Lucky for me, Matt Yglesias found an actual journalist who did what I chose not to do, and what the folks at AD cannot do. He researched the issue and came up with the following narrative progression:
On Election Day, conservatives found a new bogeyman in Senator Chuck Schumer, after Fox News host Bill Hemmer cornered him about the issue on the air. Schumer just smirked: “I think we should all try to be fair and balanced, don’t you?” Rush Limbaugh seized on Schumer’s comments as evidence that the Democrats would “do everything they can” to bring the doctrine back. Two days after the election, National Review’s Peter Kirsanow tried to rally the troops to preempt the return of the policy. “Waiting until Inauguration Day to get geared up is too late. By that time the Fairness Doctrine Express will be at full steam–wavering Democrats will be pressed to support the new Democratic president, weak-kneed Republicans will want to display comity, the mainstream media will not be saddened to see talk radio annihilated and much of the public will be too enraptured by Obama’s Camelot inauguration to notice or care.”
To figure out who was causing such agitation, I went searching for the proponents of the fairness doctrine. I looked at Obama’s position–and it turns out that he doesn’t want the policy reinstated. Then I called the array of Democratic congressmen who had been tagged by conservatives as doctrine proponents. But they all denied any intention to push for its reinstatement. As some of the world’s great egotists, it’s not surprising that Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly believe they would be the first political prisoners interred in an Obama administration. But, the more I searched for actual evidence of the doctrine’s return, the more I had to conclude that Schumer was just messing with their heads.
Messing with their heads is easy enough to do, I suppose. I would post this at AD, but since this is real research containing actual facts, it will be dismissed as "liberal", which for them is the equivalent of "evil".
Something tells me that, as Obama ends his second term in eight years, AD will still be warning all good-hearted real Americans about the imminent reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.
As I said in comments over there last night, these folks are so far out there, it takes days for the light of the sun to reach them.
UPDATE: At the risk of offending some people, I just thought I would put a couple comments from one of the proprietors at American Descent here, so you won't have to dirty yourself by visiting there. If there is a more clueless individual to his own hatred, fear, yet strange attraction to, gay folks than the person who wrote these comments, introduce me. Better yet, introduce him to a gay friend of yours.
"Someone's really getting his hate on towards the gay folks." J-Off
An example please? It's not gays I hate, dude...it's the perversion.
As displayed by the fanatical children throwing a fit out in Fagland, USA.
The truth of it is...and it is being clearly documented by both the press and the blogosphere...the hate is coming from the fags.
I responded to this with the note that he actually gave an example in the next sentence after he asked for one. It's like a gift that keeps on giving over there . . .
Tell me, J-Off...just how is that considered "hate"?
They are FAGS. It's a name that has described homos for eons. They're not "gay". Haven't you seen the hatred on their faces out there in Poofta-land?
They are perverts. Dispute that, Be-atch!
"Fag" is mild compared to "pervert", don;t you think? But perverts they are...and will forever remain. A fact you just cannot get around.
You, J-Off, are the only one around here who has displayed hatred for those with whom you disagree.
I would also point out, although I am quite sure it hasn't been missed, the not-very-latent homoeroticism of my "nickname". Also, the whole be-atch thing - please, honey, don't make me come over there!
