The embarrassing Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair photo shows the value of public relations people—and why investing real money makes people more careful about what they do.
Continue reading "Miley Cyrus, Unprotected Celebrity" »
A truly fascinating measure of the hegemony and absurdity of political correctness is the liberal elites' furious reaction to ABC news personalities having asked the two ultraliberal remaining candidates for the Democrats' presidential nomination a few mildly challenging questions.
Recognizing a trend we've reported on, Time magazine notes that efforts to make money off of global warming hysteria and other allegedly eco-friendly trends are actually harming the environment and stealing from consumers.
Continue reading "'Time' Magazine Remarks "Clean Energy Scam"" »
As you've seen if you clicked on the link in the story immediately below, the film Fitna was removed from the Livelink site because of threats of violence against the proprietors. We've embedded a new link that should work, as numerous sites are carrying the film, in the grand tradition of liberty that the Internet has already developed.
Those who dislike the film—whether they have seen it or otherwise—are trying to ensure that it gets lost on the internet, by posting other videos with "Fitna" as the title. Those who wish to make sure others can see the film should point them to this permalink: http://stkarnick.com/blog2/2008/03/post_120.html.
We will monitor the situation and continue updating the link as necessary. If it should prove necessary in future, we'll download the file and save it to our own site.
TV networks and other mainstream news sources hardly ever mention that Democrats embroiled in sex scandals are Democrats, but they always, emphatically identify the party affiliation of Republicans that get into such trouble.
Continue reading "Media Reluctant to Describe Spitzer as Democrat" »
William F. Buckley, author, columnist, TV talk show host, and founding editor of National Review magazine, died today at age 82.
Buckley was one of the people most responsible for making the conservative movement a powerful force in the United States during the past six decades.
Especially through his influential magazine, Buckley set the agenda for the American right and made it appealing to a mass audience. His editorial approach and political philosophy combined to create an ecumenism on the right that allowed the various factions to work together, although the relationships have always been strained to some degree. However, his stolid opposition to statism in all of its forms provided a rallying cry for the American right and continues to do so.
Continue reading "William F. Buckley and the Modern American Right" »
American film critics detest violent movies—unless there's an antisocial message involved. TAC correspondent Mike D'Virgilio looks at critical reactions to violence in movies.
Continue reading "The Violent Hypocrisy of Mainstream Film Critics" »
The winningest coach in college basketball history, Bobby Knight, retired unexpectedly yesterday with several games remaining in the season.
Knight, known both for his coaching brilliance and angry, public and private tirades, has long been a big target of criticism from sportswriters.
A large part of that criticism is well-earned, for Knight has always been thoroughly uncompromising in his insistence that his teams play the game the way it should be played and that others involved in the game reach similar standards, and he often manifested it in childish behavior, verbal aggression, and physical violence.
Continue reading "Bobby Knight Retires - Unlamented by Weenies" »
ESPN2 morning co-anchor Dana Jacobson is back at work after a week's suspension for her drunken, foul-mouthed tirade at a public dinner.
At the beginning of the Jan. 28 program, the first since her suspension, Jacobson offered a rather cryptic apology:
I want to once again say how truly sorry I am for my poor choices and bad judgment that night. I've taken responsibility for what I did say and do that night.
What's cryptic about it, of course, is the phrase "what I did say and do". Certainly no one should expect her to apologize for anything she did not do, so the use of the word 'did' is redundant and indeed confusing.
Evidently her intent was to imply that she did not say the most offensive thing attributed to her: "F— Jesus!"
Yet neither Jacobson nor her ESPN bosses has denied that she said it. Hence the use of the word 'did' is obviously intentional dissembling.
Continue reading "Jacobson's Back, Protesters Unsatisfied" »
Chicago Sun-Times writer Greg Crouch asks in his column today whether ESPN personality Dana Jacobson really did say the offensive words attributed to her that resulted in a one-week suspension. (See story below.)
That's a good question. Crouch points out that the original report of Jacobson specifically saying "F— Jesus" came from a blog and has not been confirmed by a particular eyewitness at the event, Scott Cronick of the Press of Atlantic City, whom Couch asked about it yesterday. Cronick said that he does not believe she said "F— Jesus."
Couch's point is that mainstream journalists should not quote information from blogs because bloggers are not responsible journalists and not reliable news sources. Real journalists—which Couch appears to define as people working for corporate newspapers, magazines, TV shows, radio stations, and websites—check their facts and are "reliable."
If I ever see any responsible journalism in the mainstream media, I'll check on that contention.
Continue reading "Dana Jacobson and Reliable Journalism" »
Providing further proof that America's elites are delighted when people of low mental ability use Christians and Christianity as punching bags, ESPN has suspended sports-show anchor Dana Jacobson for one week after she indulged in a drunken, foul-mouthed public tirade that included an astonishingly vulgar curse directed at Jesus Christ.
