The vice of fairness

Earlier today, I listened to the Fox News Sunday panel nashing their teeth and nuckling their foreheads over the question of fairness and presidential politics. At issue, the declared intention of Sinclair Broadcasting to run a "documentary" about John Kerry's post-Vietnam activities just before the November 2 election. The question before the panel; is this fair? They analysed, they debated, they gamed various scenarios, but what I was waiting for never came. No one ever ask the most important question, does it matter if it's fair? The congress passed and the president signed the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Law which specifically limited the abilities of citizens and outside groups from participating in our "particapatory" democracy. Of course, this didn't prevent anything, except accountability. The 527's rose from the loopholes and began affecting the carefully scripted and stunningly misleading messages of the two major parties. Bush and Kerry screamed, "It isn't fair! McCain-Feingold was supposed to put a stop to this...this...participating" Michael Moore made a movie and the Swifties made a commercial and before you knew it, the entire exercise of preventing debate on the virtues and vices of Dubya and Franken-face was blown to hell. All the while the call went out from both camps that it wasn't fair. The President went so far as to say that McCain-Feingold was supposed to prevent outside groups from participating in the election. This betrayal of the Constitution alone should be grounds to not only un-elect him, but bring him up on treason charges! How have we gotten to the point in this country where people freely coming together to articulate a position and have their voices heard in the election of the chief executive of the United States are considered an anathema? And it is all in the name of fairness? Or the desire to obtain and retain political power, even at the expense of the very fabric of what makes America unique and special. So should Sincair be "allowed" to air this hit piece on Kerry? You bet, and if you don't like it then get your own TV company and run Farenheit 911 in continuous loop for the next two weeks. My America is not defined by fairness at the expense of liberty, but rather by free people presented with chooses and left to make rational decisions based on their values and beliefs. Shielding people from information and opinions, no matter how shifty, injures our society and makes us dependant on the intellectual gatekeepers who decide for us what we can "handle" and what we cannot. Oh yea, and also...Teresa Kerry eats babies ;-)