Liberal media bias? What liberal media bias?
Journalism
John Stewart Throws Conservatives Some Crumbs
You may have seen the link on our Newswire, ‘Daily Show’ Brilliantly Exposes President of ‘Civility Project’ Who Smeared Tea Partiers as ‘Terrorists’. This is what Rush Limbaugh has creatively come to call a random act of journalism, and it’s brilliantly executed and hilarious. In a media dominated by lefty progressive liberals, it’s a rare thing when they call their own side out on their inconsistencies or flagrant distortions. When this happens, conservatives, libertarians, classical liberals, constitutionalists (have I left anyone out), everyone who cares about liberty and limited government, gets excited. Wow! Truth in the media; far out!
Penn State Scandal Exposes Unseemly Media Motives
The Penn State University football scandal has been ugly in a variety of ways, but not all of them are immediately obvious. In particular, the mainstream press, so proud of its progressive views on most moral matters, showed the puritanical streak they always reveal when a person widely believed to be of good moral character can be knocked down and branded a hypocrite. The media coverage in this case displayed the classic American journalism tactic of conveying salacious stories under cover of moral indignation. This was obvious in the rush to make Penn State football coach Joe Paterno the center of the story.
The Society of Professional Journalists Goes Full-bore PC
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” — Through the Looking Glass (1872) Evidently, the SPJ agrees with Humpty: The Society of Professional Journalists voted this week to impose even more political correctness when they passed a resolution to urge newsrooms to drop the terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant,” saying that only courts can decide when a person has committed an illegal act. Their logic is elusive: Aguilar said that the terms insult Latinos who are or who had once been in the U.S. illegally, citing the case of her mother who became a citizen in 1980. That’s right. It’s insulting to be called illegal when you broke the law by entering the country illegally. Heaven forbid that we should insult criminals. From the SPJ resolution: “WHEREAS only the court system, not reporters and editors, can decide when a person has committed an illegal act and;
Goldberg Is Mad As Hell, and He’s Not Going to Take It
It’s not often that a respected publication runs an article title such as “To Hell with You People.” But that’s what’s happened at National Review. Jonah Goldberg has had it with the absolute hypocrisy of the left-wing, progressive-liberal media, which is nearly the entirety of the mainstream media. As Goldberg says in the very first sentence (and with which I agree), he is more than exhausted from talking about liberal media bias. But some of this bias is so brazen, so breathtaking in its mendacity, that it simply cannot be allowed to pass without comment. You may have heard, over and over and over this past week or two, how Republicans, especially the zany and dangerous Tea Partiers, were endangering America and life as we know it because, well, because they have had the temerity to insist that even governments have to live within their means. Here were some of the Democrat talking points conveniently echoed throughout the mainstream media as told by Mr. Goldberg: Tom Friedman—who knows a bit about Hezbollah—calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and
Attacks on Bachmann’s Husband Just Latest Example of the Double Standard of Contemporary Political Rhetoric
Political rhetoric in the United States has always been feverish and low on scruples. That’s the nature of democracies. Yet there has arisen a new atmosphere in the past decade, and it is not a result of right-wing talk radio. It is instead a legacy of the 1960s New Left, which held that purity of purpose justifies any tactic short of murder.
