Category Archives: Media

A Bright Woman on Cable?!! Oh My G-d!

Economy, Energy, Gender, John McCain, Media

What is a bright woman doing on one of the Cretins Inc. channels?

That was my reaction when I heard Carly Fiorina explain economics 101 to a dumbstruck Wolf Blitzer of CNN.

At first I did not recognize the controversial former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. All I heard were the intelligent, measure words of a woman who thoroughly understood the effects of taxation on oil supply. Fiorina was telling Blitzer that by taxing the oil companies’ profits, the brilliant Obama will bring about less oil production and higher prices. (I recommend Obama begin his education with Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.)

Fiorina is advising John McCain. Good choice.

The reason for my surprised reaction is that cable is a disgrace. The unprepossessing front men and women, seldom the brightest, surround themselves with beaus and bimbos a little less bright than they. All are happy; none is threatened. And Booboos Americanus remains blissfully unaware that the bobbing heads on TV are not the country’s crème de la crème.

Update II: Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Intellectualism, Journalism, Media

“I suspect most media cheered for Obama reflexively, rather than consciously—too stupid to ask themselves whether what they were doing was journalism or advocacy. A couple of older news guys, ABC’s Charles Gibson comes to mind, failed to take sides. Consequently, the pack pounced on him and on George Stephanopoulos for asking the senator some pointed questions. But good newsmen are a dying breed. Good newswomen are mostly dead already. By the time she died, the brilliant and brave Oriana Fallaci had long since been buried professionally by mediocrities like Barbara Walters of the ‘cutting edge’ anti-aging reportage and colonic crusader Katie Couric.”

“So how did a mindless monolith’s hunger for Hussein help the Obama momentum?”

Find out by reading “Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama.” The column leads the WND Commentary Page today.

Update I: A friend, who’s no fan of Katie Couric, thought my description of her as a “colonic crusader” should be patented. Fun aside, to be a “good” newsman today means taking up a disease and fighting against it. The triumph of sentimentality over reason. Couric’s thing is colon cancer, an awful illness, indubitably, but, consider Fallaci who’d been blown-up covering many a revolution–she never so much as discussed the breast cancer that killed her. I suspect that given the kind of mind she had, it didn’t much interest her. I too switch off most newscasts when they start on the kiddies, cures, and critters crap. Part of the takeover by women.

Update II (June 7): In reply to the reader from Lewrocwell.com, who asserts that I have singled out “comrade” Obama for criticism for some reason he simply cannot fathom:

I too cannot quite understand why readers assert baselessly, rather than argue based on facts. The reader has clearly not read “Ilana’s” scathing commentary on the other candidates. It’s on this site, for those willing to do a wee search—two mouse clicks away really.

Of course, it’s also a no-brainer that the most prominent candidate—the frontrunner—would garner more commentary than the rest. Is it not? Perhaps not to all. Genghis Bush got my undivided attention in years past.

Here’s some of the commentary Mr. Allen “missed”:

“The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil”

“Mitt’s Gone; Bill’s Back”

“Axis of Economic Idiocy”

“Lexicon Of Lies”

“Busybody Hillary’s Bhutto Blather”

And more; practically every column of mine, here’s another example, is peppered with derogatory comments about the candidates and their positions, or lack thereof, as applied to the issues discussed in the column. I guess people see what they want to see.

A different perspective on my rather matter-of-fact narration of the media’s crowning of Obama comes from a rather independent-minded gentlemen I’ve come to know—he happens to be Sean Hannity’s producer, although as much as he often likes what I have to say has not succeeded in getting me on the program:

“This is your typical iconoclastic clarity – some people fight PC, you remind me more of some Buffy who stakes it through the heart and then cuts its head off on the backslash.”

Update II: History Or More Obama Hysteria?

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Media, Racism

I don’t know how much more of the elections coverage I can take.

With Obama on the verge of clinching the Democratic Party nomination, the accursed Cable Anchors are poised to cement their role in history by declaring this event an historical one. Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer, a disgrace to their profession, have dissolved in soggy sentimentality. (The MSNBC network has posted this quotidian demonstration of what I mean.)

Every American, vaporized Matthews, will remember where he was on this historical day, when a black man became the nominee of a major American political party.

All this because Barack Obama is African American (or sort of).

However, the American people have given Obama such support not because of his ancestry, but because they like him better than the other White House hopefuls. Moreover, the reason Americans haven’t elected a man or woman of color beforehand is that no decent candidate presented himself.

Are the media suggesting that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton’s bids for the office failed because of their color? I venture that their color was the least of their problems. Their characters: now that’s another matter entirely.

In Obama the American people see a viable candidate. The idea that Obama’s impending nomination is historical is an insult to Americans—it suggests that the barrier to the nomination of a Barack in years past was purely racial, rather than the absence of a strong black (or blackish) candidate.

Update I: Here is the text of Obama’s victory speech.

Update II (June 4): Sen. Clinton is the democratic choice; Obama the delegate’s choice. Democrats the country over elected Hillary; party delegates ratified Obama. Is Hillary angry that petty party rules trumped her popular appeal and stymied her bid for president? She should be. Clinton stopped short of conceding last night.

Updated: Beam Scotty (McClellan) Up

Iraq, Media, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, War

You mean there still is no consensus about the unconstitutional, unjust war an American government waged? That’s right; the “nation” is still litigating the invasion of Iraq. What’s more, the stakeholders are circling the wagons.

Here is something of the smorgasbord of McClellan coverage; it’s some of what you should take away from the publication of a stale, tell-all by a former low-level Bush administration functionary. Admonitions are in order for most members of the media who were right by Scotty’s side, whooping it up for war crimes. For or against Scott, send in some of the reviews you like (but take your pro-war crimes comments elsewhere):

• “Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?”—Richard A. Clarke

• “It would have been nice if he had told us some of this at the time, back when it was his job to keep the public informed.”—Karen Tumulty, Time magazine [Not so fast Ms. Tumulty; it was YOUR job too to apprise the public.]

• “The memoir strikes me as the standard stuff: ‘I was an insider to a corrupt group but the head of the group and I weren’t corrupt; we were misled.’”—liberal blog called American Street

• “Bush displayed a ‘lack of inquisitiveness’; the administration operated in a ‘permanent campaign mode’; the Iraq war ‘was not necessary’–other than that McClellan’s chosen to reveal them. But is that even really that surprising?” And: “the book displays a calculating mind that was never much in evidence in the White House press room.”—Jason Zengerle, The New Republic

Update (June 3): After watching Scott McClellan handle the raging bull, Bill O’Reilly, I’ve changed my opinion. This young man was strong, courageous and filled with a certain conviction. He did well against the man who acted as an accomplice to the administration, and who sold the war to those who’d have to go out and fight it. This was Bush’s war, Blair’s war, Podhoretz’s war, and Billo’s war. Billo showed his discomfort by flaring his nostrils and pursing his lips. McClellan, who was calm and comfortable, got to the man.

McClellan’s ability to admit over and over again that he had been completely wrong in his judgment and ethics served as a good contrast to Billo, who was prepared to concede nothing of the kind.

Granted, McClellan is not opposing the war on the most solid of grounds: Implicit in the case he makes is that if Iraq had WMD—irrespective of it not threatening the US or having any ties to al-Qaida—the US would have had a case for war. McClellan implies that we had a right to enforce UN resolutions, be a global governor. (Suddenly the US is an arm of the UN). We don’t.

Still, I will buy McClellan’s role as a bellwether of sorts—another insider sounding a warning—when the evidence against this corrupt administration results in impeachments, disgrace, and loss of face. There are no signs of that so far.