Rigged Elections or Rigged Politics?

Over at Tech Central Station, Glenn Harlan Reynolds is voicing all the familiar worries about voice fraud, that some shadowy conspiracy or gang of old time ward heelers will hack into high tech voting machines and rig the elections. Reynolds feels that such electoral games will increase distrust in the electoral process. I have to agree and disagree with Mr. Reynolds based on my latest experience at the polls.You see I voted on Saturday afternoon, they have early voting in my home state of Colorado, the experience was about the same as at the last election but it was a pleasant Saturday afternoon not a hurried weekday. Voting itself was simple with the new electronic machine that even printed a paper version of my ballot. Those overseeing the election were honest and efficient civil servants, and there were no old time political thugs in sight. There was also a large crowd of voters of all ages, races and backgrounds lining up to vote. No what worried me was the actual vote itself, our civil service did a good job setting up the democratic process, the problem was the ballot itself and what was on it and what was not on it. In many if not most of the races, most of the candiates were running unopposed, in only a few statewide races could residents of Denver, vote for something besides a Democrat.
Take my local race for the House of Representatives, Democratic Congresswoman Diana DeGette, a politician I really despise, had no Republican Challenger. I would have voted for any Republican against DeGette but nobody was running. In other words I had no choice, okay I had a terrible choice, a Green, an ecofreak, I voted for an Ecofreak figuring well the imbeciles in the Republican Party deserve to have that extremist sitting next to them in Congress. Yes I know Denver is a supposedly safe Democratic seat but what if Diana Degette gets run over by a bus the week before the election or she gets caught accepting bribes from a North Korean spy? Then the seat would be empty and the extremist idiot would win.
Still what sort of Democracy is this? Yes we have a safe and efficient voting system but no real choice. So what's the point? Why should we vote if we have no choice. I'm sure a lot of people are thinking this. How many good Demcorats and liberals out there are as frustrated as I am, they charge down to the polling place to vote against Bush only to discover there is no Democrat on the ballot? I wonder how many liberals out there voted for a right wing extremist of some sort because there was no Democrat on the ballot. I voted for a left wing extremist to spite both parites.
The system of course is rigged, the two parties and the corrupt elites that control them don't want to give the public a choice because the public would take it. The whole system, campaign finance (read an attempt to stifle free speech) and primary elections (the most undemocratic inovation since the one party state) is designed to deprive voters of a choice. Obviously the party leaders know how little the people think of them so they rig our elections. These are the same people who ask our soldiers to lay down their lives in Iraq to protect the principal of elections. Yet they rig our electoral process so that we have a choice of voting for A) a party hack or b) a kook. In other words our leaders have no faith in Democracy so why in the hell should we?

North Korea: China's Problem

What should the United States do about the Communist regime in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program?
The answer is a simple one: nothing, North Korea is not our problem, North Korea is China’s problem. China didn’t create North Korea, Joseph Stalin did, but the Chinese government has sustained North Korea with aid and support for decades. Without Chinese backing, Kim Po Yi’s sorry Communist dictatorship would have collapsed a decade much as the Eastern European Communist puppet states did.
The Chinese have kept Kim and his father in power for years and paid their bills. Although now it’s obvious that Beijing is loosing patience with Pyongyang, the Chinese shut down Kim Po Yi’s attempt to create a free enterprise zone on the North Korea/Chinese border. It seems it was just a scam being run by gangsters as a front for money laundering. Unfortunately, this was only example of North Korean crime, the Communist regime’s activities include counterfeiting, the manufacture and smuggling of illegal drugs and the sell of armaments such as ballistic missiles.
The Chinese are sick of this and are putting pressure on North Korea in an attempt to make the outlaw state behave. The Chinese are even assembling troops and other military forces on North Korea’s border to send Pyongyang a message. Last summer’s massive war games staged by Russian and Chinese forces, which included exercises simulating the invasion and occupation of a rogue state, seem more like preparations for an attack upon on North Korea than Taiwan.
The real purpose of North Korea’s nuclear tests is to send a message to China, the real target of the nuclear bombs and missiles is Beijing - not Los Angeles or Tokyo. Kim Po Yi is afraid of either revolution at home or Chinese invasion, he knows his sorry military which is composed of peasant conscripts with 1940s and 50s weaponry is no match for highly trained professional troops with modern weaponry. The only hope Kim has of staving off defeat and blackmailing China, South Korea and other nations into giving him foreign aid and continuing his lucrative rackets is nuclear weapons.
So what will happen next? That’s difficult to say, sanctions might work and North Korea might collapse. Or the Chinese fed up with North Korea might simply attack and put an end to Kim once and for all. After North Korea is a former province of the Chinese Empire and the politburo in Beijing considers itself the modern successor to the Emperors of old.
The best role for the United States in drama would be to step back and let China deal with North Korea. After all China is a rising power with the fastest growing economy on Earth and great wealth and power. If the Chinese want to be a Great Power and possibly a super power they have to assume the responsibilities of one. North Korea is China’s creature and henceforth China’s responsibility.
The USA has to step back and let China step up to the plate and take responsibility. Nations like China will never learn to be responsible international citizens if big brave Uncle Sam comes and solves their problems for them. The US doesn’t have the money, forces or resources to police the world we have other responsibilities in the Middle East and Afghanistan, fighting enemies who really have the capability to attack and hurt us.
Of course, stepping aside and letting China handle North Korea would take vision, humility, common sense and maturity from America’s leaders. I seriously doubt the present generation of US politicians, whether they be neoconservatives with dreams of American Empire in their heads or liberals intent on building a Wilsonian New World Order through the UN, are capable of any of those things.

