Blogbat

« Army News on My Visit to Pentagon with WAC | Main | Putin Poodle's Predictions Project Imperial Russian Failures »

November 23, 2008

Senator Lugar Hints at Support for "Fairness Doctrine"

 

 

Senator Lugar meets with me and other WAC members (Photo courtesy of World Affairs Council)

 

 

Last week I and other World Affairs Council members had the chance to meet with Indiana Senator Richard Lugar at the Capitol.

 

During our visit with the Indiana Republican on 7 November, he seemed to offer his support for a revived “Fairness Doctrine” tailored to target only one viewpoint – that of the comparatively modest talk radio industry. On the topic of such legislation, Lugar seemed sympathetic to the significant hostility among the left towards what he called “irresponsible” “right wing” radio, using catch-phrases right out of the Idiots Guide to Liberalism, intimating that talk radio was somehow a rogue entity that merely stirred up the common people to the consternation of all-knowing legislators. (Nevermind the rogue entity on Capitol Hill that is attempting to usurp the Constitution.)

 

Senator Lugar first greeted each of us and was extremely friendly and cordial, before taking his usual seat (now that the Democrats are in power) next to where the Committee Chair would sit in the Senate Foreign Relations committee room. As we each grabbed a chair – I wound up with the honor of holding down the chair of the genuinely conservative Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. Senator Lugar then gave us a quick run-down of things like the international financial crisis, his own biography, and the in-coming administration before taking questions. During much of this, much that was said was nothing notable or new. The senator is indeed a truly likable man and I must say I can see why, politics aside, he has been as successful in the Senate as he has been. Unfortunately, beyond personality and congeniality, the Senator and millions of Americans part ways – and do so on numerous issues. Lugar, who voted in favor of an amendment in the 2007 Defense Authorization bill sponsored by Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman that would have killed such a censorship doctrine’s revival, is also known, as a Rockefeller Republican for among other things most recently ganging up with Ted Kennedy against the American people during the Amnesty war of 2006. Now that it seems safe for him to do so, he appears to be reversing his position on the so-called “Fairness" Doctrine as well.

 

Senator Lugar meets with me and other WAC members (Blogbat)

 

Lugar’s language was strong and even harsh as he laid out the argument in favor of conservative radio censorship, as if he were a schoolmaster educating his children about the danger of alligators and why we need to trap them. As he sat in his seat sipping water from a glass with an emblem that read, “United States Senate”, Senator Lugar seemed to offer what was hardly a fair and balanced assessment of the state of media bias of his own. Instead, he seemed to ape the utterly false meme that talk radio was some giant politically unified monster for which there was no real counterweight. But wait, isn’t the mainstream media, which includes most of the cable news and broadcast radio news and all of broadcast news on television, print media, and entertainment? And more alarmingly, what of the blatant leftwing bias we see throughout the very newswire services that every news organization liberal and conservative must heavily lean on for its news? No word from Mr. Lugar there.

 

Sadly, the only part of media Senator Lugar expressed interest in muzzling is just a tiny sliver of media in toto; a tiny rock in a giant leftwing media ocean liberal viewpoints found in mainstream media. Indeed, conservative radio was created and became popular as a means to somehow modestly counter the prevailing leftwing bias in all other media, and, based on this election, still has a ways to go before even doing that.

 

Meanwhile, the liberal media continue to lecture viewers and listeners, shoving the leftwing worldview and even choice of candidates down the throats of those who turn on their show, buy their CDs or pay to see their movies. And MSM is eerily silent and unwilling to report any of the events concerning the new proposed censorship doctrine, despite the tremendous noise made by Democrats and particularly Obama’s transition team. Indeed, accounting to Pew Research, 70% of Americans believed mainstream broadcast news media favored Obama in the last election; the same news media that has been losing massive amounts of readers and viewers over the past several years. In fact, if trends continue, MSM would surely succumb to alternative media and just be another voice among many, rather than the unfair doctrinaires that they have been for decades. That’s likely, much more than any other reason, why MSM was so much more aggressive in its advocacy for Barack Obama than even they were for John Kerry – by 20% or more over 2004, based on opinion polls on the perception of liberal bias. Thus this past election may one day be dubbed by historians as the Mainstream Media Preservation ACT of 2008.

 

Yet, Senator Lugar lacked any criticism for the type of Goliath-like demagoguery for which the comparatively tiny conservative radio industry came about as a response; nor did Senator Lugar comment on what 70% of Americans of all political stripes believes is a problem in mainstream television and print news media; that is, its overbearing leftwing bias. Worse, rather than being forthright to the public about his true feelings, he lets them seep out among those he assumes may be sympathetic to his views. I’m afraid you read the room wrong, Senator Lugar.

 

 

The Fairness Doctrine, the government, the People, and free speech – an historical context:

 

It now seems there is a gulf betwixt the effete few who have forgotten they serve at the People's pleasure and the People for whom the Constitution was established and the Constitution and the People for whom those serving hold their temporary  legitimacy to serve. That gulf is probably best expressed in light of these two very competing views of whence original powers flow:

 

In the midst of the pitched battle over amnesty for illegal aliens and in the face of millions of phone calls and e-mails from the People telling the senate where it could put its amnesty, Pennsylvania Rockefeller-Republican Senator Arlen Specter pounded the lectern in the Senate, as I saw with my own eyes, and decreed as if an oligarchic despot, "The will of the Senate will prevail!" Shortly thereafter began rumblings of re-instating the "Fairness" Doctrine even before Republicans were unceremoniously booted out for their arrogant and childish part in scamnesty, in order to punish the People for daring to interfere with what the Senate hath deemed would be our national policy on immigration.

By Contrast, America's Founding Father Thomas Jefferson summed up Americanism in this simple, yet powerful statement: "The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." I don't know about any of you, but I much prefer the America of Jefferson over the America of snotty little fat-cat spoiled brats who seem to think their senate paychecks, the state dinners, and all the props of the chamber are their right and that we, the People, should mind our Ps and Qs. It's time to remind the Senate that its members should be well-mannered and well-heeled at all times.

 

 

RELATED: Attention Francis Fukuyama: Maggie's Notebook deecries the end of democracy with a worldwide trend against free speech toward authoritarianism.

 

 

UPDATE: Maggie's Notebook just posted a piece on the "Fairness" Doctrine and has linked to the post you're now reading and posted some great information including how to contact Senator Lugar and others who need to be reminded of their humble station.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Martin at November 23, 2008 09:22 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blogbat.us/mt/mt-tb.cgi/761

Comments

Posted by: Maggie Thornton at November 23, 2008 09:48 AM

Posted by: Martin at November 23, 2008 09:59 AM

Posted by: Maggie Thornton at November 23, 2008 06:50 PM

Posted by: Martin at November 24, 2008 10:11 AM

Posted by: Anton at June 4, 2009 01:02 AM

Posted by: Bill Bartmann at September 18, 2009 10:28 AM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: