Are you on the payroll?
How many conservatives are going to turn up on the Bush Administration's payroll? Just recently it turned out that Armstrong Williams was paid to promote the No Child Left Behind Act, and he did it without disclosing that the government had paid him to do so. At least he didn't recall making such a disclosure. How Reaganesque. Now it turns out that Maggie Gallagher, a columnist, was also paid by the White House to promote their "straight marriage is better" circus. She was paid to the tune of $40,000 and you know what, she would have disclosed that fact, but she didn't remember. WHAT??? This is getting to be like the Twillight Zone!
How is it that these people had mental lapses such that they forgot that they should disclose they were paid by someone to promote a particular point of view, especially in light of the fact that they did it as journalists. It is very disconcerting to me to discover that the government is paying the "media" to write about a specific opinion. The government's goal is to distribute information - not tell us what to think about it. And government in bed with media makes us sound less like a democracy and more like a few particular nations that we were at war with early last century.
Now to think Margaret Spelling (the new Dept of Education Secretary) is demanding that PBS refund the government for airing a kids program that showed a lesbian couple in Vermont. At least that's the truth - unless of course HRC is subsidizing PBS programming. If my tax dollars are going to be spent to advocate a position against myself, then I damn well want to see lesbians on Public Broadcast!
(sources: Second Anti-Gay Commentator Paid Off By White House, White House Pays Off Anti-Gay Commentator, Cabinet member berates PBS over cartoon)
Of course, what interests me about this whole thing is "Rathergate" during the election. Just last weekend NBC aired a huge story on how "terrible" Dan Rather was for running a story about the Bush desertion that he thought was true. They waxed philosophic about just how tainted he was and quietly gloated he would be ending his career on a down note. The Republicans and Right Wing did the same thing during the election. They blasted Dan Rather for a story that he thought factual.
Now we find out that at least two and perhaps many, many more Right Wing pundits are on the payroll of the White House. That is actually illegal. It is a crime. They actually could go to jail for it (although they never will).
Where are the right wingers and Republicans now? Why do they not denounce these people. After all, they're the ones who cried and crowed about the "rule of law" during the Clinton Impeachment. Why are they not taking the Bush Administration to task for breaking the law? Why are they not demanding he be impeached?
We all know the answer to that question. And we all know why NBC isn't even mentioning all this except in passing.