Myths About Islam and the War

There seems to be nothing about ignorance about Islam and the War on Terror - part of which is being fought in Iraq, on the part of Americans.
We don’t even have a good word to describe the enemy we face in this war, President Bush calls it a war on Terror or Terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic or a strategy, calling this war a War on Terror is like calling World War II a war on Blitzkrieg or Kamikazes. War against radical or militant Islam would be a better term but that is politically incorrect largely because it is perceived as being racist. Yet this too is an example of ignorance, Islam is not a race it is a religious faith and our enemies come from all different races.
Unfortunately these myths are only the tip of the iceberg and it looks increasingly like America is operating in complete ignorance in this war. So I’m going to try to identify a few of these myths and debunk them.
Myth 1) Islam is a religion of peace, partially true Islam does want peace but that peace is the traditional Islamic concept of peace which is not the modern Western idea of peace. The modern Western notion of peace is a wide variety of peoples and nations living together without conflict or war. The traditional Islamic concept of peace is all nations living under an Islamic government based on traditional Islamic law and all non Muslims subjugated by Islamic rulers. Furthermore Jihad or Holy War for conquest of non-Muslims is a traditional of tenet of Islam that goes back to the Prophet Mohammad who waged wars of conquest against non-Muslims. It is the duty of Islamic men to wage war on non-Muslims unless they convert to Islam, submit to Islamic rule or make a treaty with Muslim rulers. The vast majority of Islamic men don’t practice this, but it is a key doctrine of their traditional faith.
Myth 2) Islam is a tolerant faith, not true Islam is a very intolerant faith. The Koran and traditional Islamic law and theology ban all sorts of things, homosexuality, eating pork, adultery and equality for women. Traditional Islam proscribes the death penalty for Moslems to convert to other faiths. Criticism of the Prophet and the faith was a crime punishable by the death penalty. Yes, non Muslims can live in traditional Islamic societies but they are hardly equals. Historically in Islamic ruled lands Jews, Christians, Pagans and others had to pay a high tax, had to wear distinctive clothing, couldn’t build new churches, had to keep quiet, couldn’t build houses higher than Muslims. In most Islamic lands these days these rules are still enforced, people are killed for converting to Christianity, women are killed for not covering their bodies, and writers and intellectuals are killed or imprisoned for exercising freedom of speech.
Myth 3) In the past such as Medieval times, Moslems were advanced, civilized, tolerant and peaceful while Christians were violent, ignorant, greedy, intolerant and imperialistic. The truth is that historically Moslems were just as violent, ignorant, greedy, intolerant and imperialistic as Christians were. For over a thousand years from the time of the Prophet Mohammed to the wars of the Ottoman Empire various Muslim peoples, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, Moguls, Mongols, waged brutal and bloody wars of conquest against the rest of the world. Moslem armies burned cities, massacred civilians, took thousands of people as slaves and looted large areas of the Earth. Yes Europeans were imperialists but Muslims were practicing imperialism centuries before Europeans got into the business.
