Columnist.
Bill Press has a new book out called "The Obama Hate Machine." To read the blurbs, you might wonder if Press thinks no one should be allowed to criticize the president. Here's Nancy Pelosi touting the book: "In a poisoned political climate, negative personal attacks on President Obama must have no place in our public discourse." What's next? A mandate forbidding inappropriate free speech? These tolerant liberals are out of control.
The shocking death of pop star Whitney Houston built a massive audience for the Grammy Awards telecast Sunday night on CBS. It attracted 39.9 million viewers, making it the most watched non-sports program of the season. The show began with a heartfelt prayer for Houston to "Our Heavenly Father" from the master of ceremonies, CBS actor LL Cool J. But sadly (and predictably), near the show's end, religion was mocked in an elaborate Catholic-bashing mess, starring the rapper Nicki Minaj. Someone on Twitter said it best: "Stevie Wonder was the luckiest man in the crowd" during the performance.
Valentine's Day is probably not the day most people would pick to remember the marriage of John and Jacqueline Kennedy. But on Feb. 14, CBS spent more than eight minutes recalling how it was the 50th anniversary of CBSs "historic" TV tour of the White House with Jackie. They brought on liberal historian Doug Brinkley to proclaim "50 years ago on Valentine's Day, she became America's sweetheart, and 50 years later, she still is." The problem is that any honest historian couldn't claim that Jackie was JFKs sweetheart. He had lots of 'em. And now CBS has utterly ignored what NBC just exploited -- er, reported -- in prime time: Former White House intern Mimi Alford has written a memoir revealing how President Kennedy pressured her into Jackie's bed in 1962 to take her virginity. This affair began when she was 19 and four days into her internship. It would last until the eve of Kennedy's assassination.
Super Bowl XLVI was a good football game, marred once again by the bohemian elite at NBC. NBC could have prevented, but failed to stop, the broadcast of a female rapper "flipping the bird" at 114 million viewers during Madonna's halftime show. It was another "fleeting expletive" of the hand-gesture variety, and somehow, despite elaborate rehearsals, no one at NBC could seem to stop it. The same network skillfully edited God out of a clip of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance during last year's U.S. Open golf tournament.
The Obama administration is waging war on Christianity. Somehow, the networks haven't seen this as newsworthy. On Jan. 20, Obama's Department of Health and Human Services announced its perverse attempt to force Catholic schools, hospitals and other charitable agencies to finance sterilization, abortifacients and contraceptives in their insurance plans starting in 2013. Speaking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Dolan roared like a lion in a press statement: "In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences." He asserted, "To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable."
While Democrats mock Mitt Romney for his alleged lack of interest in the "very poor" and focus their political pitch on income inequality, one can't help noticing the Obamas running around to $35,000-a-head fundraisers with the very rich and very famous in New York City and Hollywood. Michelle Obama kicked off February with an exclusive fundraiser in Beverly Hills at the home of Netflix executive Ted Sarandos and his wife Nicole Avant, who raised Hollywood millions for the Obamas in 2008, and then became their ambassador to the Bahamas. Now Avant's back managing Obama's Hollywood money march. Many of Tinseltown's titans ponied up: Jeffrey Katzenberg, Harvey Weinstein, Haim Saban and Steve Bing, among others. (Katzenberg has also given $2 million to the Obama-affiliated super PAC called Priorities USA Action.)
The photograph of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer pointing a finger at President Obama on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport brought out the worst in amateur psychoanalysis from our media elite. No one had an audiotape or videotape of what was said but just the finger-pointing image somehow was definitive evidence of profound disrespect. These same journalists were not only unfazed but also actually downright amused back in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist in Baghdad threw two shoes at President Bush's head. That man, they said, was an "instant hero." Over and over, they replayed the footage, each time laughing just a bit harder.
