Fox News: Left Turn For Circus Maximus

There was an interesting article yesterday by Howard Kurtz about an interview given by Roger Ailes, the Grand Pooh-Bah of Fox News. It’s interesting on several levels. First, Fox is apparently moving left in its coverage. Secondly, it really highlights why conservatives should not trust Fox.

One of the most striking things Ailes said was that Fox is undergoing a “course correction” toward the left. Apparently, Fox executives think the entire network took a hard right turn after Obama’s election and “as the Tea Party’s popularity fades” they are shifting back to the center. Oh, where to begin.

First, there was no hard right turn. The types of stories Fox covers and the slant they put on them was no different in 2009 than it was in 2006 or 2002. Sure, they hired Glenn Beck, but he didn't dictate what the network would cover. He simply provided one opinion show. By that token, MSNBC is right wing because they hired Joe Scarborough.

Secondly, the presumption that the Tea Party is fading sits exactly at the core of why conservatives should be leery of Fox. Fox only cares about drama. . . not truth, not politics. To achieve that, it tries to shoehorn every issue into an easy storyline with clear winners and losers, so it can hire attractive women to represent each side and slap it out on television. The only thing missing is the Jello.

The Tea Party is an idea, not an organization. It is twenty million Americans all doing their own thing with the same goal in mind: change our government. It has no leaders, it does not engage in political theater. In many ways, it is akin to communist cells. And that cannot be squeezed into Fox’s format. But Fox tried. Rather than reporting what was really going on and helping people understand the Tea Party, it instead appointed fake leaders, like Michelle Bachmann, Dick Armey, and Glenn Beck to make its storylines work. Not surprisingly, those people failed to catch on. So now Fox is declaring the Tea Party finished because Fox's storylines didn't work and are played out. . . without ever considering that it has completely misrepresented what the Tea Party is.

This is why you should not trust Fox, because it does not care about presenting conservatives fairly, it cares about using conservatives to sell its drama, and it will twist conservatives to fit its needs.

Third, if Fox is to be a legitimate news source (as it pretends) then it should not be setting any sort of course. It should take the news as it comes without comment and bias. Indeed, Ailes himself complains about the bias of the other networks and the AP: “the AP is so far over the hill, they’ve become left wing, antiwar. Gotta watch their copy.” That’s certainly true. But let me ask, why then does FOX do nothing more than repeat AP stories? Why doesn't it gather its own news? And if bias is bad, why does Ailes admit in the article that he's advised so many of these candidates, including Romney, Perry and others?

Moreover, listen to what happened prior to the debate. Hours before the last debate, Ailes’s team sat in the auditorium plotting how to trap the candidates. And yes, “trap” is the right word. Listen to what Chris Wallace planned to do to trap Perry to generate “fireworks”:

“[I'll ask] 'How do you feel about being criticized by some of your rivals as being too soft on illegal immigration?' Then I go to Rick Santorum: 'is Perry too soft?'”

This is inappropriate. There is nothing wrong with planning an interview question. In fact, a well-prepared journalist needs to think of things they will ask in advance. BUT, this goes beyond preparing a question. This adds the element of using Rick Santorum to sneak attack Perry. This is akin Jerry Springer bringing out a surprise guest. This is trying to make the news, not report it.

Rush rightly criticized this: “Fox wants these people to tear each other up.” And what did Ailes say in response? “Because [people] see conservative thinking on our channel and don’t see it on any other channel, they think we’re in someone’s pocket.” Well, no. Because you call yourself “news,” we figure you would act like journalists, not game show hosts. Apparently, we were mistaken.

Frankly, none of this is new.

Fox has been a fraud since its inception. The way Fox works is simple. They buy stories off the wire from the Associated Press and ask their anchors to spin those stories to the right. That's all they do. To add excitement, they hire telegenic guests to slug it out. That’s not journalism. . . it’s a game show.

And it's not conservative either. Fox's conservatism is the conservatism of big, crony corporate socialists. It is the voice of K Street. And now it wants to turn our primary into reality television. Enough!


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As an aside, according to a Zogby poll, Herman Cain is now the leader at 28% with Republican voters.

Cain: 28%
Perry: 18%
Romney: 17%
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The Death Of Fox News??

Never let a crisis go to waste, especially somebody else’s crisis. That seems to be the motto of this administration. The latest example involves the implosion of News Corp.’s News of the World. Indeed, the Democrats are pulling out all the stops to use this to remove Rupert Murdoch from the helm of News Corp. and thereby, they hope, get FOX News under liberal control. Here’s what you need to know.

The scandal began when it was revealed that reporters at the 168 year old British tabloid News of the World had been hacking into phone accounts of famous celebrities and politicians to find dirt. This violates multiple British laws.

Things recently hit fever pitch when it was learned that the News of the World had bribed police for information AND had hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims and into the phone of a murdered British teenager (Milly Dowler). The outrage that followed forced the paper to close and led to the resignation of the latest editor, Rebekah Brooks, and of Les Hinton, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who was an editor of the News of the World during part of the period in question -- there is no evidence of wrongdoing at the Journal. This weekend, Brooks was arrested and London's police chief resigned.

The scandal reaches Rupert Murdoch because Murdoch acquired the News of the World in 1969 and made it part of his News Corp. empire. That empire includes the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, among others. These are largely conservative organizations and, thus, the Democrats hate them with the passion of a 1,000 low-carbon suns. And with this scandal, the Democrats see a chance to attack their favorite bogeymen. Indeed, they are hoping to parlay the News of the World scandal into an attack on Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and Murdoch himself, who they hope to dislodge from the ownership of these organizations.

To that end, Eric Holder has announced that the Obama-controlled Department of Justice intends to investigate whether the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post were engaged in similar hacking. Can you say... fishing expedition? He also claims he will investigate whether 9/11 victims’ phones were hacked. Keep in mind, by the way, this is the same Justice Department that routinely turns a blind eye to any and all crimes committed by leftist groups or this administration.

Other Democrats are jumping in as well. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee has launched an online petition to demand that “Murdoch come clear.” A group of leftist “journalists” has launched a similar effort. John Podesta, the president of the Centre for American Progress, a leftist crackhouse, claims: “This is not one rogue editor. This is an empire that was built on a set of journalistic ethics that’s beginning to explode and unravel. They were routinely bribing public officials.” Of course, he has no evidence. But then, if anyone should know about bribery and a lack of ethics it would be Podesta, who helped Obama transition to the White House.

This is standard liberal crappola, and mainly it’s just liberals playing with themselves. But there is reason for concern.

The SEC (also under Obama’s control) could attack News Corp. for its subsidiary engaging in bribery of the British police, which would violate foreign bribery laws, specifically the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A violation of the FCPA might require Murdoch to resign or even give up his ownership.

Also, under federal law, holders of television and radio licenses have to undergo character tests to show that they are fit to be media owners. If the SEC (or the Justice Department) finds a violation of the FCPA, the FCC (also under Obama’s control) could deny Murdoch his television and radio licenses, which would again result in him surrendering control.

At this point there is no evidence that Murdoch did anything wrong and he is doing all the right things. They closed the paper that had clearly spun out of control. The editors directly responsible, whether they had knowledge or not, have resigned. And his papers have issued a public apology. The committee that monitors The Wall Street Journal has already said they have no evidence of wrongdoing at the Journal or at Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company (which is owned by News Corp.). And it’s unlikely Fox was involved because, frankly, they’ve never reported anything that didn’t come over the wire.

