Columnist.
The latest polls show the people are not happy with President Obama's handling of budget matters, but Republicans look even worse. And yet, while the GOP delivers one idea after another, Obama has offered nothing, instead just attacking, attacking, attacking, blaming everyone but himself in utter denial of the reality that no man on the face of this Earth is more responsible for our debt catastrophe than he. Why then is the public blaming Republicans more? It is because of the ceaseless, shameless and oftentimes utterly dishonest attacks on them coming from Obama's media hit men. A day doesn't go by without a leftist "news" media outrage. They come in all shapes, too.
Laura Ingraham calls her newest book, "Of Thee I Zing," a "comedic intervention" on the sorry state of our popular culture. It begins with a declaration of independence from the moral soup in which we swim: "When in a coarse state of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bonds between themselves and the cultural blight degrading the Republic ... they should declare the causes that impel their separation." Ingraham's willingness to mix it up on the culture is refreshing and was apparent during her book interview on NBC's "Today," where she underlined to Matt Lauer that "Today's" Summer Concert Series included vile artists like woman-battering singer Chris Brown and F-bomb-dropping "artists" Enrique Iglesias and Cee-Lo.
On July 3, 1999, The New York Times exposed Al Gore for lying about his family in a national convention speech as vice president of the United States. In 1996, Gore moved the Democrats to tears by claiming that when his sister Nancy died of cancer in 1984, he vowed then and there to oppose the tobacco industry. How courageous -- and completely untrue. The Times found Gore campaigned in 1988 boasting of his tobacco-farming prowess. He lied through his teeth. Network coverage from ABC, CBS or NBC on this whopper, even as Gore prepared a presidential run? Zero.
Some "reality shows" are designed to advertise wanton misbehavior and stupidity for its own sake. There's no "life lesson," just an exercise in how you can grade your own moral worth on a "Jersey Shore" curve. That is not the case with TLC's "Sister Wives." For TLC (The Learning Channel, a misnomer demanding initials only), it was the usual slam-dunk oddball premise: Won't people be curious to see how four wives -- married to the same man -- get along in the same house? The show's stars, Kody Brown and his wives, want much more than fame and fortune. They want to make polygamy respectable, even legalized. The show was a surprise hit for TLC, drawing an average of 2.2 million viewers over Season 1 last fall. The polygamists have recognized the power of pop culture -- particularly television -- and are pouncing to normalize this abhorrent behavior.
Political prognosticator Charlie Cook appeared on National Public Radio on July 11 and summarized perfectly the media narrative on the debt-limit battle. Speaker John Boehner, Cook said, "is not a burn-the-barn-down, break-the-china kind of guy, (and) he does not necessarily reflect the views of a majority ... of the House Republican Conference, who are of the burn-the-barn-down, break-the-china mold." Hold on here. Why is it destructive to insist on a limited government? Why is fiscal sanity equated with pyromania? Cook was brought on as a "nonpartisan" analyst, but there's nothing either civil or accurate in casting conservatives as barnburners.
Actor David Schwimmer, best known as the sad sack Ross Geller on the hit '90s sitcom "Friends," is now bemoaning the sex-saturated Hollywood business atmosphere and its corrosive effects on society and women in particular. The first question many Hollywood critics should ask: Isn't it curious that Schwimmer would care about this issue -- after he earned a million dollars per episode on one of the most sex-obsessed sitcoms of all time? Schwimmer granted an interview to the British newspaper The Telegraph while promoting his new film, "Trust," which opened July 8. "Sex sells, and unfortunately, there's this inbuilt hypocrisy in our society: We're always talking about how inappropriate it is to see an older man with a very young girl, but at the same time, all our advertising is based on that," he said.
The media pandering on behalf of the Obama re-election camp already is astonishing. During the George W. Bush years, everything bad that happened in America somehow was connected to the malignant reign of "The Decider." Last year, CBS even sought out journalist Sally Quinn to claim that Bush's victory in 2000 could be blamed for unraveling Al Gore's marriage 10 years later. God knows, and so, too, do most Americans, that the state of the union is a mess. But in the Obama era, nothing that goes wrong can be traced back to the Democrats in power.
The video-game industry has won again in court, insisting on their right to make the most debased gaming experience imaginable and market it to children with little commercial restraint. On June 27, the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 against California's law mandating that children are not allowed to purchase "Mature" video games without a parent. The political elites are celebrating the ruling as a victory for a vibrant First Amendment, rejecting the very notion of social responsibility on the part of the video-game makers and their often-twisted concept of what constitutes "fun" for children.
The Republican presidential contest is picking up steam. Obama is consistently polling under 50 percent. This one's a toss-up, and in the thick of it is the Fox News Channel. It's not just their role in hosting and vetting the candidates. It's their role as the chief villain in the eyes of liberal Democrats struggling to push their version of the "truth" about Obama. Jon Stewart rhetorically asked Chris Wallace about Fox on "Fox News Sunday" because he thought he knew the answer: "Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll."
The mass-marketing of profanity just won't stop. Now it's topping the best-selling book list -- in children's picture books. You might have heard by now that there's a "subversive" little bedtime book for adults. It should not be read to children. It's called "Go the F-- to Sleep." Anyone who's ever been up at 2 in the morning with a baby or toddler knows exactly the feeling that is being exploited here. "Total genius," says the blurb on the front cover. Genius it is not. Anybody could have written this book in 90 minutes, tops. It's just having the "bright idea" of a naughty nighty-night book that might make the get-rich-quick schemers jealous.
