This week’s Washington Times column:

A telling event occurred on Sept. 15, Day 6 of the drip, drip, drip ACORN video rollout. President Obama met for lunch with former President Bill Clinton at trendy Il Mulino in New York City.

For the second consecutive day, the New York Post featured the ACORN scandal on its cover – complete with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in their outrageous “pimp and ho” costumes.

Does anyone think the president and the former president were unaware that the city in which they were dining was mesmerized by the ACORN scandal – especially since ACORN had bragged that its employees had kicked Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Giles out of their New York office?

The Sept. 15 edition of the New York Post explored the political angles and directed attention to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s investigation into why an ACORN office in its jurisdiction helped instruct a prospective brothel owner how to hide his prostitution proceeds in a tin in his backyard.

No one in the morally superior media world has asked, why did Mr. Obama have lunch with Mr. Clinton that day? So let me take a guess, and it seems like an obvious answer. Mr. Obama, under siege by a video-a-day expose that was exposing the Democratic Party to an avalanche of consequences (ACORN defunded in the House and Senate, ACORN delinked from the census, etc.), needed advice from the last president to navigate through a major political scandal.

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Everything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, “Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror.” ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah.

They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What’s more, it ain’t over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet.Stay tuned.

When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.

I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand.  (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

Now that White House “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones has resigned, what’s next?

Inevitably, the American mainstream media – ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, et al – must be held to account for sitting on the sidelines as this major story kept building without them, went viral on YouTube, and then became so large that a key appointee of President Obama was forced to step down.

But with their decision to ignore the Jones story, they may have actually done Mr. Obama far more harm than good: Who vetted this guy? How did he get past the FBI? What did he say, and how did he answer the infamous seven-page questionnaire that all Obama appointees were required to fill out? Inquiring Freedom of Information Act minds want to know.

For most people in this country, the resignation was the first they had heard of Van Jones. For this sin of journalistic omission, there’s institutional media blame. Bias is too tame a word for the utter shamelessness on display: Only Republican scandals – real and imagined – matter. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

With the deaths of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Michael Jackson, the summer of ‘09 marked the merciful ends to Camelot and Neverland, iconic American fairy tales whose story lines should have come to merciful ends long ago when their charismatic protagonists took dark and irredeemable turns.

Our country was not built to support blood dynasties or to elevate the rich and famous to a higher ethical or constitutional plain. But through the power of celebrity, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Jackson worked the media to twist truths. They manipulated their constituencies and fans to obscure their misdeeds. They played the faithful to confer this manufactured innocence on the rest of us. And, in the end, they placed themselves above the law.

My condolences go to the Kennedy and Jackson families, who should not be stained by the sins of their kin. But there is no time like the present to ensure that those masterfully produced, over-the-top, all-star televised funerals don’t serve to canonize talented and charismatic men who failed to own up to their public wrongs and who continued to flaunt the behaviors that got them into trouble.

The result was Mr. Kennedy needn’t do more than show up for work to atone for his calculated selfishness. Without apology or contrition, Mr. Kennedy crafted a public career in which he spent taxpayers’ money – certainly not his own – to make up for his unspeakable behavior. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

John Mackey – the founder, CEO and marketing genius behind Whole Foods – finds himself in an organic, unsustainable mess with his carefully cultivated affluent, liberal customer base after penning an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare.”

For starters, Mr. Mackey opens with a line from known-liberal-allergen Margaret Thatcher that features the dreaded “S” word: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Then he goes on to provide eight sensible free-market solutions gleaned from his company’s well-regarded employee health care program.

Mr. Mackey, a free-market libertarian, is now at the mercy of an unforgiving grass-roots mob intent on destroying his company. More than 25,000 people have signed on to a Whole Foods boycott on Facebook.

“Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives,” the online petition reads. “Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods’ anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities.”

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This week’s Washington Times column:

There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.

His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others – especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn’t do enough.

But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don’t do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.

Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage – the GWB43 virus – has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.

The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.

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This week’s Washington Times column:

The first round of protests against the Obama administration’s chaotic and rapid-fire expansion of government came in the form of grass-roots “tea parties,” which were predictably met with scorn by the Democrat-Media Complex (the natural coalition of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media.)

CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow led the charge, declaring concerned Americans “tea baggers,” an allusion to an absurd sexual fetish beneath describing in a family newspaper. This attack on hundreds of thousands of people practicing their constitutional right to protest speaks volumes not just about the hardened sociopolitical leanings of America’s journalistic elite, but about the brazenness with which they are now wielding their unprofessionalism.

Last week on the grounds of the once-venerated White House, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, taking his cues from his allies in the media, referred to last week’s health care town-hall protesters as “tea baggers.”

How far we have fallen.

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This week’s Washington Times column:

Well, that was pathetic. And it wasn’t an accident. The fix was in from the beginning.

