But shockingly, things may be different this year. Some members of the press were left off the list, and it looks like those invited won’t be enjoying the typical “receiving-line photo.”

What? Did I just say what I think I said?

Can we rewind that please?

But shockingly, things may be different this year. Some members of the press were left off the list, and it looks like those invited won’t be enjoying the typical “receiving-line photo.”

I know, I know. How will the reporters cope? I mean, sure – we all have problems this year. Because of the recession, I’m cutting back on unicorn ornaments and Vicodin. But the real tragedy is the denial of those precious few moments standing next to the Commander-in-Cuteness. I can’t imagine anything more horrible – and believe me – I’m really good at imagining horrible.

I think one print reporter said it best when he told Politico: “The White House is magical at Christmas.”

So true, but it’s even more true now that we have an authentic Santa Claus living there, a transcendent being beloved by the media because he promises them stuff they want so badly: a cleaner planet, an end to American arrogance, an increase in global popularity and – fingers crossed – federally funded abortions! We might even get a revamped Fairness Doctrine, but only if we wish really hard!

Anyway, “Red Eye” is coming to the rescue. While there will be no receiving line at the White House, we’re having one at “Red Eye.” I’ll be dressed as an elf, and I’ll even be making my special homemade egg nog.

What can I say: we love to receive. Some say too much.

And if you disagree with me, you’re probably a homophobic racist who hates the planet.

Tonight’s Guest:

Mike Baker!

Jill Dobson!

Joe Devito!

and…Dr. Michael Baden!

Now, only CNN could do this with a straight face. According to the network, some say talk radio is “viciously partisan,” without of course defining “some,” as “people who work at CNN.” And so the segment began, with CNN using a shrink to examine the typical listener, as though he belonged to a rare breed of lizard that dines only on feces.

Check it out, check-it-outers. 

So the shrink, probably a devoted NPR fan – dismisses Rush’s popularity as the product of a bullying mentality – that the typical conservative finds safety and security under Rush’s protection in an otherwise friendless universe.

The solution? You could smell it coming: More access to liberal talk radio. According to the nutso radio host Randi Rhodes (who claims she’s not a liberal!), that’s what’s missing. Apparently, the left is banned from talk radio!

I’m sorry, but I don’t see a sign at the clubhouse, saying “no liberal hosts.” The only sign is from the public, who hates them. It’s called supply and demand. The demand is for a conservative viewpoint – and it’s currently being supplied.

What happens when you supply a product for which there is no demand?

You get Air America. Some might call that a noble experiment, but it was neither noble, or experimental. Instead it functioned like a jar of leftwing preserves– a time capsule of corrupt liberal thinking, circa 1977. And, of course, for NPR to succeed, it needs government assistance. For liberal ideas to survive, you need welfare.

So, in short, CNN is right: talk radio is about access. But they’ve got it backwards. The reason why talk radio is conservative isn’t because radio limits access for the left. It’s conservative, because the rest of the media limits access from the right. Other than Fox News, talk radio is the only place you can hear another point of view.

It’s a shame CNN can’t be happy with that. But like a whiny child who needs all the stuffed animals in the toy store, it won’t rest until there’s no opposition. It wants the Fairness Doctrine, when what it really needs is a spanking.

And if you disagree with me, then you’re probably a racist.

Tonight we’ve have the delicious Remi Spencer, the delightful Father Jonathan, the hilarious Joe DeRosa, and more!

The list was comically, painfully long and the audience applauded and laughed at the real-life, obvious absence of leadership the sketch had captured in President Obama.  It is key to remember this is the work of comedy writers who could not find something funny about candidate or President Obama for nearly two years.  They did all they could to mock anyone and everyone around the man as to avoid skewering the “One” bearing gifts of “hope and change.”  But we’re coming up on a year in elected office and the liberals have grown restless.  

While their motives were most likely to gently nudge their hero to act on his promises, SNL’s writers still came to the conclusion that they couldn’t afford to lose what comedic street credibility they have left.  Doing what they’ve done since the late 70s, SNL finally acknowledged what the electorate recognized in our Commander in Chief months ago. Enter CNN.

Monday, October 6th Wolf Blitzer took to the airwaves:

“It seems no politician is safe from Saturday Night Live. While many people think SNL has mostly spared President Obama, what they’re doing now is not necessarily all that kind. They essentially cast the leader of the free world as a do-nothing president, at least so far. Even though SNL deals in comedy, what they said about the President rings true for a lot of you, apparently. So, did the show accurately capture a mood, or did it go off track for comedic effect? Let’s bring in CNN’s Kareen Wynter. She’s checking the facts for us. All right, Kareen, what are you finding out?”