But doing the right thing does not insulate you from an aggressively partisan government. So expect Team Obama to pull out all the stops to use the power of government to shut down the one part of the MSM that isn’t in the tank for them.

This could get interesting.

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Horton Hears A Hate

This particular Horton happens to be the Leona Helmsley of the House, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The woman who finds hateful speech leading to riots and death in her vivid memories of San Francisco in the 70s has now decided that the word "hate" must never be used--even as part of a perfectly legitimate question.

I have two immediate disclosures to make. First, I did not see the O'Reilly/Obama interview when it was first telecast on Fox because I didn't want to ruin my enjoyment of the Super Bowl (which turned out to be one helluva game). So I saw it in re-run. Second, I wouldn't listen to Oprah Radio Network if you threatened me with a broccoli-only diet. So I have to rely on reports from reliable sources who listen to the show because they like it or are paid to report on it. Both tell the same story.

The two super-egos, one from Fox, the other from La La Land talked at each other, but I'm not sure either was particularly buying what the other was saying. But here's the question that got San Fran Nan so upset, clutching her chest and having the vapors (O'Reilly to Obama): "Does it disturb you that so many people hate you?" Pelosi says she winced when she heard the question. We'll have to take her word for it, since all that botox makes it impossible to distinguish between her pained face and her happy face. I will admit though that she does look perpetually surprised, so maybe that's good enough.

"To hear this used in the presence of the President of the United States--I think we all have to recognize that while we disagree with people, and may think they are wrong, "hate" should never be used," says the Einstein from San Francisco. Well, Nancy, what if it's true? Isn't it perfectly valid for a good reporter to ask the question and give the prissy President a chance to deny it or explain it? Should we now call it "the H-word?" The selective sensibilities of the venomous left simply never ceases to surprise me.

Admitting that she is a closet masochist, she spoke of watching and re-watching the painful interview with the even more painful question. "Just seeing it again, I thought it was a completely inappropriate question." But that certainly didn't stop her from adding: "Of course, beautifully handled by the President." Well, if it was such a horrible question, shouldn't Obama have objected, or denied, or wet his pants, or something?

So here's something you probably thought you'd never hear from me. I agree with her latter comment. For a guy who's as good on his feet as a three-legged dog with the palsy, Obama gave a good lawyer/politician answer. I'd say he didn't lose his cool, but how does a robot lose its cool? Said Obama: "The people who dislike you don't know you. The folks who hate you don't know you. What they hate is whatever funhouse mirror image of you is out there." It's nonsense, of course. I didn't know Hitler or Stalin. Does that mean I shouldn't hate them? I certainly have enough reliable information about them to hate them.

So I guess if O'Reilly had asked why so many white racists hate Obama, that would also have been "inappropriate." Or why so many left-wingers hate Dick Cheney? The question should never be asked, no matter how important or how germane because the question includes the H-word. I suspect her botox includes just a touch of LSD because this woman obviously does not live in the real world.

Non-participants in this horrifying event from both sides of the political spectrum came up with one suggestion that was intended to pour oil on troubled waters. "Many people don't actually hate Obama, but do hate his policies." I thank them for their reinvigoration of 60s child psychotherapy: "Mommy and I know you burned the house down, but we don't hate you, we hate what you did."

Well, just so there's no confusion on my readers' part, I will repeat my iteration of Jonathan Chait's New Republic statement about George W. Bush. I hate Barack Obama's policies, and considering all that I know about him, I hate Obama too. At least Pelosi can sleep better at night knowing that she finally succeeded in driving me out of her Congressional district.




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Fox News: A Healthy Dose of Skepticism

One of the most critical traits required of any journalist, lawyer, investigator, scientist, or anyone else whose job is to examine evidence, listen to conflicting stories, and make sense of what they find is a little thing called “skepticism.” Skepticism is what causes you to question the things that just don’t seem right, and to check the things that seem too good to be true. But journalists have abandoned skepticism, as shown by their reaction to a recent Fox New directive.

At one point, journalists realized that skepticism was a necessary part of their jobs. Indeed, this principle was summed up perfectly in a statement attributed to the City News Service of Chicago: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.” But modern journalists no long respect this axiom.

Mike Vick is reformed! Sure, his apologies were not apologies and his mea culpa was more of a mea accusa everyone elsa, but the NFL says he’s reformed. Lindsey Lohan’s publicist says she’s sober. Sure, she ends up in rehab more often than most people go to the bathroom and she’s constantly photographed coming out of clubs drunk, but her publicist sounded very sure.

What do you mean the Democrats aren’t the party of the working class? They say they are. Sure, they get their money from rich lawyers and Wall Street, and they do favors for banks, but they say they don’t really like those people. What do you mean Obama isn’t the ideal leader? Sure, he has no educational or professional record and his first book reads like someone else wrote it, but he looks nice and he reads well. . . and all the Democrats say he’s a genius.

You get my point? The media has reached a point where skepticism is no longer considered part of the job. They will report any assertion as true if the assertion comes from the right people, even when it’s patently obvious the asserted facts could not be true. And they will uncritically parrot any conclusion, no matter how unsupported or how illogical, so long as it comes from the right people.

Indeed, the closest they come to skepticism is cynicism, but that’s not the same thing. What separates cynicism from skepticism, is that skepticism involves a thorough process of starting from a default position of doubting all that you are told, and then vigorously trying to prove or disprove the assertions. . . letting the facts fall where they may. It has no bias.

But cynicism, on the other hand, is just an opinion and it is pure bias. Cynicism takes from skepticism the idea that simple assertions cannot be trusted, but rather than seeking to prove or disprove those assertions, it stops at disbelief. Thus, if you do not trust the source, then you cast doubt on the source’s data, their motives and intentions, their capabilities, and their seriousness. And that is exactly how modern journalists behave, not with skepticism, but with cynicism. Indeed, they no longer seem capable of true skepticism, just cynicism directed at the people they don’t trust, i.e. Republicans, and blind faith in the people they do trust, i.e. Democrats and other leftists.

Consequently, it should come as no surprise how leftist journalists have responded to the news that on December 8, 2009, Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon issued a memo to his reporting staff telling them to be skeptical about assertions of global warming. Here’s what he said:

“Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”

Their response should be, “excellent! We, as journalists, must be skeptical of all things and this fits perfectly with our credo.” But that’s not how they responded. Instead, they called this directive “conservative spin” and they ranted furiously that Fox would not bow at the global warming alter. The horror, the horror that journalists would treat disputed facts as disputed!

How sad is it that the same profession that refused to believe that Presidents never sanction breakings and enterings, that the Pentagon never lied, that corporations never committed crimes, that scientists never faked data to get contracts, that colleges never paid their athletes. . . would suddenly be outraged that other journalists have dared question disputed “science” that has been exposed as the domain of liars, cheats and data-fakers.

The fact that these “journalists” react this way should tell you all you need to know about your ability to trust their reporting and their analysis. It is yet another black mark in the eye of modern journalism.

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Boo ! Did He Scare You? He Should.

Ahmed Rehab. No, that's not where they sent Lindsay Lohan after her most recent drug fiasco. It's the name of the most public face of the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR). And right after gaining a few points in my estimation over the Juan Williams firing, Bill O'Reilly lost those points, and then some, by having Rehab as his special guest on The O'Reilly Factor last Monday. So this is my belated Halloween post.

