http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/opinion/04wed2.html?oref=login

May 4, 2005
EDITORIAL
Politicizing Public Broadcasting

The last thing Americans need is public broadcasting where the politics of the moment limits the news of the day. Yet that could be where the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is heading if Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman, keeps pushing for partisan Republicans in the management of public television and radio.

Mr. Tomlinson, a former editor in chief of Reader's Digest, has repeatedly criticized PBS as too liberal over all and has said that his goal is to satisfy a broader constituency. Satisfying more people with public television and radio is a worthy aim, but several recent surveys for public broadcasting have shown that most viewers and listeners admire what's on now. More than half of PBS's viewers say they find its news more "trustworthy" than the commercial stations'. Public television and radio programs like "Frontline," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and "All Things Considered" have even higher "favorable" ratings.

There was a time when a passionate conservative might have looked at PBS programming and called it too liberal. But those days seem long past. And in any case, as an article in The Times this week showed, Mr. Tomlinson's goal of expanding the audience for PBS does not include bolstering PBS's balance with centrist programming. It involves pushing public broadcasting over the ideological line to the Republican side, with blatantly partisan programming and the hiring of more Republican partisans to control the corporation.

Mr. Tomlinson seems to have aimed primarily at the program "Now With Bill Moyers," which he found too liberal and "populist." As a result, he pushed for a new conservative talk show featuring right-leaning editorialists from The Wall Street Journal as "balance." Many stations now take both shows, even though Mr. Moyers has left "Now," which features investigative journalism, and The Journal's show is not too different from many offerings on cable news.

Mr. Tomlinson has hired a staff member from the Bush White House to set up guidelines for the ombudsmen hired to critique shows on public broadcasting. And he is trying to hire a State Department official, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's president and chief executive.

Although he has insisted that he does not want to politicize PBS or cut any programs, Mr. Tomlinson has managed to spread the word throughout the PBS community that he does not like anything that he considers too anti-corporate, anti-White House or anti-Republican. For journalists whose basic code is to "speak truth to power," this is not good news: those are th main powers in the country.

Their real fear, an understandable one at this stage, is that Mr. Tomlinson and his supporters have a larger agenda - to "hollow out" public broadcasting and fill it with programming that suits their political agenda. And if public broadcasting becomes too political to suit all but the most loyal Republicans or too boring in the name of balance, that could mean the slow death of such broadcasting, which could have been the goal all along.

Unlike such organizations as the Voice of America, where Mr. Tomlinson once worked, public broadcasting is not supposed to be an arm of the government. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was designed to serve as a heat shield protecting the broadcasting wing from Washington's political friction. Instead of shielding PBS, Mr. Tomlinson's corporation is in danger of spreading today's political heat throughout every level of the network.


May 2, 2005
Republican Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases
By STEPHEN LABATON, LORNE MANLY
and ELIZABETH JENSEN

WASHINGTON, May 1 - The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts.

Mr. Tomlinson also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And while a search firm has been retained to find a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the corporation's president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last month, Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state.

Mr. Tomlinson said that he was striving for balance and had no desire to impose a political point of view on programming, explaining that his efforts are intended to help public broadcasting distinguish itself in a 500-channel universe and gain financial and political support.

"My goal here is to see programming that satisfies a broad constituency," he said, adding, "I'm not after removing shows or tampering internally with shows."

But he has repeatedly criticized public television programs as too liberal overall, and said in the interview, "I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is a tone deafness to issues of tone and balance."

Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive of PBS, who has sparred with Mr. Tomlinson privately but till now has not challenged him publicly, disputed the accusation of bias and was critical of some of his actions.

"I believe there has been no chilling effect, but I do think there have been instances of attempts to influence content from a political perspective that I do not consider appropriate," Ms. Mitchell, who plans to step down when her contract expires next year, said Friday.

Robert Coonrod, who stepped down as corporation president in July 2004, has known Mr. Tomlinson about 20 years and considers him a good friend. "I believe that his motives are exactly what he says they are," he said. Mr. Tomlinson is "trying to help the people in public broadcasting understand why some people in the conservative movement think PBS is hostile to them and, two, imbue public broadcasting with the notion of balance because he thinks that long term it's a winner in getting Congressional support."

