Media: December 2007 Archives

Suggestion for the San Francisco cops, in case they haven't already thought of it: Check the tiger-attack victims' cell phones.

If the current speculation proves true, and Tatiana was egged on and enabled by the teens she would ultimately maul, I'm guessing that at least one of them has video. This sort of stupid stunt -- dangling one's body parts before a fierce, carnivorous beast -- is exactly the sort of behavior increasingly demonstrated among teenage boys eager to make it on "Jackass," or at least YouTube. Kids these days tend not to do anything this recklessly dangerous without documenting it -- after all, extreme stupidity is a one-way ticket to Internet fame.

Time could prove me wrong, of course, but my gut tells me this stunt was made for the small screen. And if so, that raises a key question: Does anyone doubt that the video will somehow end up on the Net eventually?

I'll try to avoid hyperbole here, but let's just say that the NFL's decision to air Saturday night's historic match-up between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants on broadcast TV is a victory for life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the American Way, freedom, quality entertainment and all things noble and decent.

Oh, yes, and it's also a victory for big government, but let's not try to focus on that part, OK?

As a native New Englander and a Patriots fan, I am thrilled. This Saturday night I have a family party to attend, so I'll need to tape the game and watch it later. Unfortunately, had the game only been on the NFL Network, as originally scheduled, I wouldn't have been able to tape it, as said network is unavailable in my area. And because I can't watch this one live, the sports bar wasn't an option.

But now, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has come to my deliverance, decreeing that the game -- in which the Pats can finish off an undefeated season, while shattering various offensive records along the way -- will be on both NBC and CBS!

Of course, Goodell was nudged by some of my least favorite people in government -- Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), who basically threatened the league with a congressional hearing and/or losing its anti-trust exemption if it didn't agree to put this game on broadcast TV. And as a conservative, it's hard to cheer this kind of heavy-handed government intrusion into the private sector, especially when all that's at stake is entertainment.

But well, heck, I'm no libertarian, and this is big-H history in the making! So hooray for big government! Not since Congress wiped out the 55 mph speed limit has it done something that I can specifically point to as directly improving the quality of my life. And this may top even that! Why, this ought to push Congress' approval rating up into the thirties!

So thanks to the senators, and thanks to the commissioner. And one last thing ... Are you ready for some football?!?

I guess with Stephen Colbert indefinitiely off the air, there's no one around to parody Bill O'Reilly -- so O'Reilly has decided to do the job himself.

That's the only explanation I can come up with for O'Reilly's latest column, which will appear in Sunday's Daily News. At issue is the town of Great Barrington, Mass., which is mandating that all Christmas lights be shut off by 10 p.m., so as to reduce the town's "carbon footprint."

A goofy bit of pointless eco-overkill? Without a doubt. But O'Reilly can't leave it at that. He sees much more sinister forces at work:

The real strategy here is to diminish the public display of Christmas in that secular town.

So how do I know that? Well, thanks for asking. As it happens, I sent a Factor producer, Jesse Watters, up to talk to this (town official):

Watters: Isn't this a just ruse to de-emphasize Christmas?
Dlugosz: These are holiday lights ... we don't think we should be putting lights all over the place and impacting our environment. We're taking a realistic approach to holiday lights."

Did you notice the term "holiday lights?"

Ah-ha! He said holiday lights -- clearly this is an anti-Christian pogrom!

Good grief, Bill. Let it go. Please, let it go. I'm begging you.

For the record, I don't deny that some sort of "War on Christmas" is afoot -- by which I mean that aggressive secularists are tying to purge any hint of religious expression, especially the Christian kind, from the public square, and some gutless corporations and school boards are knuckling under to them. As much as some liberals like to scoff at the idea of an anti-Christmas agenda, It is a real phenomenon, which is why O'Reilly strikes a chord when he talks about it.

But just because there are some grinches who want to do away with Christmas doesn't mean that one is lurking under every bed, in every closet, or at every town-hall meeting.

O'Reilly here reminds me a lot of certain ethnic activists, feminists, anti-communists, etc. who see evidence of their bogeymen -- be it racism, sexism, communism, or what have you -- everywhere, even where none exists. Those evils are real, to be sure, but sometimes we get so focused on rooting them out that we start chasing phantoms.

And when that happens, noble causes begin to look foolish.

Perhaps it's time for the "Culture Warrior" to take a break from the "War on Christmas." Because by sliding well into the world of self-parody, O'Reilly is now only hurting his cause.

Yes, authoritarianism is not hot, though few tyrants wear a wifebeater shirt quite as well. Time did a good job of making Putin look like a bobblehead doll on its cover, but I wholeheartedly agree with Chris that the cover would have best gone elsewhere.