More than any other Republican presidential prospect, Sarah Palin draws white-hot journalistic loathing. She's too red-state, too gun-toting, too religious and too unwilling to abort a disabled "fetus." Even so, filmmaker Stephen Bannon remains deeply optimistic that his forthcoming Palin documentary, "The Undefeated," will sway the media to see Palin in a different light. Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker turned filmmaker, told National Review's Kathryn Lopez that once he and his producing partner delved into Palin's life story, "we decided that not just the American people but even the mainstream media were both fair and decent -- that when presented with something that represented a completely different point of view, they would be at least open to considering it."
Traditional organizations like the Boy Scouts of America have long been under siege by atheists and pro-gay lobbyists who insist they shouldn't have the freedom of association to maintain their God-fearing identity. But you think that's maddening? How about the ultimate cultural flip-flop of a gay softball league going to federal court to insist that bisexual or heterosexual players can't play ball with them? In Seattle, Reagan-appointed U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ruled that a group called the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance has a First Amendment right to limit the number of bisexual or heterosexual players.
When the folks at CBS shooed Katie Couric out the door, one could almost hear the harrumph with which Scott Pelley was reinstalling the Old Regime of Ed Murrow. Unlike Couric, Pelley wasn't debuting with celebrity interviews and updates on Tom Cruise's baby. CBS is going back to biased Dan Rather basics, treating Couric's tenure as little more than a palate cleanser. With Couric off the news grid in pursuit of cloning Oprah Winfrey's success in feel-your-pain afternoon chat, who will be the public face of soft and marshmallowy News Lite? Coincidentally, NBC's Meredith Vieira retired from "Today," and NBC was contractually obligated to promote longtime morning news reader Ann Curry.
It's so ironic that in the very midst of the Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal, television's most shameless channel, MTV, is working overtime to make any notion of sexual restraint obsolete. This year's MTV Movie Awards aerobically established a new low. Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis are starring in the upcoming summer comedy "Friends with Benefits," yet another movie exploring the "dream life" of casual and very cold sex. As they introduced the award for Best Male Performance, Timberlake and Kunis grabbed each other's private parts on national TV.
Last July, ABC and NBC highlighted a temper tantrum from Rep. Anthony Weiner, alleging on the House floor that the Republicans were denying health care to the heroes of 9/11. To Diane Sawyer, Weiner spoke for all of America: "Every now and then, someone seems to express the nation's frustration with the endless wrangling and delay in Congress." Remember Weiner when liberal journalists roll their eyes at the stupidity of conservatives. Weiner's social-media sex scandal was underplayed by the national media precisely because they thought their ultraliberal star was far too smart to commit these stupid sex pranks with women he barely knew on the Internet.
Born blocks from the NBC soundstage in 1984 to parents in the entertainment industry, Ben Shapiro is a natural choice to write a book about Hollywood. For his new book, "Primetime Propaganda," Shapiro has studied decades of television content and interviewed a bevy of powerful Hollywood producers to document the degree to which they have created a political and cultural revolution of permissive leftism. The project gets off to a harsh start. In his introduction, Shapiro attacks "traditional" TV critics on the cultural right for being "worse than useless," suggesting some unnamed conservatives are insisting TV should not be watched. "When conservatives treat television as the Golden Calf, they leave no choice but to lay low the unbelievers -- and most of us prefer to continue occasionally glancing at the offending cow."
One part of the liberal media's Obama re-election effort is well under way: trying to destroy the reputation of Fox News and its president, Roger Ailes. Two long, new magazine "exposes" have attempted to demonize Ailes and his allegedly brain-dead minions as the antithesis of good journalism. The funnier one came from Rolling Stone magazine, which ran the title "How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory." How little does this rag understand good journalism? It took only a few lines before staff writer/fantasist Tim Dickinson fell on his face. After painting a picture of employees loyally cheering the boss at a holiday party, Dickinson entertained comparisons to ... Mao Zedong.
In 2009, the pop star Rihanna told ABC anchor Diane Sawyer she finally broke it off with her violent pop-star boyfriend, Chris Brown. For the children, of course. "When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that part. I couldn't be held responsible." She added, "I just didn't realize how much of an impact I had on these girls' lives until that happened. It was a big wake-up call for me."
When Barack Obama replaced George Bush, there was unbridled joy among the elites. The days of "cowboy diplomacy" were over! Finally, we had a president who was a careful multi-lateralist who wouldn't rudely impose his will, but would instead work with allies to build consensus. But that's not what Obama delivered with Israel last week, is it? Obama went to the State Department and insisted Israel needed to stop its "unsustainable" policy toward the Palestinians and "boldly" retreat behind pre-1967 borders. A stunned Benjamin Netanyahu responded as any ally would if so roundly betrayed. He publicly -- correctly -- denounced Obama's policy prescription.
As far as I'm concerned, there's a circle in Hell reserved for late-term abortionists. But this is the Obama era, so Hollywood makes TV shows casting them as heroic figures. Such is the state of our popular culture. On the May 12 episode of ABC's "Private Practice," Dr. Addison Montgomery (played by actress Kate Walsh, a real-life Planned Parenthood activist) spewed the strongest pro-abortion -- "pro-choice" -- rhetoric as she performed a partial-birth abortion on a woman who thought she'd already had an abortion two months before.
