Kristen Fyfe's blog

McCain/Palin supporters are idiots. So said the scribes of ABC's Boston Legal who scripted a show that went out of its way to trash Sarah Palin and elevate the election of Barack Obama to mythical status.

Oh. And bloggers are "entry level life forms that intellectually have yet to emerge from the primordial ooze."

The thrust of the storyline was a lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed she was fired from her job because she voted for McCain. As it turns out her Republican boss fired her because he thought she was stupid and based his conclusion on the fact that the woman was an ardent Hillary supporter who voted for McCain because of Sarah Palin. A double slam from the left-loving writers of Boston Legal.

The Obama-supporting characters "Alan Shore" and "Shirley Schmidt" played by James Spader and Candice Bergen represented the Hillary/Palin-supporting woman even though they did think she was stupid...for supporting the McCain ticket. "Schmidt" tells the character "Martha" as much in a conference.

"SHIRLEY SCHMIDT:" Honey, the sexist in all this is you. ... You claim to be a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter. You--you walked into that booth and voted against everything Hillary stands for, and why? Because the republicans added to their ticket someone they referred to at the convention as "the hot chick."

"Controversial." "Onerous." "Ideologically offensive."  These are the words used by Washington Post reporters Ceci Connolly and R. Jeffrey Smith to describe the pro-life policies of President George W. Bush.  The liberal slam came in an article about some of the early actions President-elect Obama will take when he is inaugurated next year.

"Obama Positioned to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions" was carried in the November 9 edition of the Post.  The story revealed that Obama is "now consulting with liberal advocacy groups" in order to create a hit list of "the most onerous or ideologically offensive" regulatory and policy initiatives of the Bush administration.  Two of the top three initiatives singled out in the Post's story are pro-life: embryonic stem cell research and abortion funding. The other is global warming.

My 14-year-old daughter informed me that the many of the young teens in her school are dressing up as Sarah Palin for Halloween.  Given that she attends school in very blue Northern Virginia, I asked her if the girls were dressing up as Governor Palin because they thought she was "scary."

"Oh, yes," she replied.

Well, at least they'll be dressed conservatively.  A few less skankily-clad kids parading through the neighborhood. 

Yes, Cruella, it's Halloween, the time for costume makers to make their annual contribution to the premature sexualization of young children.

The worldview of conservatives and republicans makes them a happier lot than liberals and democrats, even in a year when the republican "candidate is sinking in the polls," the republican "president plumbs historic depths of popular scorn" and the republican "free market squeals for intervention" according to a story in The Washington Post.

The story, A Happiness Gap: Doomacrats and Republigrins takes an initial head-scratching approach to reporting that conservatives - once again, and regardless of what country they live in - are happier than liberals even in a year marked by economic gloom and doom and a year that seems "so rosy for Democrats."

For the third time in less than six months, Newsweek religion reporter Lisa Miller has informed the world that Kirbyjon Caldwell, an African-American pastor from Texas who formerly supported President George W. Bush, has “given himself heart and soul” to Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Miller, whose latest Caldwell feature is a three-page spread in the current issue of Newsweek, writes "last summer he aligned himself with a man who he believes better represents the Christian ethics and American values he preaches." Miller wrote effectively the same story about Caldwell in June and July of this year, following closely on the heels of Obama’s break with his former pastor Jeremiah Wright at the end of May. The article in June, "His Mobile Ministry," prominently featured Caldwell as one of many pastors who were part of a telephone prayer ministry for Obama. The July article "Finding his Faith" was about Obama’s search for religion. In the third article, Miller describes Caldwell as a former Bush supporter who, "when he talks about Obama, he can barely keep the emotion out of his voice."

Sex education for kindergartners is certainly a hot topic.  It's also the subject of a McCain campaign ad that many in the media have called a "lie."  In the Hot Topic segment of ABC's The View on Monday (Sept. 22), token conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck  explained that the ad is NOT a lie and Barack Obama did in fact support legislation establishing sex education for kindergartners.

