Columnist.
Macklemore is the stage name of a white rapper from Seattle named Ben Haggerty. He and his publicists are currently trying to convince the hip-hop press and the music media to notice the greatness of his new nine-minute song "White Privilege II." The entertainment industry's white self-flagellation has entered a new phase. Actually, this is a regular part of the Macklemore routine, presenting himself as a guilty white dude transgressing on black cultural territory. When he won a Grammy in 2014 for his hit "Thrift Shop," he sent a text message to black rapper Kendrick Lamar: "You got robbed. I wanted you to win. You should have," which he then posted to his Instagram account. "It's weird and sucks that I robbed you."
The results in the Iowa caucuses are a rebuke to the notion that the national media have all the influence over America's voters. Donald Trump has been the overwhelmingly dominant figure on television news. Even his decision to duck a debate was treated as bigger news than the actual event, and he almost fell to third place in Iowa. On the Democratic side, when Hillary Clinton entered the race last April, she was presented as an unstoppable colossus, the American royal family returning to its natural place of power and adoration. Time magazine published a nauseating tribute from Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of the late Apple computer genius Steve Jobs, as "one of America's greatest modern creations ... she represents new realities and possibilities."
For a conservative, perhaps nothing in popular culture is more amusing than watching leftist Hollywood beat itself up with the battle cry "Oscars So White." For a group of people that can't possibly assemble at awards shows without making egregious displays of what passes for "progressive thought," this fight over putative racism is as entertaining as the movies themselves. Grab some popcorn. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith pompously announced they will not be attending the Oscars because no best-acting nominee is black. In a YouTube video, Jada declared, "Begging for acknowledgment, or even asking, diminishes dignity and diminishes power." One of the funnier memes on the Internet presents an aerial view of the sprawling $42 million Smith mansion in Malibu (with pool, tennis court and basketball court) to clash with the notion of racist Hollywood.
Just a couple of weeks after CNN happily acquiesced to a quickly improvised "town hall" meeting for President Obama to promote gun control, they once again agreed with the Democrats to provide a "town hall" event with Iowa voters. It was not a debate, where the candidates would spar, but an orderly event to allow all three candidates to promote themselves for a half-hour. For the most part, it was a night of softballs. CNN carefully prescreened both the questions and the questioners and made it so. The closest thing to a hardball for Hillary Clinton came from young mop-topped Taylor Gipple, a Sanders backer. "I've heard from quite a few people my age that they think you're dishonest, but I'd like to hear from you on why you feel the enthusiasm isn't there."
Sean Penn has long been the poster boy for the Hollywood left, another one of those overpaid dilettantes who constantly berate the country that's given him international fame and incredible wealth. Penn's loathing of Yankee imperialism is so intense that he thinks America is "over-demonizing" a Mexican drug kingpin that Forbes magazine estimates is responsible for the deaths of 34,000 people — mostly Mexicans. In an act of sheer self-promotion, Penn exploited an acting connection to gain an audience with notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, fresh from a prison escape. Instead of asking this man how he could butcher so many thousands of men, women and children, he asked him to condemn the American "war on drugs." This meeting and fawning interview resulted in Penn writing a rambling mess of over 9,000 words in Rolling Stone magazine — after Penn and the magazine agreed to let the mass murderer read and approve the article before publication.
To hear the press tell it, the Republican Party has gone so far to the right that Ronald Reagan wouldn't recognize it. But the Democratic Party is at this moment on the cusp of forsaking Hillary Clinton for a self-described socialist who wants America to be exactly like Sweden. So precisely which party is making a historic tilt toward a new extreme?
When David Bowie died after a very private fight with liver cancer, obituary writers churned out words like "icon" and "legend" and "subversive." Despite a life of very fluid explorations of musicality and sexuality and spirituality, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano celebrated Bowie as "never banal," displaying an "artistic rigor" which seemed to contradict the sexually "ambiguous image" he presented to "attract the attention of the media."
New York Times columnist David Brooks poses as a moderate who never stoops to being crabbily doctrinaire. He is the very model of a PBS/NPR "conservative" — defining conservatism in a very 1950s way, as wearing dreary gray suits and liking Ike and Dick Nixon. Go along, and get along with the liberal elites. But as conservatives know all too well, people who pose as "moderates" — politically and rhetorically — have a way of losing their sweetly temperate nature when conservatives seriously challenge the liberal order of things. David Brooks is clearly not a moderate or temperate man when it comes to Ted Cruz. Just the thought of this man triggers a spontaneous combustion.
