Columnist.
Hillary Clinton's $35 doorstop of a memoir is a flop. It was a best-seller to hard-core Democrats, but her advance is estimated at $14 million, which means Simon & Schuster is taking a bath in the hopes of a publishing a future president.
For those who predict the coming collapse of Western civilization, there's always MTV for proof. At this year's Television Critics Association summer tour in Hollywood, MTV put on a panel discussion for the press with the cast and creators of a forthcoming series called "Happyland." The female star of the show, actress Bianca Santos, announced the new MTV motto: "Incest is hot, and we're going to have fun!" Lisa de Moraes at the website Deadline Hollywood reported on the pilot episode of this "soapy teen comedy" -- remember that this is a show for teenagers. This show, "exploring the underbelly of a popular theme park," includes a clip of Santos making out with the amusement park's "new hottie" only to discover ... he's her brother.
Attorney General Eric Holder granted an exclusive interview to ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" from London, where he was portrayed by ABC as deeply concerned about the global terrorist threat. What stands out from this very rare session -- Holder hasn't been on Sunday network television in four years -- is that Holder pulled out the oldest, lamest card in the Obama political deck: President Barack Obama and he are opposed by people who should be suspected of racism. And darned if he didn't get away with it again.
Dinesh D'Souza shocked the movie world in 2012 with his anti-President Barack Obama documentary "2016," which became the second highest-grossing documentary in U.S. movie history. On July 2, he unveiled his new documentary called "America: Imagine the World Without Her." It has already grossed $5 million in its first week. One fictional competitor, the abortion-promoting comedy "Obvious Child," barely grossed $2 million in its first month. But there's a more dramatic contrast. Film critics are supposed to judge art, but their liberal politics are smeared all over their reviews. Metacritic.com collects and analyzes movie reviews. "Obvious Child" drew a high Metacritic.com score of 75 (out of 100). For D'Souza's "America," it was a ridiculously low score of 14.
MSNBC host Chuck Todd assembled a panel of liberal-media veterans on his morning show "The Daily Rundown" Monday and joked that the assembled heavyweights presented "a nightmare scenario for Brent Bozell." But what these journalists proceeded to issue was a devastating indictment of the Obama presidency and a real nightmare for this president. Carolyn Ryan, the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, brought up "the national funk we're in, the sort of national malaise." The word "malaise" is never a good word to be around if you're the president. But for President Barack Obama, who is now seen in polls as the worst president since World War II, worse than the Master of Malaise, Jimmy Carter, it's kryptonite.
In the George W. Bush years, liberals were routinely shocked and awed that the Bush administration would obliterate their sacred wall of separation between church and state. They frowned on federal faith-based initiatives and worried about the bureaucracy being invaded by frightening people with college degrees from Christian schools like Liberty University, Regent University or Catholic University. Government was no place to be spreading a dangerous Christian majoritarianism with a swaggering certitude that wouldn't tolerate opposing views and respect minority opinions. The media presented the Bushies as -- to quote a slur from NBC anchor Brian Williams -- "anti-gay, pro-Jesus and anti-abortion, and no gray matter in between."
President Barack Obama treats the press like a spoiled child treats his parents. Despite the pampering, he just keeps complaining about them until he gets his way. As America tires of his inflated sense of self-importance while the economy limps and his foreign policy crumbles, Obama travels around the country complaining that the mean old media aren't complimentary enough. At an event with big donors in May in Chicago, Obama lamented that he -- the very essence of reason and nonpartisanship -- is lumped in with a fanatical Congress in a tale of gridlocked Washington.
There's a new card game making the rounds that's designed to offend. What does it say about our culture that this marketing strategy actually works? "Cards Against Humanity is a party game for horrible people," reads the game's website. "Unlike most of the party games you've played before, Cards Against Humanity is as despicable and awkward as you and your friends." The game's concept is simple: A dealer issues a black fill-in-the-blank card, and using their a handful of white answer cards, players try to come up with the funniest (and often most offensive-sounding) combinations. The player who accomplishes that wins the round.
In November of 2002, Washington Post reporter-editor Bob Woodward unveiled excerpts of his latest book, "Bush at War," and caused a big stir by revealing that Fox News boss Roger Ailes had sent a confidential memo to the George W. Bush White House after 9/11 insisting the president stay tough against the terrorists. NBC "Meet The Press" host Tim Russert, who revolved into TV news from Mario Cuomo's office, spoke for his industry when he asserted, "I would not recommend that behavior for any practicing journalist." One can only imagine the furor had Fox News hosts actually entered the White House gates to participate in a Bush administration publicity event designed to promote public policy.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office found its way to the front page by declaring the word "Redskins" was offensive and therefore unworthy of trademark protection under a 1946 law that proscribes trademarks for "immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter." MSNBC anchor Joy-Ann Reid reported this news with an obscenity warning before airing a clip of Sen. Harry Reid: "And I just warn people, he does use the name of the team. So, I'm just going to warn you guys about that in advance." She's not alone. Liberal sports writers refuse to type the word in their columns.
Ronan Farrow, considered the "boy wonder" of cable hosts by MSNBC executives, interviewed his colleague Chris Matthews on June 11 over the stunning primary defeat of Eric Cantor. Farrow was shocked that the winner, David Brat, had dared to campaign among the tea party rabble, being the professor he is: "Is it rare to see that kind of brazen intellectualism, particularly in populist candidates like this?" Translation: How did he win among knuckle-dragging Virginia racists with that spiel? In response, Matthews unleashed something almost as unexpected as the Cantor defeat. He came to the tea party's defense. "I don't think you can assume that the liberals are smarter than the conservative professors. I think that's crazy talk," he said.
