Carolyn Plocher's blog

Young adults of a certain age will remember the 1992 environmental agitprop movie "FernGully," in which inhabitants of the last rainforest fight to save their environment. Well, bad ideas die hard. "Furry Vengeance," a new live-action children's movie starring Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields, picks up where "FernGully" left off, thinly veiling its tree-hugging agenda with cheap laughs and cute, furry animals.

The story revolves around a real estate developer (Brendan Fraser) who is hired to slash down a forest in Oregon and convert it into a shopping mall (enter FernGully-like bulldozers). This, of course, upsets the local woodland critters, who, as the movie's Web site says, seek revenge by turning a "peaceful cul-de-sac under construction into a battefield of epic proportions." The movie's catch phrase reads, "He came. He saw. They conquered."

Newsweek's article "The Right to Love - and Loss" pretends to fight for gay couples' "right" to divorce. Instead, it is simply a transparent ruse to fight for gay marriage. How else could gay divorce be legal unless gay marriage preceded it?

In a shining example of journalistic bias, reporter Eve Conant included seven different sources in favor of the government recognizing gay divorce (and hence, recognizing gay marriage) and quoted them 14 times in her article. Opponents, however, were represented by a single, bland quote - a two-sentence statement from the spokesman for the Texas Attorney General. "Under the Constitution and law of the State of Texas, marriage is an institution between one man and one woman. Thus the parties' arrangement from another state is not a marriage under Texas law and therefore cannot be terminated by divorce."

Jeff Anderson, a lawyer that has filed over 1,500 lawsuits against the Catholic Church, got a free 1,400-word advertisement in the Washington Post April 19. The supposedly non-opinion article was titled "Jeff Anderson, jousting with the Vatican from a small law office in St. Paul." The reporter, Peter Slevin, cast the Catholic Church as the big, bad wolf and Jeff Anderson - the "Vatican's chief American pursuer" - as the ordinary hero taking it down.

"[Anderson uses] manic energy to challenge one of the most powerful and secretive institutions in the world, a 2,000-year-old church with hundreds of millions of devoted followers," the article read. "He gets his balance from Zen Buddhism, his persistence from the reporters that felled Richard Nixon and his inspiration from the sexually abused clients who trust him to make the Roman Catholic Church pay for the sins of its fathers."

The glowing profile quoted Anderson nine times and his "longtime friend" Mike Finnegan twice. Opponents to Anderson's work were only given four sentences - three of which were nothing but one-word epithets strung together and the fourth a partial quote sandwiched between two quotes of Anderson defending himself.

The Seattle Times needs a refresher course on impartial journalism. Staff reporter Lornet Turnbull didn't even try to cover her liberal tracks as she embraced the LGBT agenda in a March 31 article: "Census Will Count Gay Couples Who Check 'Husband or Wife.'"

Turnbull's article about the LGBT community's anger toward the Census Bureau tilted in favor of the homosexual agenda with sources stacked 3-to-1.

Josh Friedes, the executive director of a Seattle LGBT advocacy group, told Turnbull that "even in the absence of federal recognition of our relationships, we have an opportunity to say on an official form that, 'Yes, we are married,' 'Yes, our relationships are every bit as equal to everyone else's.'"

No, hell hasn't frozen over but, yes, the Huffington Post now has a religion blog. The Huffington Post, a Web site devoted to rankling conservatives and pushing a liberal agenda, announced on Feb. 24 that it was launching HuffPost Religion.

Huffington Post's co-founder, Arianna Huffington, claimed it would simply be "a section featuring a wide-ranging discussion about religion [and] spirituality," but the numbers prove that it is more of an attack on traditional Christianity than a discussion.

The site didn't waste any time throwing punches. In its first two weeks, it churned out articles by a liberal nun calling Catholicism sexist; a Rabbi claiming that Judaism will "stagnate and cease to be meaningful" unless it participates in the "green movement;" an avowed atheist comparing those who believe in God to a 7-year-old still believing in the tooth fairy; a science writer warning being religious could lead to "dangerous side-effects" such as "the crusader jihadist mentality;" and a neuroscientist calling those who believe in "obsolete religious ideas" a "lunatic fringe."

HuffPost Religion is the religion blog that hates religion, but the faith it abuses the most is Christianity.

