Columnist.
The Obama years may be winding down, but our President Obama-loving media never stops being hypersensitive about the man. CNN's latest poll asked respondents "Do you happen to know what religion Barack Obama is?" and "Where was Barack Obama born, as far as you know?" A major American media outlet asking these basic biographical questions after Obama's been president for six and a half years seems to be asking "How inadequate are we?" But what they're actually fishing for is a "crazy conservative fringe" argument now that Donald Trump is on top of the GOP presidential race.
Ellen DeGeneres is a comedian as well as a daytime TV star. Apparently she deployed both those talents when she said this with a straight face in January: "I don't have an agenda. I'm not here to brainwash anyone. ... The only way I'm trying to influence people is to be more kind and compassionate with one another. ... That is the message I'm sending out." In reality, Democratic politicians regularly use her program to promote themselves and their agenda. President Obama's appearance to promote Obamacare is one of countless examples. Ellen booked a big star for her first week of the fall season, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and gushed all over her about how she was the *only* choice for president.
On Sept. 11, The New York Times demonstrated once again the media's peculiar sense of patriotism. The 9/11 attacks were not remembered at all on the front page. Instead, the top-right headline in capital letters read "DEMOCRATS HAND VICTORY TO OBAMA ON PACT WITH IRAN." The House of Representatives voted against it. The Senate voted against it. The American people are overwhelmingly against it. None of that mattered.
Mark Levin's new book "Plunder and Deceit" has been number one on the New York Times bestseller list for five weeks in a row. Like with his other best-sellers, no liberal journalist will read it, no liberal newspaper will review it, and no liberal network would imagine calling up Levin for an interview. They are too busy advocating tolerance and diversity. Why doesn't Mark Levin deserve a turn on CBS's "60 Minutes"? Why can't the conservative taxpayers be granted a forum for Levin or "Charlie Rose" on PBS or on NPR's "All Things Considered"? In short, why not a slice of Levin in all of the places where leftists like Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman are treated like the greatest minds of our time?
Ten years have elapsed since one of the most amazing cases of Republican-bashing media bias in the television era began. The media elites laugh when preachers say immorality causes God to send hurricanes, but they suggested with straight faces that Hurricane Katrina was a death sentence President George W. Bush and his cronies brought to the less fortunate. In the early spin, race-baiting rapper Kanye West and "objective" anchors like Brian Williams were in rhetorical sync: George Bush didn't care about black people.
The double standard our media impose on child sexual abuse is garishly obvious. On Aug. 14, The Washington Post set the stage for the coming American visit of Pope Francis with another splashy front-page story on a man still berating the Catholic Church after being abused by a priest from 1969 to 1976. But on Aug. 21, after a court sentenced former Baltimore Ravens cheerleader Molly Shattuck, 48, for sexually abusing a 15-year old boy merely a year ago, the Post ignored it completely. Apparently, there was no room. That boy's family had no media advocate there. It's horrible that a priest would so egregiously betray his vows to abuse and manipulate a child. It's also horrible that a mother would betray her teenage son by sexually molesting one of his friends. But only one of these stories is apparently "newsworthy."
The fascination of the news media with Donald Trump is ironic, to say the least. For people who have long lamented the domination of Big Money in politics, these reporters are presenting Mr. Big Money himself with a ticker tape parade of free media. It could be considered hypocritical, too. Big Money is a bad thing — unless they're the ones making it. Fox's 24 million viewers for their debate proved Trump's market value; ever since that debate, it's been all media, all the time for him.
The churning of market forces in television are once again forcing the question of why Americans are spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars a year on public broadcasting. On August 13, HBO announced it was buying all-new episodes of the iconic PBS show "Sesame Street," delaying their debut on PBS for nine months. Decades of liberal mockery of Republicans for wanting to "kill Big Bird" just collapsed in an ugly pile. The show that was supposedly dedicated to poor kids in "underserved" communities was just sold to the highest-bidding paywall in Yuppie Land. Before that they were negotiating with Amazon and Netflix as well.
After six devastating hidden-camera interviews, the best Planned Parenthood and its top-dollar crisis managers can muster in their defense is to protest that they were "heavily edited." Of course they were. All video is edited. It's why they call it "produced." Without offering evidence of exculpatory evidence withheld, the charge is as meaningless as Planned Parenthood is evil. Something else has been heavily edited, in fact so completely edited that virtually nothing remains.
