|link| Posted 1:40 PM by Brian Linse

Moses Wine Tasting in LA!

Roger L. Simon, author, screenwriter, director, blogger, and guy with a cool hat, will be celebrating his newest Moses Wine novel, Director's Cut, with a book signing/wine tasting in LA. The event will take place at Dutton's Books, 11975 San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood on July 2 at 7PM.

Noted LA bloggers will be serving as bartenders/judges, and they've agreed to let me hang out with them. Expect other special guests such as famed film director Paul Mazursky to be in attendance. If you're in LA this Wednesday, be sure to check this out.

I just finished Director's Cut last night, and it is a great read. Simon's inside knowledge of the film industry adds to a classic detective story, and references the post 911 world throughout. If you know the film business, the novel holds a few special chuckles for you, but anyone who has ever even seen a movie will be able to relate to his detective's brief foray into this strange and silly world.

|link| Posted 7:03 PM by Brian Linse

Katharine Hepburn

"The Greatest" is not a term that realistically applies to many people. But today, I don't hesitate to say that the greatest actress of all time has passed away. Katharine Hepburn has died at the age of 96.

|link| Posted 12:47 PM by Brian Linse

Dipshit

Ok, I realize that in Massachusetts there are a lot of Democratic elected officials, so by the time they get around to filling the slots for State Senators they may be scraping the bottom of the barrel. But couldn't they do better than this dipshit? [via: Plucky Punk's Happy Land]

|link| Posted 7:48 PM by Brian Linse

Lefty Bloggers Strategize For T Mac

Daily Koz has been in touch with Terry McAuliffe, and is putting together some ideas for how the Lefty bloggers might help the Dems in '04. There's a great thread going over there, so check it out and put in your ideas.

|link| Posted 10:32 AM by Brian Linse

The MoveOn.org Primary

Results are up from the MoveOn.org primary. No candidate got a majority, but Dean and, surprisingly, Kucinich got good numbers. I picked Edwards because I think he has a Clinton-like potential for breaking out as a "natural".

The most interesting numbers, those covering "enthusiastic support", show that Lieberman is wasting his time. Of course, this particular exercise is almost certainly biased toward the more liberal and activist-minded voters, so that must be factored in to any interpretation of the results.

I still think it's down to Dean, Edwards, and Kerry.

|link| Posted 10:37 PM by Brian Linse

If You Can't Say Anything Nice...

...don't say anything at all. Strom Thurmond, dead at 100.

|link| Posted 7:45 PM by Brian Linse

"Savage" Weiner Hard for Noonan

In an astonishing admission, Michael "Savage" Weiner has declared that his whole "schtick" has just been a desperate attempt to get a date with Peggy Noonan.

"I'm actually a bleeding heart Liberal, but, I don't know, Peggy just does something to me. Maybe it's those wool suits, I can't help myself", a dejected Weiner told reporters at a news conference.

Weiner has decided to go back to supporting gay marriage, reproductive choice, and affirmative action, since he has been unable to get Ms. Noonan to return his calls.

No word yet on whether conservative cable network MSNBC will continue to employ him.

For more on the Weiner Boy, check out Neal Pollack.

|link| Posted 12:38 PM by Brian Linse

Narrowing The Field

Well, it just got easier to figure out who to vote for in the Democratic primary, because Dick Gephardt has demonstrated that he is too stupid to be president. I mean it. Seriously.

Either: A) Dick didn't know that the president can't overrule the Supreme Court, or B) Dick knew this was not the case but said it anyway.

I'm not sure which of these would make him appear more stupid, but in either case, he clearly lacks the mental capacity for the job.

But hey, Bush the junior got elected... Maybe we can have a Dumb and Dumber '04 election!

At this point, I'm ready to trim the field down to Dean, Edwards, and Kerry.

UPDATE: Funny takes on this from Barlow and Northrup.