Now that our cultural elites feel they have sufficiently educated the public on the virtues of gays and lesbians, it's time to drill down to the next level. Here comes transgenderism. Time magazine placed "Orange Is the New Black" star Laverne Cox (born Charles Cox) on the cover as the face of "The Transgender Tipping Point: America's Next Civil Rights Frontier." Cox wrote on Facebook that the Time cover was a wonderful present on her birthday, and "I realize this is way bigger than me and about a tipping point in our nation's history where it is no longer acceptable for trans lives to be stigmatized, ridiculed, criminalized and disregarded." Beware of the words "tipping point." That means Americans will no longer be allowed to express dissent, moral or otherwise, about the choice to discard the oppressive "gender binary" and be whichever blend of genders you choose. Disagree, and you "stigmatize" and "dehumanize" people. You deny them "civil rights." You "criminalize" the innocent.
There are two ways to interview potential presidents. You can pepper them with tough questions, and why not? They're going to apply for the job of Leader of the Free World. Hillary Clinton is used to the other way: Shameless pap. Softballs to be knocked out of the park. She has been a media darling since forever. This is a typical soft pitch offered to Clinton on national television. It came just the other day: "Mitch McConnell said at one point that 2016 will be the return of 'The Golden Girls.'" This was designed to make the Senate Republican leader look like a jerk and allowed Clinton to shoot back, "That was a very popular, long-running TV series." Cue laughter. This softball interviewer, like every other, pushed Clinton to announce her candidacy for president and pampered her with grandmother questions.
The feminist film critics can exhale now. Someone has finally concocted their dream movie: an "abortion comedy." Because apparently nothing sounds funnier than an unplanned one-night stand and a courageous destruction of God's most beautiful and most innocent creation. It's called "Obvious Child." Feminist lingo sells this monstrosity. Former "Saturday Night Live" cast member Jenny Slate plays Donna Stern, a standup comedian who "is forced to face the uncomfortable realities of independent womanhood for the first time." A "drunken hookup -- and epic lapse in prophylactic judgment -- turns out to be the beginning of a hilarious and totally unplanned journey of self-discovery and empowerment."
The liberal media consistently dismiss or condemn hearings into Obama scandals as unnecessary and rabidly partisan, and reach those conclusions before said hearings even begin. That might explain why the public doesn't always line up with that opinion. A new ABC-Washington Post poll shows 51 percent of those polled support the new House investigation into the scandalous lack of security for our personnel at the Benghazi, Libya, consulate. ABC and the Post found 58 percent think Team Obama engaged in a cover-up, and only 32 percent denied reality and claimed they "honestly disclosed" what they knew. Perhaps it is because we are approaching the second anniversary of that attack, and this administration simply refuses to account for its actions that night.
It's been 10 years since Ronald Reagan passed away, but one horrible myth about him will not die. When he passed, The Advocate magazine published an essay by radical gay playwright Larry Kramer titled "Adolf Reagan." The rant began: "Our murderer is dead. The man who murdered more gay people than anyone in the entire history of the world, is dead. More people than Hitler even." In Kramer's fever swamp of a brain, Reagan caused AIDS. He reveled in its fatalities. Now HBO is honoring Kramer's unceasing hatred by making a TV movie out of his hate-filled 1985 play/jeremiad "The Normal Heart." The movie ends with a "historic" note bashing Reagan some more: "President Ronald Reagan mentioned AIDS publicly for the first time Sept. 17, 1985, vowing in a news conference to make AIDS research a 'top priority.' Reagan's proposed budget for 1986 actually called for an 11 percent reduction in AIDS spending. By the end of 1986, there were 24,559 reported deaths." (Which is higher than all the Jews murdered by the Nazis?)
When George W. Bush was president, a week didn't go by when the press wasn't dismissing his intelligence and proclaiming his administration's incompetence. Over the weekend, President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan. Someone on his staff demonstrated truly jaw-dropping incompetence by accidentally releasing to 6,000 journalists the name of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan as part of Obama's welcoming delegation. That is a death sentence, not just for the agent but for all those around him. Try to imagine the media firestorm this would have created had the transgression occurred during the W years. Remember the endless coverage day after day, week after week over the disclosure of Valerie Plame's name, a veritable D.C. paper-pusher by comparison? She became the poster child in a relentless campaign to undermine Bush's foreign policy -- and the man himself.
Shailene Woodley is fast-rising movie star, and at age 22, she's already thrown the country's most uptight feminists into a tizzy. Time magazine asked Woodley: "Do you consider yourself a feminist?" To say she didn't give the Hollywood answer would be an understatement. "No, because I love men, and I think the idea of 'raise women to power, take the men away from the power' is never going to work out because you need balance." Many women continue to reject "feminism" because it evokes an ideological rigidity grounded in the hostility toward men. That, in turn, drives feminists around a bend.
Just before the 2010 midterms, Comedy Central star Jon Stewart drew a large crowd to Washington to celebrate a "Rally to Restore Sanity." He gave a closing speech, intended to be inspirational and not comical, on how "we can have animus and not be enemies." The same man who succeeded in convincing CNN to cancel "Crossfire" in 2004 because its squabbles were "hurting the country" felt the need to sermonize about overdoing caricatures of our political opponents on television. This raises the question: Does this man watch his own show? "The country's 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder," Stewart proclaimed in his address.
You can always tell when a network legend is retiring. His/her network blocks out most of a Friday night so they can remember all of the legend's glory days. At 84, ABC's Barbara Walters is taking a bow, and she's certainly as synonymous with television as Johnny Carson or Walter Cronkite. Walters was a pioneer for female journalists on TV. She's also an archetype for our liberal feminist media. In recent years, she's competitively elbowed out other contenders in providing leading Democrats with the most comfortable of softball interviews. A holiday tradition at the Obama White House is a visit from Walters, who stays as sweet as pumpkin pie.
