I'm so old

can remember when the F.C.C. used to actually act in the public interest sometimes.
I can remember when the F.C.C. could serve the public interest just by doing nothing....
But those days have gone the way of ABBA and now the nexus of media, the public, and commerce is guarded by F.C.C. Chairmediocrity Michael Powell...son of the incumbent Secretary of State.

Powell is a barrister, and a perfectly disposable one at that....which means in the roiling fertile political stew that is Washington he's got to make his bones now so that he can live off the necessary contacts and sweetheart later.
In a normal Republic a preposterous pompous fraud like Michael would be righting divorce court briefs and clipping coupons in Silver Spring.
But the Brave New Class of professional conservative bureaucrats (conservacrats) is ever in need of men, men with the courage to sell out this nation for chump change once their public tenure ends.
These are the mini-Cheney's of DC, there to make the inevitable auction of public assets goes as smoothly as possible sans fuss or bother.
Now, I don't wanna call Michael a corruptard or anything so crude, he HAS pondered at length decided that the public interest demands more corporate ownership of multiple local media outlets.
Apparently your local newspapers and radio and TV news are not trite, violent, biased, profit-driven and joyless enough....And if you like Fox style reportage , just wait til it's the only thing you can get on the 11pm news.
A decision like this is worth billions to dollars to serial acquisition maniacs like Rupert Murdoch and Mel Karmazin who are now free to buy up newspapers and TV stations in the same market without regard to socialistic notions as free competition and freedom of choice.
And if, five or eight years from now Former F.C.C. Chair Powell is found on the board of News Corp or Infinity Broadcasting....well remember you read it here first.
No doubt he'll be deep in that poisonous swamp where fundraising, lobbying and policy mix up a rancid brew....no doubt it'll be a bigger and more profitable swamp by then.

Sick
Demented
Typical....