Winners and Losers

I remember growing up playing sports and games. The first thing I remember about this time was always being one of the last kids picked. (Maybe I shouldn't have grown up so stable.) The second thing I remember was there were winners and losers. (I was a party to both) The next thing that I remember is what i am going to write about today.

As a younger person I recall people losing a game and suddenly wanting to change the rules to make the game closer or even reverse the current rankings. Now if games are a predeccor to adult life. We play them to learn about rules and winning. We also play them to learn how to accept defeat and try again. But I have seen recently in the adult world a trend of wanting to change the rules because one side is losing.

A few years ago a man wanted to challenge the right-wing stranglehold on radio commentary. He created his own network Air-America. With a name like that and hosts with big names and huge followings this endeavor was too good to fail. Unfortunately it did fail. In the game of free airwaves, not enough people wanted to listen.

Left-wing talk radio was losing the battle. So what is the answer. Most people after a failure such as this would follow one of two choices. They would accept defeat and move on, either to another media or to something totally different. or They would try again, hopefully with a new and better plan.

But some on the left have learned the wrong lesson(or maybe never learned the lessons at all) while playing games growing up. If we are losing lets just change the rules. This rule change is called the "Fairness Doctrine". It is a rule change that will force station owners to air shows that no one in there listening demographic want to hear.

How can I be so certain that these shows are not wanted. Because capitalism works.

In this weeks news I read about more newspapers folding or retooling. Is this a bad thing. I am surprised environmentalist aren't cheering this, other than the majority of the papers are advocates of theirs. With more and more print media failing, this means less and less deforestation to make paper. But are these papers the exception to their rule.

The move away from print media may be a subject of a future blog.

In the future when someone is losing, be wary and vigilant in making sure they don't change the rules.