Culture/Society

Was it just good-natured joshing, or did some MSM elitism creep into Matt Lauer's interview-ending question to Tim Russert on this morning's "Today"?

"What's up for the New Year for you? Same thing as usual: keg of Old Milwaukee and a noise-maker?"

What's this? Condescension to Russert's blue-collar image leavened with a dab of drunken-Irishman humor? The camera crew burst into guffaws, but check the video - was Russert's laugh a bit more strained?

As the AP reports (Strip-Searched Muslim Woman Gets Apology), the Dept. of Homeland Security sent an apology letter to a Muslim woman who was strip searched on April 11th, 2006. Naturally, the AP uses the report as an excuse to bash the US government.

The Department of Homeland Security has sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip-searched at a county jail.

Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to England.

It amazes me that this Kwanzaa business has been washed of the real life criminal activity of its creator. The man was a race monger, a violent thug, a rapist, a torturer... just a horrible human being.

Yet never a word of this man's evil is ever uttered when his pseudo holiday is discussed in the MSM.

And the Cox News Service did it again on Christmas in theirs titled Kwanzaa glows even brighter after 40 years.

Kwanzaa turns 40 today. The colorful holiday, invented by California professor Maulana Ron Karenga in 1966, is like a jazz musician who fuses bits and pieces of music into a vibrant mosaic of sound. Kwanzaa, "first fruit" in Swahili, is a fluent, nonreligious holiday that borrows liberally from a patchwork of cultures and traditions.

Karenga originally created the seven-day observance to empower black communities and uplift black culture and identity.

I considered making Paul Krugman's column, "Helping the Poor, the British Way", my subject of this Christmas Day. I even had a snappy headline sussed out: "Let It Snow Socialism". But when it comes to using the message of the day to berate the United States, Krugman can't hold a Christmas candle to James Carroll of the Boston Globe.

Krugman took a glancing shot: "It’s the season for charitable giving. And far too many Americans, particularly children, need that charity."

Penny-ante pessimism, Paul in contrast with James Carroll's jeremiad. In his column, Carroll - a former Roman Catholic priest who has written about his bitter conflict with his military-officer father - condemns the United States in explicitly religious terms:

• "The birth of Jesus is the reversal of the imperial order. . . Empire lives in the United States of America, and, despite assumptions of many Christian Americans, Christmas still rebukes the empire."

It is unfortunate that Nativity scene figures are the target of theft and vandals across this country each year during the Christmas holiday. As this ignorant crime increases from year to year, it shows the lack of respect that too many Americans have developed for their neighbors as well as a failed respect for private property.

Let's face it. The people who do such things are jerks. It's just that simple.

But, on a lighter note, The Hartford Courant employed an interesting choice of words in their story on the recent several thefts of Nativity Scene figures across Southington, Conn.

After giving space to Church goers reacting with outrage over these mean-spirited, and pointless thefts, Courant staff writer, Ken Byron pulls this sentence out from his "professional journalism" bag 'o tricks:

Last year, I sensed that journalists in general prefer to call this time of the year in commerce that of "holiday shopping" instead of "Christmas shopping," but that when it came to people losing their jobs, they preferred to describe layoffs as relating to "Christmas."

My instincts were proven correct, as you can see below from the results of three different sets of Google News searches in November and December (links to last year's related posts are here, here, and here):

I've decided to track the same items this year to see if there is any noticeable change or trend.

Here are all three sets of Google News searches during this Christmas season, compared to last year (the Dec. 22, 2006 searches were done at about noon; the posts on the previous two searches are here and here):

Granted, the coverage of the Duke rape matter on this morning's "Today" was heavily skeptical of the prosecutor's case. And yes, host Alison Stewart did preface her remark by suggesting that she "play devil's advocate here." Even so, it's hard to see any journalistic justification for a scurrilous suggestion Stewart made. Speaking with NBC legal analyst Susan Filan, Stewart said:

"Why would she change her story at this point? She told doctors, nurses and police that she had been raped. Yet now she says she doesn't remember. Could someone have gotten to this woman?"

View video of Stewart's suggestion here.

The Boston Globe can't put two and two together on immigration. Just last week it wrung its editorial hands over the fact that illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from. But naturally it didn't make the logical connection and call for a crackdown on illegal immigration. Then today, the paper lends its pages to a union official who, when it comes to illegals, sees only employers, with nary an illegal immigrant to be found.

Annotated excerpts from Protect the rights of immigrants by Rocío Sáenz, shown here, president of a Service Employees International Union local in Boston:

• "The national political climate both exploits immigrant workers and punishes them for seeking the American dream."

Wrong. To the meager extent they're punished at all, it's for violating the laws of the United States.

As 2006 draws to a close, the MRC has once again ranked the most egregiously biased quotes from members of the media. So, who made the cut as "the best of the worst?" Click here to find out.

