Celebrities

Jim Pinkerton found a graphic way to express his displeasure over Fox News Watch's decision to devote a segment to Lindsay Lohan's latest run-in with the law. With a nod to MSNBC newsreader Mika Brzezinski, who as I chronicled here had torn up a Paris Hilton story in protest, Pinkerton ripped a page or two on tonight's show.

FOX NEWS WATCH PANELIST JIM PINKERTON: This speaks to formula, right?. We all know that Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Ritchie are fighting to get the Anna Nicole Smith slot for this year.

FOX NEWS WATCH HOST ERIC BURNS: Nicole Ritchie, who has just been sentenced herself.

PINKERTON: Exactly. I'm going to honor another formula [as he ceremoniously tears the story in two]. That would be Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC and Jack Cafferty on CNN, who refused to read their copy. It might have been a show, it might have been an act for the cameras, but I'm going to do the same thing and see what happens. Because I don't think this is really worth covering on our segment.

View video here.

Updated with video below:

Following on the heels of the Daily Kos' anti-military “Killitary,” former Air America host and “Saturday Night Live” alum A. Whitney Brown vlogged about our “idiot” murderous troops who are “crapping in their pants” in Iraq and the Republican zombie-drones who “support” them.

In the comment thread, Brown confirmed this wasn't satire, stating it was “all about anger, not humour” and offered a sarcastic (non) apology to an offended Koz Kid, “It was not my intent to defame or offend anyone who might sign a piece of paper saying they are available to kill whoever their marginally superior officer tells them to, wherever they are sent, for 1200 dollars a month.” That's nice. Enjoy (bold mine):

Hello, I’m A. Whitney Brown, and I support our brave troops overseas. We all do and we all should. But what about those troops who are not so brave? Perhaps they just signed up hoping for some extra money for college, for the medical insurance, or even some hot gay military sex.
(...)
But do I still support the individual men and women who have given so much to serve their country?
(...)
I think they’re a bunch of idiots. I also think they’re morally retarded. Because they sign a contract that says they will kill whoever you tell me to kill. And that is morally retarded.
(...)
To to sum up, I don’t like our troops, I don’t like what they’re doing, I don’t like their fat, whining families...

Let’s be blunt: Michael Moore is one ungrateful leftist hack. CNN had showered him with three hours and ten minutes of face time (repeats included) on "Larry King Live" and "The Situation Room," helping him sell his latest socialist film "Sicko." That kind of attention would make a conservative drool. But when CNN aired a "fact check" piece on his documentary, adding a fraction of balance, he declared jihad, promising in a letter to be CNN’s "worst nightmare."

Pacifica Radio defines the idea of ideological pork barrel. Every year, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting offers community-service grants in the area of about $1 million to Pacifica stations like WPFW in Washington, DC and KPFK in Los Angeles to spew their radical politics. Their flagship show "Democracy Now" celebrated the Fourth of July with an hour with Pete Seeger, the radical socialist folk singer. In this passage, they discussed how Pete's dad was a communist (Pete was a member of the CPUSA after Daddy):

But he, in those early days, linked up with the Communist movement. He and Aaron Copland and Henry Cowell and Marc Blitzstein. They had a thing they called the Composers' Collective. After all, in Russia they had collectives this and collective that. And there, they decided, as skilled musicians, they would compose the new music for the new society. Well, their attempts were laughable. Aaron Copland put music to a poem by Alfred Hayes, same man who wrote "Joe Hill" -- "Into the Streets May 1st." But only a very expert singer could sing it, tremendous range, and only a very expert pianist could accompany it properly. Of course, no proletariat ever sang him.

Remember the old commercial for aspirin where actor Robert Young, portrayer of '70s TV icon Dr. Marcus Welby, would wear a white lab coat and say, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV..."? The same mentality is at work with actor Rob Lowe, who testified yesterday before Congress for tax credits for people who add a plug-in feature to their hybrid cars. Ann Senner, writing for the AP, seems to take his credibility seriously:

Actor Rob Lowe, who portrays a member of Congress on television, appeared before lawmakers Thursday and promoted tax credits for people who add a plug-in feature to hybrid cars and trucks.

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay-left lobby, announced yesterday that it will host a one-hour Democratic presidential debate on August 9 on Logo, the Viacom gay channel and sister network to CBS. (CBS News has its own newscast on Logo with gay anchor Jason Bellini, formerly of CNN.) Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have confirmed their attendance. As a colleague joked yesterday about Democrat refusal to acknowledge Fox as a news network: "Oh, so the Democrats won’t go on networks with an agenda."

