Want your band to get a rave review in a nationally respected newspaper? You can make a killer record, or you can grossly insult a Republican on TV.

The Roots, the house band for “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” may not have had glowing reviews in mind when it played the Fishbone song “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” as show guest Michele Bachmann sat down with Fallon.

Now, Washington Post music critic Chris Richards is singing the Roots’ praises for both its new album and its Bachmann song selection. In the middle of Richards’ review of the band’s new disk, “undun,” Richards laments that the band may best be remembered this year for the Bachmann affair, and not the new material.

The band considered it a joke. Certain corners of the media considered it an outrage. NBC apologized to Bachmann and “severely reprimanded” the Roots. Last week, with the smoke just starting to clear, bandleader Questlove said the stunt was “absolutely not” worth it.

But regardless of whether the decision was in poor taste, it underscored a bigger point about the Roots: The band members might spend their work week taking Jimmy in and out of commercial, but they’ve never stopped thinking of themselves as artists.

It’s the circle of Mainstream Media life, but let’s break it down all the same.

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Larry McMurtry is a national treasure, the man responsible for literary classics like Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show.

His op-ed skills, alas, need some fine tuning.

McMurtry took to the pages of The Washington Post this week to share his thoughts on the Tucson shooting and the ensuing cultural debate. He’s a longtime Tucson resident and felt he had something to add to the conversation.

“Brokeback Mountain” screenwriters Larry McMurtry, left, and Diana Ossana with director Ang Lee

On second thought …

His rambling essay contained the usual liberal bromides spelled out in convoluted fashion. And, worst of all, he apparently has serious misgivings about the free and unfettered political debates in this country. Why would an artist who makes his living with words fear a spirited body politic?

After a quick attack on Arizona’s lax gun restrictions – a subject wholly relevant to the matter at hand – McMurtry brings out his big guns.

Oh, sorry. Is that hate speech today?

He applauds Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for blaming heated political rhetoric for the killings, even though the entire civilized world now knows there isn’t a microscopic scrap of evidence to bolster Dupnik’s case. (more…)

Everything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, “Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror.” ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah.

They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What’s more, it ain’t over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet.Stay tuned.

When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.

I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand.  (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

Now that White House “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones has resigned, what’s next?

Inevitably, the American mainstream media – ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, et al – must be held to account for sitting on the sidelines as this major story kept building without them, went viral on YouTube, and then became so large that a key appointee of President Obama was forced to step down.

But with their decision to ignore the Jones story, they may have actually done Mr. Obama far more harm than good: Who vetted this guy? How did he get past the FBI? What did he say, and how did he answer the infamous seven-page questionnaire that all Obama appointees were required to fill out? Inquiring Freedom of Information Act minds want to know.

For most people in this country, the resignation was the first they had heard of Van Jones. For this sin of journalistic omission, there’s institutional media blame. Bias is too tame a word for the utter shamelessness on display: Only Republican scandals – real and imagined – matter. (more…)

A lot has been written lately about how comedy writers are having a hard time finding humor in President Obama. “He’s just too competent,” they say.

The answer is obvious. They, on the left, are having trouble making fun of the left.

But what about us? We have a bigger problem. How are we supposed to make fun of the left?

When I get together for coffee with my fellow pragmatic, reality based, sort-of-right-wing comedy writers (many of whom still speak in hushed tones here in Manhattan, as they are still in the closet), I find I have nothing to poke fun at as I scan the morning papers. I used to relish tearing apart an op-ed from the Times or a column from Slate in front of my buddies, but lately I am left wanting. There is nothing funny anymore. One cannot parody a parody.

Here, let’s try. Take a look at this Sally Quinn article in The Washington Post, in which she “defends” Michelle Obama, after saying that “She has come under attack for exposing her arms.” (Has she? Did Sally Quinn just make that up? Could you find me someone who has done that?)

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Most 12-step programs start out by requiring that people understand that they’re powerless over their addiction and that only by turning their lives over to a Power greater than themselves can they be restored to sanity.  Far be it for me to suggest that I am that Power, but clearly someone has to step in and try to rescue these poor liberal souls.  Even the most harebrained among them deserves that much.

First, though, they have to acknowledge that Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Charles Rangel, Harry Reid and Charles Schumer, are not moderates, but, rather, leftists with a Socialist agenda.  Furthermore, they must recognize that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN, the three major networks, the news magazines and the New Yorker, are not objective in their reporting of political events, and neither are Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher, in their commentary.  If these entities and individuals are not on the payroll of the DNC, they certainly should be.  They certainly put in longer hours than Howard Dean. (more…)