Category Archives: stuff that pisses me off

land of the not-so-free and home of the scared shitless

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You know that song, right? The Star Spangled Banner? It’s sung at the beginning of almost every sports event in the United States. Yeah, that song. It looks like we’re going to have to change the lyrics. There are four verses to the song, though folks generally only sing the first verse. But each of those verses ends with a variation of the same line.

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Turns out the answer to that question is a firm “Nope.” Doesn’t matter if the banner is waving or not, because the US is no longer the land of the free or the home of the brave. Evidence? I got your evidence right here. Vanity Fair just published an article with the title

“They’re scared shitless”: The Threat or Political Violence Informing Trump’s Grip on Congress.

Over the last month we’ve seen Republicans in Congress cower before Trump, confirming Cabinet members they know…they fucking know…are unfit and unqualified. We’ve got a drunk misogynist wife-beater who mismanaged a couple of charities for veterans in charge of the Department of Defense. Pete Hegseth wouldn’t be considered qualified to drive a goddamn school bus. We’ve got a Director of National Intelligence who is a Russian apologist, an ongoing distributor of Russian disinformation, and who has refused to acknowledge that the Syrian dictator Assad used chemical weapons against his own citizens. We’ve got a Secretary of Health and Human Services who has a 14-year history of heroin abuse, who is an anti-vaccine nut, who is a Covid conspiracy nut, who claimed in a divorce proceeding that “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died” which accounted for his…ah, fuck, you get the idea. RFK Jr. is a quack. These are NOT serious Cabinet candidates.

So why have Republicans in Congress supported them? Because, as reported by Vanity Fair (and others), they’re fucking cowards. They’re afraid for 1) their careers and 2) their safety.

Look, I’ve been legit afraid for my life and safety. I understand what it feels like when you’ve been told if you do X, then Y will happen to you. I was threatened several times during my years as a criminal defense investigator. I’ve been threatened by a burglary gang; I’ve been threatened by the guy who actually committed the bow and arrow murder my client was accused of (this was a guy who’d already done time for murdering another person by stabbing him multiple times with a bayonet); I’ve even been threatened by the police for outing an officer who’d slept with a witness. It’s scary to know that there are people out there who seriously want to harm you and are capable of following through with it.

But you know what? I still did my job, because it was important. Because there were principles involved. Because civil liberties matter. Don’t get me wrong; I was scared and I took every precaution I could. There were situations I avoided because I was so fucking nervous. But I did my job.

MAGA Republicans are right to be scared. There are a LOT of MAGA lunatics out there eager to prove their loyalty to Trump by engaging in violence. Many of the Republicans in Congress were potential victims in the January 6th Insurrection. They know what Trump supporters are capable of doing. What they’re willing to do.

But they have a job to do. And they’re…not doing it. Their job is a LOT more important than my job was. There’s a LOT more riding on their job than there was on mine. And they’re too afraid to do it. Oh, a few of them may actually agree with Trump, but many/most of them know better. They’re just too scared to stand up.

Home of the free? Land of the Brave? I’m not convinced the US has ever truly been the land of the free, though I like to think there have been periods in which we’ve tried to be. But we have, in the past, been the land of the brave. When fascism threatened Europe in the 1930s and 40s, the US…okay, we dodged around as much as we could, but eventually we stood up and fought to support Europe. We haven’t always been consistent in opposing totalitarian regimes, but we’ve always at least voiced the notion of freedom and representative democracy.

Now? Not so much. Now we have a POTUS who is openly pro-totalitarian. We have a POTUS who openly spreads Russian lies and disinformation, who openly undermines the very foundations of representative democracy, who is openly corrupt, who openly dismisses the legitimacy of the Constitution.