There is an adage that says being a parent is like being pecked to death by a duck.  Perhaps the same can be said of Hasselbeck with regard to her fellow View hosts, all liberals who think they are smart.  As if on cue, the left-leaning ladies picked apart the points Hasselbeck made in order to continue to defend their favorite candidate, Barack Obama.

The Culture and Media Institute recently addressed the ad issue and detailed the bill's content (click here and here) but the mainstream press has been reluctant to get the word out on the actual facts. Recognizing this, Hasselbeck took the opportunity to use her platform to dispel the "lie" rumor.

An affinity for "strap on devices," "swallowing instead of spitting" and a preference for anal sex are some of the key elements San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford uses to identify what makes an "elitist."  Loathing the Bible is on the list too.

Morford, whose columns regularly trash conservatives and Christians, weighed in on dumb American kids last October, and trashed evangelicals with the following line: "and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait."  His September 12 column, ‘Are You an Elitist? 18 Revealing Ways to Know for Sure' makes that attack look like playground fun.

It’s no secret that Bill Maher, the host of the HBO show "Real Time with Bill Maher," loathes religion. He came under fire earlier this year for slandering Pope Benedict XVI.

On Tuesday night, CNN’s Larry King gave Maher another chance to smack Christianity, which Maher called “detrimental” and “the ultimate hustle.”

 Maher was on "Larry King Live"  to promote his latest vehicle, the film "Religulous," which is due to open October 3. "Religulous," which reportedly takes aim at all religions, was supposed to be released around Easter of this year.  It had been called a documentary previously but Maher is now selling it as a comedy.  Larry King opened his interview with Maher by praising the movie but noted that it will offend people.

Cynthia McFadden didn't exactly say John McCain had no character, but she certainly implied it. In an interview with Pastor Rick Warren on ABC's "Nightline," McFadden was trying to get Warren to indicate if he would counsel his flock on who to vote for, and what he would say to people who say "forget character," pick the pro-lifer.

The feature on Warren came after the pastor's Civic Forum on the Presidency held over the weekend at his 22,000-member church in southern California. McFadden asked Warren if he "owed" it to "people who look up to you" to tell them for whom he was voting .

They were a little slow on the pick up but “CBS Evening News” gets credit for finally acknowledging a report that shows serious side effects associated with the vaccine Gardasil, which protects against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease the can cause cancer.

The report, by Sharyll Attkisson, aired July 7 a full week after WorldNet Daily reported the findings.  As CMI’s wonderful intern Julia Seward reported, earlier in the day both the “Early Show” and NBC’s “Today” reported on Gardasil but glossed over the serious side effects contained in the report.

A woman, calling into C-Span’s morning show Washington Journal used the c-word as part of her reasoning as to why John McCain shouldn’t be president.  Apparently C-Span does not use the 7-second delay for its live programming, though the host of the show did immediately end the call after the obscene word was uttered.

The call came just before 9:00 a.m. on the July 7th broadcast during the show’s call in segment.  The call in segment allows viewers to voice their opinions on any topic.

Female Caller: I have two points. McCain is really too old for this job. We need somebody that can keep up. And number two. He does not have respect for women. He even called his wife a c---.

Peter Slen: (ends call) Let’s move on. 

For video of this click here, pertinent clip is at 2:54:36.

“OMFG” is text-speak for the unspeakable. It's also the tag line for a new ad campaign aimed at teens and featuring a jumble of sexual situations, including teens undressing each other and two girls kissing. The campaign blitz is appearing in print and television, all aimed at drumming up eyeballs for the CW network's teen-themed soap "Gossip Girl."

For the uninitiated, “OMG” translates to “Oh My God” in the language of email and text messaging. The addition of the “F” means … well, it’s the word that can cost broadcasters a hefty government fine if someone actually says it on TV.

Now, of course, executives at the CW could never admit that they were actively targeting teens with such a "provocative" ad. Nor would they ever admit they were intentionally dodging an FCC fine by using the letter "F" instead of the unspeakable word. Nor would they ever consider that "F" used next to "G," which stands for "God" would be blasphemous. In fact they've gone out of their way on these subjects. But reality has a way of well, keeping it real.

