Payola hypocrisy (a blast from the past)

Remember the radio payola scandal of the late '80s and early '90s?

Of course you don't, because it didn't get hardly any coverage outside the trade papers. After all, why would the media report its own scandals?

It was nothing like today, when big record labels are allowed to own hundreds of radio stations outright, so they can get their garbage played automatically. In the scandal of 20 years ago, record execs paid off radio programmers with money and illicit drugs to get their crap played on the air.

That's one of the reasons so much bad music started filling the airwaves. Payola was the only way to make such rubbish popular.

Meanwhile, anybody who preferred other music was accused (usually falsely) of drug involvement. Their music was criticized as "druggie music" even when no drug lyrics or payola were evident.

How hypocritical is that? It's bizarre enough that such a significant portion of America's popular culture was financed by drugs. But it distorts logic outside the realm of the sane that apologists for this trend accused people of being on drugs if they liked other music instead.

It reminds me of how those who push Ritalin on America's children are usually the same folks who think there's a stoner hiding under every bed.