“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.

—–

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. 

Finally, nothing Portman said or did during Sunday’s Academy Awards’ telecast resembles Monday’s exchange between Huckabee and Medved on Medved’s nationally syndicated radio show:

MEDVED: [T]here was one moment where a very brilliant and admirable actress named Natalie Portman won Best Actress, and she won for a movie which I loathed called Black Swan. But in any event, she got up, she was very visibly pregnant, and it’s really it’s a problem because she’s about seven months pregnant, it’s her first pregnancy, and she and the baby’s father aren’t married, and before two billion people, Natalie Portman says, ‘Oh I want to thank my love and he’s given me the most wonderful gift.’ He didn’t give her the most wonderful gift, which would be a wedding ring! And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic.

HUCKABEE: You know Michael, one of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine.’ But there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.

Medved’s factually wrong here.  Again, Portman’s engaged to be married, so she already has the promise of the wedding ring and she also didn’t thank her “love” for a “wonderful gift,” she thanked the man she’s going to marry for giving her the “most important role of my life” — meaning motherhood.  She also thanked her parents for giving her life. As a social conservative, I personally beamed upon hearing this, upon hearing a lovely young woman enjoying one of the very peak’s of her success and using the opportunity to give life a shout-out. What Portman did Sunday night was very un-Hollywood. In front of the biggest audience she’ll likely ever face, she let the world know that motherhood is her most important role, her highest priority.

For some reason, Medved says he found that message “problematic.” But in what way? Again, Portman was in no way glamorizing single motherhood, if she was glamorizing anything it was motherhood. We need more of this, and when the joyless, totalitarian feminists attacked Portman the following day, the fact that all the right people felt so threatened only confirms the beauty of Portman’s message.

Governor Huckabee’s piling on is equally wrong-headed. I’m no theologian, I just know what I know, but the public shaming and singling out of a woman for getting pregnant out of wedlock feels the opposite of Christian to me. Again, Portman is not Murphy Brown, she’s a living, breathing human being with feelings and making the very best out of her situation – and doing so, in my opinion, with dignity and class. Furthermore, this shaming is based on something that isn’t true. Huckabee accuses Portman of boasting over her situation when all she boasted over was the importance of motherhood in her life.

Medved and Huckabee’s underlying message here is correct but within the context of Ms. Portman it falls on its face. And I get that you can be on live radio and the conversation can get ahead of you. I’ve been in that situation and can think of more than a few things I’d like to take back — which is what I would do if I were Huckabee and Medved, I would apologize.

Just a couple weeks ago Michael Medved publicly criticized Rush Limbaugh and others for, in his opinion, going too far with their criticizing of Obama, claiming it hurt the movement. Well, I think Monday both he and the Governor did our movement no favors. Many of Natalie Portman’s political opinions deserve criticism and even mockery, but she’s a human being in a very human and imperfect situation that she’s handling as well as anyone could. From what I’ve seen, she’s going to be a terrific mother and deserves only support and best wishes from those of us who believe in life and that motherhood is the most important role in life.

The world needs more Natalie Portmans in Hollywood, and I regret not saying so at the time. I’ve been awfully quick to criticize her and it shouldn’t have taken this situation to give credit where its due.

We are all so imperfect.

She’s done this with racism, and now she’s doing it with the distinction between fact and opinion.

For instance, when Whoopi told Governor Mike Huckabee she doesn’t regret anything she’s said, she was at least willing to admit she’s said things that were controversial. But she said she stood behind them because they were all representative of her “opinion.”

Goldberg’s defense of her statements, admittedly based on “opinion,” proved ironic at best, considering the FACT that she spent a considerable portion of the Huckabee interview attacking bloggers for “[saying] endless stuff” for which they “don’t have to fact check.” In other words, she attacked bloggers for making statements based on opinion.

Moreover, when Goldberg appeared on Fox News’s O’Reilly on November 23rd, she rejected facts O’Reilly presented to her. From the fact that the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; to the fact that “90 percent of the terrorists” in the world are Muslim to the fact that Jews are still a more persecuted people group than any other, Goldberg sidestepped all by regurgitating the same liberal talking points again and again. She finally dismissed O’Reilly’s points altogether by saying that she and he “disagreed.” (Ironically, in her appearance on Huckabee two days prior to O’Reilly, Goldberg said: “I think fact outweighs assumption. So if you have facts in your hands, then you can talk.” Yet when O’Reilly had facts “in [his] hand,” Goldberg rejected them because they weren’t congruent with her worldview.)

While everyone can appreciate Goldberg’s praise of facts over opinions, no one can ignore her habit of talking a big game then failing to show up when the rubber hits the road. She praised facts on Huckabee, perhaps knowing it was a setting where she wouldn’t be forced to answer for her inconsistencies, but suffered the full force of a counter attack on O’Reilly, where she was not allowed to be loose with her speech.

It seems Goldberg needs to heed the words of John Adams, second president of the United States, before giving others the “fact” talk again. Said Adams: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

In other words, whether you’re on Huckabee, O’Reilly, or The View, facts are facts (and facts prove Goldberg wrong).

—–

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Balloon Boy, New GOP Website, Senator Olympia Snowe, Hillary Clinton, President Obama, Soledad O’Brien, Celebrity Jeopardy!, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Senior Citizens, and Mike Huckabee.