FRIDAY UPDATE: Talk Left agrees about the trio field, but adds that Wesley Clark would be a fine addition to any ticket as VP, or as a candidate for the top spot. I'd second the idea of VP Clark, but suggest that he has no chance of winning the nom as presidential candidate, and can only damage the eventual nominee in the arena of domestic defense, even if only by comparison. My gut tells me that our best chance is with one of the three above, with Clark as VP.

|link| Posted 4:30 PM by Brian Linse

New Zevon Review

Eric Olsen of Blogcritics fame has the first review I've seen of Warren Zevon's new album, The Wind, which is due in August. There are even short clips of a few songs!

It's a great review, with some touching personal insights. Go check it out!

|link| Posted 4:22 PM by Brian Linse

Digby Is Returned!

Digby is back after a long, mysterious absence. Now if we can just track down William Burton, Scott Rubush, Dawson, and Protein Wisdom, maybe us old-timers can regain a sense of normality in the Blogosphere.

|link| Posted 3:37 PM by Brian Linse

What's No. 2 Dick Doing These Days?

Looks like Dick VP Cheney may come out of hiding long enough to end a Senate practice that dates back to George Washington. Talk Left has the poop.

|link| Posted 3:29 PM by Brian Linse

Davei Sniffs One Out

Dave Irwin of the blog Davei, came across a "news site" that didn't pass the smell test, and with a bit of investigating, discovered that the site in question was being run by a co-chair for the re-election campaign of Gov. Jeb Bush.

As these things go, it's a pretty lame effort on the part of Justin Sayfie. My favorite part is the "what people are saying" page, where not a single person is identified by name, and not a single link to an endorsement is provided.

Kinda like those testimonials for penis enlargement that arrive with the spam every day...

|link| Posted 3:13 PM by Brian Linse

True Majority

True Majority is a progressive grassroots organization founded by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's fame. They are doing some wonderful work, including establishing a service that faxes Congressional representatives on behalf of their subscribers. Go check out their site and sign up for their Alerts.

Full Disclosure: I received an e-mail from True Majority telling me that Ben Cohen is a reader of my blog, and asking me to join them in their campaign. I also received a case of Ben & Jerry's ice cream from Mr. Cohen as a thank you, even before I had signed up at their site. I can assure you, however, that the Cherry Garcia high that is currently coursing through my veins has not clouded my judgment in the least. Ben really is doing great work with this project, and I hope the Liberal bloggers out there will join me in supporting him.

|link| Posted 2:47 PM by Brian Linse

Gun Point

Eugene Volokh makes a good point about statistics regarding guns kept in the home. Too bad Professor Volokh can't seem to bring himself to make the same point about statistical nonsense with regard to John Lott's shoddy work. But then, we always have Tim Lambert.

The other point about guns kept at home that always gets glossed over when gun rights folks argue is that one of the problems is not that guns are kept in people's homes, but how they are kept.

They average knucklehead buys a gun, loads it, and sticks it in the bedside drawer. These unsafe guns then come into play when children get hold of them, or an angry spouse grabs it in a heated moment, or a burglar finds it and shoots you with your own gun when you come home unexpectedly.

Quick safes and trigger locks (which I have used since I first became a gun owner) would reduce the real numbers of domestic gun deaths and injuries significantly. But if you listen to John Lott and his pals, they'll tell you that the extra few seconds required to access your gun this way will cost you your life. They oppose mandatory locks and safes with econometric nonsense and scare tactics.