My choice? Garry Kasparov. The only thing that has kept this opposition leader alive under the Putin regime is the fact that he's a chess legend. The fact that he's a chess legend also makes him totally hot, shirt or no shirt. Kasparov could have comfortably retired and kicked back for the rest of his life, but he's taken the challenge to fight for freedom for the Russian people. He is truly David vs. Goliath. He has cojones.

Amazingly, Bridget hasn't linked to this yet, but her heart-throb, Vladimir Putin, has been named Time's Person of the Year. Score one for all former KGB goons turned wannabe despots!

Still, we should be grateful for small mercies ... at least it wasn't Al Gore!

In fairness, I must admit that as much as I thought Gore was a poor choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, he would have been a decent one for Person of the Year. While I'm not sure how pronounced his influence has been on the grass-roots level, clearly he caught the attention of the world's elites and the media (just remember the Oscars). And, for better or for worse, ours is a mass media-driven consciousness.

Who else could have been a contender? One of my colleagues at the Daily News suggested "The Cheater," which I thought was a good idea in light of how many high-profile people got busted, in one way or another, for cheating this year. The Celebrity DUI seems like another possibility. Or, for that matter, how about "Fallen Celebrities" in general? This seems to have been a year of perpetual scandal for the people we lionize, idolize, worship -- and then tear down.

As for specific individuals, though, some names come to mind: In the long term, Mother Teresa's posthumous witness to her dark night of the soul, and the great depths of her faith, could have a profound spiritual influence -- but not one that will likely kick in before 12/31/07. Had Barack Obama been more successful as a candidate this year, he would have been a strong contender, too, if for no other reason than the implications for national race relations. And how about Oprah? The fact that she has single-handedly salvaged Obama's campaign shows us just how powerful her influence his -- year in, year out.

But if you ask me, 2007's Person of the Year is Shinya Yamanaka -- a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Japan's Kyoto University, and the developer of the most promising innovation in stem-cell research to date.

The effects of Dr. Yamanaka's discovery cannot be overstated: He has come up with a method of pursuing potentially life-saving cures that is cheaper, easier, more effective, and infinitely more ethical than embryonic stem-cell research. His discovery will likely save millions of lives -- in our laboratories as well as in our hospitals.

Yamanaka has demonstrated that good science can -- indeed, must -- be pursued ethically. And he has brought the powerful testimony of science to what is the greatest moral dilemma (and moral failing) of our age: our cavalier attitude toward human life. "When I saw the embryo," Yamanka says of the time he looked through a microscope at a fertility clinic, "I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters. I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way."

Time Magazine has overlooked Dr. Yamanka's awesome contribution to humanity this year, but I suspect history will not.

Having worked in the media for most of my adult life, I am well aware that the professionals in this business are a smart, well-educated bunch. Which is why, for the life of me, I can't understand why they seem to turn into blithering idiots whenever the subject of religion arises. For the latest case in point, see this widely cited Times of London piece, The Pope condemns the climate change prophets of doom, and its lede:

"Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

"The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering."

Wow, next thing you know BXVI will be putting a fatwa on Al Gore's head!

The sensitive green souls over at Wonkette responded with a post titled The Pope Sucks, in which they call Benedict a "Nazi," and quote the Times' paraphrase of his remarks as though it were verbatim. They sign off by wishing His Holiness "a jolly f***-you," albeit theirs in uncensored.

But wait in a minute. The subject of the Times article is the Pope's Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, which he will deliver on January 1. You can read it for yourself here. But be forwarned: You will be disappointed, as it bears almost no resemblance to the anti-green screed that the Times -- and, following its lead, countless other media organizations -- have made it out to be.

For starters, the address isn't about the environment. Primarily, it's about the role of the family in society. Secondarily, it's about the state of the human family in the era of globalization. Within this context, the pope writes about the human family's "home," the earth, and concludes:

We need to care for the environment: it has been entrusted to men and women to be protected and cultivated with responsible freedom, with the good of all as a constant guiding criterion. Human beings, obviously, are of supreme worth vis-à-vis creation as a whole. Respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man. Rather, it means not selfishly considering nature to be at the complete disposal of our own interests, for future generations also have the right to reap its benefits and to exhibit towards nature the same responsible freedom that we claim for ourselves.

That's a sentiment that most greens, save for the most rabid and misanthropic among them, would entirely agree with, no? As for the subject of global warming, the Holy Father has this to say:

I want to defend the people who disposed of the CIA tapes showing us interrogating Al Qaeda suspects. I want to indict the people who did the both the taping and the torturing. I believe that torture is wrong. I believe that videotaping our agents torturing bad guys is just stupid. This is like celebrities taping sex acts and expecting them not to show up on the net. They will show up and at the very worst possible time.

