Columnist.
The general-election campaign for president is not yet under way, but clearly, some in the media have entered the Utterly Ridiculous Zone. On CNN's "Reliable Sources," host Howard Kurtz hailed an "eye-opener: the candidate with the best coverage during the presidential primaries was Mitt Romney. And the worst? Barack Obama." That's not eye-opening. It's a declaration that you're blind and deaf, and your olfactory glands are shot to pieces. When something smells as bad as this, odds are it's rotten.
It was a very special disco-themed episode of "Glee" on Fox the other night. A new character named Wade from a different high school shared that he was born in the wrong body. He was black, but he said he felt he was born white and decided to go out on stage at Regionals painted over as a white man. Everyone adored and applauded him as he sang "Boogie Shoes" looking just like the lead singer of KC and the Sunshine Band. If you actually watch "Glee" or just know Hollywood liberals, you know I'm kidding. Of course, he wasn't a white kid trapped in a black body. Wade was an unfortunate boy "trapped" in a male body. It was "Transgender Is Cool" night. Everyone must adore and applaud. A new wall is down.
Once upon a time, it meant something for a reporter to be called a "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist." The prestige of this designation is quickly eroding. The 2012 Pulitzer Prizes looked less like an excellence-in-media competition and more like an exercise in leftist self-affirmation. No prize established this more strongly than the coveted National Reporting prize going to ... The Huffington Post. The Pulitzer judges who would rather swallow rat poison than give an award to a conservative outlet, such as The Washington Times, are bestowing kudos on a site that thrives on such celebrity dreck as "Miley Shows Off Legs in Lacy Shorts" and "Kim Kardashian Kanye West Earrings: Reality Star Sports 'KW' Initial Jewelry."
Ten years ago, perky actress Jennifer Love Hewitt tried to jump-start a music career with a song titled "Bare Naked." Now she's trying that attention-grabbing tactic again with a sleazy new Lifetime series called "The Client List." She plays a massage therapist who turns tricks. That network has adopted a new slogan: "This is not your mother's Lifetime." That's appropriate for a new drama with a single-mother whore at its sympathetic center. We learn she was forced into being a sex worker when her husband mysteriously left her -- you know, the way of the world for single moms.
Republican strategists should generally be wary of campaign advice from liberals -- and when it's from the media, generally becomes definitely. Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza recently suggested Mitt Romney's general-election strategy should start with getting a "positive first introduction" to voters through the liberal media because "only the national media can provide that megaphone and serve as a sort of validator for him." How hard did he laugh after he wrote that?
The poobahs of our popular culture never seem happy unless they're taking entertainment down to the "next level" of deviancy. When they undertake remakes of Hollywood classics -- especially the comedies -- that's when you see how far we've fallen. The forthcoming modern-day adaptation of "The Three Stooges" isn't going to be a celebration of that iconic family comedy. The trailer features Moe poking the eyes of "Snooki" Polizzi from the uber-sleazy MTV show "Jersey Shore." But that's nothing compared to the real absurdity of 19-year-old Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Kate Upton playing a nun at the orphanage where the Stooges grew up.
The news is stuffed with "studies" in which "experts" tell us how we should behave. One recently found that conservatives have lost their trust in science over the last 40 years. That's probably because the very political academics of science are routinely summoned to prove the right-wingers are not only wrong but dangerously wrong and not just dangerously wrong but evil, too. These studies are laughable.
MTV is now trying to lure young viewers with a saucy sex show in the "advice" category. They didn't reach for Dr. Drew or God forbid Dr. Ruth or an actual doctor of anything. They turned to filthy sex columnist and gay activist Dan Savage. The new show is called "Savage U," and it documents Savage touring college campuses to offer snarky/smutty advice to college students. This is MTV's libertine ideology pitched right at children, and Savage is blunt about how he'll be going around the parents.
Anyone who clicks around on the National Public Radio website is often bombarded with ads for MSNBC. Naturally, if you love one hard-left network, you'll love the other. But the promotion isn't just in advertisements. Yes, conservatives: You're being forced to underwrite with your tax dollars what you're about to read. And you're not going to like it. On March 27, the NPR-distributed show "Fresh Air" with host Terry Gross devoted its entire hour to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Gross honored her at the start as "the host of MSNBC's top-rated show." That's like applauding the tallest pygmy. Sean Hannity crushes her nightly in the ratings and always has. But Gross is clearly a fan: "Each weekday night, she talks about issues in the news and important issues that she thinks most of the media have underplayed or overlooked."
It's more than a little shocking when someone makes a movie that deals harshly with abortion. This is Hollywood after all. Abortion is a feminist sacrament. The movie "October Baby" just debuted on 390 screens and registered in eighth place for the weekend, with an estimated $1.7 million gross. "October Baby" is a drama loosely based on the real-life story of Gianna Jessen, born with cerebral palsy after she survived a failed abortion procedure and now a celebrated pro-life speaker. In the film, the lead character, Hannah, discovers her adoptive parents hid from her that she was never meant to be born.
