{"id":1608,"date":"2003-07-15T03:29:18","date_gmt":"2003-07-15T10:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2003\/07\/hail-the-panderer-in-chief\/"},"modified":"2003-07-15T03:29:18","modified_gmt":"2003-07-15T10:29:18","slug":"hail-the-panderer-in-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/15\/hail-the-panderer-in-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Hail the Panderer-in-Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tPresidential candidate Howard (“Shorty”) Dean took a break from a day of heavy pandering to minorities, in which he bravely condemned racial profiling at meetings of La Raza and the NAACP, to reach out to Lawrence Lessig’s blog audience<\/a> with a strong denunciation of Big Media:<\/p>\n

\nThe Internet might soon be the last place where open dialogue occurs. One of the most dangerous things that has happened in the past few years is the deregulation of media ownership rules that began in 1996. Michael Powell and the Bush FCC are continuing that assault today (see the June 2nd ruling).<\/p>\n

The danger of relaxing media ownership rules became clear to me when I saw what happened with the Dixie Chicks. But there?s an even bigger danger in the future, on the Internet. The FCC recently ruled that cable and phone based broadband providers be classified as information rather than telecommunications services. This is the first step in a process that could allow Internet providers to arbitrarily limit the content that users can access. The phone and cable industries could have the power to discriminate against content that they don?t control or– even worse– simply don?t like.<\/p>\n

The media conglomerates now dominate almost half of the markets around the country, meaning Americans get less independent and frequently less dependable news, views and information. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power. No consolidated economic power has more opportunity to do this than the consolidated power of media. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it’s good that candidates for office are willing to stick their heads above ground to meet and greet potential voters on the Internet. But the usual routine of telling each audience what you think they want to hear isn’t going to cut it in this medium (you can ask Trent Lott and Howell Raines about that.) Dean copied his post to his own blog, and censored critical remarks from the comments section. Here’s one that was censored:<\/p>\n

Good pandering, Dr. Dean, you?ve clearly done your homework, and I respect that.<\/p>\n

Concentrations of economic power certainly are a threat to democracy, as we?ve learned in California where we face a huge budget crisis because our elected officials are beholden to the unions, trial lawyers, and casinos who elected them, so I?m glad you?re on the case, and you?ll have my support when you take on these special interests.<\/p>\n

Other threats to democracy that have been identified by scholars include the awareness of the majority that they can vote themselves the contents of the treasury (Earned Income Tax Credit, for example) and a potential descent into tyranny predicted by Plato as politicians appeal to the baser passions of the majority. I?m glad you?re on to that one, too.<\/p>\n

Under the strict regulation of media ownership we had 20 years ago, the regime to which you?d like to return, we could only get television news from three networks, all of which had exactly the same, elitist, left-of-center, Ivy League orientation. Deregulation brought us Murdoch, the only news organization with a different spin. As you would clearly like to shut down the Murdoch empire, you?re actually an advocate of less diversity of opinion in the media. <\/p>\n

Bravo for you – choice is confusing, and it?s much better to have a Big Brother in Washington telling us how to think.<\/p>\n

Speaking of censorship, the Dixie Chicks are actually doing fine, selling lots of (copyrighted) records and selling out their concerts, but that right-wing fascist Michael Savage is getting what he deserves, don?t you think? Richard Bennett<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oddly enough, the censors didn’t delete the responses to this comment<\/a>, which should prove to the skeptical that it was in fact deleted. <\/p>\n

So do you trust a guy who practices this kind of censorship on a puny little blog to regulate media with the kind of sweeping powers he says he wants, where he can decide which company is small enough to own each and every single media outlet in each and every market? That’s one of the things you have to decide as a voter as the campaign progresses.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presidential candidate Howard (“Shorty”) Dean took a break from a day of heavy pandering to minorities, in which he bravely condemned racial profiling at meetings of La Raza and the NAACP, to reach out to Lawrence Lessig’s blog audience with a strong denunciation of Big Media: The Internet might soon be the last place where … Continue reading “Hail the Panderer-in-Chief”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-pW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}