The indictment of Bill Cosby for sexual assault could play an important role in the 2016 campaign. On Comedy Central, leftist "fake news" anchor Larry Wilmore said even if Cosby isn't convicted, a trial is a good thing. "For too long, the women who have accused him of this crime were not being listened to, because they were being silenced by a powerful man and a complicit culture. And, now, finally, regardless of what happens next, they're being heard."
Network news outlets conduct their own polls. They also bury the poll results when they don't like them. On PBS on Jan. 1, liberal pundit Mark Shields brought some very bad news for the left. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 73 percent say they want the next president to take a different approach from President Obama's. So NBC, both the creator of the poll and a relentless cheerleader of Obama, chose not to air that bombshell. Instead, they buried it deep in an article on the "Meet the Press" website. "This will become a high hurdle for the Democrats at some stage of the 2016 election," Democratic pollster Fred Yang declared in that piece.
As night fell on Christmas Eve, National Public Radio was in its usual holy-day mode, using your tax dollars to mock the traditional Christian creed. This time they promoted an activist movie called "The Danish Girl," yet another alleged "true story" about artist Einar Wegener, a married man who wanted to be a woman named Lili. An earlier NPR commercial — sorry, "underwriting announcement" — said he was the first recipient of "gender confirmation surgery."
Hillary Clinton has slammed Donald Trump for having a "penchant for sexism," but the Clinton-adoring media are acting shocked and dismayed that Trump would be so rude as to respond that she ought to look at her own husband when it comes to sexism and a "record of women abuse." Reporters are treating this as a sketchy allegation, or if true, a remarkably impolite way to campaign.
"[A] big winner has to be the Center for Medical Progress."
ABC News devoted a fluffy two-hour special to the year in review, studying the news and pop culture. They had a "Dishonor Roll" segment where they mocked the adultery of Josh Duggar and the scandal of the adultery website Ashley Madison when its client list leaked. They scorned the dentist that shot Cecil the Lion, white activist Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black, "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Kim Richards getting arrested for shoplifting, and pop singer Ariana Grande caught on video licking donuts. But nowhere in this summary were the grisly tapes exposing Planned Parenthood for its effort to profit from selling the organs of babies it killed in its abortion clinics.
If we're counting press clips, in politics the year 2015 was dominated by Donald Trump. The liberal press is emotionally conflicted on this one. Some are delighted with the notion that he's going to destroy the Republican brand with oafish overstatements. Some are disgusted that he's still in the race despite all the negativity they've piled all over him. And now some are worried he might even win and, in so doing, end civilization as we know it.
When Ted Turner was running CNN back in 1991, he banned the use of the word "foreign" on air. In a memo to employees, he made a threat to fine employees with a forced donation to UNICEF. To avoid offense, they were told they should use the word "international" instead because it "promotes a sense of unity." Today, this is Jeff Zucker's CNN, and unity be damned. Offending the audience is part of the ratings gambit. On Dec. 13, as many Christians celebrated the third Sunday of Advent and rejoiced over the incarnation of Jesus Christ, CNN was celebrating Satan. Literally.
Our news media are so overwhelmingly obsequious to the Democrats that Hillary Clinton can imply the relatives of the Americans killed in Benghazi are liars on national TV, and no one in the press blinks an eye or finds it newsworthy. ABC is about to host another one of those hide-and-seek Saturday night Democrat debates. There is something very ironic here: It was on this network where she made that outrageous statement.
Americans are infatuated with celebrities, but unfortunately for the left, that love doesn't translate into a popular landslide for the liberal point of view. Celebrity millionaires love to pose as compassionate citizens for the cameras, and it doesn't matter if anything changes. Remember the video made by actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher pledging to serve the public and Obama? "I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama," said rock singer Anthony Kiedis as he kissed his biceps, right and left. It concluded with Moore saying "I pledge to be a servant to our president," and Kutcher adding, "And to all mankind." In a crowd, the celebrities chanted, "Because together we can, together we are, together we will be the change that we seek."
Barack Obama wanted 15 minutes of airtime on Sunday night, the most heavily watched night of the week, to speak to the nation about the San Bernardino shooting. It was appropriate for the president to request it, and for the networks to grant it, but everyone knew he would say nothing new of substance. On the matter of Islamic terrorism, he never does. And he didn't. And in so not doing, he wowed the press again.
The first wave of analysis after the mass shooting in San Bernardino suggested that this could be a right-wing militia or anti-government conspiracy. This is the default position of the anti-conservative press: unless shown otherwise, it was one of those right-wingers. Then they named the suspects, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik. Remote controls were surely tossed across America when CNN legal analyst Casey Jordan guessed that the Muslim shooter was "going into this conference room where there was a holiday party, which may have been offensive to him." Ah, religion.