Religion and the military shouldn't mix.  That's the take away message that both CBS and ABC touted when their Sunday morning news programs publicized the plight of an atheist who is suing the Army for religious discrimination.

On April 27th CBS's Sunday Morning and ABC's Good Morning America Sunday each featured the story of Jeremy Hall, an Army specialist who claims he was denied promotion and persecuted because of his atheism.  Both interviewed Hall and Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a co-plaintiff in Hall's lawsuit. 

Weinstein was described as a loyal patriot (by CBS) and a defender of the religiously oppressed (ABC).  Neither network bothered to mention that on the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Web site American military members are compared directly to Islamic jihadists.  A video runs on the homepage of the site which juxtaposes a suicide bomber holding a rifle and Koran with a group of American soldiers holding rifles and Bibles.

Men don't have babies. Period. Yet in covering the ‘pregnant man' story this morning both the "Early Show" and "Good Morning America" neither outlet dealt with this fact. Rather, both were completely focused on the fact that Thomas Beatie was speaking publicly for the first time and would be shown on today's "Oprah" show. Both outlets also reported that Beatie's story would appear in this week's issue of People, due on news stands tomorrow.

So really, the media were reporting on the media reporting on the pregnant man. Which really amounts to a public relations boon for Oprah, People and of course the Beaties.

They aren’t even A-list stars, but that didn’t stop The Washington Post from highlighting a handful of visiting “Hollywood activists” in town to “start a conversation” about the separation of church and state. The story got big play in “The Reliable Source” column, the gossip/celebrity news feature of the influential Style section of The Washington Post.  Reporters Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts wrote:

Feeling a little cramped, First Amendment-wise? A crew of Hollywood activists -- Kevin Bacon! Jack Klugman! That lady from "Just Shoot Me!" -- descended on D.C. yesterday to make sure you don't have too much church in your state, and vice versa.

In all the brouhaha last week over the incendiary comments made by Barack Obama's pastor the media seemed to forget to partake in their traditional Holy Week Christian-bashing excercise.  There were a few entries in the "Easter Hit Parade," like the Comedy Central show "Root of All Evil" which my boss, Brent Bozell, wrote about in a column recently, and an episode of "Law and Order" which featured another Christian-stones-someone storyline.

I suppose it's good news that there was less faith flagellation courtesy of the liberal media, and yet at the same time it's sad that I was expecting to find it at Easter time.  But the fact remains that Christmas and Easter are generally times when the media attacks on Christians are more pronounced.

For atheists it's a different story.

A couple at the "cross roads" of a "complicated" love story.  That's how Diane Sawyer set up the feature on a transgendered Microsoft executive, his/her wife, and their son in the 8:00 half-hour on "Good Morning America."

The socially progressive bent of GMA was evident in the lack of context or perspective given to the family's story.  No consideration was given to the glaring social issues raised. It was reported as just another human-interest story.

Video (2:00): Windows (7.31 MB), plus MP3 audio (917 kB)

The five-minute feature, reported by Neal Karlinsky, explained the conflict Michael Wallent had with his identification as a male, his decision to become a female and the ramifications of that decision in his workplace and at home. 

Monday’s NBC psychic crime drama "Medium" featured a plot line in which an Arizona senator and former POW is discovered to be a two-time murderer and a cannibal. While it is safe to assume that the story was written before the Hollywood writers’ strike, and before the rise of John McCain to front-runner status for the GOP presidential nomination, the blatant use of McCain’s personal history, as a politician and Vietnam POW, as grist to feed the murderous plot is obvious.

Video (1:43): Windows Media (6.23 MB), or MP3 audio (498 kB).

