The most idiotic quote of the day

"A little state control wouldn't hurt anybody"

California Attorney General Jerry Brown, discussing the possible re-imposition of the "Fairness" Doctrine, while being interviewed on The Savage Nation radio program.

That depends on just what the state wishes to control, in this case all free speech on the public airwaves. Liberal Democrats are angry because their pet propaganda projects such as Air America Radio can't get any traction in the ratings because their offerings are amateurish, preachy and boring, so they wish to force privately-owned stations to put their crap on the air in a facade of "fairness", instead of letting the free market decide. Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post, documented one such example recently:

"President Obama may be riding high in Washington, but OBAMA 1260 is not.

The area's only progressive talk station is changing formats, dropping such syndicated liberal hosts as Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller and Bill Press in favor of financial news, starting next week.

The move by Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who purchased the station, WWRC, and others in Washington last summer, leaves the city without a liberal radio outlet. Program Director Greg Tantum says he thought the station could work because of enthusiasm over Obama, but that ratings collapsed to a level that could not be measured after the election.

But ratings nearly doubled, he says, at Snyder's conservative station, WTNT, which features Laura Ingraham and Bill Bennett." (Emphases mine)

Money talks, and businessmen such as Snyder aren't stupid; if people wanted to listen to liberal talk radio, there would be an ample selection to choose from. Nobody listens, so there isn't. The concept's pretty easy to understand. (I mourn the passing of WRC, though. It used to be a powerhouse talk station with dynamic local hosts such as Joel A. Spivak and Joe Madison, who weren't ideologues by any means, but were entertaining personalities who possessed great political analytical skills.)

I don't know what the liberals have got to complain about; don't they pretty much rule NPR, which depends mainly on taxpayer largess instead of ad revenue for its operating budget?

Restrictions on freedom such as the above proposed legislation always start small and then increase incrementally. Just ask the relatives of the estimated 100 million people who died at the hands of Communist governments during the 20th century, and they'll tell you just how dangerous doltish pronouncements such as this from supposedly learned people like Brown can be.