"Whether people like the way he goes about it or not is a different issue," Mr. Coonrod added.

Though PBS's ratings have stabilized lately after several years of decline, the network has faced criticism that much of its programming - shows like "Antiques Roadshow" and "Masterpiece Theater" - is little different from what can be found on cable television. Though a huge bequest to National Public Radio from the estate of Joan Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonald's, has furthered the independence of public radio, corporate support and state financing for public television have slipped in recent years, making the nearly $400 million in federal money annually funneled through the corporation increasingly important.

Nor have administration officials and lawmakers been shy about challenging certain programming. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, for example, earlier this year publicly denounced a program featuring a cartoon rabbit named Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.

The corporation is a private, nonprofit entity financed by Congress to ensure the vitality of public television and radio. Tension is hardwired into its charter, where its mandate to ensure "objectivity and balance" is accompanied by an exhortation to maintain public broadcasting's independence. Mr. Tomlinson said that in his view, objectivity and balance meant "a program schedule that's not skewed in one direction or another." Some corporation board members say that complaints about ideological pressure are premature.

Beth Courtney, president and chief executive of Louisiana Public Broadcasting and one of three non-Republicans on the nine-member board, said there had been no chilling of journalistic efforts. "What we should look for are the real actions," she said. "We shouldn't speculate about people's motivations."

But Mr. Tomlinson's tenure has brought criticism that his chairmanship has been the most polarizing in a generation. Christy Carpenter, a Democratic appointee to the board from 1998 to 2002, said partisanship was "essentially nonexistent" in her first years. But once Mr. Tomlinson, a former editor in chief of Reader's Digest, joined in September 2000 and President Bush's election changed the board's political composition, the tenor changed, she said.

"There was an increasingly and disturbingly aggressive desire to be more involved and to push programming in a more conservative direction," said Ms. Carpenter, who is now a vice president of the Museum of Television and Radio. One of the more disturbing developments, she added, was a "very vehement dislike for Bill Moyers."

It is not a shock that Mr. Moyers's work exercised Mr. Tomlinson. He is a reliable source of agitation for conservatives, who complain that "Now" under Mr. Moyers (who left the show last year and was replaced by David Brancaccio) was consistently critical of Republicans and the Bush administration. Days after the Republicans gained control of the Senate in the 2002 elections, Mr. Moyers - an aide in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and a former newspaper publisher who has been associated with PBS since the 1970's - said the entire federal government was "united behind a right-wing agenda" that included "the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives."

In December 2003, three months after he was elected chairman, Mr. Tomlinson sent Ms. Mitchell of PBS a letter outlining his concerns. " 'Now With Bill Moyers' does not contain anything approaching the balance the law requires for public broadcasting," he wrote.

Shortly after, Mr. Tomlinson hired a consultant to review Mr. Moyers's program; one three-month contract cost $10,000. The reports Mr. Tomlinson saw placed the program's guests in categories like "anti-Bush," "anti-business" and "anti-Tom DeLay," referring to the House majority leader, corporation officials said. The reports found the guests were overwhelmingly anti-Bush, a conclusion Mr. Moyers disputed.

Mr. Moyers said on Friday that he did not know a content review was undertaken but that he was not surprised. "Tomlinson has waged a surreptitious and relentless campaign against 'Now' and me," he said, dismissing complaints that he is biased. Mr. Moyers left "Now" to write a book but is back on public television as host of the series "Wide Angle."

Mr. Tomlinson said he conducted the content review on his own, without sending the results to the board or making them public, because he wanted to better understand complaints he was hearing without provoking a storm. "If I wanted to be more destructive to public broadcasting but score political points, I would have come out with this study a year and a half ago," he said.

Recently, PBS refused for months to sign its latest contract with the corporation governing federal financing of national programming, holding up the release of $26.5 million. For the first time, the corporation argued that PBS's agreeing to abide by its own journalistic standards was not sufficient, but that it must adhere to the "objectivity and balance" language in the charter. In a January letter to the leaders of the three biggest producing stations, in New York, Boston and Washington, the deputy general counsel of PBS warned that this could give the corporation editorial control, infringing on its First Amendment rights and possibly leading to a demand for balance in each and every show.

