What annoys liberals more than anything else? Free Speech and intellectual honesty are probably high on the list of things that give them intestinal cramps. Considering what I have seen of the anti-war rallies and the folks who proudly wear the ACORN shirt while signing up homeless people to vote three or four times (in the same election), I would also say that soap is probably high on their enemies list as well. All of that aside, what they really seem to hate is when people who don’t share their worldview invade what they perceive as their turf. The RightNetwork has crossed the imaginary line in the entertainment sand and sent the left into a rage-filled attempt to abort this infant network before it can really establish itself and slap the Hollywood elite around the way that Fox News does to MSNBC and CNN on a daily basis.
Before we get into their outward expressions of anger and disdain, along with the associated hypocrisy and contradictions, we need to understand why they are so mad. In the world of the left, domination of the airwaves is not a battle of ratings but rather an ideological jihad they are attempting to perpetrate. That is why they get so unhinged whenever something that would get a smile out of Charlton Heston tries to take hold in the media. Liberals lost the radio war so badly that they now want the government to legislate a victory for them by making the free market of political thought on the AM dial illegal. That is what the “the Fairness Doctrine” is all about. Also, most of the “Hopey/Changey” crowd is either apoplectic about losing the cable media war to Fox News or are still in the same sort of denial about it that keeps Britney Spears thinking that she is a dominant force in the music industry.
While being forced into whatever the media equivalent of “tapping out” is on these two fronts, they are violently opposing the RightNetwork; a cable channel aimed at the vast audience of people who have come to the conclusion that Hollywood hates them. The visceral reaction to the RightNetwork by the left tells us everything we need to know about them, their feelings about free speech in the marketplace of ideas, and what they think about the viewing audience in general.
The RightNetwork hasn’t been around long enough for the bubble wrap to be off their office furniture yet. This didn’t stop Keith Olbermann from bad mouthing them to all three of his viewers. Last April, months before the network was set to launch, Mr. Olbermann was trying to do to the RightNetwork what the Chinese government does to a woman’s second pregnancy. He claimed that they lied about their association with Comcast and declared the bunch at the RightNetwork, collectively, the “Worst Person in the World”.
The fact that Keith got confused because Edward M. Snider, the chairman of Comcast-Spectacor, is a personal investor in the new network didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t separate Mr. Snider’s personal business dealings from his duties with Comcast, and tried to punish the RightNetwork for his own sloppy research and reporting. Olbermann wasn’t alone. The hounds of leftist intolerance were out in force and having a go at the RightNetwork at every opportunity. That same April, Joy Behar and Lewis Black were talking on her show about the RightNetwork and how they believed there is too much conservative speech in the media.
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Chris Burgard, a producer for the Right Network had the following to say about their coverage in the media:
“I have been absolutely floored that out of all the MSM coverage of Running, it seems that no one actually took the time to see the show. They simply regurgitated the original AP report: ‘RightNetwork, whose first series, “Running”, follows the fortunes of a couple of Tea Party-backed candidates for public office…’ This sentence was repeated verbatim in almost 33,800 Google links. It’s pretty nifty that as the host and producer on the show, they haven’t talked to me or Kip Perry, the executive producer. None of the articles ever mentions how many of our candidates have won, or by how much or about Nancy Pelosi having to face John Dennis. But I guess that is today’s state of journalism. As far as I have seen, only the Christian Science Monitor and less than a handful of bloggers even took the time to actually watch “Running” before reviewing it.”
More recently, the website thenewcivilrightsmovement.com defined comic irony by describing the RIGHTNETWORK as “Bad for America.” Their September 8th article about the new network stated that “The Right Network is a media attempt to give credibility to right-wing hate and fear-mongering, conservative bigotry, and Republican talking points.” Apparently the folks at the “New Civil Rights Movement” are unclear about what the term “Civil Rights” actually means and believe that some Americans should have more civil rights than others.