4) In medieval times various Muslim societies were highly civilized, tolerant and scientifically and technologically advanced while Europeans were barbarians wallowing in the ignorance of the dark ages. Partially true, yes some Islamic societies such as the Arab and Spanish caliphates were advanced for their time. People bathed once a week or once a month instead of not at all, a few people in town knew how to read and write and some scientific research was conducted by a few intrepid men. Yet this was nothing like a modern society there was no science or technology. Nor was there real tolerance, Jews and Christians were tolerated because they had skills or money valuable to the state. Massacres of Jews were just as common in Medieval Muslim communities as Christian ones and Medieval Christian codes that restricted Jews to living in ghettos and wearing special clothes were simply copies of Moslem ones. It must also be noted here that in Medieval times the Greek Christian Byzantine Empire was just as advanced and as civilized as any Muslim society and had access to scientific and technological secrets the Muslims lacked such as Greek fire a kind of Medieval napalm that was the Byzantine secret weapon.
5) Islamic terrorists are fighting us because they see us as a threat to their faith and civilization and if we just left them alone they’d leave us alone. Not true, these people feel they have a Holy Duty ordained by God to fight and conquer us. They will fight us if see they us as attacking or invading Islamic lands and if we withdraw they’ll keep fighting us. American troops weren’t fighting in the Middle East on Sept. 11, 2001, yet we were still savagely attacked by militant Moslems on that date.
6) The people fighting us in Iraq are Iraqi patriots outraged by the American invasion of their country. Not true, most Iraqis don’t buy into the Western or American concept of patriotism and do not see Iraq as a nation. Many of those fighting us are devout Muslims who recognize only one nation - the nation of Islam. Others are simply fighting for the interests of their particular religious or ethnic group i.e. Shiites or Kurds. A great deal of those fighting us are fanatical Sunni Muslims from all over the world who simply want a chance to fight Americans on the battlefield. If they weren’t attacking us in Iraq they’d be attacking us elsewhere say here in the US. At least in Iraq they fighting US troops who can fight back rather than unarmed American civilians.
7) Iraq is a real legitimate, historic nation like the United States not true. Yes people have lived in the region now called Iraq for thousands of years and it boasts the world’s oldest civilization but historically it was not a nation. It was a province or group of province of various empires in which a number of different ethnic and religious groups lived. Iraq is a modern fiction invented by the British, Winston Churchill in particular, to enable His Majesty’s Army to control the oil fields and the region. Churchill grouped a number of people into a country and appointed a king to rule them. Iraq is nothing but an illusion, if our troops fight for it they will die for nothing. The Iraqi people don’t give a damn about Iraq and neither should we.
8) The Islamic and Arab peoples want democracy, not true, the people who run the Arab nations the Islamic scholars and clerics, the Westernized intellectuals, the military men, the nobles and royalty in the Gulf states have seen democracy and want no part of it. They see Western democracy as being incompatible with their faith and culture and attempts to spread democracy to them as a threat to their faith and culture and their positions of power and influence within it. Simply planting a democracy in the Middle East to expose the people there to it won’t work. Turkey has been a democracy for seventy years and Israel has been a democracy for sixty years the example of these successful states didn’t sway Arab thinkers why should Iraq. A serious attempt was made to create an Arab Democracy in Lebanon and Islamic extremists destroyed it. So any attempt to create Arab Democracy will fail and fail miserably. American efforts to build democracy in Iraq are doomed no matter how many elections we hold there and how many constitutions we write.
These are just a few of the myths that distort our view of reality and hinder our war effort. Unfortunately they are only the tip of the massive iceberg that is our ignorance of Islam and our world. Hopefully, we’ll overcome that iceberg before it dooms our nation’s future.

