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Seems to me that Glenn is following up on a matter he said he would clarify, that of a prominent cable company refusing to run ads critical of said cable company and of a Pennsylvania Representative who is advocating immunity for self-same cable company (and others) in the matter of warrantless domestic surveillance -- surveillance which is against the law.
The ads are running on alternative outlets in the region, but the major cable television outlet refuses to run them for whatever reason, or no reason at all, and they're throwing up all sorts of smokescreens to hide behind and to try to pretend their refusal is due to something other than simply not wanting ads questioning their ethics and legal standing on the air.
Even if they were to admit their real reason, they still wouldn't run the ads, though, would they? And they wouldn't have to, would they? Glenn isn't even arguing that they should be compelled to run them.
No, the stink that is arising has its own purpose, I would say, and that is to get wider notice of the controversy here, say on "Countdown" or one of the other cable "news" shows. With the idea that telecom lawlessness, Democratic and Republican enabling of said lawlessness, and telecom refusal to run ads critical of that lawlessness would penetrate the thick skulls of the public and ultimately make them mad enough to do something about it.
But what would happen if cable and other media outlets didn't have the option to refuse ads like this? Of course then there wouldn't be a stink over the refusal, because there wouldn't be a refusal. And the public could even become educated on the issues without a lot of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.
Democracy might could work.
<<shudder>>
The notion that we can't fight every battle at once is valid, but we also have to understand where the pressure points are.
In this case, as we've seen in many other cases of refusal to run certain kinds of political ads, the media companies face no consequence for their refusal except -- perhaps -- some momentarily bad publicity, which usually they don't care about at all.
But if they did face consequences for such refusal, financial or legal or what have you, they'd change their tune right quick.
