The NBC summer sitcom "Kristin" won't draw anywhere near as many viewers, or as much media attention, as the high-voltage shows from the last two summers, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "Survivor." "Kristin," however, may turn out to be something more important than a buzz show. If prime time ever turns away to any meaningful extent from the breezy amorality that's been its stock-in-trade for the past quarter-century or so, "Kristin" will be seen as a milestone. The June 4 New Yorker carried a lengthy article by John Lahr on "Kristin." It dealt mostly with the program's driving... continue reading
More than six years after he mercilessly killed 168 people with an ammonia bomb, Timothy McVeigh was put to death by the federal government he hated so much. The memory of his awful crime will not fade, thanks in part to a museum at the scene of his crime. But most people have probably forgotten how this tragedy was so shamelessly milked for political advantage by the American left. It's an ironic twist. In recent months, McVeigh's most influential sympathizers haven't been the Michigan Militia crackpots that every network flocked to display in their weekend warrior fatigues back in 1995... continue reading
Every so often, the invaluable intellectual gadfly William Bennett issues what he calls the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, a compilation of statistics on such topics as out-of-wedlock births, students' performance on standardized tests, church attendance, charitable giving, and much, much more. The latest edition, which came out in March, is well worth your time. With a tip of the hat to Dr. Bennett, I present a far less formal, less quantified look at the state of the culture the world over, based on news stories from the past few weeks. First, the negative indicators: - The latest American dance... continue reading
It's safe to say that Jenna Bush is never going to be a member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. MADD lobbied furiously in the 1980s to raise the legal drinking age from 18 or 19 in most states to 21, making most typical American college students imbibing outlaws for the first three years of college. Now that dump-the-beer dragnet has caught the President's daughter for the second time this year. The Clintons probably enjoyed seeing the scandal shoe on the other foot as the story was introduced, with a grand national debate over whether it should merit national news attention... continue reading
Bernard Goldberg worked in the network news business for decades, and he thinks the notion that media liberals deliberately plot to squelch, smear, and skewer conservatives in their newscasts is bunk. Instead, he thinks they're hopelessly clueless to the concept that they're liberals, and that they're biased. Now retired from CBS News, Goldberg has written a second scathing indictment of his industry, and documents his contention dramatically. His Exhibit A: Dan Rather insisted it was bad form for Goldberg to blast his CBS colleague Eric Engberg several years ago in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, and considered it "especially appalling"... continue reading
During the Monica Lewinsky uproar, New York Times columnist Frank Rich argued that since a majority of Americans didn't want Bill Clinton to leave office, his sleaziness ultimately didn't matter. Perhaps he was a trendsetter, maybe a visionary. Either way, an element of Clinton's legacy is our society's growing acceptance of pornography. In a nearly 8,000-word cover story on the porn business for the May 20 issue of the Times' Sunday magazine, Rich takes a similarly democratic approach: "People pay [at least $10 billion] for pornography in America in a year," he writes. That's more "than they [spend] on movie... continue reading
On CNN the other night, Peter Jennings was asked by Larry King if there was a slant to news reporting. "I think bias is very largely in the eye of the beholder," the ABC anchor answered. "Good journalists work very hard to leave their bias beside the typewriter, or the computer as it may be." Mr. Jennings, behold your colleague George Stephanopoulos. It's hard to imagine a televised spectacle more ridiculous than former Clinton hatchet man Stephanopoulos demanding that Bush nominees should be required to show "absolute candor" before they're confirmed. This from the man who insisted Bill Clinton loved... continue reading
Those poor, poor French intellectuals. All they want is to enjoy their oh-so-refined, oh-so-enlightened society and culture, but they can't, not fully, not when they have to put up with numerous vulgar American encroachments, notably our tourists, our language, and our fast food. Now it's our reality television. Of course, the reality genre isn't ours. It originated in the Netherlands and England, then spread to the U.S., but it's true that only after it clicked here did France pick up on it. That's probably why one French lawyer associates it with us. "French people think Americans are crazy, and we... continue reading
Since Sunday is a slow news day, Monday's newspaper often carries curious front-page articles, curious because it is so hard to understand their newsworthiness. On May 14, the Washington Post carried one such phony front-page article carrying a shocking news development. The Attorney General has a prayer group! This "scoop" isn't surprising when you remember it's coming from the feels-good-do-it agnostics at the Washington Post, long accustomed to looking down their sophisticated noses at the religious riff-raff. At a comparably early point in Clinton's presidency, reporter Michael Weisskopf insulted the Christian right, whose "followers are largely poor, uneducated, and easy... continue reading
John F. Harris spent six years on the White House beat during the low, dishonest Clinton years for the Washington Post. Forwarding all that dishonesty with a straight face (or its print equivalent) for all that time has taken a toll on poor Mr. Harris. With the arrival of a new President who's more Ozzie and Harriet than Sex and the City, he is channeling a Clintonite mantra: the media are much nicer to Bush than they were to poor Bill. In the Washington Post "Outlook" section, Harris began by betraying his inspiration: "I was on the receiving end the... continue reading