To start, let me say that I'm am not a big fan of O'Reilly, but his show is always interesting, and he often has controversial guests with whom he either banters or battles. I should also add that I applaud anyone who will bring Islamic "moderates" on his show for the purpose of hard debate. So I have to say that O'Reilly started out by doing the right thing, but finished by doing it the wrong way. O'Reilly's huge ego, self-aggrandizing nature, and perhaps shock at a Muslim spokesman who would actually appear on his show caused him to lose it during the interview.

At the beginning of the show, O'Reilly referred to Rehab as a "stand-up guy." Not once, but twice. For many of us, that expression refers to the Mafia hit-man who refuses to divulge the names of his fellow murderers in La Cosa Nostra. But O'Reilly, and I'm sure many others, use the expression to mean "brave, bold and honest." He has been known to refer to himself using the same compliment. Rehab is indeed a stand-up guy--for the Islamic Mafia and its mouthpiece, CAIR.

O'Reilly is incapable of treating most of his controversial guests with kid gloves, but he got awfully close while dealing with Rehab. His usual hardballs turned into slow softballs, and he was unusually deferential to this loathsome, antisemitic, media-savvy supporter of terrorism. O'Reilly has to know that Rehab represents a group that is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist fund-raising scheme. He has to know that CAIR's idea of American-Islamic relations is that Americans will learn to love Muslim terrorists by any means necessary. Surely O'Reilly knows that CAIR filed a complaint against Delta Airlines for racially profiling in-your-face Muslims acting up aboard a Delta flight. In fact, he has to know that was a major factor in the Juan Williams firing at NPR, which O'Reilly did a fine job of handling.

I am not in as high dudgeon over this as Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch or Karin McQuillan at my old fellow ex-radical David Horowitz's site NewRealBlog. O'Reilly goofed--big time. Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs was so angry I could feel the saliva coming out in every word of her review. I don't think O'Reilly has suddenly become a disciple of Osama bin Laden. I really suspect that he simply got out-foxed (no pun intended) by a clever and slippery Muslim spokesman who snookered O'Reilly into trading mutual grudging compliments.

I also think that O'Reilly is still somewhat dazed and defensive about his donnybrook on The View where he stated simply (and accurately) that "Muslims killed us on 9-11." My ire at O'Reilly relates not to his alleged apostasy (which it is most certainly not), but rather that we cannot give any radical Muslim an open forum with no genuine opposition. It's just too dangerous. If O'Reilly had been his usual combative, talking-over-the-guest self, I wouldn't even be writing this piece.

Here are just a few of the items that O'Reilly didn't address with Rehab. CAIR was founded and funded by Hamas and Hamas-friendly big Arab money. It was intimately involved with the Holy Land Foundation which encouraged Muslim terror attacks. Holy Land was finally found to have used lies and deception to get money from Americans grieving over 9-11 and wanting to help Israelis who were suffering the same thing on a nearly-daily basis. The money was actually being used to fund Muslim Brotherhood terrorist activity.

CAIR has used its considerable monetary resources and legal team to harass and silence scholarly opponents of militant Islam such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, and moderate Muslim (yes, there are a few) Khalid Duran. They have participated very actively in libel tourism, and have attempted to skirt the First Amendment within the United States in order to silence critics. They support United Nations and liberal American hate-speech statutes, and spend considerable funds attempting to get legislation which would make criticizing religion (in other words, Islam) a human rights violation.

The FBI and Homeland Security have classified CAIR as a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, yet the Obama administration consults them before discussing any major matter regarding Islam. I expect that from Obama, but not from O'Reilly. O'Reilly must know that CAIR co-sponsored and actively participated in a Brooklyn College Hate-the-Jews event during which several of the speakers pleaded with the crowd to support jihad, described Jews as pigs and monkeys, and chanted "no to the Jews, descendants of the apes." One militant Jordanian Muslim whom CAIR favors told a Chicago audience that killing Jews was a good deed. Does O'Reilly think that kind of behavior qualifies Rehab as a "stand-up guy?"

Rehab is a noted Holocaust-denier, and himself participates in activities of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has stated on multiple occasions that his favorite modern personality is Sayyed Qutb, who is known as the "father of Islamic fundamentalism." Perhaps O'Reilly isn't well-read enough to know that Qutb wrote the definitive Holocaust-denial textbook Our Struggle With The Jews. And perhaps he doesn't know that Rehab's favorite "intellectual" is Qutb's younger brother Muhammed Qutb, best-known as the mentor of Osama bin Laden.

I don't think O'Reilly would call Adolf Hitler a stand-up guy, but the Muslim Brotherhood of which Rehab is so fond is the parent organization and model for all later Jew-hating Muslim organizations, and during World War II had Hitler's ear. They even created a catchy little ditty for good Muslim kids to sing in the streets of the Middle East which went "Allah in heaven, Hitler on earth." And in keeping with their idea that Jews are very clever monkeys, CAIR blamed the first World Trade Center attack on Mossad agents trying to get America to attack the caliphate. They have consistently defended Osama bin Laden, and until the evidence became overwhelming denied that bin Laden had anything to do with the 9-11 mass murder.

O'Reilly may have fallen prey to Rehab's plan, along with other CAIR shills, to mislead and fool Americans by using American media to tell a different story than they tell their fellow Muslims overseas, or here in Arabic. CAIR co-founder Nihad Awad let his plan slip when it got public that he had said that they must use phrases like "return the homeland to the Palestinians" when he actually was saying to his followers "I want to destroy Israel." He went on to say to his co-founder Omar Ahmad: "Address people according to their minds. When I speak with an American, I speak with someone who doesn't know anything."

Following Awad's advice, Ahmed Rehab spoke with Bill O'Reilly. Oh--and did I mention that Rehab and CAIR played a major role in getting NPR to fire Juan Williams? O'Reilly should at least have known that and used it to go on the attack.

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Media Campaign Contributions

You may have heard the big liberal brouhaha about Fox News’ parent corporation giving one million dollars to the Republican Governors Association. Total outrage, right? Proof of right-wing bias at Fox, right? But then the outrage suddenly disappeared. In fact, the story vanished. Any guesses why? How about this. . .

When word hit the street that News Corp. had donated one million dollars to the RGA, everyone pounced. All the networks ran with the story, as did liberal bastions like the New York Times and every other liberal slag heap with journalistic pretensions. The Democrats pounced on this as well. Nathan Daschle, the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, even called on Fox News to put a disclaimer on its coverage of gubernatorial campaigns.

Daschle, by the way, is the son of rich lobbyist and former Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who couldn’t get into the Obama Administration because he hadn’t paid his taxes and because he earned five million dollars from lobbying for health care groups. Despite this, Daschle eventually ended up being hired for behind the scenes work for the Democrats on the health care issue. And now his son is in the business. . . I guess the rotten apple doesn't roll far from the barrel.

In any event, this story didn’t last. Why? Because something went wrong on the way to Outrage Avenue. Indeed, the parade took a wrong turn and found itself on Hypocrite Street instead. See, it turns out that 88% of the contributions of the employees of ABC, CBS and NBC were made to the Democratic Party. Indeed 1,160 network employees -- executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, etc. -- gave a total of $1,020,816 to Democratic campaigns in the 2008 election cycle. By comparison, only 193 of their employees gave to Republicans ($142,863)

Hypocritical Democratic journalists? Wow, I never saw that one coming!

Also, it turns out that News Corp. gives to both parties.

