Should Americans be concerned about a Federal Communications Commission official having once suggested that if government doesn't help minorities reduce white ownership of broadcast media, then only violence would assure the protection of minorities' civil rights [1]? In the little-noticed 2007 publication "The Erosion of Civil Rights," Mark Lloyd attempted to make a case for Washington controlling media ownership. At the time, Lloyd -- now FCC Chief Diversity Officer -- was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Ideologues use two predominant straw man templates. Type I declares the existence of nonexistent problems in order to draw implications that bolster ideological talking points. Type II offers imagined evidence against imagined problems to strengthen talking points.

Insistent on viewing the world through a divisive lens, Lloyd complained that because of an "important and unique role in community discourse," broadcasters must "act as a public trustee, providing free over the air service for the public good of all segments of their community of license." Operative phrase: "all segments." Never has American government forced an industry to donate a product "for the public good." Yet Lloyd wants to force broadcasters to forgo profits in order to serve the needs of racially and ethnically segregated markets.

Lloyd pushed the same kind of anti-free market, First Amendment-ignoring heavy-handedness in a more well-known 2007 Center for American Progress report, "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio." In the report, Lloyd called for legalizing racial discrimination by placing "caps" on white ownership of radio stations.

Obama's FCC, intent on diversifying talk radio, could be aiming to marginalize administration opponents. For camouflage, the FCC bent the truth in a reply to a CNS News FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for records of communications "to and from" FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that contained references to conservative media personalities. The FCC has basically admitted to a plan to conceal from Americans the content of "media ownership" discussions that are occurring. The Diversity Czar can now work to correct "the structural imbalance of political talk radio" without worrying about bothersome interference from the American people.