The Fairness Doctrine Secret

As posted on The Alien Patriot:

Today I went to the drugstore, because I got really bad allergies.

So I take my usual stuff (Claritin Clear) and go to the cashier.

The cashier looks at my stuff and says: "There is a new regulation, that when you buy Claritin Clear, you also need to buy Benadryl."

I replied: "Hell no, I don't want to buy Benadril - it makes me drowsy!"

She didn't care about what I was saying and called the store owner.

So I told the guy that I'm not going to buy Benadryl if all I want is Claritin Clear.

The guy said: "Every time I sell Claritin Clear, I get tons of calls from the Benadryl company complaining that I didn't try to promote their product as much as their competitors' one. They even come to the store, compare the sizes of the displays, how many packages of each product are on the shelf etc..

That means the only way to not get hassled by those Benadryl guys is if people have to always buy the two products together. I get no calls and everybody is happy."

I told him: "What do you mean? I'm not happy if I have to buy something that I'm not going to use, so that you don't get hassled by some friggin' company. I just go and buy my Claritin Clear somewhere else."

The store owner laughed: "I don't think you will be lucky. The Benadryl guys are onto everybody."

I got really bummed and yelled at the guy: "Dude, last chance. Either sell me the Claritin on its own or forget about it." He shook his head and I left.

As I was walking out the store owner yelled: "Hey if nobody wants to buy the two products together, then I might as well not sell any of those allergy products anymore. I'm just going to stick to cosmetics like in the old days, because there is nobody hassling me there."

Does that make sense to you? If not why would the Fairness Doctrine make any sense for the media?

Senator Bingaman in an interviews with Jim Villanucci on KKOB:

I would want this station and all stations to have to present a balanced perspective and different points of view, instead of always hammering away at one side.

Rush Limbaugh says:

At which point the manager says, "I can't keep up with this. In order to maintain my license, I'm going to have to do all this and grant all these people all this access. I gotta put amateurs on the radio? I gotta put talentness, complaining whiners on the radio? I'm not going to mess with it." And that's how it works. It's not that the Fairness Doctrine is passed and all of us go away. It's that local stations will not put up with the grief they're going to get. And that's what Senator Bingaman and that's what the Democrats want. They don't want balanced programming on a radio station. They want no conservative programming on a radio station. (highlighted by TAP)

Is this a change you really need?

The Alien Patriot