So there's no story after all? Actually, there is, but it's not one they want to talk about. The real scandal here is that ANY journalist would donate to either political party. They call themselves the Fourth Estate and they claim a nearly official role as the watchdog of our government. They even have special protections under the law to allow them to perform that role, i.e. protections against slander and liable laws and the right to protect their sources. Yet, if they truly are to hold such a role, then they should be non-partisan. That means no political contributions. . . no journalists married to politicians or campaign directors for politicians (and recusals if you are). . . and no more revolving door where journalists move back and forth between the profession and Democratic campaigns and administrations.

The real story here is the scandal of the entire profession having interwoven itself with the political establishment.

And if they won’t unweave themselves, then maybe Daschle actually has a good idea (a first for his family). Maybe journalists should be required to put up a disclaimer that identifies how much money they, their producer, their writers, their editors, and anyone else who worked on the story gave to each side any time they do a political story. Journalists pushed to get such rules forced on corporations, and corporations don’t even claim to be unbiased. So if this is good for corporations, then I would say it’s more than good for journalist. In fact, I would call it necessary.

And that’s the way it is this August 30, 2010.

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Occasionally, We Get A Victory

Until the elections in 2010, conservatives are not going to see a lot of major victories. I don't include the tea parties and similar popular rebellions since they have been been very successful so far, but are more mass movements against the imposition of big government in general. So when we have a small victory relating to a specific issue we've addressed, I think we should be allowed to crow a little about it.

Back on October 6, we ran an article questioning Fox News Channel about the wisdom of having a regular commentator who is billed as a "Columbia Professor," but who is in actuality a race-baiting leftist (see: Marc Lamont Hill), with no expertise in much of anything except his major: "Hip Hop Culture." Yet several different Fox News commentary shows have used Professor Hill as an expert on everything from urban crime to Iranian foreign policy. And most shamefully of all, he has been used regularly as a feature commentator on The O'Reilly Factor.

Beginning with some of the blogs, and followed by a much broader exposure on talk radio, the truth of Fox's self-destructive choice quickly became big conservative news. Nobody was objecting to Hill's appearances per se. What those of us who knew of Marc Lamont Hill were objecting to was his billing as a legitimate expert on matters in which he is a complete amateur. We wouldn't object to Louis Farrakhan, since his racist political views are well-known. Al Sharpton is a regular commentator on Fox News (he's a personal favorite of Geraldo Rivera), but again nobody is being led to believe that the fat reverend is some kind of middle-of-the-road intellectual university professor. But that is exactly how Professor Hill has been presented on a daily basis, as if he weren't a crypto-communist, radical race-baiting friend of Fidel Castro, Louis Farrakhan and myriad other America-haters.

My old radical-turned-conservative ally David Horowitz made the issue an open challenge, starting with the "communist heroes" wallpaper on Hill's FaceBook page. Horowitz can be unrelenting, and the Hill matter was no exception. TownHall, Reason, and numerous other conservative/libertarian blogs picked up on the story (including Commentarama). HuffPo and The DailyKos rushed to Hill's defense, mostly by shouting "racist" in a crowded blogosphere.

As of yesterday afternoon, October 16, Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media announced that "Fox News has fired Marc Lamont Hill." Kincaid had asked Fox honcho Rupert Murdoch why someone with Hill's radical views would have a role as a Fox News commentator. Before he could finish his question, Murdoch interrupted Kincaid to say that he appreciated Cliff's work on the matter, and that Hill had been "fired" last week. I think "fired" may be too strong an expression to use for a news network correcting its own mistake, since there was really no wrongdoing on Hill's part. It was the fault of the vetters at Fox. So I prefer the old corporate term: "de-hired."

Horowitz got everybody up in arms when he questioned why O'Reilly interviewed Hill for an entire segment about Iran. That seemed to stir everyone else up, including Cliff Kincaid, and everybody on the right began to dig for more information on Hill. The more they found, the worse it got. Most often attacked were Hill's credentials solely as an expert on hip-hop culture, and his repeated support of noted cop-murderers Mumia abu Jamal and Assata Shakur (a long time resident of Cuba since fleeing from prosecution in the United States).

Although we have not found final confirmation of the firing story, nobody is denying it, and the story seems credible. Kincaid's record for accuracy approaches 100%, so we have no reason to doubt it. And since the HuffPo and DailyKos are already reporting the "lynching" with slobbering indignation, we should have confirmation any time now. David Horowitz pays tribute to the diligence of Kincaid and others in his NewsRealBlog by saying: "If the coverage [by Kincaid], AIM and others has helped place the radical left wing views of Hill outside the bounds of the mainstream, it is another victory for conservatives and the blogosphere in general."

To which I add, "thank you David and Cliff for giving this Hawk a chance to crow."
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Fox News and Professor Hill--Enough!

I can't be the only one who is becoming irritated by the constant exposure of Marc Lamont Hill on the Fox News Network. He got his start on TV punditry at MSNBC (which should have been a clue), but has become ubiquitous at Fox. He's on news shows. He's on panel discussions. And he's even a regular on Greg Gutfeld's Red Eye. He poses as an affable liberal, and Fox seems to buy into it. In fact, he's a black radical who is unfortunately becoming a regular "friendly face" on Fox.

He is always billed as a Columbia professor, but with nearly every appearance, his title seems to change. At various times he's been a professor of urban studies, black studies, education, sociology, and God knows what else. But what is he, really? He got his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and subsequent degrees from Temple University (where he taught, whatever it was he taught, as an associate professor until summer of 2009). He is currently a professor of (fill in the blank) at Coumbia University Teacher's College.

His baccalaureate degree is in "anthropological education" (whatever that is). But what is his actual area of expertise? Hip-hop music, the rap culture and education. There's a winning combination if I ever heard one. But his true love is radical black "liberation" politics. If there's an opening for a new Secretary of Education, I think I see an Obama appointee in the making.

He has conducted an ongoing war with David Horowitz since Horowitz first published an article regarding the foolishness of giving Professor L. a lengthy segment on the O'Reilly Factor to discuss, of all things, Iran's development of nuclear armaments and pending sanctions back in August. Horowitz was very blunt. After being asked by O'Reilly "do you think we should give Iran three months or six months to let the UN inspectors in?" Horowitz reacted very publicly to the nonsense. "How would he know? How would he even be in a position to make an intelligent speculation? By his own account, Hill is an expert on 'hip-hop culture,' i.e. rap music. His academic degree is in education. What are his views on foreign policy worth, unless putting him on was designed to show up the shallowness of the left? Hill is in fact a knee jerk leftist, a defender of ACORN and a man whose attitudes toward race are a throwback to the Sixties. I wonder if O'Reilly understands that putting on such a lightweight feeds the racism of low expectations. Having a Columbia professor of rap music comment on the foreign policy views of Karl Rove (who was featured in the preceding segment) is demeaning to Rove and embarrassing to every African American watching."

Rather than take Horowitz on directly, Hill decided to put his arguments on Twitter. It was the final blow to Hill's phony reputation as a good-natured liberal. On September 27, Hill sent out another critique which Horowitz picked up. Horowitz responded, but at that point he noticed Hill's Twitter wallpaper. Prominent on the wall was one of Hill's heroes, Assata Shakur. Shakur is an escaped felon, charged with the cold-blooded murder of a New Jersey State Trooper in 1973 (some of that 70s violence that seems to worry Nancy Pelosi). Shakur escaped to Cuba, where she has been hiding out and producing radical black hate literature all the while protected by Fidel Castro.