The debate won’t be moderated by Bellini or any journalist, but by HRC Chairman Joe Solmonese and rock singer Melissa Etheridge. Actually, it’s not so much a debate as a series of interviews, a lot like the CNN/Sojourners magazine event designed to highlight the Democrats’ religious views – except this pander-to-the-libertine-left event ought to cancel out the impression that these candidates are devoted to their Bibles.

For those NBC brass who would lamely insist that there was no "political issue" in their broadcasting of the Al Gore Live Earth concerts all across their channels, Mark Hemingway at National Review Online sat through it and reports that gravel-voiced lesbo-rocker Melissa Etheridge unveiled a new anti-Bush, pro-Cindy Sheehan song. On Monday morning’s edition of the Stephanie Miller radio show, Cindy Sheehan made one of her routine interview stops and said she saw that and loved the song and hoped to use it as her campaign theme song if she ran for Congress against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Hemingway explained: 

6:26 [PM]: Al Gore’s personal troubadour, Melissa Etheridge, takes the stage. Etheridge wrote the turgid theme song for An Inconvenient Truth, and today is premiering two new songs. The first, "Imagine That," near as I can tell, is written from the perspective of Cindy Sheehan. Etheridge is the only musician I’ve seen today that seems really revved up about the cause. Unfortunately, for her there’s really just no way for her to sing lyrics this overtly political and not have it be extremely awkward:

Here's another sign that Al Gore's Live Earth was probably a bust. CNN entertainment correspondent Lola Ogunnaike (pictured at right) gave a great one-liner with regards to the celebrity component of Live Earth: "Frankly, I don't want to hear about environmental causes from the Pussycat Dolls."

Co-host John Roberts and Ogunnaike discussed the concert's lackluster ratings in the first hour of Monday's "American Morning." Ogunnaike blamed the ratings situation on "benefit fatigue" and people actually wanting to be out in the environment instead of sitting at home watching celebrities rant about saving it.

As NewsBusters noted, in June Rolling Stone published a “green” issue that still didn't please the enviro-left. Well, now Radar Online exposed the magazine's founder and publisher Jann Wenner's not-so-green lifestyle which contrast with his ecological stunts and stances.

 Radar's July 3 article and July 6 update about Wenner's high-living, carbon-spewing lifestyle which is filled with globe-spanning Gulfstreams, big SUVs, lending his evil Global Warming Inducing Death Plane to high-profile friends (like John Kerry) and staffers ferrying lunches back and forth should really tick the green crowd off. Oh, and he doesn't even recycle. Bad environmentalist, bad!

Wenner is reportedly planning to spend his summer jetting between Europe and his vacation home in the Rocky Mountains. How much carbon dioxide would this add up to for, say, just one get-away trip? Let's count. Wenner flies to his son's wedding in Greece and back to New York, then speeds off to Sun Valley, Idaho with his family. Counting just one round trip in each direction, the miles total to about 14,000.

Now for the fun eco-math (emphasis mine):

This is a little old as it was published last Thursday, but MTV's Kurt Loder (pictured at right) did a yeoman's job in dissecting Michael Moore's paean to socialized health care, in a movie review on MTV.com entitled, "'Sicko': Heavily Doctored."

While Loder conceded that Moore's handpicked stories of bureaucratic madness are "horrifying, and then infuriating" and praises scrutiny of HMO manager Kaiser Permanente, the MTV personality quickly turned to slamming Moore for a one-sided propaganda film that failed to present viewers with a command of the complexities of providing health care to a nation of some 300 million people. Portions below in bold are my emphasis:

Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18,000* people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools. The American health-care system is in urgent need of reform, no question. Some 47 million people are uninsured (although many are only temporarily so, being either in-between jobs or young enough not to feel a pressing need to buy health insurance). There are a number of proposals as to what might be done to correct this situation. Moore has no use for any of them, save one.

On Thursday’s Today, NBC’s Meredith Vieira interviewed Robin Williams, introducing him jokingly that he "has always made people look to the heavens and say what was he thinking? So it's only appropriate that in his latest film, License To Wed, he plays a man of the cloth. And his character, Reverend Frank is more than a little unorthodox." He’s playing an Episcopalian minister, but all his trouble lately has been by making harsh jokes about Catholic priests and pedophilia.

On the June 18 Tonight show, Williams unfurled a whole routine suggesting there were pedophiles everywhere among the Catholic priesthood, a smear on the vast majority of serious and celibate priests, as well as mean-spirited jokes about priests being sexually aroused in the confessional. Ten days later, he smeared his critics – specifically, without citing names, Michael Chapman on NewsBusters -- suggesting they didn’t care whether child-abusing priests were exposed, that keeping it quiet was okay. About halfway into the interview, Vieira steered into his mockery of priests:

Better have a barf bag handy, for Barbra Streisand was actually given a medal in France this week, and promptly stuck her foot in her mouth in response.

