ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – GOP Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann received an apology from an NBC executive after an off-color song was played during her appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s “Late Night,” her spokeswoman said late Wednesday.

The Minnesota congresswoman received a personal letter from NBC’s vice president for late night programming, Doug Vaughan, a day after she appeared on the show. As Bachmann walked onstage, the show’s band had played a snippet of a 1985 Fishbone song entitled “Lyin’ Ass B—-.”

Vaughan wrote that the incident was “not only unfortunate but also unacceptable,” Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart told The Associated Press. She said Vaughn offered his sincerest apologies and said the band had been “severely reprimanded.”

Fallon also apologized to Bachmann when they spoke earlier Wednesday, she said. He’d tweeted earlier, saying he was “so sorry about the intro mess.”

“He was extremely nice and friendly and offered his apology, and she accepted it,” Stewart said, adding that the comedian said he was unaware the band planned to play the song. “It’s just unfortunate that someone had to do something so disrespectful.” (more…)

***UPDATE: Gov. Huckabee’s released a statement:

“I was asked about Oscar-winner Natalie Portman’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar trophy and I am glad she will marry her baby’s father. However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not “slam” or “attack” Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country.”

I agree that the use of the terms “attack” and “slam” go too far — which is why I was careful to use “criticize” in the headline. I also agree he didn’t criticize her or anyone else for being a single mother. I didn’t criticize either the Governor or Medved for that. My issue was their contention that Portman was somehow promoting single motherhood. Furthermore, I also think singling the Governor out as most outlets have done is unfair, which is why I included Michael Medved in both the story and the headline. However, if you read the transcript, Huckabee does make it sound as though Portman “boasted” about her situation, which I found unfair and which lays the rest of his statement at her feet, at least in part. This was the focus of my criticism.

***END UPDATE

In the past and with great relish I’ve criticized Natalie Portman on this site for her political musings, and I couldn’t agree more that glamorizing single motherhood and downplaying the necessity of the father is as destructive to our society as anything. Dan Quayle was absolutely right in criticizing “Murphy Brown” and after all the snotty left-wing snarking quieted, I think we can all agree that history acquitted Quayle — even Murphy Brown herself admitted the former Vice President was correct. Natalie Portman, however, is not Murphy Brown. She never glamorized single motherhood. If anything, she glamorized motherhood, and that’s all the difference in the world.

And so, as much as I respect and personally admire Michael Medved and Governor Mike Huckabee, it’s impossible for me to defend either against the criticism they’re facing. Their misguided attack on Ms. Portman wasn’t only unfair, it played right into the hands of almost every negative stereotype of the social, religious conservative there is.

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For starters, unlike Murphy Brown, Portman is not a fictional character. She’s a living, breathing human being who has just been unfairly singled out and held up for a public shaming. Secondly, she’s been with the father of her child for two years now and the two of them are currently engaged and appear to be very much in love. Only in its narrowest meaning does the term “single mother” even apply here. In the real world, Portman is not on her own and the child does and will have a father in its life. 

(more…)

“Is the ecstatic truth actually a religious term?”

That question was posed to Werner Herzog a few weeks ago in an interview with the German broadsheet Die Zeit (The Time). Those of you who tuned in last week know that ecstatic truth is Herzog’s way of describing the poetic, transcendent heights of illumination to which his films aspire. “Yes, there is something of that there,” Herzog replied, “something of late medieval mysticism.”

However, he immediately provided a caveat, one that should warm the cockles of conservative hearts everywhere: “But I want to get away from the religious, from the mystical,” he stressed, “because it leads all too quickly to the cloudy waters of the New Age, which is the most horrific thing you can possibly imagine in the spiritual realm.” And then, the coup de grace: “And this is something you see in a film like Avatar, by the way.”

Whoops — guess Herzog didn’t get his marching orders this awards season! (more…)

[Ed. Note: This is part two of a two-part series. You can read part one here.]

