After flying Andrew Breitbart all the way out to Phoenix, Arizona yesterday to participate in an online Townhall election event, after taking him out of his home state, away from his business, and nearly making it impossible for him to vote in today’s crucial midterm election (though he’s on an airplane now in order to cast his ballot), at about as close to the last minute as you can get, Andrew Morse, chief of the ABC News digital division, sent the following email late this afternoon abruptly canceling Breitbart’s appearance:

We have spent the past several days trying to make clear to you your limited role as a participant in our digital town hall to be streamed on ABC News.com and Facebook. The post on your blog last Friday created a widespread impression that you would be analyzing the election on ABC News. We made it as clear as possible as quickly as possible that you had been invited along with numerous others to participate in our digital town hall. Instead of clarifying your role, you posted a blog on Sunday evening in which you continued to claim a bigger role in our coverage. As we are still unable to agree on your role, we feel it best for you not to participate.

This is yet another obvious attempt to build a narrative that puts the blame on Breitbart when the truth is that this is nothing more than ABC News caving in to and attempting to appease the organized left’s outrage machine that went into full astroturf mode after Breitbart’s ABC News appearance was made public.

As a reminder as to who’s exaggerating, here is exactly how Breitbart’s election night townhall event was described by an ABC News producer to him in an email:

This program will broadcast on the ABC Television Network, abcnews.com, ABC News Now, and ABC News Radio. …

The show will be live on the web and ABC News Now as well as on the network from 4:00pm till 11:00pm MST.

With this in mind and in writing, here is how Big Journalism announced Breitbart’s ABC News appearance: (more…)

In the above video, Stewart takes some shots at NPR for firing Williams, but it all feels like an excuse to revisit his Fox News obsession and desire to smear the station as some kind of Big Scary Monster of Right-Wing Intolerance, as though one cable news channel has anywhere near the combined power of CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, oh and, Comedy Central.

The closing skit with the “scary” Muslim man and Black man pretty much calls Williams and Bill O’Reilly a couple of racists for their individual comments that started all of this — what O’Reilly said that caused Joy and Whoopi to cluck-cluck-cluck off the “View” stage and what got Williams fired from NPR.

Here’s the moral of Stewart’s comedy:

“If they’re not going to make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I take the time to distinguish between decent white people and racists?”

It’s all so preciously sensitive and PC it just makes you want to run out and hug a baby seal.

Could there be a bigger disturbance in the satiric-force than when you have supposed comedians assuming the roles of our nation’s PC-Enforcers?  Unless, of course, the target is Sarah Palin’s Down Syndrome baby, then the sensitivity badge is quickly removed and the rubber hose comes out.  (more…)

I’m sure you’ve heard about the Juan Williams/NPR debacle. You may also know that Senator Jim DeMint has vowed to introduce legislation that will deprive NPR, as well as public television, of taxpayer funds. It seems that in this political climate, asking a candidate where they stand on funding public broadcasting or the arts has become the new litmus test, replacing questions about abortion and gay rights.

In other words, it’s Christmas everyday for Libertarians.

There seem to be three consistent arguments in favor of tax dollars being spent on public broadcasting and government subsidies for “art,” First, the defenders question the amount of money actually on the table. After all, these programs are but a teeny-tiny piece of our ever expanding government. Secondly, dispensing taxpayer cash on media is “in the public interest.” In the unholy pursuit of “profits,” private broadcasters and artists often compromise their work to make money. Private news organizations like FOX and MSNBC sensationalize the news and have become hyper-partisan in order to increase ratings and advertising dollars. We need outlets that are free from the restraints of the free market. And, of course, there is the elephant in the room, which in this case is a giant yellow bird. “Sesame Street.”

What kind of Islamophobic, racist, evil, baby-blood-drinking fascist wants to send Elmo to the unemployment line?