The corporation said it had no such plans, and the contract was finally signed about a month ago.

Mr. Tomlinson did help get one program, "The Journal Editorial Report," on the air as a way of balancing "Now." Ms. Mitchell backed the program, but public broadcasting officials said Mr. Tomlinson was instrumental in lining up $5 million in corporate financing and pressing PBS to distribute it.

Public television executives noted that Mr. Gigot's show by design features the members of the conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, while Mr. Moyers's guests included many conservatives, like Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition; Richard Viguerie, a conservative political strategist; and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Mr. Tomlinson said that it was his concerns about "objectivity and balance" that led to the creation of a new office of the ombudsman at the corporation to issue reports about public television and radio broadcasts. But the role of a White House official in setting up the office has raised questions among some public broadcasting executives about its independence. In March, after she had been hired by the corporation but was still at the White House as director of the Office of Global Communications, Mary Catherine Andrews helped draft the office's guiding principles, set up a Web page and prepare a news release about the appointment of the new ombudsmen, officials said.

Ms. Andrews said she undertook the work at the instruction of top officials at the corporation. "I was careful not to work on this project during office hours during my last days at the White House," she said.

Mr. Tomlinson has also occasionally worked with other White House officials on public broadcasting issues. Last year he enlisted the presidential adviser Karl Rove to help kill a legislative proposal that would change the composition of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board by requiring the president to fill about half the seats with people who had experience in local radio and television. The proposal was dropped after Mr. Rove and the White House criticized it.

Mr. Tomlinson said he understood the need to reassure liberals that the traditions of public broadcasting, including public affairs programs, were not changing, "that we're not trying to put a wet blanket on this type of programming."

But his efforts to sow goodwill have shown that what he says he tries to project is sometimes read in a different way. Last November, members of the Association of Public Television Stations met in Baltimore along with officials from the corporation and PBS. Mr. Tomlinson told them they should make sure their programming better reflected the Republican mandate.

Mr. Tomlinson said that his comment was in jest and that he couldn't imagine how remarks at "a fun occasion" were taken the wrong way. Others, though, were not amused.

"I was in that room," said Ms. Mitchell. "I was surprised by the comment. I thought it was inappropriate."

Stephen Labaton reported from Washington for this article, Lorne Manly from New York and Elizabeth Jensen from Columbus, Ohio.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/arts/television/02public.html

PBS's biggest problem is that it runs lots of really boring programs, most people change the channel before the political bias can even be determined. Even the educational programming has been upstaged by better done competition on cable.

PPS too liberal?? give me a break. that's the only network I can watch where I know I'll get balanced reporting.

Stevebugge that's because PPS only gives facts without any hype. we as a society are used to some type of hype or ratings drive

They do give a lot of facts, usually in the most verbose possible fashion they remind me of the professors that used to put me to sleep during lectures, but frequently they are discussing subjects that aren't terribly interesting. They do carry some good BBC Comedies though. Oh and lets not forget pledge drives. I basically don't watch TV for news, I get most of my news from print and the internet. I even find radio preferrable to Television for news. Unlike most people I also expect bias in the news, I hate it when reporters and writers pretend to be objective they NEVER are (they are still human after all). But as for the hype part, I'll agree I do expect a certain level of energy in the presentation.

without PBS, we wouldnt have things like Silverstien admitting to pulling tower 7.

The only liberal bias on PPS is seen through the lenses of conservitive extremeism.

See, I can defend liberals being unfairly accused

I like PBS. It has served me well over the years.. I was troubled, tho, that one of the kid's programs was sponsored by the no child left behind act.. THAT is scary...

I'm pissed off that Cookie Monster has gone PC.

I watch CSPAN.
And, when is NPR gonna play some decent music.

I quit watching PBS (except for Frontline) when Dr. Who was off the air.

