I’m not sure what to think of Senator “Chuckles” Schumer’s take on the return of the “Fairness” Doctrine. 

Three possibilities present themselves:

1. He’s an idiot.
2. He assumes his audience and constituency are idiots.
3. 1 and 2.

Read this and then you be the judge:

Asked if he is a supporter of telling radio stations what content they should have, Schumer used the fair and balanced line, claiming that critics of the Fairness Doctrine are being inconsistent. 

 

“The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”

There’s a vote for #1; if he thinks political speech is in the same weight class as pornography, he’s clearly been hanging out with Barney Frank and Al Franken too long.

In 2007, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a close ally of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told The Hill, “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”

There’s a vote for #1 and #2:  Americans can hear dozens of sides to every story, 24/7.  There is no shortage of free speech in this country.

Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last year said, “I believe very strongly that the airwaves are public and people use these airwaves for profit. But there is a responsibility to see that both sides and not just one side of the big public questions of debate of the day are aired and are aired with some modicum of fairness.”

Another vote for both.  “Fairness” comes from having the ability to get your point out there.  Nothing prevents the left from being heard in (it’s absurd that I have to even mention this) the media. 

 

He also defended “card check” legislation [saying] “there has to be some counter” to the leverage businesses have, claiming “employers have every leg up on people who want to organize and that’s why union workers have gone down from about 25 percent to 6 percent [in the private sector].”

 

There’s a vote for #1, because nobody could be stupid enough to think that a private ballot benefits business any more than it harms unions.

So that’s four votes for “Schumer is an idiot”, and two for “He thinks everyone else is an idiot”. 

As long as Chuckles Schumer sits in office, no New Yorker has any reason to feel superior to any toothless, Klan-voting yokel from Alabama.