corrente

Those of us of a certain age remember when we loved the name "Sinclair" because it had that gorgeous green dinosaur logo on its gas stations. The name is attached to a different kind of station these days, and the affection is wearing off fast.

(via LATimes)

NEW YORK — The conservative-leaning [leaning?? As in "tilted so far right their asses point skyward" leaning? Ahem, back to our story] Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday.

Sinclair has told its stations — many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida — to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," sources said. Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan.

"Sinclair Broadcasting" is indeed the company that ordered its ABC affiliates not to air the "Nightline" show where Ted Koppel's showing of the faces and reading the names of the (then) 700+ dead in Iraq was called "a political stunt to lessen American support for the war effort."

Now the discussion around leftyland has been along the lines of-- find out the advertisers and boycott them; fire off protests to the FCC (which of course will be ignored with Michael Powell in charge) and the rest of the usual.

I suggest reading the last graph here first:

"Stolen Honor" was made by Carlton Sherwood, a Vietnam veteran and former reporter for the conservative Washington Times who is also the author of a book [adulatory to the point of hagiography: Ed.] about the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

On the website for the film, he tells viewers, "Intended or not, Lt. Kerry painted a depraved portrait of Vietnam veterans, literally creating the images of those who served in combat as deranged drug-addicted psychopaths, baby killers" that endured for 30 years in the popular culture.

First off, given the topic, I don't think viewership is going to be all that great. People did the great Vietnam Rehashing back during the Swiftie Liars thing and those who could be persuaded to that view already were.

Second, look at the qualifications of the filmmaker here. I will defer to John Gorenfeld, expert in all things Moonie, if I'm wrong, but my bet is that this film will be so godawful as to be laughable. So over-the-top that it will boost Kerry votes in the areas where it's seen rather than the reverse Sinclair is counting on.

Thirdly--hey, remember the rules. We are lefties, we are in favor of free speech. The solution to bad speech is more speech. We don't cut off that with which we disagree, we outshout it.

Now is the time to deploy some of that Soros money. Find a competing station in every market Sinclair operates in and buy the time to run Going Upriver* in prime time as close to Oct. 30 as can be arranged.

*No endorsement of this particular website, about which I know nothing, is intended. It just came up on Google as being Canadian, which I figured would lower electoral bias.