Inside My Brain During a 45 Minute Commute

jeffmiller:

Someone asked:

Could someone please point to the portion of the letter where Obama “threatens” any entity that doesn’t stop running to ads? I can’t seem to find it.

Okay.  See above.

This language of the letter strongly suggests to media outlets that they are subject to action to revoke their licenses if they run the NRA’s ads.  Their threat is based upon a Factcheck.org review of the ad, which seems to have been mistaken.

Think about this for a second.  Obama himself has run a ton of false or misleading ads, ads that have been found to be false or misleading by Factcheck.org, but he didn’t pull any of these ads from the air … he kept paying stations to run them.

This is worse than hypocrisy … it’s thuggery.  It’s Chicago style politics.  It’s Audacity without the Hope.

A quote from someone I know - “I think that the whole asking a station to not air something is minuscule. If you’re running a campaign or any sort of marketing thing, why is it considered bad to ask someone “hey, that isn’t accurate, so could you not run it?” I mean, if they tried to threaten legal action or are in some way hindering their 1st amendment rights, sure, get up in arms. Yes, they did cite the fact that radio stations are responsible and can be held accountable for anything they broadcast on behalf of independent political groups, and asked that they not broadcast things which are blatantly false. But, they also stated in their letter that if they do find the ads fit for air and continue to air them, that they could at least talk to their campaign so they could basically try to convince them not to.

No force used to try to make them not air something, just asking “hey, could you not do that” instead. No harm or violation of anyones’ rights by asking that, and it is still completely up to the station on what they do. It is just trying to counter ads by preventing them from airing as opposed to airing counter ads and is all part of the PR of the two candidates. Either campaign could do something like that and still have nothing wrong with it.

Now, if they did try to force something, threaten legal action or suing, then yeah, I could see that being blown up into something worth discussion. But polite and non-threatening inquiries and requests? Come on, mountain out of an anthill type thing. Especially when there is actual real things which could be discussed or brought to peoples’ attention which warrants concern or alarm.”

He brings up a good point.