Kevin Martin - This Is Your Life

Kevin Martin, this is your life.

You were hand picked by our Commander in-Chief to finish what your bumbling predecessor Michael Powell started but failed to see through.

Deregulate media.

Lift all ownership restrictions.

What went wrong, Kevin?

Hell, your wife works for Bush string-puller, Dick Cheney. You should be one of the most influential wheeler dealers on Capitol Hill.

Instead, look at you. Worthless, hopeless, and vote-less.

Pushing Fumbles around doesn’t count. Everyone pushes Fumbles around at the NAB.

Granted, Capitol Hill is a mess.

Everyone will abhor everyone else until the primaries are over.

There’s little maneuvering you can do when you have a pit of pols in both parties out for the presidential nod. That's why no one's returning your calls.

And the guy that crowned you Chairman is such a lame duck even his party wants nothing to do with him.

Kevin Martin, this is your life.

Two words will follow you around for the rest of your life: No juice.

No juice as in no juice on Capitol Hill.

All you had to do, Kevin, was deliver full deregulation. Loosen up those stifling ownership rules before Christmas.

See, the reason deregulation hasn’t worked over the past decade is because there isn’t enough of it. Logical, isn’t it, Kevin?

You even set a deadline of December 18. That was so your pro-deregulation special interest group buddies would have a full week to fill your Christmas stocking once you filled theirs.

Instead, you have most of Capitol Hill along with anti-deregulation special interest groups, both liberal and conservative, calling for your Boy Sherman head. If the NRA doesn’t get you, NOW will. Who would’ve thought?

How about Trent Lott (R-MS) and Bryon Dorgan (D-ND) being on the same page?

Let’s talk about that letter from Lott and Dorgan, Kevin, which read, that you must put “sufficient mechanisms in place to ensure that local broadcasters are serving their local communities before considering any changes that would relax the existing rules governing media ownership.” Or this one, “The FCC should not rush forward and repeat mistakes of the past.”

And you thought one had to be a card-carrying liberal to talk like that?

Even Obama’s jumping into the frey. Did you get his letter where he called your December 18 drop-deadline “irresponsible” and your data “inadequate?” He may have slipped in the polls – but he’s still carrying a lot of influence in all the right circles.

It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the candidates – Democrats and Republicans – will begin to scrutinize your every devious move.

Kevin Martin, this is your life.

You’re supposed to set the agenda but others did it for you and it’s not the one you wanted.

They’ve even rearranged your schedule for the next couple of months. There’s that localism hearing on October 31 in Washington. Then there’s a media ownership session in Seattle on November 2. You’d better leave some wiggle room in your schedule, too. The Senate is also planning to have you spinning on a rotisserie next month.

Kevin Martin, this is your life.

It may not be a complete wash.

It’s Christmas and the lobbyists and other assorted influence peddlers hired by Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell are bringing their bag of Christmas goodies to Capitol Hill in exchange for the elimination of the cross-ownership rules newspaper-radio-TV rules by the FCC and Congress.

Zell wants to buyout the Tribune Company and Murdoch wants to hang on to both the New York Post and his WNYW TV station in the same city.

It depends on how sorry your 3-2 majority cronies at the FCC feel about the decline and fall of newspaper circulation.

Whatever it takes.

Kevin, consider yourself lucky that you may – not will - may win that one – but then you’ll have Congress on you like a starving pit bull.

Your problems are just beginning, Kevin.

There’s that GAO report that tells of your selective leaks to certain media groups on your behind-the-scenes dealings at the FCC. You’ve kept that one out of the news – but not for much longer.

Kevin, this is your life. No one else wants it.