Yes, CNN fact-checked the comedy of Saturday Night Live. 

Just this past Saturday, yet another opening SNL sketch slapped President Obama for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.  Armisen’s Obama conceded he’s accomplished absolutely nothing to deserve the award.   The sketch again received big laughs and applause – and more scrutiny from news media.   This time, the analysis came from the news division of SNL’s parent network, NBC.  Sunday’s NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt found the anchor asking his correspondent if the White House was “concerned” about the “comedy gloves coming off.” 

The comedy world sat up and took notice of the press scrutiny immediately.  The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart launched into a blistering, 12-minute assault on CNN’s fact-checking session this week.  “While you were doing your research did you also find that sharks live in water and don’t deliver candy grams…,” demanded Stewart, referring to a classic SNL sketch called Land Shark.

While Stewart’s admonishment of CNN was hilarious, it was also telling.  In just over 20 minutes of actual programming, the host and writers devoted two-thirds of their comedy to assailing CNN.  Why?  Stewart and company have just been introduced to the chilling effect of a White House and news media offensive traditionally reserved for the “wing-nuts” on Fox News and talk radio.

 It’s a beautiful symphony when your comedy, the White House, and the news media are on the same stage swinging at conservatives in concert.  Last week, however, the comedians strayed from the sheet music in a major way.  The public was demanding their honesty if they were to still enjoy a credible laugh with their favorite shows.   In delivering for their audience, our friends in comedy got a taste of the treatment “tea partiers” and conservative talk radio regularly receives.    Welcome to the enemies list, funny men.

This will certainly be only the beginning.  The fact that CNN and NBC News find comedians poking fun at the president as “news” acknowledges what honest media watchers have known all along.  The press, the President, and comedy formed an unspoken “circle of trust” with one another when it came to the Obama administration.  Banning together, they helped elect an inexperienced radical as President.  They also acknowledge their power “misdirected” individually can destroy all they worked together to create. 

The press is still willing to battle on behalf of this White House, but the comedians are off the reservation – choosing honesty over ideology.    The comedian’s punishment?  Fact checking and discrediting attacks from their former pals.   In no time, surely good members of Congress will call for a Comedy Fairness Doctrine.  Perhaps all broadcasts of comedy material should be reviewed by the White House before delivery?  Maybe an appointed, diverse community board of writers should be created in New York and L.A?  If the comedy seems particularly biting to the President or the Democrat Congress, President Obama’s appointed board members may add and subtract punch lines to maintain a sense of humorous equilibrium.

Sure it sounds absurd.  It did to talk radio hosts once, too.  Not so funny now, is it?

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: NBC News, Obama Health Care Plan, Joe Trippi, Jimmy Carter, China Organ Donation, Fairness Doctrine, Steven Spielberg, SAT Testing, Kelly Osbourne, and Paula Abdul.

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Health Care Legislation, Ted Kennedy, President Obama, Cap and Trade, Fairness Doctrine, Douglas Brinkley, Obama Summer Vacation, David Letterman, Town Hall Protestors, Chelsea Handler, and KFC.

Remember how upset Liberals (and even some Conservatives) were at “The Patriot Act?” It was an “invasion of our privacy and personal freedoms,” they’d say. Despite the fact that the bill was designed to gather information on terrorists and protect the American people (not harm them), I always understood the apprehension it caused people. It’s a slippery slope, and I get that.

On the flip side, however, we’ve got an administration that is NOT seeking out dangerous people with violent records, but proactively targeting American citizens in an attempt to intimidate voices of dissent.

Make no mistake about what’s going on here. This administration couldn’t care less about “fishy material” being circulated but by using such a term, they are deliberately attempting to marginalize any opposition to a government-healthcare takeover. By describing emails and blogs as “misinformation” they try and paint any opposition with the “crazy-right wing propagandist” brush, when the fact is that the majority of the American populace oppose the current bill. Just how many, you ask?

…Well, more people than ever voted for Barack Hussein Obama, that’s for sure.

This administration is trying to target the center-right American people in order to make us feel secluded. Once they make us feel as though we’re all alone, they can start sniping people off, one by one.

If this healthcare bill gets snuffed (as it most likely will), you can expect “The Fairness Doctrine” to rear it’s ugly little head again. This administration is covering their bases so that they have some “villains” to point to. Obama will try to go “Mel Gibson in “The Patriot”” on us and pick off the commanding officers first, in hopes that the rest of us will be easy-pickings afterward.

The grass-roots movement is working, and liberals hate that!

