Cowboy Confessional

If in the 21st century there is anything inherently unfair, it is the unnatural reincarnation of the Fairness Doctrine.

For anyone younger than a Baby Boomer, the Fairness Doctrine was concocted in an age when the average American received his or her news from one of three network television stations, or the local newspaper (and if you were really lucky, you had two local papers providing news and fish wrapping).  The flow of political information was narrow, highly channeled, and horribly sanitized.

Part of the problem that a limited number of news outlets created was an equally limited number of views.  The major media was then, as it is now, left-leaning (though what was considered “left” when the doctrine was enacted in 1949 would be unforgivably conservative by today’s standards), and opposing points of view were rare in the broadcast media.  If your local newspaper was as left-leaning as the evening newscast, then your intellectual horizons were artificially lowered to ground level.

Things have changed mightily since 1949.  To wit:

* AM radio — once the music world ran for the higher ground of FM — became the natural outlet for opinion to the commuting and working class

* We went from three broadcast networks with evening news programs to five+  24-hours news stations and almost 250 other channels (and still there is nothing worth watching)

* The Internet has now made everyone a broadcaster, even if they don’t have a single cogent thought

We have gone from a situation where there so little reach into American homes that opposing viewpoints would not be heard, to having so many vehicles and channels within each vehicle, that no opinion is left unexpressed.  Indeed, the common complaint from Americans is that they cannot keep up with the torrent of new, information, opinion, and endless reporting on Paris Hilton and other natural disasters.

So what possible purpose is there in reviving the Fairness Doctrine?  The same purpose that most law entails, that being political manipulation.

If government can force a broadcaster to pair every viewpoint with an opposing one, the burden of finding, cataloging, and reporting on each pairing makes running a news or opinion forum a burden and unprofitable (this doesn’t even begin to contemplate the expense incurred when a Federal prosecutor calls a broadcaster into federal court for technical violations of the Fairness Doctrine). Thus we can expect a rapid decline in discourse.

Shiftless journalist (if I may bring CBS news into the discussion) could also hand-pick people incapable of robustly presenting the opposing view.  Imagine Dan Rather selecting the spokesperson for gun owner’s rights.  Old Dan, providing his happy pills have kicked in, would surely select some toothless, camo wearing hick with a southern speech impediment — a veritable Deliverance pig porker.

But the most compelling question is “who would be regulated?”  The FCC might be given autocratic powers, and it is entirely conceivable that every blogger in the country would be subjected to this assault on free speech.  After all, Internet communications are transmitted via all manner of currently regulated telecommunications paths, be they TV cable or telephone, and I have yet to see a bureaucrat who didn’t strive to consolidate as much power as possible.

The key point is that the 21st century resembles not the 20th.  Every man, woman, and child (”child” thus including your congressman) can broadcast to the entire world, and thus every opinion is aired. 

What could be more fair than that.

Bookmark to:

How can sex be “original sin” when humans appeared to being doing little else for millions of years. Doesn’t sound very original at all.

Bookmark to:

“I don’t celebrate diversity,” I said to the San Francisco hyper liberal, who upon hearing this hyperventilated into a state of indignant disgust.

Before she could engage her tongue into a river of rhetorical retaliation, I injected “I celebrate unity.” The diametric concept short circuited her speech center as well as her alleged mind, and I walked away without further confrontation.

Culture is what makes human existence more than that enjoyed by animals. Dictionaries and anal retentive anthropologists agree that commonly held beliefs and customs (often reflected in laws) are what define social interaction. Commonality is the essence of culture.

One can appreciate and understand differing cultures, and a few pundits and social scientists make a handsome living doing so. But enforced celebration and a desire to create many cultures is inherently destructive and insane. Multiculturalism has the perverse effect of reducing focus and celebration of the common cultural traits that unify people and thus make for a functioning society.

One such culture (if I may abuse the word) is the rap and hip-hop scene, where antisocial behaviour is lauded. Throughout most of the world, cultural norms call for (a) not killing and raping people and (b) informing the cops about those who do. These primary cultural attributes — a right to life and cooperative protection thereof — are rubbish in the hip-hop counter insurgency and their drive to eliminate snitching. Gangsterism is promoted and the gangsters now intimidate innocents into silence. The simple message in “snitch and die.”

There are only two ways to cure this particular malignancy, and neither is going to happen any time soon. The first is for government to take inner-city violence and gangs seriously, and have a rather authoritarian crackdown on gangs everywhere. This won’t happen because politicians hate doing real work, much less reducing fear in the populace. Fear is the original motivation, and as long as the people are scared, politicians will have a reason to ask for votes. Politicians like a certain level of mayhem, and as long as it is confined to the poor, they get fear, votes, and money from those not dying in the street.

The other remedy would be for people within the inner-cities to deal with the problem directly. I have a quirky daydream of enraged parents stringing a local thug-and-dope-dealer from a light pole, and for the police to quietly ignore the swinging body for a few days. Direct and publicly visible reprisal has a lot going for it, not the least of which is inducing the uncertainty factor into the criminal mind. Thugs are not afraid of dying, but they aren’t (completely) stupid either.

But the odds of this happening are slim. Government has attempted to disarm peaceable poor residents, and does little-to-nothing to disarm and disband gangs. Thus every father and mother jailed behind iron bars on their living room windows knows that absent mass retaliatory action, their homes could well become a drive-by scene. I don’t normally advocate ob violence, but it may well be the last best hope for some communities.

Thugism is the most obvious and abhorrent instance of multiculturalism, yet it transparently demonstrates why cultures must focus upon and enforce common traits. Among these common traits are peace — which includes not committing crimes again your neighbors — and cooperation — which does include snitching.

Celebrate unity!

Bookmark to:

Lewis “Scooter” Libby perjures himself before a grand jury and gets 30 months in prison.

Bill Clinton perjures himself before a grand jury and walks.

Perhaps John Edwards is right after all.  There does appear to be “two Americas”, one for those elites who are above the law and one for the rest of us.

Bookmark to: