Mortie, Mortie: He's no shorty, Mortie.
The C-SPAN love continues, as the Senate Commerce Committee, headed by John McCain, grills Michael Powell and other FCC commissioners regarding their unpopular ruling loosening media restrictions, and considers overturning the vote.
Why not go after both Martha Stewart and Kenneth Lay? What about the guy from Tyco? And what’s the status of the Bernie Ebbers litigation?
Who says C-SPAN can’t be exciting? This weekend Bill O’Reilly and Al Franken went at it during a Q&A session at a book convention. The segment will re-air this Sunday, June 8, at 5:30pm EST. Discussion about the shouting match can be found at this link (scroll down to ‘Monday, June 2, 6:56pm ‘) or you can listen to it via an MP3 file or check out the banter from Al Franken’s website.
Check out Al’s upcoming book, ‘Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them‘.
I finally got to check out a couple of films from SIFF: Direct Order, about the Anthrax Vaccine, its ties to Gulf War Syndrome and US military denials; and then ‘Unprecendented: The 2002 Presidential Election‘ talked about the many suspicious activities surrounding the Florida recount. The Florida constitution forbids ex-felons from voting. That a disproportionate number of ex-felons are African-American and a high majority would likely vote Democratic, what might have been the outcome of the race if tens of thousands of eligible voters hadn’t been removed?
The FCC voted to loosen media concentration today. More crap, fewer voices. People say the Internet and cable will keep those voices diversified, but if they’re also owned by the same five or six companies, it really makes no difference. Independent viewpoints have a much smaller forum in which to be heard. There’s going to be an abundance of lawsuits, though: media companies say the legislation doesn’t go far enough, while citizen groups and the NRA (!) say it’s gone too far. Congress had even spoken up against this, and spoke up again after the vote had ruled in favor of loosening the restrictions.