Category Archives: Journalism

Not A Dime for NPR From This Little Piggy

Constitution, Ilana On Radio & TV, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Regulation, Taxation, The State

The following is from my new, WND.COM column, “Not a Dime From NPR From This Little Piggy”:

“A classmate of mine, an Israeli Arab, taught me a phrase I will paraphrase here, as it was indelicate in the original: There is nothing wrong with carving a little something for yourself out of the hind end of a pig. Translated: If you hold the person you’re scheming on robbing in contempt — by all means, rob him blind. (My friend was the recipient of a scholarship courtesy of the Israeli taxpayer whom he despised — you can see where our disagreement lay.)

For today’s purposes, the justified robber is the Public Broadcaster in all its offshoots — NPR (National Public Radio), PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), and, in my case, ‘KCTS 9 Connects,’ of Washington State. The hind end belongs to the American taxpayer. The propagandists hate their meal ticket, but feed off its flesh all the same.

To his credit, the recently fired Ron Schiller, President of the NPR Foundation and Senior VP for Development at NPR, has agreed with fiscal conservatives on the need to eliminate federal funding for his organization, which gets $90 million annually off the backs of some “seriously racist, racist” taxpayers.” (Schiller’s words.) Scrap that: doing away with taxpayer subsidies for public broadcasting was a point of agreement between this NPR functionary and a few fictitious Muslim philanthropists.

Members of the so-called Muslim Education Action Center Trust had lured Schiller to lunch. Amir Malik and Ibrahim Kasaam were really associates of gonzo journalist James O’Keefe, who played the pimp in the ACORN undercover operation. The luncheon was a trap. The bait: breaking bread with two blokes who boasted about their ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. … Boy, does O’Keefe know how to whet appetites at NPR!” ….

The complete column is “Not a Dime From NPR From This Little Piggy,” now on WND.COM.

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Watching The Words

Constitution, English, Glenn Beck, Internet, Journalism, Liberty, Literature, Media

Judge Andrew Napolitano delivered a fine editorial tonight on the not-so-wonderful-mind slot (The Glenn Beck Show). If only Fox News believed in the written word and posted the transcripts along with the image. (Good luck locating the same editorial on the Freedom Watch space.) For those of us who still like to read and post words, not images, FoxNews is one of the worst offenders. (I know, select transcripts will eventually propagate on the page, days later.) Reading is faster and more economical than watching a screen.

UPDATE II: Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt

Conspiracy, Government, Iraq, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East, Reason

The following is an excerpt from my new WND.COM column, “Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt”:

“… I’ve finally figured out what it was that repulsed me so about American opinion-makers’ slobbering response to [the revolt that began in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and swept the Egyptian president, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, from office.]

It was not so much that the media ignored the likely possibility that democracy in a country that has become progressively more Islamic since the 1950s might not have a happy ending.

It was not that the media pretended that the Muslim Brotherhood, also the “best organized opposition force in the country,” would not field a viable presidential candidate.

It was not that, in their jubilation, Anderson Cooper (CNN), Neil Cavuto (Fox News) and Christiane Amanpour (ABC) failed to mention the precedent set in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has deployed the democratic process to get the better of the country’s Maronite Christians.

It was not even the fact that the journalistic imperative to provide nuance, detail, and an economic and historic backdrop to the unfolding events was replaced, by the journalistic jet-set, with the telegenic drama of the man on the street.

None of this bothered me as much as the patronizing position these American reporters adopted; the neat bifurcation they managed to maintain between “Us” (the “free” men and women of America) and “Them” (those pathetic, shackled Egyptians).

The fact is that the heroic movement for democracy in Egypt dovetails with an ongoing flirtation with fascism in the U.S.; the twilight of individual sovereignty in the U.S. contrasts with its rise in Egypt. …

Read the complete column, “Media’s Sickening Sentimentality On Egypt,” now on WND.COM.

UPDATE I (Feb. 18): To the letter writer below: I am not a conspiracy theorist. Here is a post that explains why conspiracy is usually irrational.

“The premise for imputing conspiracies to garden variety government evils is this: government generally does what is good for us (NOT), so when it strays, we must look beyond the facts—for something far more sinister, as if government’s natural venality and quest for power were not enough to explain events. For example, why would one need to search for the “real reason” for an unjust, unscrupulous war, unless one believed government would never prosecute an unjust war. History belies that delusion.” …

UPDATE II (Feb 19): Daine: No; there are no conspiratorial. What we have are The Takers-–tax consumers—who want the Makers—the so-called rich—to support their parasitical life style. And the Über-parasites, the politicians, who make the most of this human nature.

Assassinations Under US Auspices?

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iraq, Journalism, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East

I hope the failed assassination attempt on Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s vice president, recently appointed to quell the unrest in that country, is not a harbinger of things to come. I am thinking of the vulgar cellphone images that circulated the Internet, in which a stoic Saddam Hussein, noose about his neck, is heckled by a hooded Shiite executioner. Even more repugnant than the hasty hanging carried out under US auspices were the US-sponsored legal proceedings that preceded it. (All the obligatory denunciations of Hussein obtain here, naturally. Bad man. Bad man. Bad man.) That Tribunal, which was branded “made-in-America,” had more in common with the French Revolutionary Assembly (See “No Due Process For A Despot”).

Similarly, such a barbaric specter in Egypt (conjuring the French, and not the American, Revolution), will have been greatly inspired, like in Iraq, by American media screeches.

I worry because the US is not necessarily averse to hasty hangings, considering that the strongmen we betray may turn around and tell all: You know; the stuff about how they helped the U.S. with its rendition and torture programs.