Lessons From the Cold War

The Cold War America’s greatest victory of the 20th Century teaches us several important lessons that can help us survive and win the present Terror War.
Lesson 1) Concentrate on fighting and defeating the Bad Guys don’t get distracted by nation building i.e. arrogant efforts to impose American values and institutions on foreign nations and other kinds of do-gooding. In the Cold War, when America concentrated on fighting Communism it usually won as the conflicts in Greece, El Salvador, Korea, Granada, Afghanistan and elsewhere proved. When we tried to build democracy or create model societies as we did in Vietnam we failed and failed miserably. So we must concentrate on fighting the war, that is on finding and destroying the Islamic terrorists and forgo our dreams of Arab democracy and Afghan utopia.
Lesson 2) Make sure the war is contained and limited. The world survived the Cold War because the United States and the Soviet Union found ways to limit the conflict to certain parameters. For example America dispatched weapons but not troops to Afghanistan and the Soviets limited the aid they provided to Latin American guerrilla armies. This was done to prevent limited brushfire wars from escalating into all conflicts when either side refused to limit involvement as the US did in Vietnam and Russia did in Afghanistan the result was inferno. In the Terror War this might mean sending in commandos or a limited air strike or using local mercenaries to do the fighting instead of our troops. We’ve already seen the maelstrom the massive American presence in Iraq has produced. It might also mean tolerating some safe havens for terrorists and areas under Islamic law.
Lesson 3) Learn that you sometimes have to choose the lesser of two evils in a conflict. During the Cold War America backed many despotic and oppressive regimes, many of them as morally loathsome as Communism to stop Communism. Just as America had formed alliances with Communists in World War II against the worse evils of Nazism and Japanese Imperialism. This meant backing tyrants who were weaker or autocrats who allowed some freedom as opposed to Communists who allowed no freedom. Eventually the US even made peace of a sorts with China, by accepting the lesser of two evils we ensured our victory. I might also add it was a double victory because the undemocratic regimes we backed disappeared along with Communism. In the Terror War this might mean supporting Middle Eastern dictatorships that suppress Islamic radicals or Shiite Radicals against Sunni Radicals allied with Al Qaeda.
Lesson 4) Concentrate on the Big Picture and Long Term results. America won the Cold War because farsighted leaders like Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan saw the Big Picture the battle between Freedom and Communism and Freedom’s eventual triumph. A prime example of this was the 1980s when doomsayers on right and left were saying America had lost the Cold War because of economic problems and recent Communist victories. Ronald Reagan saw between these things to final victory he saw that America would win and steered the course. Today Reagan is hailed as a visionary but at the time we was condemned as an ignorant reactionary. We must concentrate on the big picture and ignore the headline of the week.
Lesson 5) and this is the important lesson, learn that we won’t always win and sometimes will have to walk away. In the Cold War America suffered an embarrassing defeat in Vietnam but went on to win. We came out of Vietnam stronger, because of Vietnam we stayed out of other potentially disastrous conflicts. So we’ll have to learn to walk away if we want to win in the end.
It took us fifty years and the deaths of nearly 60,000 Americans and countless others in Vietnam to learn the important lessons of the Cold War. I pray that our victory in the Terror War won’t be so costly.

A Democratic Congress

Some very slick and sleazy politicking in the form of the Foley scandal could give America it’s first Democratic Congress in over a decade. So we have to ask ourselves is this a good thing or a bad thing and will it make any difference?