It's been six years since a Michael Moore mockumentary struggled at the box office. "Capitalism: A Love Story" grossed a paltry $14.3 million, less than an eighth the take of his hit "Fahrenheit 911." The long wait for the next Moore spectacle is almost over. The day before the next 9/11 anniversary, Moore's new America-bashing film "Where to Invade Next" will debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, where movies about America by an American make their debut.
As she runs to hold on to her base against an openly declared socialist in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton is declaring she intends to go even further than President Obama and his radical executive amnesty efforts. She continues to defend Planned Parenthood even after those horrific videos documented the ghastly sale of baby body parts for profit. She is wrapping herself in a gay agenda, viciously attacking religious freedom. But it's the Republicans that are the extremists.
Five years ago, Katie Couric exemplified our secular media's Islamophilia when on an online show at CBS, she proclaimed, "Maybe we need a Muslim version of 'The Cosby Show.' I know that sounds crazy, but 'The Cosby Show' did so much to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think sometimes people are afraid of what they don't understand." Given what's come to light about Cosby, she probably wishes she'd suggested "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" or maybe "Diff'rent Strokes." No matter. What must Osama bin Laden have thought when briefed that America was preparing a new weapon to defeat him — sitcoms?
Arrogant liberal journalists naturally assume that conservative talk radio only succeeds in making Americans dumber. They reach this conclusion by avoiding conservative talk radio entirely. The overwhelming majority would never dare appear on one of these shows and debate the conservative host. If one of them ever entered the ring with Mark Levin, they'd invoke the "mercy rule" before the first commercial break.
In November of 2002, Washington Post reporter-editor Bob Woodward unveiled excerpts of his latest book, "Bush at War," and created a big stir by revealing that Fox News boss Roger Ailes had sent a "back-channel message" to the Bush White House shortly after 9/11. He had insisted the president talk tough against the terrorists. The liberal media seized on this report as proof that the Fox News Channel was a tool of George W. Bush (or maybe it was that Bush was a tool of Fox). But all Ailes had done was encourage the president to rally the country after the worst domestic terrorist attack in our history. Was this press-driven controversy fueled by anti-conservative biases? Consider this: At the same time Ailes was supporting Bush, CBS anchor Dan Rather was breaking down on the Letterman show and declaring "George Bush is the President. He makes the decisions, and, you know, it's just one American, wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where."
The Center for Medical Progress has now issued a third recording of Planned Parenthood officials explaining their grotesque trafficking in baby body parts. It is even more devastating than the first two. The "news" media barely covered the second installment. They will probably pass over this one altogether. Trump World is apparently far more important than the extermination of babies for profit. The star of the new video is Holly O'Donnell, a young phlebotomist who worked for six months as a "procurement technician" for a company called Stem Express, which buys baby "specimens" from Planned Parenthood. She thought she would just be drawing blood. She had no idea she'd be called to dissect babies. She fainted on her first day of training after being instructed to pick up a baby's leg with a pair of tweezers.
The end of the Supreme Court term was depressing for conservatives.
The end of the Supreme Court term was depressing for conservatives.
Back in March, the pundits expressed horror at the alleged extremism of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Once again, a courageous group of pro-life activists has produced a damning sting video of Planned Parenthood, and this one has exposed the most outrageous behavior yet. This isn't the abortion conglomerate protecting pimps or statutory rapists as they seek abortions. This is the selling of the organs of babies after they've been killed. The video will chill you to the bone. It cannot be described as anything but what it is: evil. A group called the Center for Medical Progress posed as tissue buyers with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior medical officer with Planned Parenthood, and filmed her casually, almost dispassionately discussing over a salad and wine how she and her colleagues carefully crush baby corpses to preserve intact organs for sale. Profiting off the sale of fetal tissue is a felony.
On the day Scott Walker would announce in Wisconsin that he was running for president, The New York Times offered a typical takedown on the front page. "Admiring voters" found him to be authentic and approachable, but there were two words these fans apparently did not use: "Smart" and "sophisticated." That might be because liberal snobs at the Times think that those words are defined by how liberal you are. Those are qualities you get from reading the Times. Their own ads have touted them for giving the customer "depth" and "breadth" and "insights." Conservatives are dumb, but they have hope if they put enough of The New York Times into their brain every day. Times reporter Patrick Healy focused on how Walker needed "several months of policy tutorials" to be ready to run for president, which reminded the Times of the crash course in foreign policy the McCain campaign forced on Sarah Palin. They suggested Walker may not be "big enough to be president."
