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.

The joke wouldn’t connect unless dishonest media outlets misused Romney’s actual quote to paint him as a cold, unfeeling bureaucrat who doesn’t blink when it comes time to lay people off.

It’s the kind of theme Obama will use, no doubt, during the presidential campaign. And “SNL” and other late-night hosts will be right there, of course, to keep hammering the message home, no charge.

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.

Rebels of all stripes who come to this film with open eyes will be inspired by a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a warrior who took on the system and won.

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.

The Kennedys hits upon all the old notes; patriarch Joe, ambassador to England at the start or World War II, was a vocal opponent of America’s involvement in any action against Hitler. In other words — he was an appeaser. Joe Jr. was the family’s “chosen one” who was charged with redeeming the family’s reputation, but tragically died when his overloaded plane crashed on takeoff while attempting a reckless bombing raid over Germany. JFK liked the ladies and, while ambitious himself, was uncomfortable with the mantle of family redemption that fell on his shoulders after Joe Jr.’s death. RFK was the pragmatic child who later turns idealistic, though not in parts 1 and 2. And the Kennedy women are loving and supportive while suffering private humiliation silently over the infidelity the Kennedy men treated as every bit the sport as their famous touch football games.

In other words, you know all of this already.

Greg Kinnear plays the older JFK and plays him well. Tom Wilkinson plays Joe Sr. with all the skill you’d expect from such a master. The most surprising performance, and by far the best, is one that upon reflection, shouldn’t surprise anyone — Barry Pepper as RFK. None of these stars do impressions, they play the characters. The Kennedy accent is well known, but lesser actors could have fallen into the trap of simply “doing” the accent and passing that off as performance. That’s not the case here. 

The Kennedys is not a linear story. It tells multiple stories in flashbacks, but is mainly set on election night 1960 when JFK wins the White House. PT-109 is covered, as is the mystery of how JFK’s boat could be rammed by a 300 foot Japanese ship without anyone seeing it coming. We also learn of the jealousy and sibling rivalry over the medals JFK received for his heroism.

Joe Sr. and JFK are portrayed as they were, womanizers who managed to disconnect their extracurricular activities from the genuine love they had for their devoted spouses. They were both reprehensible human beings in their treatment of women. Oddly, though, RFK’s portrayal is the closest to hero-worship. RFK and his wife Ethel are shown to be in a genuine loving relationship and their interactions are always sincere.

We see JFK stumble in his first bid for the US House, messing up a stump speech due to nerves. But then we see him get his sea legs while speaking to a group of Gold Star mothers, a group to which, thanks to the tragic death of his older brother Joe, his mother now belongs. No one is brilliant out of the box, and this transformation, as quickly as it went and as minor as it was on the screen, helps humanize JFK. And Kinnear does a great job with it.

But it’s not all good. Katie Holmes plays Jackie with all the sincerity you’d expect from an episode of Dawson’s Creek. She slightly resembles Jackie and is borderline good in the quiet moments when it’s just her and JFK having a typical husband/wife conversation, but she loses you when she’s angry. There’s a scene where her mother, who has been jaded by life and her own failed marriage, advises her of the fact that Jack can’t be faithful and the Kennedy family discards what they want when they’re done with it. Holmes yells at her mother in a way you’d expect to hear from the stage of a high school play.

But the meat of the story, the Kennedy family itself, is perfectly cast and portrays it (based upon books I’ve read and documentaries I’ve seen) with an honesty — warts and all, that the screen hasn’t seen before.

It’s not the best mini-series ever (that honor goes to Lonesome Dove), at least not yet, but it is certainly not the “political hit job” those determined to protect the Kennedy from the truth would have you believe.

The Kennedys were human, all too much in some cases, but they did accomplish great things. Painting them as “American royalty,” as many do, belies the reality that they sought that power, it was not thrust upon them at birth. The Kennedys were and are not royalty, they were an ambitious family with the means and the will to fulfill that ambition at nearly any cost. There is a lot to be admired about that drive, but the means by which they chose to achieve it — something not unique to them or just Democrats — should also serve as a cautionary tale.

It remains to be seen if that is the lesson of The Kennedys, but thus far it is well worth seeing.