My guess is that a Democratic Congress wouldn’t lead to any significant change in our government or the national political climate. If they win the Democrats won’t have a large majority or any sort of popular mandate their election will rest on popular anger towards Washington. The Republicans will still have enough votes to kill any Democratic legislation and still have the Presidential veto.
The only upswing that I can see from a Democratic Congress would be a decrease in federal spending. The only reason we had a balanced budget in the Clinton years was that the President and Congress came from different parties. Since the President was a Democrat and Congress Republican, the president was free to veto lots of spending. A Democratic Congress would give Bush the ability to veto a lot of legislation and this could lead to spending cuts. Republicans would be free to vote against a lot of spending as well.
Of course we will still be at war and Democrats will be under pressure to support our troops and show they aren’t wimps on national security. So I have a feeling they’ll mindlessly vote for any National Security related legislation. Worse, I’m sure left wing cranks in the Democratic Party will attach some awful legislation to defense spending bills and Bush will have to sign them.
One example of this would be the restoration of the so called Fairness Doctrine , a federal law that would require broadcasters to present both sides of political issues. This would effectively kill talk radio but I’m not sure it’d make much difference these days. Conservative talkers would just follow the lead of Howard Stern and turn to satellite radio and the internet to reach their audience. The only losers would be traditional broadcasters who would be deprived of some of their most popular programming. The Fairness Doctrine would also be challenged in court and the courts might rule it violates free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The worst side effect of the Democratic Congress would be the witch hunting that would go on at the various committees. The Democrats’ left wing base is demanding that the Democrats punish the evil people they blame for the nation’s problems. Instead of doing anything constructive the Democrats will send out an endless stream of subpoenas to get every Bush staffer, Halliburton executive, neocon, army officer and CIA operative before their committees.
These events won’t be oversight they’ll be media circuses designed to appease the left wing mob nothing more. The questions will be politically loaded and there will be an emphasis on sensational sex scandals. My guess is there will be a search for an excuse to impeach Bush or try to. This will be a witch hunt modeled on the Ken Starr debacle ten years ago, the Democrats who criticized Republicans for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate and try and impeach Clinton will appoint a prosecutor to investigate and try and impeach Bush. Like Ken Starr this prosecutor will waste millions of dollars and accomplish nothing. The only result of impeach Bush will be to make Bush more popular, Clinton was made more popular by his impeachment.
Impeachment won’t be the worst excess of the Democratic Congress I imagine that Democrats anxious to please The New York Times editorial board and more importantly the wealthy campaign donors who read the gray lady will investigate abuses real and imagined in the war on terror. They will subpoena a long succession of covert operators, soldiers and accuse them of being war criminals. The public will be on the side of those fighting the bad guys who are trying to kill us and the Democrats will look really bad. Just as the Iran Contra Investigation made Oliver North a folk hero these investigations will make others into folk heroes for more credible reasons.
How will the three ring circus end? I imagine it will end in 2008 or 2010 with a new Republic majority in Congress. That is unless the Democrats grow up and behave like adults with self restraint, unfortunately I don’t think that’s possible in modern American politics.