The Noble Redskin, or Blueskin stereotype that James Cameron’s Avatar shoves down historically ignorant sci-fi geeks throats is one of the most damaging myths in our country’s history today. Cameron’s Na’vi are definitely warrior-like and have geographic based clans, the mountain people, the coastal people etc., but there is no mention of previous inter-tribal warfare and inter-culture wounds to mend. The Na’vi are good, noble and courageous while the humans, American type humans at that, except for the scientists are greedy, selfish and bloodthirsty. Michael  Medved’s excellent recent book The Ten Big Lies About America quotes less then politically correct Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlanc showing that genocides and land raids amongst regional and ethnic groups have always been the norm for native peoples, regardless of ethnicity.

Historian Elliot West’s award winning 1998 book The Contested Plains also points out that inter-tribal warfare before the white man hit the shores of North America claimed many more native lives then warfare between the tribes and Europeans. I guess Cameron’s Na’vi are just so much more evolved then our own real-life historical Indian tribes. That doesn’t even include the good old cannibalistic Aztecs who managed to make more then a few of the neighboring tribes part of their daily menu. Did you ever wonder how Cortez and his small band of merry Spaniards managed to make allies of almost all of the surrounding tribes? It wound up being pretty damn easy to do when the local bully has been using you and yours as a convenient Burger King for the last few generations. (more…)

“When’s the movie coming out?”

I have been asked that question repeatedly over the course of seven years of book-signings for Sparrowhawk at Colonial Williamsburg’s Booksellers by eager patrons who have read the series and wish to see it on the big screen.

“Not any time soon,” I usually answer. “If it is ever produced, it won’t be by Hollywood. And if Hollywood in some episode of hubris thought it could tackle it, it would attempt to maul and dismember it, just out of sheer, doctrinaire meanness, coupled with incompetence. I would likely disown the result. After all, Hollywood hates America.”

I borrow the title of film critic Michael Medved‘s book-long critique of Hollywood (Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). Neither he nor his book is the subject here, but rather the culture that cannot produce Sparrowhawk or any other nominally pro-American, pro-freedom film — including the “traditional” ones which Medved has championed in his book and in various conservative and religious columns (promoting family, God, and other, non-intellectual, non-fundamental values — “Leave It to Beaver“ style, with Ward Cleaver taking questions from the audience). (more…)

Unlike most conservatives, when I first heard about cash for clunkers, I got very excited.  But then I found out that it involved people turning in their used cars.  I had jumped to the conclusion that we were all going to get money if we delivered politicians to some collection center.  Just imagine getting $4,500 for dropping off, say, Henry Waxman at a junkyard where, together with fellow California jalopies like Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, they could be crushed and shipped off to China.  You would have to agree that would be a pretty good deal even if no money changed hands. 

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One of my liberal readers sent me an e-mail stating that the health care system in America is in terrible shape and needs a huge overhaul, which is why he was supporting Obama’s plan.  I wrote back to say that I agreed that the system needed fine-tuning, but, like Charles Krauthammer, I felt that the work consisted mainly of separating health insurance from employment and bringing about radical tort reform so that doctors didn’t have to spend more time worrying about being sued than they did about the health of their patients.  I went on to add that if I was wrong, things could always be changed, but if he and Obama were wrong, a huge federal bureaucracy would be created and you can’t kill one of those even with a silver bullet or a wooden stake through its heart. (more…)

A few years ago, I re-connected with a guy I hadn’t seen in about 50 years.  We’d been friends in junior high, but once my family moved, Gary and I wound up attending different high schools.  Which is pretty much like living on different planets. 

After he came across my stuff on the Internet, Gary contacted me and suggested getting together for lunch.  And so we did.  While reminiscing about the old days, I told him that I was still grateful that he’d taught me to play tennis.  He was surprised to hear that I still played.  But his surprise was nothing compared to mine when he said that he was grateful that I’d introduced him to good books and great music.  Quite honestly, I hadn’t realized I’d done that.  Unlike his teaching me tennis, it wasn’t something I’d set out to do.  But he assured me that I was the first person he’d ever known who read Steinbeck and Dickens, Salinger and Dostoyefsky, Hugo and Twain, Robert Benchley and S.J. Perelman, and who listened to classical music.  (more…)