In May 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg posited that the individual who packed a Nissan Pathfinder full of explosives and parked it in Times Square was likely a homegrown American “with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something.”

Fortunately, the car bomb did not detonate.

The terrorist turned out to be Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen. And, not surprisingly, Shahzad wasn’t upset about the health care bill. After pleading guilty in court he said, “I consider myself a Mujahid, a Muslim-soldier.” He was upset, as he put it, over “American occupation of Muslim Lands.”

Shortly after the attack, Bloomberg prematurely asserted that there was no evidence suggesting the bomber was part of any recognized terror network. Shahzad later told the court he trained with the Pakistani Taliban to learn bomb-making and other related skills.

Could it be that Bloomberg has underestimated the threat of Islamist terror, or is there another agenda?

The issue has again become relevant in recent days. The New York Times ran a series of articles and editorials blaming the NYPD for using the film The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America as part of their counter-terrorism training. (more…)

Left-wing operatives, like those who run Politico, are intentionally attempting to create their own reality. In the same way the left turned “30 Rock,” a show that ranked 106 in the ratings last season, into some sort of cultural phenom, the idea here is to push the political and social values of something no one watches into our country’s cultural and media narrative as though it’s something it’s not — popular.

Politico loves Stephen Colbert because Stephen Colbert loves Barack Obama and is waging war against the Right and free speech. America, however, is, to be kind, indifferent to Colbert. 1.44 million viewers and only half that among the 18-49 group, does not make you King of anything.

But Colbert knows how to play the game and understands that if he wants these kinds of hollow accolades and the opportunity to push his left-wing agenda and to have history revised in his favor, he must appeal to the right people, and the right people are not THE people; the right people are the left-wing elites who infest our corrupt media.

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No one will aver accuse me of being a Chuck Todd fan, but let’s give the man credit where it’s due. Though he’s careful with his language, Todd not only sees through what Colbert’s doing, he’s also troubled that much of the MSM is complicit in furthering the Stewart/Colbert left-wing agenda:

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HuffPo:

“He is making a mockery of the system,” Todd said. “…Is it fair to the process? Yes, the process is a mess, but he’s doing it in a way that feels like he’s trying to influence it with his own agenda and that may be anti-Republican.”

He cautioned the media to be “careful” about amplifying Colbert’s message, and said it should not be treated as “shtick” or satire.

“What is his real agenda here?” he said. “Is it to educate the public about the dangers of money and politics, and what’s going on? Or is it simply to marginalize the Republican Party? I think if I were a Republican candidate I would be concerned about that.”

Todd concluded by saying that he “idolized” American politics and didn’t want to see people become more cynical about them.

Less than a few minutes ago, Colbert was on MSNBC’s  ”Morning Joe” being fawned over by Scarborough, his guests, and his audience. All rather nauseating.

I also disagree with Todd’s claim that Colbert is doing something noble in going after these Super PACs, but we’ll leave that debate for another day (more on that here).

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If there’s anyone the entertainment media elite hate more than our GOP candidates, it’s the great unwashed who dare vote for someone who isn’t Barack Obama. In a bizarre but seething article — at an entertainment site, no less — film critic Ken Tucker was unable to control his contempt for We The People Who Think Ken Tucker Is Wrong About Everything. GOP supporters, like the ones who enjoyed themselves at last night’s debate, are now fair game — even in bathroom reading like Entertainment Weekly. But it’s Tucker’s cynical use of Martin Luther King that’s beyond the pale, even for Ken Tucker.

Ken Tucker

Lowlights from an elitist frustrated over his inability to defend President FailureTeleprompter: [emphasis added]

Huntsman was undoubtedly relieved he didn’t have to stand on-stage Monday night to face the most raucous, roused-rabble audience of any Republican debate held thus far.

[T]he people in the seats hailed lustily the history lesson offered by “Professor” Newt Gingrich: “Andrew Jackson knew what to do with his enemies — he killed them.”

It was a wild, schizo crowd. They yelled their approval of Rick Perry’s suggestion that America should “go to zero on foreign aid.”

