Dept of Fair and Balanced

But, Kieran, more importantly than saying you are sorry, and I apologize foe even asking, what is your point?

hc writes:

This is an apples to oranges comparison

Yes, I believe I said that in the last paragraph.

unless you take Bernstein’s willingness to appear on Limbaugh’s show as an endorsement of the show

Oh yeah, there is that issue. Well spotted. I took it that David Bernstein had established his threshold for disgust towards radio-show hosts in his first post, and was wondering how it might apply to the second.

the abuse employed above persuades only the previously convinced.

The statement that “Rush Limbaugh is a hypocritcial bigot” strikes me more as an informed opinion that is well-supported by the facts than a piece of cheap abuse.

what value to the disinterested reader it lacked it reasoned persuasiveness it more than made up in venom.

I count half of one sentence worth of venom in my post. It’s not directed towards David Bernstein, either.

Kieran,

I believe we had different apple/orange comparisons in mind: I understand you to have had the two talk shows in mind while I intended to contrast Bernstein’s complaint about a radio show he heard with his willingness to speak about on a radio program about his book. The different actions imply different standards to me.

kieran healy writes:
“The statement that “Rush Limbaugh is a hypocritcial bigot” strikes me more as an informed opinion that is well-supported by the facts than a piece of cheap abuse.”

Even richly deserved abuse may be persuasively ineffective beyond preaching to the choir.

As to the mention of venom, I had not intended that as criticism but praise. Persuasion is hardly the only purpose of writing, and invective is an art of its own. It is true that your post was no display of sustained animosity, but its conclusion was sharp, vicious, and memorably pungent.

And I should add: what is wrong with preaching to the choir?

As a mezzosoprano myself, I’m really quite tired of the bowing, scraping, currying favor with right wing nuts type semidemihemi-and-3/4-tonic liberals. What’s wrong with me hearing remarks which do not feel like an insult to my intelligence and/or my morals and which seem to have some purchase on reality? I spend enough time around lunatics, it’s rather brain-refreshing and heart-warming to hear sane speech.

We in the choir have needs too. I’m just saying.

And the choir applauds the conductor/preacher!

Bernstein has really done a disservice to the Conspiracy, which used to be at least interesting. Now it’s rapidly devolving into an unintellectual Instapundit-type site.

I agree. He really needs to stop posting about his book, too.

” the platform of a drug-addled, draft-dodging, hypocritical old bigot who spews lies and hatred like a slurry spreader shifts pigshit”

What an outrageous slur–he isn’t THAT old . . .

Pouncer wrote:

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, on the other hand, gets it’s “modest public subsidy” as a cut out of my taxes every year.

I agree, the CPB ought to have to compete in the marketplace like its commercial counter-parts. If the subsidy they have stolen from my pay check is so “modest” as Kieran claims, then they can certainly forgo it and have to earn their support much like commercial stations – not that NPR does not run commercials to support its programming, they just call them “thanking the sponsors.”
Daniel Bernstein is right about NPR’s leftward bias which is only one example – “On the Media” is pretty much an hour-long editorial, most of the commentators veer pretty much port-side (even in supposedly entertainment shows such as Prairie Home Companion), and the shows do take a definitely left-ward tilt in the premises by which they examine issues almost taking it as axiomatic that the government ought to be involved in a particular enterprise (which is typical for a forum dependent on government subsidies to operate). I guess it does speak of the unpopularity and rejection of leftist ideas that they cannot compete with conservative and libertarian ones without relying on the government to support them.

DocG wrote:

Maybe their need for govt support says that. But maybe there is value to having non-profit media. Ever consider that?

I’ve considered it and I’ve rejected it on two grounds.

First, I do not believe that there is anything inherently virtuous in being “non-profit” as opposed to being “for profit.” “For profit” indicates that one has provided a good or service that people appreciate enough to pay for voluntarily whereas “non profit” often but not always indicates the opposite. I’m a big fan of market discipline and mistrustful of any institution which thinks it deserves funding without having to prove that it pleases the people it expects to pay for it. So much for the theory of “value.”

Second, you can run a “non-profit” enterprise while still having to earn revenue and be self-supporting even through voluntary contributions (as is the bulk of NPR’s funding source). If you really believe there is something “good” or “valuable” in an enterprise which is not competent enough to earn a profit, then you can find a way to run one without making a profit. Of course you have to rely on persuasion rather than force – which always seems to be a problem with supporters of statist radio and television. It seems to me that if “non profit” media had value, then they would prove it by being self-supporting.

Matt Weiner wrote:

Rush Limbaugh derives a HUGE amount of money from the government’s enforcement of radio stations’ monopoly on the airwaves.

How so?

In fact, technically, the airwaves belong to me and you and the rest of the people and are leased to radio stations at well below market rates.

What’s the market rate and how was it determined?

So, if we were truly to open the airwaves to market competition, I would be getting a lot more money out of Limbaugh’s pocket than out of NPR’s.

I think you may want to reword this.

Some NPR-haters on the left refer to it as National Pentagon Radio, while some on the right refer to it as National Palestine Radio. There were some pro-Israel donors last year who withheld contributions because they thought NPR was coverage was anti-Israel but I don’t know what ever became of that.

Micha–
Well, this raises interesting questions, though I’m not an expert (nor willing to devote too much thought to it, actually). I think that it is legally true that the People or government owns the right to broadcast–whether we ought to own it is another question. But I don’t see a legal or moral problem with public ownership of property in general–I have no problem with the idea that the government owns the Pentagon building, for instance.
The more interesting question to me is the sense in which the airwaves are property that can be owned by the government or a radio station. To operate a big radio station, it’s not enough to have a transmitter–you also need to be able to get the FCC to squash anyone else who tries to broadcast on your frequency. This is at least prima facie unlike the example of owning, say, a piece of wood you find on the ground–that’s a physical object that can be restored to you if someone takes it from you.
Are there really sharp lines between ownership of physical property and ownership of the right to broadcast? I’m not sure, but that’s because establishing rights to physical property also involves quite a lot of government coercion. (As you can tell, I’m not a libertarian.) Maybe the best I can come up with is to say that, if people are secure in their property rights, as I am in the ownership of my car, it’s wrong to take them away. But–because of the way the laws are–that’s not the case with the airwaves, which legally are public property. So I do think that below-market leasing of the airwaves is a much greater subsidy than the direct subsidy NPR receives. (NPR receives that subsidy too, of course.)