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June 19, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:22
June 19, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Have we gotten any calls yet from farmers who want to stick a pitchfork in me?
Kind of expecting that that's going to happen.
I have the privilege of sitting in today and I was here yesterday sitting in for Rush Limbaugh, and we've been talking about the ethanol mandate in the United States, which I think is absolutely crazy.
I know how this stuff starts.
It starts with good intentions and the other thing that starts most bad ideas in America, lobbying.
There has been a huge financial push for ethanol from two sources.
There's one company that is the largest producer of ethanol in North America, Archer Daniels Midland of Decatur, Illinois.
They have a lot of political clout and always have.
In addition to that, a number of entrepreneurs have been building ethanol plants all over the country.
They have been pushing for the mandate.
Why?
They're not only they have they're making a product in which there is a government mandate that it be used.
I'd love to manufacture a product that government says you have to use.
So those two groups have been pushing politicians at the state and federal level very hard to move us in the direction of ethanol.
Then you have the corn farmers who see the opportunity for massive profits, and many of them are getting that right now with this mandate of ethanol.
Then you appeal to the greens, we can save the earth, which this doesn't do, and you've got a perfect political solution, and it sounds so good.
The problem with solutions that are political as opposed to market-driven is they almost never work.
I don't want to sound like a conservative ideologue here, even though I am a conservative ideologue, because you can bore people to tears by saying that the government should not be involved in solving problems, the market should be solving problems, but the fact is that that's right.
A lot of people sit back and say, well, we have a problem with our reliance on foreign oil.
We have a problem with global warming that way too many people have bought into.
Let's just fix it.
They're told that this is a fix, and nobody ever steps back and says, Hey, is this fixing anything, which it isn't, or is it going to make matters a lot worse?
I believe we are going to have to reverse this ethanol decision before 2012.
Because when we get to that point, corn might be seven dollars a bushel.
And if corn is seven dollars a bushel, the cost of everything that we eat and consume is going to be about twice as high.
Corn is the starting point for everything.
The ethanol mandate isn't saving the planet.
And in many cases, it's environmentally abusive.
Now I'm from Milwaukee and I ought to know.
Remember that beer commercial?
Who was that?
I'm from Milwaukee and I ought to know.
Blats or was it Pabst?
Blats, I'm from Milwaukee.
Should I should I reveal where you're from?
Yes, uh by remarkable coincidence, uh, the chief of staff is that are you still the chief of staff or have you been reassigned?
Your chief of staff of this program is from a suburb of Milwaukee, so we both won't be way too much about beer.
If the manufacture of beer requires massive amounts of water.
You can't make an alcohol without using a lot of water.
Well, ethanol is an alcohol.
You have any idea how much water these ethanol plants go through just to produce a small amount of ethanol.
So we're using all sorts of water, which has environmental consequences.
We're creating a fuel that has to be shipped rather than pip.
You're creating a fuel that has to be shipped twice.
You're then requiring that it be added to gasoline.
It is a fuel that on its own is so expensive that the government has to subsidize it to the tune of about 45 cents a gallon, and you're putting it in cars even though it is less fuel efficient than the regular old gasoline.
It is a crazy public policy, particularly when you see what's happening to every other part of the economy that it affects.
And because we're diverting all this corn from its current uses into ethanol, everything else is going through the roof.
Check out the cola you drink and check out where that price is.
It's because of the ethanol.
McDonald's says that the increase in their food costs is taking about a penny or two off the bottom line on the share price right now.
Everybody's food costs are going up.
Because corn starts everything.
It's just a crazy public policy, and it's never had any real opposition because the alternative has been oil, and oil is very politically unpopular.
Well, you know what?
While corn indeed is an American made product and it's grown by American farmers and these ethanol plants are operated by Americans.
We actually have an American oil industry, and everybody wants to portray it as the great Satan, but it's not.
We have oil companies that are based in the United States with shareholders all over the United States and employees in the United States.
