Grassroots don't grow from the top down!

Wow. Someone tell this American politician that you can't create a grassroots movement at the top. And that if you try, you will make yourself a laughingstock.

Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays last week declined to apologize for a September 26 on-air remark by Rush Limbaugh -- syndicated by CC-owned Premiere Radio networks -- so now the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has sent an e-mail, signed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to supporters asking them to contact Mays and demand that he make Limbaugh apologize. ... (Full article here.)

Good grief. What an exercise in political self-aggrandizement.

I really hope the CC CEO sticks to his guns and that Democrat supporters ignore Reid's request, and actually see it for the self-serving gambit it is ... wrapping a bruised ego in the American flag and asking supporters to massage it.

Sadly, tho, in "the land of the free" it has become more politically expedient to create a media circus than to develop a thick skin and uphold the principle of free speech and freedom of expression ... and then get on with serious issues. Like the Iraq war itself, rather than just opinions about it.

Such overt influence-peddling reminds me of soviet times when "adoring" crowds in the "workers paradise" were created for western consumption...