In order to show them just how effective it has been, I will be taking submissions for a “Flag Yourself Campaign” video that will be released on Thursday. If you have a camcorder or webcam and a penchant for truth, it’s time for you to join up. I will be sending my own letter of discontent to flag@whitehouse.gov and suggest that you do the same.

If you would like to take part in the video, send an @ reply to twitter.com/scrowder

It’s time to step up to the plate and win one for the gipper.

…Or at least just stick it to Sean Penn.

Listen to Ayn Rand

A little history behind the Federal Communications Commission and the notion that the airwaves belong to the public is in order. It all began in 1924 with Herbert Hoover when he served as Secretary of Commerce.  It was Hoover who fought for government control of radio and made repeated attempts to extend government power beyond the limits set by legislation of the time including attempts to attached detailed conditions to radio licenses. 

Author Ayn Rand wrote about this in 1964 in an essay titled “The Property Status of the Airwaves.”  According to Rand, “It was Hoover’s influence that was largely responsible for that tombstone of the radio and the then unborn television industry known as the act of 1927, which established the Federal Radio Commission with all of its autocratic, discretionary, undefined, and undefinable powers.”  With minor revisions, this act morphed into the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC was born.

As Rand noted in her essay, “The act of 1927 did not confine the government to the role of a traffic policeman of the air who protects the rights of broadcasters from technical interference (which is all that was needed and all that a government should properly do). It established service to the public interest, convenience, or necessity as the criterion by which the Federal Radio Commission was to judge applicants for broadcasting licenses and accept or reject them.”

Rand noted that the act amounted to a “blank check on totalitarian power over the broadcasting industry, granted to whatever bureacrats happened to be appointed to the Commission. She continued, “The Act of 1927 granted to a government Commission total power over the professional fate of broadcasters, with the public interest as the criterion of judgment and simultaneously forbade the Commission to censor radio programs. From the start, and progressively louder through the years, many voices have been pointing out that this is a contradiction impossible to practice.  If a commissioner has to judge which applicant for a broadcasting license will serve the public interest, how can he judge it without judging the content, nature, and value of the programs the applicants have to offer or will offer?”

There is no question Democrats want to define the “public interest” obligations of broadcasters. It’s been in their platform for years and FCC Commissioners like Michael Copps have confirmed their intentions, including shortening the term of a broadcast license from eight to three years. The bottom line here is clear – intimidation tactics such as redefining public interest obligations and shortening license terms do not lead to a free media, but a controlled media. Long live these prophetic words of Ayn Rand!

Except among his loved ones, the hoopla that has accompanied his passing has nothing to do with Walter Cronkite the man and everything to do with Walter Cronkite the symbol.  He symbolized a time – “The Golden Age” to hear the wistful liberals tell it – of a solid, unconquerable media monolith that passed judgment on What Is The News and defined Socially Accepted Opinion. 

–

Oh, those glorious days of yesteryear, when those drooling slobs without the education or breeding to live in New York and work at the Times or at one of the three networks would genuflect before their black and white TV sets every evening and await Mr. Cronkite to bestow upon them The Truth!  Now (sigh), it’s chaos, with too many different media outlets and too many different opinions.  It’s gotten out of (our) control! 

Come back, Walter, and save us from Fox News!

It was a Golden Age, all right – a Golden Age of enforced unanimity and bogus consensus hidden behind the strained-serious face and stentorian oration of St. Walter.  It was an age of media liberalism unchallenged by anything like a conservative alternative. And it was all encompassing.  In recent days, many have watched the footage of Cronkite announcing the death of John F. Kennedy.  But if you watch the footage for a few minutes before his genuinely moving final bulletin, you’ll hear his innuendo hinting that Kennedy has been shot by disgruntled right-wingers. It must have broken his heart to find out that JFK had been murdered by a commie loner with an affinity for Castro. 

Think of the proudest moments of the heroes of the media’s “Golden Age” – the McCarthy expose, the Watergate hearings, Cronkite’s own infamous thrust of the rhetorical dagger into the back of the fighting men in Vietnam (and of the Vietnamese who hoped for freedom) that was his Tet Offensive editorial.  It’s like a liberal greatest hits album. There’s nothing, nothing even remotely conservative in the pantheon – because nothing conservative would have ever even occurred to the media heroes like Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow and the rest. Their prized objectivity was really only a tool that justified their own biases and opinions – if they did it, by definition, it was “objective.” 

