Columnist.
The central criticism of the George Zimmerman trial is that there was one. It was simply impossible to convict him of anything beyond a reasonable doubt. The central criticism of the coverage of this trial was that there was any. How did this story merit consideration as national news? Why was the death of Trayvon Martin a thousand times more newsworthy than any other person shot on an American street? Answer: because Al Sharpton and other race-hustlers wanted it that way.
Today's children live and breathe in a popular culture that teaches them to accept the worst kinds of sexual exploitation and violence as a normal part of life. They're even encouraged to laugh at the idea. The Parents Television Council has issued a new report on "TV's Newest Target: Teen Sexual Exploitation." Out of 238 scripted episodes that aired during the study period in 2011 and 2012, 150 episodes (63 percent) contained sexual content in scenes that were associated with females and 33 percent of the episodes contained sexual content that rose to the level of sexual exploitation.
The re-election of President Obama has left most conservatives in a very pessimistic frame of mind. How could the majority of voters not see Obama had failed to prevent ongoing economic stagnation and the threat of bankruptcy? How could they endorse additional layer upon additional layer of bureaucratic intervention when the economic results were so awful? Donald J. Devine was Ronald Reagan's pick to head the Office of Personnel Management and is today vice chair of the American Conservative Union. You might see him as the personification of the pessimistic frame of mind. Several years ago, he approached me for support for his just-announced campaign for Congress against Maryland's Steny Hoyer. When I asked him why he was running, his answer was as funny as it was honest. "I don' know ... uh...why I'm ... uh... doing this," he said almost woefully in his deep Brooklyn accent. Then he cracked his trademark smile. "Ya want to talk me out of it?" I procured for him a maximum contribution.
A federal judge has finally selected a trial date for accused Fort Hood mass-murderer Nidal Malik Hasan -- July 9. We'll see if it actually happens. If you've forgotten that mass shooting, then the media had scored a point for President Obama. The Pentagon dismissed the terrorist attack as "workplace violence," the Obama media nodded in agreement and the massacre vanished from public memory. Hasan went on his deadly rampage, killing 13 and wounding another 32, on Nov. 5, 2009. By the beginning of 2010, the networks were already in "sleep" mode. On the one-year anniversary, only NBC filed a story (that completely avoided the word "Obama"), while CBS had a single anchor brief. Amazingly, ABC offered nothing.
Feminism as a political cause is on such wobbly knees that it must rely on charges of rampant sexism that have no basis in reality. The current Exhibit A is "Think Progress" blogger Alyssa Rosenberg, who surely scrunched up her face in disgust as she wrote the headline "Women Are Half Of Video Gamers, So Where Are The Female Video Game Characters?" Serious long-term video game fans should laugh at Rosenberg's ignorance and laziness. This headline had all the style and finesse of a belly flop into an empty swimming pool.
The media elites have never been less interested in objectivity than they are right now on "gay marriage." They don't wear rainbow flags on their lapels when they appear on television, but the coverage speaks for itself. Even liberals are admitting the obvious. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) studied a sample of almost 500 news stories from March to May and admitted "statements of support dominate" the daily narrative. "The study lends credence to conservative charges that the nation's news media have championed the issue of same-sex marriage at the expense of objectivity," media reporter Brian Stelter asserted at The New York Times. "Others have argued that news organizations are right not to overly emphasize opposition to what many see as a core civil rights issue."
Egotistical musicians often exaggerate their political influence, none more than the nattering, narcissistic rapper Kanye West. He has compared himself in global stature to Apple founder Steve Jobs and has titled his latest album "Yeesus." Rolling Stone magazine has posted part of a West song titled "I Am a God," where West raps that Jesus is the "Most High," but he's a "close high." Now it's The New York Times pandering to West's colossal self-regard -- and it's downright embarrassing. Mouth-breathing Times writer/superfan Jon Caramonica stooped to telling West that "what I find probably the most moving thing that you've ever done, which is calling out President Bush at the Hurricane Katrina telethon. To me, that moment is actually the peak of putting a message in a pop format." West agreed, designating it as "a very pop moment of a lifetime or generation."
The unfolding story of the Obama administration monitoring not just telephone records but Internet usage has drawn media coverage with adjectives like "astonishing." No doubt about it, even the pro-Obama press acknowledges it is a scandal. Still, it is laughable that the media would label him a "dictator" or discuss the "I word." That's not what greeted George W. Bush at the end of 2005. Just eight years ago, journalists openly discussed tyranny and the possibility of impeachment.
The specter of school shootings has brought a too-typical staple to local newspaper sections: the boys disciplined at (or suspended from) grade school for bringing a toy gun or anything resembling a gun. The Washington Post just found the latest wild overreaction, from Calvert County, Md., a blue state that's cracked down on gun rights. "A kindergartner who brought a cowboy-style cap gun onto his Calvert County school bus was suspended for 10 days after showing a friend the orange-tipped toy, which he had tucked inside his backpack on his way to school," according to the family.
The national media have evinced some outrage over the Obama Justice Department's aggressive persecution of investigative journalists. But not enough. It is more important to help President Hope and Change overcome the legacy-strangling notion of an "atmosphere of scandal" than to investigate a scandal that is strangling their very profession. On Sunday's "Face the Nation," New York Times editor Jill Abramson claimed to be very concerned about the leak probe, but proclaimed of all these scandals that, "I'm just not sure, you know, they come together and create, you know -- quote, unquote -- 'an atmosphere of scandal.'"
