Privatizing Censorship?

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Hello and welcome to Review of the News Online. I'm William Norman Grigg, Senior Editor for The New American magazine -- an affiliated publication of The John Birch Society.

Three decades ago, as a POW in Hanoi, John McCain was the captive of a hideous, violent regime devoted to constructing the Total State. Today, as a Republican Senator from Arizona, McCain occasionally displays hints of a worldview similar to that of his erstwhile captors. That mindset was on display during McCain's performance in a July 8^th hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee.

McCain was one of several Senators who upbraided Lewis W. Dickey, Jr., chairman of Cumulus Media Inc., for the radio chain's temporary ban on broadcasting the Dixie Chicks. The chart-topping country act had provoked controversy early this spring when its lead singer, Natalie Maines, criticized President Bush during a concert in London.

According to Dickey, Cumulus's decision to impose a 30-day ban on playing Dixie Chicks records was dictated by commercial concerns -- specifically, an outpouring of fan complaints to Cumulus country stations. Dickey also noted that the temporary ban didn't apply to the chain's Top-40 stations, which represent a larger and more lucrative market.

Nonetheless, McCain insisted that Cumulus, which owns 250 radio stations nation-wide, had engaged in politically motivated censorship by refusing to play the Dixie Chicks. "If someone else offends you, and you decide to censor those people … the erosion of our First Amendment is in progress," pontificated the Senator, who also insisted that the episode presents "a strong argument about what media concentration has the possibility of doing."

McCain's comrades eagerly piled on Dickey. As summarized by the Los Angeles Times: "If broadcasters are free to banish a musician, lawmakers asked, what's to stop them from keeping a controversial politician off the air or silencing discussions about hot-button issues such as abortion or gun control?" McCain, noted the Times, "is emerging as a leading opponent of radio consolidation. Last month, he proposed legislation that would require industry giants such as Clear Channel to sell some holdings to come into compliance with new media-ownership rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission."

According to McCain, Cumulus's treatment of the Dixie Chicks illustrates the monopolistic tendencies of the radio industry. "To restrain … [the Dixie Chicks'] trade because they exercised their free speech rights was remarkable…. This is about the erosion of our First Amendment rights."

The main problem with McCain's formulation is that the First Amendment doesn't apply to private entities, or even to state and local governments. By its strict and specific language, that Amendment applies only to Congress, including the Senate -- and particularly including pathologically narcissistic collectivist politicians like John McCain.

In the ideological world McCain inhabits, the purpose of law is to protect the power and privileges of the ruling class -- a perspective akin to that of the Vietnamese Communists at whose hands the senator suffered as a POW. McCain can be counted on to support any measure that enhances the state's ability to carry out that mission -- and his proposed re-regulation of the radio industry would certainly advance that design.

The John McCain who accused Cumulus of eroding the First Amendment by refusing to play Dixie Chicks records is the same politician who devised a campaign finance reform law explicitly intended to suppress criticism of incumbents.

The McCain-Feingold law, parts of which were found unconstitutional by a federal court earlier this year, is nothing less than an attempt to discourage citizen involvement in political campaigns by restricting the use of issue-oriented advertisements. The law is so hopelessly convoluted that leaders of both parties held three-hour classes earlier this year to review its arcane details for the benefit of lobbyists and campaign workers. Obviously, if the campaign law presents a challenge of this magnitude to full-time political professionals, it will be all but incomprehensible to private citizens -- which is precisely the point of the law in the first place.

When private broadcasting interests such as Cumulus Media make programming decisions McCain doesn't like, it is "censorship," insists the socialist solon. However, when the feds have the power to suppress political speech McCain doesn't like, they are acting in the public interest.

During the February 23, 1997 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, McCain described what he regards as the limits of "acceptable" political speech. Referring to critics of the McCain-Feingold act McCain declared: "I think informing the public is perfectly legitimate. But to launch an attack on me or, in this case, Senator Feingold, in my view, is their participation in a political campaign, and therefore, they might be subject to some kinds of limitations." During a September 26, 1997 speech on the Senate floor, McCain defended restrictions on television and radio advertisements that mention specific candidates: "These ads are almost always negative attacks on a candidate and do little to further healthy political debate." During a campaign stop in his 2000 presidential bid, McCain summarized his views with astonishing clarity: "If I could think of a way constitutionally, I would ban negative ads."

How can we reconcile these statements with McCain's eagerness to defend Natalie Maines' ill-advised comments in London? Perhaps McCain's point is that Americans should be perfectly free to criticize incumbent politicians, as long as they do so overseas. Perhaps McCain is simply the vain, self-intoxicated, statist hypocrite he appears to be. Or maybe he's an unusually candid specimen of our increasingly arrogant ruling class, which is bent on immunizing itself from accountability.

In the decision upholding most of the McCain-Feingold law, federal Circuit Judge Richard J. Leon insisted that the regulations were constitutional because "individuals and other entities can avoid regulation simply by not mentioning a candidate for federal office in its ad, and … those groups may seek an advisory opinion from the FEC to determine whether a communication is regulated by [the McCain-Feingold law]."

So under a law co-written by McCain, self-styled paladin of free speech, our choices would be either to avoid criticizing our supposed representatives, or getting the federal government's permission to do so.

Thank you for listening. Please join us again next time.

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