Cronkite was supposed to be the voice of the people of Middle America, but he was really just a loud voice speaking at them.  And soon after they turned and rejected the man Cronkite dubbed the smartest of presidents – Jimmy Carter!?! – and elected Ronald Reagan, he threw in the towel.  He passed the torch to Dan Rather, and the sun set upon the Golden Age of Media Liberalism.  For all his faults, at least Cronkite maintained a certain dignity, but Crazy Dan is a catastrophe.  When Rather dies, the quickest way to find his obits will be to Google the terms “Texas Air National Guard fraud” or “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”

The passing of Cronkite does mark the end of an era, but let’s not fool ourselves. He was human wallpaper to those of us who grew up watching him intone the news every night, a vaguely comforting presence during turbulent times for those of us too young to understand that much of what he was often passing off as the truth was the utter nonsense.  

But to simply dismiss his actions ignores their very real harm, and to simply write off the superficial eulogies of the mainstream media as mere nostalgia is to underestimate their danger. In the case of Vietnam, where he and the rest of the media elders did their level best to ensure that the Vietnamese had no chance of a free future, the killing fields of Cambodia are a stark reminder of the human cost of Cronkite’s conscience. And the threat of a return to a liberal media monolith looms ahead, with petty fascists fantasizing about re-branded censorship reestablishing their monopoly on public discourse under the guise of “fairness” and “community control.”

Walter Cronkite is gone.  Our condolences should go his family.  But we must also speak the truth – the man was not a hero, not a saint, and let us all hope our country never again sees another man like him.

Plain and simple, this is censorship. If Congress truly believed in free speech, it would have allowed a vote on this. To do otherwise is a slap in the face of all Americans, the First Amendment, and those who drafted the First Amendment in 1791. To not allow a vote on this freedom of speech issue telegraphs one thing – Democrats in charge of the House want to censor the airwaves, and in particular conservative talk radio.

They clearly want to regulate radio. Their speech is so disingenuous, its laughable. They say they do not favor the Fairness Doctrine, yet they support back-door measures that would accomplish the same goals. They cannot deny that programming advisory boards, localism rules, and defining the public interest with some “teeth” are all means of regulating speech in America – particularly conservative speech. This is an outrage and all Americans should see through this for what it is. These are tyrants in action.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has stated, “If markets cannot produce what society really cares about, like a media that reflects the true diversity and spirit of the country, then government has a legitimate role to play.” Of course, he reserves the right to define the “diversity and spirit” of the country. Apparently, the country (free marketplace) cannot do that for themselves.

This is plain and simple tyranny and we must call it for what it is. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski along with Michael Copps are close followers of the leftist media reform organization called Free Press. Genachowski has even named a member of Free Press to his staff as a communications liaison. In my book, Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio, I quote the Communications Director for the Free Press. Here’s what Craig Aaron said.

So, I don’t support re-instating the Fairness Doctrine not because I don’t support the goals, but because I think it’s the wrong way to go about it.

So, if that’s the wrong way, there apparently is a right way. Please read this note from Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon. All Americans should be outraged.  It’s time for a mass cleansing of Washington in 2010.

Genachowski made the statement in response to a question from Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. 

Generally, the Senate hearing was a lovefest and accolades were also handed out to Robert McDowell, a Republican who has been re-nominated for another term on the commission.  McDowell has stated unequivocally that he does not favor regulations such as mandated programming advisory boards considered under localism regulations that the FCC issued for proposed rule-making in January 2008.  Let’s hope that report finds itself shredded and trashed forever.

The radio industry led this fight and now has Mr. Genachowski on record as stating, “I strongly believe in the First Amendment and don’t think the FCC should be involved in censorship based on political speech and opinion.” As a longtime talk radio programmer, I would liked to have heard Mr. Genachowski also say he does not favor FCC mandates to set up “community advisory boards” for radio stations.  The FCC stated that such boards would further localism interests in its January 2008 report.  We presume that since Genachowski stated he does not favor localism mandates that would censor political speech, he would also not favor local advisory boards. It’s utter nonsense that in the United States an agency would suggest broadcast stations must have “community advisory boards.” We have our advisors – you the listener.  If you don’t like what you hear, our ratings reflect that.  And, that is the only valid form of censorship in America. 

Be vigilant for free speech and let’s make sure Julius Genachowski is true to his word.  And, watch out for the new wave of political correctness that has swept the world and is now taking stronger hold in America – legislation against hate speech.  Who decides what is hateful?  The National Hispanic Media Coalition has asked the FCC to investigate alleged hate speech by John and Ken of KFI, Los Angeles, Lou Dobbs of CNN, and Michael Savage of the Talk Radio Network.  Beware of further assaults on broadcast speech rights. 

Brian Jennings is author of Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio.