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…)

Most heartening is that unlike some on our side, the Governor seems to get it. If this unfortunate episode proves anything, it’s that Sarah Palin understands that a Republican is up against more than just their Democrat opponent and the mainstream media; pop culture is also waging ideological war on all things conservative and traditional. This is a reality we ignore at our own peril, and this week Governor Palin (and Carrie Prejean, for that matter) fought back and won wielding truth, good humor and dignity.  

Matt Lauer deserves credit for behaving himself. Tough but fair made a Haley’s Comet-like appearance at NBC this morning. But I am curious about the consequences Lauer expects Letterman to face. Other than in Hell, what could Lauer possibly mean? Letterman just savaged Sarah Palin’s family. If there’s a faster, safer, easier way to enhance your mass media/pop culture resume, I’m unaware of it.

Lauer certainly can’t be naïve enough to be talking about Letterman’s ratings. When it comes to the culture war, ratings, box office – you know, that pesky bottom line stuff – means absolutely nothing in Pop Culture-dom. Air America lives, MSNBC gleefully keeps digging and Iraq War movies are still scheduled to hit theatres. This isn’t business, this is hardball politics.

Letterman knows his legacy as an entertainer vanished years ago, and so all he’s got left is what’s in his elitist Manhattan bubble. Ratings-shmatings, this “warped, frustrated old man” now lives only for big smiles from the Julia Roberts’ crowd and, as they pass on the street, a bow from Brian Williams. No doubt those needs are being fulfilled just fine even as the little man inside Letterman wonders when things went so horribly wrong.

But bravo, Governor. The Lettermans of the world are nothing to be afraid of. In fact, they’re less than nothing. Pop Culture is wholly owned by bullies. The American people understand this and are not impressed by them, but they’re also not impressed with politicians who don’t fight back, either.

Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean. I like our chances.

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.

Democrats long ago jettisoned America’s melting-pot ideal – E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”) – because it imperils their campaign for permanent rule. Splitting the country into separate identity groups and playing them against each other works a lot better. And anyone who disagrees is a racist.

Win. Win. Win.

One of the first things President Obama attempted to do after taking office was to take control of the Census Bureau, an act that could redraw congressional districts and ensure Democratic majorities for years to come. The new president also etched out an enemies list, focusing on conservative talk-radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh. He also appears to have singled out Fox News. Comedians and mainstream journalists who are usually contemptuous of government bullying and First Amendment threats also continue to do the president’s bidding.

These overt political gestures were done amid economic chaos and mainstream media delirium to ensure permanent victory for a newly radicalized Democratic Party. Moveon.org, George Soros and the ghost of Saul Alinsky are in charge now. It’s not just “tea party” protesters who think we’ve tilted far left. Self-avowed anarchists and open socialists proudly brandished Obama placards at well-attended May Day parades.

When elected, the Democrats dole out billion-dollar bonuses to their core supporters at taxpayers’ expense. Witness the $787 billion stimulus package, an orgy of special-interest payback for labor unions, liberal activist groups and multinational corporations. One would be hard pressed to name a Democratic policy that is motivated more by principle than by winning.

Where is the media to expose this blatant corruption when the media are in the middle of the pile? NBC News, whose parent company General Electric is getting billions in stimulus cash to perpetuate Democrat-friendly “green” technologies and health care information systems, is at the forefront of a bizarre campaign to act as a check on the party that is out of power, not the party in power. NBC anchor Brian Williams bowed to the new president; MSNBC is a Fellini-esque exercise in liberal triumphalism.

You can read the column in full here.

In journalistic terms it’s called a “tick-tock.” This is when the media crafts a news story that takes you behind the scenes of an event and breaks down, piece by linear piece, the individual acts which led up to that event. With “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted,” director John Ziegler (“Blocking the Path to 9/11“) turns the art of the tick-tock around and aims it, with damning effect, squarely at the news media.  The result is not a documentary, at least not for anyone who believes in truth, fairness or journalistic integrity – the result is a horror film.

If you expect Ziegler to build his case using easy targets like Keith Olbermann aping David Strathairn playing Edward R. Murrow, think again. Olbermann’s a bit player in this cinematic indictment, a clown. The real conspirators run the gamut of every network (cable and otherwise), and most of the major print and online publications. Maybe it’s not a horror story, after all. Maybe it’s something closer to an Agatha Christie mystery where everyone’s the murderer.

The victim, of course, is American journalism.

Even for those of us who obsessively followed every twist and turn of the 2008 presidential election, watching Ziegler’s autopsy of the grisly affair, starting with the primaries and ending with the days immediately following Barack Obama’s securing of the Presidency, is to experience in a comprehensive way the breadth and scope of American media corruption.

Watching election coverage in real time last year was often frustrating to the point of outrage, and for the first half-hour of “Media Malpractice” the old outrage returns. But what Ziegler does is summarize his case like a prosecutor delivering a closing argument, bringing the disparate pieces together into something much more important than a narrative. What we see is the media’s behavior in full blown context, and as the entire story comes together your outrage slowly evolves into something much more disturbing.

The real genius behind the film is in the wise choice not to use talking heads. Other than pieces of an interview with Governor Sarah Palin (the full interview is included as a DVD extra) that pop up in the opening and then later during the coverage of her bid for Vice President, Ziegler understands that no matter how smart or insightful, no analyst could make as damning a case against the participants as the words and actions of the participants themselves.

Other than the director’s narration to fill in the gaps and frame the context, the filmmmaker gets out of the way and allows us to witness first hand as Campbell Brown, Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, Wolf Blitzer, Major Garrett, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson and a troubling legion of familiar others summon audacious amounts of hypocrisy, ignorance and dishonesty to blunt any piece of news that could hurt Obama and destroy any individual who could stop him – and that includes Hillary Clinton, Palin, and an unlicensed plumber who dared to ask a question the media wouldn’t.

This compelling first person approach more than makes up for the film’s few flaws. The first and last ten minutes are sluggishly paced and the soundtrack is frequently intrusive and unnecessary, but once the film’s narrative takes hold these issues are of little consequence. And with a run-time of 115 minutes the overall pacing is deliberate. This is a necessity, though, in order to fairly and fully make the case for an expansive and darkly effective media conspiracy.

So trained are we for the few second clip that it took a while for me to understand that the reason some clips feel longish is because the film is more interested in being fair than fulfilling the needs of our national ADD.  We’re not “told” what anyone said. No shady editing techniques are employed to make a subject look bad.  Ziegler let’s them talk. Full quotes. Full context. He knows it’s not necessary to play the drive-by game on the drive-byers. They step into the noose and jump all on their own.

It’s worth pointing out that “Media Malpractice” is not anything close to an anti-Obama screed. Obviously within the mission of the film, William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and other cuts from our current President’s Not So Greatest Hits get some play, but for you reasonable Democrats who were horrified by the media corruption even as it benefited your guy, there’s nothing to fear here.

Palin haters will be disappointed. Included in the DVD is Ziegler’s full 45-minute interview with the Governor, snippets of which were released earlier in the year to great media uproar for her daring to criticize the likes of Katie Couric. Ziegler has the Governor watch and comment on the harshest coverage she received, some of it for the first time, and her impressive poise, good humor, and graciousness, while witnessing the lies and attacks on her family, remains intact. Whatever effect this vicious and partisan coverage may have had on her future is yet to be seen, but that she hasn’t allowed it to get under her skin is obvious.

Narrative or documentary, all good films have a moment that stay with you long after the credits roll, and there’s one here that put a chill down my spine. Directly after Palin’s triumphant acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, which, in effect, made complete fools of all those involved in the coordinated three-day media attempt to destroy her beforehand, NBC anchorman Brian Williams took to the air and read, word for word, a manifesto written by Time magazine’s very partisan Joe Klein demanding the media not relent in their destruction of her. His piece was littered with lies, including the scurrilous one furthered by Charlie Gibson about Palin claiming God was on our side in Iraq, even though a videotape of the event proves otherwise.

Watching Brian Williams, who up to that point had always come off as a slightly befuddled Dad right out of a 50’s sitcom, trumpet a partisan character assassination and call to arms his media cohorts is a revealing look at the rancid heart that beats beneath the blow dry. It’s also a warning.

In the production-values department, “Media Malpractice” may feel a bit rushed in spots but as of right now it’s the most important post-election analysis released and couldn’t be more timely or necessary. We’re less than 20 months away from the next election and you only think you understand the magnitude of media corruption.