The Republican Party is fully aware of what he’s doing. And they’re unwilling to oppose him. Because they’re afraid. They’re willing to allow democracy to die in the US because they can’t find the courage to say ‘no’. Hell, they’re not just willing to let it die; they’ll volunteer to help bury the body.

neil fucking gaiman

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Bless Pearl Cleage. Because of her, I can’t listen to Miles Davis anymore. One of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, and I can’t listen to him. Why? Because Pearl Cleage told me:

[H]e is guilty of self-confessed violence against women such that we should break his albums, burn his tapes and scratch up his CDs until he acknowledges and apologizes and agrees to rethink his position on The Woman Question.

Back in 1990, a woman gave me a book of essays by Cleage: Mad at Miles; A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth and told me I needed to read it. I asked why a white guy like me needed to read a Black woman’s guide to truth. She gave me that look…the look women can give to guys that basically says, ‘I can’t even believe you’re asking me that question, are you actually that oblivious?‘ Of course, I was that oblivious, but I didn’t want to be. So I read the book.

I mean, sure, I could still listen to Miles Davis. But if I even get the impulse to listen to him, I remember Cleage quoting a scene from Miles Davis’ autobiography in which he described slapping the shit out of Cicely Tyson because she spoke to a friend that Miles didn’t like. Tyson called the police and hid in the basement until they arrived. The police spoke with her in the basement, noted that she didn’t appear to be badly injured, and the spoke to Miles, who told them, “She ain’t hurt bad; I just slapped her once.” He and the police had a laugh, they left, and according to his autobiography:

Before I knew it, I had slapped her again. So she never did pull that kind of shit on me again.

If I even think of listening to Miles Davis, I get a vision of Cicely Tyson–one of the best actors in the modern world–cowering in a basement while police have a laugh with her abuser. And nope…no Miles Davis for me. Just can’t do it.

Now it’s Neil Gaiman’s turn. Like a lot of folks, I loved Gaiman’s writing. I really liked him on Bluesky, where he was incredibly kind and thoughtful and accessible to everybody. He seemed like the nicest guy.

But he wasn’t. Back in August of last year, I wrote about the early accusations against Gaiman. I wrote that I believed the women who accused him of cruel behavior. I wrote,

[A] pattern of behavior is what defines an abuser. It’s necessary to distinguish between a person who commits a bad act and a person who’s a bad actor.
Neil Gaiman, it appears, is a bad actor.

In fact, it appears he’s more than just a bad actor. I just finished reading the most awful report, There Is No Safe Word about Gaiman’s long, sordid, horrifying history of sexually abusing vulnerable women. I was somewhat reluctant to read the article. As a fan of his work, I knew it would be painful to read; I knew reading it would leave me disappointed, disheartened.

I was wrong. It left me furious.

Sure, it seems clear from the reporting that Gaiman is massively fucked up personally. And as a Buddhist, I know I should feel compassion for him. But what I feel most at this moment is rage. Fuck Neil Gaiman, fuck Miles Davis, fuck them both in the neck. Fuck every guy in a position of power who’s used that power to abuse women. Fuck the entire patriarchal system in the neck.

Some days I find it hard to understand why women aren’t arming themselves and climbing to the tops of water towers in every community and picking off men at random.

So nope, no Miles Davis and no Neil Gaiman for me. Just can’t do it.

EDITORIAL NOTE: I’ve been using variations of this same editorial note since sometime in 2023. I’m sadly confident I’ll have to keep using for as long as I write this blog. It’s still true. We must burn the patriarchy. Burn it to the ground, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in oil and set them on fire again. Burn the patriarchy, then drive a stake directly through the ashes where its heart used to be, and then set fire to the stake. Burn the fucker one more time. And keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations.

that bastard Pythagoras

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I have a problem with the ancient Greeks. I can never remember who did what, who said what, and who taught what. I can never quite remember which ones were poets, which ones where philosophers, which ones were mathematicians, which ones were playwrights, which ones were scientists. It doesn’t really matter; it almost always turns out that each of them basically did everything.

But I know this: it’s that bastard Pythagoras who’s credited with first writing ‘There are two sides to every question.’ Then a couple thousand years later, Thomas Jefferson added fuel to the fire in a letter; he wrote: “There’s always a different point of view, which is entitled to be heard.”