Of course the Huffington Post has come out against them and the leftist site, CrooksandLiars.com is currently cyber-stalking the investors and publishing what personal information they can about people who did nothing more than legally invest in a new cable network. Never mind that these folks have free speech rights and the RightNetwork will create jobs. Liberals fear it; therefore they must do what they can to destroy it. Is this new? No. I could easily fill a 60,000 word book with all the hate that the lefties have aimed at the RightNetwork. They seem to be wasting a lot of airtime and ink on something they are trying to depict as irrelevant. The fact that they happily, eagerly want to deny those they don’t agree with their basic, free speech rights says volumes about the modern liberal. But what has this whole situation said about what they think of Americans as a whole?
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Not so long ago another controversial cable television network was founded. When Viacom launched its gay lifestyle offering, LOGO, the response was quite different. We needn’t chronicle all the praise this network got in the media, but adjectives like “courageous,” “bold,” and (of course) “fabulous” were liberally applied to this cable channel throughout the mainstream media. . The New York Times wrote puff pieces about the new channel and industry publications such as “Business & Cable” praised everything from the networks platform to the stunning choice by Viacom of choosing a television novice to run the day to day operations of LOGO. Rarely in the conservative media did anyone write headlines such as “LOGO: The Network that Launched a Thousand Glory Holes.”
Even when people did oppose the channel on the identical ideological ground that the RightNetwork critics have staked out, the same people who are saying that there should be a limit to conservative speech were decrying LOGO’s critics as bigots. Once again, this is no surprise to anyone. We all know the Bill Maher types have one set of rules for themselves and a far stricter set of rules for their conservative opponents. The interesting bit is that a number of publications that cited the publications that cited the popularity of shows like “Will and Grace” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” as proof that there was a market for a gay oriented cable channel. And they were absolutely right.
Yes, there is a market out there for LOGO. All politics aside, LOGO has a built-in audience, and there is obviously a buck to be made here. In the United States they have every right to go after that market and enjoy the profits that come from it. In its best years (2000 and 2001), “Will and Grace” was drawing a little over 17 million viewers. :Queer Eye” was attracting approximately 3.5 million viewers in its first season. While these numbers were often bandied about as proof that there is a mainstream audience for LOGO, rarely do we see that argument being made in favor of the RightNetwork.
According to the Washington Post, Time Magazine, and MSNBC, the audience for Rush Limbaugh is between 20 and 30 million. Glenn Beck draws over 2 million viewers per day, and Bill O’Reilly is over 3 million. If the numbers for “Will and Grace” and “Queer Eye” have been offered as a proof that the climate is right for a Gay and Lesbian cable channel, then the numbers from Rush Limbaugh alone should be considered a national mandate for the RightNetwork. That is not an argument that the Keith Olbermann’s, Joy Behar’s and Bill Maher’s of the world will ever make or accept because people who like programs such as those don’t count in their world.
In the leftist media world that is clinging to a shrinking empire, the audience for Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (which is most of this center-right nation) are persona non grata. Liberals boycott the advertisers of these programs because somebody who has something to sell should not be allowed to profit from Mr. Limbaugh’s or Mr. Beck’s audience. Their opinions and the ratings they generate are considered more irksome than meaningful, and new cable channels like the RightNetwork should not be able to tap into this vast audience. In short, liberals consider this audience to be second-class citizens. Seeing as most of the country is in the Limbaugh demographic, this is what they think of the majority of us.
The RightNetwork is a scary proposition to the liberal media empire because what they are creating will probably be attractive to large percentage of the television audience. According to CEO and Founder, David Jaget:
“We are not a show for the Republican party. We are an entertainment network and we are going to have people who are proud to be Americans who come from the left, and are part of the Democratic party as well as those from the right. We are about right lifestyle, not right politics.”
In the final analysis, liberals don’t like most of the country because when offered a choice, we tend not to pick them. The AM dial is dominated by conservative talk. Conservative books take the top spots on the best seller’s lists. The dominant FM radio formats in the nation are country, Christian rock, and Christian teaching. Cable news is dominated by Fox News. All the liberals have left is entertainment. If conservatives get a foothold in that as well, the MSNBC anchors will be reduced to cave paintings to get their points across.