The first argument is simply ridiculous. We’ve all had to, at one point or another, examine our household budgets and look for spending cuts. We write down a list of our expenses, organizing them in order of both cost and importance. At the top is stuff like rent/mortgages, utilities, car payments etc. Towards the bottom is the fun stuff like vacations, extra cable channels, and faster internet. Everybody always starts at the bottom. Nobody starts at the top. “Hey, let’s ditch the house and keep our annual trip to the Wisconsin Dells?”  My girlfriend always likes to try and sneak cigarettes and scotch into the non-essential category. Nice try. I always push for more mac and cheese in order to keep my subsidies of R.J. Reynolds and Pernod Ricard intact. But I digress. (more…)

World War II was my war. We fought the Germans. They were the enemy. There was a German problem. Of course, if we had stopped to think about it, which we didn’t because we were too busy trying to win the war, we would have realized that not every German wanted to fight us; maybe not even a majority of them did. But they didn’t oppose the Nazi extremists who had taken over their government and attacked us in the name of German racial superiority. I’m sure a lot of Germans agreed with Hitler. But those who were against him, didn’t dare speak up. A few did, of course, like the great German patriot Reverend Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He spoke out against the Nazi thugs. For his pains he was put into a concentration camp and died there.

Jihadist thugs are now attacking us in the name of Islam. No doubt there are a lot of Islamic believers who don’t support this. But like the Germans in World War II, they are not speaking up… for good reason of course, as there was a good reason back in the days of the Third Reich. But because they aren’t speaking up to oppose what is being done in their name, the world has a Muslim problem. Everybody knows this. Not many public figures dare to say it out loud. Some public figures don’t want to know it, much less say it out loud.

Bill O’Reilly, who has taken great pains in recent years to position himself as a centrist, has now had the courage to say out loud what everybody knows. The predictable cries of outrage have ensued. Juan Williams, a true blue liberal who has no doubt outraged his bosses at NPR for years by appearing on Fox, even if it was to espouse their cause, is now paying the price for O’Reilly. They couldn’t fire him; he doesn’t work for them. Juan does, so out he went. (more…)

So, many people are calling for the de-funding of NPR. After all, why should Americans have to pay for something that’s so fundamentally anti-American?

Let’s face it: they didn’t fire Juan Williams for expressing an independent opinion, they fired Juan Williams for expressing an independent opinion that didn’t jibe with theirs. And it was worse, because he did it on Fox News – two words that bring a pained sneer across the faces of the already contorted NPR listener.

But, hell, everyone can see NPR’s duplicity. They never police their lefty employees, and suddenly, Juan Williams is fired? If it wasn’t because of his views, what was it then? Was it because he’s black? Or because he’s black and didn’t do what he was told?

Anyway, I’m one of the few to say, keep funding NPR.

Because if we don’t, they go away.

And we can’t have that. We need them around to remind ourselves what subsidized failure looks like. As long as NPR drones listlessly on, we can point to it and say, “yeah, we’re letting them live.” (more…)

So, NPR canned Juan Williams (yeah, like I wasn’t gunna do this story). If you aren’t familiar with NPR, simply imagine yourself, on a bus, sitting next to Judd Hirsch.

Anyway, it’s all due to comments Juan made on the “The O’Reilly Factor,” last Monday. There Bill asked him to respond to “The cold truth [that] jihad, aided …by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”

Williams replied, “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot….But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

Racist.

He also brought up the Times Square scumbag – who had no problem saying that the war with America is just beginning.

But as Slate points out, the passage quoted by NPR was a spoon-fed clip that dumps out before Williams says his worry reflects the problem of generalizing about groups of people.

I doubt Media Matters will cover that. (more…)

(more…)

My favorite part of this debate is how the NY Post’s Linda Stasi, when referring to the infamous leaked memo, mentions the “military family” part of the memo twice, but never once “health, or “environmental conservation.” And, of course, this is why, in the laundry list of suggested topics, “support for military families” was added (last) — so that people like Stasi could parrot that particular talking point as bipartisan cover:

My second favorite part is Stasi’s statement about how the memo “doesn’t talk about Obama’s health care…”

What a canard. Like the NEA conference calls, there’s no need to force feed fish marked “ObamaCare” to an audience of partisan seals. All you have to do is toss the issue out there. The White House knows this and so, I suspect, does Stasi. In her own circular logic she actually makes that point when arguing ”Old Christine” produced a pro-ObamaCare episode without even being asked. Thank you, Linda — this is exactly why the memo didn’t have to mention “Obama’s health care” specifically… Minions don’t need GPS. Just point. (more…)