Yeah, no.

Pythagoras and Jefferson, those guys took it for granted that those questions and different points of view would be reasonable, at least semi-rational, and somewhat honest. But that’s not the world we live in today. Today a motherfucker will flat out lie his ass off, knowing the news media will find a way to soften–or worse, justify–the lie. Not only that, they’ll dodge using the term ‘lie.’

One of the lead stories in this morning’s WaPo started with this: Donald Trump and his campaign have waged an aggressive campaign against fact-checking. Which is to say Trump doesn’t want anybody to call him out for lying. The article went on to list a few of his lies, calling them ‘falsehoods’ or ‘fabricated tales.’ Fabricated fucking tales. Aesop, another of those Greeks, he told fabricated tales. Donald Trump tells lies.

Pythagoras. I’m not saying it’s all his fault, but c’mon.

But because of that bastard Pythagoras, WaPo felt compelled to include another side to the story. Ready? This: Harris, too, has taken a cautious approach to interviews. Jesus suffering fuck. That ‘too‘ carries a lot of weight. It suggests Trump’s lies are a ‘cautious approach to interviews’ and Harris is basically doing the same thing. That’s not true. In essence, WaPo is lying about Harris in order to be ‘fair’ to that lying sumbitch Donald Trump.

This stuff isn’t complicated. Yeah, there ARE at least two sides to every legitimate question. But c’mon, journalists, do your fucking job. If Candidate A says, “Gravity exists and a fall from a great height can kill you” and Candidate B says, “Gravity is just a theory and the government can’t stop me from jumping from a great height” that doesn’t mean there are two sides to the gravity story. If you report Gravity opponent not afraid of great height risk you’re basically telling folks it’s okay to be suspicious of gravitation. That’s not news; that’s you being irresponsible by spreading bullshit.

Journalists, Pythagoras and Thomas Jefferson aren’t the boss of you. Stop spreading bullshit. If those guys were around today, they’d say, “There are two sides to every question, but c’mon, you can ignore obvious bullshit” or “There’s always a different point of view, which is entitled to be heard, but complete fuckwits should be shrugged off.”

Grow the fuck up, journalists, Call a lie a lie. Do your goddamn job.

innocence doesn’t matter

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Okay, first you have to understand that I’m a criminal defense guy. I spent several years as a private investigator specializing in criminal defense. Prior to that, I’d been a counselor in the Psych/Security unit of a prison for women; a significant proportion of the inmates there didn’t need (or deserve) incarceration. I’ve also taught courses in criminology and policing at American University in DC and at Fordham in NYC. I have a solid understanding of how the criminal justice system works. Or fails to work.

Second, you need to understand that I am completely opposed to the death penalty for any crime. I can present lots of arguments against capital punishment, but to spare you that, let me simply say this: the State should not be in the business of killing its own citizens. That’s it, end of argument for me.

I’m telling you this up front so you’ll understand my position when I see a social media post that makes this claim:

[W]e killed an innocent man in Missouri last week; his name was Marcellus Williams.

Criminal trials are about evidence–testimony and forensic evidence. Can the State present enough evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime of which they are accused? At best, it’s an imperfect system. Sometimes factually guilty people will go free, sometimes factually innocent people will get convicted. That’s an indisputable fact (and also a solid argument against the death penalty).

Marcellus Williams

A lot of people are making the claim that Marcellus Williams was innocent. Was he? Despite those claims, we don’t really know (another argument against the death penalty). What DO we know? We DO know the following:

