Media Matters takes aim at Ann Coulter quite often. In one sense, I can hardly blame them for it. Spend half an hour with her and she’s bound to say something they can trumpet on their web site. Fair enough.

But this complaint just seems like it was made on a slow news outrage day.

During the October 8 edition of CNBC’s The Big Idea, host Donny Deutsch asked right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: “If you had your way … and your dreams, which are genuine, came true … what would this country look like?” Coulter responded, “It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention. In fact, that’s what I think heaven is going to look like.” She described the convention as follows: “People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America.” Deutsch then asked, “It would be better if we were all Christian?” to which Coulter responded, “Yes.” Later in the discussion, Deutsch said to her: “[Y]ou said we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians,” and Coulter again replied, “Yes.” When pressed by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like “the head of Iran” and “wipe Israel off the Earth,” Coulter stated: “No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws.”

After a commercial break, Deutsch said that “Ann said she wanted to explain her last comment,” and asked her, “So you don’t think that was offensive?” Coulter responded: “No. I’m sorry. It is not intended to be. I don’t think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that’s why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don’t believe our testament.” Coulter later said: “We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all.”

Without getting into all the theology of it, and whether or not Ann is accurate in her description, where is it implied anywhere that she is some sort of authoritative source for Christian theology? Did she get her Masters of Divinity when I wasn’t looking?

And why — again, not considering the accuracy — would such a statement be considered offensive anyway? If a Muslim were to tell me that I don’t know the true God, or if a Jew were to tell me that I worshipped a man who was dead and buried (and I have been told the latter, though by atheists), why would I be offended? If that’s what they truly believed then it is what it is. I take my religion seriously, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t tolerate it when someone else frames me within their beliefs. I can handle that without getting offended, and I would hazard a guess that most Christians could as well, contrary to the common stereotype.

Must’ve been a slow news day, or MM’s first stringers — Robertson, Dobson, et. al. — didn’t say enough to enrage them. Although with this low bar to clear, it doesn’t seem like it would take much.

Technorati Tags: Media Matters, Donny Deutsch, Ann Coulter, Christianity, Judaism, offense, religion

The Democrats won’t put themselves in front of Fox News for a debate, but Republicans willingly subject themselves to blatant bias an unprofessionalism in debates hosted by the liberal media.

Chris Matthews has been fairly sedate and even-handed throughout the afternoon, but he just gave conservatives some ammunition by offering an editorial comment about an extended answer Fred Thompson gave on whether the feds should step in on a labor dispute.

Thompson initially just responded “no,” but then explained why he would not support a government intervention.

“You should’ve stopped at no,” Matthews told Thompson.

“Well, that’s your opinion, Chris,” Thompson shot back.

Ammunition, indeed. I’d say a bold admission of bias. As “sedate and even-handed” as he may have been at other times, this sort of pot-shot should never have happened.

But what’s really telling is what he said to Joe Scarborough that morning.

However, I do have one sensitive point and that is, I don’t mind being wrong — I try to be right. I don’t mind somebody saying I’m not fair — I try to be fair. … If someone says I’m not independent, it’s going to be very hard for me to bite my tongue. …
For twenty years I’ve paid the price of indepdendence. I’ve taken it from everybody … every night of my life for the past twenty years. …

If they accuse of me of being partisan, I’ll go rip! …

Sounds like he “ripped” before they accused  him of anything.  But that’s the liberal media for you; they don’t see their own bias as bias.

Technorati Tags: Chris Matthews, liberal media, Fred Thompson

The crew at the Blogometer have a good round-up of the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” phrase. What I find interesting, and sad, is how the Left has left the concept of “context” way behind them. When Media Matters criticizes Limbaugh, they lead one to believe that something said less than 2 minutes later, never mind the day before, is irrelevant to context.

Limbaugh himself suggests (and not without a little self-serving promotion) that you need to listen to his show for 6 weeks before you can get a good feel for it, especially his schtick. Media Matters and its liberal lemmings want to believe, at least for the moment, that Limbaugh began broadcasting yesterday, which is the only way they can say that he is abusive to the troops.

Technorati Tags: Rush Limbaugh, Media Matters, phony soldiers, media, radio

It appears that too many on the Left are willing and eager to accept Jon Stewart at face value, forgetting that his show is, y’know, not an actual news show.

