In Friday's Wall Street Journal, the godfather of talk radio's moral crime syndicate, Rush Limbaugh, elected to step from behind the microphone onto the op-ed pages of the country's premiere apologist news organ for unfettered capitalism. Perhaps there is no more appropriate venue from which he could address the President of the united States in the form of an open letter, for it is precisely that unfettering of capitalism, in the form of the deregulation of FCC ownership limits on radio stations, that has enabled Limbaugh to accomplish what he has accomplished: a profit model that supersedes the level exchange of ideas, spawned a host of lesser imitators, and poisoned the political discourse in this country to near-metastatic levels.
Why Limbaugh thinks President Obama would have any interest in the opinions of a man who has explicitly stated that he wishes for his failure, and by extension the failure of the American government, escapes me.
We'll take a look at some of Limbaugh's statements, some downright insulting, some laughable, and some staggering in their disingenuity, and we'll set fire to a few strawmen, below the fold.
We all remember when Howard Dean went down in flames.
Iowa. January 18, 2004.
One scream, replayed endlessly, endlessly, on every media outlet in the country.
But have we forgotten this?
November 19, 2003
In an interview around midnight Monday on his campaign plane with a small group of reporters, Dean listed likely targets for what he dubbed as his "reregulation" campaign: utilities, large media companies and any business that offers stock options.
And the media corporations, sensing the threat, retaliated, and at the first opportunity, savaged him.
But the good Doctor
called them out on it.
DEAN: I think you report the news, you create the news, and that's what you guys do, and that's fine.
BLITZER: We didn't create your concession speech, you did that.
DEAN: You chose to play it 673 times in one week.
(LONNNNGGGG PAUSE. DEAN AND BLITZER LOOK AT EACH OTHER. FINALLY, JUDY DEAN TOUCHES HOWARD DEAN'S ARM, LEANS TOWARD HIM AND SAYS SOMETHING)
To say that Howard Dean and Wolf Blitzer simply "looked at each other" is a grotesque understatement. I will never forget the look of pure hate on Blitzer's face as long as I live: he knew Dean had him. He knew that the measure of the Fourth Estate had been taken, and found wanting.
The beast had been named.
Now comes 2009, and the public trust in media, breached on a regular basis with, to borrow Limbaugh's words in the op-ed which we are about to examine, a regularity that is "both chilling and ominous", is laid waste.
And that thing which Limbaugh, his imitators, and their corporate beneficiaries fear most is the taking of steps which wold restore that trust.
Republicans have lost control of the Congress. They have lost control of the executive branch. With fortune on the side of our nation, the control over the judicial branch which they have hoped to inflict on our nation for the foreseeable future will be thwarted.
Two things remain to them: obstructionism, and fearmongering through use of the media.
Take the latter away, and the former will surely be their death sentence.
It won't boggle the mind to suggest that conservatism dominates the political dial.
There's a blog dedicated to the destruction and suppression of progressive talk.
Its name is quite telling: "Radio Equalizer."
Which is exactly what its operator, Brian Maloney - or Limbaugh - DOESN'T want: the equalization of radio.
It's the classic conservative bait and switch: call it exactly the opposite of what it is.
And Limbaugh is insultingly obvious in this respect, right from the outset in his so-styled open letter to President Obama, beginning with its very title, "Mr. President, Keep the Airwaves Free":
Is it your intention to censor talk radio through a variety of contrivances, such as "local content," "diversity of ownership," and "public interest" rules -- all of which are designed to appeal to populist sentiments but, as you know, are the death knell of talk radio and the AM band?
Wait a minute. How does President Obama "know" this? Well, if Rush says it's a fact, it must be, right?
Local content will be the death of AM radio?
It isn't where I work now. It wasn't where I last worked, where a locally-owned AM radio station influences public discussion and to some extent, policy in its community. That station is live each weekday from 6a to 6p, is a constant source of discussion in the community (not all of it positive, but that's the cost of doing business WHEN RADIO ACTUALLY REPRESENTS FREE DISCOURSE) as well as on early Saturday mornings.
Where I am now, the AM station carries local sports, does community affairs in the morning around an "adult standards" music format hosted by an 81-year old announcer who is a member of the state broadcaster's association's Hall of Fame, and is a looked-to source for information on local events such as school closings, town meeting, charity fundraisers, and the like.
No, Mr. Limbaugh, President Obama does not "know" this.
I know your statement to be false, and by rights, so should you.
And I'm betting you do.
From there, Limbaugh proceeds to employ the hackneyed conservative saw of demonizing the positive, like we saw in the Presidential election campaign when suddenly, it was a Bad Thing to be a "community organizer." Suddenly, "diversity of ownership," and, by God, the "public interest" are Bad Things.
This from a key spokesman for a movement that has done its best to turn appellations such as "intellectual" and "academic" into pejoratives.
Limbaugh complains, and claims, that "members of your party, in and out of Congress, are forming a chorus of advocates for government control over radio content."
Much like affirmative action was intended to reverse the results of discrimination, the things that are being considered are intended as REMEDIES.