Remember when Don Imus saw his cushy CBS Radio and MSNBC career go up in smoke in 2007 when he tried very early one morning to make one of his fake misanthropic jokes about the Rutgers women's basketball team being "nappy-headed hoes"? Black activists demanded his firing. Advertisers fled. The corporate suits, appalled and fearful of the terrible publicity, canned him. But if you're a black rapper, terms like this advance your career. The female rapper Nicki Minaj has a very hot new video called "Stupid Hoe." She uses that same term to snap at other women -- "We ship platinum, them b----es are shipping wood / Them nappy-headed hoes, but my kitchen good." (Don't hurt your brain trying to make sense of it.) Minaj even threw the n-word in the lyrics: "How you gon' be the stunt double to the nigga monkey?"
The Brian Williams MSNBC debate in Florida was not only dreadfully boring -- I never thought I could ever long for commercials -- it was pathetic. Freed of the fear of triggering an avalanche of applause against loaded questions, Williams and his co-moderators couldn't bring themselves to utter one single question asking the Republican candidates to respond to Obama's mistakes. For almost two hours, not one Obama failure was cited. Apparently, his record is spotless. Instead, the candidates (especially Rick Santorum) were thrown four questions surrounding the 2005 legal battle in Florida over pulling the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, which pushed all the liberal media hot buttons about "far right" religious conservatives throwing their religion around where it didn't belong. This isn't breaking news. But like the ABC debate fixated on contraception, it's evidence that liberal networks are focused on their agenda, not on the voters' concerns.
Late-night comedians historically have relished the opportunity to poke fun at politicians. Sometimes they savage them. In the Obama era, they haven't been so enthusiastic about any of it. A recent study of political jokes on three late-night shows (Letterman, Leno and Jimmy Fallon) by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that Barack Obama's joke count is "substantially lower than any other president." Some of the Obama jokes are actually bipartisan slams. Jimmy Fallon joked, "Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are more mature than President Obama and John Boehner." This is the classic comedian's pose, and the safe one that all the politicians are ridiculous, squabbling poseurs. Still, it's every bit as much pandering to the public as the politicians are.
It's a crying shame that in today's network "news" media only books written by gabby left-wing celebrities generate interest. When those left-wing screeds are written by left-wing, celebrity clowns such as Michael Moore, Bill Maher or Ed Schultz, then somehow it's A-list booking. That's when the "Today" show and "The Tonight Show" roll out the red carpet. It's a sad indictment of the industry that serious books about ideas are rarely discussed, and if the serious book is written by a serious conservative, then rarely becomes never. Not even when there is a screaming market demand for such a book will the TV bookers relent.
It was symbolically perfect that on the same day Hollywood went to the Supreme Court to make the case for broadcast profanity, Entertainment Weekly reported that the next showing of the ABC smutcom "Modern Family" would feature a two-year-old girl dropping the F-bomb. The episode's title will be "Little Bo Bleep." Shameless. There's no other way to describe the people running these networks. We're told "It might be the first time in a scripted family broadcast TV series where a child has said the F-word." But it won't be the last -- especially if the high court grants Hollywood's demands and shreds any regulation of nudity or profanity on TV.
Sitting through the Republican debate on Saturday night with ABCs George Stephanopoulos was just painful, from beginning to end. Some of it was just political Ambien. But when it was finally over, there was just one question: Who in the GOP in his or her right mind invites a historically shameless Democratic spin controller like Stephanopoulos to "moderate" a primary debate like this -- ever? The only thing that can be said in defense of that horrible decision was turning to NBC the next morning and seeing "moderator" David Gregory be even more slanted in his questioning. ABC slanted the ideological questions in their debate by a ratio of 6 questions from the left to each 1 from the right. The NBC ratio was 8 to 1.
