Feud

Here for the past couple of months, we've been embroiled in a feud.

In one corner, we find Time-Warner cable, the people who provide me with a connection to the internet so that I can bore you with what I have to write.  They also provide our home with basic cable and would love to provide me with a land line telephone, too, if only I would let them.  T-W is a pretty darn big company which sometimes works well, and sometimes doesn't.  I fired them as my cable provider for over a year after they apparently cut my cable service three days after paying their inflated bill.

In the other corner is the Columbia Broadcasting System, or, CBS, purveyors of a fairly decent set of television programs which I enjoy from time to time.  CBS owns both television and radio stations throughout the country, including channel 11 and at least one radio station I listen to on a regular basis.  Having worked for a CBS affiliated radio station at one point, I am partial to the way CBS handles their radio news.

So, there's this feud going on between T-W and CBS having to do with rebroadcasting rights.  According to a third party (Belo, publisher of the Dallas Morning News), CBS wants a raise.  Whatever it was that they were charging T-W for rebroadcasting their television programs, CBS decided that they wanted more.

Apparently much more.

So, that means that we've got a feud going on.

For the better part of a couple of months, CBS has been telling us that "mean old Time-Warner is threatening to take our shows off the air!"  Time-Warner in the meantime has been telling us that CBS is the villain in this little drama.  Well, finally, CBS has been yanked from Time-Warner cable.  Time-Warner is telling us (in a crawl across the bottom of the screen of the replacement programming in half-hour intervals) that CBS will not allow rebroadcast of their signal.  CBS, on the CBS owned and operated radio station is advertising that it's Time-Warner's fault and that we should be flooding T-W's switchboards with continual calls of protest over the unfair treatment.

Someone or the other is bullshitting.  What we really need is for both sides to state their position so that we as consumers can make a rational decision as to what we want to do.  What we have are two large companies arguing back and forth attempting to make the other side look like Hitler.

It's kind of like politics.  Scratch that.  It's exactly like politics.

The Dallas Morning news has been covering some of the pre-2014 elections hi-jinx going on here in the Lone Star State.  Governor for Life Perry has decided that it's time for him to step down, creating a vacuum which seems to be sucking up every last Republican office holder into aspirations to move up a step on the totem pole.  The leading contender for Mr. Goodhair's slot is the current Attorney General here in Texas, whose only credits seem to be that he's adept at suing the Federal Government (27 times at last count - and he's wondering why the State can't get more Federal aid) and that he's so far to the right that there are feathers coming out of his right coat sleeve.  According to the Dallas Morning News, the current Attorney General has millions in his campaign chest and is intimidating any other potential candidate with the fear that if they run against him, he'll dig up something to use against any other contender to cast him or her in a negative light.

Uh, yeah.  I can see a really high-brow campaign coming up.  As high brow as The Three Stooges, that is.

This same crap is going on in Washington, too.  Let's see what we can do to put down the other guy instead of coming up with viable alternative solutions, or, paying attention to facts which just might get in the way of getting elected.

I'm tired of the bullshit from Time-Warner, from CBS, from Austin, from Washington, and from the local representatives right on down to (and including) the board of education.

Let's be honest, shall we?  Sure, life would be a little less interesting, perhaps, but I believe I'd appreciate the break.

Be Seeing You!

bdharrell