Unbiased Media Week (Yeah, Right)

Pictured is Christine Amanpour, currently of ABC "News" and formerly the Scud Slut for CNN. Since leaving CNN, Amanpour has left behind her "all Islam, all the time" reporting, and has branched out into distorting the news generally and ambushing conservatives on a very heterogeneous menu. She's hardly alone, but she's always been one of my favorite sleazebag TV personalities.

In her pursuit of fair, unprejudiced reporting, Amanpour recently interviewed two personalities on ABC's This Week. Her question to Democratic operative and Obama adviser David Axelrod went as follows: "People from all over the world, frankly, say to me, here comes a president with a huge mandate, a huge reservoir of good will, huge promises to change, and with all of that, his popularity is down. People don't appreciate some of the amazing legislative agenda that he's accomplished."

She should have gone straight for the gold and asked: "Why are the American people so stupid that they don't realize the genius of Barack Hussein Obama?" Axelrod didn't do nearly as good a job flacking for Obama in his answer as Amanpour did in her question.

But the tone was a bit different when she interviewed Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. "What is Christine O'Donnell's qualification for actually governing? What is Sharron Angle's actual qualification for governing? Are you not afraid that they might be a turnoff? Are you not afraid that their somewhat, one would say, some might say, bizarre statements, their sort of fringe quality might actually turn people off?" She might have asked "why are people as unqualified to govern as Barack Obama running for office?" but that's an entirely different story. You see, like her loaded question to Axelrod, this loaded question served the purpose of "asking the hard questions."

The mainstream media simply can't understand why people are turning away in droves and accusing them of serious liberal bias. The MSM folks deny it, and I think that many of them genuinely believe that they are being completely neutral. Sort of like media critic turned political pundit Pauline Kael after Nixon's landslide election: "I don't understand how he could possibly win. I don't know anyone who voted for him." The TV and print journalism MSM reporters are like an incestuous cult that never speaks to anyone outside the family. Think "left wing version of the Westboro Baptist Church."

As I said, Amanpour is far from alone. In the same week, there was a plethora of similar incidents throughout the mainstream media. New York Times reporter Kate Zernike on C-SPAN Washington Journal said: "People, again, have trouble separating race and the Tea Party movement, because there is this feeling of "we want to keep ours,' and there is very much an 'us vs. them,' and when you talk about 'them,' it always brings up that the 'them' are the poor, the disadvantaged, blacks, etc., and now I would say illegal immigrants as well." Zernike failed to mention that "the people" who can't make that separation are largely the same people who hang out at Pauline Kael's place.

And then there's the neutral interview conducted by NBC's Matt Lauer on NBC and at least five subsidiaries owned or controlled by NBC-Universal. Interviewing President Obama, Lauer led with: "You said, you know,'the Republicans, they're treating me like a dog.'" Lauer went on to list a few more sins committed by the Tea Party and the Republicans, before summing up his question/lecture to the president: "Former President Clinton said he doesn't think the Democrats, you included, have been rigorous enough in pushing back against some of the Republican attacks. [Here comes the advice posed as a question] Over these next five weeks, Mr. President, do you intend to change your tone or your emotion in terms of your pushing back?" The appropriate question would have been: "Do you deny their charges, and if so, where are they not telling the truth about you?"

Not to be outdone, ABC World News host Diane Sawyer simply passed off a stage-managed Obama puff piece as news. "Today we got to listen in on a phone call--President Obama talking recently to Gail O'Brien, a cancer patient in New Hampshire who is now able to get health insurance." I guess there are some advantages to having your own permanent TV network bedroom in the White House. You get to listen in on and tape "private" conversations between the president and one of his apostles, and then "reveal the good news" to the American people.

In more faux news on MSNBC's Hardball, comic and political genius Bill Maher offered: "I love Jimmy Carter! Jimmy Carter is so honest and and out there. You know, sometimes, I hear people [there go those "people" again] say, 'Oh, Obama, his term could become like Jimmy Carter's.' Yeah, I wish. You know, Jimmy Carter did some real bold things, like returning the Panama Canal [to Red China]. Can you see a president trying to do that today? I think this country needs a lot more of that sort of forthright honesty." Well, at least it's sort of a criticism of Obama, and we should thank the Lord for small favors.

For those of you who prefer it a bit more salacious, there's always Joy Behar on ABC's The View discussing Christine O'Donnell's surprise candidacy: "She's a witch who doesn't masturbate [is that a common practice among witches?]. Isn't it interesting that Sarah Palin backs her up, and one of the reasons she got elected [sic.] is because Sarah did those robo-calls to make sure she got elected. And if I recall, wasn't Sarah exorcised in Alaska by a preacher one time? She believes in exorcism [as does the Catholic Church]. These two are in it together. Talk about a coven. This is a coven!" Behar should know, since she's a witch with a capital "B."

On NBC's Nightly News, correspondent Lee Cowan opined: "GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller's message is ultra-conservative, campaigning to end what he called the 'welfare state' in part, by phasing out Social Security and Medicare, views now-Senator Lisa Murkowski calls extreme." If those views are so extreme, how come Alaskans turned Murkowski down in the Republican primary, and why didn't Cowan mention that little tidbit?

My final honorable mention is Daily Beast writer Peter Beinart on ABC's This Week: "The Tea Party is now the Republican Party, I mean, I think what we're seeing in the Republican Party is something akin to what happened to the Democratic Party between 1968 and 1972 in which the forces of George McGovern took over the Democratic Party, overthrew the Democratic establishment and moved it substantially to the left. What they didn't realize was that while they were able to take over the Democratic Party, they were pushing the party further away from where average Americans are." To paraphrase Maher, "you wish." The rebellion in the Republican Party, most notably from the Tea Party members, stems from the Republican establishment ignoring where the average Americans are.

These are only a few samples of what passes for mainstream journalism these days, and all of it in one week. I'm sure many of you observed other fine examples of their inability to contemplate that there might be any view consistent with American thought that might be somewhat different from the liberal line.

Maybe I'm just becoming the Pauline Kael of the rural hills of California. I don't know anyone who voted for Obama. I don't know anyone here who believes a word the mainstream media tries to pass off as "news reporting" or "fair interviews." I don't know anyone here who thinks that Obama-style "hope and change" means anything other than the ultimate destruction of our great republic. It's time for the mainstream to get rid of their "reporters" and "news shows" entirely, and replace them with infomercials. At least an infomercial is honest about hyping its own product.