Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!


Tim Robbins at the National Association of Broadcasters:

I would like to start with an apology. To Rush and Sean, and Billo and Savage and Laura what's-her-name. A few years ago they told America that because I had different opinions on the wisdom of going to war that I was a traitor, a Saddam lover, a terrorist supporter, undermining the troops. I was appealing at the time for the inspectors to have more time to find those weapons of mass destruction. I was a naïve dupe of left wing appeasement. And how right they were. If I had known then what I know now, if I had seen the festive and appreciative faces on the streets of Baghdad today, if I had known then what a robust economy we would be in, the unity of our people, the wildfire of democracy that has spread across the Mideast, I would never have said those traitorous, unfounded and irresponsible things. I stand chastened in the face of the wisdom of the talk radio geniuses, and I apologize for standing in the way of freedom...


Video of the whole thing here.

Comes with a special shout out to John McCain:

Radio has come a long way from the early days when family's gathered around the trusty old Philco to listen to such programs as Superman, Sherlock Holmes and Amos and Andy. Thanks to music and sound effects, this magical medium was able to transport families to a place where a man could fly, a brilliant detective could solve the most perplexing of crimes, and two white guys could portray ridiculously offensive black stereotypes for the amusement of millions.

The first broadcast occurred on Christmas Eve in 1906 at Brant Rock, MA, when a man named Fessenden played his violin, sang a song and read Bible verses into a wireless telephone of his own invention. His goal was to find financial backers, but no investor of the day believed that radio could ever replace the most popular leisure activity of the day; listening to the hoot owl while playing the zither as your 14-year-old niece bounced on your knee. Some of you may remember. It was all the rage in the early century.

But soon broadcasting over the radio caught on and zither playing and child molestation were a thing of the past

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