To the ears of babes and other underdeveloped thinkers – let’s call them liberals – what could possibly be wrong with anything that employs the word “fair” or promotes “equality?” It is language so scrumptious, so sensible, so reasonable, who else but callous, cold-blooded, Reagan-loving, daisy-smashing, kitten kickers, lacking even a jot of civility, could find any fault with them? It’s somewhat reminiscent of a girl I knew years ago who went by the saintly name of “Angel” – she could have ripped the chrome off a jeep with her eye teeth. She also had a tendency to growl when she breathed. The name was, obviously, a smidgen deceptive.
This is the case with the potential abdominal ulcer to the First Amendment known inoffensively enough as the “Fairness Doctrine” (sounds delightfully benign, doesn’t it?) – in actuality, a wholly unfair and hostile assault on the Constitution of the United States. I sincerely believe that every advocate of this machete to the gut of freedom is not only missing the point entirely, but is probably still, to this day, attributing the demise of Mario Cuomo’s talk radio program to a right-wing, back-room, illuminati-financed conspiracy.
Michael Medved
Listening Thursday to the Michael Medved radio program, it was astounding – nay, breathtaking – to hear the measure of incompetence, ignorance and downright inanity that many on the Left exhibit when attempting – I say attempting – to defend this brick-to-the-head of First Amendment rights. The idea that the “Fairness Doctrine” appeals to many American Leftocrats – and the fact that it must be “fair” because it is, after all, in its name (not unlike “yellow fever” must be wonderful because sunflowers and Sugar Corn Pops are yellow) – is the perfect illustration of the divide between conservatives and liberals. One side believes in the free market, the other side throws their unending faith behind the – *cough* – government.
Imagine, if you would, owning a little candy store somewhere (or a “bodega” in today’s Brooklyn-speak) and being told by an all-powerful, intimidating supplier that you had no choice whatsoever but to stock a particularly unpopular item – let’s say garlic-basil flavored ice cream – and that you had to purchase a very specific amount of that item and keep it in on the shelves at all times, even though you knew the product would never sell. Due to a vigorous garlic lobby that somehow felt slighted (and oppressed) in an ice-cream market controlled by an implacable chocolate monopoly, you were told it was the only fair thing to do – despite the fact that garlic was doing extraordinarily well in so many other areas. Eventually, you could either try to convince the supplier that, perhaps, ketchup-flavored sugar cookies might be a better choice – or you could simply close up shop due to the inability to generate profits.
Most would go by way of the latter.
This is the essence of the “Fairness Doctrine” – to force (via the federal government) politically liberal points of view onto market-driven, conservative-dominated, terrestrial talk-radio in equal time.
Like so many stuck-in-the-mud libbies who stamp their feet, wring their hands and stammer around in dumb perplexity trying to figure out why the hell they cannot crack the talk-radio genre, there are those who defiantly choose to dismiss in totality the idea that market forces are actually at work in determining what goes on the air – that the talk-radio listening public are simply uninterested in hearing shrill, emotionally unhinged, arid leftists yammer on and on with no sense of craft or creativity, tearing down the institutions and traditions of this great country. These angry-at-everybody compassionates do not accept that liberal talk radio does not sell.
It doesn’t.
That bears repeating … liberal talk radio does not sell. Save for a few exceptions, there is no real market for it.
Period.
Instead, incredulous leftist legislators, fixated talk-show-callers and skull-dead pundits – i.e. the gatekeepers of liberalism’s most important value, equality over liberty – are collectively convinced that heavy hands from the shadows are at work in successfully stifling reasonable alternative opinion coming from the liberal end of the spectrum – that a veritable cabal of racist-sympathizing, corporate-friendly, broadcasting fat-cats are cunningly conspiring to shut out any and all opposing views at all costs. Therefore, government intrusion becomes a logical and absolute necessity – because without television, motion pictures, newspapers, music, magazines, the internet, public schools, universities and Alan Colmes, no one would have a clue about liberalism.
Sorry. That’s not how it works.
Advertisers are not disposed to invest their hard-earned dollars in radio programming that overwhelmingly goes unheard and is about as compelling as a big-toe blood blister. I can assure you, if there was a call for liberal talk radio, and there was money to be made, currency-loving entrepreneurial types would be steamrolling their wheelchair-bound grandmothers to cop a piece of that pie. Besides, it is not – repeat not – the function of the federal government to drive a given industry into unprofitability by forcing the proprietors of privately owned entities to market unmarketable products. The fact of the matter is, even in havens of political blue – like New York City and San Francisco – liberal talk radio does not thrive.
Another important point almost always lost on big-government, anti-free market liberals is that capitalism, in all of its wonder and glory, forces people to actually take the wants and needs of others into consideration.
Say it with me …”Capitalism means caring.”
Still, liberals cherish equality more than they do liberty, not understanding that the two are in no way synonymous. (I am refrring to equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. That’s for you, Keith Olbermann).
One caller to Michael Medved’s show on Thursday, who was particularly smitten with radio liberal-yacker (and MSNBC host) Rachel Maddow, commented:
With Rachel’s programming versus the right-wing programming, it’s one versus – what – fifty? How many right wing shows are there versus how many liberal shows are there? And I live in Texas, which is very red, in Dallas, which has nothing besides, up and down the AM dial, right-wing talking points.
Here’s a friendly suggestion to those on the Left who long for more allocation along the radio dial … how about figuring out a way to create a product that the money-spending public-at-large actually wants to hear? A radical concept, I grant – as fanatical and contumacious as wishing to preserve the millennia-old definition of marriage.
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