I can see it now, Sesame Street goes conservative. A new character appears "Mr. Corporate Sponsor" (he will be called Sherman) who is always flanked by two policemen wearing suspiciously nazi style uniforms....

sherman- Say cookie monster, how are you today?

cookie monster- i'm doing great sherman. I've got a new mp3 player, see?

sherman- yeah that's what I wanted to talk to you about. see we think maybe you might have downloaded some music without paying for it..

cookie monster- oh no sherman, I got all my music from oscar.

sherman- yeah well, see that's even worse. that's why we had to shake oscar down and crush his trash can.

cookie monster- oh my goodness is he ok?

sherman- um, yeah, sure, uh, actually he's going to be on "vacation" for a while. Do you know what a "vacation" is?

cookie monster - no.

sherman- well, that's where mr hammer and mr anvil here break your wrists and put you in a dark hole for about 3 years.

cookie monster- well that doesn't sound like fun.

sherman- well it won't be fun. and when you get out your gonna own us a lot of money.

cookie monster- but I don't have any money

sherman- that's ok, we'll have a job waiting for you so you can work your bill off...

I wish when people throw around the term "liberal bias" they provide a link that shows the factual basis for that assertion. The only shows I watch on PBS are the American Experience, Frontline, and Nova. If someone can explain how any of these shows are biased in some fashion please let me know. Frontline had a nasty program on Wal Mart once that I'm sure the largest corporation in America could have crushed if their purchased politicians had that power. Maybe one day they will.

Or maybe that the Teletubbies promote homosexuality upsets some people.

Yeah.

"Yeah."? Just "Yeah."??? I had the feeling all was going to go to hell there, especially when the education witch started attacking little characters on their shows. And Bill Moyers' retirement was a pretty huge hint. Let the trials begin!!!!

I can hardly find anything of interest on PBS anymore, except an occasional Austin City Limits.

How are PBS documentary shows biased? Read Bernard Goldberg's book Bias, and you will know. PBS is the same as the big three, they just use more multisylabic words. The bias comes from the worldview, and is invisible to the programmers. If you share the worldview, you probably won't see the bias either.

Nova, the only show I've tuned in lately, is going the way of Scientific American magazine -- their raison detre is to promote Darwinism and global warming. Also I have noticed that it has become more about scientists than science -- more human interest than actual expository revelation of the inner workings of the world.

But let me pose a question that might make the bias clearer: Can anyone give me an example of a PBS show that attacks liberal causes? that takes positions that are not politically correct? Maybe I've missed something, but I think one would be hard pressed to find an example.

I really don't care much about PBS, since I hardly watch it, but I don't want the network to be biased either way. It would be nice if the programming were a reflection of America, and America is pretty divided philosophically and politically. One would think that a truly "public" broadcasting service would reflect the conservatism of about half the populace as well as the liberalism of the other part.

I just thought of another example, and a challenge to PBS. 62% of Americans think that abortion should never be legally allowed, or more strictly controlled than it is today. (CBS News poll, April 2005)

Has PBS ever run a program that supports more strict legal controls on abortion? No? Why not? If that does not scream "Bias!" then you're simply not seeing the big picture.

when you start throwing out stats, you are full of crap......autodid 62% of rtwngrs

Has PBS ever run a program that supports free abortions? No? Why not? If that does not scream "Bias!" then you're simply not seeing the big picture.

Much more interesting to me is the question, should the goverment own any broadcast media at all?

"I really don't care much about PBS, since I hardly watch it"

But that doesn't stop you from a tirade against what you're not sure is on it.

From the Random House College Dictionary -- 1973

conservative
1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc. and to resist change.
2. cautious; moderate: [i]a conservative estimate{/i]

liberal
1. favorable to progress or reform, as in religious or political affairs
3. of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies or monarchies.
5. favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible.
6. favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression.
7. free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant

-------

Boycott-RIAA is not about keeping things the way they are or resisting change. We are not cautious. We are not moderate. Music is one of the liberal arts.

Don't make us pick sides.

I'm a non-violent anarchist

From Websters:

Main Entry: 1mod·er·ate
Pronunciation: 'mä-d(&-)r&t
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin moderatus, from past participle of moderare to moderate; akin to Latin modus measure
1 a : avoiding extremes of behavior or expression : observing reasonable limits b : CALM, TEMPERATE
3 : professing or characterized by political or social beliefs that are not extreme

In short taking the best from both sides

"Don't make us pick sides."