  1. Felicia Gayle was murdered. She was stabbed 43 times with a knife taken from her kitchen.
  2. Her purse, jacket, and a laptop computer belonging to her husband were missing at the crime scene, presumably stolen by her murderer.
  3. Henry Cole, a convicted criminal, testified that Williams admitted killing Gayle while they were both in jail for crimes unconnected to the murder. His testimony conformed to published public reports of the crime and contained no new information. He did NOT come forward until after a reward for information was offered (he accepted the reward: US$5000). Although there’s no overt connection to this case, when Cole violated his parole the State chose NOT to revoke his parole. It’s possible this may have been influenced by his decision to testify against Williams.
  4. Laura Asaro, Williams’ girlfriend at the time of Gayle’s murder, testified Williams admitted to her that he’d killed Gayle. She also said she saw a laptop in Williams’ car and found a purse that contained Gayle’s ID. In addition, she testified that she saw scratches on Williams’ neck, blood on his shirt. Although she did NOT accept any reward money, a neighbor said Asaro claimed she was getting paid to testify. No flesh was found under the fingernails of the victim, making her testimony about scratches moot. Asaro, who’d been arrested for solicitation (prostitution), lied about that arrest during deposition. No bloody shirt was found during a later search, nor was Gayle’s purse recovered.
  5. A warranted search of Williams’ car produced a calculator belonging to Gayle and a ruler with the logo of Gayle’s employer.
  6. The laptop taken from Gayle’s home was recovered from a witness who claimed he’d bought it from Williams.
  7. There was no physical forensic evidence tying Williams directly to the scene of the murder. No fingerprints that matched Williams; none of his shoes that were tested matched the bloody footprints found at the scene; DNA taken from the murder weapon did not match Williams. Police suggest Williams may have worn gloves and could easily have disposed of a bloody shirt, shoes, and Gayle’s purse.
  8. All capital cases are tried before death-qualified juries. Potential jurors who are categorically opposed to the death penalty are automatically disqualified. Research strongly suggests death-qualified juries are more likely to vote for convictions.
  9. Williams was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

The Innocence Project (a group I respect) made much of the fact that the State offered no motive for Williams to have murdered Gayle. Despite what you see on television, motive is rarely a major factor in a criminal investigation. The fact is, people do stuff all the time without being able to explain why they did it. That’s even more true of people with drug issues or problems with impulse control. The absence of an obvious motive doesn’t mean much when it comes to criminality.

Back to Williams. Was he innocent? There was evidence that he was involved in the murder, but that evidence is largely circumstantial. There was testimony that he’d confessed, but the veracity of testimony given by a fellow inmate who sought a reward and an ex-girlfriend is questionable. Williams offered no explanation for why he had the victim’s calculator and ruler in his vehicle, or why another witness testified he’d sold the victim’s laptop. The evidence presented to the death-qualified jury was enough to convince them of his guilt.

So, was Williams innocent? Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know. I’m inclined to think he was probably guilty. But in the end, I really don’t care.

His guilt or innocence doesn’t matter to me in terms of his death sentence. Even if he murdered Gayle, I don’t believe the State should have the power or authority to kill its own citizens. I also believe that when we base our opposition to the death penalty on the innocence of the accused, we’re tacitly agreeing with the argument that it’s okay to execute the guilty.

The State should not have executed Marcellus Williams, regardless of his guilt or innocence.

motives? I got your motives right here.

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I used to comment fairly often on the various mass shootings in the US. In fact, I actually started to count the number of posts I’ve written with the tag ‘another mass shooting’ but once I hit 30 posts, I gave it up. I did notice that the last time I commented on a mass shooting was almost a year ago. I wrote this:

[H]ow often can you repeat the same weary commentary? Because it IS always the same. Every single fucking time, it’s the same. The names of the victims and shooters are different, the locations are different, the numbers of the dead vary, but the bodies are all dead in the same way and the guns involved are at least similar.

So here’s me, once again, writing the same essential goddamn post. Winder, Georgia. Apalachee High School. Your basic AR-15 platform weapon. A 14-year-old shooter. Fourteen, for fuck’s sake. FOURTEEN! We’re talking late puberty, here. This a period when boys begin to get some sense of who they are…and this kid?

People…everybody…always ask this question after a mass shooting: why? As WaPo writes this morning:

“…the shooter’s motives remain unknown. In a news conference Wednesday, Smith said investigators from the sheriff’s office and GBI had interviewed Gray [the shooter]. The investigators do not yet know why the shooting occurred, Smith said, adding that “We may not ever know.”

