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 Obama's ratings 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."... continue reading
For the Christian faithful, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday is sacred. It's a time of reflection and 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." Her primary lyrical "thought," if you can call it that, is "I'm just a holy fool, oh baby... continue reading
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. After President Obama's budget speech at George Washington University, Brooks wrote a column for The... continue reading
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. Some commentators will... continue reading
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... continue reading
As the network TV barons peruse through 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 in 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. "Nudity" in this contract is... continue reading
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? The end may have looked near at the... continue reading
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,... continue reading
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... continue reading
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... continue reading