Great advice, if this group ever loses focus and descends in to Left - Right partisan bickering, well we will be no better than Congress (only with out the nice paychecks and benefits). The goal here is to get Copyright & Patent back to a point where it is limited and benefits inventors and creators and oppose the entertainment industry lobbying groups.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, chances are you can find someone here who you don't agree with on a single political point except the need to do in the RIAA.

"I wish when people throw around the term "liberal bias" they provide a link that shows the factual basis for that assertion"

It's possible that he just didn't have the time to compile a convincing highlight reel of news clips before he made the post.

Code, we just got a great public radio station in Minnesota, KCMP (The Current) They play great indie music, and play local music in every set. They stream CD Sound Too. Check em out:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/thecurrent/

compmore: I used to think I was moderate, too. I couldn't decide if I was really a conservative radical or a slightly radical conservative.

But in the last five years or so, it has really turned into an either/or, red/blue, conservative/liberal. I'd rather be purple.

If we didn't have wing nuts on both sides, the wheel would fall off.

flibbertygibbet, when you accuse, you lose. The statistic I quoted is readily available on the web, if you had bothered to google, before you started typing garbage.

http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm

Just scroll past the first part, which reports a Fox poll -- since nobody likes Fox here, apparently.

Next comes the ABC/Washington Post poll showing that, in April, 42% of respondents thought abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. The next section down the page is the CBS New poll I cited. Add up the "stricter limits" and the "not permitted" columns and you will get the exact percentage figure I quoted.

My point is that stricter abortion laws are the default mainstream American opinion, not a "wingnut" opinion. If you think otherwise, then you are mired in a little corner of the world that does not represent the whole.

The Z-man suggests that since PBS has not run a program advocating free abortions, it is biased (conservatively, I presume). No, it just shows that even the PBS programmers don't have the gall to advocate for something that extreme. They would if they thought they could get away with it, though.

"PBS Taken Over By Right Wing Human Squirrel" -- you say this like it is a BAD thing. I think it will be a refreshing change from the RABID liberal squirrels who run the place now.

Oh, and I do watch the Newshour quite a bit, simply because other people in the house turn it on and it would be rude for me to shut it off, change the channel or set fire to the TV while they are watching it. Actually, the worst criticism of the Newshour is not that it is liberal, it is just mind-numbingly boring. The brain dead hosts ask the same brain dead questions of the usual cast of characters, who always refuse to answer the questions, but instead spew whatever party line they came to the show to spew. Then the hosts re-ask the same stupid questions. Rinse and repeat. It is absolutely pointless.

Look. The guy looks like a squirrel.

he is a squirrel, i totally caught him in my birdfeeder in my front yard this morning, i threw a pointy rock at him with a tenacity unforeseen by squirrelkind

"If we didn't have wing nuts on both sides, the wheel would fall off."

So very true. we need the extremists. how else would we know what common sense was

Yes, but what happens when the extremes start thinking they are the moderates, and the moderates start acting etremely moderate?

Isn't this is exactly what happened in Russia?

I still haven't figured out what happened in Russia except that the former communists still hold power

"The Z-man suggests that since PBS has not run a program advocating free abortions, it is biased (conservatively, I presume)."

You suggested that since PBS has not run a program that supports more strict legal controls on abortion, it is biased (liberally, I presume).

I was being sarcastic, supplying the flip side of your own statement.

-------

"My point is that stricter abortion laws are the default mainstream American opinion, not a 'wingnut' opinion. If you think otherwise, then you are mired in a little corner of the world that does not represent the whole."

Default mainstream America opinion? Based on a 42% minority? Fifty percent still think Sadaam had WMD. Does that make it right?

150 years ago, half of the country thought slavery was a good thing and the only good Indian was a dead Indian. It was the default mainstream American opinion.

Just because a lot of people think the same thing does not necessarily make it right.

My own personal opinion is that males should have absolutely nothing to say about this subject, since it does not and never will have anything to do with us.

"Music is one of the liberal arts."

Liberal in this sense is actually the opposite of technical, not moderate.

The opposite of technical? Not so. Natural sciences are part of the liberal arts.

The source of the phrase comes from the Latin artes liberates, or "work befitting a free man."