Nobody knows why 14-year-old boys do anything. And frankly, what does it matter? Maybe he’s pissed off at his parents, maybe he’s been bullied at school, maybe he’s decided to join Hamas, maybe he thinks he’s being controlled by the Jews of the Nine Universes, maybe he kept losing a particular ‘boss’ fight in Dark Souls, maybe he just wondered what it would be like to wander through the halls of Apalachee High shooting people. What difference does it make?

Let’s face it, this kid’s motives are a distraction from what everybody—and I do mean everybody—knows is the real problem. Easy access to firearms. Even if the kid (and lawdy, he’s just a kid) was bullied—even if he did want to join Hamas—none of this would have happened without access to (what I assume is his daddy’s) semi-automatic rifle. Take the gun out of the equation and the butcher’s bill drops.

But we won’t do that. Because this is America and in America we…well, in America kids are disposable.

Fuck it. Go Wildcats. Go, run for your lives. Ain’t nobody going to help you.

goddamnit

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Let’s talk about Neil Gaiman. No, wait. Let me first offer up my creds.

I was, for several years, a private investigator specializing in criminal defense. I helped criminal defense attorneys defend criminals. That sounds awful, I know. But two things. First, the US Constitution says every person accused of a crime deserves a fair trial, and a fair trial means the accused has the right to challenge the evidence of the State. The other thing is this: my job was to investigate a criminal case and report facts and evidence to the defense attorney. Not facts and evidence that HELPED the defendant. Just facts, just evidence. It didn’t matter to me if the facts/evidence helped or hurt the accused. A good defense lawyer needs an unbiased account of the case.

I’m telling you this so you can judge for yourself whether or not I’m full of shit when I talk about Neil Gaiman. He hasn’t, to my knowledge, been charged with a crime. He has, though, been accused by multiple women of sexual abuse.

I believe them.

I wish it wasn’t true, but it almost certainly is.

A lot of feminists (and I like to count myself as a feminist) say we should always believe women. I don’t always believe anybody. If there’s anything I learned as a PI, it’s this: everybody lies. But as a criminal defense PI, I never had a case in which a woman lied about sexual assault. Some women may have confused some of the details of the assault (no surprise; sexual assault is pretty fucking traumatic), but I never had a single sexual assault/rape case in which the accusation was unfounded. I’m not saying women don’t lie about it; I’m just saying I never had a criminal case in which a woman lied about it. (I should amend that; I never had a case in which an adult woman lied about it. I did, sadly, have two cases in which adolescent girls lied about sexual assault—one apparently out of spite, one for no apparent reason. Kids don’t always act logically.)

But back to Neil Gaiman, a writer I’ve long respected and admired. He always struck me as being thoughtful, caring, sensitive, and honest. He may actually be some of those things most of the time. But based on the reports I’ve heard and read, I believe he also used his position and influence to coerce or pressure women to engage in unwanted sexual acts.

When the first woman reported, I hoped it would turn out to be an isolated incident (which, of course, is one incident too many). That was my hope, but I fully anticipated there’d be more. It’s always safe to assume influential men will be assholes. Hell, it’s always safe to assume all men, influential or not, will be assholes. I mean, patriarchy is built on a foundation of men being assholes, and believing in their absolute right to be assholes.

At this point, I think three more women have now come forward with accusations against Gaiman. Why is that important? Because any form of abuse can be a single act. A person might get roaring drunk and piss their pants once and never do it again. A person might get angry and hit somebody once, and never do it again. A person might pressure somebody to have sex once, and feel bad about it, and never do it again. Everybody is capable of acting badly. But a pattern of behavior is what defines an abuser. It’s necessary to distinguish between a person who commits a bad act and a person who’s a bad actor.

Neil Gaiman, it appears, is a bad actor.

Is it possible he’s being unfairly accused? Sure. But it’s highly unlikely. Is it possible that he believes all these acts were consensual? Sure. But he’s forfeited any claim to actual innocence, and my experience suggests these women are telling the truth.

