-By Warner Todd Huston
Francis Wilkinson, executive editor of The Week news magazine, seems to think that The New York Times is a model of restraint with a centrist editorial policy and that conservatives should be afraid of the day when the Old Gray Lady publishes its last sheet. My guess: if your eyebrow could be raised any higher at this claim, it’d become a toupee.
In a somewhat contradictory piece headlined “Will GOP regret attacks on The Times?,” Wilkinson by turns says that The New York Times has on one hand allowed the Bush administration to program its content while on the other hand says that the paper exhibits “bedrock liberal assumptions that define the paper.” How it can be both is hard to understand, but Wilkinson seems to think it’s possible.
The central point of the piece, though, sets up a sort of straw man that is then knocked down by saying that The New York Times is a model of journalistic restraint that will be sorely missed by conservatives when the paper is buried to be replaced by Internet based “news” outlets like The Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo. Even so, this piece is not without merit.
The Week: Conservatives Should ‘Regret’ New York Times’ $$ Troubles?”
Remember how everyone in the Old Media delighted in lambasting Governor Sarah Palin when the GOP bought all those clothes for her use during the McCain campaign? Remember how it was reported as nearly a foregone conclusion that these purchases must have somehow been illegal? It was even bigger news when the left-wing group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed an ethics complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the GOP. The whole thing was the talk of the Old Media, as you may recall.
On May 20, ABC’s Jake Tapper
On May 20, Politico had an interesting little treatment of columnist Charles Krauthammer crowning him as the most important conservative columnist of the day. A brief overview of his life and his emergence as the most reliable voice against Obamaism served as the main subject for the piece, but a few quotes on Mr. Krauthammer made by other columnists added a sense of how respected Krauthammer is to scribe Ben Smith’s piece. All the quotes were complimentary but shockingly, in one of those quotes, lefty Time columnist Joe Klein seemed to hint that a person in a wheelchair was
Wow. Just wow. If this New York Times headline isn’t an act of advocacy for higher taxes in California, what is? With its May 20 coverage of the vote for California’s tax hiking ballot measures, the Times plainly scolds fed-up voters for rejecting them with a headline that pointedly says: “
A 60-year-old Mormon Church in Massachusetts burned to the ground on Sunday, May 17. A story about the incident appeared in the
I hate to pull an “I told you so,” but… well, I told you so. Remember a few days ago when I showed how an unsubstantiated rumor becomes political “fact” in the Old Media? I reported that CNNs Peter Hamby found one woman that wondered if actor
Remember how the left always asserted that George W. Bush was stupid? Remember how they were so thrilled to have the Obammessiah that spoke so well, a president that was perpetually the smartest man in the room? Well, after the many stammering TelePrompter free stump debacles during the campaign, many began to doubt this claim of his superior intelligence. Certainly by itself this is no big deal. But added with the whole here is another small dent in the perception of Obama’s overrated superiority.
Recently I have been messing around with Twitter, the social media site of the day (shameless plug: see me as warnerthuston on Twitter). So, checking out some of the Old Media to see what they were saying about Twitter, I ran across Time Magazine’s attempt to seem cool with the Twitterers, er Twitterists, er Twits, er whatever they are called. Time was following some “
Did you know that former vice president Dick Cheney is speaking out only because he is trying to protect his legacy? Well just in case you wondered about it Steven Hurst for the Associated Press wants to assure that he has
Tourism has recently been up a little in Juneau, Alaska. More folks than ever have been interested in taking bus tours through Alaska’s capitol city with a major attraction being the Alaska State House where Governor Sarah Palin goes about her daily work. In fact, the tours have been gaining in popularity since before John McCain asked the governor along for his run for the White House. The bus tours are so popular that adorable little Piper has even set up a lemonade stand to sell tourists a glass of lemony goodness to quench their thirst for something wet as well as something cute.
In a fit of hypocrisy sure to outrage, just as Attorney General Eric Holder makes ready to attend a ceremony to honor fallen police officers, the Obama administration is proposing to
In a transparently unhinged and partisan hit job against several Bush administration officials, Newsweek thought it would be amusing to
Looks like it is just starting to dawn on some lefties that Obama is ushering in an era of oppression of free speech. So it seems for
Oprah.com and CNN have decided that there is a growing “new” trend in American sexual relations. The two Internet giants have teamed up and have decided that increasingly “
As expected, Joe Biden is fast becoming the clown prince of Washington D.C. His never ending case of athlete’s mouth resulting from his penchant for sticking his foot between his chompers is something that should be no surprise to any long-time Biden watcher. But, amusingly, UPI tries to re-center the Biden story, rescuing him from ridicule, to discuss the supposedly important things that President Obama has entrusted to the vice president.
Amy Davidson of the New Yorker should take up bowling or gardening because history doesn’t seem to be her thang, if you will. In the aftermath of Barack Obama’s own false historical reference, made during a Wednesday press conference, of famed WWII era English Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Davidson jumped to her keyboard to further garble history with an
Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik should check into a clinic somewhere to have his delicate mental balance checked. Maybe they might have some nice medication he can take to temper his Palin Derangement Syndrome? His is so bad he can’t even write about a little reality TV show without
Jessica Valenti, founder of the vaguely pornographic sounding Feministing.com, has decided that
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has let the cat out of the bag in the Post’s April 27 issue about a regularly scheduled
I respect Polish concert pianist Krystian Zimmerman’s moxie. Oh, he hasn’t a clue what he is talking about, but he has the courage of his convictions at least, which is more than I can say for all those wild-eyed, half-informed, hypocrites in the American entertainment industry.
Looks like Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt sort of put his foot in his mouth — or his pen as the case may be — in an April 27 editorial where he as much as called America’s older workers “lumbering” and less talented than “younger, nimbler” employees. In a nation that has one of its largest blocks of citizens in the “older” category, those over 40, it seems like Hiatt just insulted the largest number of Americans. Not the best way to sell newspapers, eh?
Someone needs to sue Santa Monica High School for education malpractice on behalf of the ill-educated Sean Penn. I mean, the man is nearly illiterate and he certainly has no grasp on history, philosophy, or statecraft. But his wacko left-wing inanities aside, it is his illiteracy that seems the most lamentable. Oh, it isn’t Rosie O’Donnell illiterate, hers is a special class of insensibility all by itself, but Penn’s brand is proof of the lowest quality of education. I mean the man can barely put two words together sensibly much less exhibit a grasp of grammar and syntax. It really is a crime how badly he’s been educated.
The newest false meme invented by the Old Media is this claim that ex-presidents and ex-vice presidents have some sort of “tradition of silence” where it concerns commenting on those that take residence in the White House after they leave. The reason the Old Media is pushing this false claim is because Dick Cheney has been commenting on Obama’s security mistakes and the Old Media wants to scold Cheney for his efforts to get the truth to the people.