In these hard times, Americans are trying hard to relax and take refuge in entertainment. But The Washington Post is insisting that country music fans are not really sympathetic figures. They are prone to self-congratulation and "closing ranks" behind the thought that they live in the "real America." The Post music critic going by the name Josh Freedom du Lac - that just can't be his name - doesn't really seem to like patriotic music, despite the patriotic byline. He worries that songs like Jason Aldean's "Hicktown" or the Zac Brown Band's "Chicken Fried" do something wrong: They are "narrowcasting... continue reading
The raucous sound of applause for President Obama when he spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner underlined what could be the news media's motto: "You had us at Hello." They shamelessly cheered and screamed even louder when he only half-joked "I am Barack Obama. Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me." The public should wonder: Are the media too personally infatuated with this president? A recent video even showed the White House press corps standing up in homage when President Obama entered the briefing room - a definite, emotional break with the normal, disinterested stay-seated... continue reading
When the late Playboy centerfold and tabloid-media celebrity Anna Nicole Smith graced the white marble steps of the Supreme Court in 2006, the network news operations couldn't get enough of the story. The blonde floozy had married a fabulously wealthy Texas oilman who happened to be 62 years her senior, and now she wanted to collect his estate. It was a serious legal challenge, and a salacious gossip story, and the networks covered it religiously. But when a Supreme Court decision affects the networks directly, and adversely, there's no coverage. The Supreme Court ruled on the case of ABC, CBS,... continue reading
When Sen. Arlen Specter ran in a contentious primary against conservative congressman Pat Toomey in 2004, his slogan was "Courage, Clout, Conviction." The other day, when Specter's pollster apparently told him he was going to lose to Toomey in a rematch, he promptly chucked that blather about his courage and conviction and narrowed his thinking to clout. In desperation, he switched to the Democratic Party. Specter will say (and now do) anything to remain in power. So he tried to spin his way out of this shameless act of political self-preservation by attacking conservatives. And the left-wing "news" media were... continue reading
When the conglomerates behind the viciously anti-Catholic book "The DaVinci Code" were looking for a director, Newsweek reported Ron Howard had a secret weapon: his aw-shucks child-star Opie Taylor likeability. "Ron is not a polarizer," said one. "We all knew the book was quite controversial, and we were ready for that. But we didn't want to add to it." In that same article in 2006, it became clear that Howard wasn't going to make the film less vicious (or less filled with historical lies and distortions) than the book. There would be "no placating. It would be ludicrous to take... continue reading
There's something very curious - even laughable - about watching the media assemble to offer President Obama a grade after the first 100 days. They weren't exactly a team of dispassionate scientists in a lab. They continue to be what they've been all along - a rolling gaggle of Obama cheerleaders - only before it was a campaign and now it's an administration. So now they're assessing whether their awe-inspiring historic candidate still glows with the luster of victory. Hmm...let's see. They applied the luster, they boasted of the luster, and you can bet your bottom dollar they'll continue doing... continue reading
Nobody tunes into a beauty pageant and expects a public-policy discussion that could be mistaken for C-SPAN. The long-standing perception about the question-and-answer section at the end is that the aspiring beauty queens will uniformly voice their strong support for world peace, an end to hunger, and free lipstick and mascara for the homeless. The latest Miss USA pageant on NBC illustrated that beauty pageants are becoming a dangerous culture-war mine field. It doesn't matter how brilliant your answers sound. All that matters is that you provide the politically correct answer, or your dreams will be blown to smithereens. Carrie... continue reading
Of all the bizarre fictions that the media have spread about Barack Obama, the strangest is that's he non-ideological. The supreme purveyor of this fantasy is Obama himself. During his trip to Tobago to meet with Latin American leaders, the president claimed "we can make progress when we're willing to break free from some of the stale debates and old ideologies." That's a pretty funny sentence when your foreign policy reeks of Jimmy Carter, fermented since 1977. In a room stuffed with Marxist crackpots like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Obama came not to lecture, but to charm... continue reading
Ever since he left real radio in favor of the satellite kind, Howard Stern and his faded Dirty Old Man strip-club radio act have been invisible. But now, some people are apparently trying to match him on the struggling Sirius/XM radio system. Actor Jamie Foxx has a weekend show called "The Foxxhole." It, too, was virtually invisible - until he unleashed a vicious attack on 16-year-old Disney teen queen Miley Cyrus. Don Imus was publicly and noisily removed from MSNBC two years ago for his dismissal of the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." If you think that was... continue reading
Newsweek greeted the coming of Easter with a black cover, and the headline "The Decline and Fall of Christian America," spelled out in red in the shape of a cross. Inside, it was more declarative: "The End of Christian America." Why? Because they found that the percentage of self-identified Christians had fallen 10 points since 1990. Okay, then let's compare. How much has Newsweek's circulation fallen since 1990? Just since 2007, their announced circulation has dropped by 52 percent. It would be more plausible to state "The End of Newsweek." At the end of 2007, Newsweek reduced its "base rate"... continue reading