Blame it on ClimateGate. Ever since those controversial e-mails and documents exposed manipulated climate change numbers, liberals have been scrambling to regain their footing and their followers. The Economist's cover article of their March 18th edition, "Spin, Science and Climate Change," shows just how desperate their situation is.

The subhead of the article reads, "Action on climate is justified, not because the science is certain, but precisely because it is not." Forget what the numbers say - especially the ones that don't validate climate change - The Economist "sees no reason to alter its view" on the subject. The earth is a turning into a molten lava cake and nothing will convince these journalists otherwise. For a newspaper that claims it was founded on the principle that everything "put forward [in the paper] should be subjected to the test of facts," this article didn't even meet its own criteria.

The article blamed the lack of action against climate change on everything from the recession to the health care debate to the northern hemisphere's cold winter to the ClimateGate scandal. But the biggest problem, it said, lies in politicians who, heaven forbid, have actually looked at the scientific numbers and concluded that it cannot be arguably proven that climate change even exists or, if it does, that it's caused by man or in any way threatens our existence.

CNN dished out a heavy dose of liberal bias last night with its two-hour long documentary "Her Name Was Steven." The documentary sympathetically followed the "gender reassignment" of former Largo, Fla., city manager Steven Stanton.

CNN, which advertised the documentary as being about "one person's struggle to live an authentic life," gave a grand total of 47 seconds to those opposed to sex change. The rest of the two hours was focused on presenting sex change as if it weren't a choice. Stanton called his operation a "medical necessity ... done to preserve life." It was necessary, he said, in order to become "who God meant me to be," to "make my body and my spirit 100 percent compatible."

To shack up or not to shack up?

It seems like every year a new study on the consequences of living together before marriage negates everything that had been said about it the year before. Cohabitation increases divorce - no, wait! It makes your marriage last longer - no! It only lasts longer if you were engaged before you cohabited ... It's a never-ending argument that keeps the presses happily rolling along.

On March 9, CBS' the Early Show joined the fray by inviting Hannah Silegson, author of "A Little Bit Married," to cite yet another "new study" that claims "if you only live with one person before you get married, you'll have a no higher chance of getting divorced."

CBS' Harry Smith introduced Silegson's book as a "cautionary tale," saying that "playing house" could be a "losing game," but the criticism of cohabitating ends there. Silegson and three other pro-cohabiting panelists discussed living together as "the new romantic right of passage."

"You want to try before you buy," Silegson told Smith.

Robert McCartney really, really thinks same-sex marriage is a good idea. Back onDec. 10 the Washington Post columnist took the D.C. Catholic dioces to task for thinking otherwise, and now in his latest column "celebrating" D.C. giving gays their "first-class due," McCartney elevated "local influential gay-rights advocates" to the status of America's most revered figures.

McCartney described one of the men, 84-year-old Frank Kameny, as the "founding father of the gay rights movement, at the level of a Thomas Jefferson or John Adams." Perhaps McCartney got a little carried away - after all, no rational person could analogize coining the slogan "Gay is good" with founding the greatest system of government yet devised, right?

McCartney also bragged that Kameny is an "in-your-face-militant" that once solicited sex from radio listeners, "especially police chiefs and prosecutors," during a guest appearance on an Alexandria radio show. John Adams indeed.

You have to feel bad for some journalists. They spend all day struggling to keep up the whole "disinterested reporter" act, only to be undone by their own Tweets. In a moment of weakness, maybe at the end of a long day, something pushes them over the edge - good (they catch a glimpse of the first lady's arms or Sarah Palin suffers some embarrassment) or bad (Obama's latest poll numbers or Sarah Palin enjoying some victory). Their hands go instinctively for the Blackberry and they furiously thumb out their innermost liberal feelings. 

Take Ali Velshi. CNN's chief business correspondent tweeted recently that Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning is an "embarrassment 2 the Senate, 2 Washington, & 2 politics." Velshi's tweet linked to a CNN article titled "Lone Senator Blocks Unemployment Extensions," which criticized Bunning for demanding fiscal responsibility before passing a $10 billion unemployment package. 

According to Vanity Fair's Matt Pressman, President Obama's plummeting approval rate isn't just affecting the Oval Office, it has liberal magazines suffering and conservative titles flourishing. "Hate sells," Pressman wrote in his Feb. 23 article, and, with fewer Americans approving of the President, conservative magazines have enjoyed a "boost from the anti-government, tea-party led fervor."

