It's hard for me to precisely pinpoint the moment when I first heard about the latest phony conservative issue. To the best of my recollection, it happened late in the '08 campaign, around the time that all the other phony conservative issues - Ayres, ACORN, "socialist," unAmerican, Joe the Plumber, "spread the wealth," etcetera - were clearly on the fast track to history's trash can.
At that point, all of a sudden, my email box began to fill with fulminations about "the Fairness Doctrine," and about how, if Barack Obama was elected, he would bring it back from the dead and kill conservative talk radio. And it was also around this time that the conservative media outlets - the nexus that includes Fox/Limbaugh/National Review/American Spectator/New York Post/Michelle Malkin - went into overdrive about this purportedly imminent threat to our freedoms.
I hadn't thought much about the Fairness Doctrine for a very long time, probably because it was put to sleep 21 years ago, with no real prospects of ever being revived. And it's a fair bet that many of you don't even know what it is...excuse me, was. Basically, the Fairness Doctrine was a 1949 policy which required that broadcasters present both sides of a controversial issue. It was crafted for a bygone era when there were few media outlets - hence, a limited range of consumer choices - and the airwaves were thus considered a finite resource in need of federal regulation. But the doctrine proved difficult to enforce, and in 1987, prodded by President Reagan, the Federal Communications Commission killed it off.
The demise of the doctrine helped spark the rise of conservative talk radio; liberated from the requirements of "balance," broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh could run free. In the open and expanding media marketplace, conservatives have clearly dominated.
Yet today, for reasons to be shortly explained, conservatives have convinced themselves that Obama and the congressional Democrats are going to bring back the Fairness Doctrine - a move, in the fevered conservative telling, that would force broadcasters to balance all commentary and thus undercut freedom at the microphone, or, wose yet, kill off the conservative shows altogether.
As the New York Post headlined prior to the election, "Dems Get Set to Muzzle the Right." As Michelle Malkin wrote, "Fairness Doctrine here we come." As the Wall Street Journal editorial page warned, the Fairness Doctrine is "likely to be reimposed." As the National Review website claimed, "a leftward lurch" by Obama and the Democrats will trigger "quick action on the Fairness Doctrine." As Limbaugh himself fumed, "It's going to be more than just me and (Sean) Hannity whose freedom of speech will be done away with via the Fairness Doctrine."
These people are starting to sound a tad like Jack D. Ripper, the paranoid right-wing general in the film Dr. Strangelove, who was terrified that the communists were conspiring to poison "our precious bodily fluids."
Which only prompted me to wonder: Where is the reality-based evidence that Obama and the Democrats are conspiring to unleash the Fairness Doctrine on the conservatives' precious bodily fluids?
Answer: There is no such evidence whatsoever.
Granted, some Democratic lawmakers have said nice things about the Fairness Doctrine. Senator Chuck Schumer remarked recently on Fox News, "I think we should all try to be fair and balanced, don't you?" Senator Dick Durbin has voiced a desire to bring back the doctrine. House Democrat Maurice Hinchey, tried three years ago to circulate a bill mandating a revival of the doctrine. Senator Dianne Feinstein has talked of holding hearings on the talk radio imbalance. From those disparate threads, conservatives have woven an entire flag that they are now wildly waving.
The thing is that Hinchey's bill flopped, and the House Democrats have never bothered to follow up; Feinstein has never held any hearings; Durbin's office has told the press that he had only expressed his personal view, and that he had "no plans, no language, no nothing"; Schumer wasn't saying anything specific about any doctrine revival, and, like most senators, his talk is often cheap anyway; and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office has indicated that there isn't enough Democratic support to reinstate the doctrine - even if such a move was deemed a top priority. Which it isn't. Indeed, Pelosi's office recently stated that she has no plans to entertain the issue.
On the contrary, reinstating the doctrine doesn't even rise to the level of a low priority. Last summer, candidate Obama made that perfectly clear. A spokesman put out this statement: "Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters. He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible."
Sounds pretty definitive, right? But not to the conservatives, who naturally have convinced themslves that Obama's statement is really an elaborate trick, that he actually means the opposite.
Of course, if they believe that Obama is really plotting a sneak attack on talk radio, they also have to believe that Obama is stupid enough to elevate the Fairness Doctrine to the top of his agenda - where it would take precedence over the Wall Street crash, the seizing up of the credit markets, the jobless rate, the threat of deflation - little things like that. But since these conservatives have absolutely nothing to say about the economic threats to the average person's livelihood, and would prefer to dwell on their own paranoia...well, that helps explain why they have come to believe what they believe.
We have seen this mindset before, of course. Belief is more important than fact. When conservatives convinced themselves that war with Iraq was just and right, they chose to believe that Hussein had WMDs...and no factual evidence to the contrary could ever sway them. The "imminent threat" of the Fairness Doctrine is their new WMD.
And it's easy to see why this is so. They are battered by defeat, and divided among themselves; as Michael Reagan, son of the late president, writes today in the conserative Human Events, "we remain broken up into separate factions, barely speaking to one another...as a result, we don't win elections...This is Balkanization at its worst." Therefore, in their time of woe, what better way to bridge all the factions than to find a phony issue around which to unite? Since it's now clearly obvious that Obama has no intention to take away conservatives' guns, why not claim that he intends to take away their radio hosts?
It's a great way to raise money - one conservative think tank has put out a money appeal headlined, "Hannity and Limbaugh to be kicked off the air" - and it's a great way to whip up hysteria down in the bunker, where factual reality fails to intrude. But it's no way to win elections.