“Idiots are now convinced that Dubya doesn’t know Nelson Mandela is still alive,” writes Abu Wabu. “What has in fact died, and what a miserable, stinking death it was, is real intellectual rigor on the idiot left.” As made evident by followers of Daily Show host Jon Stewart, “a voice for democratic ideals and the noble place of citizenship”, at least according to Tom Brokaw. Pity, then, that Stewart’s idealistic nobility is wasted on an audience of morons:

Thursday’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Oh my God. How funny was it? And for a very wrong reason indeed. I’ve already shared it with others. George W Bush thought Nelson Mandela is dead? Dude! How wrong could he possibly be!

Hat tip to Tim Blair, who has a host of other examples. And, of course, if these Nuance Nabobs would take a look at the context, they’d see that Stewart’s hack job just fed them plastic red meat, that they gobbled up. This wouldn’t be so scary if “The Daily Show” weren’t so many people’s primary news source.

It’s a comedy show, folks. Treat it with way more skepticism than your average nightly news program.

Technorati Tags: The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, Nelson Mandela, Tom Brokaw, George W Bush, liberal, media, comedy

The appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University was trumpeted by portions of the Left as a big win for “free speech”. I’m reminded of the saying used quite often; an open mind, like an open window, still needs a screen to keep the bugs out. Just because our republic isn’t going to collapse if we let an evil man speak doesn’t mean we should offer up a forum for him.

But apparently, the Left has its own version of the screen. If the speech exposes the dirty laundry of the Left, it should be screened out.

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign’s demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said.

GQ writer George Saunders traveled with Clinton to Africa in July, and Clinton is slated to appear on the cover of GQ’s December issue, in which it traditionally names a “Man of the Year,” according magazine industry sources.

And the offending article by Atlantic Monthly staff writer Josh Green got the spike.

Wasn’t it supposed to be George W. Bush that participated in this kind of stifling of dissent?

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, GQ Magazine, George Saunders, Josh Green, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, free speech, liberal media

The clutter on your TV screen is getting worse.

Kyra Sedgwick, star of “The Closer” on TNT, walks under a police tape and scans the screen with her flashlight. And every time she does, she makes Gretchen Corbin, a technical writer in Berkeley, Calif., irate.

The promotional ads for “The Closer” run in the bottom right of the screen during other TNT programs — a graphic called a snipe. But for Ms. Corbin, who sometimes watches movies that have subtitles, the tiny images block the dialogue.

“Some ad just took over the entire bottom of the screen so I missed what the characters said to each other,” said Ms. Corbin, describing a recent experience. “And it’s TV, so you can’t rewind.”

Snipes are just the latest effort by network executives to cram promotions onto television screens in the age of channel surfing, ad skipping and screen-based multitasking. At first, viewers may feel a slight jolt of pleasure at the sight of a new visual effect, they say, but over time the intrusions contribute to the sense that the screen is far more cluttered — not just with ads, but with news crawls and other streams of information.

Not just “snipes” but full blown, full-color, moving ads that take away from the current show, sometimes obscuring it. This really is way too much.

This ranks right down there with a feature on news channels that appeared after 9/11: The Scroller(tm). On a day when terrorism hit the US, keeping up with more news than just what was being covered at the moment was very useful. But when The Scroller is noting who’s won a local mustache and beard contest, it’s usefulness has long, long been outlived. Give me some of my screen back, guys

Technorati Tags: television, snipe, Gretchen Corbin, advertisements

Shire Network News #104 has been released. The feature interview is with graphic novelist, Bosch Fawstin. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary segment.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to “Consider This!”

MoveOn.org placed a full-page ad in the New York Times suggesting that General Petraeus might be called “General Betray Us”. MoveOn.org, who I assume supports the troops, just not their leaders, and who don’t question anyone’s patriotism, except when they do, says that “Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.”

Now, by “unwinnable”, I imagine they mean that we can’t win, by stopping the fighting. And that’s certainly true, especially if you look at history. I mean, the British have been trying to stop Protestant and Catholic violence in Ireland for…. Oh, wait. They did manage to stop the violence. OK, well that’s a good thing, right?

The peace in Ireland came after 38 years of, shall we say, “occupation” by British forces. But MoveOn.org is shocked — SHOCKED — that “American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years”. So perhaps peace after 38 years was not worth it? Talk about your short attention spans. Talk about your instant gratification culture. These guys must not keep their money in anything longer than a 6-month certificate of deposit. “The Cold War going to last how long? Ah, just give the Soviets what they want. A few innocent looking missiles in Cuba aren’t going to hurt anyone. Let’s just move on, and bring the troops home from Germany.”

(Oh, and we’d better not let them know that we still have American troops in Germany. I mean, can you imagine the reaction? I may be a mean-spirited wingnut, but I have my limits.)

