History Channel As Mouthpiece for Koch

Interesting observation!

Americans Against the Tea Party

If you're watching some of the garbage on the "history channel" you're putting money in the Koch's pocket - and the Tea Party's coffers.

Watch Evidence of the History Channel Being Nothing But a Mouthpiece for the Right Wing (VIDEOS)

Posted by: Richard Rowe

September 7, 2013

Pay close enough attention to commercials, and you can learn everything you need to know about anyone. Commercials can allow us to look into our web of ties to Corporate America, put its spiders on a single string and understand the loops they weave to catch the greediest of flies.

Lately, the Koch brothers (manifesting as Americans for Prosperity) have been tapping the sweet, retired, conservative oldness of the History Channel’s daytime demographics. During any particular episode of Pawn Stars, you might see an ad like this:

Yes, that’s one of the many ads that the History (and Military History) Channel play during daytime hours, and the web address given takes you here, to a page talking about the risk factors involved with the implementation of Obamacare. While claiming to “answer” questions about Obamacare (no “Affordable Care Act” crap here), the Koch Bros. website reads like a list of things that Bill “Harlem Jazz” Clinton would laugh at. Watch his defense of Obamacare here:

But give the Koch Brothers’ marketing people credit; its reach into the brains of History viewers is more deeply multilayered than you might think. In an epic example of political crossover, Pawn Stars Rick Harrison has become the latest darling adopted by the Corporatist Right; on June 21st, he popped his slightly bulbous head into Glen Beck’s holy of holies :

During the course of the interview, Harrison took the opportunity to go on recored complaining about Nevada’s zoning laws, and the fact that it would have cost him $400,000 to tear down a wall to expand his showroom into the warehouse. See, the Pawn Shop is in a Vegas historic district, which probably means that Frank Sinatra buried a hooker there. Like most places in historic districts, permits for demolition (particularly on load-bearing walls) are very difficult to obtain because they affect the resale value of the building. For someone who buys and sells history for a living, you’d think Rick Harrison would be a little more understanding.

Harrison also went off on a tear about a sexual predator who hadn’t been convicted in Utah. Though he might have mentioned that Utah’s violent crime and sexual assault rates per capita suddenly spiked by nearly a third higher in the ten years after private prison company MTC set up shop in 1980. But, where there’s money to be made, the spiders will spin webs.

And money is what it really comes down to, doesn’t it? You could take the cynical, ad hominem route and point out that of course, a person who bargains for the highest price, sells and resells other peoples’ valuables for a living, is naturally prone to centering his life around money. Then, there’s the “Vegas Effect” of greed and gambling. But, it takes more than location and predisposition to turn a businessman into a corporatist drone.

Rick Harrison has the same problem that most small business owners and medium-high income earners do in this country: small businesses and the kind-of wealthy do bear the greatest burden of taxes in this country: smaller companies can’t hire accountants to squeeze the company through every loophole in the book, so they wind up paying most of the full 39 percent ALL companies are supposed to pay.

http://aattp.org/watch-evidence-of-the-history-channel-being-nothing-but-a-mouthpiece-for-the-right-wing/