As reported by the Associated Press Thursday (emphasis added throughout):

Barbra Streisand performed her first-ever concert in France this week — and was rewarded with a medal of the Legion of Honor.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy awarded the medal to Streisand in a ceremony Thursday, the first time he has bestowed the honor since taking over from Jacques Chirac last month.

Get the barf bag ready:

By now you should know the drill concerning potables, combustibles, and sharp objects…

American heartthrob Tom Cruise has been prevented from filming scenes to a new movie about the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler at German military sites due to the actor’s connection with Scientology.

I kid you not.

As reported by Reuters Monday (emphasis added throughout):

Have you ever wondered what makes liberals so full of…hate?

After all, it seems that regardless of the venue or the setting, someone on the far left side of the dial is going to say something bad about Republicans, George W. Bush, Fox News, or all of the above.

Such was certainly the case when former Air America host Janeane Garofalo sat down to discuss her new animated feature “Ratatouille” with the Boston Herald (h/t Brian Maloney).

In the end, it didn’t take long for Garofalo to lob her first surface-to-conservative missile (emphasis added throughout):

Update (Ken Shepherd | 16:18 EDT): Victory is Graham's!

Tim Graham appeared on "Live Desk w/Martha MacCallum" today to discuss what appears to be NBC paying for a post-incarceration interview with hotel heiress Paris Hilton. He joked: "It just sounds like a bad MTV reality show called Pimp My News."

Video (2:36): Real (1.90 MB) or Windows (1.60 MB), plus MP3 audio (748 kB).

For a video archive of Graham and other MRC experts, click here.

The June 22 "Today" show picked up on NewsBusters contributor and publicist Michael Chapman's post from two days earlier, "Robin Williams Slams Catholic Priests as Pedophiles, Spews Bigotry on NBC Tonight Show."

We've clipped the June 22 set-up piece by reporter David Gregory, as well as Catholic League president Bill Donohue's opening remarks in the discussion segment that followed.

Video (2:48): Real (2.05 MB) or Windows (1.72 MB), plus MP3 audio (810 kB).

Here's an excerpt from Chapman's entry:

Actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson is close to forming a presidential exploratory committee, according to numerous media outlets, citing people close to the TV star. Reporting that news, CBSNews.com ran with a less-than-flattering AP photo of Thompson, pictured at right.

"Former Sen. Fred Thompson attends the Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford Conn., on May 24, 2007," read the caption.

By contrast, ABCNews.com ran an AP photo that features a stern-looking Thompson. With skyscrapers in the background, it evokes his current TV character incarnation, New York County District Attorney Arthur Branch on NBC's long-running court drama "Law & Order." You can see that screen cap pictured below:

Bill Maher, host of HBO's "Real Time", tore into Jerry Falwell on the May 18 edition of his show, saying, with a photo of Falwell in the background, such things as, “... death isn’t always sad." The worst comments from Maher came from his argument for turning homosexuality into a religion, with references to the Mass as gay oral sex and reception of Holy Communion as gay oral sex. Here is the clip. WARNING: the material is very offensive.

The TV industry is a fickle business, just ask any veteran of the small screen. While most actors in Hollywood would probably tell you that they're at the mercy of you the viewing audience, blogger LaShawn Barber noticed that comedian George Lopez whipped out the race card to complain about his five-season-long show being canned by the alphabet network.

"TV just became really, really white again," complained Lopez, who was reacting to the premise of "Cavemen," the sitcom that will replace his show. "Cavemen" will basically transform the Geico commercial cavemen premise into a half-hour laugh riot (you can tell I suspect it will be even less funny than Lopez's show).

Eco-tastic celebrities, politicians and even CEOs made Time magazine's 100 "people who shape our world."

Former Vice President Al Gore was included in the "Scientists and Thinkers" category. Hmm...he's not a scientist so would that make him a thinker? Just call him Al-istotle.

Actor and green activist Leonardo DiCaprio, Virgin Airlines' Richard Branson (who has offered a $25 million prize for a solution to global warming), talk show host Oprah Winfrey, and media personality Brian Williams also made the list.

Celebrities were well represented: Cate Blanchett, who marched in protest of global warming in Sydney, Australia; George Clooney, who made the cover of Vanity Fair’s 2006 “Green Issue”; and “Light Green” musician John Mayer who advocates changing one thing each year. Others included Brad Pitt, who has worked with Global Green on “sustainable” building, and Oprah Winfrey, who recently handed out compact fluorescent light bulbs to her audience.