Of course, if Professor Volokh's logic were applied to Lott's statistics on this point, the stupidity of this idea would be obvious to everyone. Bitching about "bogus" gun studies would impress me more if these same folks didn't support Lott in a thesis that promotes gun tragedies involving children and other innocents. It's shameful, and it erodes the credibility of otherwise thoughtful gun rights activists.

|link| Posted 1:57 PM by Brian Linse

Orrin Ready For The 'Booby' Hatch

It's now clear that Sen. Orrin Hatch has lost his mind. All that wacky behavior we used to find so charming (you know, like being buddies with Ted Kennedy) now, in hindsight, was clearly a sign of creeping mental illness. We should have seen it coming and tried to help him...
[via: InstaPundit]

|link| Posted 1:49 PM by Brian Linse

Capo For Senate Update

Jim Capozzola has a post updating his plans for a Senate race. Adjust your calendars for 2006...

|link| Posted 5:06 PM by Brian Linse

Joyeux Anniversaire Emmanuelle

Happy Birthday to Emmanuelle Richard!

|link| Posted 4:25 PM by Brian Linse

Dad's Day

On Monday of this week one of my best friends, Dylan Goss, became a father when his daughter Lou-Andrea charged into the world. On Thursday, my friend Warren Zevon became a grandfather twice over when his daughter gave birth to twin boys. This Father's Day is a special one indeed.

I am not a father, but a gentleman known around this blog as "BadDude Dad" is. His real name is Don Linse, and he is not only my dad, he is my best friend. I am well aware of the fact that most sons are not lucky enough be able to make such a statement, so when I call my best friend later today to wish him a Happy Father's Day it will be an acknowledgment of his day, but of my blessing.

Happy Father's day to Dylan and Warren, and to all the fathers out there who do their best with the greatest challenge a man can face.

And to BadDude Dad, my friend, I love you. You are my hero.

|link| Posted 4:04 PM by Brian Linse

Happy Birthday Treacher

It's Jim Treacher's b-day today! Hope you have a great one, Treach!

|link| Posted 4:04 PM by Brian Linse

Guarding The Well

Dwight Meredith has a must read post for anyone who has been following the disturbing saga of a certain out of control blogger. The blogger in question has been doing all the heavy lifting in the work to discredit herself by publishing irrational and unsupported attacks against other writers that cross all boundaries of taste, ethics, and most likely legality. Meredith looks at the situation and sees a lesson for the Lefty blogging community at large, and I think his view on this is correct. [via: Rittenhouse Review] Also, check out Lisa English's post on the situation.

Jim Capozzola has more on "The Village Idiot".

|link| Posted 4:29 PM by Brian Linse

Examined And Observed

Welch and Layne have redesigned and tarted up their LA Examiner site, making it easier and more fun to read. This is what these guys do best, and you should plan on checking in every day.

Combined with Kevin Roderick's LA Observed, the City of Angeles is being poked, prodded, x-rayed, probed, checked for essential fluids, and told to turn it's head and cough.

Don't be surprised if this town is walking funny for awhile...

|link| Posted 1:41 PM by Brian Linse

Two Good Reasons

Two good articles in Reason Online today: Jonathan Rauch writes about some interesting First Amendment cases, and Jacob Sullum covers the elusive Iraqi WMDs.

|link| Posted 1:18 PM by Brian Linse

Ideas For Big Media

Probably because I asked so nicely in the post below, both Glenn Reynolds and Mickey Kaus have addressed substantive issues in the wake of Howell Raines' exit from the NYT.

The common theme from Glenn and Mickey is that the pretension of objectivity amongst some American media is preposterous and unnecessary.

|link| Posted 1:58 PM by Brian Linse

Howell Raines Pulls The Train

Burning question of the day: What the fuck are Mickey Kaus and the journo-bloggers going to write about now that their favorite pinata, Howell Raines, is history? And more importantly, will anyone give a shit?

I guess the guys who are on the "inside" can be forgiven a bit of grave dancing glee, but we do have our limits. Where is the thoughtful and forward-looking analysis from guys like Kaus, Welch, and Layne? I love these guys, and they are all friends, but I'm disappointed in all of them. Anyone want to talk about what bringing the evil "liberal" Lelyveld back might mean? How about the impact that these events might have on the NYT's traditional role as the drum major that most of TV news coverage follows? How about all the questions that I'm not smart enough to ask, but that we rely on our journalism pros to think of?

Dudes, FYI: Nobody outside of journalism geek circles gives a shit about the gossip!