So, just what were they thinking when they taped prisoners who were (I am confident in fact bad guys), undergoing “stress questioning?” I’m assuming it wasn’t for pornographic reasons—though that is possible. (Please see: Herr Doktor Kraft-Ebbing). Someone thought it might be a good idea to document the interrogations. Well, someone was wrong.

I am not shocked that we transgress. I am very shocked when we are stupid, cover up badly and hold no one accountable. There are times when we push the boundaries. Torture is not legal and should never be legal. But it happens. What should we do when it happens? We should count on the bravery and patriotism of our people, and they should own up and take the hit. They should tell the truth and go on trial. If it was important enough to make someone choose to break our laws, they should be subject to justice. With any luck, their peers will acquit them if the case was urgent enough.

The same should be the case with taping these interrogations and then disposing of the tapes. I’d send the idiot who called for the tapes to be made to jail for gross incompetence. The people who disposed of the tapes however could be heroes. Had these tapes come out—and as with sex tapes, you have to count on it—they would have been played 24/7 on Al Jazeera and Al Arabia. And if you believe our standing is low in the Arab and Muslim World today, please know that there is still a great distance we could and would fall.

The cover up attempt however is wrong on so many levels. We cannot have a system of law and justice when our agencies and branches of government lie to each other—and lie under oath. If you want to know why there are conspiracy theories regarding nearly everything we do, it is because we chip away at our own credibility. The damage is mostly self-inflicted. The CIA does not get to lie to the 9-11 Commission. They do not get to swear that no tapes exist when tapes do exist. A patriot might order the destruction of the tapes and stand up and justify the act. But we cannot have a government of liars who continue to harm our us by evading and avoiding their patriotic duty to serve the interests of our nation.

The great question is not if we are perfect. We are not. The question is if we can violate our laws with absolute impunity or if we believe in and practice accountability? The elephant ate my homework evasion should not be allowed to stand.

I must admit that when I first began reading Jonathan's post about fellow Democrats' benign neglect of the Hamas-loving Mike Gravel, I thought, "So they ignored the yahoo in the room. Big deal, politicians do that all the time." But then Jonathan got me with the line, "Had he made analogous charges or observations as starkly offensive to Blacks, Hispanics, Asians or gays, can you imagine the other Democrats remaining silent? Don’t you think that someone would have challenged him?"

Jonathan is absolutely right. The silence here is damning. And so is this press release, which appeared in my inbox late yesterday afternoon:

DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE MIKE GRAVEL
TO SPEAK AT MPAC CONVENTION ON DEC. 15

(Los Angeles - 11/30/07) -- The Muslim Public Affairs Council today announced that Democratic Presidential candidate Mike Gravel will be a keynote speaker at its seventh annual convention on December 15 in Long Beach, CA.

A two-term U.S. Senator from Alaska, Gravel is best known for his blunt, no-nonsense approach in the Democratic Presidential debates where he's known to rail against the war in Iraq with the same outrage he used to condemn the one in Vietnam. In 1971, Gravel ordered the top-secret "Pentagon Papers" - a series of secret government reports that chronicled United States failures in Vietnam - into the Congressional Record and then went on to lead a one-man filibuster in the Senate that led to the end the military draft in 1973.

SEE: Mike Gravel's Comments During the 3rd Democratic Presidential Debate

SEE: "Mike Gravel, An Anti-War Crusader for Two Generations" (Kansas City Star, 11/21/07)

Gravel has been written off by media commentators as unelectable and has little money to finance his White House bid, but he has been able to keep his hopes alive through YouTube and the Internet. Low in the polls, he was blocked from the two most recent Democratic debates in October and November. His primary reason for running for the presidency is to advance his agenda for direct national elections on issues, called the "National Initiative."

SEE ALSO: Interview with Mike Gravel on "This is America with Dennis Wholey"

"The whole reason I am running is to empower the people," Gravel told AFP. "What the people need to be able to do is to be put in position so they can vote on the policies issues that affect their lives."

MPAC invited all of the Presidential candidates from both parties to address the Muslim American community at the annual convention. To date, Gravel is the only candidate who has accepted....

This is just a bad, bad move on MPAC's part. Fine -- the organization invited all the candidates, and only Gravel said yes. Sure, it should let Gravel, and any other candidate who wants to speak, get a spot at its convention. But to issue a gushing press release extolling the virtues of a candidate who just so happens to be an apologist for two Muslim terrorist organizations ... well, let's just say that's going to do very little to debunk the pernicious stereotypes that MPAC ostensibly exists to counter.

Several outrageous things happened and, worse, didn’t happen during the Democratic debate on NPR on Tuesday. I am truly upset and angry with all the Democratic candidates running for the presidential nomination. I am deeply offended mostly at what they did not say.