In Monday’s episode, titled “Aftertaste”, the medium (“Allison DuBois,” played by Patricia Arquette) suspects an ex-POW Arizona state senator is involved in a murder she sees in her dreams. Through a series of psychic flashbacks, she discovers that the senator (“Jed Garrity,” played by Gregory Itzin), as a young Army captain held by the North Vietnamese, proposed to his cellmates that they kill and eat a dying American soldier rather than starve to death. “Garrity” drew the short straw and committed the actual murder himself by strangling the dying soldier.

Triads. Quads. V's.  No, it's not a math lesson, it's the terminology used to describe relationships by polyamorists.  Not sure what those are?  Lucky you have the February 13 edition of The Washington Post's "Style" section to enlighten you. And if you read far enough into the copy you'll also find a game plan for redefining marriage. More on that in a minute.

In what can only be described as a Valentine to immorality and provocative behavior, the Post ran a 2554-word feature on polyamory that describes a practice most readers - even the liberal fans of the Post - would find disturbing. Sometimes called "swinging" or "wife swapping," polyamory is the practice of openly having several sexual partners, regardless and sometimes in spite of, marital status.

Anyone who has given birth to a child knows that post-partum hormones can really cloud your thinking. But your political views?

Apparently, when you are a conservative, or thought to be a conservative, reporters think you might move left after you give birth. That was the assumption ABC's JuJu Chang brought into her interview with The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck on today's broadcast of Good Morning America.

Chang, who said she gave birth within nine days of Hasselbeck, was back on GMA with an interview of The View's co-host, labeled a conservative two times in the piece, who returned to her job this week as well. The interview was set up to be a chat between two new moms, but quickly became political.

Chang: Has motherhood changed your views at all - either your politics or just your worldview or your life view ?

Hasselbeck: I think motherhood stirs up questions about life. You look at it differently. I'm not voting just as a single woman anymore or just for myself. I'm actually looking at how this world will be shaped so that my kids can live in a place that's safe for them. And that is my main goal. I think it does change.

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (PPGG) has unveiled what it calls an “edgy” TV and radio campaign that “focuses on the importance of practicing pregnancy prevention and safer sex.”

Except that the words “pregnancy” and “safe sex” are never spoken.  And the pitch man in the “Mile High campaign” is flamingly gay. The TV ad is being run on MTV, VH-1, Comedy Central and TLC, and the radio ad is running on KMEL-FM, a San Francisco station.  See if you can find the purported "sexual health" education messages in the ad. 

Here is the text of the commercial: (click here to see the video)

"The Golden Compass" did not produce box-office gold during its first weekend.

While ranked #1 for the weekend, the movie which opened in 3,528 theaters, was lavishly produced and promoted, only took in in $26.1 million, according to Boxofficemojo.com. Studio New Line Cinema was hoping for returns in the $30 to $40 million range.

"Compass" drew the ire of many Christians because the movie is based on the first book in a trilogy called "His Dark Materials" by avowed atheist Philip Pullman, who has said publicly that his books are about killing God. In "USA Today," Rolf Mittweg of New Line Cinema conceded that the "religion controversy might have had an effect."

Will Time magazine come and cover MY Sunday school class? You know, the one where I teach my kids that their Christian faith is under attack on a weekly, if not daily, basis from the mainstream media?

I think its a valid question because Time just did a lovely send-up to a Sunday School for ..... atheists. Yep. Seems the atheists, or rather humanists, in Palo Alto, California think believers have something going on with the whole Sunday School thing.

Time's reporter Jeninne Lee-St. John promotes the atheist program, atheist summer camps and a new Carl Sagan-named Humanist public charter school in her Nov. 21 story. The fact that the piece was put up on Time.com on the eve before Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans gathered to give thanks to God, is delectable irony.