Thank god for Nick Denton, who at least has been able to take a reasoned look at what happened, what role may have been played by the internet, and what relevance it all might have to the broader world outside of shoptalk circles.

Hey, here's a thought: Kaus talks to his best pal Bill Gates and gets him to have a couple of his pocket protector boys set up a private chatroom at MSN where all these journo-geeks can gather and dish. They get it out of their systems, and we don't have to weed through it all on their blogs!

"Hey Bri," you say "What about Andy Sullivan?" Fuck him. He went pathological a long time ago, and I stopped reading him during the run up to Gulf War II. I expect better from these other guys, though.

Personally, I have been applying generous helpings of salt to NYT content since Whitewater and Wen Ho Lee. There are big issues here that need some analysis from talented and insightful writers. Anybody interested?

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has some good ideas. I especially like the RSS monitor idea. And it turns out that smart-ass Welch beat me to my snarky lede by a day.

MO' UPDATE: Great point by Jarvis: "[T]he competitor in the news business isn't other news, it's other, more fun things to watch and do. And if one big purveyor of news suffers in credibility or compelling interest, all news suffers. In this pond, falling water grounds all boats." And it turns out that it was Oliver Willis who actually brought the Times down.

AND: Richard Bennett doesn't think too highly of my criticism.

|link| Posted 1:12 PM by Brian Linse

All Hillary, All The Time

Kevin Drum points out that the good folks over at NRO have gone wild with Hillarymania.

Can anyone argue that this pathetic site is now anything more than a convenient meeting place for neocon circle jerks where K-Lo usually has the biggest dick?

|link| Posted 12:56 PM by Brian Linse

Righteous Indignation Since 2001

One of my favorite conservatives has a new MT blog. Go say hi to Ben Kepple, and if you don't already read him, everything you need to know to get started is communicated by the six photos in his new banner. Ben is a bright, passionate, and reasonable thinker and writer. Too bad he's almost always wrong...

Great new digs, Ben! And I'm glad I don't have to hope that Blogspot is up to read you from now on.

|link| Posted 1:42 AM by Brian Linse

Almost Not Funny

NORFOLK, VA—With more than 5,400 jubilant Marines and sailors cheering him on, President Bush landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Harry S Truman in a Navy jet Monday to preside over a historic veterans'-benefits-cutting ceremony.

Don't forget, president Bush wants us to "support the troops"... hey, you think what he meant all this time is that he wants us to actually pay their benefits privately so the gubmint don't have to?

Fucker.

|link| Posted 10:31 PM by Brian Linse

Fish In A Barrel

This Eric Rudolph capture story has made highlighting bigotry and hatred on the religious right as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

"To tell you the truth, I wish they hadn't caught him," Franklin Holloway said, pausing before voting this morning in a town referendum to allow restaurants to serve beer and hard liquor. "Look at those abortion doctors. They kill innocent babies."

"If he did that Olympic bombing he should be punished," Linda Holloway added. "But as far as those abortion clinics and the gay club is concerned, he shouldn't be punished for that. You see, those things are not right in the sight of God."

Well shit-howdy! You think them folks realize that they's the same as them there Mooslum fy-natics blowin up shit in Israel cuz Allah toll 'em to? Same as them crazy fuckers what flew 'em planes to the towers?

The truly scary reality is that they actually just think our god can beat up their god, and our god-fearing president is just doing the work for Him here in the garden. Falwell and Roberts spoke it after 9/11, and these pathetic "believers" are back to remind us that fundamentalism is still going strong in the religious right wing.

I wonder if Mickey Kaus and Andy Sullivan are still more worried about violence from the fringe Left?

|link| Posted 2:49 PM by Brian Linse

Stoopid Is As Stoopid Does

Just in case you are in need of a good laugh (and who isn't these days?) Ken Layne has latched on to a story that is almost too far out there to be true.

Meet one Tucker Max, a womanizing bartender, author, and internet comedian who was sued by a former girlfriend for publishing humorous memoirs of their relationship on his website.