What is Our Mission in Iraq?

Has America succeeded in its mission in Iraq and should that mission continue? The answers to these questions, which is the center of our national debate on Iraq, depends on what our mission in Iraq is.
If our mission is to create a model nation in Iraq, plant democracy in the Middle East or create a modern free Arab and Islamic society then we have failed and will continue to fail. If our mission in Iraq is to wage war upon Islamic terrorism and those who practice it, then our mission in Iraq has been a resounding success and will continue to succeed.
The nation building experiment in Iraq has failed and failed miserably, Iraqi democracy is a bad joke and the nation is spiraling into a hell of civil war, ethnic cleansing and terrorism. It is time to admit that nation building in Iraq has failed and to pull the plug on it while searching for a political solution for the Iraq crisis.
As a battle front in the war on Terror, Iraq has been a tremendous success we’ve drawn the terrorists out onto the battlefield, engaged them, defeated them and killed them. Part of the reason there hasn’t been a major terror attack on the US since Sept. 11, is that the forces, resources and money the Jihadists would have used in their attack on America have been expended on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead of trekking to America to launch terror attacks on Americans in the heartland, Jihad terrorists are flocking to Iraq to face American troops on the battlefield and getting killed by them. The money, the weapons and the men Bin Laden wanted to deploy against America and Europe are being wasted in Iraq.
So obviously America does have a legitimate mission in Iraq to fight and destroy the enemies who want to kill and enslave us. The enemy being Radical Islam as practiced by Al Qaeda and other fundamentalist (perhaps traditionalist) Islamic organizations. Al Qaeda and its allies are in Iraq and trying to take over the country.
The fighters in Iraq fall into two broad group, local individuals fighting for power and influence for their particular faction Sunni, Shiites, Kurds and various tribal groups and foreign fighters mostly devout Sunni fighters intent on waging Jihad. None of these people are patriots fighting for the Iraqi nation, they are Kurds, Sunnis or Shiites fighting for their tribe or ethnic group or devout Muslims fulfilling their religious obligations.
Note in traditional Islam there is no such thing as a nation, a Moslem’s only loyalty to is to Allah (God), the Prophet Mohammad (God’s messenger on Earth) and the true faith (Islam). The nation is the faith Islam not the country. Traditional Islam teaches that every man has a moral obligation to wage war on the nonbelievers (non-Moslems). Waging war means defending Islamic lands from non Moslems and conquering the lands of non Moslems for the faith.
The agenda of Jihad is not just to defend Islamic civilization against threats from the West real and imagined. Jihad isn’t going to stop because American troops leave the Middle East, the US withdraws support for Israel or Americans start showing politically correct tolerance for Islam. The Jihadists will continue their war until they or dead on the battlefield or the flag of Islam is flying over every city on Earth.*
That’s right, the Jihad terrorists want to conquer the world, this isn’t a comic book fantasy it’s a real doctrine based on history. Both Bin Laden and his buddy, Taliban boss Mullah Omar, have both used the title Caliph which means Emperor of Islam and commander of the faithful. Historically the Caliphs and their imitators the Turkish Sultans and Indian Moguls were leaders of empires whose goal was to subjugate the world for Islam.
A small minority of modern Moslems has concluded that in the wake of the Cold War the non Islamic countries, including the USA, are weak and ripe for Islamic conquest. Sept. 11, wasn’t intended to tell us to stay out of the Middle East and leave Islam alone, it was the opening shot in a war of Islamic conquest against America and the rest of the world. Note this includes any Islamic nation that doesn’t accept their version of Islam as the law of the land.
The sorry truth is that we’re going to have to fight these people sooner or later. It might as well be now when they are weak and disorganized, and it might as well be in Iraq. Do we want the war in Peoria or in Falujah? If we pull out of Iraq and leave the Middle East, the Jihad Army will follow us back to the United States and bring their war with them.
So how does this affect our mission in Iraq? Simple there are two wars over there, the battle between Iraqi factions for control of Iraq which is none of our business and the war with the forces of Jihad which is certainly our business. That means our troops in Iraq should concentrate on the war with Jihad and leave Iraqis alone as much as possible. Let the Iraqis sort out their own politics and run their own society.
This means we don’t need a large occupying army in Iraq, only a couple of bases and an elite force of heavy infantry and commandos backed up by our air power that will engage terrorist forces. One of the main goals of this force will be organize, train and arm a force of mercenaries, an Arab Legion of the United States which will fight and kill our enemies in the Middle East. That way Americans won’t have to get their hands dirty and American boys won’t have to die in what is essentially an Arab war. The Iraqi Army we’ve formed would be the nucleus of this force.
Yes America, we do have a mission in Iraq, it’s to fight our enemies not to pursue the fantasy of building democracy in the Middle East. Unfortunately the Bush administration and its apologists in the media have cast our mission in Iraq in terms of nation building and ignored the battle against terror, largely because there is little profit for Haliburton in a battle against Jihad. So it is time to concentrate on the real mission in Iraq and stop letting ideologically charged fantasy and special interest greed determine the mission.

