It turned out that Michael had just been fired from his job on the cable news network MSNBC. He had been the host of his own television talk show for some time by this point, and I’d caught bits and pieces of it a few times since it’s debut. It seemed that he had made a decidedly hostile and offensive remark to a gay caller, a remark the network management had taken a dislike to, and Michael was attempting to “set the record straight” on what happened. He claimed the remark had taken place off the air, during a private conversation between himself and a caller during a commercial break. When I tuned in, he was fielding calls from sympathetic fans, many of them angry that the liberal media was again trying to silence a prominent c

After a while, I got tired of listening to Michael feel sorry for himself and started changing radio channels again. After cycling through several sports shows, cooking shows, and Spanish-music channels, I happened across Rush Limbaugh, that stalwart champion of the right.

Eventually, I switched off the radio, quite confused. What, I wondered, was the good conservative opinion on the subject? Should media owners be permitted to exercise their judgement on what programming to air, or should networks air even offensive points of view in the interest of fairness? Is it censorship for a media network to pull programming that its viewers find offensive? I found myself wishing that Rush and Michael would give each other a call and get together on this issue, one way or another, because I simply didn’t know which way was up anymore.

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