The suit was not for libel but for invasion of privacy, and as luck would have it, the case came before what appears to be the single most uninformed and incompetent civil judge to make the news in a very long time. Newbie judge proceeds to find for the lovely lady, a former Miss Vermont, and requires Mr. Max to remove the speech in question from his site. This results in an obscure website becoming the focus of a high profile free speech case, and insures that anyone with a modem will soon have visited the page through caches and mirror sites.

But wait, it gets better.

Katy Johnson, the Miss Vermont in question, is also the proprietor of her own website, a piece of work that simply has to be seen to be believed. When I first visited it I thought that it must be a parody site created by Max. It isn't. And if I think about it, it is unlikely that there exists a human being funny enough to have thought it up as a joke... Ok, maybe one of the Pythons or The Poor Man, but I doubt it.

So let me be the first to say, "Thank you Miss Vermont"! You have helped identify an incompetent judge, helped us discover a new and very funny internet star in Tucker Max, and done more to harm beauty pageantry than 100 Andrea Dworkins could have ever wrought.

Got any ideas on "World Peace", Katy?

|link| Posted 5:20 PM by Brian Linse

A Bad Day For American Democracy

As predicted by virtually everyone, the FCC has passed sweeping rule changes affecting media ownership limits. Two of the five FCC commissioners who voted against the changes were defeated by Chairman Michael Powell and the other two Republican commissioners. In a dissenting statement, Commissioner Michael J, Copps wrote:

I dissent to this decision. I dissent on grounds of substance. I dissent on grounds of process. I dissent because today the Federal Communications Commission empowers America’s new Media Elite with unacceptable levels of influence over the media on which our society and our democracy so heavily depend.

This morning we are at a crossroads – for the Federal Communications Commission, for television, radio, and newspapers, and for the American people. The decision we five make today will recast our entire media landscape for years to come. At issue is whether a few corporations will be ceded gatekeeper control over the civil dialogue of our country; content control over our music, entertainment and information; and veto power over the majority of what we and our families watch, hear and read.

Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, also dissenting, wrote:

This is a sad day for me, and I think for the country. I’m afraid a dark storm cloud is now looming over the future of the American media. This is the most sweeping and destructive rollback of consumer protection rules in the history of American broadcasting.

The public stands little to gain and everything to lose by slashing the protections that have served them for decades. This plan is likely to damage the media landscape for generations to come. It threatens to degrade civil discourse and the quality of our society’s intellectual, cultural and political life. I dissent, finding today’s Order poor public policy, indefensible under the law, and inimical to the public interest and the health of our democracy.

In the end, this Order simply makes it easier for existing media giants to gobble up more outlets and fortify their already massive market power. It capitulates too many of the longstanding demands of the media companies we oversee.

This approach shatters most of the last vestiges of the consumer protections that weren’t eliminated in the 1980’s. This decision pulls the teeth out of the remaining rules, leaving the FCC a toothless tiger. As big media companies get bigger, they’re likely to broadcast even more homogenized programming that increasingly appeals to the lowest common denominator. If this is the toaster with pictures, soon only Wonder Bread will pop out.

Commissioner Adelstein's reference to a "toaster with pictures" recalls former Reagan administration FCC Chairman Mark Fowler's now infamous statement that public interest responsibilities did not apply because a television was now like any other ubiquitous appliance; just a toaster with pictures.

So it seems that today's action was the endgame of dereg efforts that have been going on for almost twenty years. In a Salon article, Eric Boehlert reports that former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt calls today's vote "the culmination of the attack by the right on the media." This from the man who was in charge during the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, an effort that he managed to limit to the massive deregulation of radio that has rewarded us with Clear Channel dominance of nationwide radio broadcasting. Fears of the dangers of concentration in TV and print are not alarmist. We have seen the reality develop in just seven years with radio.