The audience showed a nasty streak in the booing Fox questioner Juan Williams for asking Gingrich[.]

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***UPDATE: One of the folks involved in the event was kind enough to forward the video. It’s a must-watch. The great Frank Luntz gets bigger laughs than Colbert (who gets none) and not because these South Carolina moms “don’t get” the joke. These are smart women who know Colbert’s joke really isn’t. Watch how many of them describe Colbert as a left-winger and, quite hilariously, as a “Charleston dandy.”

Man, I love the American people.

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Because those left-wing journOlists at Politico share Colbert’s agenda to define GOP candidates as out-of-touch, because Politico shares Colbert’s goal to deny free speech to millionaires not named Stephen Colbert and corporations not named Politico, it makes sense that after gushing all over Colbert in somewhere around 258,223 stories, Politico would bury the lede in the 258,224th:

Via POLITICO’s Mackenzie Weinger in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Stephen Colbert made his appearance at the Café Moms town hall via a recorded video message:

Stephen Colbert made a cameo appearance at the Café Moms town hall meeting in Myrtle Beach on Monday with a recorded message asking the audience if they agree with Mitt Romney’s line that “corporations are people.” …

“My next question for the Café Moms South Carolina town hall is: What do you think about South Carolina’s favorite son forming an exploratory committee to run for president? While you discuss that I’m going to call my mom.”

And snark, snark, snark, and blah, blah, blah.

The real story, however, is found (as it usually is at Politico) near and at the bottom:

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Director Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” is aging as badly as the Aussie-fied mullet Robert Downey Jr. sports in the 1994 media satire.

Loud, brash and in your face, this collage of film stocks, styles and sensibilities made some critics squeal with delight during its 1994 release. Call that a chance to hop on the hip bandwagon, but looking back it’s clear “Killers” marked the start of Stone’s slow slide toward mediocrity.

“Killers” follows the infamous Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis) as they morph from amoral killers to media darlings. The two start out as lovebirds eager to taunt and terrorize the innocent, always leaving one person alive to spread their legend. They aren’t the most well thought out criminals, and before long they’re behind bars for their atrocities.

Even violent criminals can pick up celebrity cache if they play the media just right.

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This weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” skit targeting likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is a perfect example of two media worlds working toward the same goal – the re-election of President Barack Obama.

First, mainstream news media outlets take a Romney quote out of context – “I like to fire people” – to gin up manufactured outrage. That meme circulates for a few days, long enough to get on the radar of “Saturday Night Live” writers who can’t find anything funny about a president residing over a stagnant economy.

Why look for potential laughs there, right? It’s not as if sitting presidents haven’t translated into comedy gold for decades.

Next, “SNL” picks up the Romney meme and makes it the Jan. 14 show’s opening sketch. The bit has Romney (Jason Sudeikis) appearing at a Middle American diner and firing everything in site – including the bacon on the menu.

Ha ha.

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You would think a humor publication would find plenty to mock about Barack Obama.

After all, then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 alongside Greek columns and promised his election would be the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …” And let’s not forget the plethora of broken campaign promises, battalions of straw men and class warfare that have come to define the last three years.

Instead, The Onion serves up faux news stories like this:

Obama Openly Asks Nation Why on Earth He Would Want to Serve for Another Term

Yes, the media narrative regarding Obama has officially arrived at a newspaper dedicated to political satire. Liberal humorists would rather protect their own than make us laugh and speak truth to power.

PITTSBURGH—Citing three years of exhausting partisan politics, constant gridlock in Congress, and an overall feeling that the entire nation has “completely lost it,” President Barack Obama openly asked a campaign-rally crowd Tuesday why he’d want to serve another term as president of “this godforsaken country.”

“My fellow Americans, I come to you today to ask, why?” Obama said to 1,200 people gathered inside a gymnasium at Taylor Allderdice High School. “Why can’t our congressional leaders work together to create jobs? Why can’t Wall Street ever be held accountable? And most important, why on God’s green earth would I voluntarily subject myself to this nonsense for another four years?”

