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Vox Clamatis...

TV cable and monopoly media

Control of propaganda is essential to the success of totalitarian regimes; in fact it’s a defining characteristic of these governments.

Although Mussolini invented Fascism, the unified rule of government and big business (his own definition), it remained for Hitler to add an all-pervasive propaganda apparatus to the mix to produce the first modern totalitarian state. Lenin was a pretty close second in this achievement and there is no doubt that the Soviet Union eventually surpassed Hitler in the propaganda department. The Chinese, who were later to outdo the Soviets in this regard, have since been surpassed by North Korea where the thoughts of the Dear Leader are now piped continuously into the kitchen of every home.

Here in the United States, increasing monopoly control of the media proceeds apace. Despite the opposition of the majority of the population, House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Texas) has promised to block any Congressional effort to stop the FCC’s recent rule change loosening controls on media ownership. If that weren’t enough, President Bush has promised to veto any such legislation that somehow might reach his desk.

At the same time that the number of voices in the media is being reduced, the United States is undergoing one of the periodic bouts of self-destruction that have accompanied every war for the last century.

Critics of either government policy or the right-wing agenda are labeled wimps, traitors, “America-hating liberals” or other names that serve to denigrate their motives rather than actually deal with their arguments. Outrageous accusations ranging from drug smuggling to murder are leveled against opponents (Bill Clinton, John McCain and Anita Hill, to name three) by the gutter right-wing press and then blandly repeated by “more main stream” journalists like Rush Limbaugh and the talk show gang at FOX News.

The FCC’s fairness doctrine is no more. The era of the “big lie” has returned and cable’s got it. From German-Americans, to Japanese-Americans, to suspected communists, to Arab-Americans and now to “liberals,” America has, for the last century at least, always turned on its own in times of crisis.

After the excesses of the McCarthy Era the voices of the right wing in American politics were thoroughly discredited.

From the late ‘50s through the ‘60s right-wingers were considered to be Red-baiting loonies who skulked furtively off to their John Birch Society meetings. The Republican Party pretended to listen to them but never allowed them to actually wield any power. When Barry Goldwater and his true believers finally managed to win the presidential nomination and were thoroughly trounced in the election, it was widely thought the Republican Party, a party that had been on the wrong side of every major social issue since the Civil War, was finally finished for good. And I do mean for good.

Well, they’re back, they’re as mean and loony as ever, they’ve got mega-bucks and they’ve got a pipeline directly into your kitchen (or wherever your cable connection may be).

The party which pretends to believe in free markets is rapidly gaining a monopoly over the most pervasive and absolute monopoly America has ever seen: cable television. Exempt from competition and exempt from the fairness doctrine, they are free to stream virtually any kind of dreck they choose into your home.

Do you have a choice of cable suppliers? No. But don’t feel bad; almost nobody does. Do you have a choice over what kind of programming comes streaming into your television? No. You are, like Judge Chin quoted above, a Fox News subscriber. You are one of over 80 million, a fact that Fox is happy to advertise in court, happy to use to set their ad rates to their customers. Fox and their imitators need you. Do you need them?

There is no good reason why your local cable company couldn’t offer a line-up of programs which would give subscribers the market power to exclude biased, silly and objectionable programming. Comcast already offers at least six different cable service packages. Why not re-shuffle this division of the bandwidth by viewer preference? Why not let Fox News, MSNBC, Pat Robertson, World Wrestling Entertainment and infomercials actually be subject to the free market? It might be that the cable companies would end up having to pay viewers to watch some programming.

Just think of it, negative cable fees. Couch potatoes could grow rich and fat at the same time by just sitting through the 700 Club or an infomercial for “Girls Gone Wild”. Retirees could supplement their social security payments by watching ads for penis enlargement pills.

I know damn well they’d have to pay me a lot more than $39.95 a month to watch Newt Gingrich, Ollie North, Mark Fuhrman, G. Gordon Liddy or any of the other assorted felons, perjurers, liars and hypocrites currently appearing as news commentators on Fox. Fox News could no longer automatically claim you or me or Judge Chin as their subscribers. I suspect their ad revenue might drop precipitously. Do you think their programming might change?

They say the pen is mightier than the sword. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Kim Il Sung thought so. Rupert Murdoch and the right-wingers think so too. That’s why we haven’t got gun control, but they’ve got media control.

Call your cable company. See what they have to say. Then call your congressman. It’s likely to be a long fight, but we really don’t have any choice.