Last week’s lackluster “Beer Summit” featuring Sgt. James Crowley, professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was orchestrated to end a national discussion on race, not begin one. That’s why there were no microphones, even though each participant showed himself to be perfectly qualified, astoundingly articulate and camera-ready for an illuminating and much-needed public debate.

The problem for the White House was the more the esteemed professor talked, the more trouble he created for his friend, the president. The clever photo-op sans audio was crafted to yank the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research off the stage, lest anyone begin to question what is being taught at Harvard these days.

Conversely, the more Sgt. Crowley weighed in, and his brave black co-workers spoke out, the more obvious it became that a national discussion featuring this cast of characters may not end with the results the professor and the president wanted. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

Less than a month after being confirmed as the nation’s attorney General, Eric H. Holder Jr. called out the American people as “essentially a nation of cowards” for refusing to talk openly about race.

So, thank you, professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and President Obama, for starting the long-awaited national discussion on black and white identity – while averting our attention from the cockamamie scheme to nationalize health care.

And kudos to the professor and the president for choosing Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department as the representative of the Caucasian-American side of this difficult and much-needed historic debate.

Poetry was at work as the archetypal racist white cop who, according to the admittedly fact-challenged president, “stupidly” arrested his “friend.” Sgt. Crowley waged a swift and effective public relations campaign that quashed the racism meme that Mr. Gates was recklessly pushing.

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This week’s Washington Times column:

The most unsettling news story of the last week came out of Philadelphia, where a group of black and Hispanic children of elementary-school age paid for the right to swim at a private suburban club and were denied the experience without cause and publicly humiliated in the process.

While the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton cry racism too often and make a mockery of their cause by exploiting events for their personal gain, sometimes old-fashioned bigotry does rear its ugly head in America.

In this instance, the Valley Club’s president confirmed our worst fears when he offered something far from an exculpatory explanation. “There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,” John Duesler said in his initial statement.

Some campers claim to have overheard at least one parent fretting about the sudden influx of 65 minority children at the mostly white club. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

What a shock that Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It did not so much criticize Alaska’s governor for prematurely stepping down from her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina Fey began last fall.

The assassination of Sarah Palin – by media.

For those who didn’t pay attention, Mrs. Palin’s unexpected stratospheric rise as a national political figure threatened the media’s preordained presidency of Barack Obama.

In light of how the Obama machine took down Hillary Clinton, which unsettled many feminists who believed 2008 was their time, many who saw sexism at play – the destruction of an ascendant Republican female icon was an urgent imperative for the Democratic Party. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

Mario Lavandeira, the mean-spirited impresario behind the celebrity-obsessed mega-Web site PerezHilton.com, was left scratching his pink-tinged pompadour last week, wondering aloud in a campy cry-baby YouTube classic why, after being physically assaulted in public, he is now universally scorned and widely considered the villain of an incident that left him appropriately “black eyed.”

Aside from the basic rules of karma, here’s why: The calculus of political correctness is like roshambo, the “rock-paper-scissors” game. Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.

Don’t ask why. It just is.

For those not paying attention to this tawdry tale, Mr. Lavandeira, aka Perez Hilton and the self-proclaimed “Queen of All Media,” referred to Will.I.Am, the black frontman of the platinum-selling Black Eyed Peas, by an anti-gay slur at an after-party of the MuchMusic Awards in Canada.

This interlude was born of the L.A.-based hip hop trio’s displeasure over critical comments about their recent album on the Perez Hilton Web site. The affair later culminated in the band’s black manager, Polo Molina, reportedly slugging Mr. Lavandeira after an evening of silly ego- skirmishes between the two parties. (more…)

Michael Jackson’s shtick was simply a more sophisticated, well financed variation on the molester with an ice cream truck. When after paying millions to his young accuser, Jordy Chandler, Jackson was later found to have gay porn producer Marc Schaffel, an un-indicted co-conspirator in Jackson’s 2005 child molestation trial, as his PERSONAL VIDEOGRAPHER and close pal on the very private grounds of Neverland Ranch.

Michael Jackson (left) and Marc Schaffel (right) seen in photo with Warren Beatty (center)

When this scandal was exposed (but underplayed by the dysfunctional and enabling mainstream media), Schaffel was shown the door and Jackson’s people issued a press release acknowledging the impropriety of the situation but claimed not to have known of Schaffel’s mystifyingly inappropriate background — especially given the accusations against Jackson and his continued desire to present himself as a kid-at-heart.