Didn’t Obama campaign as a non-partisan healer who would rise above congressional gridlock? And didn’t he enjoy a Democratic Congress for his first two years in office that allowed him to pass virtually anything he pleased?

Now, here come the delusional talking points that could have been uttered by Bill Press or any other reality-challenged liberal pundit.

“I have a pen and some paper right here,” Obama said Wednesday morning at a town hall meeting in Ohio. “Let’s list the pros and cons of being president. Con: There are people out there who literally want to shoot you dead. Con: We live in a country seriously considering a Newt Gingrich White House. Con: You can help 40 million Americans receive health care, sign legislation that regulates a financial system run amok, give the order to kill Osama bin Laden, help topple Muammar Qaddafi’s tyrannical regime without losing the life of one American soldier, end the war in Iraq, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, stave off a second Great Depression, take out more than 30 top al- Qaeda leaders, and somehow everyone still calls you the next Jimmy Carter.”

And what’s the video link currently at the bottom of the story page: Did the media treat Bachmann unfairly because she’s an insane woman?

Expect much, much more of this as the presidential elections come into sharper focus.

Over and over and over we keep reading about how Hollywood’s holiday box office was some sort of silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud. But once again, the context-challenged entertainment media only tells us half the story. Here’s a sampling:

Box Office Mojo:

Based on studio estimates, the four-day weekend will end up at over $201 million, or up around 10 percent from the same four-day period last year.

DHD:

Let’s party hearty with the end-of-holiday box office for end-of-year 2011. Or let’s not (and say we did.)… [S]ources tell me this final weekend will definitely be up over last year.

Los Angeles Times:

Most films sold more tickets over the New Year’s holiday than the Christmas holiday, with family films benefiting from the biggest bumps. Overall, the weekend was up 10% compared with the same period in 2010.

Cinema Blend:

Sales were up considerably from last weekend’s Christmas holiday and the new year is off to a solid start.

Except…

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The subtext of this unbelievably stupid article brought to us courtesy of The Incredible Shrinking Los Angeles Times, is that adultery sells on television because our society is changing to the point where we’re now warming up to the idea of marital infidelity. This is the actual subtitle of this very poorly researched piece of cultural propaganda: Cheating spouses are prevalent on prime-time TV. Blame society’s changing views on marriage and fidelity, and the shows’ need to push boundaries to succeed.

Twice as popular as “Nurse Jackie”

In other words, television is following society, not the other way around. Whatever. Here’s a snip:

Prime-time TV is starting to look like an ad for Ashley Madison, the online dating service for married folks, where the message is, “Life is short. Have an affair.”

To be sure, bed hopping as a plot point is nothing new. In fact, it’s as old as storytelling itself (see: the Bible). But the proliferation of adultery on TV — seemingly occurring far more frequently than in real life — could be the result of a perfect storm of cultural and sociological factors, industry veterans and sociologists say.

Among those factors: Cynicism about marriage is rampant, and about half of all marriages end in divorce, a number that’s remained steady for years. “Since the ’60s and ’70s, we’ve seen a general loosening of mores in this country and a cultural shift away from the core values of marriage, fidelity and monogamy,” said Julie Albright, a sociologist at USC. “People believe marriages don’t work anyway, so seeing affairs on TV kind of serves as a model for how things can and will go bad.”

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Absolutely superb piece by Robert Tracinski:

By now, you have probably heard the twittering (literally) about “Communist Muppets” after Fox Business guest commentator Dan Gainor complained that the villain in the latest Muppet movie is that stock Hollywood cliché, the evil big businessman. In this case, it’s even more of a cliché: an evil oil tycoon with the none-too-subtle name Tex Richman. Get it? The “rich man” is the villain. Apparently, the Muppets are the 99%.

The left-leaning mainstream media had great sarcastic fun with this story, projecting the possibility of House Un-American Activities-style hearings for the Muppets. The use of sarcasm, as we shall see, is an integral part of this story on a very deep level, but it also serves an immediate, practical purpose: to avoid discussing the real issue behind Gainor’s complaint.

