Thank Jeebus for the Chicks

The recent nonsense about them has inspired some concern about media consolidation:

Cumulus Media Inc. became a target for critics of media consolidation on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

Senators sharply questioned the free speech implications of a decision by the nation's second-largest radio broadcaster to temporarily ban the Dixie Chicks from its 42 country music stations' airwaves in March. The ban came following the band's criticism of President Bush as he was preparing to go to war in Iraq.

It's not a problem if an individual station makes that decision, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing he convened on radio ownership issues. But to make the decision for its 42 country stations at Cumulus' corporate headquarters "is an incredible act."

To "restrain their trade because they exercised their right of free speech is a strong argument about what media concentration has the possibility of doing," McCain told Cumulus Chairman and Chief Executive Lewis W. Dickey, who had been called to testify. "Because if someone else in another format offends you and you decide to censor those people, the erosion of the First Amendment in America is in progress."