One thing I saw a couple of days ago, in Kalamazoo, was a protest near
the office
of their US Representative, Fred Upton. It was a small
protest, put on by the Pink Patrol. I did not stop to see
what the protest was about.
Today, I tried to find some reference to it on the Internet, but there
was nothing. So I went to the
href="http://www.house.gov/upton">Fred Upton website,
and a few other places. There really isn't a lot of news
about him. Seems that his biggest sins are supporting media
consolidation, and opposing Internet neutrality. Aside from
the fact that such legislation promotes the interest of big business,
and hastens the fusion of business and government, and makes it easier
for the government to saturate the public with propaganda, and
increases the amount of money needed to run a successful political
campaign, and inhibits free expression and artistic development, and
leads to loss of jobs, and generally makes everyone in the country more
ignorant, I don't see a huge problem there.
Seriously, the freedom of the Internet and diversity of the media are
important political issues. These are the sort of issues that
should not be partisan, but somehow have become partisan in recent
years.
A recent article in the Washington Post provides a good example of why
this is important.
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR2006100501811.html">New
Media A Weapon in New World Of Politics
By John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 6, 2006; Page A01
At first glance, three uproars that buffeted American politics in
recent weeks have little in common.
Former congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.) ended his political career over
sexually charged e-mails to former House pages. Sen. George Allen
(R-Va.) stumbled over his puzzling use of the word "macaca" and his
clumsy response to revelations about his Jewish ancestry. Former
president Bill Clinton had a televised temper fit when an interviewer
challenged his terrorism record.
All three episodes, however, were in their own ways signs of the unruly
new age in American politics. Each featured an arresting personal
angle. Each originally percolated in the world of new media -- Web
sites and news outlets that did not exist a generation ago -- before
charging into the traditional world of newspapers and television
networks...
href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8200549670959213802&q=macaca">
Senator George Allen (R-VA) calls campaign volunteer S.R. Sidarth
'macaca'
is an example, on Google Video. It is just 62 seconds of
video, but it has a huge impact. And even though it is just
62 seconds, the file is big enough that the provider needs a lot of
bandwidth to host it, and the end user is not going to want to see it
without a fast Internet connection.
Personally, I dislike this Jerry Springer-type style of politics*, but
there is no way to stop it. Given that this tactic exists, it
is important for it to be equally accessible to everyone. We
definitely do not want any one group to have greater access to this
kind of thing. There already is a significant information
gap, in which people with lots of money can get their message out to
more people, and make it flashier. Plus, people with less
money don't have as much access to information. The
combination of tiered Internet access, and media consolidation, would
worsen the information gap.
Congress has been lax in its duty to perform its oversight duties, and
this had led to a serious problem with the balance of power in this
country. Hamstringing the press is only going to make it
worse.
So, when you see that there are efforts to dampen the influence of new
media, it starts to look like a Machiavellian scheme. I don't
know if that is what the Pink Patrol was all worked up about, but if
so, I certainly agree.
-----------
*for a more serious discussion of the Foley matter, see John Nichols'
post,
The
Problem With the Mark Foley Problem.