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:

• Chevron Corporation is the defendant in a contentious lawsuit — now 17-years-old — being tried in an Ecuadoran court;

• The Amazon Defense Coalition, an Ecuador-based nonprofit that claims to represent thousands of poor citizens of the third-world country, is the plaintiff;

• Representing the plaintiff in the lawsuit is a legal team headed by New York-based trial lawyer Steven Donziger;

• Joseph Berlinger is the man who produced the controversial 2009 documentary, “CRUDE,” which, though only 1 hour and 45 minutes in length, seems endless in its criticism of Chevron; and
  

• Members of the mainstream media have covered the lawsuit in anti-Chevron stories similar to a CBS News 60 Minutes segment, “Amazon Crude,” that aired May 3, 2009.

On April 30, attorneys for the San Ramon, Calif.-based oil giant asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplain in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to order the release of outtakes from Berlinger’s flick, arguing that they might contain incriminating information that might help settle the case sooner than later. Within days, the judge granted Chevron’s request and ordered the release of outtakes from “CRUDE.”

Several months passed until, lo and behold, the folks at Chevron were proven right!

On Aug. 3, I shared a report, the title of which — ‘Crude’ Footage Reveals Lies Behind Trial Lawyers’ Suit Against Chevron — revealed what was uncovered by Carter Wood at the National Association of Manufacturers’ Shop Floor blog.

Fast forward to Oct. 7, 2010, some five months after Judge Kaplan declared the outtakes were fair game. In a memo to his court clerk, he stated that copies of the outtakes should be provided to three requesters — Thomson Reuters, American Lawyer Magazine and ALM Media — as well as to “any member of the public who requests (them) upon payment of the reasonable cost of duplication and blank media.”

As of today, I could find no evidence that any of the outtakes have been published. Not by any of the requesters. Not even by CBS News!

Why? Because the amount Chevron would have to pay if it loses the lawsuit is estimated at $113 billion — up from $27 billion figure reported in previous reports about the case — and nothing would make members of the left-wing media happier than to take a huge financial chunk like that out of “Big Oil.”

I close with two messages:

To the mainstream media, I say, “Your bias is showing!”

To Mr. Berlinger, I say, “I hope you remember how much emphasis you placed on your First Amendment freedom of expression when you were vehemently opposing the release of outtakes from your film [To refresh your memory, click here or here]. When people start to air the outtakes from your film in YouTube videos, remember that those outtakes are now part of the public record and, therefore, protected by federal law.”

Stay tuned!

NOTE: For more background about this case, read more than three-dozen posts I’ve written about it during the past 18 months.

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?

-Obviously, Global Warming. The increasing temperature forced him to jog at night, and he found the sunlight oppressive. Plus, it made his beard itch.

-Wall Street greed. Faisal had just seen “Capitalism: A Love Story,” became enraged, but got lost and ended up in the theater district. Better luck next time.

-Bill Ayers never returned his sweatpants after that weekend in Catalina. Sure, it was a great time, but those sweatpants had sentimental value.

-Lenscrafters was completely out of the Rachel Maddow collection. So he had to settle for a David Shuster knockoff.

-The latest incarnation of “The Lion King” was unoriginal and passionless. Worse, it didn’t reflect the damage George Bush did to the world the way “American Idiot” did.

-They’re building a Wal-Mart down the road, and their affordable prices deeply offended his “mom and pop” sensibilities.

-Norman Mailer doesn’t blog nearly as much on the Huffington Post as he used to.

-The electrolysis didn’t work on his pubes.

-The lack of diversity in the workplace is disgusting – well, except for MSNBC. They get a pass because their hearts are in the right place.

-That same sex marriage won’t lead to the option of marrying a goat.

- That George Clooney didn’t find anyone at the end of “Up in the Air.” Although I suppose – he did find himself.

And..

-Those evil tea partiers made of mockery of Islam with their delightful bacon and egg salad sandwiches.

I’ll stop there, because it really is the tea partier’s fault–for they created the climate of hate that only encouraged Shazhad’s actions In fact – I’d say the car bomb was a direct result of the tea partiers, the new Arizona immigration bill, Rush Limbaugh, offshore drilling, and of course, Fox News.

Because all that stuff is evil. Unlike, you know, real evil.

Should be a delightful showcase of intelligent talent on this here show!

We’ve got..

comedian Joe Devito

all around entertainer Steven Crowder!

the delightful and beautiful Brooke Goldstein

and finally, Gail Lebowitz, from Sunset Daze!

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.

Based on the information so far, the honchos at Comedy Central are cowering like the Dutch. A spokesman for Comedy Central said, according to the Times, that it was not giving permission for the episode to run, without censorship, on the studio’s website.

A few questions:

First, where is Homeland Security on this? (Oh, never mind, they’re most likely busy infiltrating Tea Parties.)

