Read backstories here , and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust would soon upload video of retired and off-duty rent-a-cops posing as on-duty cops at the Jimmy Kimmel stunt shoot, when cameramen turned their spotlights on a teen pro-life protester. Following are a couple. In this 1st video Troy Newman of
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Video: Jimmy Kimmel’s Rent-A-Cops Pose as Active Duty While Film Crew Burns Pro-Life Protester with Spotlight
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Tagged Abortion, altercation, angeles-daily, bennyhollywood, built, camera, celeb news, film, Hollywood, jimmy-kimmel, politics, scene, stars, white
It looks like some combination of the Texas heat and the fear of losing his bid for reelection. Probably more of the latter, huh?
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Open Thread: Another Dem Lets Loose on a Constituent
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Tagged celeb news, fear, News, open thread, politics, some-combination, stars, texas, the-fear, the-latter, TMZ
I’m fairly confident but not certain this didn’t initially come from The Onion — a fawning profile of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow written by MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman. “This is the rare 21st-century TV news star,” Friedman writes, “an un-self-absorbed celebrity.” “Maddow, 37, is the voice of reason at MSNBC,” Friedman elaborates. “Notable for their verbal brawn, the hosts of cable news shows often behave on air as if they’re competing for a gold medal in preening. Maddow gets her point across in a restrained but emphatic way. She doesn’t feel a need to outshout her guests.” Here is my favorite paragraph in Friedman’s soliloquy, which ought to have been subtitled, “Not incidentally, I agree with her politics” — The tone is unique. Maddow says she presents ‘essays, which have a thesis, facts, analysis and conclusions. That way, I think, I don’t invite pounding on the table or yelling at people.’ Allow me to provide an example, from Maddow’s trip to Afghanistan last week. During an interview with Brigadier General Ben Hodges on the costs of reconstruction and how they’ll be covered, Maddow said this (first part of embedded video) — MADDOW: People needed to provide policing, basic services, the kind of government jobs that you’re talking about, obviously you need good, committed Afghan nationalists essentially to do that. You need people who want to do it for their country, people who are brave and willing to see that transition through. Who’s going to pay their salaries in the long run? HODGES: Well, that’s a great point. I think, you know, Afghanistan does not have oil but they certainly have incredible mineral wealth, potential … MADDOW (after interview, raising finger for emphasis): Afghan mineral wealth. It’s not quite in the category of the mythical Caribbean walrus from BP’s oil spill response plan, but maybe it’s close. Followed by Maddow contradicting herself less than two minutes later in her July 7 broadcast while being led through a Kabul marketplace by NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel (second part of embedded video) — ENGEL: They have turquoise, rubies, emeralds. Obviously, recently the country’s been famous, in the news recently because they discovered all these minerals in the mountains, a trillion dollars or more … MADDOW: Well, they discovered, discovered … ENGEL: …. They’re still in the rocks … MADDOW: We’re talking about them again. We’ve sort of always known that Afghanistan had incredible mineral wealth. ENGEL: Yes. MADDOW: I mean, everything from lapis to lithium. Hmm, would these be examples of Maddow’s “voices” of reason? Or how about when she suggested to Hodges — on the July 4th weekend, no less — that America’s presence in Afghanistan was “inherently corrupting” ? As any devout left-winger will tell you, this describes America’s presence anywhere — including America. Or when Maddow claimed this past Sunday on “Meet the Press” that shelling out more unemployment benefits is “the most stimulative thing you can do” for the economy. That being the case, imagine the phantasmagorically stimulative effect of laying off most federal workers and paying them unemployment benefits instead. In fairness to Friedman, he does couch his description of Maddow — she is “the voice of reason at MSNBC .” That she is — at least compared to the bellicose buffoonery of Ed Schultz, the pompous self-importance of Keith Olbermann, and the manic meanderings of Chris Matthews.
