Sunday, October 01, 2006
Air America
After hearing yet another dittohead proclaiming yet again that Air America is going to fail (which I was hearing on the air and in person from people before they even launched), I thought I'd go looking for just what their listenership is. I got sidetracked, though, because immediately I found some article from worldnetdaily.com claiming the same tired old line about Air America's demise. I also found a few other remarks here and there talking about how they wouldn't exist if it wasn't for high-profile rich liberals supporting them. Does anyone else see the irony of these same people saying that, meanwhile reading sites like newsmax.com and worldnetdaily.com (the second not making money until 2 years later, from the wikipedia entry)?
More irony - trying to maintain this idea of speaking for the everyman and loudly bleating about "elitists", and at the same time bashing Air America for asking money from its listeners. I suppose they'd rather have their financial support for their "news" sources be secret? Or funded by someone with obvious bias and clearly an elitist like Richard Mellon Scaife? Or rely on a newspaper propped up by Sun Myung Moon like the Washington Times?
In all truthfulness, I haven't tuned into Air America in weeks, maybe months, but if conservatives really believe in the marketplace of ideas, why do they fear Air America so much? I think at heart, they know that given a level playing field (and by that, I mean dollar for dollar spent - right now, conservative think tanks outspend liberal ones 4-to-1 to get their message out), conservative ideas will lose to liberal ones - it's clear that people want universal healthcare, despite all the work and PR done to tell us why we shouldn't - and it's clear an awful lot of work was done and a lot of money spent on giving us that message. That's quite a colossal failure of PR, but there you go.
These attacks on one lonely little dissident radio network are just pathetic, but I guess I shouldn't expect much from the same crew that thinks that Katie Couric is somehow indicative of the "liberal media".
More irony - trying to maintain this idea of speaking for the everyman and loudly bleating about "elitists", and at the same time bashing Air America for asking money from its listeners. I suppose they'd rather have their financial support for their "news" sources be secret? Or funded by someone with obvious bias and clearly an elitist like Richard Mellon Scaife? Or rely on a newspaper propped up by Sun Myung Moon like the Washington Times?
In all truthfulness, I haven't tuned into Air America in weeks, maybe months, but if conservatives really believe in the marketplace of ideas, why do they fear Air America so much? I think at heart, they know that given a level playing field (and by that, I mean dollar for dollar spent - right now, conservative think tanks outspend liberal ones 4-to-1 to get their message out), conservative ideas will lose to liberal ones - it's clear that people want universal healthcare, despite all the work and PR done to tell us why we shouldn't - and it's clear an awful lot of work was done and a lot of money spent on giving us that message. That's quite a colossal failure of PR, but there you go.
These attacks on one lonely little dissident radio network are just pathetic, but I guess I shouldn't expect much from the same crew that thinks that Katie Couric is somehow indicative of the "liberal media".
# posted by Sean LeBlanc : 3:49 PM
