Links and Minifeatures 01 19 Friday

Q and O has two excellent articles detailing the flaws in the proposed resurrection of the fairness doctrine. The first goes into details on the political games at the heart of why they want to do it, but the second dynamites the dynamic completely. Given an individual issue, there are usually a lot more than two opposing points of view. So depending upon the political preferences of the station management, you could see a rational response that's definitely on the Republican side of the question balanced with a right wing kneejerk nutjob. Or a rational idea on the democratic side balanced with a complete raving lunatic leftwing idiot (okay, so I repeat myself - twice). If the station management is a little more sophisticated (as many liberal television stations and networks have been), they get some reasonably mainstream viewpoints on their side, then balance it with some complete extremist on the other, alienating their audience from what may be a stronger, better argument if presented with equally mainstream dressing. If an issue is "non-partisan" as so few are, editors and producers can simply pick the opposing viewpoint that either disagrees with theirs the least, thus framing the debate in terms of whether they should get 95% or 100% of what they want, or by choosing the opposing viewpoint from the extremists that can always be found, who express their disagreement in such a way that turns the vast majority of the audience away from their viewpoint.



Ronald Reagan was correct to get rid of the Fairness Doctrine. Let's leave it where it belongs.

**********



Mindboggling. 22% of polled Americans want the "surge" to fail, and 15% more don't know if they want it to succeed. I can envision precisely five explanations:



1. Those polled did not understand the question



2. Those polled understood the question, but are so politically partisan that they believe the casualties to 150,000 American troops are less important than having George Bush's strategy fail.



3. Those polled included 37% non-citizens, or 37% with loyalties to some other place on the globe, not the United States. If they were somehow in the United States, our illegal immigration problem must be worse than we thought (Remember that if they were here legally, INS would know about it and report their numbers).



4. The polling was conducted in Al-Qaeda headquarters, the UN General Assembly, or some other non-representative sample of places.



5. Those polled thought the question had to do with political approval, not actual success if implemented.



If I had to bet, my money would be on number 5, those who don't realize that the President already has all the authority needed to actually implement the surge proposal, but wants to "sell" the rest of the nation to give it the best possible chance.



Given what I have encountered in the way of "civil debate" lately, 2 remains a real possibility.



I'm truly ambivalent about the surge. If there is some real difference the extra troops can make by being there for a few months, yes, I'll support it. But my best understanding is that they would just increase the number of available targets, and that the important change that may lead to success has been getting the Iraqi government to sign off on new rules of engagement while cracking down on the militias and extremist clerics, such as Sadr, instead of sheltering them because they have friends inside the government. Since that's already happened, that is most likely why we've gotten all the good news from Iraq these past seven days or so.