Diversity Czar: end run around the Fairness Doctrine?

"Thanks for devoting an entire column to something that has almost no supporters and which has little to zero chance of being voted on in Congress, much less passing." – Reader response to an earlier article, Censorship: the Fairness Doctrine 

Continuing the very Bush administration practice that the lefties claimed they abhorred so much, that of appointing "czars" as a means of circumventing the "advice and consent" of congress, the Obama administration appointed yet another czar of its own on July 29th, this one being Mark Lloyd, Diversity Czar at the Federal Communications Commission.

(The saving grace is, of course, that Supreme Being Obama puts only "good" people in place whereas Beelzebub Bush appointed only "bad" people).

The world of political conservatism has been all abuzz about the appointment, although detractors refer to the "buzz" as a "right-wing smear campaign" that "baselessly warn about the reemergence of the Fairness Doctrine." (Think Progress)

(In politics, the jeer of "smear" is the smokescreen that gives away the existence of the fire.)

Nonetheless, from the prose of the conservative columnist pros it appears that the FCC Czar's first priority is to abolish conservative talk radio, doing so via regulatory diktats rather than reviving the old Fairness Doctrine, which mandated that every individual public issue mentioned over the airwaves must present "both sides" of the debate.

(Leave it to arrogant government-huggers from both sides of the aisle to claim that the public is so narrow minded that there can only possibly be two sides to any topic – their two sides.)

The premise for ending the stranglehold on the talk radio genre by conservatives is that too much conservative talk and not enough liberal talk is bad for American democracy because it's anti-diversity.

Yet it's diversity that gave rise to conservative talk radio in the first place. In a free society with free people freely tuning their freely purchased radios to freely sponsored programs and freely listening to whom they damn well pleased, free people voted with their ears to listen to conservative yak rather than liberal lip.

But of course when progressives talk about diversity they don't mean individual diversity, they mean politically correct ideologically-defined government-imposed "group diversity." They mean a diversity of people who believe exactly as they believe. A liberal black woman lip-syncing with a liberal Hispanic man counts as "diversity." Anyone outside of their officially designated groups simply won't be tolerated.

In other words, they don't mean diversity at all. Just as the term "liberal" means the opposite of what "liberal" meant when those dudes in their powdered wigs founded America, so "diversity" means the opposite of what any dictionary or thesaurus or encyclopedia says it means.

A CNS News article about FCC Czar Mark Lloyd has him repeatedly espousing "equality" about as often as he demands "diversity." Paragraphs are peppered with phrases like "equal voice" and "equal capability of citizen discourse" and "citizen equality" and "equal ability to communicate" and "equal capability of citizens."

So who destroyed all this magnificent equality in the first place? Why, the big broadcasting corporations, of course, who put people like Limbaugh and Hannity and Savage in front of microphones and forced the captive audience to listen to them.

(They also polluted the airwaves with the likes of libertarians such as Neal Boortz and David Brudnoy. Could this have been a corporate conspiracy to offer a "fake diversity" and therefore forestall the liberal's wet dreams of resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine?")

So how, exactly, can diversity and equality be restored to America's radios? Through government diktats from the FCC Czar, of course.

The same article is laced with language like "re-establish the regulatory power of government" and "ensured only by our government" and "Washington must 'ensure'” and "Government...is the 'only' institution that can manage the communications of the public" and (quoting from Saul Alinsky's manifesto Rules for Radicals) "direct that pressure not at the government, but through the government at our true opposition – the broadcasters."

Only big coercive government can possibly save us from the corporations by shoving their own version of electronic equality down our ear holes.

But of course when progressives talk about equality they don't really mean equality, they mean politically correct ideologically-defined government-imposed egalitarianism, which being, in practice, a society in which all are forced to be equally impoverished by their self-defined betters who will keep their limos and Learjets and lakeside lodges and luxurious lifestyles at the expense of the equally impoverished.

(Real equality and diversity are opposites of government imposed equality and diversity, but don't try telling that to the ideologues.)

This all brings up the big question: why is conservative talk radio such a big issue with liberals?

Apparently, radio conservative talkers are capable of turning otherwise good little liberals into crazed far right conservative wingnuts. You know how it is, all conservatives are gun-toting tobacco-chewing trailer-dwelling NASCAR-watching bible-blurting inbred southern hicks. The very people, ironically, who used to be praised as "Solid South" Democrats.

If liberals actually are so meek-minded maybe they need the constant supervision and protection of government czars who will constantly tell them what and how to think. Sort of like surrogate Mommies and Daddies.

Libertarians, who unlike Saul Alinsky are the only true radicals, made up as they are of enlightened individuals who have rejected both the liberal line as well as the conservative cant, have a place in their ranks for those who successfully escape the government-huggers.

It means understanding that freedom of speech cannot be achieved through government management of speech.

But that takes real diversity, real equality, and real liberality.