We have oil service companies that are based in the United States and employ thousands and thousands of workers.
We have people who work on refineries.
We have people that work at every level of the American oil service industry.
It is not a terrible industry.
It produces a product that's made in America that we haven't found a decent substitute for.
And I hope we do.
I'd love to see the hydrogen car become affordable and see it work.
They're making tremendous progress on the battery cars.
They're not there yet, but the hybrid technology that some of the automakers are embracing is starting to work.
We may come up with something that is a great replacement for gasoline.
But the market's going to decide what that is.
If you can come up with a car that runs off a battery that'll give you 400 miles before having to be charged, and you don't ever have to gas up again, people will buy that car.
The same thing with regard to hydrogen or any other technology that comes out there.
This problem can't be solved, but it isn't going to be solved by taking a bad fuel, forcing people to use it, and drive up the cost of everything else.
Do I sound like an ideologue on this?
Yeah, I do.
Uh one-eight hundred-282-2882 is Russia's telephone number to Wassaw, Wisconsin.
Howie, it's your turn on EIB.
Mark, I really appreciate your taking my call this morning.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Um I have been listening to Rush Limbaugh for a long, long time, uh, a man who has made social studies fun.
And in fact, I get the limbaugh letter.
This June, Rush interviewed a man by the name of Thomas Sowell who published a book, Basic Economics.
Now in my own I I want to interject, Tom Sowell's the great economist from uh he's at the Hoover Institution, which is near Stanford.
He is one of my uh heroes.
He's one of the greatest conservative thinkers and writers out there.
Amen.
And as I read his book, I bought a copy of his book and I and I am reading his book right now, and for crying out loud, basic economics, I can't put it down because of the way he has gone to great extent to explain things in terms that that I can understand, and don't get me wrong, I'm an educated man.
I have a master's degree shortly.
Okay, how does this tie into our ethanol discussion then?
Okay, uh into the ethanol discussion.
You are right on the market here, uh, right on the money with talking about how uh a product, corn that can be used for both food and fuel, needs to be left alone by the government.
Take the subsidies out of it, because according to what Sowell is saying in his book, Basic Economics, the market will take care of itself.
The market will set the price for a qu a bushel of corn.
The market will set the drive for how much corn is going to be used for fuel or food or any of those.
And it's actually easy to explain this.
If we have a certain amount of corn in the United States, and you take half of it and use it for fuel, it's going to drive up the price of the remaining corn.
And it's not surprising that that's what's happened.
As I said, I've got the Wall Street Journal Commodity Prices in front of me.
Everything everything that is corn based is up.
The cattle, the hogs, the chickens, the eggs, the milk, not to mention the corn itself.
Corn is up to four and a quarter a bushel.
If we get a drought this summer, it could hit five bucks.
It really could.
For corn.
Which was one of the most affordable commodities that we've had.
Now the benefits are there obviously for the corn growers.
They're getting a windfall off of that.
But if we presume that that's a good thing, why not mandate every product that's made in America and inflate the price of everything?
And while the people who produce it, they're going to be in great shape.
You could take that illogic to almost any extent.
We what we have done is we've created an evil oil and created a good ethanol and just assume that there wouldn't be any consequences from that decision.
Well, there are consequences out there.
It's terrible public policy.
Well, and if we left the government out of it, once again, the market would take care of itself, and uh fuel oil, whether it was made out of corn or petroleum, would find it its right marker in the price share, and these things, the market and the economy would take care of itself.
Thank you for the call, Howie.
To uh Ann Arbor, Michigan, John, you're on EIB.
I'm a farmer, and I have agreed with everything you have said.
But there are three very important quick points I'll make which take the argument even further.
And that is number one, ethanol has been subsidized all the way from concept to tailpipe.
You miss the fact that the government is requiring the automakers to build products now in the increasing numbers to use the darn stuff and reflect brought to the refinery.
You're right.
