This seems to perplex a lot of people, and it's understandable: why would a truly lunatic fringe movement get this kind of airtime when the public opinion is almost completely against them on social issues like health care reform and all the others?
Why? The reasons are manifold and go back to that other period of near anarchy, the 1920s. But it took time after the Republicans handed the airwaves to business, though on a thin legal leash. There was that post-New Deal chipping away, but the big first was when we lost the Fairness Doctrine at the FCC in 1987 thanks to Republican President Ronald Reagan. The doctrine wasn't law, but it guided the broadcasting standards of the United States for decades and allowed for a more equitable access to the airwaves for differing opinions and viewpoints, and it worked. There was at least some variety, not that it was stellar or truly representative of the social/cultural landscape, but it was better.
It also worked because the structure it brought about would never have allowed for the existence of the current echo chamber of the right we now inhabit, and that's including CNN and the major networks that were already traditionally to the right thanks to ownership. This is why Republicans and enemies of free speech everywhere don't want anything approximating a return to something like the Fairness Doctrine. Never mind that the public technically owns the airwaves and has from the start, the interests of big business are more important. But day after day, we see the right-wing nuts on the idiot box. Why?
It's not that complicated, and there's another reason why all the useless flailing is all over the airwaves: it's because the Tea Baggers, the militia nuts, white hate groups, Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin, lost white girls, the "birthers," the operatives like James O'Keefe (the "ACORN pimp"), and yes, the multimedia gaggle of mumbling, anti-abortion nuts, Libertarians, babbling morons like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, both of whom have resorted in recent weeks to all but advocating acts of violence against the current President of the United States, Barack Obama, aren't a genuine threat to the status quo in America.
In reality, these mutants and wackos are badly needed by a pro-big business and finance Republican Party that has nearly lost its entire base over the administration of George W. Bush. After that, all you have remaining are the wackos, the fringe, and crumbling establishments often reach for the closest set of cranks when the curtain's about to close on them (including within the political establishment). Some say this is "all part of the plan" (which one?), but I disagree. You couldn't make this shit up, and that's why even the GOP cannot control them. These babbling jackasses, these morons, these throwbacks to the time of the Frontier hick and the lynch mobs that once ran riot in America are, in fact, in many cases, their very descendants. Yes, there is an element of "astroturf" to a lot of it, but these goobers are here, now, and they've been with us, hobbling the rest of us, from the beginning of this nation and will for the foreseeable future.
The message? There is no message coming from these people except, "More of the same." That's pretty pathetic considering many of them are now or are going to be the victims of the very policies they're advocating. Some of us simply like to shit where we eat because it's easier in the beginning. Of course, there is the underlying racism in these protests and the movement, and for many of these lost fools, the biggest fools alive on this rock called earth, it's the only reason they're at a Tea Party rally or why they were at a health care protest against reform: they're angry that a "nigger" is president. The thread connecting the economic elites of America and the white underclass is that they're all Eurotrash and can never truly be "European," no matter how much they prattle on about their respective heritages. Why wouldn't we see them on television, print, and Internet media all of the time?
These idiots are really chasing after an America that never was, but everyone likes watching a spectacle, even me. That'll learn 'ya (or not, maybe ever)!
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