The doctrine of false fairness

Apparently I’ve never written about the Fairness Doctrine here; I was sure I had. Now is as good a time as any, due to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (R-SC) short-lived call for its reinstatement and the longer-lasting freak-out prominent political radio hosts experienced in reaction. All of those radio hosts have been conservatives, as you can see by following the link, which has the best corresponding photo ever. Sean Hannity looks like an opera singer, Glenn Beck looks like he’s about to start sobbing – again – and Rush Limbaugh just looks hungry.

The Fairness Doctrine, for those who are unaware, would require radio hosts to present both sides of a political issue on their shows. I’m not exactly sure how this on its own would make it fairer, as they usually do present both sides, or at least their own hysterically distorted versions of them. Genuine balance would require them, essentially, to suppress everything that’s paid off for them so far they believe.

You might think an avowed centrist such as myself would be the first to call for such a law. Actually, you’re more likely to find centrists in staunch opposition to it for these reasons: 1. It’s probably unconstitutional. 2. Even if it weren’t, it doesn’t do anything to create genuinely fair, honest or balanced or talk radio. It forces the wingers who currently dominate the airwaves to speak through clenched teeth, if they don’t quit first and find a better gig on TV.

Furthermore, even though the majority of Americans are not nearly as partisan as any well-known host, it is evident that at least some of them are fine with radio as it is. Perhaps I have too much faith in the power of consumer demand, but if people had been calling for Limbaugh-grade centrist radio, they would have gotten it. It does exist, Alan Nathan being the best example. Either he has a limited marketing budget (I’m available for freelance work!) or listeners just aren’t that into him. Too bad. They could use him.

The same goes for left-wing talk radio, if you can find it. Though the Fairness Doctrine would apply equally to all ideologies, the fact is that conservatives would suffer at a disproportionate from its constraints. Commercial alk radio has always been a more successful medium for them, for some reason; I find that liberals are best off in highly segmented magazines, blog networks and community radio.

There is no need to fear a resurgence of the Fairness Doctrine, as President Obama has already confirmed that he’s an opponent of it himself. I can’t say at this point if he’s opposed enough to pose a veto threat, but it would never clear the House, so why bother?

A Rush to judgment if there ever was one

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

It seemed like I had countless options for this week’s fail, but you all know by now how I feel about using Holocaust imagery in reference to anything other than the Holocaust – I’m talking to you, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) and the Washington Times editorial page – so we’ll move on to something that is not only offensive, but complete bullshit. It was brought to you by none other than Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh’s ass has a lot of storage space, and he often pulls things out of it to discuss on his radio show. This week was no exception. He blithely asserted, without anything resembling evidence, that Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner “has the full support of a major political party in this country . . . the Democrat party [sic] is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he’s just a victim.”

This reminds me of a time last year when an immigrant to Canada from the Middle East was deported for committing a double-digit number of crimes, and someone wrote an editorial accusing us of failing him. That’s the mentality Limbaugh seems to think exists here. If Loughner is a victim of anything, it’s an inadequate level of support for the mentally ill. But is that making anyone shed a tear for him, least of all the Democratic Party? Where’s the beef, Rush?

This followed an episode in which he accused the Democrats of wanting tragedies of this nature to happen so they can push their agenda. Imagine if someone accused former President George W. Bush of appreciating 9/11 for the opportunity to go after Saddam. Oh, wait. People have made that accusation. Do you suppose Limbaugh had any patience for it? Some people have warmed to Democratic ideals; he seems to think any political gain for them is plotted.

Should anyone assume that I am biased against conservatives in this matter, keep in mind that most of the people seeking to tie the Tucson shooting to right-wing rhetoric are random, rank-and-file liberals who are not as easily noticed as anyone I mentioned today. There are many individual examples of the collective winger fail, I had to pick one, and right-wingers tend to be the highest-profile examples. I maintain that the craziest conservatives are famous and the craziest liberals wish they were.

LPFM and the LCRA vs. NAB SOBs

Another one from the lame-duck desk: The Local Community Radio Act (LCRA) passed this week, giving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the mandate to open up airspace to low-power FM (LPFM) stations across the country. Hardly anyone noticed. Did you notice? It went so unnoticed that Yahoo! News didn’t run a piece on it. If the lack of notice doesn’t prove to large radio broadcasters that community stations don’t pose a threat, I don’t know what will.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) led the charge against the bill, with the dubious claim that LPFM stations would create “interference” with their signals. Having been involved with two such stations, I can tell you this is highly unlikely at best. Unless you’re keying the call numbers into your radio, you’re lucky if you can get a clear signal from an LPFM station.