The flex fuel vehicles are also being mandated.
You're right.
And number two, farmers like myself are now diverting those acres that were growing wheat and soybeans and vegetables and other crops to corn.
Good point.
So let me interrupt your point at that for a second, if I could, John.
Uh I was quoting all the commodity prices earlier.
Soybeans, way up over a year ago.
Wheat, way up over a year ago.
That's the trickle effect that you mentioned because for taking land that had been used for other things, there are no shortages of that, sure.
So less those green people who want to eat soy products other than meat are going to find a lot less of them produced in this country now, because uh there's more money in growing corn, and that's what farmers are doing.
Look at the acreage planting estimates and so forth, and you will see there's a lot less wheat planted, there's a lot less soybean planted, that meaning higher flour, higher soy products, which leads to the third and most important point of all.
And that is, I would like to ask you and everyone, would you rather import your fuel or would you rather import your food?
Even little Tuffy is getting poisoned from imported cat food.
Now, as this nation grows more and more and more dependent upon imported fuel uh imported food, because we're choosing to burn our food in our fuel tanks, where does that take us?
Do we want to rely on others for our gas tank or for our food supply?
And that is where all this ultimately will take us, and two years from today, the uh you know, the congressional hearings will be held uh because of the human outcry of people being uh not happy with the imported food, which seems rather cool at the moment to some people.
But do you want to be dependent upon foreign fuel or foreign food?
Thank you for the call, John.
His points were outstanding.
I'm Mark Delling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
My name is Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I uh on my program in Milwaukee, whenever I have a topic that I really care about that the audience isn't reacting as strongly as I believe they ought to be, I just keep threatening to switch over to Paris Hilton.
You don't call on this.
I'm gonna talk about Paris Hilton.
So I'm now handed by you want me to do this Paris Hill tonight.
I uh this is actually interesting.
I apologize to the audience who wants Russia's show to be a Paris free zone, but from the Associated Press, the city's top prosecutor's office, this is Los Angeles, got Paris Hilton jailed for violating probation by driving with a suspended license and then condemned her early release.
On Monday, city attorney Rocky Delgadillo was the one apologizing for keeping quiet about a 2004 accident in which his wife crashed his city issued vehicle while driving on a suspended license.
I realize that I should have spoken up earlier.
That was a mistake, Delgadillo said at a news conference.
I mishandled the situation, and I apologize.
Delgadillo, however, insisted his wife did not receive any special treatment.
He also said his wife's violation is not comparable to the Paris Hilton case.
So The mean old city attorney who tried so hard to get poorer Paris thrown in the slammer for committing the terrible offense of driving without a license.
His own wife drove without a license and crashed a car, which was his city owned car.
That is kind of beautiful.
All the Paris fans say, see, let Paris out.
She is being persecuted.
Uh can't believe I'm doing this second Michael Bloomberg related topic of the program, and it's not even the last.
He's got a proposal to impose congestion pricing on people who drive their cars in Manhattan.
I think 86th Street is the northernmost boundary.
He wants to charge a special fee of eight dollars a day for anybody who wants to bring their car into that zone.
What do you think?
Dumb good idea.
Dumb, dumb.
Seems dumb, but I'm not sure why it is dumb.
On a related note, New York City students could earn as much as five hundred dollars a year for doing well on standardized tests and showing up for class in a new program to begin this fall.
City officials announced yesterday.
And the Harvard economist who created the program is joining the inner circle of schools Chancellor Joel Klein according to an official briefed on the hiring.
Both Mr. Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, that's three Bloomberg stories in one program, have been eager to hear Professor Fryer's thoughts on how to reverse the persistent lagging of poor and minority students who make up most of the city's public school enrollment.
But educators have been skeptical saying students have to love learning for its own sake, not for cash prizes.
The program as being proposed would pay kids who do well on standardized tests up to $500.
They'd be literally given cash if they do well on standardized tests.
Now this idea has a lot going against it.