EDITORIAL NOTE: This is further evidence (as if we need any more evidence) that we must burn the patriarchy. Burn it to the ground, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in oil and set them on fire again. Burn the patriarchy, then drive a stake directly through the ashes where its heart should be, and then set fire to the stake. Burn the fucker one more time. And keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations.

fuck everything, especially those guys

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Yeah, I’m talking about those Nazgûl motherfuckers on SCOTUS. Like almost everybody I know, I spent yesterday vacillating between 1) feeling depressed and helpless and 2) wanting to set fire to the entire combustible world. The decision yesterday that POTUS (and Trump in particular) is essentially above the law was appalling and frightening, but the fact that it was delivered in smug terms by the most conspicuously corrupt and openly partisan SCOTUS in history was insulting. It’s like they’re standing there, grinning in their black robes, saying “Fuck yeah, we’re corrupt. And ain’t nothing you plebs can do about it.”

Justice Sotomayor, in her properly raging dissent, wrote, “in every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” And she’s right. That whole notion that nobody is above the law has gone straight down the porcelain facility. This is an unprecedented fuckwankery. This is deep fuckwankery; fuckwankery down at the cellular level. I mean, the spouses of two of the Justices (Alito and Thomas) openly supported the insurrection/insurrectionists, and yet those two tainted pricks didn’t have the fundamental sense of decency to recuse themselves from the case.

What makes this even more galling is the fact that those arrogant motherfuckers on SCOTUS were put on the bench by partisan politicians who represent a minority of US citizens. A combination of partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the absurdity of the Electoral College means that the US is largely ruled by the minority. And in recent years, that minority cheated, lied, and wriggled around enough to install three partisan hacks onto the SCOTUS bench.

Wipe the smiles off the faces of 6 of these corrupt wankers.

Every single one of the Justices sitting on this SCOTUS testified under oath that they respected stare decisis, the legal concept that courts should follow precedent. At least six of them lied about that. This Court has largely shat all over precedent. For almost half a century, Roe guaranteed a woman’s right to choose. That’s gone. The Bakke decision on race-conscious admissions in higher education was the law of the land for almost as long. Not any more. For 40 years, Chevron — Jesus suffering fuck, people, there have been 70 SCOTUS and some 17,000 or so lower court cases based on Chevron, which states courts need to defer to the experts in various regulatory agencies when deciding how to interpret a law. A judge probably doesn’t know enough to decide what level of exposure to a certain chemical or substance would be harmful to a child. A judge probably doesn’t have a fucking clue about the long term effects of effluent run-off from a hog containment farm into a local river upstream from a small town. Experts need to decide this shit, not judges. But nope, this SCOTUS has turned that power over to elected or appointed judges.

Wait…I forgot bribery. Last week, this SCOTUS (and I am NOT MAKING THIS UP) made the bizarre decision that while it’s illegal for a public official (like, say, a mayor or a member of Congress, or possibly a judge) to accept a bribe, it’s perfectly for fine for them to accept a gratuity. A bribe is the offer of money (or something of value) from a person/entity before the public official makes a decision affecting that person or entity. A gratuity is accepting the same fucking thing after the decision is made. Seriously, the Court says bribes are bad but gratuities are okay. This decision was written by the Justice whose massive credit card debt was mysteriously paid off before he was nominated. You know who I’m talking about–the guy reliably accused of sexual assault. That guy. (Okay, Kavanaugh.)

If you’re reading this hoping that at the end I’ll suggest some way to make you feel better about the situation…sorry. If you’re hoping I’ll cobble together ideas for a way forward, or maybe offer some practical advice on how to minimize the damage…nope. Maybe tomorrow or at some point in the future. For now, all I have to say is let yourself be angry or depressed for a while. Maybe just be numb for a while.

