N.O. Pundit

Double Standard

I start out my mornings with a steamin' cup of Neal's Nuze (and so should you!). A tidbit in today's edition:

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a broadcasting company that owns 62 television stations, has decided to broadcast a television movie before the election called "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal." This is a 42-minute movie about The Poodle's anti-war activities when he came back from Vietnam. It will be shown on all of their stations, many of which are in battleground states.

As expected, the Democrats are up in arms over this. They're outraged that a company would choose the programming it wants to run on its own stations. At least18 senators have come out against it. The film includes interviews with Vietnam war POWs, their wives, and others that were affected by Kerry's testimony about atrocities. The company has invited John Kerry to be a guest on the program. That's not enough for the DNC.

What say the Democrats? Since they don't like the content of the broadcast, they are trying to get it banned from the airwaves. We call that "censorship." The Democratic National Committee is going to file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission today, complaining that the broadcast amounts to an illegal contribution to President Bush's campaign. To state it in the plainest possible terms, the Democrats are asking the Imperial Federal Government to use its monopoly on the use of force to prevent a private corporation from airing programming Democrats don't like. Censorship is the only word that really applies.

Do you remember what happened back in June?

Lawmakers are accustomed to late nights on the job. But when the Senate did not finish work on a defense bill until 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, there was a bit of grumbling in certain Republican quarters.

The reason? Votes were pushed back until 9:30 p.m., according to senior Republican aides, because some Democrats wanted to attend the premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11," the new Bush-bashing movie by the filmmaker Michael Moore.

The premiere, at the Uptown Theater in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, was attended by the filmmaker himself, as well as about a dozen Senate Democrats, including Bob Graham of Florida, Max Baucus of Montana, Dianne Feinstein of California and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey.

"I saw roughly the first half of it," said Mr. Graham said afterward. "It was very, very tough on President Bush. I think it will energize the Democratic base and it will irritate the Republican base. The question is what will it do to people in the middle."

Matbe the solution is if the Republicans actually showed some nads now and complained to the Democrats about broadcasts which are illegal contributions to Senator Kerry's campaign.

Posted by nopundit at October 12, 2004 09:30 AM