Canadian Cynic

Cutting off your nose to spite your face

OK, so it's old news how right-wing Sinclair Broadcasting is planning to air an anti-Kerry propaganda film some time between now and the election. But here's where it gets positively hysterical.

Over at Eschaton, Atrios was kind enough to punch up Sinclair's share price and its trend recently. Ooooooh ... not good, due to the organized efforts of outraged lefties to boycott Sinclair's advertisers. If I was a Sinclair shareholder, I'd be getting a bit pissed right about now.

But here's the good part. This Associated Press article over at TruthOut describes how a cable pay-per-view company apparently just broke its contract to show Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11", but it's the very last paragraph of the article that's the kicker:

Also Friday, Moore offered to let Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. air the movie for free. Such a deal would likely get a chilly reception at Sinclair, a broadcaster with a reputation for conservative politics that plans to air a critical documentary about John Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities on dozens of TV stations two weeks before the election.

If I was a Sinclair shareholder, I would be going absolutely berserk reading that. The thought of getting the most popular documentary in the history of the universe, for free, and undoubtedly being able to sell commercial time during its airing -- Good God, how does life get any better than that for a broadcasting company?

And yet, Sinclair appears ready to bone their shareholders up the ass for ideological principles. If I had a sizable financial stake in Sinclair, I'd be on the phone to a lawyer, asking what it took to sue the company for selling out the financial interests of its shareholders.