Christmas may be arriving soon, but NPR chose the week before December 25 as the appropriate time to broadcast an atheist message of holiday intolerance. Showing that radio can still compete with television for extreme examples of bias, the taxpayer-supported NPR also wondered if ailing Senator Tim Johnson’s family "has the right" to ruin the Democratic majority.

The media’s flirtation with Senator Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have lessened their love affair with Hillary Clinton. "Today" show co-host Meredith Vieira told Mrs. Clinton that it’s now "more imperative that we need a village to raise healthy, secure children." The New York Senator also received a very warm welcome on "The View."

This week, Dan Rather appeared on CNN’s "Reliable Source" and claimed that Saddam Hussein was more honest than President Bush. Rather also reiterated his attacks on the Fox News Channel.

On Thursday’s "American Morning," CNN correspondent Dan Lothian reported on the controversy over a new Christian video game that, according to co-host Soledad O'Brien, "critics say" encourages "hate and religious intolerance." Who are these critics? Well, if you believe CNN, they are simply parents and concerned citizens.

In reality, the experts are actually committed left-wing activists. The video game in question, "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," is based on the popular series of religious books. Mr. Lothian informed his cable audience that some people have attacked the game, which features characters battling the anti-Christ and fighting for souls, as bigoted. During the segment, Lothian talked with Rebecca Glenn, who he described simply as "a Christian" and who the onscreen graphic labeled a "parent." Left out of the story? Glenn is also the co-president of CrossWalk America, a left-wing, "progressive" group that fights "radical fundamentalism." Oh, and her organization is also leading a boycott of the game. Think CNN and Dan Lothian should have mentioned that fact?

WSJ's Opinion Journal has indulged in another round of the MSM's upturned nose to the lowly blogger, another cornucopia of contumelies, a mountain of maligning. We are all fools and imbeciles according to assistant editorial features editor, Joseph Rago in today's Op Ed, The Blog Mob.

Here's the wind up...

Blogs are very important these days. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has one. The invention of the Web log, we are told, is as transformative as Gutenberg's press, and has shoved journalism into a reformation, perhaps a revolution.

I feel a "but" coming!

And the pitch...

The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.

A swing and a miss, Mr. Rago.

Few bloggers, Mr. assistant editorial features editor, imagine themselves to be anything like investigative journalists... few even consider themselves journalists at all. A small number may have taken steps into that field, but most bloggers who blog on culture, the news and politics are in it for opinion making. And, I'd lay odds that few would dispute such a claim.

Playing into the stereotype of what conservatives think liberals are interested in, CNN reporter Stephanie Elam introduced a new study on pot by calling the drug "our friend marijuana." Elam, the guest business reporter on Tuesday’s "American Morning," discussed a report from the Marijuana Policy Project [MPP]. The pro-legalization group claims that pot is the most valuable cash crop in the United States, far exceeding corn, wheat, and other products. This information seemed to animate Elam and guest host John Roberts:

John Roberts: "Corn and soybeans have nothing on America's largest cash crop, and get this: you can't even buy it at your grocery store. Twenty-four minutes after the hour, Stephanie Elam is minding your business this morning. Morning to you."

Stephanie Elam: "Good morning. I wonder how many people are tuning in now."

Roberts: "Yeah. What are we talking about here?"

Elam: "Our friend marijuana."

Roberts: "Oh!"

ABC's Laura Marquez displayed last night how the media just don't get religion.

Introducing her story on a rift in the Episcopal Church as conservative parishes in Northern Virginia voted to leave the American branch of the Anglican Communion for greener theological pastures, Marquez blamed conservatives for troubling the church's still waters.

"Members of Virginia's Truro Church may have been singing the words "The Church's One Foundation," but the action they took today rocked that foundation to its core."

In other words, conservative, orthodox Episcopalians are the bad guys, prompting a "secession" as Marquez called it, from the Episcopal Church. But that just shows Marquez's confusion as to the church's true foundation.

"Put down the candles and step slowly away from the menorah." Reading her pay-per-view New York Times column of today, that's what I felt like shouting at Jennifer Michael Hecht. Hecht manages to turn the Festival of Light into a celebration of the rejection of traditional Judaism - and an odd bow in the direction of colonialism and cultural imperialism.

Hanukkah celebrates "a revolution against assimilation and the suppression of Jewish religion." Syrian-Greeks had colonialized Israel, overturned the Temple, and turned Jews away from their religion. A small band of faithful Jews defeated the Greek army, drove them from the Israel, reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of God.

According to Hecht, that was . . .a bad thing. In her view, "progressive, modern Jews" should actually consider the Syrian-Greeks the heroes of the story, and those who fought against them to restore traditional Judaism the villians.