Expecting Hill to do something to cover up his radical connections, Horowitz was shocked to receive another post from Hill which said "Assata Shakur is an American hero & freedom fighter. I'll always stand next to her." So rather than disavow an urban terrorist, Hill supports a communist murderer who was a member of the murderous Black Liberation Army (also well-known to Nancy Pelosi, when they had a base in the Fillmore District of San Francisco). These weren't the over-heated Sixties--the murder occurred during a pitched battle ten years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voters Rights Act.

By the time Hill had sent twenty-seven increasingly belligerent responses to Horowitz, he had caught the attention of Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid. On September 28, Kincaid interviewed Hill and published a corresponding article. Says Kincaid: "What's more, an article on his web page, which appears under Hill's by-line and photo, declares that Shakur, who is still on the FBI's Most Wanted List, is one of the great heroes in the Black Freedom Struggle, and proclaims 'Mother Assata: I am eternally grateful for your life and example. I give thanks to the ancestors for you. I pray for your continued protection and pledge to support you and our people until I die.' "

Here are a few other juicy tidbits of information about Hill:

He called the notorious anti-white, anti-Jewish Khallid Muhammad a "mentor, teacher, and revolutionary hero." He believes that news reports lied, and that Muhammad did not die of a brain aneurysm, but rather at the hand of a white assassin. Muhammad was so filled with hate and invective, that even Louis Farrakhan kicked him out of the Nation of Islam.

He gave a lecture on the "Importance of Ideological Training in the New Millenium [sic.]" at the Polymathematic University's "Political Education Program for the Poor Righteous Communist Party."

He declared on a MySpace page that the people he would most like to meet include Assata Shakur, Louis Farrakhan, Fidel Castro, and Mumia Abu Jamal (an even more cold-blooded cop killer).

He speaks on the "Importance of the Nation of Islam to Hip-Hop Culture" and once belonged to the Ansaaru Allah Community, an Islamic sect with doctrines similar to the Nation of Islam which has been accused of being a dangerous religious cult.

His MySpace page also includes Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Ella Baker ( a personal favorite of communist Van Jones, recently exiting the Obama administration).

By October 3, Assata Shakur was removed from Hill's Twitter page and MySpace. So the next time you see Marc Lamont Hill, impeccably dressed and smiling up a storm anywhere on Fox News, remember that he is not Alan Colmes in disguise. This is not a good-natured liberal who's just in it for the happy face time. He's insinuating himself as some kind of moderate into the mainstream of semi-conservative TV. And he's doing so with the assistance of Fox News, its producers, and its regular personalities. While the hosts are jocularly bantering with him, he is smiling and thinking to himself "you deserve to die."
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Journalism Is Dead

With Glenn Beck, not the mainstream media, exposing Van Jones for the rest of us, it might be the appropriate time for a little rant against the state of modern journalism. How to put this: “Journalism Is Dead.” Yep, that about sums it up. And I have particular anger for Fox News.

Modern journalism is in a bad state. Though, to be fair, most of what ails modern journalism has ailed it since journalism first began:

• Modern journalists are biased. True enough, and when I get the chance, I will put together an article showing you just how biased. But journalistic bias is nothing new. Indeed, at one time, journalists were openly biased. When you pick up the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, for example, you’re looking at a paper that was founded as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party.

So even though the New York Times is a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, that’s nothing new -- they’re just less honest about it. Same thing with the Associate Press announcing just prior to the election that they would no longer present all views “uncritically,” but will instead put their own spin “on the news”. And while this may represent a change of official policy, it certainly won’t change the practice, which has involved spinning for as long as I can remember.

• Charges of being co-opted are nothing new either. The Founders called for a free press. But other countries have not been so noble. Pravda means “truth” in Russian, but you would have been hard pressed to find much truth coming from Pravda during the cold war. The Pentagon periodically gets caught paying journalists to present favorable opinions on its behalf. And while corporations now dominate journalists, this is not so different than the days when Randolph Hearst ran his newspaper empire with an iron fist.

Modern journalists are also an easily co-opted group. The Washington Post tried to use its connections to sell “off the record” private meetings between the rich and powerful and those with too much money. White Houses have learned to manipulate the press corp as well by granting special access. . . hello ABC. The NFL, a master at manipulating journalists, dispenses tickets, interviews, and access to keep its journalists in line -- when they don’t outright hire them. Corporations have gotten very good at using journalists for their purposes as well. Maria Bartiromo of CNBC got in trouble when it was revealed that she accepted favors (like flights on private jets) from the same people she reported on. And CNBC has started pimping for sponsors, unless you want to believe their repeated “spontaneous” sales pitches for Gap jeans are actually news.

At this point, modern journalists are little more than press agents for the people they cover.

• Charges of sensationalism are not new either. Sure modern journalists try to create crises and false urgency to sell their work and they often trade in salacious details rather than relevant fact, but that’s all been done before. The phrase “yellow press journalism,” which fanned the flames or populist resentment to begin the Spanish American war, was hardly meant as a compliment.

The Real Problem Is Journalistic Laziness

So what is different today? Frankly, journalists have gotten lazy. How else do you explain the media, with its vast resources and supposed training and drive for the truth, being scooped repeatedly by bloggers? How else do you explain allowing plagiarized work to appear in a paper like the NYT day after day for so long without any editor noticing? How do you explain journalists who don’t know what they are talking about and don’t take the time to inform themselves?

You do know that you really can’t trust anything they tell you, right? As anyone who has ever been involved in an incident that ended up getting press coverage can attest, the journalist is often the least knowledgeable person in the room, both when they arrive on scene and when they leave. And few facts survive the journey through the journalist’s mind to reach the work itself, if they ever made it into the mind in the first place. Indeed, in my experiences with journalists, I have been shocked to see how poorly the journalists understood the events about which they reported and opined, and how little they cared.

And frankly, modern journalists are a strangely uninquisitive lot. They don’t know and they don’t want to know. Why? Maybe because the more you know about something, the more you realize just how much more you don’t know. Perhaps, it’s easier to remain ignorant of our ignorance. After all, ignorance is bliss.

So how does this manifest itself? It manifests itself in many ways. Stories are shallow and often wrong on fundamental levels. Journalists do little work to cultivate contacts, which used to be the lifeblood of journalism. Instead, they read the AP wire or scan the net. Place a quick mid-night phone call that won’t be returned in two rings, and bamo, you have a story and a failure to deny the story: good to go! Journalists no longer even wait to confirm their stories with a second source, which used to be the fundamental rule of journalism. Instead, they just add the magic words “is being reported” to let you know that this news is really only rumor. And when was the last time you heard of real investigate journalism?

When I look at modern journalism, the writing is poor, the research is worse or non-existent, and the reasoning is laughable. Not a week goes by that I can’t find some article that contains such obvious logical inconsistencies that the journalist should have realized their “facts” were impossible. Even when I read a “reputable” magazine like the Economist, I marvel at how easily I can rip up article after article without even researching a single fact. Your names are wrong, your dates are wrong, your numbers don’t add up. You just claimed an average rate that exceeds the population size. You claim that no one raised and objection, right before quoting someone who objected. Think people.

My Problem With Fox “News”

So what bothers me about Fox News? Fox News had a unique opportunity and they blew it. When Fox burst onto the scene, conservatives flocked to Fox in drove because they were sick of hearing their views ridiculed on each of the other channels. At that point, Fox had a chance to re-define journalism.

