One of the Biggest Reasons Our Nation Is So Divided and Polarized

Environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the Fairness Doctrine:

“The devolution of the American press began in 1986 when Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine.

We had a law in this country that we passed in 1928 that said that the air waves belong to the public. The broadcasters can be licensed to use them, but only if they use them to promote the public interest, to inform the public and advance democracy. That’s why we have the 6 o’clock news. They didn’t want it. The broadcasters didn’t want that because the news departments were chronic money losers.

But they were forced to put on the news at 6:00 and even today you hear news on the music radio stations and that’s an artifact of the Fairness Doctrine. They said, if you’re using the broadcast air waves, you have to do that…

They no longer have an obligation to serve the public interest. Their only obligation is to their shareholders. They serve that obligation not by informing us, telling us the things we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy, but rather by entertaining us...

We know we’re the best entertained, the least informed, people on the face of the world. They got rid of their investigative reporters. 85 percent of them lost their jobs in the last 15 years.

They got rid of their foreign news bureaus so the Bush and Cheney administration can say to the American people, ‘Oh, we’re gonna go into this 800-year-old fist fight in Mesopotamia and they’re gonna meet us with rose petals in the streets’ and the Americans believe them.

The Canadians didn’t believe them because the Canadians still have a Fairness Doctrine…

England has the same kind of rules and in Europe, but in our country, we lost those rules and, as a result, we know a lot about Britney Spears’ gradual emotional decline and we know a lot about Charlie Sheen, but we don’t know much about global warming or the fact that the Appalachian Mountains essentially no longer exist.”

Quote of the Day -- On Racism

“There is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat.”

--Robert F. Kennedy, 1968, shortly before his assassination

50 Years Ago Today

50 years ago today, June 5, 1968, Robert Francis Kennedy, RFK, Bobby Kennedy was shot and ultimately, killed, in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, after addressing a campaign rally after his win there, that day, in the California primary.

Herewith, a few of his quotes, a few of his most memorable quotes. Back from a time when those with more tried to help those with less.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Some men see things as they are, and ask "Why?". I dream of things that never were, and ask "Why not?".

I miss having more intelligent, altruistic, well-educated, well-spoken, thoughtful, introspective people in and leading our government, don't you? I miss having more people who realize that helping the middle- and lower- and working-classes strengthens not just them but the wealthy, as well. It strengthens the entire nation.

Frankly, I miss the entire concept of "noblesse oblige."