A blast from the past but, oh, so relevant today...

[Montauk6]

Back in my misbegotten freeper youth, I'd stay up to listen to that "annoying leftist" Larry King when he did his late night Mutual Radio talk show. I describe him that way just to give you a peek at where my head was in those hazy crazy 80s.

Anyway, I bring this up because I came across a recording of King's show from June 6, 1989, when his guest was the late great Frank Zappa. I transcribed the following exchange as both a nostalgia trip and a chilling pause to consider how things got so wacked out; check it out:

CALLER: In your book, under the heading "Liberal Media Bias," Frank, you made some great points about spin control, etc.

FZ: Mm-hmm.

CALLER: I think the news media is badly misused, esp. in the area of sensationalism where individual lives and entire industries are destroyed by innuendo...

FZ: That's right.

CALLER: ...for the sake of a 25-cent newspaper. Even by supposedly hi-quality publications like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

FZ: Mm-hmm.

CALLER: Could you elaborate on liberal media bias and spin control?

FZ: Well, what I say in the book is that there is no such thing as a liberal media bias BECAUSE liberals don't own broadcast licenses. All media in the US, presume the rest of the world too, is basically controlled by people who are of the right-wing persuasion; and I think that the concept of liberal media bias was a convenient fiction manufactured during the Reagan Administration.

LK: But you can't say "all," Frank. Gannett would hardly be like a liberal--hardly be a conservative organization. They're a pretty big media owner.

FZ: Mmm, I don't know; if you use USA Today, or that newspaper, as an example, I would say I find things in there that are certainly spun in a rightward direction--

LK: Their editorials, I would say, probably are more liberal 80% of the time.

FZ: Yeah but the editorial isn't what people read. It's the whole smell of that publication is what I'm talking about. Basically, media, in all of its forms, is controlled by people who are not liberal. So, if you raise this boogie man of liberal media bias, it gives you the license, under the idea of American fairness, to give the people on the other side a little bit more time. And so, what happened under the Reagan Administration is they would scream "Liberal media bias; please give more time to the conservative point of view," and then what that did was--it just swamped the country with conservative propaganda. Except that it wasn't conservative propaganda, it was bordering on FASCIST propaganda. And there you have it.

RIP, FZ. As Stevie might've sung it, "where are you when we need you, like right now..."

And this was 16 years ago, when the prevailing thought (unless I'm mistaken) took for granted the so-called liberal slant of the MSM. That's what so chilling to me.

[evlbstrd]

1. FZ had it so right for so long.

And he fought hard.

[Montauk6]

2. Can you imagine the field day he would've had with Dubya?

He may well have become the first musician prosecuted under the Patriot Act! Those crooks, I think, can live with angry protest songs but ones that make them out to be the most laughable, UNIMPORTANT buffoons (as only FZ can style it)?