For many years now, the liberal Children's Defense Fund has featured as a sort of logo a children's drawing with the scrawled-out words, "Dear Lord, be good to me, the sea is so wide, and my boat is so small." For many of those years, Hillary Rodham Clinton chaired the group's Board of Directors. It's extraordinary that CDF has nothing to say about six-year-old Elian Gonzalez and his plight at sea, and now Hillary is saying to little Elian: get back on a boat to Fidel Castro's Cuba. Spokesman Howard Wolfson recently explained that "Hillary Clinton knows that we must... continue reading
The left-wing magazine the Nation can apply its hidebound brand of analysis to serious public-policy topics. Typical of this is a December book review wherein the Nation's Europe correspondent writes, "If you look at Communism as merely the story of crimes, terror and repression...you are missing the point. The Soviet Union did not rest on the gulag alone. There was also enthusiasm, construction, the spread of education and social advancement for millions..." It's this kind of stuff that makes the Nation...the Nation. However, this spring, as last spring, the Nation devoted almost an entire issue to the movie business and... continue reading
The scandals of the Clinton administration just won't stop. If it isn't Bill Clinton, it's Hillary; if not Al Gore, it's Janet Reno. A day doesn't go by without a new revelation of wrongdoing - or its cover-up - from what we were promised would be "the most ethical administration in history," but is easily the most corrupt ever. On March 29, the latest stink bomb exploded. A federal judge ruled Bill Clinton had violated the Privacy Act in releasing Kathleen Willey's supportive letters last March, after Willey charged the President with sexual harassment. That document dump was a crime,... continue reading
There's nothing wrong with like-minded persons protesting whatever they find objectionable, be it a sacrilegious art exhibition or a bigoted baseball player. That also includes agitating to remove an offensive program and/or its host from television. If it's acceptable political action to work for the dismissal of Howard Stern, then homosexual activists have the right to try to scuttle Dr. Laura Schlessinger's upcoming TV show. But as far as the substance of their argument goes, it's another story. The character-assassination campaign by the Schlessinger-bashers is repugnant. Remember, though, that this is the radical gay movement, and as it has attained... continue reading
While so many in the media have found it outrageous that Bill Clinton could be accused of having "blood on his hands" over administration inaction on violence in America, for CBS it is perfectly acceptable - even worthy of nationwide TV promotion - to charge a Pope had the blood of six million Holocaust victims on his. On March 19, CBS's "60 Minutes" promoted the book "Hitler's Pope," by British journalist John Cornwell. If an author of Cornwell's disposition were writing about Bill Clinton, CBS would have no trouble dismissing him as a "Clinton hater," as a vicious tool of... continue reading
Every once in a while a movie becomes the toast of Hollywood, and such is the case with "American Beauty." Already it's won innumerable citations and awards, and enters this Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony with eight nominations, including Best Picture. Most critics just can't say enough about this film. From the New York Post: "'American Beauty' is a flat-out masterpiece. Surely the best movie of the year. Indeed, an all-time classic." From Daily Variety: "This release will spark a rash of critical hosannas and play exceedingly well to sophisticated audiences." From USA Today: "['American Beauty'] brims with brilliance... a singular... continue reading
Here are two rules of civility in politics. One, conservatives are not allowed to question the motivations or crocodile-tear strategies of liberals. Two, because the true visionaries in the Manhattan media elite have a more heightened sense of society's needs, they can say anything they want about those distasteful people who stand in the way of enlightened progress. If you doubt me, I offer a perfect example: the media's coverage of the Clinton-NRA gunfight. You can hear the anger in those scandalized media voices: doesn't Wayne LaPierre know the rules? LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association,... continue reading
There's something truly bizarre about political reporters whining that the presidential race being winnowed down to just Bush and Gore with eight months to go. These are the same people whose only question for Bill Bradley in the last month was: so when are you getting out? These are the same people who never gave any conservative Republican challenger a chance in this race. One Newsweek reporter said "his hair hurt" just thinking about the boring race to come. This is the same reporter who told Don Imus that Steve Forbes should quit after New Hampshire, suggesting: "It's too bad... continue reading
In a shocking victory for lackadaisical Justice Department prosecutors, Democratic fundraiser, Gore associate, and communist Chinese agent Maria Hsia was convicted on March 2 of illegally funneling $100,000 to Democratic candidates, including the Clinton-Gore campaign, in 1996. In a much less shocking development, the major so-called "news" networks and so-called "news" magazines promptly ran and hid under rocks. Okay, U.S. News mentioned it briefly, and ABC and CBS gave it a sentence or two before the throwing the story in the trash. But these acts of criminal wrongdoing are clearly much less exciting to the average reporter than groundbreaking political... continue reading
It's only natural that leftists would take the media lovefest over John McCain's Trash Talk Express to mean only one thing. In The Nation, Eric Alterman asked: "Can we please put the 'liberal media' [insert barnyard reference here] to rest forever, now?" At the invitation of the Los Angeles Times, left-wing media critic Jeff Cohen declared: "The 'Straight Talk Express' may not roll over Bush, but it already has run over and killed the myth of the liberal news media." Nowhere in their critiques did they consider that nowhere but nowhere have the mainstream press praised the Arizonan's votes to... continue reading