NewsBusters Columns

This week, I did something that USA Today’s executive leadership apparently hadn't done lately: I read the newspaper’s “principles of ethical conduct for newsrooms.” It's pretty highfalutin. The media manifesto of virtue, posted online, applies to all employees “working with any news platform, including newspapers, websites, mobile devices, video, social media channels and live story events.” 

How appropriate would it be for a major publicly held American company to hire a person with a history of having publicly made the following statements and many others like them? (In the interest of brevity, I shall list only four.) “The world could get by just fine with zero black people.” “It's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old black men.” “Dumbass f---ing black people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” “Are black people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically only being fit to live underground like groveling bilious goblins?”

Before George H.W. Bush fades from memory into the darkness of history books, one more point needs to be made. It is about the contrast between how most of the major media treated him when he was president and how they mostly (but not completely) did a 180 during their coverage and commentary of his funeral. Maybe reporters and anchors considered their largely favorable and complimentary coverage of the man in death as penance for their earlier sins during his life, but they still should be held accountable for what they said about him when it mattered.

Joy Behar was furious. Furious! Why? It seems that following the death of President George H. W. Bush, View co-host Joy Behar  wanted to say something nice about the late president, and settled on a comment about his signing of an amendment to the Clean Air Act in 1990. Said she, as reported here in on NewsBusters: 

Conservatives note that an avowed anti-Semite like Louis Farrakhan maintains a Twitter account while a gaggle of conservatives no longer do. Think Anthony Cumia, Owen Benjamin, Roger Stone, Sabo, “Gay Patriot” Bruce Carroll, Gavin McInnes and Laura Loomer. Former Republican candidate Jesse Kelly became the most recent example.

Meaning no disrespect to climate alarmists of the past half-century, who have been quite formidable in their doomsday warnings, the modern era has ushered in a new wave of scaremongers who threaten to eclipse their predecessors. This shouldn't discourage the original enviro-wackos of the 1970s, who hadn't accumulated sufficient empirical data to support their burgeoning secular religion. Give those people a break; how were they to know they'd have egg on their faces for predicting apocalyptic global cooling? We're much more advanced now, so it's not fair to judge them.

Impolite question, but it needs to be asked: Is there a Republican dead body that left-wing partisans won’t use to bash Donald Trump? This week’s partisan corpse abusers callously exploited the passing of George H.W. Bush, America’s 41st president, to get in their digs at the current commander in chief. Their vulgar level of incivility was inversely propositional to their sanctimonious calls for decency.

A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42 percent prefer the latter. Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was view him favorably. Lenin was the first premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Half of millennials have never heard of Communist Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1959 and was responsible for the deaths of 45 million Chinese people.

I first met the man who would become America's 41st president in 1968. He was a Houston congressman and I was a young reporter for a local TV and radio station. My first impression was how kind he was to this “kid,” who had just moved to Texas from the Washington, D.C., area and was just starting to learn the “language,” like “fixing to go” and “y’all.” Everyone who worked for George H.W. Bush, or knew him, has a story to tell. I have several.

Rush Limbaugh was furious. As news trickled out about ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen saying he had lied to Congress, the liberal media pounced. This was surely it, they were in essence saying. The Trump-Russia collusion connection has been finally uncovered.