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MarketWatch Writer Praises Maddow as … Wait for It … ‘Voice of Reason’
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Tagged afghanistan, country, dollars-or-more, Hollywood, jon friedman, News, People, politics, rachel maddow show, rachel-maddow, Voice
Here’s another slightly dated example of leftist America-bashing on the taxpayer-funded airwaves over the patriotic holiday weekend. PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley interviewed leftist director Oliver Stone on July 2 about his Hugo Chavez-smooching documentary South of the Border. Stone denounced Hillary Clinton as “an agent of the old empire game,” and when Smiley nudged Stone about Chavez’s remarks, Stone insisted he loved it when Chavez called Bush the Devil: “I think that’s a great comment. I think it’s true….He is the devil. He was.” Smiley didn’t simply celebrate Stone (as he did, with say, Van Jones, boldly professing he would take a bullet for Jones ), but he was gentle in bringing up some hard questions. He suggested he didn’t really want to dwell on the Bush-as-Satan stuff: SMILEY: If I’d wanted to, I could have done this. I didn’t want to waste our time doing it, but because the stuff is so easily found all over the internet – you know where I’m going with this. You know, on the regular, there are statements made by Chavez that cause people in this country to shudder, all kinds of things, about everything that Chavez – as you know, he’s not shy about speaking his mind. So he has made all kinds of comments about all kinds of things. None of those statements give you reason to believe that he’s gone a bit off the range? STONE: No, no. Listen, I was with him not too long ago. I was with him in 2007 and 2009. I mean, he’s under attack, but he’s a free man and I think sometimes he speaks without perhaps – he’s a big bear of a man. He’s gruff, you know, and he sometimes speaks off the cuff. He is a popular leader, but he serves the people. He’s not corrupt in any way. I find him a free soul. SMILEY: Off the cuff remarks, off the wall remarks, two different things. You think they’re off the cuff, not off the wall? STONE: Well, I don’t know which ones you’re referring to. I mean, if he’s calling Bush – “the Devil was here yesterday” – you know, I think that’s a great comment. I think it’s true. I mean, at that point, Bush was going to war in Iraq against the wishes of the majority of the United Nations. By the way, as somebody has pointed out, Chavez at the U.N. that day got the most longest applause of anybody there at the entire sessions. It’s quite something. So North America has made a big issue of everything he says, but, you know, Bush is the one who started the war. The coup d’etat of 2002, you know, was initiated by the Venezuelan oligarchy and supported and abetted by the U.S. and we make that very clear in the film. SMILEY: I’ll recall that comment about Bush as long as I live. As you may have heard – STONE: – Well, he is the devil. He was. Smiley deserves some credit for questioning around the edges about Chavez’s dictatorial tendencies, even as Stone denied it all as ridiculous. When Smiley asked whether Obama was different than Bush, he complained it was “Bush lite,” and knocked Hillary Clinton: You know, Hillary was down there a few weeks ago and there she was trying to separate Ecuador from Venezuela. She’s an agent of the old empire game. It’s a dead end for us. We keep overreaching. We want to control anybody who steps out of line, which is a regional power…. We are saying – basically, you know what it is? The pact for the New American Century, remember from the 1990s, when Bush and Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz, wrote that pact about the American unilateral control of the world. We will brook the appearance. We will not allow for the emergence or any military or economic rival. I went into that in the W film I did on Bush. This is our policy and, whatever Obama says, this is what he’s pursuing in Afghanistan. There’s been no real change in that policy. We have our empire; we are number one. We are the world’s policemen and we will not brook an interference in that. The tone is lighter; the words are lighter, but it’s a soft power. It’s not strictly anti-American to knock President Bush or Hillary Clinton, but Stone had a more generic critique of “our empire,” and overall American arrogance in global affairs: STONE: The U.S. has knocked off so many reformers over the last hundred years, but they’ve all emerged independently. Except for Castro, they all went down, every single one from Guatemala, Panama, Brazil, Chile, constantly. This is the first time we have not been able to do anything. Hopefully, this is going to stay stable, but right now we’re fighting actively to get rid of them. SMILEY: You’re not naive, obviously. You like shaking things up, don’t you? STONE: No, I like – SMILEY: Yeah, you do. Come on. STONE: If I were, I’d be more political. I’d be more overt. SMILEY: This isn’t political and overt? STONE: Well, I like making movies. I love feature movies, as you know, but documentaries are fresh and they keep me humble and they keep me in the field. If I can contribute a little light to the worldwide cause and alert people in our country as to what our empire is really doing , I think I’d be doing some good in my life.
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On PBS, Oliver Stone Loved Hugo Chavez Calling Dubya the ‘Devil’: ‘It’s True’
NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” wants to tackle more than football players. In a bold move for scripted dramas, which usually shy away from taboo issues, the July 9 episode of the network drama featured a high school-aged character deciding to have an abortion, declaring it was “the right thing to do.” The plotline earned praise from many in the media. Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker praised “Friday Night Lights” for delivering “one of its finest hours ever.” In a July 10 blog post , The Atlantic’s Tony Lee noted that he was impressed by the “nuanced, apolitical manner” that the writers used to convey the dilemma facing this pregnant teenage girl. Lee described the episode as “devoid of political posturing or grandstanding,” ignoring the fact that the writers’ decision to include a pro-choice decision is itself a political statement. While the characters did not deal lightly with the issue, the show’s justification for the abortion relied on several common pro-choice arguments, including economics and self-interest. The pregnant student, Becky Sproles, worried she wouldn’t be able to care for a baby. Her confidant, high school principal Tami Taylor, advised Sproles that she would tell her own daughter to “think about her life, think about what’s important to her and what she wants.” That position earned support from Slate . Writer Emily Bazelon said Taylor’s advice for Sproles to “think about her life” was “the perfect thing” to say in that situation. New York Times writer Ginia Bellafante called the storyline “remarkable,” noting the rarity of abortions on television shows since the 1970s. Bellafante said that unlike more recent shows that presented both arguments in the abortion debate fairly, “Friday Night Lights” chose instead to hold to its “quasi-Marxist understanding that economics dictate everything.” The episode did include mentions of alternatives to abortion, including crisis pregnancy centers and adoption agencies. But Bellafante acknowledged that the “opposing view,” that is, the pro-life view, “was depicted as obtuse and out of touch.”