"The most prominent and biggest-selling [conservative magazine], The National Review, definitely seemed to experience an Obama-hatred bump in 2009," Pressman said.

It's no secret that America's going through a difficult time - sky-rocketing debt, a struggling economy, and the highest unemployment rate in two decades - but, according to Susan Jacoby, we have bigger problems. Our nation's "greatest failing" - our nation's "social disease," she says, is our patriotism.

On the blog "The Spirited Atheist," which is co-hosted by the Washington Post and Newsweek, Jacoby wrote that NBC's pro-American coverage of the Winter Olympics is just another example of our "provincial, reflexively nationalistic mindset." To Jacoby, the Olympics isn't a time to wave the American flag and proudly sing the national anthem; it's a time to wipe out our "delusion" of "superior American morality."

"American television has unwittingly, by omission more than commission, presented a portrait of a nation clinging to the stories it tells itself about the superiority of American morality, culture, and education," Jacoby wrote. 

Roman Polanski, the once-fugitive movie director that raped a 13-year-old American girl in 1977 and then fled to France, has won an award while still under house arrest in his luxury Swiss Chalet. Last week, Polanski received the Silver Bear award as best director at the Berlin International film for "The Ghost Writer." His producer Alain Sarde accepted, because, as Polanski said, "The last time I traveled to accept an award I landed in jail."

The award was met with a chorus of approval from Polanski's apologists, including Bernard-Henri Levy, a French writer and philosopher.Writing in a Feb. 21 Huffington Post article "Salut, Roman Polanski," Levy celebrated the smack at justice.

Levy argued that the award proves two things. First, that there are still "men and women of honor," such as the jury of the Berlin Festival, who refuse to "be intimidated by the mob." And second, that Roman Polanski deserves to be applauded for refusing to be "cornered and defeated" by the "pack that snaps at [his] heels." Polanski, Levy wrote, is "indestructible," "courageous" and has a "spirit of resistance" - and to those "bastards" that tried to bring him down, Polanski has now proven to them that "the artist, not the mob, always has the last word."

Kathy Griffin is once again gunning to be the most crude, offensive, and downright disturbing comedian on air.

On Feb. 16, she appeared (appropriately enough) on Headline News Network's "The Joy Behar Show" to promote as much of herself as humanly possible: her recently released stand-up DVD "She'll Cut a Bitch," her appearance in an upcoming Law & Order episode as a lesbian rights activist (which she claims will garner her an Emmy), and her live comedy act at Madison Square Garden where she'll be "worse than she's ever been."

USA Today just can't move on. It's been over a week since the pro-life Tebow ad aired during the Superbowl - and it wasn't nearly as controversial as the liberals said it would be. Tim Tebow's mom said nice things about her son; Tim hugged her, both of them smiled, and that was it. Most people shrugged and forgot about it. But not USA Today. On Feb. 15, it's Faith & Reason section touted the headline "Tebow pro-family ad leads to surprising 'choice' message."

The article gave the tired argument that even if you're choosing life, it's still a choice. Pam Tebow "chose to ignore doctors" but she still had options open to her. Author of the article Cathy Lynn Grossman, however, painted Tebow's choice as both ignorant and selfish, since the pregnancy could have left her first four children motherless.

The once-Disney princess Anne Hathaway recently announced to a cheering media that she was leaving the Catholic Church due to its "limited view" on her homosexual brother. Even though the media haven't stopped clapping, Michelangelo Signorile, a gay activist and talk radio host, warned on "The Joy Behar Show" that Hathaway may be temporarily sidelined by the conservative bigwigs in Hollywood.

"I think that it's the powers that be that has the problem," Signorile said to Behar on Feb. 9. "Hollywood, ya know, it's the money. The conservatives - the money is always conservative, and they're always afraid."

"Their choices are up to YOU" is the tagline for the new pseudo-reality show "Bump+." A fictional Web series designed to look like a reality show, "Bump+" follows the stories of three women facing "unintended pregnancies." Their decision as to whether to abort, or bring their babies to term and either put them up for adoption and keep them, rests on the viewers, who weigh in via the "Bump+" Web site. Yes, killing of the unborn has now become interactive entertainment.

Washington Post's Kathleen Parker described the show as "Jerry Springer meets Oprah meets ‘American Idol' meets Dr. Oz meets ... America's conscience." Christopher Riley, the show's co-executive producer it was "inspired" by President Obama's call last year to find "ways to communicate about a workable solution to the problem of unintended pregnancies."