Editor and Publisher seems hardly able to hold back their excitement over the possibility that someone has found proof of the existence of the mysterious "Captain Jamil Hussein" who the Associated Press claimed as a source for the supposed burning of 6 Sunni Iraqis in retaliation for the depredations of that sect on their Shi'ite neighbors.

In a Sunday posting on their site, E&P is crowing about "Conservative Bloggers in the U.S." eating crow.

Though far from definitive proof, it was strong enough to cause at least one conservative blogger to wonder if those who had mocked the AP might have to eat "a huge shinola sandwich."

The tag for the story on the Hot Air home page currently reads, "Anyone got any good recipes for crow?"

Why isn't Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, who first broke the "fauxtography" scandal out of Lebanon, among Time's "digital democracy" change agents?

After looking at the weak collection of candidates available to vote for as Time's Person of the Year last week (based on what they did in 2006, which wasn't much), I wrote:

Perhaps YouTube, online forums, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and online media should be the Thing of the Year: The Shadow Media. Of course, Time would be writing about its own likely eventual demise, but it would fit.

That's essentially what Time has done in its mostly (in my opinion) good decision to name "You" as Person of the Year:

..... for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

Time named as "You" everyone trying to influence the world just a bit from their keyboard. That would include, to a miniscule degree, yours truly, and, again of course, many people who are reading this post.

Oh-so-predictably, two of the three "hard-news" members of the magazine's "15 citizens of the digital democracy" are influencers from the left side; none are from the right -- sorry, libs, a milblogger is not presumptively "conservative" (direct links may not work unless you have already visited Time's web site):

The MRC's new Culture and Media Institute has already drawn national press attention by making a Christmas list -- not your everyday Christmas list, mind you, but a list of who's been naughty in denying Christmas in the public square, and who's nice in upholding traditions. The list of "Santa's Helpers" and "Grinches" is here. CMI's Kristen Fyfe explained:

It seems almost ridiculous that acknowledging Christmas should be controversial.  In a country where 96% of the citizens celebrate it, why do so many feel like Christmas is under attack?  An online poll done by the Chicago Tribune last week showed that 68% of respondents think there is a war on Christmas.  Why?

...but my colleague Julia Seymour has got the Airing of Grievances part down for those of us at the MRC's Business & Media Institute.

The camera pans across a sparkling Christmas tree, then zooms in on singer Clay Aiken, who begins to sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”: “... and ransom captive Israel … that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear …”

So which holiday is that about?

ABC’s Kate Snow tiptoed around that question on the November 26 “Good Morning America.”

“We have a special treat for you this morning to get you warmed up for the holiday season,” she said, touting Aiken’s new “holiday” record (title: “All is Well: Songs for Christmas”).

In a new Business & Media Institute analysis, “Good Morning America” was the least likely of the network morning shows to refer to Christmas, mentioning it only about 31 percent of the time.

Julia Roberts to Diane Sawyer on why she avoids killing spiders:

"You think, that’s a person, or somebody’s Mom or somebody’s best pal.” Good Morning America, 12-13-06

I trace the beginning of my evolution from pro-choice to pro-life to a comment I heard on the radio a decade or so ago. It might have been Rush Limbaugh who made the point that many of the people moved to tears at the thought of the killing of baby seals are the same ones who "celebrate" a woman's right to have an abortion.

Something clicked. What kind of moral compass is that?

For creating a story out of nothing and then finger pointing at US society and saying how evil it is, this Dec. 12th CNN story takes the cake. In "Poll: Most Americans see lingering racism -- in others", not only is a somewhat leading poll cited as evidence that America is still rife with racism, but CNN uses comments emailed to them by their viewers as some sort of follow up proof for it!

Very scientific, I know. After all, CNN used science via the Internet and phone lines to conduct this farcical poll, I suppose.

(CNN) -- Most Americans, white and black, see racism as a lingering problem in the United States, and many say they know people who are racist, according to a new poll.

But few Americans of either race -- about one out of eight -- consider themselves racist.

Cato the Elder famously dragged Carthage into every speech, calling for it to be destroyed. Like a modern-day Cato who has played the DVD of "An Inconvenient Truth" way too many times, The Boston Globe manages to drag global warming into an editorial this morning about, of all things, the baby that Mary Cheney is expecting. In doing so, the Globe hypocritically invades the very Cheney privacy it claims to want to champion.

Writing of the decision of Cheney and Heather Poe to bring a child into the world, the Globe claims that:

"Like any couple choosing to become parents, they must have concluded that the joy of raising a child outweighs the uncertainties of introducing it to a planet threatened by global warming, nuclear proliferation, and other terrors of the modern world."

Ana Marie Cox of "Time" magazine asserted that the pregnancy of Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, shames the White House and pondered whether it was a "...genetic experiment to extend the lineage," on Tuesday’s "Imus in the Morning." Cox, appearing in the 6:00 hour, alluded to Ms. Cheney’s sexual orientation on several occasions and emphasized that she is the vice president’s "gay daughter."

