POOR QUALITY? JUST CHARGE MORE!





I think I’m going to fire up a poetry writing tutoring service, say—humn—let me see—at the rate of thousand dollars an hour? No one else in the poetry teaching world makes that sort of a rate, do they? Will it work? This is truly a nation which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.


A RECENT LETTER TO ABC

The following is a letter—slightly altered—I drafted and sent to ABC:

Subject: ABCNEWS.com EDITORIAL
Date: Thursday, January 11, 2007 8:22 PM
From: George Thomas
To:

To any remaining responsible party at ABC,

I have noticed very disturbing news coming out about ABC. At least three items.

1. You are bringing on the inflammatory, right wing commentator Glenn Beck to add content to Good Morning America.

2. You have participated in the restraint of trade by compiling an inaccurate list of advertisers (I know it was inaccurate because I contacted 85 or so of those advertisers personally, linking them to a copy of the memo) who you claim do not want to advertise on Air America radio programs, bankrupting the network on which the only clearly Democratic party talkers anywhere appeared on commercial radio. Your Republican Party bias is evident.

3. You have helped silence freedom of the press by forcing the shut down of a blogsite which was legally using clips of unrestrained, inflammatory and racist comments by ABC's KSFO radio station in San Francisco to inform advertisers of the kind of biased programming that ABC supports and encourages. If your tactic stands, legitimate fact gathering and reporting is certainly in danger. I can't believe that a major network is acting so irresponsibly, even to the eventually detriment of its own news department. For the full story on this go to.

The three actions taken together represent a clear effort to bend the news to the favor of the Republican Party and to silence all commentary which does not suit ABC's corporate ownership. This is the kind of behavior I'd expect of a South American national news organization controlled by a dictatorship.

I'm 69, and I don't think in my life I've ever been more ashamed of the antics of one of our three major broadcasting networks. You are discrediting ABC and smearing your own reputation. Eventually, as long as America remains free, this disgraceful and biased attitude of ABC towards the Democratic Party and free speech will become public knowledge. I hope someone with responsible journalistic instincts in your organization will see the error of your ways and quickly correct them unless your corporate leadership is truly in favor of the Bush regime's attack on civil liberties and American democracy.

Sincerely,
--
George Thomas
Spokane, Washington