*For a good view of Jihad see Robert Spencer’s excellent book “Onward Muslim Soldiers.”

Who Killed Broadcast TV

An interesting thing is happening in my hometown of Denver, a several of the cities big broadcast TV stations are literally begging the public for support in their efforts to build a new digital TV tower on Lookout Mountain west of the city.
It seems some local homeowners don’t like the idea of a monstrous broadcast tower in their backyard and the local politicians are paying more attention to them than the TV stations. They’re actually running hysterical ads reminiscent of political campaign propaganda that scream people will loose free over the air broadcast TV. This is an interesting state of affairs, a medium that was once the most arguably influential force in American life literally begging for its life in the court of public opinion.
So we have to ask who killed Broadcast TV? Or more importantly when did it die and does anybody care? I found myself asking that because the only thing I watch on broadcast TV is the morning newscast as I make breakfast because I want the day’s weather to see how I should dress for work. In the evenings I still watch a lot of TV but it’s almost all DVDs, since I don’t have cable at the moment, the DVDs are of old movies, classic TV shows, cartoons and cable shows in other words the stuff I like. Interestingly enough the only contemporary TV shows I watch on DVD are cable shows such as “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Sopranos,” “Deadwood,” “The Shield” and “Sleeper Cell.” The rest of the stuff I watch is old classics “The Rockford Files,” “Wiseguy,” “The Avengers,” “The Prisoner,” “Dr. Who” and all manner of old movies.
Could the real reason that people are not watching broadcast TV is that there is little on it worth watching and there’s plenty of other stuff to watch? After all the alternatives are cheap, you can order cable or satellite TV for about $50 a month, you can buy a decent DVD player for $30 if you shop the sales. Netflix will ship virtually any DVD to your door for a few bucks, and if you’re a real cheapskate like me you can find ninety percent of them at the public library for free.
Why would anybody in their right mind watch “Dancing With the Stars” when you’ve got “The Sopranos” on HBO and “The Rockford Files” and “Casablanca” on DVD? That’s the question the public is asking and guess what their answer is. I recently tried to reserve “The Sopranos” from the Denver Public Library every DVD of it was checked out. Want to reserve a DVD of a thirty year old episode of the classic British science fiction show Dr. Who, you have a long wait.
Don’t believe me, watch a DVD of “The Sopranos” then watch a new network show especially something truly embarrassing like “Bones” and compare. A five year old “Sopranos” has me on the edge of my seat, twenty minutes of “Bones” I yawn and feel like checking my e-mail. “Bones”(a completely brainless revival of Quincy) is especially horrifying because it stars David Boreanas a great actor who formally appeared in truly entertaining shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” which were broadcast TV’s last dying gasp at anything truly original.
The only things keeping broadcast TV going are sports and local news. CNN and Fox took national and international news away from the networks ten years ago. The rest of the programming on local TV looks like something for the brain dead, reruns of two year old sitcoms nobody watched when they were first on, reality shows, infomercials and the freak shows put on by Jerry Springer & company. Today, the only time the average person watches his local broadcast station is to catch the game or the local news.
The minute the game’s over they switch right over to the History Channel, TCM or HBO or reach for the video game or the DVD collection. And why not, today’s broadcast TV is largely an abomination is there anything on it as good as there was twenty years ago. Back then classics like “Cheers,” “The Cosby Show,” “Newhart, “Star Trek: the Next Generation,” “Wiseguy,” “The A Team,” “Crime Story” and “Hill Street Blues” populated the airwaves. These were prime time network or syndicated shows and they were better than anything on Fox today. Yes there’s “24” but has “24” done anything that “The Sopranos” wasn’t doing six years ago?
To make matters worse, classic television has largely disappeared from broadcast TV. My generation loves TV because we grew up with the best of it, not just what the networks were showing at the moment but the good old stuff. When I was a kid in Colorado in the 1970s and 80s our local independent station Channel 2 broadcast seven or eight hours of classic TV a day. We got to watch it all “McHale’s Navy,” “Superman,” “I Love Lucy,” “The Honeymooners,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Leave It To Beaver,” “The Wild Wild West,” “The Rockford Files,” “Bonanza,” “It Takes A Thief” (the only time Robert Wagner ever acted), “Star Trek,”(ask any kid who grew up in the seventies he or she can probably tell you what time the local station showed the Star Trek reruns when they were in school in Denver it was 3:00 p.m. on Channel 4) “the Avengers” and we loved it. When I was a kid what Channel 2 was showing when we got home was a big topic of discussion in the hallways of my school.
During the night when there wasn’t a game they’d show classic movies (real classics with guys like John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart) in prime time, imagine a local commercial broadcast TV station showing a Bogart festival in black and white Channel 2 did that in the early 1980s. Another local station Channel Four showed classic movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” as afternoon filler fare. I first saw “Casablanca,” “High Sierra” and “The African Queen” on Channel 2 and concluded that Bogie was the greatest actor in the universe. Today I still live in Denver and I can’t remember the last time I watched Channel 2. Of course Bogie hasn’t appeared on Channel 2 since I was in junior high interesting coincidence.
Our local Public TV station, Channel Six added to the fun by pumping out a lot of the classic British stuff, “Dr. Who,” “The Prisoner,” (I remember staying up late on Friday nights just to watch it), “Blake’s Seven,” “Fawlty Towers,” “Monty Python,” “Good Neighbors,” “Yes Minister,” and lots of classic British miniseries like “I Claudius,” Jeremy Britt’s “Sherlock Holmes,” and “Private Schultz” under its “Mystery” and “Masterpiece Theater” labels. In those days PBS hadn’t yet become a medium for leftist propaganda and many of its programmers still felt their duty was to show quality programming.
I have to ask is anybody twenty or thirty years from now going to look nostalgically back on “American Idol” and “Deal or No Deal?” Maybe these things will be answers to Trivial Pursuit Questions that’s about it Although I imagine people will still be watching “The Sopranos,” “The Rockford Files” and “I Love Lucy” at that time. Of course by then there will be no such thing as broadcast TV and the digital TV towers will be of interest only to scrap dealers.
So who killed broadcast TV we did because we were given a choice? And broadcast TV did by forcing us to turn elsewhere for something to watch.