A Little Language Quibble/Jab

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!

Just something that caught my fancy....

Iin a campaign to oppose to re-election of “dishonest left-wing extremist Harry Reid (D-NV).... [and] his non-stop assaults on America” a right wing site, “The Right-Wing Underground Resisting Socialism and Surrender” is soliciting funds.

Political fund-raising? As American as apple pie, of course. More power to ‘em

In pleading for funds, the site proclaims: “We're going up against the President of the United States and the Senate Majority Leader. So we have to do this right. We truly need to own the TV airwaves.” [Emphasis added.]

Should we tell them that, decades ago, in the Radio Act of 1927, “socialist” ownership of the airwaves was set as the law of the land, and that, in fact “We do truly own the TV airwaves?”

(Of course, I’m conflating their metaphor with the reality of our broadcasting history, but I’m always amused when advocates demonstrate a certain inability to understand the implications of the words they chose.)

(BTW: Conservatives like to argue from various obscure facts that there is no basis to claim the “public owns the air waves.” They overlook the most basic rule of the early radio and then broadcasting laws: that the government was leasing “air waves” to licensed broadcasters. Leasing something to someone requires ownership.)