As well as those that get told.
Posted by olvlzl.
If any of the shock jocks came out strongly in favor of increased progressivity in the income tax, perhaps appealing to a hard pressed working class audience in the process of advocating it, I will promise you that they wouldn’t have stayed on the air as long as Imus and McGurik did after their last racist patter. It’s an interesting question of why, when the majority of Americans are shafted by The System it’s women, black people, gay people, and others who aren’t in control of The System and not shafting anyone who are the radio bigots targets. Don’t think for a second it isn’t planned. Everything about our media is governed by intentionality and extensive research. If it wasn't intentional it wouldn't account for such a large proportion of talk radio today.
The advocates of free speech and freedom of the press don’t much seem to get around to discussing the blacklist on ideas that are important. Thinking back over First Amendment advocacy over the past couple of decades, it seems that the frequency and force of free speech advocacy tends to be in inverse proportion to the importance of what was being said. The defacto blacklist of entire categories of important public business goes just about unmentioned by the professional free speech absolutists. Doesn’t the importance of what is being suppressed count for anything? Would it really matter if Entertainment Tonight or about 98% of what gets said on air or over cable was suppressed? Only in that the vacuum might just be filled by information people need to make intelligent choices in voting and leading their lives.
Here is an interesting article about progressive taxation by Christopher Shea, asking if we are about to reach a tipping point due to non-progressivity. Notice the talk about what gets included in the various analyses of the issue and who is including and excluding various data.
The authors also say it is “improper and misleading,” to point out that the top 1 percent, as a group, contributes more tax revenues than ever - without clarifying that this is soley becuse they receive a larger share of income than ever.
This is a good example of how excluding information is intentionally used to structure arguments. There is nothing so easy as twisting an issue to serve an intended purpose by the exclusion of data, the right wing and the media that serve it are masters at excluding what doesn’t serve their financial interests. That is the standard operating system in our media. Our dying democracy is the result.
Note: As I was typing this George Will was on ABC trying to put a damper on talk about reviving the Fairness Doctrine. See what I mean?