First of all, it's the brainchild of a Harvard economist.
So right then and there, you've got to be really skeptical about it.
Secondly, it strikes me the wrong way.
I've got a butt here, though.
Aren't we supposed to reward achievement?
Isn't that what the market is really all about?
Now let's suppose they do this.
Obviously, if you dangle 500 bucks out there, at least some kids are going to study harder and apply themselves more.
They're going to show up for the tests, they may bet you better than they otherwise would have done, because that money's hanging around out there.
The money would be privately raised.
They're not suggesting using tax dollars.
Why is this a bad idea?
Liberals like to think emotionally and conservatives like to think logically.
I'm not sure I can make a logical case against this.
So I'm going to do something a little unusual here.
I honestly don't know if I think this is a good idea or not, although I'm flirting with it being potentially an idea worth trying.
You tell me whether or not you like it.
And I want something more than just, well, you shouldn't pay people.
You should be learning because that's the right thing to do.
You've got in urban America, millions of kids who aren't learning.
The New York school system, if it's like every other urban school system in America, is almost dysfunctional.
In my own community of Milwaukee, the school system is it's it's it's r it's a wreck.
It's just a train wreck.
The dropout rates are through the roof.
Those that do graduate have terrible academic scores.
It's common for the kids that are recruited to college to not have to be it not be able to play their first year in collegiate sports because they can't hit the academic requirements.
It's just a dysfunctional system.
If you can do something to get kids to apply themselves, what really is the downside?
On the other hand, on the other hand, it does seem to almost subsidize failure by implying that we're going to be paying money to the worst school kids in the worst school systems out there whom we certainly wouldn't be willing to do this in a more affluent suburban district.
So you tell me whether or not you like it, and I'm open to be convinced that the telephone number is 1800 282 2882.
New York City considering a plan to pay students up to $500 a year if they do well on standardized tests.
Why standardized tests?
Well, that's the thing that they've got to do well on to keep their money train flowing.
The standardized tests are linked to no child left behind and to all sorts of other state and federal aid programs.
You tell me if you think it's a good idea or not.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on EIB.
I've made fun of programs like this in the past.
Get a couple of free McDonald's hamburgers if you get good grades, get tickets to a baseball game.
Seem to me that it cheapened the whole notion of academics that this is something that you do to make yourself a better person, a more employable person.
It's something that should be a reward unto itself.
On the other hand, New York City is flirting with a plan to pay kids who do well in standardized tests up to five hundred dollars a year.
Given that we have so many incentives right now for doing poorly, you want to get a lot of attention at school, act up and be a jerk.
You'll have nineteen million counselors and specialists willing to work with you.
Maybe there's something to this.
I honestly don't know what I think about it.
Let's go to the telephones, Overland Park, Kansas.
Andy, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark is Sandy from Owen Park, Kansas.
I spent uh 15 years as a teacher in the New York City area, about seven of those years I taught at uh reform school, so I have pretty good knowledge of how to you know teach and reward uh difficult children, let's say.
The problem you have isn't with the plan.
You know, it it's a positive reinforcement, it's it's consistent with the way the free market works, etc.
However, you've got the most liberal teachers union in the world in New York City and and running the educational system up there.
These are the same people that will tell you if you uh play uh volleyball and one team wins and another team loses, it's bad for the self-esteem laws, etc.
etc.
How are these this liberal, you know, teachers group going to fairly and objectively administer a program of reward like this and still be consistent with their policy of not hurting anybody's self-discovery?
Well, and that's what you the the origin the opposition from this initially seems to be coming from teachers for exactly the reason that you mentioned.
Now, the proposal from the guy from Harvard is that it would be tied to the standardized test scores, meaning the teacher's subjectivity is taken out of play.
I'm presuming they're talking about the annual series of tests that you have to take, which are right now used for no child left behind, they're used because of state mandates and so on.
