"Billionaire-backed ghouls and madmen"
Last edited Sun Jun 25, 2017, 04:50 PM - Edit history (1)
Or - "How We Got Here"
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan killed something called The Fairness Doctrine:
The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was — in the Commission's view — honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC, which was believed to have been under pressure from then President Ronald Reagan, eliminated the Doctrine in 1987.
For the record, the two federal judges who helped Reagan kill the Fairness Doctrine were future-Supreme Court incubus Antonin Scalia, and disgraced Nixon henchman Robert Bork. After helping to hold down the Fairness Doctrine while Reagan smothered it, both men went on to enjoy long and fruitful careers as wingnut icons and ruiners of American democracy.
Also in 1987, immediately after the Fall of the Fairness Doctrine came the Rise of Conservative Hate Radio:
Daniel Henninger wrote, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, "Ronald Reagan tore down this wall (the Fairness Doctrine) in 1987 ... and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination."
Then, in 1990, immediately after the Rise of Conservative Hate Radio began normalizing a Republican vocabulary of lies, slander, casual racism and hate-mongering via millions of AM radios and "Rush Rooms" across the country. an up-and-coming pervert named Newton Leroy Gingrich began teaching a cohort of ambitious sociopaths inside the Republican Party to relentlessly parrot exactly the same hate-speech coming from Limbaugh and his imitators outside the party.
Venerable, sclerotic institutions like The New York Times looked-with-alarm (as the kids say) --
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- but took no substantive action whatsoever to actually stop the Rise of Gingrich, because of their deeply inbred insularity and childlike faith that between the Wise American Voters and some other group of Sober Men of The Establishment. someone else would surely step in to put an end to such toxic and radical flapdoodle. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later, those other heroes would get around to it:
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Four years later, neither the Wise American Voters nor the Sober Men of The Establishment had shown up to save the day.
Sad!
Sure those crazy Liberals had been jumping up and down screaming that the Party of Lincoln was dying and last remnants of Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicans were being displaced by billionaire-backed ghouls and madmen, but really, who listens to Liberals anyway?
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2017/06/in-beginning.html?m=1
"Driftglass" is the other half of "Blue Gal" from "Crooks and Liars" website.
He has been at it since the early days of Bush, and has lifted my spirits with his utterly fearless commentary during some of the darkest hours of right wing Mordor.