The left, incidentally, has no problem with overwrought political analysis of children’s shows, when it serves their purposes. Say something about an anti-business message in the new Muppet movie, and they will make fun of you at a prominent left-leaning publication like Slate. Write a stupid article about how Thomas the Tank Engine is an agent of capitalist imperialism, which only demonstrates how much student-loan money you wasted on that degree in English literature, and it’s considered a thoughtful article worthy of publication in a prominent left-leaning publication like, you guessed it, Slate. It all depends on whose ox is being gored. …

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Donchaknow, Alec Baldwin was so awesome and open and funny and beloved on Twitter… until the American Airlines thing.

There was a slightly manic quality to it. Baldwin tweeted as if he couldn’t get enough of the hits of instant pleasure you feel when you tap out a tweet that gets a big response. It must have been a lot of work, and it earned him nothing but goodwill in return. Last week, when he found himself in the news for being tossed from an American Airlines flight after an altercation with an attendant, he was hit with a slew of hostile tweets. What had started as an amusement had become something of an addiction, and was now just a pain.

The writer is Jim Windolf and the denial is epic. Not once does Windolf mention the many, many nasty and divisive tweets Baldwin sent out in an effort to insult over half the country who want Obama out of office. Not once does Windolf mention the many Twitter wars Baldwin lost to those who had the temerity to challenge Sir Alec.

But wait, “Vulture’s” revisionist suckupitude gets worse:

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You gotta love “The Hollywood Reporter’s” opening sentence:

You can’t blame director James Bobin for being slightly giddy these days. The Muppets is one of the best reviewed movies of the year (“We have a 97 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes,” he says proudly), will likely be an Oscar contender in multiple categories and even managed to upset Fox Business News in the process.

Yeah, “slightly giddy”because, uhm, except for the box office.

Spin, THR, spin!

In week three, “The Muppets” is expected to take in only a measly $7M, making its total take a disappointing $65M. If you look at the best apples-to-apples comparison Box Office Mojo could come up with, “The Muppets” is presently behind the pace of two films that barely squeaked past $100M: “Bolt” and “The Princess and the Frog.” There’s even talk now that this under-performance has killed any franchise hopes for our furry friends. 

So what went so horribly wrong? After all, everyone who’s seen the new Muppet movie has loved it. The reviews are splendid. Simply put, the reboot of a decades-old cultural institution that enjoys generations of goodwill couldn’t have gone smoother. 

Certainly, Hollywood is currently suffering from larger, existential problems. No doubt about that. Other than our political and media class, Tinseltown is one of the most loathed and divisive institutions in America today. But if you look at what’s happened over the past week or so, it’s not unreasonable to lay some of the blame for “The Muppets” box office failure at the feet of the outrageously out-of-touch entertainment media.

Believe it or not, MSM, snarky headlines like this might crack you up, but they’re not at all helpful to the film:

“‘Muppets’ Director James Bobin Addresses Fox Business Network’s Communist Allegation.”

And this is where I feel bad for James Bobin and all those involved with “The Muppets.” Hell, even though they’re not real, I feel bad for the Muppets. I love the Muppets. Who doesn’t love the Muppets?

Unfortunately, though, while media leftists have been having a grand ole’ time mocking  a three-minute Fox Business segment, what they can’t see from their precious little bubbles is the damage they’ve done to the film in the process.  For no reason other than the irrational need for elites to feel superior through the mocking of Fox neanderthals, these same elites have turned what was a throwaway Fox Business segment into a national feeding frenzy.

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It’s bad enough the new Jonah Hill comedy “The Sitter” is getting blasted by most movie critics. More than a few film scribes are claiming the R-rated comedy is racist to boot.

Let’s back up a moment. The film casts Hill as a slacker forced to babysit three precocious teens. Consider it “Adventures in Babysitting” with a very foul mouth.

