Columnist.
As much as CNN likes to tell the public and advertisers that it's squarely in the sensible center between the partisan attacks of MSNBC and Fox News, the reality says otherwise. Even if CNN has no Screaming Schultzes or Crazy Larry O'Donnell types, it's still firmly in the Democratic sphere of influence. On his show, "In The Arena," on May 12, CNN host Eliot Spitzer recounted how a story in The New York Times "brought a smile to my face. It said the president of the United States calls you for wisdom and advice about issues around the world. So first, when he calls you, what does he say? Hi, Barack calling for Fareed? What does he do?"
The Obamas want credit for bringing American culture to the White House. When they decided to celebrate poetry at the White House on May 10, it was really not a surprise they would try to make it socially "relevant" by inviting a rap music "artist" to unload some rhymes. The rapper goes by the name "Common" (real name: Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr.). He is celebrated by many on the left as a "socially conscious" street poet. But that's not the way it was seen by cops in New Jersey. ABC reporter Jake Tapper blogged that Dave Jones, president of the New Jersey State Trooper Fraternal Association, was contacted by the White House about trooper objections. Obama officials claimed they had never heard of Joanne Chesimard (who renamed herself Assata Shakur), a woman Common celebrated in "song."
As much as liberals complain about conservative "misinformation" and incivility, they never seem to find it on channels like MSNBC, and we know there are small bands of liberals that wander over there. While many were watching the first GOP presidential debate on May 5, Ed Schultz invited on left-wing bomb-thrower (and 2010 congressional-seat loser) Alan Grayson to heap mud on George W. Bush. Schultz asked if Bush failed to accept Obama's invitation to ground zero out of personal pique. Grayson replied through a smirk, "I suspect that President Bush might've been passed-out drunk the last three or four days, so I'm not sure he made any conscious decision at all."
It's inevitable that the joy and national unity over the killing of that monster bin Laden would cool. Already we're debating the journalistic and political ramifications. On Wednesday, President Obama told CBS he wouldn't "spike the football" by releasing photos proving Osama is dead. I agree with the president, as much as that pains my friend Sean Hannity and other conservatives (and non-conservatives like Juan Williams).
When word emerged Sunday night that President Obama would be making remarks from the White House at 10:30 p.m., viewers knew it must be important. When it began to leak that America had finally found and killed Osama bin Laden, there was joy from sea to shining sea. The nagging pain that this radical Islamic assassin had never received American justice was finally relieved. Crowds gathered in front of the White House and at Ground Zero to chant joyously, "USA! USA!" But for most, it wasn't jubilation. It was the silent fist pump and a silent prayer of thanksgiving for the safety of our extraordinary military. And a thanks to this president for his leadership in bringing justice to that monster.
America can display a strange sexist standard on child sexual abuse. When an adult woman assaults a teenaged boy, Hollywood laughs this off as a teen dream come true. The topic was great fodder for '90s teen shows like "Dawson's Creek," with not a drop of judgment inserted, proving that when Hollywood pleads it's only "reflecting reality," it's really only reflecting its own reality. Mary Kay LeTourneau started assaulting her student Vili Fuulaau when he was 12 and she was 33. When they married 10 years later -- after she served seven years in prison -- the nuptials were celebrated on air by "Entertainment Tonight." The couple remains shameless. They've repeatedly hosted a "Hot for Teacher Night" at a Seattle nightclub.
In the Bush years, poll results that showed the American people losing confidence in their president were featured routinely on the front page of major newspapers like The Washington Post. But when the Post discovers that President Obama's ratings are collapsing, you need a search party to find where inside the paper they're buried. On April 26, the Post offered three stories on polls, each with bad news for Obama. The only one mentioned on the front page (in the very bottom right-hand corner) was a Post/ABC poll showing "rising gas prices are leading Americans to drive less, and hurting the president's popularity." From there, the reader would have to travel to page A-12.
For the Christian faithful, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday is sacred. It's a time of reflection, prayer and fasting. It is Holy Week. It deserves the strongest respect. But our secular media culture does not bend a knee -- or even shut a mouth. Instead, Holy Week means it is time to grab the spotlight with the most indulgent forms of spiritual irreverence and mockery. Start with the infantile Lady Gaga. She released a new single titled "Judas."
Conservatives who really wanted to see at least a spending "haircut" for NPR or public broadcasting in the underwhelming budget deal for 2011 might have suggested at least some symbolic victory for conservatives. Here it is: Fire David Brooks as the alleged conservative or Republican "counterpoint" on PBS and NPR on Friday nights. We could hire Donald Trump to announce it from the boardroom. Or keep him, but banish forever, for once and for all, the notion that he is a man of the right.
Delay and indecision are beginning to define the Obama administration. One matter the Obama Justice Department cannot decide is whether to file an appeal to the Supreme Court in the "fleeting profanity" case called Fox vs. FCC. They've filed two extensions to kick the can down the road. Their latest deadline is April 21. Without an appeal, the Second Circuit's evisceration of any limitation on broadcast cursing will stand. That's right. All bets will be off. If you think the Idiot Box is foul now, wait until Hollywood is allowed to be as gross as it wants.
