Just a thought about political purity ......

[Stinky The Clown]

Right now, quite a few are angry with Ben Nelson. Probably with good reason.

Then we have Heath Schuler.

Jim Webb, from time to time.

The generally lovable Jon Tester.

More than a few others.

We on the far left (sorry, that's who are ... the far left) rail against them. "Fight them in the Primaries", we screech. I've done it myself.

But look at where the Repubics find themselves. They ran off their version of our Blue Dogs. Linc Chaffee. Even Chris Shays. And now they have a very unified party. Much smaller. No majority anywhere. Diminishing popularity. But boy are they unified.

I'd love to see us get some party discipline, for sure. But not in a way that makes us a party of far left losers. Not that lefties are losers. Just that a minuscule minority would be losers. And too much purity gives us exactly that.

Those Dems we love to hate are quite likely the most liberal person who could get elected in their districts and states right now.

If you want a nice, comfortable majority of real lefties, change the minds of the people, not the Congress. The people will leada nd Congress will follow.

So where does all this lead?

Easy:





The.

Media.




Break it apart. Regulate the fuck out of it. Make a national Limbaugh Network a costly undertaking and pretty much impossible.

As Colbert famously said: The truth has a decidedly liberal bias.

Just let the honest news be reported and Congress will in fact, turn liberal.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Query -

How do you "regulate" the media and still uphold the Constitutional guarantee of a free press?

[Stinky The Clown]

2. I'm not a lawyer

Where there's a will there's a way.

We had media ownership laws once, why not again?

If we **want** to do it was *can* do it.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

5. Be careful of what you advocate -

media ownership laws aren't the same as "regulating the media." Talk of regulation smacks of prior restraint or censorship, and no one wants to get on that train.

Dangerous stuff.

We need a free press, the freer the better. That's more important than anything else. We also need to be vocal about what is not being properly presented.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. To add ......

I'm not sure we can ever regulate *what* gets said, but we *can* regulate the volume. And by limiting ownership, we make every city have to go find their own cadre of right wing assholes to buy up the 5000 watt AM stations. That at least makes it harder.

We need to break up the big broadcast conglomerates. Not regulate speech.

[Greyhound]

4. Limiting the access of a particular company has already passed the Constitutional

challenges, that's why, pre-Raygun, we had far more players in media and Rupert Murdock was excluded from our market.

Media deregulation and consolidation from Raygun through Clinton is how we got this mess. There is nothing but corporate money to stop us from doing it again.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

6. That would work, yes.......

I get nervous when talk of regulating the media springs up, because the next step is censorship, and that is too frightening to contemplate.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. The differing is on vocabulary, not intent

I'm an imprecise verbal hand grenade tosser, not a precise advocate of some shade of principle.

"Regulate" the media, can, as you say, imply most anything. I really just want the mega media companies broken apart. I want local media ownership. I want mandated competition in news reportage (the modern day equivalent of the days of two dailies or more in every city). I want access to a microphone within the grasp of small, struggling groups. I'd love it if both the KKK and SCLC could own their own stations.

As it is now, we have that pig, limbaugh and all his copycats controlling the message from coast to coast. I would not silence him. But I would lower his volume and span of influence.

[Greyhound]

8. Yet we have it (censorship) now. It's not official government censorship,

but it is real and just as pernicious.

You remember (I believe you are of an age) what this country was like a couple of generations ago. America has become a nightmare of authoritarianism, a nation that the America of 40 years ago would have imposed sanctions on and tried to destabilize.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

9. I want

Edward R. Murrow. I want lots of Murrows, who have the courage, the intellect, the curiosity, and the determination to get, synthesize, and report the real story. I want owners like Katharine Graham who will back up her people when they put themselves on the line for the story, regardless of the "official" threats.

What we have now are not "journalists," and it's an insult to the memories of people like Murrow and Friendly and Pyle and all the good people who came before them and who should be their gods. Instead, I'll wager that most of these airheads don't even know who any of those three people are.

We had it good back then, didn't we, Greyhound?

[Greyhound]

10. You want journalism to be in the hands of journalists?

Yes, it is sad. I know Walter Cronkite is still alive, I wonder what he would say over cocktails at El Encanto (He lives in The Boulders in Carefree, AZ)? You know he and Paley called this in frightening detail back in the 70s when the networks first forced the news departments to compete with the entertainment divisions for ratings.

As for having it good, I've always been just too young, always seeing it but too far behind it to really enjoy it. A little kid when the hippies existed, coming into high school just after prop 13 eviscerated the system, starting a small business just as corporations were given free reign to kill any competition, now I guess I'll probably miss out on SS to.

It's kind of depressing. OTOH, I've been lucky enough to always be healthy and clever enough to get around them (excluding the last 6 years or so). The coming times are really frightening me though, hardly anyone seems to realize just how big this all is.

I miss America, too.