The McCain campaign went looking for a major anchor to be awarded the blessing and the curse of the first Sarah Palin interview - a blessing for ratings and a curse from all the competitors who would accuse the winners of being soft on Republicans. At CBS, Katie Couric had wallowed in fan-club-president questions to Hillary Clinton about her "pure stamina," so she couldn't be first. NBC's Brian Williams kept asking Barack Obama those hardballs about how his late mother would swoon over the latest glowingly positive "news" magazine cover. How hard was it to pick Charlie Gibson on ABC?... continue reading
Something mildly miraculous is happening among pop music stars. Several of them, from the Disney-marketed Jonas Brothers to the recent "American Idol" winner Jordin Sparks, are showing some extraordinary courage, having decided to serve as role models for teenage virginity and abstinence. Newsweek recently described the Jonas Brothers "so pure they could be carved from a bar of Ivory soap." They are actually brothers, and all three of them - ages 20, 18, and 15 - wear a purity ring on their left hand, pledging to remain virgins until marriage. "People are, like, 'No way, that's impossible'," 18-year-old Joe told... continue reading
The executive suite at MSNBC is the last hardened corner of America to concede that maybe Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are nowhere close to the textbook definition of detached, "straight news" anchor. Their decision to abandon what was tenderly called their anchoring "experiment" only acknowledges that the idea was a bust: MSNBC was regularly coming in dead last among the commercial cable-news and broadcast-news network covering the conventions. NBC News is coming to the realization that Olbermann and Matthews aren't only suppressing MSNBC's ratings on election and convention nights, they're ruining whatever credibility NBC's brand retained. When the boos... continue reading
For months, the CW network has been pushing its reworking of the old teen soap "Beverly Hills 90210." When it finally debuted, Entertainment Weekly magazine joked: "'90210' is the Sarah Palin of TV shows - it's new, it's pretty, few people have seen it in advance...and its main purpose is to remind you of a trusty old product while adding some new vigor and soap opera to the cultural discourse." Put aside that nasty insult aimed at the new star on the political scene. It's the "new vigor" phrase that's salient. The lame, recycled "90210" opened with - an oral... continue reading
When MSNBC's Chris Matthews suggested in Denver that Barack Obama earned his present elevation in American politics, unlike "showcase appointments" like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, he reminded the world of the peculiarity of liberalism. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate underlined it. Liberals find no joy when Republicans select women or minorities for top positions. They are all fraudulent traitors to their own apparent group interests. Conservative blacks aren't really black. Conservative Latinos aren't really Latino. Now, conservative women are somehow not really women. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift spoke for her colleagues on the Palin... continue reading
Barack Obama's campaign has been seriously frightened by John McCain celebrity-mocking ads. Those celebrities were virtually nowhere to be found for most of the Denver convention. While the Obama machine may control the inside of the convention, outside these celebrities are clearly out of control - again. That overbaked tart Madonna kicked off her latest concert tour with a fairly typical attempt to put her Kung Fu grip on media attention by signaling her preferences in the presidential race. In her first concert in London - the same city where the Dixie Chicks professed their shame for being geographically associated... continue reading
For two years now, we've heard Barack Obama's media allies telling us how he was a somehow Not A Politician, that he was the pragmatic soul of civility who was "uniquely qualified to nudge the country toward the color purple." (So said Newsweek.) If that myth hadn't died under tons of weight to the contrary by now, it certainly should have expired in Springfield, Illinois when he selected Joe Biden as his running mate. The Democratic hatchet men were unleashed. Obama brought the D-word to the table: the Republicans are a "disaster." The country could not suffer through "Four more... continue reading
When Sen. John Kerry arrived in Boston for the last Democratic convention, the TV news stars thought they'd died and gone to political heaven. Dan Rather said Kerry's speech drove the crowd in Boston into "a three-thousand-gallon attack about every three minutes," and Newsweek's Jon Meacham was comparing Kerry to Abraham Lincoln on MSNBC. If media liberals can get that excited over Kerry, viewers may have to worry about the anchors lapsing into diabetic comas over Barack Obama's ascension convention in Denver. It's easy to forget just how "tick tight," as Rather once put it, the primary race was between... continue reading
Hollywood is always reminding us of its rosy vision of the future where there are absolutely no limits to sexual adventurism and gender confusion. Seldom is heard a discouraging word about the next new frontier of tolerance. "If it feels good, do it" isn't merely a T-shirt slogan. In California, it should become the state motto, and might soon sound like a new pledge of allegiance - one utopia, casting aside any moral compass, finding liberty and justice in applauding every perversion. On television, it's become almost blase to place a reality show in the fashion world that merely features... continue reading
Doug and Annie Brown became a hot topic of conversation in June when his book came out, called "Just Do It." The married couple from Denver made a decision to do something dramatic to their marriage, and have sex for 101 days in a row. They called it a "sexpedition." They expressed surprise at how much closer they became, relishing conversations, holding hands, and strengthening their marital bond. They felt like courting each other the way they did when they first met in their twenties. On the jokey surface of our popular culture, we consistently encounter the idea that marriage... continue reading