Super Bowl AirTime: CBS Censors the Left, but Not the Right (refuses gay ad) [View All]

[2 Much Tribulation]

Congress may make no law limiting freedom of speech. As of last week, that means no law even as to non-voters & non-humans in the form of corporations that don't know the first thing about democracy because they don't ever practice it with their own employees, breaking the most fundamental ethical rule present in every philosophical and religious system: the Golden Rule.

Hypocrisy is too weak of a word to describe CBS Super Bowl ad policy of turning down ads. CBS makes policy that acts just the same as laws censoring speech based on content, and CBS enforces them as to advocacy ads it considers not "responsibibly produced."

Thus, CBS accepted Focus on the Family's anti-choice/pro-life/anti-abortion ad. It was "responsibly produced."

But CBS has declined an ad by a gay dating service willing to pay for Super Bowl Time. See
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/thehuddle/post/2010/01/gay-dating-site-claims-cbs-is-discriminating-against-its-super-bowl-ad/1


Let's not in this post focus on the PARTICULARS of the ad refused, in case any readers are inclined to be uncomfortable with the "speech" or say "it's not political per se" and the like.

The really big issue here is the apparently uncontested power of CBS to pick and choose ideological messages to further or not further.

Did Citizens United kick We the People out of any voice or regulation of campaign speech, only to leave us defenseless against arbitrary media-corporate censorship policies to which both the Constitution and laws are inapplicable because they are in the "private" sector of media corporations?

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/thehuddle/post/2010/01/gay-dating-site-claims-cbs-is-discriminating-against-its-super-bowl-ad/1


THERE are many ways in which Citizens United does NOT "open the floodgates" (as well as ways it does).

For example, when it comes to CBS policy, it is "shutting the floodgates of gay speech."

When it comes to deterring policitians from taking on big corporations, there doesn't even need to BE a floodgate at all, just the mere threat that big corporations could go on the attack is enough to make our politicians who do not wish to be career-based political suicide bombers into political wimps. You won't see this power on any FEC disclosure form and you never will see it, because it's money NOT spent that is the most powerful.

That's just like the CBS refusal to air the ad for the gay dating service - it's money NOT spent that is even more powerful in distorting our freedoms than money spent!