Conservative talk radio host Steve Malzberg and NewsBusters' associate editor Noel Sheppard had a lengthy Spreecast conversation Monday about the media's support of pedophilia, its love affair with Bill Clinton, and its hatred of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (video follows with highlights and commentary).
The first topic up for discussion was Friday's Gawker article which actually said pedophilia should be treated as a "sexual orientation."
Malzberg and Sheppard were predictably horrified by the piece, and wondered why, especially in the wake of the Penn State sex scandal, media representatives wouldn't come down strongly on the author who just so happened to be Gawker's West Coast editor.
Sheppard noted with due irony the article would get a lot of attention if it exposed pedophilia in the Catholic Church. Then it would have been front-page, headline news.
The discussion then moved to former President Bill Clinton with Sheppard observing that had the media accurately depicted how well the economy was doing in 1992, George H.W. Bush would have easily won reelection.
Instead, they aided and abetted the Democratic presidential nominee's claims that the economy was doing poorly despite the gross domestic product growing by four percent or more in each quarter of that year.
Sheppard noted the press did the same thing in 2005 with former President George W. Bush's plan for Social Security reform, and as a result, the program seven years later is in far worse shape with little likelihood of a cure any time soon.
From there, Malzberg and Sheppard discussed Cokie Roberts saying on ABC's This Week Sunday, "I think this Democratic Convention was really over the top in terms of abortion."
The pair agreed that although it's conservatives that are always labeled by the media as being "extreme" for their views on such things as abortion, only fifteen percent of the nation supports the rhetoric espoused at last week's DNC.
Next on the docket was CBS's Norah O'Donnell who on Sunday not only asked Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan why he could got his marathon time wrong from 22 years ago. She actually equated the error to Al Gore saying he invented the internet
Sheppard observed the absurdity of O'Donnell - with 8.1 percent unemployment and perilously high budget deficits as far as the eye can see - actually wasting time on this issue with a vice presidential nominee less than two months before a pivotal national election.
The pair ended their conversation by once again revisiting the media's coverage of former President Bill Clinton, and in particular how they totally ignored his pivotal role in deregulating banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, and financial derivatives that directly led to the housing bubble as well as the financial collapse of 2008.
Sheppard emphatically stated that if the media had reported back then the two specific pieces of legislation responsible for the collapse - Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 both enacted by our 42nd president - Clinton wouldn't have been invited to either the 2008 or the 2012 Democratic conventions because "he'd be the new Herbert Hoover." He'd be the one that got blamed for the economic collapse because it was his deregulation that led to it.
Yet regardless of all Clinton's many transgressions, so-called journalists lined last Wednesday and Thursday to gush and fawn over him like they had just seen Fabian.
Watch the entire conversation. You'll find it informative and highly entertaining.
