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You know there's trouble in the ranks when what's left of the right-wing intelligent- sia keeps questioning the pith and authenticity of teaparty pin-up and their single shining hope, Sarah Palin.
Former newsman Juan Williams said this, on Fox News Sunday:
“It’s telling to me, again, you’re talking about Mike Pence from Indiana, you talk about a charisma gap, y’know, charisma-challenged people. There’s nobody out there, except for Sarah Palin, who can absolutely dominate the stage, and she can’t stand on the intellectual stage with Obama.”
Continue reading "Palin's gravitas questioned by... who??? " »
We're beginning to think Glennn Beck might be The Anti-Christ (and there are plenty of earnest evangelicals, btw, who would agree...).
We don't know much about biblical prophecy, but we do know that according to the latest "Who's your favorite dude?" poll in USA Today, the sproingy, rich, little hysterian from Mt. Vernon, WA tied with the pope, Billy Graham, and Jimmy Carter (none of whom would have made it into a BlatherWatch Top 25).
We're further frightened that Beck beat out the Dalai Lama, (though there are plenty of earnest evangelicals who believe the Dalai Lama is the Anti-Christ).
The big winner in the annual, year's end, most-admired rada-rada was- even after the political wringer he's been through- Barack Obama. While not in any way decisive, that bodes well for the President's continuing political prospects.
For the womens: Hillary Clinton).
President Obama remains the unchallenged champion on another front: For the third year in a row, he is by far the most admired man in America. Secretary of State Hillary Clinot continues an even longer run, ranked in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll as the most admired woman for the ninth straight year.
(While approximately half of Christendom thinks Barack is The Anti-Christ, nobody much believes it about Hillary, although many earnest evangelicals are pretty darn sure she's of The Iluminati).
The list:
Most admired man:1. Barack Obama
2. George W. Bush
3. Bill Clinton
4. Nelson Mandela
5. Bill Gates
6. (tied) Pope Benedict XVI
6. (tied) Billy Graham
8. (tied) Jimmy Carter
8. (tied) Glenn Beck
10. The Dalai Lama
Most admired woman1. Hillary Clinton
2. Sarah Palin
3. Oprah Winfrey
4. Michelle Obama
5. Condoleezza Rice
6. Queen Elizabeth
7. Angelina Jolie
8. Margaret Thatcher
9. (tied) Aung San Suu Kyi
9. (tied) Laura Bush
9. (tied) Barbara Bush
Defunding public broadcasting.
It's a fight the right wanted and had intended to pick in 2011 with their scrappy new majority in the House.
Then they were handed a great gift in the ham-handed way Fox News' Ersatz Liberal Juan "'You're exactly right,' Bill" Williams was fired by NPR in October.
NPR and PBS stations, while suffering the occasional bomb threat, braced for a financial backlash, but it never happened- contributions to the popular and popularly-funded media were not effected by the controversy which ended with Williams $lipping into the welcoming arms of Rupert Murdoch and the right-wing parallel media universe. (they can always use a darkie).
Happy holidays from BlatherWatch.
This from Radio-info's Tom Taylor:
It’s almost like healthcare, where an Obama policy is bound to see tough challenges in court. Surely Barack Obama and his FCC Chairman and Harvard Law School friend Julius Genachowski have talked about keeping the Internet as a level playing field for everybody.
The RAIN Newsletter caught NPR's All Things Considered putting this in a real-world setting -
“Imagine logging on to your favorite band’s website and you wanted to buy something from them directly, and you were somehow diverted to the ISP’s favorite online music store."
That's the Future of Music Coalition speaking and you can guess where they stand. Yesterday’s 3-2 partyline vote in favor of Genachowski’s plan to regulate how phone and cable companies handle their jobs as Internet service providers is a victory for the Chairman and the President. (It doesn't apply to wireless carriers.) But it will be challenged by one or more of the big guys (Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, who knows?). The fireworks may not come immediately, but might wait until the FCC promulgates the rules that implement the policy to “preserve Internet freedom and openness.”
by Chris Chronic, guest writer
Finally a victory in the Senate. It's a better version of what’s known as Low Power FM (LPFM) licensing just passed.