Fox could have changed the face of modern journalism. Fox could have forced journalists everywhere to start dusting off their sense of journalistic integrity and to stop being so damn lazy. But they didn’t.

Fox could have teamed up with a good reporting unit like the Washington Times and started to give us hard hitting news. They could have easily drawn in people like John Stossel and asked him to perform the kind of investigative journalism that he has done so well throughout the years -- hard facts, gathered through traditional means and verified, fairly presented, with logic and reasoning and without political bias. But they didn’t.

Did you wonder what life was really like on the streets of Baghdad when all that CNN would show you was Marines being killed? How about an investigation into what caused the banking crisis? Who was responsible? What is China doing in Africa (future article coming up on that one)? Did you even know they were in Africa? How about the Saudis? Does ethanol make sense?

Well, Fox didn't investigate (though their anchors happily gave you their opinions). Fox does not produce its own news, it just reads wire service reports. You can get those on-line a lot quicker and a lot more accurately (Fox shortens the reports to keep them simple). Fox does not do investigative journalism -- other than puff pieces. They will never uncover a government fraud or expose a defective missile system, because they just don’t do that kind of work. And they barely know other countries exist.

Fox doesn’t bring in experts to enlighten you, it brings in combatants to snipe at each other for thirty seconds before the segment ends. Fox News is news for those with attention deficit disorder. It is for people who want to hear someone argue for their side, it is not for people who are looking to learn the truth. It is talk radio, done on television by well-endowed anchors and anchorettes. And we conservatives accept this because there is no alternative.

Now, I'm not saying that the other networks are better, they're not. But that doesn't change the fact that Fox is offering very shallow product to us. It also doesn’t change the fact that Fox is squandering a golden opportunity here. If they tried harder, they could redefine news and give the words "journalistic integrity" some meaning again. They could give us the free press that a democracy needs. They could enlighten us about the world around us, about our politics, about each other. They could tell us the things we need to know to make good decisions. And most importantly, they could give us a source of news that we could trust. But that would be hard.

* end of rant *

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San Francisco Diary--Journal Of An Exile

Up In Smoke: San Francisco has long been in the forefront of the marijuana legalization movement. Though I've long suspected that the vision for The City promoted from City Hall derives from a crack-pipe laced with LSD, the use of marijuana by the general populace is devoutly to be wished. City Father (or Mother): "We're going to ban automobiles, confiscate your meat, take your guns, mandate homosexuality, tax you at 100% of your earnings, and put your children in education camps." San Francisco Citizen: "Whffffffhh--Far out, man, cool. Ya got some Cheetos?"

NOTE: In California in general, and in San Francisco particularly, the people are waking up to the fact that the state is broke. In the spirit of good citizenship and sharing the wealth, there is a growing movement to legalize the use of marijuana. You might be foolish enough to believe that this is just a matter of a bunch of potheads wanting easy access to their drug of choice. Au contraire, mon ami. Pot advocates believe that marijuana legalization would quickly close the $26 billion budget deficit by providing happy, mellow taxpayers. The accountants haven't figured out yet exactly what amount of marijuana would need to be smoked and taxed to raise $26 billion, but they point out that it wouldn't all have to come from the marijuana tax. There would also be a rapid increase in revenue from the junk-food taxes as well.

According to the Joe Biden theory of taxation, these people are real patriots. Imagine--volunteering to pay taxes. They've even produced "tax us" ads, which began a limited run throughout the state on Wednesday. The fascist pigs at NBC in San Francisco and the ABC narcs in Los Angeles and San Francisco have so far refused to run the ads. But the CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC and CNBC cable franchises in San Francisco have all gleefully accepted the ads. The Fox News Channel is holding. Oops, I mean "holding out."

Says spokeswoman Nadene Herndon of Fair Oaks, an actual user (not a paid spokesperson): "The governor and legislators are ignoring millions of Californians who want to pay taxes. We're marijuana consumers. Instead of being treated like criminals for using a substance safer than alcohol, we want to pay our fair share." So far, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hs been unavailable for questions about how they reconcile their anti-smoking, anti-junk food views with their pro-marijuana views. But who needs consistency when there's tax money to be had, and willing taxpayers to give it?

One consumer on the SF Gate (Chronicle) website said "Marijuana is not a drug. I used to s&%# d#&k for coke. Have you ever s&%#d d#&k for marijuana?" Even in San Francisco, the votes on that comment are running about 50/50. That might merely be a function of the number of coke dealers versus the number of coke users in The City, not that there's anything wrong with that.

NOTE: The contract between the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) and its 2800 union employees expired on June 30. The trains continue to run by mutual agreement to extend the negotiations. BART is currently $250 million in the hole after already having raised fares and cut service to help close the budget gap. The unions are still demanding a 3% pay raise even in a failing state and national economy with a 9.5% unemployment rate. So far, nobody has suggested that the operators and dispatchers be allowed to smoke marijuana while on duty in order to raise tax revenues to help cut the deficit. Maybe they don't have cable TV and have missed the ads.

NOTE: San Francisco may be in the forefront of disease as well. The City has reported that it has now had its third case of drug-resistant swine flu. In its resistant form, the disease is communicable between human beings. The teenager had the symptoms of the disease before boarding a flight to Hong Kong, but did not seek treatment in San Francisco. She is currently in isolation in Hong Kong under the watch of the World Health Organization. The Board of Supervisors hasn't yet demanded her immediate return to San Francisco to spread the disease. Local health authorities say the strain can be treated with a new drug called Zanamivir of which The City has approximately twelve doses. They are also experimenting with marijuana as a cure, but nobody is quite sure why.

NOTE: Mark Morford, the Chronicle columnist who writes gentle prose about the average American has done so again. He has announced that fully 11% of those crazy non-San Franciscans believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, "Worshipping Allah or secretly kneeling to Mecca 500 times a day behind his desk in the Oval Office while wearing a kufi and a rainbow-colored disha dasha." Where Morford got his statistic, let alone his recital of Muslim ritual, is unknown. But he does report "Here is some good news for you! Something you can believe in like crispy whitebread Jesus toast, part of this complete breakfast! Something to stick into your big heart of patriotic goodness like fresh imitation strawberry-flavored cotton-candy gunfire! 89% of Americans know that President Barack Obama is not a Muslim." Since I can't tell what the hell this guy is talking about (and I'll bet you can't either), I can only assume that he is a heavy taxpayer from the movement described in the first note in this column.

NOTE: The San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office says the body found Monday morning in McLaren Park was a man, not a woman as police reported earlier. No comment.

NOTE: The CBS channel in San Francisco has accepted the marijuana ad. CBS is the network of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. That would explain a lot.
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All Celebrities--All The Time

There seems to be something going on with today's TV newscasts. It's not that they don't let us know that there are actually important and even life-altering events going on in the world, but the amount of coverage given to truly significant events is dwarfed by the coverage of people who are largely famous for being famous.

NEWS: Over the past week the following events have occurred: The administration announced that the stimulus was working and that unemployment would peak at 8% even as the Labor Department was announcing that the rate was 9.5% and climbing. There was a change in government in Honduras which leaves open the question of whether it was a democratic takeover or an intentional misreading of the Honduran constitution (I favor the former, President Obama strongly supports the latter). In Iran a fixed election resulted in spontaneous demonstrations, followed by violent and deadly suppression of the opposition. Unlike the Honduran situation, the President hastened to make a completely neutral series of non-engaging statements on the matter. North Korea launched multiple missiles in direct defiance of even more numerous UN resolutions while laughing at President Obama's "stern warnings."

