I have attempt to get an account on the site "media matters" in order to get my voice heard by the other side. After all, I figured it would be like this site only mostly liberals... boy, I was wrong. The site consists mainly of issues put forth not discussed, fed to the users... they do have comments underneath, but I am having a hard time figuring it out. I posted a comment and after that I noticed it wasn't there... I have the vague feeling Im being censored.

The American press did not side with the Nazis in WW II and afterwards. But parts of it are siding with the Ba’athists in the Iraqi War, now. Witness this lede from the Lexington Herald-Leader, in Kentucky, online version, today (Friday):

An Iraqi court has ruled that some of the most prominent Sunni Muslims who were elected to parliament last week won't be allowed to serve because officials suspect that they were high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Knight Ridder has obtained a copy of the court ruling, which has yet to be circulated to the public.

The ruling is likely to dampen Bush administration hopes that the election would bring more of the disaffected Sunni minority into Iraq's political process and undermine Sunni support for the insurgency. Instead, the decision is likely to stoke fears of widening sectarian divisions in a nation already in danger of descending into civil war.

Source: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/world/13476408.htm

You know the old challenge: try to describe a spiral staircase without using your hands.

This evening's Abrams Report on MSNBC managed to pull off an equally impressive feat: describing a gay porn and sexual exploitation ring without mentioning that it was just that, or indeed even that males were involved.

It goes without saying that there are all sorts of predators on the internet, including many adult heterosexual men seeking to exploit underage girls. The purpose of this report is not to single out gays, but to draw attention to the PC-manner in which MSNBC approached an issue.

Abrams Report guest host Lisa Daniels had as her guest NY Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald. In this Times article, Eichenwald had broken the story of Justin, a young teenager who had hooked up a web cam, and in looking for friends on the internet, was gradually lured into becoming an internet porn star. In the segment, and in seeing him elsewhere on air, Eichenwald comes across as a good guy and a solid professional. Particularly in light of his employment at the NY Times, he deserves credit for taking up the story in the first place.

In discussing the perpetrators, Daniels and Eichenwald referred to them variously as "they" and "the predators," with Eichenwald going so far as to call them "evil." But neither ever managed to mention that the consumers of the porn were men. For all we knew, these were Desperate Housewives on line. But in fact, as Eichenwald did reveal in his Times article, this was a gay porn ring, and indeed the abuse went beyond the internet - Justin ultimately was physically molested by a number of men.

David Edelstein, film reviewer for the Washington Post-owned online magazine Slate, thinks Steven Spielberg's Munich is "the most potent, the most vital, the best movie of the year." Some critics might laud Munich without making left-wing statements in the process. Not Edelstein, though. Here's the beginning of his piece:

Rapidly overtaking the "Cinema of Revenge" is the "Cinema of Revenge with a Guilty Conscience"—i.e., "My people got even and all I got was this dumb hair shirt."

What's the reason for this post-9/11, self-critical twist on the thriller genre's beloved scenarios of injury and retaliation? Maybe it's that the recent consequences of such thinking have been so catastrophic: that despite invading two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), quickly overthrowing their governments, and inflicting massive casualties on their populations, the enemy's resistance has, if anything, grown more tenacious; and that our ally Israel, among the world's most reflexively vindictive nations, hasn't managed with its instantaneous reprisals to stanch the flow of blood. At this juncture, to make the movies we always have, the ones that revel in righteous brutality, would not only be socially irresponsible. It would be delusional.

In a commentary published in today's (Friday December 23, 2005) Los Angeles Times, writer Joanna Connors attempts to advance a simply laughable premise. The piece is entitled "God's recurring role in Hollywood." The money quote:

"Contrary to popular belief, Hollywood not only believes in God, Hollywood loves God."

What is Connors' supporting evidence for such a claim? She cites the works of Cecille B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith. She also claims biblical allegories in films such as E.T. (1982) and Shane (1953). Does Connors realize these examples are decades old?! (Some are several decades old!) A lot has changed in the last 25 years!

This year’s Christmas season has been marked by a pitched battle sparked by John Gibson’s book "The War on Christmas." The trend is hot enough that liberals are taking umbrage at the idea that Christians like the word "Christmas" and want to tell America’s most massive retailers that the last few weeks of the year are not centered on some winter festival without religious significance. But there's an entirely different "war," Brent Bozell writes this week, a nastier, more intolerant war going on in cable TV-land:

The Viacom corporation is an active participant through its Comedy Central channel. Its method is not excessive sensitivity, but wild-eyed insensitivity. This cable sinkhole is attacking Christianity with contemptuous mockery. It’s TV programming that approximates urinating on the Koran, except that is to be condemned, and this is to be celebrated.

Raleigh News & Observer finally heard from readers about what is over the line; putting a picture of a female santa on the front page making out with an orangutan. No, I'm not kidding.

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

What the Today show probably intended as an ecumenical, warm-'n-fuzzy holiday segment just veered wildly off course when a rabbi spoke some unvarnished truth.

The topic was "December Dilemma: Interfaith Holidays," and dealt with the issue of celebrating the holidays in families with children where the parents are of different religions.

Footage was played of a family with a Jewish wife, a Christian husband and a couple of very cute daughters. They were predictably shown admiring both a Chanukah menorah and a Christmas tree.

Back in the studio, David Gregory interviewed "The God Squad" - Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman - who for years have made joint appearances to discuss religious matters.

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well someday become the foundation of a common citizenship—Winston Churchill

Much has been made of words in recent years, and we can lay every outcry at the feet of Political Castration.  Every single one.

The first has to do with language itself.  We live in a nation where approximately 215 million people speak English.  That’s right; out of the approximately 300 million in America, the vast, vast, vast majority speaks English, and in case you’re retarded or liberal—a bit redundant, I know—the majority is the rule in this nation, and has been since its inception. 

In reporting what it called a "big win" for Senate Democrats in killing off drilling in ANWR, this morning's Today show aired footage of gorgeous snow-capped mountains, similar to the file photo to the right.

There's only one little problem.  The drilling in ANWR won't take place anywhere near those mountains. 

It will occur on barren coastal plains far away.  A few years ago, attempting to break through the ice-jam of blather over the issue, the National Review's Jonah Goldberg took a trip up there himself.  Here's one of the photos Jonah took, giving an idea of the area in which drilling would take place.  Them's some mighty small mountains!

Over at "Best of the Web," James Taranto has provided another very typical service of his, knocking the bias and inaccuracy at the Reuters wire service. (Trying to find any data on the Internet on the survey "by the Chicago-based National Qualitative Centers" reported below outside this strange Reuters article is tough, although there is this liberal delight from a public-radio station discussion board.) Reports Taranto:

Something is wrong with the arithmetic in this dispatch from Reuters:

President George W. Bush ranks as the least popular and most bellicose of the last ten U.S. presidents, according to a new survey.

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TVNewser notes that Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person In The World" feature on his MSNBC chat show "Countdown" will be made into a book published by John Wiley & Sons. (Hmm, you wonder if he'll have any place in the book for "close seconds," as in "A very close second, Brent Bozell -- yeah, the wacky guy from that Media Research Center scam." )

Olbermann tells the Cox News Service the "worst person" designation is "a euphemism for somebody who's wrong and egregiously stupid and abusing their own position." Can someone get Keith a dictionary? Euphemism is defined by Webster's as "the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant." I hardly think calling someone "Worst Person In The World" is agreeable and pleasant. Speaking of the not-euphemistic, maybe we should seek a book deal out of our feature "The Kooky Keith Award (for Keith Olbermann's Conspiratorial Rants)."

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