Muzzling Talk Radio

June 22, 2007

 

There's an old saying: “If you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Well, the liberals tried that and now their motto is: “If you can't beat ‘em, legislate ‘em.” A bunch of these, uh, people got together in Washington for a big confab recently to bellyache about why Americans weren't cozying up to their liberal agenda. They call themselves “progressives” now because they say “liberal” has become a dirty word. Well, yeah. They made it so.

 

At the end of this little pow-wow (sorry if that's politically incorrect) in Washington, DC, these liberals decided that talk radio has to be legislated. Why? Because they can't succeed at it. They pointed out that 91 percent of total weekday talk radio programming is conservative. You know why? Because liberalism cannot stand up to the daily scrutiny of the truth. Mario Cuomo tried it and failed; in New York, of all places. Air America has tried it several times and they've failed. Now they're under new management and hope this time things will be different. Of course, you know the definition of insanity. It's doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

 

One of the points they made was quite telling. They said in the top ten radio markets that still 76 percent of talk programming was conservative. That should tell them something. Even in the big cities, people don't want liberal talk radio. Liberals tend to whine. People can't tolerate whining for very long. But their solution to their problem of drawing listeners is a microcosm of what's wrong with their philosophy. They think the government should control everything . They said as much during their little convention. They said conservatism was dangerous because it expected too many people to fend for themselves. Of course, if you're fending for yourself you don't need Big Government and if you don't need Big Government you don't need them.

 

By the way, the dirty little secret with Air America is that they actually buy the air time from many, if not all, of the stations they're on, according to some inside management types with whom I've spoken. That's the difference between brokered and bartered time. Shows like mine and Rush and Hannity are bartered. In other words, stations agree to run some network commercials within the show and they sell the rest of the time locally. With brokered time, you're buying large blocks of time from the radio station and running whatever you want. Where I come from they're called infomercials. If, in fact, the government needs to step into this battle it should be to require stations that run infomercials to tell the listeners at the top of each hour exactly what they're listening to.

 

But back to these so-called progressives and their latest effort. They want the government to step in and require stations to run an equal amount of their tripe for every conservative show they run. This is the same tactic they take with everything. When the town council in Farmers Branch, TX voted to fine those who rent to illegals, the “progressives” went nuts. They demanded a vote before the people. The people voted better than two-to-one for the council bill. Then the “progressives” went judge shopping and found one that would order an injunction to stop the law. That's the problem with their whole agenda. The people don't want it but they want to foist their progressive agenda on them anyway.

 

They're progressives, alright. They're progressing just as fast as they can toward a socialist state. No wonder nobody wants to hear about that on their radio.