Though today's vote is being seen as a victory for Michael Powell and the interests of the media conglomerates, it is most certainly not the end of the story. The ball is now in Congress' court, and beginning Wednesday, Sen. John McCain will hold hearings through his Commerce Committee at which all five FCC commissioners will testify. This will be an opportunity for the dissenting members to speak out, and for Congress to ask some pointed questions, one of which, as Joe Conason points out, is why chairman Powell has thus far refused to release studies and recommendations from his own staff. A bipartisan group of Senators including Trent Lott and Ernest Hollings is also determined to overturn today's ruling.

Now is the time to turn up the heat on Congress. If Senators Lott and Hollings are successful in committee, the debate will reach the Senate floor where we all have our elected officials allegedly working for us. Go to the CDD site to find out what you can do to help.

|link| Posted 8:36 PM by Brian Linse

The Ugly Face Of Ignorance

When I read this piece in the NYT, I moved in a slow, burning rage to my computer to post about it. Then I thought, no, let's let Atrios field this one. He's sure to have the best take on it. Go read Maybe We Need Gitmo After All. In this case, the ugliness in question has faces and names. They include Eric Rudolph and his "fans" like the hideous Crystal Davis, 25, from North Carolina. These backwards-ass country fucks are out there folks, and they ain't afraid to promote their hate... as long as it's in Jesus's name, of course. I wonder if Crystal will be able to find a good Christian like herself to vote for in 2004...

God help us.

|link| Posted 4:42 PM by Brian Linse

Telecommunication Deregulation

Kevin Drum has bravely stated that he does not believe the current push to further deregulate the telecommunications industry is a bad thing. You should go read his post, and check out the first ten or so comments, then head back over here. I'll wait...

Welcome back. Before I proceed to explain in excruciating detail why Kevin is so wrong on this one, let me just say that this kind of post represents for me the best of what a blog can be. And since Kevin is such a nice guy, his commentors seem to be more reasonable than most, and often, as in this case, provide valuable content.

Kevin states his case well, and as far as it goes it is a reasonable argument. But what Kevin misses -- in fact, what most discussions on this topic miss -- is an important aspect of the history behind telecom regulation. Here's a bit of that history. Bear with me, and I'll make it as brief as possible.

The Radio Act of 1927[pdf] was the first attempt by Congress to regulate the new, but rapidly growing broadcast industry. It was fashioned after the model of public utility law, and it created the Federal Radio Commission as the oversight body. The most important aspect of this Act was the establishment of the doctrine that broadcasters must act in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity" (Section 11) as a condition for being awarded a license (and specifically not ownership) for use of the broadcast spectrum. It was clearly established that the broadcast spectrum was the property of the people of the United States.

The Telecommunications Act of 1934 further established these concepts as applying to television, and reinforced the public property and "PICN" doctrines. The FRC became the FCC, and many court cases followed that further defined the boundaries of broadcaster's free speech rights and the dictates of their public service responsibilities.

Cut to 62 years later, when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 largely finished the deregulation begun during the 1980's. By this time, gone were the 1949 Fairness Doctrine, many of the rules governing concentration of ownership, and seemingly, the sense that scarcity of spectrum space was a problem.

Now, of course, under the chairmanship of Michael Powell, the last remaining restraints on concentration of ownership are about to fall. Fortunately, for the purposes of this post, only two concepts are important: public ownership of the broadcast spectrum, and "PICN".

I think the central problem in many interpretations of the need for broadcast regulation is the tendency to believe that scarcity was the reason for PICN regulation. In 1927, and until the era of cable television, it was certainly an important example of the need for government intervention (see: Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC), but the underlying principle was, even then, that the broadcast spectrum is the property of the people of the United States.

The fact that scarcity is arguably no longer the issue it once was is reasonable justification to adjust the model of government regulation, and perhaps, can even be used to justify some loosening of constraints on ownership concentration. Conversely, however, the question must be asked: How is scarcity defined? And if one takes the view that there will always be more citizens seeking broadcast spectrum space than can ever be accommodated, the answer is that there will always be scarcity considerations in broadcast regulation.

