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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The much anticipated Sarah Palin documentary by filmmaker Steve Bannon comes out in theaters next Friday, July 15th.  People can now see the trailer for the first time.  I’ve now seen the film three times and one thing that stands out is how Sarah Palin has always been on the offensive and refuses to apologize for who she is.  Subsequently, there are tens of millions of Americans who not only relate to her, but her ballsyness contrasts more with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.  If Sarah Palin doesn’t run for the Presidency, someone in the Republican Party should take note on what real leadership looks like.

Democrats who watch this will see somebody they wish they had on their side—and they did once, in Alaska.  Governor Palin stood up to the deservedly vilified ExxonMobil whose criminal misconduct with the Exxon Valdez was exacerbated with years and years of legal wrangling and deep-seated corruption that Governor Palin took on directly.  Bannon’s movie is not a woe-is-her exercise in victimology; it’s a jarring look at how entrenched politicians and entrenched media can distort reality to maintain the status quo.

I have built a brand and a mission based upon pointing out media distortion and lies.  I have never seen a greater disparity between the media Sarah Palin and the real one.  Mainstream media types who have seen this movie are admitting as much but claim that it’s Sarah Palin who drastically changed into a completely different person.  No, this was a manufactured Palin, manufactured to destroy her in the pursuit of protecting Barack Obama.
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When the mini-series The Kennedys was announced last year the left-wing blogosphere “hit the fan,” so to speak. Robert Greenwald, a “progressive” propagandist who seems to always be hitting up readers for money to pay for unpopular “documentaries,” called it “a political hit job,” with no sense of irony or any idea of what the finished product would look like. (He’s currently soliciting money to produce a “documentary” on the evils of the Koch brothers.) Greenwald even dragged self-professed JFK lover Nigel Hamilton (author of the JFK biography “Reckless Youth” – which was also attacked as anti-Kennedy) into the fight. Needless to say, this campaign was designed only to harm the mini’s conservative producer Joel Surnow for, well, being conservative. That’s really the only explanation for their “outrage” since an early draft of the script was all they had to go on.

Never known for letting the facts get in the way of a good story, and always on the lookout for an excuse to start a chant, drum circle, boycott or petition, leftists decided on the boycott/petition angle to get the mini-series dropped from its intended home, the History Channel. Naturally, the network that brought us the two-hour star-studded spectacle called “The People Speak,” based on über-leftist Howard Zinn’s work, caved faster than couch-cushion fort. Fear of a left-wing backlash and/or agreement with the Leftists’ agenda kept other, larger networks from picking it up. So the mini was without a home for a while. (Note: I say this because with a top-notch cast and crew and a $30 million production budget, the quality of the project was never in doubt — which leaves ideology or fear as the only logical rationale for passing.)

It finally found a home on the Reelz Network, where parts one and two premiered last night.

Having watched it, and many other movies based on the life of the Kennedy family (including the aforementioned JFK: Reckless Youth on ABC), my overall reaction is this: What was all the fuss about?

After digesting the first two parts, I can honestly say that there were only one or two things I didn’t know already, and none of them were major shockers. The Kennedys shows the family to be exactly who they are known to have been – ambitious, loyal (at least to each other), tenacious, all with a willingness to do whatever it takes to get their way and an insatiable taste for the ladies. The only people who would come away with their perception of the “clan” being destroyed or even challenged are young people spoon fed history from sycophants and ideological hacks who still believe “Camelot” was the closest we as a nation and species have come to perfection.

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Imagine the following scenario taking place on the world stage:

Scene 1: Employees of one of the world’s largest oil companies are found to be in league with a right-wing film producer in an effort to produce a documentary aimed at helping the company fend off a lawsuit in a third-world country’s court that, if lost, could cost the company more than U.S. $100 million.

Scene 2: New York-based lawyers, said to be working on behalf of thousands of poor plaintiffs in their suit against the oil company, ask a U.S. federal court judge to order the right-wing film producer to provide his court with outtakes from the documentary, and the judge says, “Yes.”

