As if we needed another sign that liberalism is dead:
Progressive health care reform groups demanded on Thursday that Washington’s NBC television affiliate refuse to air a 30-minute infomercial funded by a conservative group opposed to creating a public insurance plan.
The Service Employees International Union sent a letter to NBC4, arguing that the station has a responsibility to pull the documentary-style commercial paid for by Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. The ad, set to run Sunday after “Meet the Press,” “will be false, deceitful, and a distortion,” the union’s attorney wrote in the letter.
The SEIU has not seen the ad, but is drawing the conclusion from CPR’s record of running “demonstrably false” ads. The station has the duty to protect the public from misleading advertising, the letter argues.
If the ad is aired and does contain falsehoods, CPR could face a fine from the Federal Communications Commission, said Levana Layendecker, the online campaigns director for Health Care for America Now, a coalition pushing to create a public insurance plan.
Once upon a time liberals weren’t afraid of speech they disagreed with. Whatever happened to “I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”? Or Zero Mostel’s “We of the Left do not blacklist”?
Dead and gone.
It’s ever so much easier to suppress your political opponents than it is to argue against them.
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Thanks for the heads-up Dave (and SEIU). I can only assume that the protest means that there is gratuitous amounts of sex and violence in the infomercial.
I can’t wait to see it.
Stupid. Nothing gives credibility to an opponent like trying to silence him.
“Liberal” = Authoritarian these days. Sometimes for conservatives but you have to wait and hear what they say first. With Liberals the default position is now restrictions on speech with 1st amendment supporters being the exception.