For many months, the liberal media elite has made no secret that in its mind the field of Republican presidential candidates includes Mitt Romney and a collection of clowns. Clearly, Romney is the opponent that Barack Obama and the liberal establishment want nominated. Journalists have mercilessly savaged every single conservative alternative to Romney who's ascended to the top of the polls: Palin, Bachman, Cain, Perry and Gingrich. It's too bad for them that the results from the Iowa caucuses threw off their bold predictions that the Romney juggernaut would achieve lift off in Des Moines, Iowa. Yet Romney won by only eight votes over, surprising, Rick Santorum. This means one thing only: Senator, step up to the guillotine.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has hit several huge roadblocks. First it was the cold temperatures that sent many home. Next was the long-overdue decision to evacuate them out of public parks by liberal Democrat mayors. But another huge roadblock that's emerging: their enormous hypocrisy on wealth. The occupiers have pushed the ludicrous slogan that "We are the 99 percent," somehow stands for the same public that installed 63 new conservative Republicans in the House in 2011. To demonstrate their 99 percentism in October, these protesters staged a "Millionaires March" in New York City, parading to the homes of wealthy citizens such as Rupert Murdoch and David Koch. But OWS organizers have conveniently ignored the massive wealth of celebrities within their own ranks.
Profanity and pop music go hand in hand these days. The pop star Rihanna recently appeared on the British version of Simon Cowell's singing competition "The X Factor" dressed in a demure plaid jumper with a prim white collar. It seemed like a bow to younger viewers (and their parents). But a glance at her black sneakers and the mood was shattered: She'd inscribed the words "F--- off." On her blog, The Record, NPR music critic Ann Powers declared this little stunt exemplified an undeniable reality: "21st century pop music is very dirty." In fact, "2011 saw so much boundary-breaking in pop that the lines seem forever pulled down."
For those Republican presidential candidates who eventually conclude there is no path to the nomination, there is consolation in the notion that they won't be the ones to face the brutal onslaught being prepared for the GOP king-of-the-mountain by team Obama and its army of "objective" media allies. This time around, the Obama machine cannot run on the fairy dust of hope and change. It cannot suggest after four years of dreadful executive-branch performance, that the promised one is on the horizon. Its only path to victory is the one that finds its opponents even more disliked. So it can be guaranteed that whoever wins the Republican contest will face one of the most scorching personal assaults the country has ever witnessed.
The depravity of our popular culture and our eagerness to shred traditional values manifests itself every day. Lady Gaga, the top-earning woman in the music business and deemed by ABCs Barbara Walters to be one of the "most fascinating people," has a new vocation in mind. She's announced she wants to become an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church so she can marry two gay male friends. Lady Gaga is as unattractive, in every sense of the word, as her name is stupid. She welcomed Easter with a single called "Judas" ("I'm still in love with Judas, baby.") and arrives at Christmas as Reverend Gaga. This is the same "instant online ordination" that TBS late-night host Conan O'Brien used in November in a disgusting scene to "marry" two gay males live on his television show. Gaga and Conan are two of the real cultural losers of 2011. Here are some other winners and losers:
In 2008, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. At that time, it wasn't hard to imagine the Swedes were rewarding Krugman for eight years of blasting George W. Bush. In other words, the Nobel Prize truly matched its namesake: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Krugman regularly throws rhetorical dynamite at anything that stands in the way of his radical worldview. Krugman outdid himself for outrage in 2011. Every year, the Media Research Center collects a panel of willing conservative journalists and talk show hosts and puts them on a sickening roller coaster ride through the worst media bilge of the last twelve months to arrive at the Best Notable Quotables of the Year.
In this special season of giving, Hollywood is willing to give people what entertainment executives think the country needs: a vicious, bloody takedown of Christmas. The Dec. 11 episode of "American Dad" on Fox exemplified those with a complete absence of Christmas spirit; it was titled "Season's Beatings." Father Donovan announces he is running a Christmas play at the mall, so Stan Smith, the conservative Christian CIA agent/idiot dad, expects to play Jesus Christ on the cross. He says, "I'm the most devout member of the church," and he also says, "When it comes to Christianity, that's the money shot." Stan is told he's too fat and is cast as Santa Claus. When he discovers that the part of Jesus has gone instead to the show's bisexual space alien character, Roger, who boasts he's working on his "savior bulge," Stan beats Roger senseless.