PBS rabid?! In what universe? That's hilarious! (Actually, it's kind of scary. How conservative do you have to be to think of PBS and RABID at the same time?)

i don't know but you guys have completely overlooked the fact that they're gonna beat cookie monster up and put him in a work camp... :-0

They want to put the Wall Street Journal editorial board in control of politically correct thinking of PBS??!!

Now here's scary reading for you from Salon. This is the worst wingnut rhetoric I've ever heard. Who says that the left is inflaming the rhetoric by talking about a theocracy or the fact that the Bushies are similar to the Jihadists? What's the difference? Read this. Tell me that both sides, Bush and Bin Laden, don't perfcetly complement each other in wishing to bring the modern world back to the dark ages.

"If the GOP does go nuclear, will the Dems go the way of Waco? Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page editor for the Wall Street Journal, says that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is "acting like David Koresh" over the judicial filibuster. He foresees a fiery ending to the standoff.

"For Democrats, judicial philosophy is a cultural Armageddon," Henninger wrote. "Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy have turned the Senate into a Branch Davidian compound. No one in the liberal cult is allowed to leave, including the hostage nominees -- unless they recant their conservatism. How many Senate Democrats plan to be in this bunker when Bill Frist's ATF squad detonates the 'nuclear option'?"

NPR here is absolutely blatantly conservative.

"liberal bias" in public broadcasting my arse.

" i don't know but you guys have completely overlooked the fact that they're gonna beat cookie monster up and put him in a work camp... :-0"

Well, we've still got Animal. You'll have to pry his drumsticks from his cold, dead paws...

Don't you just love the choice of words in that one quote--"cultural Armageddon," "Branch Davidian compound," "liberal cult," "hostage journalism," "bunker," etc. Shame on the Wall Street Journal!! That's just abysmal writing, as purple as you can get. I would expect to see that in the National Enquirer, not what purports to be a real newspaper.

Like you, Shadow Mom, I can't figure it out who is a conservative or whatever. Not when their leaders fling around distortion fields and Orwellian language.

I can't keep it straight.

A pro-business Wall Street Journal editor smears Harry Reid, of all people, who is a corrupt in-the-pocket gambling shill, as a member of the Branch Davidians, this takes the cake.

I'll let Code Warrior straighten all this out for us, his district in Waco is responsible. Help me out here? The survivalists are the right wing faction that bombed the Oklahoma gov'mnt building, distributed anthrax, and they regard the Clinton handling of the conflagration at the Koresh compound as Day One of Judgement Day.

Waco is Bush's home field. WTF?

Why throw these words at Harry Reid?
Dvaid Koresh
Waco
a fiery ending to the standoff
a cultural Armageddon
Branch Davidian compound
liberal cult
hostage nominees
bunker

Waco is Bush's home field. WTF?

didn't the Waco fire occur in 1993 when Ann Richards was Governor? didn't she Graduate from Waco High? How is it Bush's home field?

This explains the Waco thing--I found it on their Chamber of Commerce webpage.

" Waco is an excellent location for the George W. Bush Presidential Library Center because of its central location in Texas and proximity to the President's ranch in Crawford. A presidential library here would be easily accessible to world leaders and guests visiting the President in Crawford."

I don't know how close they are, but that sounds pretty close to me.

Btw, just goes to show how awful MSM is these days. The fact that that editorial made it into the paper is offensive in and of itself. It is inflammatory and insulting without providing any real insight, and the editorial board of WSJ should all be ashamed of themselves. And Daniel needs to go back to school--the school of responsible journalism.

Oops, here's the link for the Chamber of Commerce page:

http://www.waco-chamber.com/ceo.htm

I guess that would make Codewarrior an accomplis to the Waco fiasco if we're gonna stretch that far.

I lived close to the Serria Nevada's at one time. guess that makes me responsible for the tragegy of the Donner Party

I lived about five miles from where Jimmy Hoffa disapeared. haven't had any FBI agents question me yet.

Oh, come on, comp, we were just trying to figure out why the Waco thing came up. Now you're getting paranoid!! I live in Miami--you can blame a whole lot of stuff on me!!