So if you use the same rating scale, you simply say a kid who gets this, such and such a score gets fifty bucks, a hundred bucks, hundred and fifty, two hundred up and down the line.
It would fly in the face of what you're right, what these teachers tend to believe, which is that you're stigmatizing those who aren't doing well.
That's one of the reasons why I think that this might be an idea worth merit, because it does go up against the entire trend in education, which has been to say that failure is as good as success, that creative math is as good as regular math, that reading should be something in which you interpret things whatever way you want to interpret it, and and so on down the line.
So I think that there's something there to this.
The problem with it is is that it implies that we've got to give people cash in order to do the right thing in life, and that's the concern that I have.
But I could go either way on it.
You're right, though.
It flies in the face of every educational trend that we're seeing in this country, which may make it a good thing rather than a bad thing.
Mark, I I theoretically, I think it's a good idea, and we use reward systems and punishment systems, obviously in the reform schools where I work, but it's going to be in the execution.
And even with standardized testing, pardon my expression, you could bastardize the way those results come out too.
You're saying that the people who you used to work with in New York are a bunch of quacks.
Yes.
Thank you for the call.
That's what I thought he was saying.
To uh Jess in San Antonio, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark, uh, if my my thought is if the objective is to get kids to go to school Who otherwise wouldn't go to school and they're not using my tax dollar, why should anybody complain about that?
I mean, after all, uh, people set up charitable things for all sorts of purposes that only deal with a very small percentage of the population.
Nothing about that says it has to be fair.
Now, if they're used by tax dollars, that's a different story, but here are the concerns that while this is going to be started with private funds, how many good ideas that have been started with private funds have been co-opted by government?
I would not want tax dollars to be used for it.
I do agree with you that if this is based on test scores, it's much better than simply paying them to show up, which has been used in a lot of school districts around the country.
See, school districts' aid from the state and from the federal government is based largely on popul on the school attendance.
So on the days in which they do the head counts, they come up with every bribe possible to give students just to get them to show up.
Well, that's ridiculous.
In many cases, the people who are showing up are the disruptive ones who would be better off if they weren't in school.
This is based on doing well on the test, which means you have to actually apply yourself toward the studies.
If you're going to do well on the test, it's an indication that you must have learned something.
Now, there is a problem, and that's this.
In many school districts right now, they're doing something called teaching to the test.
Because they know what the standardized tests are looking for.
They're teaching specifically what is tested as opposed to a more broader based education.
In some respects, that's good if the tests are focused on the basics.
In other respects, it's bad if their purpose for teaching is not to prepare kids for anything other than to pass this test so that they can get more outside aid.
The thing that makes this an interesting idea is you're actually giving a reward to kids for doing something well as opposed to every other kind of government funding program that's out there, which seems to be aimed at every failure that we have in our world.
That's true, but and and with the even the mention of government funding scares the heck out of me.
But this could go one step further.
The previous caller was worried about the teachers' union.
Heck, since this is charitable money, maybe this could go outside the teachers' union.
Maybe vouchers all of a sudden could be brought into play on this, and magnet schools and things of that nature could be used for this purpose.
Well, that's something that gives me concern, though.
If this is such a great idea, how come the private schools haven't been doing it?
Well, the teachers' unions, why?
Well, but I I said the private schools, though, which tend not to be unionized.
Thank you for the call.
You do have, though, in urban environments, just awful school systems.
Absolutely awful, and people are searching for solutions and they don't know what to come up with.
Most of the people who run these school systems are liberal, which is why we've had the problems in the first place.
But you're talking about kids who are coming from dysfunctional homes, from neighborhoods that are crime infested.
Many of their friends are disruptive people themselves.
They go into classrooms in which the teacher is unable to maintain any discipline because the school administration doesn't allow the teacher to show discipline.
It's a very difficult situation than the one that exists in most of the rest of the country where you still have a lot of strong families and you've got a sense of discipline in the schools.