Scene 3: Recognizing that the outtakes are now part of the official court record, members of the news media request copies of them. In turn, the federal judge orders that copies of the outtakes should not only be provided to members of the media requesting them but to members of the general public.

Scene 4: After obtaining the outtakes, members of the media spend countless hours airing video snippets, painting the “Big Oil” company in the worst light possible and, in so doing, aiding and abetting the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Unfortunately, a real-world scenario diametrically opposite the one described above seems to be taking place now. Below is a list of the players involved: (more…)

Okay, here’s my favorite headline of the day – no, make that year.

Take a look-see, for yourself, see.

Yes, the AP headline reads: “NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery.”

Yeah it’s only a mystery if you’re in the media, and really stupid. Everyone else pretty much understands why the terrorist left a fuel bomb in an area filled with families.

He hates us. He hate our country, our culture. He wants you dead.

But the media – an entity full of fragile egos and bubble-encased boobs – just can’t see that. In fact, it’s kinda awesome how huge and gaping their blind spot toward radical Islamic fundamentalism is. If only there could be other motives for the mayhem, so they’d never having to place blame on anything (except America, of course).

So I thought I’d help them out, and find motives the media could be comfortable with.

So why did Faisal Shahzad try to blow up Time Square? (more…)

Give Comedy Central an anal probe. Not because of Jon Stewart’s ongoing tiff with Bernard Goldberg and Fox News, which is just polite, interesting fun. Rather, it has to do with the disturbing news that the creators of the animated sitcom “South Park” were threatened by an apparent jihadist organization called Revolution Muslim over an episode that contains some (mildly) irreverent material about Mohammed – and the cable network caved.

They bent over and censored the show. According to the New York Times arts blog posted this morning, the episode in question, a follow-up to the one that showed the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear costume, was edited by Comedy Central to avoid further offense. The version that aired Wednesday contained audio bleeps and image blocks (“CENSORED”), apparently inserted by the network, after the Muslim group warned on its website that show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably end up like Theo Van Gogh.” This is a reference to the Dutch film maker who was murdered – shot eight times then stabbed, with a note pinned to the knife, like in an Eric Ambler story — on an Amsterdam street after he made a documentary critical of Islam’s treatment of women. Fearing for her safety, Van Gogh’s collaborator, Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was forced to flee the country, and the Dutch Parliament engaged in vigorous debate on the subject of banning certain kinds of speech as “blasphemy.” In other words, they unheroically blamed the victim. (more…)

It’s been roughly a week since actress Sigourney Weaver blamed his lack of breasts as the reason James Cameron lost out to Kathryn Bigelow in the battle for the Best Director Oscar.  Yet, there’s been no media feeding frenzy as a result, even though Weaver essentially said Bigelow didn’t really deserve her Oscar – it was simply a matter of gender politics at work.

Shouldn’t women’s groups be outraged by such a remark? Or did they see a kernel of truth in what Weaver said?  The National Organization for Women has nothing about the incident on its web site.

So Big Hollywood reached out to several women connected to the film industry to get their thoughts on Weaver’s accusations.

Ally Acker with Reel Women Media says politics play a factor in why certain people win that golden statuette: “When Mo’Nique said at the Oscars, ‘I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics,’ she must have been delusional,” Acker says. “Her performance was good, but her award was all about politics.” (more…)

This week, Kim Kardashian became the butt of criticism over a picture she posted of herself holding a cat, on Twitter. Apparently the oversized peach on stilts grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck, and this raised concern that she might be hurting the pet.

Here’s the deeply offensive picture:

I know. Sickens you, doesn’t it? Of course PETA, weighed in:

Kim Kardashian isn’t the only person who mistakenly thinks that because a mother cat picks up her kittens by the scruff of the neck that a supportive hand under the rump isn’t needed.

Right. However, the other animal group, SPCA says the hold is pretty much fine – and that’s where I get all my advice when I potty-trained Bill. (more…)

Now, there’s always a scene in zombie movies, when one non-zombie character will turn to another, and say, “If I ever turn into that, I want you to kill me.” Then they make love, and reload.