But pretty soon we’ll need to get over it and resist. Resist in any way we can. Resist in every way we can. But today it’s literally raining here in the heartland, and for today that’s fine.

fairness

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Try to imagine this. A nation in which entities licensed to broadcast news or entertainment to the public were obligated to set aside a certain amount of their broadcast schedule to discuss controversial matters of public concern–and to do so in a way that included different perspectives.

Let’s say there was a television network called Really Good TV. To keep its broadcast license, RGTV created a regularly scheduled program called Really Important Stuff. And let’s also say there was a public controversy involving…I don’t know, maybe the overpopulation of parrots. RGTV’s Really Important Stuff show might do a segment in which people would discuss whether overpopulation of parrots was a critical issue, and if it was, how it might be handled. They’d include folks who very much enjoyed all the parrots and didn’t think it was a problem, and folks who totally fucking hated parrots and felt they should be poisoned at government expense, and folks who felt the best solution to parrot overpopulation was to allow them to be hunted for sport, and folks who felt parrots should be captured and neutered and released back into the city. Every main point of view would be included in the discussion, and viewers would be allowed to evaluate those positions and make up their own minds.

Reader, we actually used to live in that nation. We really did.

In 1927, Congress decided the agency that regulated federal communications (back then it was the Federal Radio Commission) should only issue broadcast licenses when doing so serves the public interest. Not private interests, not corporate interests, not the interests of the rich, not the interests of a particular political party. The public interest. In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission (which expanded the FRC to include television) created a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses to 1) present controversial issues of public importance AND 2) to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. It was called, appropriately, the Fairness Doctrine.

And hey, it worked. Television and radio stations were allowed to decide for themselves HOW to implement the doctrine; they could do it through news segments, or public affairs shows, or through editorials. Nor were the stations required to provide equal time for the various opposing views. But they had to devote some time to important public issues and they had to present contrasting viewpoints.

It didn’t always work smoothly, but it worked. In 1969, for example, the FCC yanked the broadcast license from WLBT television in Mississippi (an NBC affiliate station) because the station’s overtly segregationist politics shaped their decision to refuse to broadcast NBC’s coverage of the civil rights movement.

News media ‘free speech’ includes misleading information & lying.

Think about that for a moment. A local NBC news station refused to show news coverage of the civil rights movement created by NBC–coverage of a nationally important topic–because the owners/staff of that local station opposed civil rights. That local station didn’t have to agree with the coverage (and clearly, they didn’t; WLBT broadcast the Citizens’ Council Forum, a syndicated series of fifteen-minute interviews with segregationists). But they needed to present the issue fairly to their audience, about half of which was Black. When the station refused, the FCC punished them by taking away their broadcast license.

It was a powerful statement by the government that important public issues broadcast on public airwaves needed to be addressed fairly, and that meant including differing perspectives held by the public.

What happened to the Fairness Doctrine? One of the two dominant political parties felt oppressed by having to present opposing points of view. Care to guess which one?

President Ronald Reagan, in the mid-1980s, appointed three new commissioners to the FCC (the fourth had been appointed by Richard Nixon). They issued a report stating the Fairness Doctrine actually harmed the public interest by violating the 1st Amendment protection of free speech. Seriously. The FCC commissioners argued the free speech rights of political entities were diminished by requiring opposing views to be presented to the public. They voted unanimously to abandon the Fairness Doctrine.

Congress, believe it or not, disagreed with the FCC decision. It’s difficult to imagine now, given the current level of hyper-partisanship, but back then both houses of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, voted to enact the Fairness Doctrine into law (previously it had only been an FCC policy).

Not surprisingly, Reagan (who, again, engineered the destruction of the Fairness Doctrine) vetoed the legislation. Congress failed to overturn the veto. The FCC decision was implemented. By the summer of 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was dead. Dead as the Wicked Witch of the East–not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.

About a year later, in the summer of 1988, radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh began his new radio show at WABC-AM in New York. In 1991, Democrats attempted to revive legislation to make the Fairness Doctrine law. That failed when President George H.W. Bush announced he would veto the law. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch and former Republican Party political strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News.

Do the math.