LPFM may be the livest and local-est of all radio. (Not that anyone gives a shit, since commercial radio for the most part has given up on live & local radio).
But for communities across the country, low-power broadcasting now has a freer hand in deciding who, in towns large and small across America, will receive these permits to operate stations that previously were being slapped down by the hand of Congress, DJ Jesus, and an unlikely enemy: NPR.
To be sure, LP FM was intended for the use in communities of organizations and non-profit groups to broadcast in areas where before, their message may have not been heard.
What went wrong? Back in 2000, the FCC declared that spacing standards were unfair for translators, low-power broadcasters which repeat signals from a larger station to reach an area outside its coverage area.(KPLU, for instance, uses translators to broadcast north and west)
The only other way was pirate stations (like Free Radio Olympia: Fucking shit up since 2001!)
This meant less space for new LPFMs. Adjacent stations claimed interference on either side of their already low-power translator assignments. Congress assumed a translator was the same as a higher power FM and therefore interference be damned.
The technology was the same, right? Media Geek 2003:
“What’s troubling is that the translator licensing window amounts to an enormous spectrum giveaway to stations that will not come even close to serving their local communities as well as LPFM stations that must originate at least 8 hours a day of local programming by FCC rules.
On top of that, the nation’s biggest holders of translator licenses are enormous right-wing Christian radio networks that subsist almost entirely on hundreds of these low-power translator stations. Commercial stations can only have translators to fill in gaps in their local coverage, while these godcasters slip through as “educational” non-profits which allow them to have translators to rebroadcast stations thousands of miles away. “
(KLOVE installs their 13th station in Moses Lake)
Mega Christian broadcasters, such as Educational Media Foundation (EMF) known across the country as KLOVE, included low-power FM stations hogging the band across the nation (Bozeman alone has multiple channel applications from Radio Assist Ministries).
This summer, EMF and Prometheus Radio Project reached an agreement and wrote up a "memo of understanding" with the FCC proposing that local service give preference to LPFM applicants over translators. Radio Assist also signed off for the most part with the memorandum.
NPR, whose public radio domain is normally from 88-92 on the FM dial however, chose to block the status of LPFM radio.
Why? No one knows for sure other than ego.
From Democracy Now! in 2000:
"Nobody can accuse NPR of being a powerful special interest. But in its winsome way, NPR is now providing political cover for some real Beltway bruisers.
"Take NPR’s opposition to low-power FM radio. This FCC plan would license small radio stations to schools, churches, and local community groups for educational purposes. It’s "cottage radio," serving neighborhoods and community constituencies that big broadcasters don’t.
"Radio doesn’t get any more "public" than low-power FM! Yet NPR has joined the huge commercial conglomerates in the National Association of Broadcasters to try to block low-power radio in Congress. Not that lobbyists for Big Broadcasting need any help. They spend $5 million a year to influence legislation, and hand out an additional $1,000 a day to candidates for federal office. They treat the public airwaves like their private property. They don’t want spectrum reserved for low-power FM. Their purpose is profit, not diversity or community service."
What is NPR’s stance today? Perhaps this, summed up from the Prometheus Media Project:
“Radio Assist Ministry--possibly the largest of the translator mega-filers that resells granted translators to Christian ministries as a non-com money-making operation--filed a comment agreeing with the Memorandum for the most part. The question was, how would NPR react to the Memorandum? On August 10, NPR expressed their opinion to the FCC. To both sides' dismay, NPR found the ideas expressed in the memo "troubling."
The Daily Kos reports what you won’t read or hear much elsewhere. Reclaim the Media, a Seattle-based media justice organization also worked with other advocacy groups to see that this bill passed.
Bill Taylor says:
“'Hutch' began his radio career in 1945, and was a mainstay a DJ and newsman on Seattle's KOL in the 1950s and ‘60s.
He left Seattle in 1965 to join XTRA 690, an all-news station licensed to Mexico with a signal that covered San Diego and Los Angeles."
He later moved to the San Francisco and became a business reporter for more than a decade at KCBS. He was best known for his daily radio reports from the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange.
Hutchinson aired a twice-daily business feature called Money Talks, analyzing stock trends until a stroke partially paralyzed him in 1982. He died in August 1985 at his Sherman Oaks home at age 64.
Change is good
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