Meet the New Flap - Same as the Old Flap

In November of 1984, when I was a junior in college, ABC ran The Day After, a fictional (duh) account of a global nuclear war. Aired at the height of the Cold War, it was 14 straight hours an evening of fairly blatant propaganda for the Nuclear Freeze movement, and against Ronald Reagan's policy of confronting the Soviets.

Did conservatives complain? Oh, yeah, we (and I was a newly-minted one, although not without the odd teething pain) did. Did I watch? Growing up as I was doing, 20-odd miles from the nearest Minuteman III missile silo? You bet.

Was it cheaply-done, manipulative krep? Oh, lordy. Even Jason Robards couldn't save that turkey.

The point being, ABC - the third-largest broadcast media outlet in the country, at the time, devoted 27 painful hours an evening of top-billed prime-time airtime, nationwide, to a movie that had very little redeeming artistic merit or scientific thought (the movie was about as empirically rigorous as The Day After Tomorrow", last summer's Algore-riffic, scientifically comical environmental scold-fest). Its value was purely political; it was a baldfaced attempt to scare Americans into backing the Nuclear Freeze movement, and by extension oppose Reagan.

The left - especially the blogging left - is going to have an aneurism over Sinclair Broadcasting's decision to allocate two hours of prime time to "Stolen Honor", a documentary about the effect John Kerry's leadership in the anti-war movement (to some: treason) had on American POWs held in North Vietnam at the time.

"Propaganda", they [1] bellow.

"So what?" I respond. "Welcome to the only world we conservatives have ever known".

"Hatchet job", they yell.

"Right", I respond. "So much worse than CBS allotting a whole hour to Richard Clarke's now-largely-debunked hatchet job? An hour given without disclosing on the air that the book was published by a corporate cousin of CBS? An hour devoted to a puff-piece interview of a book whose only rationale for existence was to attack the Administration? A book whose author's claims have been pimp-slapped to history's curb, and whose conspiracy theory-cum-sob-story (of his CIA agent wife being outed by big, bad Republicans) has fared as well as Audrey Seiler's? That kind of hatchet job?

"Never mind", they screech. "We're complaining to the FCC! We're taking direct action"

"About what? A private entity engaging in First Amendment-protected speech? Aren't you guys supposed to support the First Amendment? Isn't it, in fact, the only Amendment most of you can remember on cue?"

"BUT THIS is DIFFERENT!", they reply, steam shooting from their ears. "It's proof that the media is really conservative!"

"No, it proves that one chain of mostly-low-power, UHF stations dissents from the mainstream media, which means that along with talk radio, the WashTimes, the NYPost and parts of Fox News, you have a couple dozen fringe-market TV stations who've woken up, smelled the coffee, listened to their audience, and have decided to get out of the hell-bound handbasket. They see that there's a solid half of the American people who just don't believe that NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, APM, FrankenNet, the NYTimes, LATimes, ChiTrib, Strib, Viacom, Knight-Ridder, Hearst, the AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, Time/Life/Warner, Newsweek, and 80% of the rest of the news, entertainment and publishing media (conservative guess) are giving them the whole story. About anything, much less politics and the world around them."

"Well, you're an asshole, and you probably never get laid", they respond. "You're an angry A white male suburbanite!"

"True on counts one and two", I respond, "although I live in the city. But let's stay on point: Sinclair owns those stations, and they have every right to broadcast whatever they see fit. You have every right to tune elsewhere. Let's see what the market'll bear, shall we?"

"Didn't you hear me? I said you're an asshole! A racist! Sexually inadequate!"

"Er, yeah", I respond, "Duly noted. Now, would you care to address any of the actual claims brought forth in Stolen Honor? Because if you can intelligently contest any of the claims in the program, I'd honestly love to have a dialog about it."

"FASCIST! FASCIST! FASCIST!", they respond.

"Right. Well, that's a start...", I reply.

[1] Celebrity blogger attitudes impersonated.

Posted by Mitch at October 13, 2004 04:48 PM | TrackBack