The one-week suspension is very revealing of the mentality of the management team at the Disney-owned sports network, given that the same behavior would have gotten anyone not in the media fired, and it would have gotten a media person fired had it been delivered against an accredited victim group—cf. the termination of radio host Don Imus and basketball commentator Tim Hardaway last year.
Continue reading "Christ-Hater Skates,Thanks to Elite Prejudice Against Christians" »
One of the greatest difficulties in the West's confrontation with Islam in the past decade has been our failure to recognize the true nature of Islam. This is a direct consequence of our failure to recognize the true nature of our own civilization, and the great good that is inherent in it.
Continue reading "The Reality of Islam" »
I haven't seen The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie, so of course I have no opinion on whether it is any good, but I found a fascinating assumption in Lou Lumenick's review of the film in the New York Post.
Lumenick suggests that a work reflecting Christian values must necessarily be bad.
In an outline of what's wrong with the film, Lumenick states the following:
The CGI animation is crude, the humor is cruder, and the plot is Christian-friendly. Proceed at your own risk.
My advice to all, including non-Christians: when reading reviews in the New York Post, proceed at your own risk.
Here's a good indicator of how the mainstream media look at the religion the great majority of Americans hold. The headline writer for E! News felt constrained to put the word prayers in scare quotes in the headline of a story on actor Dennis Quaid:
The article reported on a grave illness facing the newborn twin children of Quaid and his wife, and noted that the actor's representative had sent the following statement to E! News: "Dennis and Kimberly appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers and hope they can maintain their privacy at this difficult time."
Continue reading "E! Puts Prayers in Scare Quotes" »
Film directors Brian De Palma and Paul Haggis have attacked the media for not reporting enough on the negative aspects of the Iraq War, and said that they felt compelled to make up for that poor reporting by making their recent films Redacted (De Palma), which opens tomorrow, and In the Valley of Elah (Haggis), which opened a few weeks ago and crashed at the box office.
There has been no word yet on whether reporters will return the favor by making quality movies to compensate for the shoddy filmmaking behind the current crop of films opposing the Iraq War.
Novelist-journalist Norman Mailer has died at age 84, according to his literary executor. Malier, known for his interesting but often overly dense prose, puzzling choices of story material, combative journalism, "existential" philosophisizing, and aggressive self-assertiveness in his personal life, burst on the scene at the age of 25 in 1948 with a well-written, critically acclaimed, and popular debut novel, The Naked and the Dead.
Intelligent, wily, handsome, charismatic, and highly personable when he wanted to be, Mailer was the embodiment of the "hipster" culture that arose after World War II, in which authors such as he, Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, and Stanley Baldwin rebelled against the overly bureaucratized and stifling, government-dominated society that had arisen during the first half of the twentieth century and found its greatest expression during World War II, when nearly everything in American society was under control of the national government.
Continue reading "Norman Mailer and the Hipster Cataclysm" »
The Icecap website presents a scathing denunciation of global warming alarmism today, written by Weather Channel founder John Coleman. Here are some excerpts:
It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.
Continue reading "Global Warming Is "Greatest Scam in History," Weather Channel Founder Says" »
Big-name and -money advertisers have hitherto been reluctant to put much money into web advertising, but that trend is reversing fast, according to eMarketer, a leading advertisement tracker.
In 2006 the top 100 advertisers cut their spending on TV, radio, and print by $230 million and raised their online ad spending by $558 million—an increase of approximately 17 percent.
Continue reading "Advertisers Moving to Internet—and Fast" »
The one big advantage environmental activists have is the presumed purity of their motives. They claim they only want to protect the earth from a few particularly greedy people, and they say their efforts benefit everybody.
That’s their story, anyway, and they’re sticking to it. The reality is a far different matter, as the acclaimed documentary filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Patricia McElhinney make clear in their film Mine Your Own Business, now available on DVD.
The film is billed as presenting “The Dark Side of Environmentalism,” and it succeeds brilliantly. Seldom have Western environmental activists been shown in all their abundant arrogance, smugness, and paternalism.
Continue reading "New Film Exposes the "Dark Side of Environmentalism"" »
A fascinating article in today's Christian Science Monitor shows that the media got everything wrong in the Jena 6 story, which was portrayed as an example of racism in the South and of injustice toward blacks. Craig Franklin, a local journalist from Jena, demolishes what he calls "Media Myths About the Jena 6" in the story.
It is a must read, and the facts it adduces constitute a powerful indictment of the mainstream media and the race baiters who continually try to take advantage of such situations.
Some excerpts:
Continue reading "The Truth About Jena" »