The foursome get mixed up with an effeminate drug dealer (Sam Rockwell) as well as some thuggish black characters (including rapper Method Man). It’s here where some critics are crying foul. Consider the following comments:

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Think Snooki and her “Jersey Shore” pals are harmless reality show fun? The Parents Television Council begs to differ, and it has the research to back up its claims.

The PTC’s latest study, “Reality on MTV: Gender Portrayals on MTV Reality Programming,” illustrates the unhealthy sexual messages bombarding the shows’ youthful viewers. The study reveals the “harsh, demeaning, degrading and sexualized dialogue” rampant on some popular reality shows, and how often the female stars denigrate themselves and each other.

The “Snooki Effect” is real, and high school teachers are noticing it now, says PTC President Tim Winter. Students are absorbing the cruel actions seen on shows like “Jersey Shore,” Winter says, and “it’s having a profound and noticeable effect on the way students behave.”

Among the PTC study’s major conclusions:

• Only 24 percent of what females said about themselves was positive across all shows combined.
• While terms men used for each other were often viewed as complimentary (e.g., big man, dawg, superhero, MacGyver, winner), women used far more degrading language when talking about other females (e.g., b*tch, c*nt, rodent, skank, trash bag, slut, trick, ho).
• Females talked about sex acts more than men, talked about sex more graphically than men, mentioned sexual body parts more than men, and talked about intercourse and foreplay more than men.
• Although 88 percent of the sexual dialogue between females and males across all shows focused on intercourse and preliminary activities leading to intercourse, the topics of virginity (0.2 percent), contraceptives (1.4 percent) and STDs (2 percent) were only mentioned 4 percent of the time.

Winter says his organization wasn’t looking to single MTV out when it started the study. The PTC, a non-partisan education organization advocating responsible entertainment, examined prime time cable reality show ratings to find shows with the biggest audience in the 12-17-year-old age bracket. The Nielsen ratings data yielded four MTV programs – “Jersey Shore,” “16 and Pregnant,” “Real World” and “Teen Mom 2.”

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The following contains spoilers … you’ve been warned!

Last night on “Glee,” it was all about enjoying the best years of your life, which for some strange and odd reason the writers on the show seem to think happen during high school. Hey kids! Don’t believe “Glee.” It gets better, I promise.

Remember Sam? The kid whose family lost everything, and then the big bad banks came kicked them out of their house? We haven’t seen him since last season, but the Glee Clubbers decided that they needed to get him back in order to win their upcoming competition. Rachel and Finn took a road trip to talk to Sam about coming back, and to his parents about letting him stay with friends so that he could be a part of the club again.

They found him stripping in a nightclub.

Yeah, that happened. Apparently the only way to help his family make ends meet was to spray paint himself with body glitter, shake his booty, and let the ladies cram dollar bills down his teeny tiny pants. He tells Finn and Rachel that he tried getting a real job at Dairy Queen, “but it paid minimum wage and 2 free Blizzards.”

I feel bad for Sam, I really do. I feel even worse that “Glee” would sanction the idea that a bad economy not just excuses bad behavior, but demands it. Thankfully, his parents agree to let him go back to McKinley High, and he’s allowed to be “just a teenager” once again.

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You have to wonder if Steve Banen has children and, if so, how he might feel sitting in a theater that promoted the National Rifle Association, exposed the lie that is Global Warming, or mocked Barack Obama as the failure he is. Because, you know, Banen doesn’t see anything wrong with sucker punching parents with political messaging in films advertised as innocent children’s fare.

This, however, says it all:

For the record, I’ve never seen or read any of the entertainment these conservatives don’t like, so I’m not really in a position to defend the content. But when far-right Fox personalities perceive secret political messages from the Muppets, it’s a reminder that conservatives sometimes have too much time on their hands.

On principle, I guess, you can oppose conservatives warning parents about the content in movies. But it’s an indefensible principle.