Loose cannon, former Senator from Alaska, Mike Gravel, usually portrayed as the weird eccentric who is even better for a laugh than Dennis Kucinich, defended Iran’s support of Hamas and Hezbollah. He wondered why we think, “there's something wrong with Iran supporting Hamas and Hezbollah? These are two elected organizations, and — and why can't they (Iran) give support to those organizations? Israel doesn't want it, so why do they (the Democratic candidates) buy hook, line and sinker that they can't give aid to Hamas and Hezbollah?” He continued that, “We give unlimited aid to Israel. These people (the Palestinians) are fighting for their rights.”

Okay, you can say that he is a nut or a radical. You can explain that he doesn’t really represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party. You can marginalize him and explain him away.

What you cannot explain away, forget, or in my view forgive, is the silence of the other Democrats. No one said, “Hey wait. I want to respond to that.” No one distanced themselves from him or followed up his endorsement of the aims and methods of Hamas and Hezbollah with an objection. No one questioned or denounced his creating a “moral equivalence” between Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah terrorists.

Notice that he was not simply advocating for a Palestinian state or remarking on the pain of the Palestinians. He was specifically equating Iran’s support of two terrorist organizations that reject a two-state solution and the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, with our aid to Israel. How could this go uncommented upon? If silence connotes assent, what did these candidates convey by their silence?

They all simply moved on to the next question. Maybe they were embarrassed. Possibly they didn’t want to give the issue further airing. They can spin it today as not wanting to “dignify” his rant. However, let’s try a little thought problem: Had he made analogous charges or observations as starkly offensive to Blacks, Hispanics, Asians or gays, can you imagine the other Democrats remaining silent? Don’t you think that someone would have challenged him?

As a life-long liberal, people often challenge me to explain why the Jewish Community is no longer as predictably and overwhelmingly liberal as we once were? Some theorize that once we got money and property, we abandoned our ideals and sense of social justice and compassion. I do not accept this at all. If you want to understand why the center of gravity of the local Jewish Community has moved to the right, listen to the heartbreaking and deafening silence of Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Kucinich and Obama. Remember the famous quotation attributed to Edmond Burke, “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men (and one woman) do nothing."

I am also unhappy that this story, Gravel’s words and the silence of the Democrats, has been met with like silence from the media. Where is the outrage? Where is the coverage?

Wow, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post (whose syndicated column runs Wednesdays in the Daily News) must really have it out for Mike Huckabee. This week, he essentially regurgitates his hit piece from two weeks ago on the former Arkansas governor, trashing him on mostly religious grounds.

And why does Cohen feel the need to go after Huckabee again? Because Huckabee behaved tactfully, and refused to use religion as a campaign wedge issue.

Seriously.

Cohen's objection is that, when on "This Week," Huckabee declined to answer host George Stephanopoulos ' question about whether GOP rival Mitt Romney is a Christian. “Mitt Romney has to answer that.... It's not for me to determine what somebody else's faith is," Huckabee answered.

To which Cohen goes apoplectic:

Mike Huckabee knew precisely what was being asked of him, and he also knew, because he is a preacher, what the right -- not the clever, mind you -- answer should be. But Huckabee merely smiled that wonderful smile of his and punted. This, with apologies to George W. Bush, is the soft demagoguery of low expectations.

Stephanopoulos ... provided the perfect opportunity for Huckabee to make some ringing statement in support of religious tolerance. He might have made some reference to the ugly anti-Catholic campaigns run against Al Smith (1928) and John F. Kennedy (1960).... In other words, Huckabee might have preached.

Sure, that might have been nice --- had Huckabee actually been asked something like, "Can a Mormon be president?" But he wasn't. Instead, Stephanopoulos tried to set him up with an entirely theological question about what qualifies as authentically Christian belief. It was a question of zero relevance to the presidential race, and one which, if Cohen had an ounce of integrity, would offend him far more than Huckabee's diplomatic response.

Because if anyone was trying to use religion to divide here, it was Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos knows full well that Mormons think themselves -- and strive to be -- followers of Jesus Christ. But he also knows that Mormonism holds numerous tenets, about the nature of Christ and other issues, that are so at odds with orthodox Christianity that most Christian denominations don't consider it a Christian faith. This would certainly be the case of Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister.

What Stephanopoulos was trying to do was stir up an old religious debate, and put Huckabee in a pickle: If Huckabee says Romney is a Christian, he offends many Christian believers who see Mormonism as something radically different from what they believe; but if he says Romney is not a Christian, he offends Mormon voters.

Huckabee, to his credit, saw through this trap and offered the response that was not only politically savvy, but also spiritually sound: It's not his place to judge another man's faith or heart, period.

Good answer. A tolerant one, too. And one that directly responded to the question being asked -- a rarity in politics these days. Had Huckabee blathered on about the need for tolerance, he would have simply been dodging the question, for which Cohen surely would have blasted him.