In the end, they’re just worried about losing market share – also highly unlikely. Community stations are perhaps the world’s finest example of niche media. Before, you would find most LPFM stations in rural areas that are generally underserved in terms of media. This bill would allow more of those stations to pop up in cities, where some people are simply sick of Clear Channel.

Members of Congress weren’t swayed by the NAB’s claims. The bill was championed in the House by Reps. Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Lee Terry (R-NE), followed by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and John McCain (R-AZ – told you he’s running shit). It passed in both chambers and is on its way to President Obama’s desk. Nice that they agree on something, however limited its impact.

Ironically, most of the groups who pushed for the LCRA’s passage identified themselves as “progressive,” as you can tell from the source of the above link. I can attest to community radio as a stronghold for left-wing programming; I was the most conservative person at CKUW until my friend Tristan Field-Jones came along. It’s easier for progressives to break into radio this way, since there’s more money in commercial radio for conservatives, as that unfortunate Air America debacle proved.

So if major broadcasters have nothing to fear from community radio, and progressive activists are the only ones paying attention, what exactly is the point of this legislation? The fact is that an LPFM station is the ideal place to learn the basics of radio hosting; to get local music, events and notable people on the air; and to provide diversity in radio commentary. If anything prevented these stations from taking root before, there’s no reason to maintain those barriers.

We need some bullet control

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Rep.-elect Allen West (R-FL). If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s because I wrote favorably about his attitude toward race issues on Wednesday. But that’s the way it works around here: One day I praise someone for doing something smart, the next day I trash them for doing something stupid. I have no sense of loyalty when it comes to politics, except to my own opinions. Anyway, the “something stupid” in question was West’s pick for his chief of staff on the Hill.

As we learned by watching The West Wing, the three criteria for a chief of staff are as follows: They must be your best friend, they must be smarter than you and you must be able to trust them with your life. I don’t know if West’s pick, Florida radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman, is his best friend, but she is the farthest thing from smarter than him, and I wouldn’t trust her with the life of a paramecium. She is one of those hosts, who come as close to inciting violent political revolt as they can (barely) get away with.

Kaufman recently told a rally of Tea Partiers that if “ballots don’t work, bullets will.” Actually, if there’s only one shooter, it results in being arrested for murder or an attempt at it. And if there are many shooters, that results in an uprising that can easily be quelled by a domestic military or coalition of foreign militaries, leading to charges of treason if you make it out of that intact. If ballots don’t work, that means you lost.

Confusingly, Kaufman has been linked to a lockdown of 300 schools in the south Florida area. An e-mail was sent to her saying “something big was going to happen”; that e-mail was filled with “very extreme out-of-control” rants about gun rights and various ethnic groups. It is suspected that her show may have triggered something in the nutjob, although this theory is a stretch. Kaufman wisely stepped down from her post with West to avoid linking him to this controversy. But he still wanted her first.

It’s fine for West to choose staff members from outside the establishment, as he promised to do on the campaign trail. But it’s not fine for him to choose someone so obviously unqualified for serious politics. Kaufman thinks the “liberal media” is trying to “lynch” him by attacking her when, really, he proved his own poor judgment.

Political correctness killed the radio star

This is why it was a huge mistake for National Public Radio (NPR) to fire commentator Juan Williams. I don’t really give two shits about him personally; he’s about as effectual in the punditocracy as I am in the world of fashion. But politically motivated personnel decisions may lead to politically motivated funding decisions, which will likely become more potent depending on the level of Republican gains after the midterms, as hinted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Williams, as you are probably aware, was fired after commenting that people of Muslim appearance in airports make him feel scared. The article notes that “he was making a larger point about how he wants Americans to move beyond prejudices against Muslims.” Acknowledging his own prejudice was probably the best way to illustrate his point. I conclude that the NPR brass listened to this one snippet and fired him before the lawsuits came in.

Most arguments for public broadcasting are that it promotes truly democratic media; that is, free from the influence of advertisers and/or corporate heads. That argument loses much of its credibility in matters such as this. Every position of management invites the opportunity for misuse. Don’t get me wrong, I favor the concept of management, but we can’t always count on people not to take unfair advantage of it.

