Hollywood rarely gets guns right, which makes The Walking Dead’s departure from the status quo that much more impressive. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to congratulate a show for getting the basics right, but when procedurals regularly show cops running up stairwells with their fingers on their triggers, it’s worth highlighting this rare reprieve from reckless technique.
Cable Television
By Erik Soderstrom | November 16, 2015 | 12:58 AM EST
AMC’s new, post-apocalyptic drama, Into the Badlands, premiered last night, and gave anti-gun liberals the world they’ve been clamoring for: one where all firearms have been outlawed. Only, far from the peaceful utopia gun control advocates always promise, the world has instead devolved back into the barbaric, feudal society that dominated much of human history.
By Matthew Balan | November 12, 2015 | 12:29 PM EST
Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly attacked CNN's Carol Costello on the Wednesday edition of his O'Reilly Factor program over her "cheap shot" at the moderators of the recent GOP presidential debate on Fox Business Network. O'Reilly targeted Costello's "completely ludicrous" remark that "the moderators didn't ask very challenging questions." He also underlined that the CNN anchor has "a history of provocative statements."
South Park Finds Out What Happens When You Run the Police Out of Town (You're Gonna Have a Bad Time)
By Alexa Moutevelis Coombs | November 11, 2015 | 11:53 PM EST When Officer Barbrady accidentally shoots an unarmed 6-year-old Latino boy, the town of South Park rises up to get rid of the police, in the episode "Naughty Ninjas." (“We've only had a Whole Foods for a month, and already, we don't need cops. So cool.”)
By Tom Blumer | November 10, 2015 | 10:23 AM EST
The folks at Investor's Business Daily are more than a little tired of seeing their IBD/TIPP (TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics) polls smeared by establishment press publications and pundits.
No similar torrent of criticism has been directed at other polls which have been horribly inaccurate predictors of actual election outcomes. A large majority of them seriously and oh-so-predictably underestimated support for conservative and center-right candidates and causes in 2014 and 2015.
By Karen Townsend | November 10, 2015 | 12:17 AM EST
In “Chapter Twenty-Seven” of CW’s Jane the Virgin, Jane’s Abuela (Ivonne Coll) files the paperwork to get her green card, after many decades, to stay legally in America. You may remember that it was revealed in a previous episode that Abuela is an illegal immigrant who never bothered to become a legal citizen.
By Erin Aitcheson | November 6, 2015 | 3:18 PM EST
Stoners plus dope fiend Snoop Dogg, carjackers, rappers, LGBT of all types including out-of-the closet actress Ellen Page, and the like all have a place to call home — Viceland. Claiming to be a new hip and edgy TV channel aimed to please millennials, Viceland boils down to an entire channel devoted to pushing the progressive, liberal agenda, 24 hours a day.
Viceland has been a project long in the making and up until its announcements this past Tuesday, Vice has had a somewhat limited presence in print, on MTV and more recently, HBO. It now has its hands on something more influential, a 24 hour cable channel that will be oozing with a weird, perverted form of “journalism.”
By Tom Blumer | November 2, 2015 | 10:49 PM EST
On June 30, the Washington Post announced that it would be "compiling a database of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty in 2015." The Post has been "tracking more than a dozen details about each killing — including the race of the deceased, the circumstances of the shooting, and whether the person was armed."
The paper's work thus far has been a revealing exercise which should be getting far more attention than it is. I believe would be getting the needed attention if the revelations were different. You see, the analysis of fatal shootings thus far shows that, in layman's terms, the overwhelming majority of them were wholly justified (HT to an Investor's Business Daily editorial).
Moderators at CNBC, Which 'Graded' Debaters' Speech Patterns, Scored At or Below Every GOP Candidate
By Tom Blumer | October 30, 2015 | 9:34 PM EDT People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And people who ridicule the level of others' speech patterns should check theirs first.
CNBC didn't do that. Instead, on Thursday, as I noted in a previous NewsBusters post, it childishly rushed out a grade-level evaluation of the Republican presidential candidates' speech patterns during the first three debates, including the Wednesday train wreck it rudely hosted, and created a graphic with the title, "Are you smarter than a GOP candidate?" Payback is sweet (bolds are mine):
CNBC Rates Grade Level of GOP Candidates' Speech Patterns; Childish Moderators Not Taken Into Account
By Tom Blumer | October 29, 2015 | 3:50 PM EDT It would appear that CNBC isn't going to take the criticism of its debate panelists' awful conduct last night lying down.
In what appears to be an all too predictable immature response to the dressing-downs several Republican presidential candidates administered to certain of their moderators as a result of their juvenile behavior and insulting questions — particularly John Harwood and Carl Quintillana — the network has rushed out ratings of the top ten GOP candidates' speech patterns during the first three debates, with an obvious undertone: Ignore these candidates; they're just a bunch of dummies.
By Tom Blumer | October 29, 2015 | 1:41 AM EDT
The competition for the worst moderator moment of Wednesday night's GOP debate is fierce. John Harwood's rephrasing of an old and discredited charge that Marco Rubio's tax plan disproportionately benefits the top 1 percent has to be in the running.
That's especially true because Harwood himself had to back away from a simialr contention two weeks ago, yet still brought up the same issue with a similar dishonest assumption Wednesday night. After Rubio refuted Harwood and pointed out that the CNBC hack previously had to correct himself about the substance of the Rubio-Lee plan, a finger-wagging Harwood still insisted he was correct (bolds are mine throughout this post):
By Karen Townsend | October 20, 2015 | 12:51 AM EDT
In the CW’s Jane the Virgin episode titled “Chapter Twenty-Four,” Jane discusses how her grandmother is in this country illegally. How timely, in this election cycle, CW!
Through the magic of flashbacks, Jane frets that her police officer boyfriend may have an ethical challenge with her disclosure of grandma’s legal status. They just happen to be in bed together when she decides to break this news. Is this a deal breaker for Michael? Nah. Jane assures him that grandma isn’t a real criminal so everything is a-ok with him.