And if there was any question — any at all — that MoveOn.org and the allegedly objective New York Times were on the same, viciously partisan side, here’s some information that should clarify things. The Times gave MoveOn.org a significantly cut rate on their “Betray Us” full page ad. The standard rate for that size an ad is $181,692, but MoveOn.org got theirs for a mere $65,000. That’s a about 65% off! That’s either because September is a slow ad month for the Times, or because, as one Republican staffer put it, they must’ve gotten the “family discount”. Actually, this rate is called the “special advocacy” rate, but is this discount available for conservative causes? If you ask the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, or the National Right to Life Committee, you’ll soon realize that this “special advocacy” rate is applied in a rather lopsided fashion. Got to keep it all in the family, as it were.

In conjunction with this, the Times has put out a new, sliding scale rate for political ads. The new schedule is as follows:

All Republicans: 110% of list price
Generic Democrats: 75%
BDS Sufferers: 50%
Daily Kos writers: 40% but the ad must appear in the Entertainment section
Michael Moore: No upfront charge. Instead, 13% of gross profits from the next movie
William Shatner: Name your own price
And an additional 5% off for each clever pun on someone’s name (which must appear in at least 48 point type)

At least we know where the Times stands; side by side with an organization, like MoveOn.org, that is willing to smear anyone for political gain. It runs in the family.

Back to you, Brian.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, MoveOn.org, New York Times, Bosch Fawstin, General Peter Petraeus

The Fox News Channel is somehow too biased, supposedly, for a fair presidential debate, but the Huffington Post and Slate aren’t?

Democratic 2008 presidential hopefuls parried unusual questions about flatulent cows and “spoiled brat” voters, as well as Iraq and health care, in the first exclusively online campaign “debate.”

The “mashup” forum hosted by Yahoo! in partnership with the blog Huffington Post and online magazine Slate, allowed voters to compare responses to similiar questions on burning issues, posed by talk-show host Charlie Rose.

Democrats are simply not interested in fairness and balance. Republicans are going to participate in their own debate hosted by left-wing political web sites. But for Democrats to complain about Fox’s bias while embracing a host that is even more biased to the left than about any MSM outlet you can name is the height of hypocracy. Their concern about “bias” is all talk, and completely disingenuous. It is their problem that this highlights, not Fox’s.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Huffington Post, Slate.com, presidential debate, media bias, Fox News

I’m not a big fan of opinion polls, especially when average Americans are polled on a subject that they really don’t know or can’t know much about. One of the recent polls that the media has enjoyed reporting the results of is whether folks think the “surge” in Iraq is working.

Frankly, the average American, myself included, has no way to know definitively whether the surge is “working” or not. It mostly depends on your definition of “working” and what you’re hearing from the news media. A poll of people without all the facts — and if you’re not in the military or the government, you probably don’t have nearly enough facts — is pretty much useless.

Still, the media like to use them to generate news, and back in July, CBS News polled Americans and found that 19% thought the surge was “making things better”. However, when that poll started to go against the liberal media narrative of how bad things are going there, their coverage reflected their displeasure at the outcome.

On the day of the long-anticipated report from General David Petraeus on the “surge,” the CBS Evening News ignored how its latest poll discovered the third straight month of an increase in the percent of Americans who believe the surge has “made things better” in Iraq. As the percentage has gone up, CBS’s interest in the result has gone down. In July, anchor Katie Couric led with how only 19 percent thought the surge was “making things better” and a month later, in August, when that number jumped to 29 percent, CBS and Couric gave it just 12 seconds 20 minutes into the newscast..

While Monday’s CBS Evening News skipped how the share crediting the surge for “making things better” rose to 35 percent in the survey conducted through Saturday, the newscast found time to highlight three other findings that stressed public opposition to the war and distrust of President Bush.

When the poll backs the narrative, it leads. When it doesn’t, find some other way to ask the question to get the “right” response.

Oh, that liberal media.

Technorati Tags: liberal media, polls, Iraq surge, CBS News, Katie Couric

The Democrats, in bowing and scraping to the fringe of their party and not appearing on Fox News Channel for debates, are not getting the exposure they need.

The Republican debate on FNC last night was the highest rated debate so far this election cycle. The debate scored 3.14 million total viewers. That beats the nine other presidential debates.

I realize that the primaries are really geared for the base, since that’s who votes in the party primaries. But wouldn’t more exposure be better in an effort to get their views out to more of America? Or does the fringe mean that much more to them?

Technorati Tags: Fox News Channel, Democrats, debates, Republicans, media