By David McQuade
AT&T is certainly not your momma's American Telephone and Telegraph anymore. In ideological lockstep with CNN, its wholly owned "news channel" for two years and counting, AT&T has chosen sides against you in the dangerously escalating culture war, pouring fuel on already out of control fires.
There's no other way to say it: If you subscribe to AT&T Wireless, DirecTV, AT&T U-Verse, HBO Max, or any of AT&T's services, you are financially empowering the war machine of left-wing media that despises everything you and your family stand for if you're a conservative, or worse, a Trump supporter.
To CNN that makes you a racist, regardless of your skin color. You're a "deranged bigot" and xenophobe who enjoys caging children, a homophobe and unwitting agent of Vladimir Putin. You're intellectually and culturally inferior (ask them). You're a dangerous relic of the past who clings to your Bible, your guns and your "toxic" traditional values.
After AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner in 2018, the merger that placed the mean-spirited "news" cudgel in the company's ideologically aligned hands, BGR.com published a list of owned entities responsible consumers should be aware of, appropriately entitled, "Here's What AT&T Owns, Apart From Your Soul":
AT&T Wireless, "the cell carrier everyone loves to hate" as the article discerningly stipulates; DirecTV; AT&T U-Verse; New Line Cinema; Warner Brothers; DC Entertainment; Turner; TBS; HBO; and CNN.
However, it's the meat-and-potato businesses of wireless and cable or satellite subscriptions that have fueled AT&T's merger and acquisition frenzy into every other area of your life, including CNN, which has gotten progressively worse under its ownership.
Given AT&T's heady list of pricy acquisitions, some may be tempted to think that the company is just "too big to fail." But they'd be wrong. Remember once-dominant Texaco or Pacific Gas and Electric. "The bigger they are …"
Arrogant AT&T has recklessly taken on more debt than any non-financial services company in American history, encumbering itself to the tune of an unprecedented $180 billion. And now they're looking to you – goodhearted, center-right America – to service the obscene debt with your loyal, bankable subscriptions each month.
But with some conservative subscribers already fleeing the bitterly partisan carrier, they are taking on water and close to sinking. At some point a single additional AT&T subscription lost will make the difference. It may be yours.
Fast-losing market dominance, "the carrier everyone loves to hate" is no longer even among the top two U.S. carriers; it lost that spot to T-Mobile in recent weeks just as it lost its No. 1 spot to Verizon years earlier.
Further, the Wall Street Journal reports they've lost nearly 6.5 million television subscribers over the last two years. Add to that 886,000 U.S. premium TV subscribers and 68,000 online-only bundles lost, and you better understand why the debt-laden ship is so close to foundering.
If you're not convinced they need your subscription dollars to stay afloat, the concessions they'll attempt to throw at you when you call to cancel will confirm your suspicions. But if you're like me, you probably prefer to steer your considerable purchasing power into companies that don't enjoy bludgeoning you with your own money.
That said, we do owe CNN's corporate overlords a debt of gratitude for one thing: Given such impossible debt, AT&T executives have succeeded in serving up to you and me – on a silver platter – both the fulcrum and the lever to turn conservative-hating media right side up, once and for all.
So, please be a patriot and "pull the lever" the progressive behemoth has inexplicably placed in your hands and switch mobile and television providers, at least until AT&T demonstrates that it is serious about earning your family's business back. And tell them why you're leaving.
Think of it as a woke, self-respecting "me too" moment if you too are fed up with being abused by liberal, self-entitled media "elites" who lord over you as though they're your superiors. They've obviously forgotten they work for you.
Apparently, $180 billion is a lot of money even to Wall Street, as demonstrated by frantic institutional investors saber rattling about the urgent need to start throwing assets like DirecTV overboard.
If you and your circle of less-than-radical-leftist friends increase the pressure and defect in meaningful numbers, already staggering AT&T will quickly find itself on its proverbial knees agreeing to level the playing field for you and your family, while jerking its pet "news channel" back to the center by its neck.
You and I understand that politics are downstream of media.
That means it's entirely up to us to stop power-hungry, left-wing crony capitalism and the non-stop progressive agenda in big media – or be consumed by it. It's a binary choice; but an easy one in this case thanks to the gift of AT&T's ungrateful insolence toward your half of the country, and thanks to them needing you like never before.
This is a game we can no longer afford to lose.
It's long past time for an arrogant, conservative-hating media monopoly to be broken up or pulled back to the center due to market pressure and flipping a few merchant tables. And in-your-face-leftist AT&T has made itself the ideal low-hanging fruit for such a productive and gratifying experiment in the free market.
The off-the-charts bonus is that Prada boots will be shaking all over New York and California when they see you flexing your muscle and redirecting your purchasing power. No Fortune 100 company that currently prostrates itself to the fringe left will want to be next – not even the "cancel culture" social media bullies in Silicon Valley.
However, if you elect to turn your back on our president and "take one for the progressive team" by continuing to finance AT&T's hardcore, anti-conservative bigotry, know that you are also underpinning one of America's largest purveyors of "near hardcore porn" as they like to call their popular adult tier. They think nothing of exploiting your daughters and destroying families for fun and profit with colorful show descriptors like "Filthy Young Deviants."
That should come as no surprise since virtually their entire youth channel lineup favors a mindless, progressive ideology, as evidenced by "Rock the Vote" (to the Marxist left) MTV Networks and their dozen "edgy" channels at last count – with not a single corresponding channel to the right of them. Not one.
Still feeling good about empowering AT&T with your monthly subscriptions?
I know it's counterintuitive, but even during the left-wing mob's destructive "revolution" that vandalized CNN's own logo and smashed its lobby glass next to burning police cars, the mantra at CNN remains, "Hell yes, we'll take your guns!" Law-abiding gun owners and NRA members, your lost subscriptions alone would bring AT&T to its knees – they may just make your organization's largest donation ever to earn back your business.
AT&T's CNN sympathizes with the deceptive "Defund the Police" Marxist tactic that's creating chaos and misery in the very urban communities they claim to care about; while insisting that defunding Planned Parenthood – directly responsible for eliminating tens of millions of black lives that should also matter – simply cannot happen. And they call you the "racist."
Since we have literally everything to lose at this decisive moment in time by our cowardice or inaction, know that AT&T's liberal war machine in media is well down the road of attempting to quash free speech and forever label your conservative values criminal "hate speech." For the sake of your kids, please don't let them succeed.
Here's a suggestion this side of the loss of free speech and religious freedoms in our gravely divided One Nation Under God: Defund AT&T and stop bigotry against conservatives.
Please repost and pass this article on to family members and fellow patriots. Friends don't let friends drive AT&T. #defundATT
David McQuade founded cable channel Z Music Television, "The Positive Alternative" to MTV, and has worked extensively in the television and film industry for over three decades as an executive and media strategist.
The post CNN hates you – so it's time to defund its parent, AT&T appeared first on WND.