Second, what is it about animation and cartoons that these idiots cannot understand or abide? There is probably no point in trying to explain to them that this is a cartoon series and is deliberately, delightfully offensive (the original pilot for the program was entitled “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe”). Ever see any of the episodes about the gay teacher? And his leather-clad “assistant,” Mr. Slave? If you happened by any chance actually to be a gay schoolteacher who saw those shows, you either: a) wanted to die, or b) were dying laughing and will continue to chuckle every time you think about it for the rest of your life.

Planet Earth to Revolution Muslim: You need a sense of humor to live in this country. Otherwise go away.

Last, why are our media outlets run by jellyfish? Are there no bravehearts in the newsrooms and control rooms anymore? The Emmy-winning “South Park” is a take-no-prisoners sort of show whose main characters Stan and Kyle (not to mention the inimitable, somewhat anti-Semitic Cartman) bravely tread where no newspaper commentator, Op-Ed columnist, cable news bloviator, or talk radio loudmouth will ever dare to go. They go, literally, where the sun don’t shine. Stone and Parker are — like Theo Van Gogh — free-speech fundamentalists. Are we going to allow courageous artists to go it alone? We can’t let the bullies win.

Comedy Central needs a backbone, and Revolution Muslim needs a bitch-slapping. This is a situation about which the Left and the Right can easily agree.

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.”

“After 82 years, the Academy had to award a woman or there would have been a revolt,” she said about the Best Director Oscar. “Why not award a woman who shoots guy stuff as well, or better than the guys?”

Women & Hollywood blogger Melissa Silverstein says via her site that Weaver threw Bigelow “under the bus in a big way.”  She continued, “I know that [Weaver] loves Cameron. He gave her some of her greatest parts. But really, do you have to diss a fellow hard working director? And I find it interesting to have a very high profile woman diss another high profile woman. Well, we all love the catfight. Ugh.”

Weaver’s comments tarnish Bigelow’s Oscar in a way that wouldn’t have happened with other nominees, she says.  “Would anyone be talking about this if [Quentin] Tarantino or one of the other guys had won over Cameron?” she asks.

Jane Fleming, President of Women In Film, took a more moderate tone in her statement regarding the incident:

Women In Film is thrilled for Kathryn Bigelow and applauds her historic win. As an organization, we don’t need to spend time judging the opinions of others as much as we need to continue on our mission to foster, train and financially support female filmmakers so that we can reach a moment in history when there are enough women represented in the creative arts that their work will be judged simply on its own merit, not on the gender of the person who created it.

The bigger question remains unanswered: Why didn’t more women in Hollywood speak out on their own to defend Bigelow?

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.

But then they add, “the manner in which Ms. Kardashian is holding the kitten could lead others to mishandle animals.”

Which makes no sense. If the way she’s holding the furball is fine, how could it cause others to hurt other cats? Weird. It’s like the media’s take on the tea parties. Sure, their protests are peaceful, but it could lead others to extremist violence!

Hopefully not against kittens.

Anyway, this little tale shows you how much animal rights activists really know about animals. It’s slightly less than their knowledge about humanity, which is nil. Fact is, they got into animal rights because people can’t stand them. So they find comfort in this activism, thinking they’re doing something for animals, when they’re just doing something for their egos.

In fact, Kim’s kitten clutch is the natural, correct way to hold a kitten. Sorry PETA: Mommy cats can’t cradle the kitten’s bottom in its “supportive hand.” Because it doesn’t have a hand. It has paws. Hence they carry the kitten by the teeth – which is also how Andy Levy transports Pixel and Stormy when he’s moving apartments.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe who heckles during sex.
Tonight we’ve got comedian Jim Florentine, gossip maven Tara Palmeri, and FBN’s Sandra Smith!

Plus, other stuff.

and…i’ll be on Hannity later tonight!

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.

Does Williams get a chance to respond? Not really. Because when he tries, Ratty accuses him of trying to hijack the interview!

Anyway, I guess the segment was meant to analyze the fringe elements in an otherwise earnest movement filled with decent people. But because the analyst is Dylan Ratigan and the couch is MSNBC, you know it was just a ruse used to paint all tea partiers as a bunch of Nazi-sympathizers who eat babies.

More delightful, though, is the segment banner, which reads “Anger in America.” Which makes sense – judging from his manufactured outrage, the angriest person in America is Dylan Ratigan.

It must suck doing Rachel Maddow’s laundry.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a homophobic racist tea-partying baby-eater.

Tonight!

Imogen Lloyd Webber (a delight!)

Rick Leventhal (dashing!)

the great author Andrew Klavan

….and more!