Cox claimed that the Bush administration is "falling apart" because the news of Mary Cheney’s pregnancy is the best they’d received recently:

"This administration’s really falling apart though, I do agree. I think, you know, you know times are bad when the best news the White House has had recently is, you know, Dick Cheney’s gay daughter is pregnant. Like, he’s going to be a granddad, that’s pretty much it."

Well, at least he didn't blame it on Bush. In his column of yesterday, Market Watch's Jon Friedman tells us not to rule out this explanation of CBS Evening News's disappointing third-place finish under Katie Couric's baton:

"America wasn't truly ready for the first solo woman evening-news anchor, let alone someone smart and attractive with pretensions to sounding puckish and hip."

Oh, please. Does Friedman really believe that? From Maureen Dowd [love her or hate her] to Oprah to Katie herself back in her 'Today' days, millions of Americans are comfortable getting their news and views from women opinion-leaders. Katie hasn't flopped because of her sex. She's been unsuccessful because she's done nothing to distinguish herself from her liberal media competitors - with the exception of letting her show's precious few minutes of hard news be crowded out by the awkward "Free Speech" segment.

Those looking for a true conservative to enter the Republican presidential field might be feeling a bit perplexed in the wake of Sam Brownback's performance on this morning's Fox News Sunday. The senator from Kansas:

• Endorsed the ISG report and appeared to strongly support negotiations with Iran and Syria.
• Called for a timetable for US withdrawal.
• Spoke approvingly of a Bidenesqe division of Iraq into three ethnic regions.
• Declined to swing at the softball host Chris Wallace lobbed at him regarding Mitt Romney's flip-flops on abortion and gay rights.
• Seemingly described himself as a "compassionate conservative."

Invited by Wallace to comment on the ISG report, Brownback was surprisingly supportive: "I think [Pres. Bush] really should look at these recommendations very seriously as well. And it seems to me that what Baker-Hamilton provides us is a chance to kind of reset the table and get a bi-partisan buy-in and not just a bipartisan buy-in, a global buy-in to what we can do to move forward in Iraq and get our troops out of harm's way and out of the sectarian violence. I think this is an important moment, like senator Dodd identifies as well"

Mary Cheney’s announcement of her pregnancy and upcoming lesbian parenthood has inspired national-media stories playing up "furious" conservatives in the Vice President’s Republican base, even as activists on the gay left use the news to lobby against defense-of-marriage policies in Virginia and other states.

CNN’s "Paula Zahn Now" took up the permissive cause on Thursday night with a supportive news story by Mary Snow on how Virginia is "unfriendly" to gay rights, followed by an imbalanced panel discussion in which one liberal insisted homosexuals had to fight for their cause or "You're going to get dragged behind a truck otherwise." MRC’s Robert Knight, featured in the Snow report, told me that CNN didn’t use his remarks that "every birth is a blessing," or that loving fathers are important. Why? Because it wouldn’t match the "furious" conservative template? Paula Zahn started with the conservative fury, right from the beginning:

Not an Onion article. I solemnly affirm to Scrappleface: New York Times columnist Judith Warner doesn't want social programs to be judged by how much they cost or whether they work.

Disclaimer notwithstanding, I bet you're still dubious. "Come on, Finkelstein - that can't be right. As liberal as the New York Times might be, there's no way one of its regular columnists would come right out and say that."

Wanna bet?

The particular government programs that Warner - the Times's family-issues maven - discusses in The Real Value of Public Preschool [subscription] are what she describes as "free" pre-school for three- and four-year olds. And here's what she says:

"I am finding the rhetoric in the debate over universal preschool disheartening. It’s all the usual stuff about cost-benefit and outcomes."

Regular viewers of Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” know that the two hosts rarely agree on anything, and that when they do, their guests better watch out, because they’re going to be blasted from both sides. Such was the case Tuesday evening when H&C invited the Reverend Paul Scott of the Messianic Afrikan Nation to discuss his bizarre views about race and Christmas (video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated). Colmes began, “So, you have a beef with Christmas this year, or every year?” The Reverend replied:

Well, the problem that we have is with traditional Eurocentric Christmas, the lily white Christmas. Christmas is the whitest time of year. And in a situation and a climate when black men are being shot by police officers, black -- elderly black grandmothers are being shot by police officers, black men are being forced to dance their way out of traffic tickets, white comedians feel that they can make jokes about black men.

Colmes accurately inquired: “That has nothing to do with Christmas, though, as you well know. Do you think most people look at Christmas through the lens of race?” The Reverend amazingly answered: “I think that racism is so prevalent in our society you can't separate anything from race.” He said that. He really did. And that’s when the fun started: