MEDIA ACCESS, NOT FLAG BURNING
by Peter D. Moss

Few things get the patriotic juices of conservatives flowing faster than the sight of a flag burning for publicity. A constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning is a conservative stock issue known in Washington as a hand-grenade issue: it is useful to get the attention and the contributions of conservatives in political campaigns, but it has no chance of enactment. Even the conservatives sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court consider flag burning as free speech protected by the First Amendment. But what motivates the flag burners? Lack of media access, plain and simple. Unrich people with a legitimate grievance have no broadcast and print media access on issues the self-serving media barons (owners and controllers) don't want debated, thus simply denying the aggrieved their right to communicate and their right to organize others similarly aggrieved. The barons make only one exception to media black-out for the unrich: a public flag burning. If people don't want the Bushist regime to bomb Iraq, they get no hearing. If they burn a flag, they get immediate media attention, although not the desired result. The goal of the media and of the aggrieved is quite different. The media barons do not publicize flag burnings to remedy the underlying wrong. The media barons just want to expose the burners as unpatriotic and foolish and the underlying issue as unworthy of all the news that's fit to print status. This mean spirited censorship is media policy; if flag burning was not defined as newsworthy and never publicized, it would stop. Thus the media barons responsible for communication on public issues are themselves the guilty promoters of flag burning. Yet in the process of trying to discredit and silence the flag burners, they have unwittingly publicized the underlying issue(s) of the aggrieved. The staunchest defenders of capitalism are not even two-legged. The Spanish fighting bulls will attack, and often kill, anyone who so much as waves a red flag. Thus the emotional reaction to flags is present not just in human conservatives and therefore probably cannot be eradicated by reasoning with the flag wavers. And those who would "die for the flag" forget that it can be replaced for $8.95 or so at the nearest dime store. The remedy to flag burners and burnings is a legislative re-interpretation of the Free Speech provision, guaranteeing adequate and prompt media access for any aggrieved U.S. person(s). If I am elected, I will propose legislation to create a federal media access commission, FeMAC. It will have a toll free phone that any aggrieved person can call to ask for media access on pain of a public flag burning. If a majority do not agree with the flag burner(s), the grievance will have been aired and gone nowhere. And the dime store will have been denied an $8.95 sale. Who says you can't win'em all? To pick on another recent controversy, it took me days to figure out the high level of emotions accompanying the recent pledge of allegiance "under God" flap. The conservatives were dealt a double whammy, because both religion and patriocy were involved in the challenge. We must remember that religion and patriocy are two of the hottest hot button issues for conservatives so the flap not only got their attention but got a double dose of attention. And much as I hate controversy except for analytical use, we should take note of the Iraq flap in particular, and the abuse of the 9/11 mentality to reclassify people as patriots if they accept that mentality for intrusive civil rights violations and union busting, and terrorists if they question, think about, or godforbid criticize Bushist initiatives under the homeland security bunting. It took 10 years of public protest and violence to get Nixon out of Vietnam. It should have taken just one toll free phone call to the FeMAC grievance number by an anti-Vietnam war patriot followed by a binding national referendum. If elected to the U.S. Senate, I will introduce legislation to create a federal media access commission, FeMAC, to provide a federal 800 number for publicizing underdog grievances in lieu of flag burning. The FeMAC will be staffed by persons aggrieved by media black-outs of their just cause. In addition, the editorial boards of media will be brought into First Amendment compliance by replacing the senior member with a FeMAC commissioner each time a media wrongfully denies access to a complainant. In time the media will honor the First Amendment once sufficient replacements have been seated. The media owners will still own and manage their printing presses and broadcast equipment and will earn fair returns on their investment, but will not be able to black out or warp issues they dislike because the airwaves and the public's attention belong to the public, not to the barons, which was of course the whole reason for the First Amendment when it was enacted. We cannot blame the Founding Fathers for not foreseeing that a media baronetcy will arise (perhaps starting with Citizen Kane) which will black out, spin, delay, and otherwise control news flow, public discourse, and national policy, too often to serve advertiser preferences and always the policy of the central government which is increasingly unresponsive to the needs and desires of America's 98% unrich. A better country and world can be legislated if the voters will it.