Part-Time Pundit

Red vs. Blue: A Poor Ending to a Great Web Series

The popular web video series Red vs. Blue has put out their 100th and final episode of the series with three alternate endings. It marks the end of one of the staples of the Web 2.0 culture and citizen-produced media. It also is one of the few things that said culture has produced that doesn't make me want to head butt the sidewalk. Someone please tell Lonelygirl15 to stop making videos.

Web 2.0 as a media-producing enterprise is a remarkable failure. Sure, there are some successes such as Ask a Ninja and Barats and Berate, but for the most part the content produced are either cheap knock-offs or so stupid that it makes reality TV look good. Wikipedia makes better fiction than most of these attempts at entertainment.

The fact that Red vs. Blue has amassed such a following and had such a long run is remarkable for a society that has an attention span of about a half a second. I've enjoyed the series from the beginning, having seen all 100 episodes and all the PSA extra episodes they put out.

The first 25 or so episodes were the best by far. That isn't to say that after episode 25 they jumped the shark like say, Battlestar Galactica with the Season 3 finale (seriously Ron Moore, where is your brain?). But the episodes seemed to lull somewhat. It remained entertaining nonetheless. Towards the end of the series the quality stepped up greatly as the end was in sight which likely motivated the creators.

However, episode 100 is a dismal failure, and a poor ending to an otherwise good series. The fact that there were three different endings underlies the fact that the creators likely had no idea how to wrap up the series. They probably would have been better off to keep putting out episodes instead of wrapping it up arbitrarily at 100. The plot seemed to be something added on later in the series, and there was no thought at the time on how to bring it to a close. The disappointment was exaggerated because the series had such a good run before the last episode.

That said, the passing of Red vs. Blue (or at least the Blood Gulch Chronicles) will leave a void in the Internet. The only bright side is that likely the American worker will have five more minutes of productivity a week that they would have spent watching the series.

July 2nd, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Misc | one comment

Socializing the Free Market of Ideas

In response to the Center for American Progress's hit piece on talk radio imbalance, various Senators have expressed support for resurrecting the Cold War era "Fairness doctrine" which requires equal airtime for opposing points of view. Senator Feinstein (D-CA) specifically rejects she said they wanted a legislative fix for conservative talk radio, but still suspiciously supports the fairness doctrine as does Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). Senator Kerry (D-MA) has also expressed his support.

The underlying notion is that somehow conservative talk show hosts and conservative radio owners have colluded to produce an effective monopoly on talk radio. Instead of bringing anti-trust charges, they've decided to try to regulate it. They conveniently forget the frequent attempts (and failures) of left-wing radio to get and stay on the air. The fact that there have been so many left-wing radio shows that make it on the air (but eventually fail) shows that market entrance is not difficult.

There is a latent idea that the public is unable to come to the "correct" conclusions on policy because talk radio is indoctrinating them. This vicious, un-American and treasonous idea is unworthy of political debate in this country. People can be trusted to make up their own minds and much research indicates that people listen to conservative talk radio not to make up their minds, but because their minds are already made up. If people can't be trusted to make their own minds up, then we ought to be having a discussion on repealing the right to vote, not about media ownership.

One thing to notice is that the market of news and opinion is not synonymous with AM radio. There is the internet, television, movies, podcasting, print, books and lectures. While conservatives do apparently dominate talk radio, liberals dominate television, movies and certainly academic lectures. If one doesn't want to listen to AM radio, they can turn on the TV, surf the internet, or listen to a podcast. There is nothing even approaching a limitation of the flow of information.

Yet, the fairness doctrine is only to apply to talk radio which is obviously an ideological-based attack on certain speech. It is no mistake that Democrats are the voices supporting this (though to be fair certain Republicans are warm to the idea because politicians always like silencing criticism). The resistance to "immigration reform" (which is essentially legalizing at least 12 million illegal immigrants and then not addressing the problems that caused the issue in the first place) was based on talk radio and the cognizanti don't want the influence getting in their way.

As a compromise measure, if we are going to enact a "fairness doctrine" for the radio waves, we should do so also for television. Let's have fairness on NBC, ABC and CBS which are also transmitted over the air. Let's have fairness on the movies shown on those channels so that they fairly represent all viewpoints instead of the latent left-wing propaganda that animates Hollywood. Let's have fairness in the various sitcoms that all portray fast and loose morals. We could have real family-friendly entertainment again.

We could also apply the fairness doctrine to the Internet to balance left-wing biases outlets such as Wikipedia and the Daily Kos. Let's apply the fairness doctrine to colleges and the classroom where indoctrination is most prevalent (and most left-wing). The possibilities are endless and the lawyers could be well-employed. Let's empower the Family Research Council to litigate fairness on all our media outlets.

The "fairness doctrine" is a relic of the past for a reason which will accomplish little more than stifling speech and more accurately stifle only certain ideological forms of speech. In their benevolence, Democrats will allow conservatives to have "free speech" as long as they are not allowed audiences. Unfortunately for them, "free speech" doesn't work that way. The free market of ideas doesn't need to be socialized by those who would pre-ordain the ideas that we are to hold.

July 2nd, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Congress, Freedom of Speech, Politics | 6 comments