Planned Parenthood has just released a video in response to the upcoming Super Bowl ad featuring the pro-life birth story of college football star Tim Tebow.

The pro-abortion group's ad includes Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner and former NFL football player Sean James promoting what they call "respect for women's choices."

James said in the ad that he "respects and honors Mrs. Tebow's decision" but every woman's decision must be "valued ... trusted and respected." 

"My mom showed me that women are strong and wise," James continued. "She taught me that only women can make the best decisions about their health and their future."

It's Groundhog's day again and for the 99th time Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow - six more weeks of winter. Phil and his shadow have been around since 1887 - a 123-year-old American tradition - but if PETA has it's way, this year will be the end of Phil's career. According to its official blog, it's time for Phil to retire and replace him with "an electronic groundhog."

"Phil is forced to be on display year round at the local library and is denied the ability to prepare for and enter yearly hibernation," the blog said. "Add to that the displeasure of large, screaming crowds, flashing lights of cameras, and human handling."

PETA's statement, however, hasn't been met with much enthusiasm. Most of the comments on their blog page were either critical or humorous.

Rob Stein of The Washington Post rehashed a two-year-old study about teen pregnancy rates on Jan. 26 in order to criticize funding for abstinence programs. Little did he know that he'd have to eat his words just a few days later.

On Feb. 2, Stein wrote another abstinence-centered article, but this time with a very different theme. The headline read: "Abstinence only programs might work, study says."

A "landmark study" released one day earlier found that abstinence-only programs not only work but have considerably better results than their "safe-sex" counterparts, Stein reported.

"Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can persuade a significant proportion to delay sexual activity," Stein said, summarizing the study which found that over 60 percent of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program delayed having sex during the study's two-year span.

Slate's William Saletan must hate happy endings. At least that's what you'd think after reading "The Invisible Dead." No, that's not the title of some new horror best-seller - it's the headline of his article about football star Tim Tebow's pro-life ad.

In it, Saletan argued that the Tebows were "lucky" and went on to expose the "grisly truth about the Super Bowl abortion ad." That "truth" was the idea that dangerous pregnancies carried to term often kill the baby and the mother.

"On Sunday, we won't see all the women who chose life and found death. We'll just see the Tebows, because they're alive and happy to talk about it," Saletan wrote.

If it isn't obvious already, Joy Behar doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut. On Jan. 26's "The View," a clueless Behar accidentally tipped the agenda of much of the gay and same-sex marriage movement.

"They," she said, referring to gays, "don't take monogamy and infidelity the same way that the straight community does."

Such things as fidelity, she added, don't have the "same weight" with gays as with straights, and - you might want to sit down for this - Behar was actually right for once.

With the latest battle over same-sex marriage brewing in a California federal court, gays are claiming that they simply want the right to participate in traditional marriage. But that couldn't be further from the truth. As a previous CMI article noted, many gays don't want to just participate in traditional marriage. They want to radically change it.

UPDATE: The New York Times joined the fray as well with a similar article. 

Must be a slow news week. Both Time and the Washington Post reported yesterday on a rehashed two-year-old study about rising teen pregnancy rates.

"Pregnancy rates among U.S. teenagers," wrote Time's Belinda Luscombe, "which had been dropping since 1990, took an upturn in 2006, according to newly released data."

This "newly released data," however, is far from breaking news. The original study was actually published over two years ago by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and it got plenty of attention back then, including from the Washington Post. The study has since been given a little facelift by the liberal, anti-abstinence organization the Guttmacher Institute and has been re-released as shocking new data. So why did the Post and the Time even consider this newsworthy? The Post's Rob Stein unknowingly sandwiched the answer to that question in the middle of his article.

Every week Oprah Winfrey encourages over 44 million Americans to "Live Your Best Life" - the mantra of her billion-dollar brand.

"The key to realizing a dream," Oprah said in the Sept. 2002 issue of her O magazine, "is to focus not on success but significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning."

Maybe Oprah should revisit that statement and add, "Unless we're talking about sexual abstinence. In that case, just throw in the towel."

In a Jan. 22 interview, Oprah criticized Bristol Palin, the teen daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, for recently telling In Touch Weekly that she was pledging abstinence until marriage.

