On the night before Thanksgiving, just an hour after Rosie O'Donnell had publicly belly-flopped with a horrible attempt at an old-time variety show on NBC, Barbara Walters made a fool of herself interviewing Barack and Michelle Obama. The toughest questions dealt with whether there was enough "change" in his cabinet picks, and whether he was "waffling" on tax hikes for the rich - questions his (and ABC's) liberal base would enjoy. Let's go back eight years. On the Friday before the Inauguration, Walters interviewed then-President-elect George Bush and his wife Laura. But it was only one part of a routine... continue reading
Christmas is coming, which means it's time for Comedy Central to begin besmirching the holiday. This year's first salvo is "A Colbert Christmas," hosted by the clueless- ultraconservative buffoon persona played by Stephen Colbert. Colbert is so busy manufacturing his O'Reillyesque right-wing jerk that it's impossible to tell where the real man and the cartoon diverge. His adoring entourage in the secular press tries to smooth over his satires of Christianity by insisting he's a Sunday school-teaching Catholic family man. Colbert told the Associated Press that he thinks his Christmas special is "sincerely strange, but strangely sincere." Why do men... continue reading
If there is a dreadfully overused word in the giddy countdown to the Obama inauguration, it is "smart." Not just "smart," but also its stronger cousins like "Brilliant" and "Genius." These words have been offered shamelessly for nearly every person assigned a role by President-Elect Obama. They are assembling an "all-star cabinet." This was not an honor for those having attended all the right schools, but a tribute to people who have all the "right" ideas. Liberals are smart because they're liberals. Conservative beliefs are honed from having been dropped on your head as an infant. Last week, Newsweek almost... continue reading
Both Time and Newsweek magazines are giggling at the Supreme Court oral arguments on the fleeting-TV-profanity case of FCC vs. Fox Television Stations. The court is considering if it has the authority to regulate obscene language on the public airwaves. Time noticed Justice Antonin Scalia joking that "Bawdy jokes are okay, if they are really good." Newsweek reported that Justice John Paul Stevens wanted to know if "dung" was a dirty word. The magazines that aspire to define history saw this Supreme Court argument as only good for a laugh. Maybe it was. After all, Barack Obama will soon be... continue reading
The liberal crocodiles at The New York Times are shedding tears for National Review magazine. The headline of media reporter Tim Arango's piece is "At National Review, a Threat to Its Reputation for Erudition." It is a curious topic for the Times, which usually treats the idea of intellectual conservatism as oxymoronic. Arango mourns that the tenor of debate at National Review Online, the magazine's Internet sister, "devolved into open nastiness" over the question of Sarah Palin's fitness for the vice presidency, "laying bare debates among conservatives that in a pre-Internet age may have been kept behind closed doors." Arango... continue reading
The election of Barack Obama was certainly historic, and the great attraction of that historic moment led to more history: an Obama-smitten news media that completely avoided their responsibility to test the nominee with hard questions. It made the gooey 1992 Clinton campaign look like a fistfight by comparison. Obama faced none of the withering scrutiny applied to even the Republican vice presidential candidate. Instead, he was treated to a nearly constant string of encomiums and tributes to his transformational candidacy, while nearly every possible pitfall of political embarrassment or inconvenience has been omitted or dismissed. The investigative resources of... continue reading
The Washington Post announced an important new study from the respected Rand Corporation on its front page on November 3. Teenagers who watch a lot of television featuring sex talk and sex scenes are much more likely than their peers to get pregnant or get a partner pregnant, according to the first study to directly link television programming to teen pregnancy. The study was published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. It tracked more than 700 12-to-17-year-olds for three years, and found that those who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as... continue reading
Hollywood celebrities campaigning and cavorting with national contenders is a staple of presidential politics. Frank Sinatra is remembered for backing Jack Kennedy. Paul Newman made waves for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Warren Beatty was part of George McGovern's "Malibu Mafia" in 1972. Ted Kennedy used Carroll O'Connor, famous for playing Archie Bunker, to add to his lunch-bucket appeal in 1980. Republicans, too, had their moments. Nixon had Hope; the Gipper had the Duke, Jimmy Stewart and others. But these were exceptions to the rule. For a generation this industry comprised of the very rich and very famous has been dominated... continue reading
The election results aren't in yet, but there is one set of surveys with an unmistakeable conclusion. Everyone should be forced to admit that the publicists formerly known as the "news" media have worked themselves to the bone this year to elect Barack Obama. Polls have found it. The Pew Center for the People and the Press documented a landslide: "By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on November 4." The Center for Media and Public Affairs found it. Measuring for comments that are either measurably... continue reading
Academics at Washington State University have discovered something that may not be very profound. Celebrities are quite successful in persuading young people to turn out and vote. The survey found that get-out-the-vote pitches by celebrities in the 2004 election cycle helped create an 11 percent increase in voting by people between the ages of 18 and 24, compared to the 2000 election."It suggests that we can make use of celebrity culture to get students engaged," said Erica Austin, a co-author of the study and dean of the school. "They want to be like celebrities." Austin's team found that "celebrities have... continue reading