At the Bottom of the Bachmann-WELS Flap
By Lars Walker All right, I’ll come clean. Sam Karnick wore me down, and I have to admit it. I am a Lutheran. And that, at least according to Joshua Green at The Atlantic, would seem to be pretty fringey stuff. Definitely outside the realm of respectable opinion in today’s world. (Which must be a surprise to all those Garrison Keillor fans.) Or… maybe I’m not a Lutheran at all, really. If you were to speak to an official of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, to one of whose congregations presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann used to belong, they’d probably tell you that my own church, a member of a conservative but pietistic fellowship, isn’t really Lutheran in the proper meaning of the term. We’re insufficiently sacramental in our focus, and so not truly Lutheran. And you know what? I’m OK with that. Among ourselves, we other Lutherans laugh at the Wisconsin Synod sometimes. You might call them our Hasidim. A little strict, a little stiff by our standards. They have their own ways, which sometimes can even cause offense, as when we visit their churches and are denied communion. But at bottom we respect them. They have their principles, and
‘This is what happens when false prophets prophesy falsely’
At First Things, David Mills explains the harm of false prophets, and he recommends the traditional Christian way of thinking about the end times: In being directed to reflect on the end of history, we are being directed to reflect on the men and women we ought to be. . . . The world will still try to make such reflections look weird and uncool, but how weird and uncool can it possibly be to be a saint? Recommended: “Families and False Prophets”
Icons of ‘Liberal Dreamboats’ Crumbling
By Mike Gray History isn’t what it used to be: Did you hear that ripping sound? Two liberal icons known by their silly stage names — Mahatma Gandhi and Malcolm X — have just been torn down from their sanctified perches thanks to a pair of massively researched but finally damning new biographies. Both men, it turns out, were at pains to take on phony identities. Each hid his homosexuality, each was racist, each took pains to manufacture favorable coverage, each was driven by petty hatreds instead of shining ideals — each of these supposedly principled figures was an out-and-out phony. Perhaps the most delicious irony of this myth-busting is that writers with impeccable liberal credentials are the ones who are doing the exposing — and implicitly rebuking the generations of journalists who actively participated in the distortion and exaggeration. — John Boot Malcolm X’s life story, the one the credulous media have been at pains to perpetuate, was largely a pre-fab job: Malcolm X, a hate-spewing charlatan (“Jews run the country,” he said, while women were “tricky, deceitful, untrustworthy flesh” and a plane crash that killed lots of white people was “a very beautiful thing” because “We call on
Christian Movies, Secular Critics
by Warren Moore A few days ago, we discussed the struggles over the amount of “Christian content” in the film Soul Surfer, currently chugging along in the marketplace despite generally hostile reviews. Interestingly, the movie seems to be doing just fine with audiences, with an 85% audience approval rating. However, at sixseeds.tv, Timothy Dalrymple examines the discrepancy between critical/elite opinions and the Christian audience. Asking why Christian movies get slagged by the critics, he moves beyond the pat answers pretty quickly and comes up with what I think are some real insights. For example: The producers of Soul Surfer and the Hamilton family (with an assist from Carrie Underwood) famously fought over the extent to which Bethany’s faith should be foregrounded in the movie. tells us that her faith is made “plenty explicit.” Now, I am generally of the “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” camp, but I find the word “explicit” interesting here. Is there something vaguely offensive, even obscene, about public displays on faith? responds to faith-talk on the silver screen in roughly the same way that Christians respond to bare flesh. A certain minimal amount is permissible, after which one should hide
Covering Up “Camelot”
By Mike Gray Of course, there was a very real conspiracy behind The History Channel’s decision to dump the miniseries . It doesn’t take Glenn Beck’s blackboard to connect those dots. But after watching The Kennedys, I am completely at a loss to figure out why anyone seriously found the material objectionable. The broadcast broke no new ground. Likely, the keepers of the fictional Camelot flame simply didn’t want another reminder of the vast disconnect between calculated and conjured myth in the wake of Mr. Kennedy’s tragic death and actual reality. Whether one reads a good book about the Kennedy years or watches The Kennedys on ReelzChannel, one thing is clear—there were potential ethical and moral time bombs threatening his presidency. And there is a credible case to be made that had Kennedy lived beyond that fateful fall day in 1963, and had he managed to be reelected in 1964 (not at all a sure thing), he may not have survived a second term, politically. That’s right. As Hugh Sidey suggested before his death in 2005—the same Hugh Sidey, who as an editor at Time Magazine during the Kennedy years, was also a Camelot insider—JFK’s various and sundry moral,
Notable Quote: Mona Charen on Those “Evil, Immoral, Unethical, and Stupid” People Who Oppose Abortion
By Mike Gray When debate first erupted about partial-birth abortion, the industry at first claimed that there was no such procedure. Forced to retreat from that lie, they claimed that the procedure was exceedingly rare. When that line was exposed as false, they insisted that it was only performed to save the lives of pregnant women or in the case of severe fetal abnormality. That wasn’t true either. Behar speaks for many when she smears abortion opponents as “evil, immoral, unethical, and stupid.” Now there’s a moral inversion of the first order: those who justify killing a developing child because his or her life poses a temporary inconvenience waxing indignant and morally outraged at those who oppose such a gruesome act. Charen’s article appears here.
Recent Comments