Pest Control

[Jacobin]

http://billmon.org/archives/002713.html

Update 9:35 PM ET: Over at Daily Kos, Hollywood producer Robert Green offers an interesting, if entirely speculative, account of how The Right Wing Path to 9/11 made it into the ABC prime time lineup. I found one of his hypotheses particulary intriguing:

marketing took one look at this movie and said -- hey, Rush Limbaugh will love this. So will Hugh Hewitt. Remember, ABC owns lots of radio as well, and in particular right-wing talk radio. Synergy! And their audience will watch our movie if they tell them to (they don't call them dittoheads for nothing.) So marketing took the ball and ran with it (probably with cyrus's "friend of limbaugh" help). That's all about generating ratings and buzz.

I think this angle deserves more scrutiny. It would explain why so many in the rodential hierarchy either backed or went along with the far right-wing slant of the movie. I find it extremely hard to believe Cyrus Nowrasteh simply slipped his propaganda intentions by the powers that be (which Green seems to suggest is the most plausible hypothesis.)

I find it much easier to believe that somebody -- maybe lots of people -- saw a chance to cash in on the Disney-ABC-Capital Cities axis of weevils. Limbaugh, after all, is an extremely lucrative franchise for the rodent. The ABC Radio Network has over 4,000 affiliate stations. I don't know how many of them are fully or partially dedicated to the conservative propaganda (slap) talk show format, but I'm guessing it's a substantial number.

As I recall, a few months back various lefty bloggers were debating the political impact of media consolidation, with the majority opinion seeming to be that it was no big deal.

Guess again.

Billmon does it again. If you haven't ever tried his blog, I recommend