This has been the traditional approach to spectrum scarcity, which could be better termed "perpetually limited spectrum". Can we really believe that there is some magical number of available information resources that trumps historical scarcity definitions? Who do I see about getting my own TV station? Even Ted Turner believes in this approach. He states that the environment that allowed him to build his media empire from one lowly UHF station no longer exists.

If a young media entrepreneur were trying to get started today under these proposed rules, he or she wouldn't be able to buy a UHF station, as I did. They're all bought up. But even if someone did manage to buy a TV station, that wouldn't be enough. To compete, you have to have good programming and good distribution. Today both are owned by conglomerates that keep the best for themselves and leave the worst for you -- if they sell anything to you at all. It's hard to compete when your suppliers are owned by your competitors. We bought MGM, and we later sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner, because we had little choice. The big were getting bigger. The small were disappearing. We had to gain access to programming to survive.

Even the now notorious Telecommunications Act of 1996 was very specific in noting that the PICN standard was still the foundation of telecommunications regulation. Section 336, BROADCAST SPECTRUM FLEXIBILITY, (d) states: "Nothing in this section shall be construed as relieving a television broadcasting station from its obligation to serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity." And if you go to the text of the Act, and do a word search for "public interest", you will see that this standard is applied throughout the legislation.

Kevin's argument is, in part, that diversity is not necessarily a problem, and that the diversity of information sources available to citizens today is exponentially greater than it was when the early concepts of broadcast regulation were established. It seems to me, however, that this is a relative concept, and if we factor in the far greater communicative power of modern broadcast technologies, diversity cannot be measured solely by a numerical calculation of information outlets. If the same corporate owners control the largest television, radio, and print media outlets in a given market, can we really expect the average citizen to seek out, or even to know how to seek out, alternate views? The majority of Americans are not blog-reading, internet info-seeking geeks like us. And even if they were, the fact that public ownership of the spectrum and the requirement of PICN are still the guiding principles of regulation would require that the FCC act in our interest, and with our input, in deciding the models of broadcast regulation to be applied.

Michael Powell's FCC, or at least a 3-2 majority of it, does not seem to believe this.


Additional Reading: What Part of "No Law" Don't You Understand?

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds points out the fact that the FCC is shilling for the media congloms while chipping away at our rights. Congress, too. DCMA anyone? The irony of this contradiction -- the FCC protecting Big Media from the citizens of this country while turning a deaf ear to our concerns for diversity -- is a bitter one. All the more reason for kudos to people like Ted Turner and Barry Diller for standing against their own financial interests and in favor of better democracy.

MO' UPDATE: To get a sense of just how bought and paid for the FCC is, go read this piece from the Center For Public Integrity. The FCC met 71 times with representatives from the broadcast industry to discuss the upcoming rules changes, and held 1(yes, one) public hearing. Also see Molly Ivans at TomPaine.com for more on the corruption. [via: Aspasia]

AND THIS: Go check out Lisa over at Ruminate This. She's more fired up than I am on this. [via: Cursor.org],

NOT DONE YET: The venerable Nick Gillespie has a shockingly shallow and, well, idiotic commentary in the LA Times. The gist of it seems to be that since Rupert Murdoch has been successful enough to be able to afford 6 Billion to buy DirecTV, he must know what's best for us with regard to program content and diversity. How like Plato old Nick can be, huh? Even for one as usually open to libertarian ideas as I am, this is a weak piece of work. Nick asserts "New Media" diversity, yet never addresses the most obvious question for a libertarian -- that of ownership of the spectrum. He bases another comparison of concentration on media revenues.(Huh?) And further asserts that the failure of the Time Warner-AOL merger, in terms of stockholder share value, is a measure of how difficult it is to dominate media. (What is it with libertarians and money, anyway?) It is, unfortunately, a miserable piece of low-level libertarian hack work. Nick can do better, and he usually does. [via: Busy Busy Busy]