Well, I want you, dear viewer, to make the same promise to me. Except instead of killing me if I become a zombie, I want you to kill me if I ever turn into Dylan Ratigan.

I am not joking. If you see symptoms of me frothing, twitching, or ranting until my eyeballs pop out and roll across the floor – I want you to hack me to pieces with a hatchet. Try to make it quick.

See, there is a reason why no one should ever be Ratigan. He has a hard time being himself. Check him out interviewing a Tea Party leader, Mark Williams, as if Williams himself ran a concentration camp in the 1940’s. (more…)

If you’re like me, and congratulations if you are, then you try to enjoy your weekends. For example, I spent last Saturday in bed, watching my favorite soaps, eating donut holes basted in Nyquil. I call them happy holes – after seven of them, you think you’re an Angoran rabbit.

And this leads me to a key life lesson: Nyquil rules. But also: you know you’ve truly succeeded in life when your adversaries aren’t having fun on their weekends. When someone who hates you spends their Saturdays consumed by hating you, then you can safely say, you’ve won – without even raising a finger.

I mention this because I received a press release, on Saturday…yes, on Saturday…from none other than Media Matters. Yep. Instead of playing t-ball with their kids (or their ferrets dressed as kids), this outlet of internal misery just had to publish a press release about Fox News’s coverage of Haiti. Yep, while everyone else tries to do actual stuff – Media Matters is still using the earthquake to hammer its number-one enemy/one true love. (more…)

No Gregalogue today, but here’s a clip about the Newsweek article blaming sad movies on Bush!  Take a look, take-a-lookers:

Tonight’s Guests:

Ann Coulter, Professor Marc Lamont Hill, Steven Crowder, and Father Jonathan. (more…)

So last Monday’s Gregalogue on the Climate Change conference caused a flurry of emails.

Well, not really a flurry.

More like twelve. But if climate change apostles can exaggerate facts, why can’t I?

Anyway, I got one missive, which I condensed, from a guy named Jonathan. It goes:

…the Gallup poll Mr. Gutfeld mentioned … on climate change took place in 1991…Climatology is still a relatively new science and progress in the last 18 years has been substantial. There has … been a good deal of skepticism among scientists…and more recent polls show that this research has changed most of their minds. It is irresponsible to cite a poll almost 20 years old without noting it.

Jonathan then cited a poll where a large majority of respondents accept human activity as a global warming cause. (more…)

So Joy Behar had writer Andrew Sullivan on her show to discuss Sarah Palin, and by “discuss,” I mean drag her through the mud by her pony tail. My favorite part was when Behar describes Sarah’s “people” as “evil and nasty”–right before she and Sullivan go evil on Palin, launching into a 10 minute dissertation on the “hard to believe” story of the birth of Trig.

Check it out, check it outers:

Of course, Sullivan isn’t alleging a cover-up–he just can’t believe Palin’s story. Meaning, of course he’s alleging a cover-up. Whatever–the whole obsession makes me queasy–much in the way Truthers, Birthers and Sullivan’s bushy beard do as well.

Anyway, Sullivan is dining out on this, and why shouldn’t he? He is, after all, the latest recipient of the “Strange New Respect” award. This award was first coined by the American Spectator roughly thirty years ago, given to any one labeled a conservative who then veers left. This is the easiest way to gain any respect from the media: slide on over to their side, unbutton your shirt and tell them, “hey, you were right all along.” (more…)

Yesterday, Washington Post columnist and former Bush II speechwriter Michael Gerson played a long slow violin solo over the death of the mainstream media. There’s nothing new in his piece. Dazed with panic as the circle of financial ruin closes in, we’ve heard this song many times before from our ink-stained dinosaurs. And true to form, Gerson can’t break the mold. It’s all there, the rose-colored glasses, denial, and a heaping helping of rationalization.

Once again, from that familiar MSM perch where one can look down their nose at the great unwashed who just don’t understand the magnificent tradition of journalism they’re about to lose, Gerson blames We the People for no longer wanting  to pay for our news and choosing partisan sources “that reinforce and exaggerate … political predispositions.”

