In a recent poll, reading in America is revealed to be, well, less than appreciated by large swaths of the population. This ought come as no surprise. We live in a time of stupendous ignorance, which allows for the expression of epic stupidity. The Founding Fathers were suspicious of democracy…
In an article from the Washington Post we learn that the United States has slipped in the ranking for life expectancy in the world to number 42. Douglas Adams aside, this is not a good thing. The article lists a good many factors contributing to this fact, which seems paradoxical…
E.g., Don’t hold your breath that the Democrats will save us. Or that anyone will. It might take something far more dramatic. Perhaps something revolutionary. But it's going to require far more than sitting around watching our TV's to make it happen. Marty Kaplan is a really smart media-reform and political-reform…
Salon's Michael Grieve reports on Michael Copp's address to the YearlyKos Convention. Copps, an FCC commissioner, addressed the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago: a three-day gathering of about 1,500 bloggers and liberal activists. But his address was less a lecture than a call to action. "The country needs you, it needs…
That's what the broadcast license-renewal process has become: a rubber stamp procedure. The following are the words of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps: [U]nder pressure from media conglomerates, previous commissions have eviscerated the renewal process. Now we have what big broadcasters lovingly call “postcard renewal” — the agency typically rubber-stamps an application…