CBS: Right-Wing Media

Tonight, I watched part of the CBS Evening News wanting to know what had happened in the international news today. Instead, I was blasted by Sean Hannity talking about how the Democrats will lead us to be killed by Islamic terrorists and that it really shouldn't matter if a party is scandalous and corrupt (yes, he actually said scandals shouldn't matter in an election) as long as they're keeping you safe from the hypothetical boogey-man the Democrats don't know about.

Okay... I hadn't watched the CBS Evening News in a long time, apparently...

After immediately changing the channel and doing a bit of research, I found out that the CBS Evening News has installed a freeSpeech segment, where a wide range of people can come on and spout their views. That's a really creative spelling on the freeSpeech, no? I bet that took some really snazzy Madison Avenue marketing robot all day to figure out.

My gut reaction to giving up minutes of valuable air time when you only have 24 minutes to briefly inform the country of what's going on in their nation and world was "is this supposed to be news?" but I decided that maybe it was a worthwhile venture for opening up democratic debate, as long as they were fair and balanced and all that jazz.

So I looked up the past guest list.

Bob Schieffer, okay... Morgan Spurlock talking about the need for discourse...that's a little odd. Ahmed Younis talking about winning the war on terror...okay. Rudy Guiliani...Rush Limbaugh?

Fact: In the first two weeks this freeSpeech gimmick was on the air, the guests were two former Republican office-holders, a Rpublican propagandist, a man supporting the War on Terror, an L.A. Times reporter talking about Central American women, a famous filmmaker saying nothing of substance, a comedy writer who made some bad jokes about Congressional vacations, and Bob Schieffer.

Do you notice anything missing?

One would think that if your network is going to launch a thing ostensibly to raise public discourse, they might allow at least one sitting or former Democrat on the air, or at least a blatantly left-wing media figure. Yeah, they've had Katrina vanden Heuvel on, but that's one person. When are they going to invite Noam Chomsky to show up? Limbaugh has spent two decades bashing the "liberal media," yet he gets to come on the second day. Hmmmm...

And now we can add Hannity to the list, and what is this, that I just found? That's right, they let a lunatic on the air who blamed the Amish schoolhouse massacre on the teaching of evolution (in public schools, mind you) and the presence of abortion in the United States. I'm sorry, I don't care how you slice it, that's a far-right nut job. Where's the guy in the Che Guevera shirt? Where are the hippies? Where are the nihilist philosophers? Where are the actual left-wing media people of substance like Danny Schechter or Amy Goodman? Hello, CBS? I think they hung up.

And did I mention they refused to let Bill Mahe r come on and talk about his religious views? Yet insane people are shooting up schools because we're telling our kids about the scientific method...

For a pinko communist secular progressive filthy vile liberal media, they really aren't doing their job.

Oh, wait, maybe that's why CBS Evening News has plummeted back into 3rd place in the ratings just a few months after the hoop-la surrounding Katie Couric's mere appearance put them to number one...