So the solutions that might work might the solutions rather that might not be needed in a more affluent community or in small town America might not apply in a school district like New York.
To Dave in New York City or on the Russian Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey, how are you doing, Locke?
I'm great, thanks.
Well, I would take it a little bit further.
I would say that uh perhaps they could tie it to either public assistance in the household, which would get a little more parental uh, you know, influence with the children, which the teachers say that they don't get enough of, if there's a threat of maybe reducing public assistance because the child's not attending school or doing well.
In other words, you want to make this a two-pronged program, pay the kids who do well on the test and dock the one, yeah, get the money from the kids who do poorly on the test.
I you know, I I love the notion of incentives and disincentives, but the chances of getting something like that done in New York City are probably non existent.
We you know, our mental the mentality, you know, is that nobody is responsible for their own failure.
They're fighting oppression and economic hardship and the Bush administration and all of the other things that are keeping people down.
It isn't their fault, so we're not going to sanction them.
You are Right, though.
The kids who do well in school, almost always, there are exceptions, but almost always come from solid families.
And whether you're talking about an affluent community or one that is facing significant crime and poverty problems, the better the family situation, the better the kid is going to do in most cases.
There are always exceptions.
The best families can produce screwed up kids.
And somehow, miracle of miracles, in some very bad family situations, some kids come out and emerge just fine.
But the norm is that if you've got a bad home situation, no father figure present, mother with all sorts of problems of her own, that the kid is going to fall into the wrong groups, the kid is going to have the wrong influences and start adopting these attitudes that school isn't cool, school isn't the place to be, the gang is where I need to be, that's where I find my sense of home and community.
When you get this in the second and third and fourth generations, which is what we're facing right now, it's an enormous problem.
Dangling a little bit of money out there is probably just a quick fix.
But I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad fix because almost every government program that we have right now is aimed at rewarding failure.
Welfare is for people who have low income.
So is food stamps.
But who gets sent to the counselor?
Who gets the extra time?
Who gets the extra tutoring?
Generally the kids who aren't doing that well.
Those that are doing well, those that are coming out of decent environments, we don't provide much for them.
This at least would be a way of rewarding people who are doing the right thing.
Thank you for the call.
Very quickly to Galconda, Illinois.
John, it's your turn on the Russian ball program.
Yes, thank you for taking my call.
I think it would be a great idea if they would put this in a savings account for the children.
And once they graduate, they could use it to go to trade school or help with their college tuition.
But you, John, uh you gotta we gotta think this through.
Yes, sir.
Do you really want to set up a fund overseen by government to save all I can see them raiding this baby every time?
I would rather get it right in the hands of the kids instantly.
If it's from private donations, the government wouldn't be involved.
Yeah, I know, but I'm not sure that it would work then.
If the idea is to motivate the kid to do well, you've got to let that kid convert that cash into hamburgers and uh music as quickly as possible.
I mean, otherwise the kid's not going to see any value in it.
The idea here is to give something that really has meaning for these kids and use it as a way to induce them to do well on these tests.
So I think that means you gotta slap the cash in their hands right away.
Thank you for the call, John.
Appreciate it.
My name is Mark Elling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on EIB.
All right, let's start with this premise.
Kobe Bryant is an idiot.
Can we accept that and now move on to the actual story?
He's an idiot.
Kobe Bryant had the world around his finger a few years ago.
He had the best center in the NBA and the best coach in the NBA on his team, and they were winning championships with ease.
I think they won three in a row out there.
And Kobe, being Kobe decided that he didn't like having to share the glory.
He didn't like the fact that Shaquille O'Neal got a lot of the credit.
He didn't like the fact that Phil Jackson got a lot of the credit.
So he went and he cried to the owner of the Lakers.
I don't want these people around here anymore.
He wanted to prove that he could win on his own.
So Shaq left, Phil Jackson left.
Guess what?
The Lakers were terrible.
So Phil so so Kobe started to cry again, and they begged Phil Jackson to came come back, they gave Phil Jackson 10 million dollars a year.