Remedies to the control over the airwaves that is now exerted by corporate giants that use them to manipulate the discourse in a fashion that favors legislative agendas that benefit one thing and one thing only: their bottom line.
And they are willing to pay Rush Limbaugh 400 million dollars to help them do it:
His $50 million a year paycheck represents a raise of about $14.4 million a year over his current contract, which was paying him $285 million over eight years and was set to expire in 2009.
The deal — struck a month short of the 20th anniversary of "The Rush Limbaugh Show" — is thought to be the most expensive in radio since Howard Stern moved to Sirius Satellite Radio for a reported $500 million in 2004.
"I’m not retiring until every American agrees with me," Mr. Limbaugh, 57, said on his radio program Wednesday.
The deal amounts to a major bet by Clear Channel Communications and its syndication subsidiary, Premiere Radio Networks, that Mr. Limbaugh’s brand of conservative talk will prosper well into the next decade.
while Stern's huge contract is said by some to be a large contributor to that which has bankrupted the merged Sirius and XM networks, Clear Channel, utilizing as it does the public spectrum, has no such problems. Clear Channel is currently selling off properties in smaller markets, in fact, in an effort to buy itself back.
Limbaugh continues:
It is not an exaggeration to say that today, more than ever, anyone with a microphone and a computer can broadcast their views. And thousands do.
Lacking the capital and promotional infrastructure to promote its material, these "broadcasters" reach a fraction of the people in a week that Limbaugh reaches in one day. Here, he offers a specious comparison: the playing field is in no sense level.
And this is by design.
Another deliberately deceptive and misleading statement of the sort that Limbaugh can render like no other:
The government is explicitly prohibited from playing a role in refereeing among those who speak or seek to speak.
But the government, under the administrations of Reagan, both Bushes, and Bill Clinton's misguided deregulation of radio, did exactly that, by proxy. They ceded control of the discourse to corporate entities.
This is not to advocate for a return to the Fairness Doctrine. i know of no circles in which a reinstitution of the Doctrine is being seriously discussed. I personally happen to feel that, with the unregulated media of cable and to a lesser extent, satellite "radio", the Fairness Doctrine, were it to be reinstituted, would be not only ineffective, but counterproductive. It would energize the right and create a selling point for Fox News:
"Come hither, for news 'fair and balanced' free from the heavy hand of 'government censorship.' " Terrestrial radio would become stigmatized to some extent, and we'd be right back where we started.
Rush is almost done, and no Rush Limbaugh bloviation would be complete without summoning the boogeymen:
I would encourage you not to allow your office to be misused to advance a political vendetta against certain broadcasters whose opinions are not shared by many in your party and ideologically liberal groups such as Acorn, the Center for American Progress, and MoveOn.org.
Let me ask you this:
Where was the first place that Joe Average heard of MoveOn or ACORN, and what did they hear about them?
People such as Limbaugh want to make sure that, in the instance of the stimulus package, the average person is deterred from an objective analysis of the effects it might have on the economic mess that the unfettered capitalism that allows them to run amuck on our airwaves by a search for imaginary acorns and marsh mice.
Misdirect. Demonize. Delude.
Lie.
It's what they are, it's what they do.
For example:
There is no groundswell of support behind this movement. Indeed, there is a groundswell against it.
I must have missed that. All I hear speaking against it are those whom this threatens.
Such as you, Mr. Limbaugh, your corporate masters, and your political allies.
Limbaugh continues to offer strawmen to the very end:
The fact that the federal government issues broadcast licenses, the original purpose of which was to regulate radio signals, ought not become an excuse to destroy one of the most accessible and popular marketplaces of expression.
This, again, is a destructive and desperate bait-and-switch by a proponent of the "free market", enabled by the so-called "free market", and in the service of this unfettered capitalism mischaracterized by its proponents as a "free market."
In a free market, FCC licenses would go to the highest bidder, not the most connected one AND the FCC would not censor content, which they already do through speech codes. The level of censorship, subsidy, and regulation already benefits Limbaugh. The issue is whether he can survive a free market.
A TRULY free market, where the airwaves were once again made accessible to local broadcast operations, free from content controlled by corporate-tasked "market managers" who now function as the hand of censorship that Limbaugh would have you believe we are in danger from by the government.
Which renders his conclusion as limp and ineffective as something else in the absence of one of the drugs he has been convicted of obtaining illegally:
What will it be? Government-imposed censorship disguised as "fairness" and "balance"? Or will the arena of ideas remain a free market?
It isn't a free market NOW, Rush. Thanks to you and your corporate masters, we lost that some time ago.
No. The Fairness Doctrine is a convenient demon for the Right.
Deny them this. It feeds their beast, and it wouldn't be effective as a remedy anyway.
The solution is not regulation of CONTENT, but of OWNERSHIP.
Reregulate.
Reexamine the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Bill Clinton's biggest gift to a medium that did all it could to destroy his Presidency.
Return the airwaves to the people to whom they belong.
This is the thing that Rush Limbaugh fears the most.
This is what he doesn't want you to know.
This is his biggest fear with respect to the administration of President Obama.
This is why he wants him to fail.