Double Standards
Last September, as I noted in a NewsBusters post, the Washington Post published a column by feminist freelancer Jody Allard, who used her perch to publicly shame her sons, lamenting how they were "blind to rape culture." Last week, facing criticism for continuing to expose her parent-child struggles and her sons' apparently unacceptable worldviews, she went to Medium.com to explain why she's not letting up. Those who continue to carry her columns need to be asked how they can justify continuing to enable her.
New York Times intelligence reporter Peter Baker did all he could to minimize the scandal that resulted in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and maximize the danger President Trump is now in, in Sunday’s “Trump Turns to Familiar Playbook: Clintons’.” Baker attacked Clinton special prosecutor Ken Starr and cited Democratic attack-dog James Carville as an authority to defend the integrity of Trump special counsel Robert Mueller.
In an appearance Sunday morning on ABC's This Week, New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer teased his party's economic plan which will be unveiled Monday. One hopes, probably in vain, that it incorporates an understanding of basic economics. Schumer betrayed the fact that he has little to no such understanding when he declared that "gas prices are sticky," and that when the "price for oil goes up on the markets ... it never goes down." This Week host George Stephanopolous was to so interested in pushing Schumer about "single-payer" health care, aka a full government takeover of health care, that he didn't even notice (or pretended not to).
The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard had a Friday morning piece that called out The New York Times for “diss-mot[ing]” conservative talk radio host Mark Levin’s new book Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism from the number one spot on their secret bestseller list.
I have recently been reminded of one of my earliest conclusions about the American left. I arrived at that conclusion when it was relatively civilized. In those days, we called it American liberalism, but even then it was fla fla. My conclusion was that when any entity falls under the dominance of liberalism, it loses all sense of its fundamental purpose. A city loses all sense of its purpose, which is governance. A university loses all sense of its purpose, which is education.
The Women's March movement has received fawning and forgiving establishment press attention, particularly from the Associated Press and New York Times, since its first official event the day after President Donald Trump's inauguration. Now the movement appears to be (or at least should be) self-immolating for several reasons, most recently its unapologetic support for a 1970s convicted cop killer. That controversy has even pulled in the Black Lives Matter movement, which has also received consistent and undeserved favorable press treatment, also exposing BLM once again as consistently, violently radical. Now the AP and the Times aren't covering either group's direct association with this controversy.
The broadcast networks' obsession with all things Russia continues: Over the last ten days (July 9 to July 18, including weekends), the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts have devoted nearly two hours (114 minutes) to the ongoing probe of potential 2016 collusion -- far more airtime than they devoted to any other political topic.
The cast of Morning Joe set their freakout level to def-con red in the wake of Donald Trump’s not-so-secretive dinner meeting with Vladimir Putin. “I’m not trying to make this look sinister,” a panicked Mika Brzezinski exclaimed frantically, “I'm not sure who is. We're just wondering what happened there.” An indignant Joe Scarborough deceivingly declared, “I don’t know what to say,” before going on to, disappointingly, say quite a bit on the matter. However, Mark Halperin arrived to steal the show in the end by stating, “If President Obama had done this exact thing and had not disclosed, there would be tons of questions about it.”
Pausing briefly from the press's never-ending Trump-Russia obsession, both Politico Magazine and USA Today decided earlier this week to focus on the state of President Donald Trump's health. Nothing tangible appears to have prompted either report. USA Today absurdly issued a "breaking news" alert on the topic.
Republican hopes of repealing and replacing ObamaCare hit yet another brick wall in the Senate on Tuesday, effectively killing current efforts. While the other networks in the Big Three (ABC and NBC) remarked on the failure of action after seven years of promises, the reporting on CBS Evening News took on a mocking tone filled with glee. “They control the White House and the Congress, but Republicans could not deliver on the promise they've been making since the day ObamaCare became law: to repeal and replace it,” quipped Anchor Anthony Mason at the top of the program.
The New York Times Sunday Review really outdid itself, with contributing opinion writer Michelle Goldberg smearing the pro-life movement while fiercely defending Planned Parenthood from phantom foes: The headline and text box were grimly amusing in a hypocritical way: “A Playboy President and Women’s Health -- Trump has already made a grab for abortion rights. What next?”
What has been reported by many but ignored by the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) is that Jane Sanders, the wife of Senator Bernie Sanders, is currently under an “accelerated” investigation by the FBI for bank fraud. And on Saturday, The New York Times was openly worried about what it could do for the Senator’s chances in upcoming elections. The investigation “is threatening to take some of the luster off the senator’s populist appeal,” wrote Yamiche Alcindor, national reporter for the paper.