WONDER LAND
Rush to Victory
Why is Harry Reid acting like David Koresh? Because conservatives are winning.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, April 29, 2005 12:01 a.m.

In 1987, Rush Limbaugh sat down at a microphone at radio station KFBK-AM in Sacramento and began broadcasting something called "The Rush Limbaugh Show."

The rest is history.

The "rest"--the inexorable 15-year rise of conservative ideas and clout across what Howard Stern calls "all media"--is described in a provocative new book by Brian C. Anderson, "South Park Conservatives." What was once a mostly exclusive liberal country club--television, the press, book publishing, even the campuses--has become heavily integrated with aggressive, even crude, conservatives.

As described by Mr. Anderson, a writer with the Manhattan Institute, conservatives established their first beachhead in the early 1990s with talk radio. Then Fox conquered cable news and finally a virtual Mongol horde of conservative-to-libertarian bloggers swept across the Internet. In the 2004 election, these electric horsemen (apologies to Jane Fonda) pulled down Dan Rather and haunted John Kerry's war hero with Swift-boat ghosts.

It is no news that America has become a big backyard pool of opinion, awash with Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, Dennis Prager, the Drudge Report and, I'm told, Al Franken.

Contrary to myth, Roger Ailes didn't do this. Ronald Reagan did. Ronald Reagan may not make it to Mount Rushmore for winning the Cold War. But he secured his place in the conservative pantheon for tearing down another wall: the Fairness Doctrine.

The Fairness Doctrine was a federal regulation, dating to 1949, which mandated "contrasting viewpoints" from broadcasters. In reality, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that incumbents got "free" TV coverage across their terms while challengers got crumbs. The Fairness Doctrine was also an early nuclear option: If a local broadcaster's news operation made the local congressman or his party look bad, Washington could threaten to blow up his broadcast license.

Ronald Reagan tore down this wall in 1987 (maybe as spring training for Berlin) and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination.

It wasn't obvious that conservatives soon would dominate talk radio. Radio programming has always been a soulless decision based on ratings. If programmers thought they could win the drive-time slots with Don Imus reading "Das Kapital," that would be on the air and advertisers would support it. But it's not.

What worked after speech became free in the spectrum ozone was hyper-articulate conservative hosts opening their microphones to millions of hyper-angry conservative voters--not least in such liberal bastions as New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.

In 1994, Newt Gingrich, his Contract With America and the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952--the years in which the Fairness Doctrine largely kept politics off the air. This didn't happen because the Gingrich candidates were getting their message out in the Los Angeles Times or Boston Globe.

The conservative media ascendancy chronicled by Brian Anderson has driven many liberals nuts. The liberal media-advocacy group FAIR wants a new Fairness Doctrine to repair "broadcast abuse." Just months ago, FAIR cited "the immense volume of unanswered conservative opinion heard on the airwaves."

What goes around comes around, I suppose. Conservatives would say they're now using radio, TV and the Web--all of it free from political control--to give as good as they got from the 1960s onward. For years, they claim, liberal managers in broadcasting, journalism, publishing and academia marginalized them. Were conservatives imagining that?

Maybe not. Mr. Anderson cites left-wing philosopher Herbert Marcuse (who taught at Columbia, Harvard and Brandeis) urging liberals back then to practice active "intolerance against movements from the Right" in the name of "liberating tolerance." Thus, for example, liberal academics would vote to deny tenure for conservative colleagues--and still do--believing that this is a morally mandated act.

Liberals now marvel at the energy and output of the conservative "movement"--the talk shows, the think tanks, the blogosphere. No need to wonder; they compressed the rocket fuel for the inevitable explosion.

But a price has been paid. What got lost during the years of liberal exclusionism, according to Peter Berkowitz of George Mason University, was "guidance for the negotiation of disagreement in a democracy." No more perfect example of the price the political system has paid for years of conservative shunning exists than the Senate's standoff over judges. You can find the reasons Democrats are shunning the Bush nominees to the appellate bench by consulting the Web site of People for the American Way--abortion, corporate law, minimum wage, Social Security, environment. They disagree with these nominees on--everything.

