Everyone with a civilized bone in his or her body thinks the prisoner abuse is unwarranted, unacceptable, and in our most idealistic moments, un-American. There, I said it. Now let me say this: The arrival of the Iraqi prisoner abuse story shows what Jim Wright once called "mindless cannibalism" can overtake the media's war reporting. While reporters murmur about the White House trying to do "damage control," they do not describe their own activity, best defined as "damage overdrive." There is nothing sicker than to see the Katies and Matts clucking about how these pictures will do us great damage... continue reading
It was awarded the status of top news, the front page of the New York Times. Disney was telling its Miramax subsidiary that it could not distribute radical, Bush-loathing Michael Moore's new "mockumentary," titled "Fahrenheit 9-11." This report, like virtually all the news accounts surrounding Moore's upcoming film, seem to glide right around Moore's very obvious hatred of conservatives and his very checkered history of cinematic fact-mangling. The first act of fact-mangling on this film may be this story of Disney censorship. In paragraph six of the Times story, we were given a Disney spokesman declaring they "advised both the... continue reading
Six years ago, the national drama revolved around a heavily investigated leader, his allegedly partisan prosecutor, and the media's fervent desire to save the leader from the prosecutor by hailing the leader as essential to the country and demeaning the prosecutor as a sleazy menace. That was then, and this is now. The current legal situation surrounding Rush Limbaugh does not involve lying under oath, abusing public office, and inappropriate adultery with the much younger help. But now that he has admitted his dreadful addiction to prescription pain-killers and made the painful steps of recovery, Limbaugh is facing a sleazy... continue reading
Hollywood has never been America's capital of what they call "organized religion." In a town that thrives on instant fame and nearly as instant has-been status, wealth and success can appear to arrive at random, just as surely as bankruptcy, addiction, and failure. How can God be found in these whirling details? When people find themselves at the pinnacle of adulation, even celebrity worship, who feels the need for God? It may help to explain why religion on prime-time television continues to be shunted aside, ignored, exiled as irrelevant. There are exceptions. CBS's "Touched by an Angel" found a very... continue reading
Memo to: Republican Party Leaders From: A Friend Re: Where Are You??? The other day John Kerry had finished addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention and was greeting participants when the C-SPAN camera caught one woman, presumably a member of the Fourth Estate, gushing to the Democratic candidate, "You've got my vote!" There's no surprise here. It's almost impossible to distinguish between Democrats and journalists in their passion to elect Kerry and defeat Bush. But where, oh where, are you ? It's good to criticize those in the media who long ago lost sight of the word "balance"... continue reading
The new seriousness at the Federal Communications Commission toward basic, unmissable profanity on broadcast television and radio is beginning to draw great protest from the proponents of profanity and indecency. They have unfurled the banner of the First Amendment and utter the usual buzzwords and mantras: free speech, censorship, chilling effect. Then there's a new one: "creative integrity." This last one comes from NBC president Robert Wright, who wrote a passionate editorial in the Wall Street Journal claiming the TV elite are the titans of "creative integrity," and must not be protested. "Ultimately, we have much less to fear from... continue reading
The front page of the Washington Post carried bad news for the anti-Bush media (redundant, I know). After all their rhetorical shelling of George Bush's position, and after all the press-conference demands for his apologies and admissions of incompetence, and after all the anguished highlighting of bad news from the Sunni Triangle, the latest ABC-Washington Post poll found that Bush has "significant advantages" over John F. Kerry with the public on dealing with Iraq and the war on terrorism. Kerry's domestic-issues advantage has also evaporated. All this has happened as the poll respondents said the war and terrorism have become... continue reading
Breast-exposing Janet Jackson tried to rehabilitate her sinking music career the other night by going on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and satirically smearing her infamous Super Bowl nipple-cover stunt onto undeserving National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. This Jackson woman is fast becoming as pathetic a figure as her brother. NBC's writers cleverly figured out how to make Jackson's perversity fit into the news of the week, and the vast chasm between Jackson's exhibitionist public conduct in Houston and Rice's grace under televised fire in Washington could spur some laughs. But it could also be seen as Jackson piling desperation atop... continue reading
When Condoleezza Rice raised her right hand to begin a much-anticipated TV show on April 8 - broadcast live for three hours on ABC, CBS, and NBC - the absurdities were already in full swing. Absurdity #1: Where was the "news" here? The September 11 Commission was learning almost nothing new, since Rice had already testified for four hours in private. All that was left was a political spectacle. The liberal media-Democrat complex wanted to give the impression that the Bush administration had done something criminally wrong. That might seem hypersensitive, but wasn't it that very hypersensitivity to impressions that... continue reading
Anyone with cable television in his home ought to have a sticker on the remote control warning: "Subscribers with children under 18: abandon hope, all you who push these buttons." As bad as broadcast TV has gotten, with sex and violence and explicit language pouring through the screen, it's nothing compared with what children can find, day and night, on basic cable. Not obscure, late-night, pay-per-view cable, but the cable on your set right now. Offensive content was more than twice as frequent on original cable programming as on broadcast TV, according to a recent study by the Parents Television... continue reading