The ominous threat of a government shutdown dominated the news last week. The media weren't wrong to cover it as a dramatic debate, but all of the hype and horror looked a little bizarre by the weekend -- like wide-eyed, screaming hurricane warnings on the Weather Channel followed by a sunny calm. When the deal was struck, the TV pundits quickly moved on to how there were sharper, harsher battles ahead over much larger chunks of federal spending. That's true. But in hindsight, the entire shutdown fight looks by comparison like a war over who was splitting the pizza delivery bill tip. The $38 billion in spending cuts is a bit of an achievement when Obama didn't want to cut anything -- but it's still the drop in the proverbial $3.7 trillion bucket.
As the network TV barons peruse a menu of pilots for new fall shows, some just jump out of the pile. Some Tinseltown pundits have already pegged it as "likely" that NBC will pick up a show for fall called "The Playboy Club." Just like it sounds, the show is based on Hugh Hefner's original Playboy Club in Chicago in swinging 1963. If that doesn't sound porn-friendly enough, the pilot's producers at 20th Century Fox TV required all actors on the show to sign a nudity clause -- virtually unheard of in broadcast television.
The news leaked out Monday that Katie Couric is stepping down from her failed experiment as the anchor of the "CBS Evening News." People inside the news business greeted the news as shocking. But what's shocking is that Couric didn't get the boot years ago. CBS's ratings cratered while she earned $15 million annually. Couric was once projected as the Great White Female Hope after Dan Rather's involuntary retirement in 2005. His numbers in his last week had dropped to a last place 8.1 million nightly audience. But what did Couric deliver?
It's a discussion for another day as to why those entrusted with the delivery of news so stubbornly refuse to cover the very deadly war being waged at this very moment against Christianity in the Middle East. The aggressors are radical Islamists, the victims Christians, especially those wearing the cloth. Every week, another report detailing another attack seeps through the wall of non-information, of men condemned to death in Saudi Arabia for the crime of conversion, of Catholic churches bombed in Baghdad on Christmas Day, of Coptic congregations slaughtered in Egypt and the like. Sad and troubling to be sure, but it's over there ... over there. Do you have any recollection of the story 15 years ago of the small community of Trappist monks in Algeria kidnapped in a prisoner-exchange plot and then murdered? To the extent I was aware of the brutal story, it was something I quickly filed away in the memory banks under "Oh, dear." Nothing more.
Think of all the militant anti-war types who were thrilled at the removal of the Bush "war machine" in 2008, only to see President Obama's strained endorsement of military action in Libya. Oh, how the political wave of the hard left has crashed ashore. It seems like only yesterday when they were celebrating Cindy Sheehan as she flagrantly called President Bush "the biggest terrorist in the world." Then they elected Obama and it all went to hell. Over the last two years, these chagrined radicals have watched in stunned disbelief while their hero Obama continued the Iraq War wrap-up on the generals' timeline and then added more troops in Afghanistan. They listened in shock as Team Obama announced it was reversing itself on indefinite detentions at Guantanamo.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the perpetually immature creators of the filthy cartoon "South Park," have spent years delivering product sure to please high school sophomores and L.A. Times film critics. But the problem with toilet humor is that, eventually, the commode is filled. They have crossed so many lines of decency on television and in cinema that they need a new frontier to muck. To great secular media fanfare, Parker and Stone are debuting a new musical on Broadway called "The Book of Mormon." A mocking musical titled "The Koran" wasn't going to find buyers, only fatwas. So they chose the Mormons because they seem so ... harmless and "cheesy."
Anyone who's ever seen Jay Leno do one of his "Jaywalking" segments on NBC, locating average Americans and asking them factual questions on street corners, knows there are far too many Americans who know next to nothing about just about everything. They can't name our first president or don't even know what the phrase "Founding Fathers" means. Ask them to name our current vice president and watch the brain waves flat line. Newsweek magazine recently announced its disgust after it offered the government's official citizenship test (the one we require immigrants to pass before being naturalized) to 1,000 Americans. Thirty-eight percent of the sample failed. Newsweek worried in its headline: "The country's future is imperiled by our ignorance."
Watching video clips of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the aftermath are, well, shocking, even to a media-overstimulated world. It almost needs a disclaimer. "These are not disaster-movie special effects. This is real." For everyone in public life, the reaction should be one of horror and sorrow. But in recent years, the definition of "public life" has expanded dramatically with the rise of social and electronic media. It now includes a class of people that has no class.
In the public policy conversation today, there is nothing funnier than hearing the leadership of National Public Radio deny there's a liberal bias at play over there. Even when the Daily Caller posted sting video of their top fundraiser Ron Schiller describing America as remarkably undereducated and the Republicans as ruined by racist, gun-toting, phony Christians, NPR's reaction was repeating Sentence One: Who, us, biased?
Today's installment of the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization comes from Hollywood -- as if that's a surprise. Tinseltown is demeaning Christianity again -- as if that's a surprise, too. But this time, it's not some gutter-mouthed punk. This time, it's a network doing it, formally. ABC has approved a pilot with the title "Good Christian Bitches." Is this what Christian women -- especially the good ones -- deserve?