Stop the presses! Decadence dominated the publicity oozing out of the Cannes Film Festival in France. The festival's highest honor, the Palme d'Or (or Golden Palm) went to "Blue Is the Warmest Color," which drew most of its buzz from an explicit 10-minute lesbian sex scene. This apparently was art, not pornography. The Cannes jury headed by Steven Spielberg took the unprecedented step of insisting that the movie's two stars be included as Palme award recipients. New York magazine's Vulture blog cooed that these awards were the festival's "Most Pleasant Progressive Surprise."
Here's a story you probably haven't heard, unless you read Drudge or Breitbart. The Independent in the U.K. has published a story (from which I pull freely), as have a couple of Jewish outlets. That's all I can find. You tell me if it qualifies as "news" that the "news " media should be covering. It involves a young man who would someday become one of the best-known and most powerful men in the world. A new book is out. It explores recently uncovered diaries kept by this young man. The journal entries document his fascination with Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
Usually moviemakers strive to stay ahead of the cultural curve. It makes them "visionaries" who are "cutting edge" because they "push the envelope." Two years ago, "Occupy Wall Street" was the hot fad, stoking the usual left-wing outrage at bankers and the finance industry. They were the ones portrayed as greed-heads never held accountable for their crimes. Businessmen just twirl their mustaches and laugh evil laughs. But that was two years ago. Time for something fresh -- and edgy. A new movie suggests that movement was for sissies. It's time for someone to start a new campaign: Assassinate Wall Street.
As the Obama scandals surround the White House, some conservatives are suggesting that -- finally -- the media are "getting tough" on Obama. Don't count on it. All our modern experience suggests tough reporting on a Democratic president is more of a temporary sensation than an ongoing trend. The news media honestly believe they were tough on Team Clinton. It is simply not true. There was a seemingly endless supply of Clinton administration (and Clinton pre-administration) scandals, yet can you name one that was resolved? The floating FBI files. The illegal fundraising. Whitewater. On and on they went, and the media response was predictable: two or three days of tough coverage -- if at all -- and then, inevitably, political spin overtaking the hunt for facts. The search for truth became a discussion about "Republican overreach."
The annual network list of canceled primetime shows cannot be pleasing to the progressives who measure shows based on their cultural and political usefulness. "TV Will Be a Lot Less Gay Next Year," the commissars complained at Slate.com. They counted 11 canceled shows that featured regular gay characters. That bothersome thing called the market: why must it get in the way! CBS's gay sitcom "Partners" lasted six episodes and was canceled shortly after Barack Obama's victory. NBC's "Smash" only featured four regular gay characters, but it couldn't keep anyone watching. The most prominent victim was "The New Normal," Ryan Murphy's NBC sitcom credited by many leftists with paving the way for America's growing support for the gay agenda -- and helping with Obama's reelection.
The Obama scandals started piling up on top of each other in the last few days. The civil servants who testified on Benghazi were heartbreaking. Then the IRS admitted a punitive agenda against tax exemptions for groups with "tea party" in the name or groups that "educate about the Constitution." Then Eric Holder's Justice Department was revealed to be wiretapping the Associated Press in April and May of 2012 to nail a leaker. President Obama is not a "victim" of a "second-term curse." This is the corrupt *first* term beginning to smell, it is *his* administration, and even the media cannot deny the odor of malfeasance.
It sounded like a freedom-of-religion case when a Columbus, Texas high school relay-race team was disqualified from the state track championship because Derrick Hayes pointed heavenward after his team won the race. That would seem odd in a red state like Texas. It turned out that officials were so strict, they warned runners to make no hand gestures after the finish line. Hayes had apparently pointed forward, and then upward, and for that he was out. It can be tough to be a student in today's public schools. Never mind restrictions on the schools. It is becoming impossible to express a socially conservative or Christian viewpoint -- as a student. Across the land, everyone is ordered to welcome without a discouraging word any expression of the gay or transgender variety. But try to say the G-word or oppose abortion, and watch someone lower the boom.
The Washington Post offered a splashy profile of freshman Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, and the most surprising thing about it was a lack of venom. The reporter described "the self-assured, nonstop talker who won national debate championships as an undergraduate at Princeton." Cruz "honed his reputation early in his career as a dazzling Supreme Court advocate" and now "has bashed into the national conversation," most notably in attacking establishment Republicans, who've called him and other young Senate conservatives "wacko birds." This story, however, wasn't as surprising as James Carville's declaration on ABC's "This Week." He was typically blunt -- but in a wholly unexpected direction. "I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I've seen in the last 30 years."
Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III started tongues wagging when he posted this cryptic message on Twitter: "In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness." This was in response to liberal activists showing their rabid intolerance by demanding, so obnoxiously, that the Washington Redskins be renamed the "Redtails." But the sentiment absolutely fits the reaction to professional basketball player Jason Collins proclaiming, "I'm black and I'm gay" in Sports Illustrated. What? A gay athlete? Stop the presses!
The Washington Post reported something surprising on April 29 -- a hidden-camera expose by pro-life advocates. On the front page of the Metro section, the Post reported how a veteran D.C. abortion doctor named Cesare Santangelo told a 24-week pregnant woman that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, "we would not help it." "(T)echnically, you know, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive, but it probably wouldn't," he said in a way to reassure the woman who was working for the undercover group Live Action.