I’m as opposed to taxpayers funding the arts as anyone else, so if Republicans make cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), I won’t shed a tear. My appreciation for public broadcasting is largely emotional; it creates a homelike, populist feeling that commercial broadcasters can’t duplicate. (I watched a lot of PBS as a kid.) But that’s a poor argument for propping it up. I could also point out that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting only receives $400 million a year from appropriations, but that seems to be more than enough.

What may happen is that donors will need to step up to the plate more than they already do, or public broadcasters will need to start selling a little bit of advertising. In order to maintain its integrity, though, the advertisers would have to be local to the station in question. Supporting local entrepreneurship is a cornerstone of populism, and this is the best way to reconcile that with the need to make up for lost revenue.

It’s hard to view McConnell’s words as anything but the words of a disgruntled fellow conservative. I expect he’d find an argument for public broadcasting if a left-wing commentator got fired. I’m just saying.

My response to “P.J.”

Last Sunday, I was discussing the West Virginia mine accident on The Kenny Show on 92.9 KICK-FM, for which I’m a regular commentator. We both agreed that all precautions should be taken to make sure miners don’t die too much, although this required a bit of convincing on my part. Then Kenny posed the question of why someone would work in a coal mine if they knew how fundamentally unsafe it was.

I suggested that many people who mine coal as their career typically do not have a good deal of formal education, which, however questionable its real-life application, matters to employers who would offer a cushy desk job. It may be that all they know is coal mining, which pays quite well, and when the only work experience you have is in a single trade, your employment prospects are far more finite than they would be for, say, an MBA or a communications grad.

A caller referring to himself as “P.J.” didn’t like this statement, which came off to him as a blanket statement due to the lack of qualifiers (some, most, many, etc.). That used to drive me crazy when random gits on the Internet complained about women, but I’m used to it now. P.J., on the other hand, considered our perspective “condescending and elitist.” We rarely get call-ins during my segment, so of course I was licking my chops at the prospect of a good debate.

P.J. pointed out that he has friends who work in unionized mines in the summer, between semesters, presumably for extra money, and are unaccustomed to the conditions I was setting out at the Massey mine. I reminded him (twice) that Massey is not a unionized mine and was far more poorly regulated than whichever Canadian mine his buddies work in. I also pointed out that West Virginia’s economy is heavily dependent on coal, and so it’s natural for a lot of its residents to be inclined toward working there.

What I didn’t have time to explain to him was the difference between educated and smart. For all I know, everyone working at the Massey mine is absolutely brilliant and could show their CEO a thing or two about management. But, as previously stated, that might not matter to an employer. When I’m done school, I’ll have a B.A. in communications, and every useful thing I’ll have learned will have come from my vocational college. University hasn’t taught me a damn thing.

In short, P.J., I apologize if I sounded like I was indirectly insulting your friends, but please consider the above before accusing me of anything next time.

I’ll never love this play again

It’s always a fun time for me when an artist or performer brings a proposal for new legislation to Capitol Hill in their own favour. This time, it’s soul singer Dionne Warwick, who is demanding that Congress see to it that any musician played on AM or FM radio is paid a royalty per play. Because of course the government has to be the first to save artists from destitution. Or at least a smaller house.

This is already being done for more modern forms of radio, so it’s not exactly unprecedented. Also, royalties are already being paid to the writers of songs that play on traditional radio, which has always seemed pretty off to me. Shouldn’t these people get paid for actually writing songs? The “reality-show airhead with a great voice but can’t write” market is still very lucrative.

Nonetheless, in the age of the Internet, I see music radio as little more than an advertising channel for a musician’s CD, downloads, or live concerts. That’s where they’ve been making their money for years. I suspect Warwick is calling for a new conduit because most people young and download-savvy enough are asking “Dionne who?” as they read this. Maybe she should be asking for old-age pensions for musicians instead.

But the AP article above doesn’t reveal Warwick’s true motivation for a bill of this nature, the neutral name of which is the “Performance Rights Act.” What does is an editorial she wrote herself for the Huffington Post, in which she asserts that it has been euphemistically renamed the “Civil Rights for Musicians Act.” “This bill . . . closes the legal loophole the radio corporations and CEOs are using to ensure that African American artists receive fair pay for airplay,” she says. Wait, what? When did we start talking about race?

Within all 658 words of this essay, the words “African American” or “black” appear a total of nine times. This makes it next to impossible to think of this bill as anything other than affirmative action for black musicians, with no evidence that they earn less than white musicians on the basis of race. But the worst part is one of the essay’s last sentences: “. . . the struggle to pass the Civil Rights for Musicians Act isn’t about us any more than Rosa Parks bravery was about getting a better seat on the bus.”