What if the atheists declared they were about to throw "the largest atheist event in world history" on a Saturday in Washington and few people showed up? Reason Rally organizer David Silverman estimated that "99 percent of all atheists are closeted." The closet must still be full, because they sure weren't in Washington. The Washington Post story on Sunday guessed there were "several thousand" people in the intermittent rain. But Paul Fidalgo of the Center for Inquiry told the Post, "We have the numbers to be taken seriously. ... We're not just a tiny fringe group."
In 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America effectively nationalized the movie industry's rating system to guide parents and the wider public about the content of films before purchasing tickets. A year hasn't gone by since that the "beautiful people" don't throw their artistic temper tantrums when they receive a harsher rating than they want. The latest example is a documentary named "Bully," which investigates the lives of five bullied students during the 2009-2010 school year in five states -- Georgia, Mississippi, Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma. Two of the five committed suicide. The filmmaker is basing his whole publicity campaign on shock and outrage for receiving an R rating for six uses of the F-bomb, as well as other vulgar threats.
A few nights back, Mark Levin made a powerful point on his radio show: Fox News boss Roger Ailes is a well-known and infamous name in media circles, like some sort of cable-news Voldemort or Darth Vader. Meanwhile, MSNBC boss -- quick, can you name him? -- Phil Griffin is unknown and not the least bit controversial after hiring, as Levin unforgettably put it, a "conga line of morons."
You know it's election season when Republican candidates get angry phone calls from liberal musicians telling them not to use their old music (like "Survivor" whacking Newt Gingrich for using "Eye of the Tiger" from 1982). Meanwhile, Democrats are handed new anthems on a silver platter written with their re-elections in mind. Bruce Springsteen's new album has been hailed as a soundtrack for Obama's re-election, especially the song "We Take Care of Our Own" ("wherever this flag's flown"). Springsteen is lauded for going on "a tear to raze Wall Street and raise Main Street." This is where author Jason Mattera comes in to laugh and point with the facts in his new book "Hollywood Hypocrites."
Our transparently feminist media are currently cranking their hyperbole machines in their War on Limbaugh. They are reporting -- chortling, really -- that Republicans have a huge problem with women voters. The Washington Post breathlessly reports that their poll found Democrats won by 25 points on "Cares more about issues that are especially important to women." But there's an enormous, deliberate, daily oversight by most of these pro-Obama journalists. They are choosing to ignore the vicious way liberal talk show hosts and comedians talk about women -- and not just conservative women -- on a regular basis. Many of them come from NBC and MSNBC.
At the same time Washington was ablaze with outrage at the idea that Rush Limbaugh insulted a woman as a "slut," ABC premiered a new Sunday night show called "GCB" -- shortened from "Good Christian Bitches." Limbaugh apologized. ABC displays no such contrition. They insulted only those Christians. In the midst of this trashy debut, ABC promoted a new sitcom coming in April titled "Don't Trust The B---- in Apartment 23." ABC advertised the debut of "GCB" with a photo of actress Kristin Chenoweth in a choir robe cut way above the knee, as if such a thing exists. "Love One Another," it read, dripping in sarcasm. That's Hollywood's definition of a "good Christian."
In the wake of the Obama administration dictate that private insurance companies cover contraceptives and abortifacients, supporters have defined anyone who would oppose this mandate as waging a "war against women." Obviously, no opponent of this policy is actually bombing, shooting or stabbing women to death. The same cannot be said for what the cultural left favors -- a war against babies. The latest front of "advanced" leftist medical ethics has emerged from the experts at Oxford University. They don't just favor abortion, even partial-birth abortion. They favor "after-birth abortion."
HBO has perhaps made Bill Maher America's nastiest talk show host. He's also America's most prominent, militant atheist. Now he's made himself the most prominent million-dollar donor to Barack Obama's super PAC, Priorities USA. He broke out a big check onstage in San Jose to advertise his magnanimous support. A few days ago, NBC's resident feminist Andrea Mitchell practically needed smelling salts when Santorum super-PAC backer Foster Friess repeated a very old (and equally innocent) joke about Bayer aspirin being used as birth control. This somehow became the scandal of the day for Rick Santorum.
It seemed like someone had been inhaling something at CNN on Friday morning. They kept touting an upcoming interview: "Barack Obama could win the presidential election by a landslide. Op-ed contributor Charlie Garcia tells us how next." Garcia, a consultant to corporations on how to market to Hispanics, broke out rainbows and unicorns for Obama: "He's doing all the right things. He's basically saying, 'look guys, comprehensive immigration reform. I'm all for it. It's those Republicans that just keep getting in the way.'"
Sarah Palin's top aides held a conference call to denounce the forthcoming HBO movie "Game Change," which like any ultraliberal media production, knocks Palin as a mentally imbalanced moron. Reporters are already underlining the Palin aides haven't seen the movie. But isn't that the point? As Pat Buchanan once said about another subject, "Does one need to lift the manhole cover to know what's below?" Did the Clinton team wait to see the movie before begging ABC to kill "Path to 9/11"? Did the Kennedy team wait to see the miniseries "The Kennedys" before getting it demoted to the Reelz channel? The Palin folks can be pretty certain -- especially since the trailer itself announces it's a hit job.