Here is the statement by Jackson spokesman Dan Klores in July, 2002:

“The minute Michael and his advisers found out about Schaffel’s background, they cut the cord immediately. This was months ago. (Schaffel) has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, doesn’t represent him in any way, shape or form, and has been told this repeatedly by Michael’s attorneys.” (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

Last Tuesday as I was driving home from a screening of “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” a profoundly moving and eerily timely drama that comes out Friday, I found myself stuck in a bizarre late-night traffic jam thinking of ways to spread the word about this potentially transformative movie that thrusts its audience into the day’s headlines and draws attention to the plight of those who could potentially topple Iran’s cruel and menacing theocracy.

With an LAPD helicopter hovering above me in the night sky, I called home to ask my wife why our neighborhood was cordoned off, with traffic enforcement redirecting cars around the perimeter of the Los Angeles Federal Building. She couldn’t find anything on TV. When I reached home, I discovered via Twitter that thousands of Iranian-Americans, plentiful in West Los Angeles since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, were demonstrating solidarity with family and friends in Tehran by protesting the rigged Iranian election results and drawing attention to the regime’s long-standing human rights abuses.

The closure of a segment of Wilshire Boulevard, a key east-west artery, spoke to the urgency and magnitude of the situation. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

In its obvious zeal to create a one-party state, the Democrat-Media Complex (the natural coalition of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media) last week seized upon the horrific murder of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington as an opportunity to ascribe blame to the American conservative movement and to further marginalize the Republican Party.

In record time, the media’s blind partisans and their feral friends in the left-wing blogosphere used the alleged “lone wolf” act of James W. von Brunn – an 88-year old self-avowed racist and anti-Semite – to try to affirm the controversial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report that posited ” right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president” and are a becoming a growing domestic terror threat.

The networks, CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times – the usual obnoxious suspects – toed this specious ideological slander, even though it smacks of the kind of profiling that the left rejects. Even Shepard Smith of Fox News jumped to the same conclusion by offering a surge of nasty notes in his in-box as proof. (You should check my e-mail, Shep!) If a newsreader on Fox News thinks it’s true, triumphal lefties crowed, then it must be! (more…)

In case you missed it, Big Hollywood launched an important song for our times today.

Listen to it here:

Jon David, our anonymous Hollywood player known for trolling for liberal starlets and reporting back to his conservative compatriots at Big Hollywood, was inspired to write, perform, finance and record “American Heart” after a recent run-in with a cynical L.A. woman who at a Venice-area party admitted her contempt for the United States of America. But when Jon David asked her to name a better country, she couldn’t.

Read the rest of the hysterically funny and all-to-familiar story behind the song (and the lyrics, too) here.

‘American Heart’ — let’s get this song on the radio.

Let’s get it going viral.
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Thought I’d post the entirety of Jon Voight’s extremely important speech last night at the 2009 Republican Senate-House Dinner.

What Jon is doing is extremely important.

Jon was once lauded for toeing the liberal Hollywood line.  He is showing that his peers can speak out as a Hollywood conservative and as an apostate — and survive. “Do not tell me it can’t be done,” he begins.  The left will flail as they attempt to marginalize him and diminish his stellar reputation and award-winning career.

His analysis of how President Obama got elected will eventually be the accepted truth once sober and dispassionate journalists reenter the mainstream media. And he is also to be praised for his steadfast support of the Jewish people and Israel. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

The Democratic Party’s attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so.

When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit?

Democrats invest – with taxpayer money, mind you – in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the “education system” have done the rest, making “D” the default choice on Election Day.

Democrats brazenly take policy positions – think government services and even amnesty for illegal immigrants – not because they are the right thing to do, but because they are time-tested demographic bribes. Forget cigarettes and beer, Democrats would distribute needles, methadone, medical marijuana and biscotti in voter goodie bags if they could get away with it.

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This week’s Washington Times column:

With Barack Obama, many Americans had hoped to get a post-racial president. With Mr. Obama’s pick of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace David H. Souter on the Supreme Court, it looks less and less like they got one.

President Obama – a man we still hardly know – clearly subscribes to the notion that we should judge each other not just on the content of our character, but also by the color of our skin.

We’ve had warning signs before. Remember the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.?

As for the outrage du jour, the call for Sotomayor to apologize for making a racist comment in a 2001 speech is silly. She said what she meant, and she meant what she said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

On this day in which Americans honor their war dead, perhaps a smidgen of our time should be spent reflecting on the unheralded and fearless wartime antics of Sean Penn.

Yes, that Sean Penn: Hollywood actor, director, tough guy and agent provocateur in America’s time of peril – a man history, no doubt, will credit with an assist in bringing democracy to Iraq.

It is now time for Mr. Penn to end his service to his country and commit to the next chapter in his life. He has done more than enough. America simply doesn’t make medals for Mr. Penn’s kind of service. Nor would he accept them. Now he must come clean and take on the next challenge of his career: Bring the rest of Hollywood to America’s aid by creating an army of underground patriots.

With a Democrat as commander in chief, it’s now or never for Tinseltown to get the patriotic bug. (more…)