So much for the alleged conservative conglomerate media. Broadcasting & Cable magazine reports leftist actor Tim Robbins drew a standing ovation last week before the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas for attacking the corporate media for distracting the country from real (liberal) issues with Britney and Hasselhoff stories. But Robbins also sneered that "talk radio geniuses" like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly called him a "traitor" for opposing the Iraq war, and now he "stands chastened" as everything in Iraq is a utopia of democracy and prosperity. The magazine did not note that in April 2003, ABC touted Robbins claiming a McCarthyesque "chill wind" of censorship was blowing across America.

Broadcasting & Cable critic David Bianculli was supposed to host Robbins for a Q&A at the convention, but when Robbins said he brought a speech that he was told was too preachy and negative to give, broadcasters yelled that he should give the speech, so he did. Far from being miffed at having his moderator’s role snuffed, Bianculli glowingly recounted the highlights:

The “Scrapbook” section in next week's (September 10 cover date) Weekly Standard magazine excoriates actor Tim Robbins for charging, on last week's (August 24) Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, that, referring to Iraq, “we've killed over 400,000 of their citizens.” The un-bylined article commented: “He's wrong, of course. American soldiers have not been slaughtering 300 Iraqis a day for the last four years. Even for one of Hollywood's most feculent personalities, this is an appalling slander of U.S. troops.” Citing the Iraq Body Count Web site, the magazine pointed out that “the antiwar group's 'maximum count'” of “'civilian deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to the coalition presence (e.g. insurgent and terrorist attacks)'” as well as “'excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion,'” stands at 77,555, “one-fifth the number concocted by Robbins's overactive imagination.”