Crayfish Conspiracy
A Louisiana bubba -- if that’s not redundant -- named Billy Tauzin thinks the networks are stretching their first amendment right a mite too far. Now you wouldn’t likely think you’d find a good ole boy and thought in the same sentence, but what makes this particularly concerning is that the Republican Congressman heads the House sub-committee that oversees telecommunications, and he’s gonna hold hisself some hearings on why the networks called Gore states faster than Bush states. He either thinks it was a plot to install The Wooden One where Bush-Lite was the true entitlee, or he jus’ dudn’t trust ‘em commie pinko bastards anyways, and this was the fallout. (Most of the media types I know, from the corporate muckymucks down to the ever-lowly pseudo-journalists would vote for Bush anyway, Billy Boy.)
The truth is that the networks were not in conspiracy, except that they are mostly cut from the same capitalist cloth. They wanted to be first. They got some misreported numbers which they, ergo, interpreted incorrectly, and bang-zoom, Lil Al was gonna be prexy-next. The greater concern that The Gumbo Brain was never likely to grok — and wouldn’t want to if he could — is that the people who control the network newscasts aren’t concerned with such trivialities of choosing who will be in the White House; it doesn’t matter to them. They are in charge at a higher level.
Consider all of the opprobrium being shoveled upon the networks since 1980, when in calling Reagan over Bush long before the West Coast polls closed. It was eminently clear that they could have waited until Christmas and the outcome would not have changed. Nor would it this year. Okay, had they not put Florida in the donkey column early, I wouldn’t have called my sister and told her she could watch the returns from the safety of her thus-mitigated Dubya phobia, but otherwise the nation would be as it is.
If Tauzin had even a glimpse of vision, he might have gone after the networks — and their down the food chain cohorts in the local markets — for their treasonous greed. Why do you suppose the broadcasters remain so uncharacteristically silent on the lethal corruption of our election process by special interest money? I can give you three billion reasons why. That’s how much was spent on federal races this cycle, and most of it on buying television time. That’s a lot of money, and while it’s true that political candidates do get a special lowest-unit rate, it means that the television coffers are filled to over-flowing. Yo, Wild Bill, why don’t you check out how much GE, Disney, and Westinghouse contribute to political campaigns?
The problem with the networks — like most everything sliding down the slippery slope of unfettered capitalism — is that we have lost sight of purpose. The networks are not about entertaining and informing, but about selling time to advertisers. The government is not about preserving clear and open communications between themselves and the public they purport to represent, but about getting themselves re-elected.
In the midst of the mess about the lack of sunshine in the Florida vote debacle, there was one glorious ray of hope. Newsweek reported that by a margin of three-to-one, the American people said they were more interested in getting the count right, than getting it done quickly. Perhaps Congress will rediscover their very reason for being -- to serve the public; to get it right -- and will then deliver to us wholesale campaign finance reform. In other news, the Supreme Court blocked the execution of a man who believes in Santa Claus.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.