The big topics of the week were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the presidential fly killing:

The election of Mahmoud was compared by the talk show hosts alternately to the 2000 Presidential and the 2008 Minnesota Senate elections. Fallon claimed that now that his opponent lost, he’ll go on to make a documentary about Global Warming.  David Letterman actually did a joke almost every single night, changing the punchline from Florida voting machines, to Pat Buchanan, Al Gore, Al Franken and Jeb Bush.  Bill Maher used Norm Coleman then criticized his audience for not knowing who he was talking about. The funniest line was Ferguson’s who claimed that Iranian politics have finally gotten as corrupt as Chicago.

Ferguson and Conan get the Writers Over Shoulders Award for making a joke about the fly being eaten like a lizard.  Ferguson speculated that it would be done by Cheney, while Conan put a computer animated tongue in the president’s mouth, snapping the fly off his wrist. Kimmel gets an honorable mention for putting a sound effect of flatulence behind the video so it looked like the President was trying to fan the odor away.

The Most Overused Person as a Punchline goes to Thomas Prusik Parkin, the man who dressed up like his dead mother to collect her social security check. David Letterman accused both Elton John and Barry Manilow of dressing like their mothers on alternate nights. The funniest line he said was that he was so good at dressing up like an old woman that Ashton Kutcher wanted to date him. (He told a similar joke the following night, saying if he wanted to look like an old woman he should have dressed up like Madonna.)

John McCain buying a hybrid was another big story of the week getting attention from Conan, Fallon and Letterman who used it for ageist jokes. Letterman claimed that a Hybrid to McCain would be a horse and buggy while Conan claimed that to McCain, hybrid meant an AM/FM radio. Fallon claimed that seven months ago he couldn’t use a computer, but now he’ll have a hybrid and a twitter account; perhaps he’s the new Benjamin Button.

Jimmy Fallon reached all the way back to an administration that predated his talk show career to deliver the Lamest Attempt at an Obama Joke, claiming that George Bush tried to one-up the new President by killing a fly himself, but it took 20 minutes of clumsy two handed swatting. There were also a couple Bill Clinton as a predator jokes during the week. But the Oldest Presidential Reference goes to Stephen Colbert, who ran Richard Nixon’s quote about Bohemian Grove being “faggy.”

Most of the week’s Obama material centered on the fly. One exception was Jon Stewart who derided the President for trying to fix Health Care in the middle of a war on two fronts and trying to keep the nation from looking like it did in the Grapes of Wrath. But the Funniest Obama Line goes to Conan who claimed that while President Obama was on the phone talking to Phil Jackson and Dan Bylsma, Joe Biden got to talk to Tito Jackson and a real penguin.

The Most Interesting Interview of the week was Governor Mike Huckabee on the Jon Stewart Show. Governor Huckabee very clearly laid out the constitutional pro-life position for the Daily Show audience. Stewart, was defenseless against a rational case for the rights of the unborn, especially since Huckabee’s position was not based in religion, zealotry or misogyny–the straw men Stewart usually attacks. His audience also appeared stunned, as they were not able to perform their trademark trained seal-clap more than a couple times during Stewart’s humiliation.

The Angriest White Man is still Bill Maher, who after a brief flirtation with moderateness, struck back at those of us who congratulated his criticism of Obama. In a remarkably unfunny rant, Maher warned Republicans:

And as far as you folks on the right, who think that we’re now somehow in league: we’re not in league. I was criticizing Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douchebags you live to defend.  I don’t want to be on your team, pick another kid.

Gee, all we did was compliment him for being fair.

Besides Letterman, perhaps there might have been another threat issued down to a host last week. It seems David wasn’t the only one, who had to apologize to his “sponsors.”

The first was while I was watching a guy I really like, Governor Mike Huckabee on Fox News. After watching Gov. Huckabee do a lot of guest spots on its other shows, Fox decided to give the Governor his own talk show. Being a great guest and an outstanding leader doesn’t mean you are automatically a great host. I watched the show the first time it was on and cringed but figured he was a good speaker and was used to talking to folks after being a pastor so he would grow into the role. After this weekend with the three Miss Americas and Rosie Perez someone should speak to the Governor. Does he know anyone who will tell him he makes a good talking head but if he ever wants to be taken seriously again for any major political office he should stop doing his talk show? Two of the Miss Americas singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” was ironic in that that it is exactly what Fox should do with this show, send it somewhere on vacation. Does Fox not have a budget for writers? If the monologue jokes were any lamer they would have to come out in a wheelchair. Please, Governor Huckabee, for the sake of all conservatives everywhere stop being a third rate Jimmy Kimmel and start putting your organization together for 2012.

Then we had sweet lovable Helen Thomas making a fool of herself in front of yet another president. My Great Uncle is 93 and the state of Pennsylvania and his step daughter recently stepped in and took his drivers license after he sideswiped three cars on his way to church. Can’t someone who loves poor Helen do the same with her press pass? Isn’t there a nice group of Red Hat ladies she could go to Vegas with? You’d think the rest of the liberal “journalists” might have had a word with her a few months ago when she started spewing all her “what else should a journalist be except a liberal” stuff. But no, Helen Thomas is the AIG of White House reporters she is too big to fail!

Finally, where are the friends of Brett Favre? Why doesn’t his wife or his best hunting buddy take his Internet connection away from him at this time of year? This is the third straight year he has retired from football which I believe moves him ahead of George Blanda on the all-time list. Why didn’t he just let the Jets know he wasn’t coming back and head down to the bayou for some alone time?

I was just rereading this and thought it might be too snarky, I wish my buddy Bill was here to set me straight. Cue the James Taylor and fade to black.