A review in yesterday's New York Times exemplifies an error I've found to be quite common these days: the idea that strong affection for a member the same sex is equivalent to homosexuality. This line of thinking degrades elevated feelings into a category of the merely bestial: the sex drive (not that there's anything wrong with that). . . .
My first job after graduating from college was in Detroit. Prior to graduation, my high-school and college classmates and I would discuss our respective future plans — to a person we all declared we’d never take a job in Detroit. Once the mortar boards and graduation gowns were packed away, however, and wedding bells and wet nappies weighed-in on economic reality,At first, I lived in Dearborn, but eventually find an affordable house to rent in the Warrandale section on Detroit’s west side. In 1985, I…
An Associated Press internal memo that suggested the company's widely used journalism style guide would not recommend the use of the terms husband and wife to describe same-sex couples raised much controversy in the past week. As was to be expected, AP backed down under the withering fire from homosexual activist groups . . .
Let's suppose that a Christian murdered two Muslims in, say, Jersey City, New Jersey. Let's further suppose that he cut off the heads and hands of his victims and buried them in a town southwest of Philadelphia. The press reaction? Based on past treatment of such atrocities as the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, we know that the media would instantly connect the killings to the alleged murderer's religious beliefs, regardless of the lack of any evidence that there was any causal relationship at all…
Phil Mickelson, the affable “aw shucks” fan-favorite on the PGA Tour and one of the game’s greatest golfers, really stepped in it this week. He ticked off liberals by hitting it Dead Solid Perfect in a few off-hand comments about his dissatisfaction with current income tax policy. Poor Phil. He was too naïve to know that such talk is to be left only to the real pros — the tax-hiking, redistributive masters of our modern economy. He didn’t realize that his job in today’s American Culture is…
With Barack Obama’s track record almost four years into his presidency, you would think he deserves some tough questions from a media that supposedly prides itself on “speaking truth to power.” Hmm, not so much, that is if you’re a progressive Democrat politician whose policies the vast majority (say 90% plus) of those in the media embrace. It has gotten so bad that when the president actually gets asked tough questions by a Spanish language network it actually becomes news that he was asked tough…
The eyes of the world were on Norway today. Not one but two international stories focused on that small country, something that doesn’t happen very often. It isn’t every blogger who’s up to the job of tying the sentencing of mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik together with the opening of a mysterious, 100-year-old package, but I am prepared to take on that challenge.
Maureen Dowd is the quintessential New York Times writer, and thus a perfect example of what ails the mainstream media. Her piece in yesterday’s Times at first seems to reflect a growing liberal disenchantment toward Obama, but it actually fits the mainstream media’s basic narrative of the Obama presidency, a narrative concocted by Obama himself: that any failures have been caused by shortcomings in the ability to communicate the wonderfulness of all things Obama-administration to the general public, and this failure is to be blamed,…
HBO's new series, The Newsroom, begins promisingly enough with nods to both Alfred Hitchcock and Paddy Chayefsky.But from clever allusions to Vertigo and Network, the series pilot on Sunday night quickly succumbs to the weight of its own pretensions, violations of the show's own internal logic, and a tired recycling of writer Aaron Sorkin's West Wing, platitude-spewing themes.
Yes, printed newspapers are struggling these days, but it's their own fault: they're lousy.
I dedicate this post to Tom Friedman, one of the most pedestrian, overrated intellects of this or any other age.
"America has balkanized fiercely thanks to a disreputable media and dishonorable 'leaders,' and a Pandora’s box has cracked open as a result."
“If you’re by yourself or you’re not from around here or you don’t know anybody around here, you’re a target. Automatically.”
"This event illustrates the fact that eugenic ideas are still flourishing and influential in some areas of society and are, likewise, still very destructive."
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