The administration continues to say that the Guantanamo detention center needs to be closed, while doing the opposite. Meanwhile, Mullah Abdul Qayum Zakir, released from Gitmo, has become a major leader in the reconstituted Taliban in Afghanistan and is actively assisting in the killing of US troops and his fellow Afghans. The Obama nominee to the Supreme Court has had a significant recent ruling of hers reversed by the high court in no uncertain terms--a unanimous court chiding her for ignoring all the evidence, testimony and oral argument presented on appeal. Four of the five justices dissented anyway because they really liked the result produced by the nominee's ignorance of the rule of law and the Constitution. Several hundred thousand demonstrators took their Fourth of July holiday time to join nationwide "tea party" protests. The demonstrators in the Capital were turned away by the owners of the DC mall who are major contributors to the Obamacrats.

The queen of White House news reporters and the dean of CBS White House reporters got into a loud and heated debate with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs over Obama's alleged manipulation and staging of news conferences and coverage of the President's speeches. Meanwhile, the President proposed his cap-and-trade and health care plans which could destroy the American economy entirely (thus, like FDR, turning a depression into a Great Depression). As for the health care issue, it was considered so important for the Obama message to get out that ABC News took up residence in the White House. That was done so the event could be carefully produced and stage-managed by Obama and the gang through the mainstream media, particularly TV.

All of those events got coverage--perhaps 20% to 30% of TV news airtime. But there were more important things to cover. The remaining airtime was devoted to the truly significant events of the week.

CELEBRINEWS: Michael Jackson, former pop star and known cuckoo died under mysterious circumstances. How mysterious? Mysterious enough for the "news" stations to spend hour after mind-numbing hour talking about it. They were shocked--shocked--to find out that drugs may have been involved. They were amazed to find out that the fifty-pounds-dripping-wet Jackson may have had cardio-vascular and other health problems. They were delighted to find out that there was a hired on-site doctor who mysteriously disappeared from the scene, and after a full day of on-air but unsupported medical speculation, they were even more delighted to discover that he is a cardiologist. Well, that is strange, isn't it? Like everything else about Jackson's entire adult life. Remember, this is the guy that comedian Dennis Miller suggested was a "monkey-loving freak." An influential, even trend-setting pop star--in fact, the "King of Pop," died. OK, we get it. Can we move on?

Prior to Jackson's death, the big news was the death of Farrah Fawcett. That was sad. She had fought a valiant battle against cancer. A few minutes of airtime would have been meet and proper. But quickly, more and more airtime was eaten up by her past, her strange appearance on a nighttime talk show in which she appeared drunk or drugged, and just to make the whole thing juicier, her odd relationship with celebrity Ryan O'Neal. O'Neal is the father of her child and was supposedly both abusive and yet still planning to marry her. Give us dirty laundry.

Just when it looked like nothing more significant could happen, pitchman Billy Mays died. Again, he was a very well-liked celebrity and a highly familiar face on TV, so it would be expected that there would be coverage. But once more, the noting of the death of a TV celebrity must not go without lengthy exposition on his life, marriage, career and "mysterious death." He had hit his head on an airline flight earlier, and out came the experts on head trauma, cardio-vascular disease, airline overheads, and alien abductions. It ultimately turned out that Mays had a simple but deadly heart defect. It was a sad but non-mysterious stress-related end to a good man's life. Enough!

But the nets still had two or three hours of precious time per night to fill, and even they recognized that the other three stories were starting to get stale. Then, as if in answer to their prayers, that time was filled. Steve "Air" McNair, former quarterback of the Tennessee Titans, was found shot to death along with his girlfriend, a 20 year old Iranian woman (caption photo of crime scene from Fox News Channel). Ooh! Guns, mysterious circumstances, love affair, married man, and best of all--a celebrity. Quick, call Geraldo, Keith, Greta, the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the American Association of Criminologists, the American Association of Conspiracy Theorists, and the Flat Earth Society--we have NEWS to be talked about at length!

We can't entirely blame the media. The public seems to suck this stuff up. It's a sickness at both ends, a sort of symbiotic psychosis. It should probably be called "celebrity necrophilia by proxy." I'll have to look it up in my Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Worst of all, it's combined with the weeping and wailing, opinions, and maudlin tributes from total strangers whose lives apparently revolved around these people. Those tributes are covered in-depth and endlessly by the TV news stations. TV began to cover these ghoulish outpourings of public emotion at about the time of the John Kennedy Jr. and Princess Diana deaths. It was such a successful exercise that the nets figured if some is good, a lot more is even better. Let's hop on this gravy train.

A large proportion of Americans cannot locate Iraq on a map, or name the English Prime Minister, or name the President of the United States during the Spanish-American War (if they've ever heard of the Spanish-American War), or explain the Electoral College, or even who the major combatants were in World War II. But ask them what Michael Jackson's biggest hit was, or which TV show Farrah Fawcett was famous for, or what product Billy Mays was pushing, or how many yards Steve McNair gained in the Super Bowl against the St. Louis Rams in 2000, and you will get quick and accurate answers. Some may even know the name of the missile-tossing dictator of North Korea, but only because he appeared as the "ronery reader" in Team America--World Police.

I don't have an answer to this obsession with celebrity and TV's incessant pandering to it. But I do know the question. "What can we do about getting Americans concerned with things that really matter instead of listening to, taking advice from, and watching endless hours of TV about celebrities--particularly dead celebrities?"
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And then there is this...

Now that it is apparent that ABC has become the new All Barack Company with their upcoming new show "Live from the East Room, It's Barack Obama". NBC has also jumped on board as a'Nother Barack Company with the appointment of Tom Brokaw to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships. Of course his appointment was just days after President Obama's star turn in "Inside the Obama White House". However, much to President Obama's consternation, there is least one station that has not been so easily taken in.

WARNING: You are now entering a Full Spin Zone...



I'm guessing Fox News won't be getting any invitations to the White House Christmas Party (or coup whichever comes first).
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ABC TV Becomes the All Barack Company

ABC (formerly American Broadcasting Company) was so thrilled with President Obama's speech on health care, and so overwhelmed by the brilliance of the underlying Kennedy medical care takeover, that the bigwigs have decided simply to move into the White House to avoid having to take a trip across town to hear the words of the Great Healer.
ABC's coverage after the speech became more fawning as time wore on. At first, ABC actually made a few comments that questioned whether the plan was perfect, or even whether America could afford it. But ultimately, starting with George Stephanopoulos on "World News," a sycophantic avalanche had begun which by Wednesday afternoon ran 55 to 18 comments in favor of the plan. The lockstep has begun.

Stephanopoulos was ecstatic reporting how Obama received wild applause from doctors who agreed that the health care system should be run by healers and not by bean counters. Many of us who saw the speech would have said "mild" not "wild," but applause is in the ear of the beholder. Dr. Tim Johnson, ABC's socialized medicine advocate, said "it was a very tender moment . . . and I think he was right on target at reaching out to the heart of most physicians." Johnson neglected to mention that while he was reaching for doctors' hearts with one hand, Obama was reaching for the taxpayers' wallets with the other.