That’s right. She compared a bunch of petulant musicians to Rosa Parks. And she calls the whole idea “economic justice for African Americans.” Though she does not say the royalty should go to black artists only, she frames it as their problem, which is just obnoxious. That’s enough for me to give this bill the “NO” stamp. Good job!

Why I left my radio show

Today marks the third mensiversary (the monthly equivalent of an anniversary) of The Future American, so I thought this would be as good a day as any to write about a new and unforeseen development in my punditry career. As the title has made obvious, after eight months, I recently quit producing political affairs programs for CKUW 95.9 FM, the radio station at the University of Winnipeg. The very last episode of Midpoints airs this Monday.

I say “programs” because there have been two of them: the first, Boiler Room, was one that I hosted with a partner, Vanja. He left after six months because, as an honours student, he couldn’t commit any more time to the show. Initially I was excited to go solo, even though Vanja was a fantastic co-host (he remains my Eastern Europe consultant), because it meant full creative control – at least within the bounds of broadcast regulations, which forbade me from swearing on air. But after only a few weeks of producing Midpoints, I burned out.

Don’t get me wrong; I still love radio itself. I’m going to continue being a panelist on The Ultra Mega Sports Show and doing my share during special station events. But because of the aforementioned broadcast regulations and CKUW’s self-imposed commitment to local content, I was unable to use Midpoints to talk about what really concerns me: U.S. politics. I’ve produced episodes covering provincial infrastructure projects, the Canadian federal deficit, and even the reach of the swine flu in Canada. And as I wrote four-minute commentaries about each of those things, I kept asking myself, “Do I care? Why does anyone care?”

Well, a month or so of that made my weekend afternoons a mental chore; it’s the same feeling I imagine that a fourteen-year-old boy gets when he’s expected to mow the lawn later that day. Now I have those hours free to enjoy lunch with my family, hang around the city with my friends, spend quality time with my boyfriend, and focus more energy on the “Fail of the Week.” That’s a huge relief off my mind.

But it’s not just the show itself. The culture at CKUW is the kind I’ve written several entries against more than once. I’ve produced the only political show that isn’t hardcore left-wing, the only news show that ignores activists, the only spoken-word show that discusses policy details and not human-interest drivel. Also, CKUW is full of hipsters, the most annoying segment of the population. As I’ve grown more culturally conservative, they’ve become nearly impossible to talk to without screaming.

And so, as of 2 PM CST this upcoming Monday, my political commentary will be confined to this blog. But I don’t think any CKUW listeners will be sad when Midpoints is gone for good.

A “Rush” of blood to the head

Let’s get this out of the way first. I don’t like Rush Limbaugh. He was the first in a long line of extremely partisan talk-radio hosts that, collectively, have damaged political discourse in America beyond repair. An objective eye will plainly see that he pays no mind to factual accuracy when there’s provoking to be done.

So here’s a tip for Democratic leaders: Leave Rush alone. (Cut to a video of me on my bed, sobbing that sentence over and over again, with mascara running down my face.)

That might seem like an odd idea, considering that he’s now been set up as the unofficial leader of the Republican Party. That is false. At the end of the day, commentators who have adopted Rush’s style don’t live and die with a party. They live and die with a doctrine. If a member of the party they think best represents that doctrine turns out to be too “opposite” for them, you can bet they’ll complain about it. It’s been known to happen before – remember how pissed Ann Coulter was at Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)? She called that column “They Shot the Wrong Lincoln.” You stay classy, Ann.

Rush Limbaugh shouldn’t be at the heart of any debate between Democrats and Republicans in government. Maybe they’re getting a little tired of arguing about the economy, but the rest of us know that attention must continue to be paid. There are too many Americans who won’t sleep any better knowing that his approval rating is lower than that of Bush himself.

Were I a Republican or a conservative, I would be humiliated to have someone like Rush Limbaugh claiming to speak for me. He spends more time talking about why liberal ideas are bad than he does talking about why conservative ideas are good. He is so desperate for attention that he’ll lower himself to say that he hopes the president fails, after spending eight years attacking Democrats who said the exact same thing. He has proven himself more than once to be an example of the racism, sexism, and classism associated with conservatives by people who don’t have anything more productive to say. And the saddest part of all is, he doesn’t even care.

To wit, he illegitimizes conservatism. By holding him up as the gold standard of conservatism, Democrats are legitimizing him.