The bias started in the first paragraph:

It feels like Groundhog Day, the movie. Every time Congress takes up abstinence-only education programs, you can count on the media to trot out a story claiming abstinence-only education doesn’t work. They did it in April of this year with the flawed Mathematica study and they’re doing it again with a "new" study put out by the pleasantly-named National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The Associated Press story, "Report: Abstinence programs don’t work" is a classic example of liberal-agenda promotion. From the slanted opening paragraph to the failure to cite or quote even a single advocate of abstinence-only education, the entire piece is a pitch for progressive comprehensive sex education programs. Just look at the lede:

"If I'm an unborn child and I want the support of the far religious right I better stay unborn as long as possible because once I'm born I'm off the radar screen. No healthcare, no child care, no nothing, " said Jim Wallis, founder of the liberal Christian group Sojourners.

Only he wasn't labeled a "liberal" by Katie Couric.  He was called a "progressive."

Wallis got the royal treatment from Couric in the October 18 broadcast.  In a piece about the Values Voters Summit being held in Washington, D.C. this weekend, Couric reported a segment on whether evangelical Christians can be counted on by the G.O.P.

She went hard left after the opening statement, in which she said there was "a new kind of holy war" for the hearts and minds of 50 million evangelical voters.

Smiling, she asked Wallis,“Do you believe that evangelical Christians are still the domain of the G.O.P?”

He answered with an emphatic, “No,” adding their votes are "up for grabs."

Radio Disney is bleeping "God" from ad copy for the upcoming movie "The Ten Commandments."

Seriously.

The folks at Liberty Counsel sent out notices on Monday and Tuesday of this week letting people know about a copy of an email they had in which a Radio Disney representative was advising a media buyer to delete the words "chosen by God" in ad copy for the movie "The Ten Commandments" which opens on October 19. To see the email, and also the petition that Liberty Counsel has to get Radio Disney to reconsider this decision you can click here.

On September 30, a Sunday – the Lord’s Day in the Christian church – San Francisco will host the Folsom Street Fair, perhaps the most hedonistic event held in public in America. The fair is the San Francisco homosexual community’s annual celebration of promiscuity, sadomasochism and debauchery. The ad for this year’s fair mocks Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with a half-naked beefcake Christ and disciples bedecked in all manner of leather and chains. The bread and wine of The Last Supper are replaced with sex toys. Many Christian groups have expressed outrage. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells CNSNews.com "I do not believe Christianity has been harmed." Hear the audio there.)

Will the national media cover the story?

On Tuesday, Jesse Jackson, the Brady bunch -- not the TV folk but the anti-gun lobby -- and other liberal activists rallied against “the national scourge of illegal guns” in cities around the nation.

The networks ignored the event, probably because turnout was so embarrassingly low. The Chicago Tribune reported that “about 200” piled out of three buses in Lake Barrington, Illinois, the Chicago-area protest keynoted by Jackson himself. The Philadelphia Inquirer said “about 200” showed up in Philly. The Dallas Morning News reported about 60 demonstrators in South Dallas, and AP said “about 100”attended the Washington, D.C. event held in nearby District Heights, Maryland.

Anti-gun activists were counting on good coverage if they had big turnouts, and no negative coverage if they didn’t. It’s the flip side of how the media cover pro-life rallies, downplaying enormous crowds and playing up the handful of counter demonstrators. In this case, the networks chose to look benignly in the other direction. The gun grabbers know that liberal journalists don’t like guns. Or, rather, they don’t like private citizens owning guns and taking personal responsibility for their own safety and that of their families and property.

How do we know? From the loaded coverage night after night on the networks and each day in major newspapers. A new CMI study, The Media Assault on the Second Amendment, documents seven months of media coverage of gun issues, and explains how the media are taking potshots at the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

The TIME headline is ironic: “Study Finds Abortion Pill Safe.” Safe for whom exactly?  Certainly not for the millions of pre-born children who have died when their mothers took it.  Nor is it “safe” for their mothers.

The August 15 article by Sara Song (and the story run by AP on August 16) touts the findings released in the New England Journal of Medicine that show use of the RU-486 abortion pill “in the long term, is safe.”

That’s a message the feminist influenced, pro-choice media want to promote. In her article Song wrote “women who use mifepristone (RU 486) are no better or worse off than those who choose surgical abortion” and that “most existing research shows that surgical abortions have no effect on overall health risks.”