Are you suffering "scandal fatigue" yet?
Finding it hard to keep up with all the breaking news of how the leadership of the Republican party is willing to subvert democracy at every opportunity?
Are you just plain too tired to care that another official government agency investigation has found a prominent Right Winger putting political ideology over the common good?
How about another political hack Bush appointment intent on destroying the public agency entrusted to him?
Well, then you don't want to read this diary.
But if you think you can handle just one more straw, upon that already cracking camel's back of Republican credibility to govern, read on...
Ken Tomlinson abruptly resigned from his post as Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting about a month ago without much comment.
Now we know why:
The former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting broke federal law by interfering with PBS programming and appearing to use political tests in hiring the corporation's new president, internal investigators said Tuesday.
Read the whole thing here:
http://www.sfgate.com/...
A more detailed story with lots of great quotes from Bill Moyers appears in the December issue of Vanity Fair, in a damning article by James Wolcott. (There's also a compelling article about the true story about CBS and Memogate by Mary Mapes herself, that you can read here: http://www.vanityfair.com/...)
Moyers observes that conservatives have wised up enough not to call for outright censorship of programs they find objectionable. Instead, it's as if they released "green gas underneath the door and over the transom" that numbs the synapses of producers and executives, subduing them into compliance. Enter Kenneth Tomlinson, the former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and designated fumigator--a man I now think of as The Green Gasser.
So not only did Tomlinson subvert the law and the charter of PBS by corrupting PBS from within to abandon the "balance" that has been it's vaunted reputation for decades, but he deliberately engaged a strategy to spend millions of taxpayer dollars, corporate contributions, and "Viewer donations from people like you" to push one-sided Republican ideology down the public's throat AND force any criticism of the Bush administration off the airwaves.
I know its supposed to be very unfashionable these days to make Nazi references, but outside of rounding up liberals in concentration camps, is there any fascist tactic, from propaganda to torture, that this administration DOES NOT use?
With the current pending break-up of the Knight-Ridder newspapers forced by Republican shareholders in the news, the message to those in the media is clear: No matter what the law or journalistic tradition says, any criticism of the Bush administration, no matter how principled, will earn you the destruction of your company or cost you your position in the media establishment.
We owe Democratic Congressmen David Obey of Wisconsin and John Dingell of Michigan a huge "Thank You!" for keeping their eye on the ball on this issue, and making sure that it was exposed for all to see. And Vanity Fair has been doing some simply AMAZING stories lately, working off some of that "Rise of the Vulcans" guilt, I would guess...
Let the Right Wing noise machine commence its charges of "liberal bias!"
And you thought Fat bastard had retired after the Austin Powers movies?
Full coverage in the New York Times here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/business/media/16cnd-broadcast.html?hp&ex=1132117200&en=8d0dfed3147b78e2&ei=5094&partner=homepage