And then came the bombshell. Stephanopoulos promoted an upcoming June 24 primetime special "Questions for the President: Prescription for America." Johnson will be joining Stephanopoulos for that coup. Not a bad "get" for the network, except the special will be set up, organized in, and broadcast from the East Room of the White House. I guess Martin Sheen already had the West Wing tied up. That's a whole lot more than what reporters used to call a "scoop."

The reaction to this symbiotic love fest has so far shown up only on conservative websites, some local radio and TV stations, and of course, Fox News Network. Grace-Marie Turner, president of the not-for-profit Galen Institute said that if ABC's June 24 special turns out to be one-sided, it would be "unconscionable." Good Morning America will join ABC's World News in a week of coverage of the issue. It's called "softening up the opposition." Turner added that "it is absolutely reckless of ABC to host a presentation from the White House on this issue and to not include opposing viewpoints."

Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay complained to ABC News and asked for "an opportunity to add our Party's views to those of the President's to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected." More to the point, McKay said that without outside comment, the report will be nothing more than a "glorified infomercial."

Although ABC News senior vice president Kerry Smith insists that ABC has "had many critics of the President's health care plan on ABC reports," he was unable to explain the three-to-one margin of favorable comments over negative comments. In the two day period leading up to Obama's speech, ABC, CBS and NBC had a total of eight segments and two news briefs promoting the plan and the President's upcoming speech. In that same time period, the three networks allowed one critic, and showed one short segment from a commercial opposing government-run health insurance. But it remains unclear how ABC got the exclusive on the East Room. Maybe CBS and NBC already got the Lincoln Bedroom.

Even former Presidential candidate John McCain (RINO, AZ) found his conservative credentials long enough to ask "How can we possibly , reasonably address this bill . . . without accounting how to pay for it?" As of this writing, neither McCain nor any other opponent of the bill has been offered rebuttal time from ABC, let alone an entire wing of the White House to broadcast from. The real statistic which ABC will be completely ignoring on the 24th is that of the 47 to 50 million uninsured people that Obama and the Democrats claim need government health care, 9.7 million (a low estimate from the Census Bureau) are non-citizens, 7.9 million are under 24 years old (and need little medical care or haven't yet gone to work where employer-provided insurance would largely be available), and more than 9 million earn over $75,000 per year and could well afford to pay for their own insurance.

Thanks to my friend Angel in Arizona and several of our regulars for reminding me that this is about more than just a crazy, socialist government takeover of health care. It is also about the extremely dangerous intimacy between the media and the administration which undermines the whole purpose of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press. A news organization that takes up residence in the White House is no longer performing its genuine public function. It's one thing to be in the tank for a politician, and it's quite another to become his roommate.

Because I felt it was appropriate to post this column today, I will be doing my San Francisco Diary on Saturday instead of its usual spot on Thursday.
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Dr. Obama Writes A Prescription

The President stretched forth his healer's hands, and has diagnosed America's health care system to be in desperate need of major surgery. He has temporarily written a prescription for a new wonder drug. It's a red pill, and it costs about a trillion dollars. But the good news is that everybody will get to take the pill, whether they want to or not.

Speaking before the American Medical Association on Monday, Mr. Obama turned a crowd that had previously been openly hostile to socialized medicine into a crowd of merely semi-hostile questioners. Introducing an amorphous speechified version of the Ted Kennedy plan to turn medical care over to the government, Mr. Obama danced and parried around the details of what a huge and expensive program this would be.

Despite the Congressional Budget Office estimate of the cost of the plan at $1 trillion dollars over ten years, the plan would still leave 36 million Americans uninsured. So it doesn't really solve the "crisis in health coverage" and what it does cover will cost an estimated $62,500 for each new person covered. The Financial Times reported that the CBO had played the role of "the skunk at the party" in 1993, when the administration grossly underplayed the cost of Hillarycare. Although the new CBO report doesn't smell quite so bad to the Obama administration, it didn't need another "trillion dollar program" being announced by supposedly friendly accountants.

Most of the criticism and questioning at the meeting related to the cost of the program and the fact that the plan claims that individuals can keep their private and employer plans. The problem with that second part is that is assumes something that is very unlikely. Private plans won't be able to compete with government giveaways or maintain their current level of medical choices and approved medications, while many employers, facing taxes on "excess benefits" and loss of tax deductions for certain coverage will simply opt out of employer provided health benefits. The moment millions of previously covered Americans cancel their private plans or cease to have plans through their employers, they all become "uninsureds" who will join the crowd getting their care from the government (or rather, from the taxpayers).

Although the plan presented by Obama and Kennedy appears to fill a major gap, in fact it leaves much of the gap unfilled and in addition will create another huge class of uninsured Americans who will have no choice but to join the government plan or go without insurance. Specifics on how the government bureaucrats will determine level of care and availablity of care were left to the imagination. Most doctors, indeed most Americans, recognize that there is a health care delivery problem of major proportions that needs to be solved, but most also realize that nationalized health care and its ugly stepsister "single payer" health care are cures that are worse than the disease.

In addition, the number of "uninsureds" includes those who are temporarily uninsured (largely because of the increase in unemployment), and all illegal immigrants. The number of genuine, legitimate, longterm "uninsureds" is far lower than the government wishes the American people to know about. That real number is what most doctors, laymen, and charities wish to see the government working on. Only liberal politicians want to see the exploitation of another "crisis" which grants government more power over people's lives. Most of the President's advisers are getting their concepts from the national health care systems in England, Canada and socialized Europe. None of them have apparently noticed the huge dissatisfaction with those systems among the "beneficiaries," nor that all of those systems are being carefully re-evaluated to provide for more and better private care.

So how did the MSM treat the reaction to Obama's AMA speech? More evenly than we've come to expect. The AP felt the necessity to gush before reporting the actual news: "For all the young President's popularity, the response he got Monday from doctors at an AMA meeting was a sign his road is only going to get rockier as he tries to sell his plan to overhaul the nation's health care system." CNN was consistent with its all-Obama all the time reporting: "The AMA was expected to be a tough crowd but they quickly melted. This is the beginning of an essential courtship for Obama, who desperately needs this group to pass his health care reform."

NBC's Nightly News was a little more realistic in saying "there were doctors at today's American Medical Association gathering who booed the President." ABC World News actually got to the heart of the matter by noting that doctors "fear that a not-for-profit public plan will drive private insurers out of business, swamping enrollments for the public plan and forcing the government to slash doctors' rates." CBS Evening News said that Obama "made his case for change in front of a tough audience" but was honest enough to add "and he found himself on the defensive."

Obama got a "standing ovation when he said he might be open to some kind of relief for doctors from malpractice lawsuits," said CBS. But Obama giveth, and Obama taketh away. "But he then got a smattering of boos when he says he still opposes caps on jury awards." AP surprisingly reported that "former Senator Tom Daschle says controlling the cost of malpractice insurance will have to be a part of the Obama administration's overhaul of the health care system."

Even Fox News was fairly generous in reporting that the President "could be winning some support by focusing on medical malpractice suits." Well, you can't lose kicking the lawyers. Yet AP, AFP, and McClatchy all quoted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as saying "Americans don't want a government-run system that puts bureaucrats between patients and doctors." But AP then backed down a bit as it found some Republican disingenuousness: "Republicans are honing an attack line against Obama in an attempt to play on Americans' fears of government overreach and economic uncertainties, suggesting he is nationalizing American industry and socializing medicine." Oh, those rotten Republicans. What's the big deal about government overreach and financial disaster when you can have a health care system as good as Cuba's?
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