If you thought that last year's TV shows were scandalous, the ones lined up for this year are going to make your eyes burn. It's going to get so bad, in fact, that even the mainstream media is calling it out. On Jan. 20, USA Today ran this article on their front page: "Sex on TV: It's Increasingly Uncut - and Unavoidable" written by Gary Strauss.

"Viewers are about to see," Strauss warned, "full-frontal male nudity, heterosexual, homosexual and group sex, and graphic scenes rarely - if ever - seen on mainstream TV."

The most "fornication-heavy" show this year, Strauss said, will be pay-cable's "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" starring Lucy Lawless. He described it as "a 300-meets-Caligula epic about the Roman Empire's notorious slave/gladiator."

"Lawless," Strauss continued, "portrays a conniving social climber who is nude in some scenes, commits adultery in others and uses sex to manipulate frenemies and family. One episode shows Lawless' character and her gladiator-camp-owner husband (John Hannah) manually stimulated by slaves before having sex. Upcoming episodes feature orgies and a gladiator whose large endowment ultimately leads to his downfall."

If you haven't heard much about Heidi Montag before, that's probably going to change. MTV's pseudo reality star has become a cautionary tale, and is facing a firestorm of critics after going under the knife for a staggering 10 different cosmetic procedures in a single sitting. The list ranged from a mini brow lift to a chin reduction to pinning her ears back to the predictable breast augmentation (her second).

"For the past three years, I've thought about what to have done," Montag told People magazine last week. "I'm beyond obsessed."

And she finally revealed her new look yesterday, appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America." But she wasn't exactly met by a cheering crowd. Kudos to GMA for being properly revolted by Montag's butchery.

Reporter Deborah Roberts, for example, called Montag's surgeries "frightening" and co-anchor George Stephanopoulos felt sorry for her.

Whether you have children or not, you've probably heard of Hannah Montana (or perhaps Miley Cyrus); Selena Gomez from Disney's "Wizards of Waverly Place"; or the Jonas Brothers, the boy band that elicits ear-splitting screams from their female teeny-bopper fans.They're big names in the entertainment industry, even though the oldest of the bunch is only 23.

What you may not know, however, is that each of them has taken a pledge of purity. That's not something you normally hear from the morally bankrupt land of Hollywood where anything goes ... and usually does.

Of course that doesn't mean these purity-ring-wearing Disney stars haven't been hit with criticism about their own "morals," especially Miley Cyrus and her provocative picture in Vanity Fair. On the other hand, at least the notion of abstinence has crossed their minds and, to varying degrees, their lips. And that may, perhaps, positively influence their young fans (even if it's tossed to the wayside in their own lives). Not everyone thinks that's cheer-worthy, though.

Heidi Montag, the actress from MTV's pseudo reality show "The Hills," is a run-of-the-mill Hollywood personality. She has unnaturally large breasts (along with at least nine other surgical "touch-ups"), overprocessed bleach blond hair, skimpy clothes and even skimpier bikinis. She's married to an equally immature prima donna, Spencer Pratt, who throws random fits and says things like, "We're the most famous people in the world."

But Heidi doesn't just claim to be a "super-celebrity"; she also says she's a devout Christian and a "modern Mother Teresa." And that's entirely plausible, if Mother Teresa had a thing for singing lyrics like "eat my panties off of me."

Good grief. We're still talking about Palin's clothes? You'd think that with the latest Democratic scandals - like Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's racist comments and new revelations about Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' affair - they'd be too busy beating out their own fires to revisit old fodder against Republicans. But apparently U.S. News & World Report's Bonnie Erbe has nothing better to do.

On Jan. 11, Erbe crowed on her blog, "So today Sarah Palin delivers some great news: She's becoming the TV star she's apparently always wanted to be and sparing us (for the moment, at least) the worry that she might run for national office."

If you're educated, you'll vote for gay politicians. That was the underlying message of the Time's article "Europe's Gay Leaders: Out at the Top" by William Lee Adams. Adams based his premise on the worn out stereotype that conservatives lack forward-thinking skills - or perhaps any thinking skills whatsoever - and need to be educated by progressive liberals such as himself. (And since we're dwelling on stereotypes, note that the first sentence above used only eight words to summarize what Adams, like a typical pontificating liberal, took 1,867 words to say.)

Adams argued in his article that Iceland, which elected Johanna Sigurdardottir last year - the world's first gay leader, was an "extremely homophobic" country until its citizens were given an "education."