How absurd. (more…)

Last night, VP of Sesame Workshop Sherrie Westin joined Bill on “The O’Reilly Factor” to defend a recent show where “Sesame Street” trashed Fox News:

So, PBS, if it is true, as VP of Sesame Workshop Sherrie Westin indicated in the above segment, that the GNN (Grouchy News Network) clip exposed by Big Hollywood three weeks ago was in praise of Fox, then how do you explain this?!?!:

I don’t know what was in the head of the producers, but my guess is that this was one of those parodies that was too good to resist. But it should have been resisted. Broadcasters can tell parents whatever they think of Fox or any other network, but you shouldn’t do it through the kids. -PBS Ombudsmen Michael Getler

I guess that means you were against Pox News before you were for it, or something? (more…)

Government broadcaster PBS is running a new, five-part series on a subject naturally interesting in our time: American Experience: The 1930s. Episodes are available for online viewing here.

The program is just what one would expect from PBS: earnest, well-researched, skillfully presented, and eager to lick the boots of government while criticizing individual freedom for everything wrong in the world.

There are two important lessons to be learned from the Great Depression, in my view:

1. The government causes business cycles and downturns through its erratic, manipulative policies intended to benefit powerful voting blocs at the expense of those less able to fight back. The market works when left alone, and government interference should be limited to redressing actual harms done by one party to another. This includes combating fraud, enforcing valid contracts, and setting clear but liberal guidelines for transactions made across political borders. And nothing more.

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Whenever reading Politico, everything should be washed through this filter. You must always keep in the front of your mind that this supposed “news” organization took the time to dig up and publicize dirt on a private citizen whose only sin was asking a perfectly reasonable question of a public figure. Politico’s warning to the everyday American was clear: get in the way of our guy and we will summon all our resources to publicly humiliate you. This all goes to prove that Politico is nothing more than a digital version of the Dinosaur Media — and just as clueless and dishonest as their unholy brethren, especially when it comes to explaining why their counterparts are drowning in the tar pits of obsolescence.

To hear Politico tell it, CNN’s stuck in humiliating fourth place behind FOX, MSNBC and their own Headline News because they’ve made the mistake of not appealing to the great unwashed who prefer partisan bickering and echo chambers:

With the proliferation of media across platforms these days, there’s less shared knowledge among people, who are increasingly heading to niche outlets for information. At the same time, there’s a large appetite for the new media world where the MSM gatekeepers no longer hold as much clout, and “he said, she said” journalism gives way to strong point of view. …

There’s no doubt that the over-the-top, and politically partisan, hosts are having more success attracting viewers on nights when there’s no major news event.

And what better place for Politico to get an opinion on such a matter than The Nation aka: “The flagship of the left“:

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Normally I don’t like making fun of Columbia journalism students, because it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, if the barrel were full of Columbia journalism students.

And that would be very wrong.

But when I saw this video, I couldn’t resist. It’s of a panel, in which students are pointing out how predictable cover letters won’t help you get a job in the post j-school world. So what would? How about a rap?

And so it begins, as one student unleashes his inner Jay-Z, listing in all earnestness a lengthy promise of his many qualifications.

Roll tape, roll-tapers:

So, no surprise: the student raps benign pap that his professors and like-minded dorm-rats would applaud – from railing against complacency, to never losing touch with “his humanity.” But I’ll repeat the part the kid really wanted them to hear:

“There’s no need to hear crazy, or create a false sense of parity, like Fox News and Hannity.” (more…)

So the White House is ticked off at Fox News. So much so, they’re saying bad things about us behind our back. Last night, after work, I found a bag of soiled underpants in my locker, and for once, it didn’t belong to me. It was a novelty g-string, so I’m assuming it belongs to Gibbs.

So why is this happening? I’ll tell you, if you just calm down.

The White House is focusing on Fox News because there is no one else around to mess with. I mean, aside from Rush, and perhaps a reunited version of April Wine – they got nobody. The Republicans are hanging back, somewhere, waiting for their moment, which may never come. The Dems, however, have everything – the Houses, the President, the media, the international community of dimwitted Norwegians- but they can’t get their crap together.

So, whose fault is it? Fox News. (more…)