He came back, they still aren't able to win.
They're winning more than they did without Phil Jackson, but they're still not able to win.
Now, Kobe Bryant is crying that the Lakers haven't given them enough given given him enough good players around him and he wants to be traded.
Well, what an idiot.
Everyone would have told you that a few years ago when you demanded that the good players that are around you leave.
So we start with the premise that Kobe Bryant is an idiot, which gets to the story that I find more interesting.
Apparently, he was talking to some fans in a parking lot last month.
And one of the fans had a cell phone camera that records full motion video and audio.
Those things are becoming pervasive.
And while he was talking to these fans, not knowing that this was being recorded on the cell phone, he apparently made some extremely inflammatory comments, including ridiculing one of his teammates, Andrew Bynum, talking very harshly about the Lakers.
The guy who made this tape is now shopping it around.
And he's apparently planning to put it on the internet for a dollar ninety-nine a pop.
He played it for some members of the news media yesterday, and apparently Kobe comes off looking terribly.
That he sounds selfish, that it's just a terrible representation of himself.
Now, why Kobe Bryan's talking to anybody in a parking lot, I don't know, but he did it, and he comes off badly.
The larger point that I want to raise here is this.
There is an absolute revolution going on in America right now, combining two technologies that I think are going to change everything about the way we live our lives.
The YouTube type technology, not just YouTube, but all of its competitors that have the ability to take any video and just slap it up on the internet.
It's changing the entire American news media.
The reason that the Michael Richards racist rant at the comedy shop in Los Angeles got such incredible play is because you could see it.
Somebody had a cell phone video, they slapped it up.
In that case, it wasn't YouTube, it was one of the other ones.
Slapped it up there, and the thing spread across the internet like wildfire.
It's taking away the power of the mass media to control what gets put out and what doesn't.
The cell phone camera, which eventually everyone's going to have, allows virtually everybody to be their own news producer.
This is both good and bad.
You're going to see people completely take advantage of other people by recording them without knowing it, slapping it up on the internet.
This can be used against guys who are in the wrong place with the wrong woman.
It can be used against corporate executives who are doing things that they would prefer not to be seen.
It can be used against celebrities, it can be used against anyone.
On the other hand, it also is going to empower and enable people to capture things that need to be put out and need to be thrown around out there.
We're seeing just in the last few weeks several different instances of things being put up on YouTube that have had a significant impact on public policy issues.
In the case of this Kobe Bryant thing, it's going to affect people's attitudes toward him.
You're empowering almost everyone who's in any situation to be able to mass produce something.
And if you've got something that's of interest, titillating, lurid whatever, it's going to find a home on the internet, and by word of web, it's going to spread real, real look at all the Paris Hilton stuff that's shown up out there.
I think that you we cannot possibly fathom how far this is going to go for both better and for worse.
It's going to be an enabler for perverts, but it's also going to be a way for people who have something to say and something to offer and something to show to be able to break through the current barriers that the mass media puts up in place.
So you watch now how this video thing takes off and see if I'm not right that we're not seeing a revolution in technology and media content because of these two things.
My name is Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
Mark Belling in for Rush.
On the show yesterday, I made a comment that the mainstream media is beginning to represent, resemble the paparazzi, and it's hard to tell the difference.
Here's a story from Texas.
The CBS affiliate in Tyler, Texas, is naming as its new anchor person, a 24-year-old woman named Lauren Jones, who is a bikini model magazine pinup, and one time Price is right spokesmodel and WWE SmackDown performer.
No television experience whatsoever.
They are hiring her and they are going to put her on the air for a reality TV series called Anchor Woman.
Now you tell me what what the difference there is between news and pure fantasy.
The line between journalism and fantasy isn't being blurred.
There isn't even a line anymore.
I appreciate your listening to me, Roger Hedgecock's here tomorrow.
My name is Mark Belling.
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