For Democrats, judicial philosophy is a cultural Armageddon. Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy have turned the Senate into a Branch Davidian compound. No one in the liberal cult is allowed to leave, including the hostage nominees--unless they recant their conservatism. How many Senate Democrats plan to be in this bunker when Bill Frist's ATF squad detonates the "nuclear option"?

Time was, "choice" for conservatives mainly meant accepting one's lot in life. Now they have options, lots of them.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

I knew it. you help hide Elian Gonzalas Shadowmom.

The Wall Street Journal editorial above is jaw-dropping. I buy the WSJ every day for the true facts of corporate pirates going under the yardarm. But quickly turn past the editorial jerkoffs, so that I don't spew my breakfast. The WSJ is one of the world's two great newspapers.

I have the article from "South Park Conservatives" handy, would you like to read it? It'll drive you crazy.

Now let's examine the facts above, now once and for all, the neo-cons admit it! You can see the prime position that Texas-born Clear Channel and Tom Hicks had in shaping history with the rise of Limbaugh and Savage. But it was all about repealing the Fairness Doctrine in 1994. Newt Gingrich's's greatest victory.

As Goering said, "If we'd had televison, there would have been no stopping the Nazis."

Someone will have to explain to me- what so cool about being a conservative? What is a conservative? Why are they so nasty all the time, like Rush Limbaugh? ARe there any heros in fiction who are conservative that I might consult for role models.

I must confess - when it comes to conservatives, I feel like a violin virtuoso amoung marketing majors.

Helped hide Elian??? Comp--don't you know me better by now? I think (unless a parent is proven unfit) a child is always better off with a parent--even if it means a loss of creature comforts. I don't measure happiness by dollars in the bank. That little one needed his father, and I'm glad he got to be with him.

Now for more serious business, Tom, I would love to read that article. However, I've been arguing with comp for a couple of days, so I've already been driven crazy. But please post it if you can, and I'll check on it tomorrow. Thanks.

That little one needed his father, and I'm glad he got to be with him.

me too. he's where he needs to be. I was just trying to be llighthearted.

Thank Gd Fr MUSC

Depends on how you define conservative, leflaw. Rush Limbaugh is no longer conservative, certainly as a religious conservative I would no longer accept him as in my camp. He is a Republicanist, and he defends the Republicans no matter what they do, right or wrong. He defends them when they wimp out on their responsibilities to the people who elected them. He is about them having power at all costs. As I've said before, I believe we need a new revolution in Congress, and the ideal result of the election, IMO, would be if every single incumbent was turned out of office. Term limits via the mechanism of voter rebellion. I think we've all been betrayed by members of both parties.

Why are conservatives nasty? I don't know. Could it be because of all the put-downs from liberals all the time? Could it be that the liberals who shape the pop culture of literature, music, TV, and movies have been spitting on and lampooning conservative values for 35-40 years? That could tend to sensitize the victims of such abuse. About a dozen years we decided we were mad as hell and weren't going to take it any more. So we fight back with sarcasm and lampoons of liberals. Apparently they can dish it out, but can't take it.

Conservative heroes in fiction? Ayn Rand's heroes are conservative -- not my brand of conservatism, but supporting many conservative principles. Judah Ben-Hur is a great conservative hero. Ben-Hur is a book about a man who endures by faith. I'll think on it some more, and get back to you.

Robert Heinlein's books would provide some conservative themes and heroes. What about John Wayne, the most popular movie star of all time? His characters were conservative, law-and-order types, revered by red-state moviegoers. There is a vast genre of Christian fiction these days -- I'm not familiar with it, but millions are reading it, and are being influenced by the solidly Christian conservative characters in them.

Of course, the greatest conservative role model of them all would have to be Moses, and I don't mean the soggy Charlton Heston impression of Moses. Read Moses' five books. (For me, that would be the foundation of conservatism, as well as the foundation of our government and law.)

Sorry, we seem to have drifted from the topic of PBS.

Wrong!! Why are conservatives so nasty? They never have any fun, that's why!

Not many conservitives here on this site but I've seen a lot of nastyness as well. Just a thought.

Why are conservatives nasty? I don't know. Could it be because of all the put-downs from liberals all the time?


this isn't serious is it? lol

maybe it's because they ARE conservatives.