WHAT’S BEHIND THE “FAIRNESS DOCTRINE?”

On the face of it, the “Fairness Doctrine” sounds fair: opposing views on politics, religion and government deserve an opportunity to be heard. I think we would all agree on that as a premise in free speech, print and broadcast media.

No so quick. I’m going to switch for a moment to ObamaCare. There is not a sane soul in the country that wants ObamaCare. Yet, our illustrious government, led by our illustrious President, saw to it that ObamaCare became a “cram down;” they crammed it down our throats whether we wanted it or not.

Well, this “fairness doctrine” issue is the same thing.

The liberals have discovered that no one wants to listen to them. They even launched their own network, which has gone nowhere. How can you sell advertising when no one wants to listen? What these guys want to do is to herd everyone into a giant coliseum and start broadcasting the liberal agenda over loudspeakers until everyone there has become indoctrinated. That’s how they did it in the Soviet Union and that’s how they did it in Germany.

The airwaves are free. People can listen to opera, symphony, bluegrass, rock, pops, news radio, NPR, religion, and liberal or conservative radio. The fact that most people are listening to conservative talk radio and very few are listening to liberal talk radio just frosts the gizzards of the left wing.

In short, we’re to blame for the ills of the nation because we refuse to listen to and adhere to the liberal agenda. That’s why the subject is being talked about in the halls of Washington yet once again, because Pelosi, Reid and their pals want to silence the conservative voice. They see it in a more practical light; if they require broadcasters to give equal airtime to their liberal views, broadcasters will stop their conservative programming because they won’t be able to sell any advertising while the liberals are on the air.

You might think that this is a figment of my imagination, but you also know they are doing everything possible to shut down bloggers. The only reason they are not going after the newspapers is that the print media is already in the pocket of the liberals. The fact that sales of newspapers is drastically down underscores my argument; the few conservative news outlets still around seem to be holding their own quite well.

So, the fairness doctrine is not about assuring the freedom of speech at all; it’s about controlling what information the people are allowed to hear, just as ObamaCare is about controlling what type and quality of medical service you can get.

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In a side bit of news, British Petroleum… you might remember the guys who caused that giant oil spill in the Gulf… has always been close to the Russians. In fact, BP has been engineering Iran’s oil fields for years and the Iranians have been selling their oil to Russia. Now, BP is selling out to Russia; in a very low key announcement over the holiday, BP says it is selling the bulk of its corporate stock to them. Now, I ask you: when BP refuses to cough up monetary damages for what happened in the Gulf, are we going to sue Russia? Think about that the next time you pull into a BP ARCO station to gas up.