Lefty Dems have been mentioning the Fairness Doctrine with regularity lately since they’ve been losing legislative battles even with a majority. They are blaming talk radio, or “hate radio” as they like to call it. They define hate as anything said that is counter to left-wing orthodoxy. They’d rather have the government, not the market, decide what goes on the airwaves. Democracy just makes things so difficult for them, it seems. But here’s the good news:
By a vote of 309-115, lawmakers amended the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill to bar the FCC from requiring broadcasters to balance conservative content with liberal programming such as Air America.
The amendment in question was proposed by Rep. Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana who used to be a radio talk show host. Surprisingly, Democrats backed away from their Fairness Doctrine threats, some even denying that high-profile Democrats, like Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein, had threatened to bring the odious doctrine back.
I thought about those threats this morning as I drove to work. I was listening to 850 The Buzz and for about 20 minutes Adam Gold, Joe Ovies, Tony Riggsbee and whoever else is on that show spouted word-for-word the Democratic/Left party line about the immigration bill. Cracks were made about a Karl Rove plot, the influence of Big Business and even the Swift Boat Vets for Truth and how they said all those unfair things about John Kerry. And this is on a sports station. Add up the thousands of MSM outlets spewing the same line and you can see how “unfair” it is that conservative talk radio exists.
