After every mass shooting, well-meaning but empty-headed celebrities come out in droves to hold up signs with hashtags and lend their voices to anti-gun political ads. This week was no different in the wake of last week’s two tragic shootings. A new ad released today by Michael Bloomberg’s group, Everytown USA For Gun Safety, added a few new faces to the usual gamut of gun-grabbers.
Michael J. Fox
By Mark Finkelstein | November 28, 2012 | 8:32 AM EST
Throughout his tenure as Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo has chosen to maintain a surprisingly low profile. Think quick: how much footage have you seen of him in the Hurricane Sandy aftermath compared to his cross-George Washington Bridge buddy, Chris Christie?
But has Cuomo finally decided the time has come to make himself more visible? A PSA for Hurricane Sandy relief, aired on Morning Joe today featuring a star-studded cast of Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Whoopi Goldberg, Edie Falco, Michael J. Fox, Julianna Margulies and Nathan Lane. One panel, devoid of reference to the relief organization, starkly read "Join Governor Cuomo and New York." View the video after the jump.
By Matthew Balan | March 14, 2011 | 3:29 PM EDT
Jay Kernis, senior producer of CNN's In the Arena program, promoted liberal writer David Sirota's thesis that "the mythology of the 1980s still defines our thinking on everything from militarism, to greed, to race relations." Sirota bashed 80s cultural touchstones such as The A Team and Ghostbusters for being "hideously militaristic" and the "ugliness of [their] anti-government message."
Kernis interviewed the Huffington Post contributor about his new book, "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything" in an item on his program's blog on CNN.com on Monday. The producer first asked about the writer's hypothesis that "the political and cultural references from the 1980s have not only become cool again, but may be a way to explain our present-day issues and conflicts, and even influencing our thinking today."
Sirota, who once attacked Glenn Beck as a "right wing political terrorist" and labeled opponents of President Obama "a bunch of psychopaths," cited an apparent connection with the current Tea Party movement:
By Tim Graham | April 8, 2009 | 4:15 PM EDT
Selling a new book, actor Michael J. Fox appeared Monday on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and dismissed Rush Limbaugh as "cartoonish" for his criticism of Fox’s slashing ads for Democrats in the 2006 midterms. After host Jon Stewart suggested Limbaugh’s brain was "diseased," Fox even joked to Stewart that it’s questionable that Limbaugh has a brain. Left out of the cozy, mocking liberal chat was any notion of what Fox actually said in his commercials for Democrats.
"Cartoonish" is a good word for what Fox claimed in a mud-slinging 2006 ad against Sen. Jim Talent, who lost his race. He claimed Talent "opposes expanding stem cell research. Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope." (For more background, see the October 25, 2006 Cyber Alert.) At the time, The Weekly Standard reported one spokesman took the extravagant claim further, claiming that by criminalizing medical research, the anti-cloning legislation would mandate that a cured patient's first steps "out of a wheelchair" would be "into a jail cell."
Stewart walked Fox into a Limbaugh attack by suggesting how he was stunned that Fox’s "motives could be impugned." As if Fox wasn’t doing any impugning of Jim Talent?