Extremist Christians Confuse Freedom of Religion with. . .
The Extremist Christians at the National Religious Broadcasters are all in a tizzy about the potential for the return of a “Fairness Doctrine,” ignoring the fact that Obama has come out against such legislation. They are really scared of limits on their ability to promulgate hate, and they are trying to block every camel under that tent.
Well, it is their job to whine about liberals, but this time the extremist Christian whack jobs are confusing what religious freedom means — they think it means they can hate anyone they want to, evidently. Let’s begin at the beginning. For a long time the leaders of the extremist Christian conservatives have relied on radio and TV to get their message out. They’re worried, and whining about it, that Congress may reinstitute the “Fairness Doctrine.” Now what they say is that they’re scared their Christian programming would have to then represent Muslim points of view, or Hindu points of view. That’s about the stupidest whiney little fear I’ve ever heard. Here it is from WorldNetDaily, that paragon of fairness. I am told they did not make this up, but in all fairness I can’t be sure. After all, this is WorldNetDaily we’re talking about.
As the National Religious Broadcasters convened today in Nashville, an ominous shroud cast by political chatter about the reimposition of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” in the nation’s capital hung over the gathering.
NRB President Frank Wright said he sees the move as a credible threat under a Democrat-dominated Congress and with President Obama in the White House.
. . .
He said the new political climate doesn’t just threaten broadcasters, but even churches that have no broadcast outlet.
“The fairness doctrine has a tremendous potential for constraining free speech, but hate crimes (legislation) has the potential of criminalizing it,” he said. “In the short run, the fairness doctrine has the immediate threat of being applied to Christian broadcasters and to the church in a very deleterious way. Hate crimes legislation, if that is enacted, will evolve over time and bleed over into speech and have a negative effect, but not right away. The fairness doctrine will have a negative impact the day it is implemented.”
He said he expects religious broadcasters, largely Christian, to be particularly hard hit because of the doctrine’s requirement for so-called “balance.” If an opposing view must be found for every matter of controversy, Christian broadcasters could find themselves in the unenviable and untenable position of seeking out other religious viewpoints – Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist – to counter what ministers of the Gospel say on the air.
There’s a reason we call the extremists on the right wing “whacj jobs.” In this case, these folks don’t understand, or pretend not to understand, that we have a constitution that allows them to believe any religious belief they wish. Our constitution does not allow interference with such religious beliefs, no, not even under a so-called “Fairness Doctrine.” When the “Fairness Doctrine” was in place before not once was a religious broadcaster required to present another religion’s point of view. Not once. Indeed, I’m betting there were not even any challenges on that score, for what lawyer would be so stupid as to challenge the constitution’s protection of religious exercise?
These religious broadcasters are doubly stupid in thinking a “Fairness Doctrine” is going to come out anyway. Obama has come out agiainst such legislation. Hey, he won’t sign it, rubes, even if such legislation were to get through the House and Senate! He’s on your side! But maybe these folks have it right, and I’m all wrong. Maybe they have found the hidden meanings in Barack Obama’s campaign statement about the Fairness Doctrine from last June:
here may be some Democrats talking about reimposing the Fairness Doctrine, but one very important one does not: presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama.
The Illinois senator’s top aide said the issue continues to be used as a distraction from more pressing media business.
“Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters,” press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to B&C late Wednesday.
That’s it, the extremist conservative Christian whack jobs got out their secret decoder rings and figured out that Obama means exactly the opposite to what he said.
The real truth here is that the Christian extremists are worried about hate crime legislation, of course. They don’t want that on the top of their agenda, of course. Who wants to come out in favor of hate? Hey, even these guys aren’t that stupid. So they are going to use their usual slippery slope arguments. In this case it is logically flawed, but they are going with it anyway. They think if they can stop the “Fairness Doctrine” then they can rile up their supporters to stop hate crime legislation that will protect them as they continue to demonize gays, lesbians, atheists, liberals, etc. They are confusing freedom of religion with the freedom to hate.
What else do you expect from intellectually bereft troglodytes who believe the earth is only 10,000 years old?
With the ascendency of El Rushbo as the Chief Mahout of the Grand Ol’ Pachyderms expectt a constant screed of wailing and gnashing of teeth.
As the death grip of guns, god and gays relinquishes its rigidity from atrophy, the theocrats will bluster and blather into irrelevance.
The “Fairness Doctrine” is antiquated anyway. The rationale was that, since the broadcast spectrum is finite, purveyors of one political point of view should not be permitted to monopolize it. There’s no way to make that model fit cable, satellite radio, the Internet, and other non-broadcast forms of communication.
It’s also worth noting that the Fairness Doctrine was used in the 1960s to yank the broadcast licenses of TV stations that refused to air footage of the civil rights struggle. Some Southern stations, IIRC, would actively block network feeds of civil rights demonstrators being beaten by police. In other words, the much-maligned Fairness Doctrine struck blows against evil.
The anti-Fairness Doctrine stuff is a shell game. When the real question of media consolidation starts to come to the fore, it will be a bait-and-switch to equate “anti-media consolidation” with “Fairness Doctrine” and have all the little Rush-bots lined up to spew outrage at their Congress-critter. With the ‘critters getting an earful from both their voting constituents AND from the media giants themselves, the question of media consolidation will be dropped as a topic too hot to handle. At least that’s what the media conglomerates are hoping for.