Leftists hate that parents now have the information they need to go around Hollywood’s left-wing propaganda machine. That same hate drives their opposition to home schooling. It’s just a fact that the left wants our kids for those 180 days a year to brainwash them into the next generation’s Occupy Wall Street.

If you’ve been watching, the whole of the entertainment media is currently in full mockery mode over the controversy surrounding the new Muppet movie, but that’s just a symptom of their frustration and a desire to pretend they’re not frustrated. You see, the left feels entitled to the culture and, any loss of power or control freaks them out in the same way a single right-of-center cable news channel in a sea of liberalism freaks them out.

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Most of us are familiar with product placement, where movies become quasi-commercials thanks to products like Taco Bell (“Demolition Man”), Mini Coopers (“The Italian Job”), and Reese’s Pieces (“E.T.,” arguably the Grand Poo-Bah of product placement).

And I’m sure the television audience at-large has seen it on various programs through the years, probably with the same semi-amusement they feel toward regular commercials. My earliest memory of TV product placement was “Knight Rider,” and I’m not ashamed to say one of my biggest childhood fantasies was Simonizing K.I.T.T.

I’m not naïve (about this); I realize product placement has been and will always be a part of movies and TV. To be fair, it’s now become downright necessary for the TV sponsors, since digital technology lets you skip over the ad breaks cleanly. It’s a wonderful breakthrough; you’re no longer forced to hear perky people describe cheese as “melty,” a vomit-inducing plight from which even the best VCR couldn’t entirely shield you.

But there’s an annoying new trend, and it’s not the little scene-blocking visual plugs that briefly occupy the lower half of the screen (DON’T get me started.) It isn’t like the “Seinfeld” episode with the Kenny Rogers Roasters plot, and it’s a far cry from James Garner getting behind the wheel of a Firebird and suddenly becoming even cooler.

No, what I’m talking about is how TV characters have recently started to visibly, dramatically, almost droolingly enjoy the products and talk about them on-script. And it’s happening on my shows, which is clearly unacceptable.

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Groups like the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the National Organization for Women exist to protect the rights of those too often attacked in the press or in the culture at large.

But their noble missions seem to hit a speed bump when it comes time to defend conservatives who happen to fall into their protective sphere.

Earlier this month, a gay reality show star claimed he was assaulted for being conservative. The incident didn’t draw massive press and outrage, so Big Hollywood reached out to GLAAD for a response. Their reaction was muted and brief:

“GLAAD’s mission is to fight for people, Republican or Democrat, who are targeted for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.  No one should be targeted for their political beliefs either, but advocacy around those issues is outside of our mission.  That’s what you guys do.”

At least GLAAD’s reaction to the alleged assault didn’t actively attack the right. That’s precisely the tactic chosen by NOW after it took several days to drum up outrage over a sitting Congresswoman being grossly insulted on a late night talk show:
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The relentless way Bill Maher derides the intelligence of anyone who believes in God is proof positive that Mr. Bill is convinced he’s a genius. Although most liberals exhibit a similar “the dummies need us to think for them” propensity, when it comes to matters of religious faith, Maher elevates the affliction to a whole new level.

And while it’s pure speculation on my part, based on his juvenile behavior, it appears as if Maher is a disgruntled Catholic trying desperately to convince himself God doesn’t exist; so regardless of how bright he perceives himself to be, Maher lacks the insight to realize that he’s revealing something he’d probably prefer the rest of America not to notice.

For someone as mentally deficient as Maher believes I am, even as far back as the first grade I recognized that there was no direct correlation between parochial school and the personhood of God. Yet for all Maher’s clever innuendo and sarcastic banter, it must go deeper than that, because this man apparently isn’t astute enough to separate Catholicism from God.

Maher was raised by an Irish Catholic father and a mother (Julie, nee Berman) that he was unaware was Jewish until he was a teenager (which right there reeks of family dysfunction). Seems somewhere around the age of 13, when hormone-infused Bill, had he been raised a Jew, might have been practicing his Hebrew to prepare for an upcoming Bar Mitzvah, Maher’s Catholic dad realized birth control was a good idea after all.

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