The fullest moon of the year, biggest in FIFTEEN years, is right outside...a werewolf kind of night.
The steady parade of gloomy economic reports is the fog, what netroots and progressive common sense needs to be is the beacon. Opportunity to radically change the direction of the ship of state for the next decade are there before us, if we don't hit the reef of distraction.
There is going to be a flurry of action in the first few months of the next administration, and THAT would be the perfect time to slip a few surprise fixes into the power structure. If we can instantly enact three immediate changes, at ZERO cost to the consumer, what would they be?
Here's one ! !
A la carte choices on cable and satellite.
Those of us who hated the Telecommunications Acts in the mid nineties pretty well knew what would happen when media consolidation accelerated.
And those who fought the FCC last year were prophetic.
It is time to show corporate media our wrath, and if any should suffer, it should be:
#1 the Mickey Mouses at Disney
#2 the brain washers at FOX
#3 the war profiteers at General Electric.
Think about it, ESPN/ABC is about to move all the bowl games, all the NFL will move to paying cable, while the stadiums that house these running and jumping millionaires is paid for on the public dime. Next, March Madness will go to pay-per-view, usurping public ownership of colleges and universities, selling the rights to whoever owns Budweiser.
Maybe its my disgust at this HDTV switch, I've got over $250 worth of antennas, coaxial cable, boosters laying on the ground, waiting for an extention ladder to clear some limbs. Free TV, spread out over a year, has already cost me $20 a month, and I don't even know what to expect.
What are you cable and satellite consumers paying ESPN and Disney, $8 per month? $12?
Wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't you have the option of throwing Mickey's tea in the harbor?
A great leveling is occurring, and there should be no reason for the media to get out of this "throw 12 obese folks on an island" or "put 15 B-listers in funny costumes" then call it entertainment.
One of my earliest diaries was showing how the IRS could be overwhelmed by paper returns filled out in pencil, a strictly legal protest which demonstrated how fragile the system is. Throw away the label on the IRS coupon, force the data to be typed in by humans, whooola.
But a la carte choice is popular, its radical, its progressive.
The only ones fighting it are the corporate media, and having the CHOICE, not to watch sports or support Murdoch would be instantaneous accountability.
Democracy in action, our nation was founded on protest, and this is a way for the laziest amongst us to make them feel our wrath.
Once you tear that asunder, the stock may suffer, but then those new found HDTV broadcast channels could be localized. If we let Disney come out the big winner, just like WalMart does to Main Street, the channels will look like a ghost town.
Television had potential 50 years ago, but we blew it.