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Media Applaud Teen Abortion on ‘Friday Night Lights’
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Tagged Abortion, abortion-relied, becky-sproles, characters, media, mma, Nbc, night, plotline-earned, politics, position-earned, since-the-1970s, writer-emily
The Israeli commandos who intercepted a flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip on May 31 were cleared of wrongdoing by a military inquiry into the matter. The same panel faulted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for “mistakes that were made in decisions, including some taken at relatively high levels,” according to retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland . While we at NewsBusters have taken Reuters to task before for their biased coverage of the Middle East, the news wire actually broke from the pack a bit in its portrayal of the story , focusing on the conclusion that there was no wrongdoing by the Israelis in the now infamous raid. By contrast, the Washington Post and Associated Press opened their stories focused on the negative. Below are the lede paragraphs for the respective news agencies: JERUSALEM — An internal Israeli review of the navy’s raid against a Turkish aid ship faulted planners Monday for not formulating alternative plans and concluded that the agencies involved should have shared intelligence more efficiently before the operation. TEL AVIV, Israel — Flawed intelligence-gathering and planning led to Israel’s botched and deadly raid on a Gaza-bound protest flotilla, with security forces underestimating the potential for violence, said the official report released Monday. Reuters noted as early as the fourth paragraph of its July 12 story that the Israeli commandos were found to have discharged their weapons in self defense. A few paragraphs later it noted that: Eiland said his inquiry found evidence that activists on the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara opened fire on Israeli commandos. “We found that there are at least four incidents in which the people who were on the ship shot at our soldiers, either by using the weapons that were stolen from the soldiers or a weapon that they had,” he said. “We do have evidence that there was at least one weapon on this ship before we arrived and there is good reason to believe that the first shooting that occurred was when our soldier, the second soldier that arrived on the deck from the very first helicopter was shot by somebody,” he added. The Washington Post’s Janine Zacharia also made reference to Eiland’s findings about the crew and/or passengers of the Turkish ship firing on the Israeli commandos and noted that “[t]he inquiry also found that passengers had cut off banisters from the ship to use as weapons against the soldiers.” By contrast, although Ian Deitch hacked out 25 paragraphs for his story, the AP writer found no room to elaborate on the findings other than this brief reference in the second paragraph: The report, however, praised the commandos who took part in the operation, saying they were justified in opening fire and killing nine after being confronted by violent pro-Palestinian activists on board one of the ships.
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Investigation Clears Israeli Commandos of Wrongdoing; AP, WaPo Focus on ‘Mistakes’
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Tagged Associated Press, israel, middle-east, News, online media, operation, politics, TMZ
Attorney General Eric Holder said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that if the suit filed last Tuesday — on the grounds that immigration falls under the federal government’s jurisdiction — failed, the Justice Department could sue on the grounds of racial discrimination . …Holder said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the federal government was leading with its “strongest” argument in the suit filed Tuesday and would not rule out a second suit months down the road — if the law ends up going into effect. “It doesn’t mean that if the law for whatever reason happened to go into effect, that six months from now, a year from now, we might not look at the impact the law has had … and see whether or not there has been that racial profiling impact,” Holder said. “If that was the case, we would have the tools and we would bring suit on that basis.” Will DOJ have a case if Holder pursues this angle?
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Open Thread: Another DOJ Lawsuit Against Arizona?
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Tagged case-if-holder, down-the-road, federal, holder, impact-the-law, News, open thread, politics, said-on-cbs, stars, the-grounds, whether-or-not
Mika Brzezinski wants to “cut the crap” when it comes to building speculation as to whether Sarah Palin will run for president in 2012. According to Mika, Palin’s candidacy is a done deal, and the press is letting itself be sucked into a phony build-up. Mika is so sure that Sarah is running that on today’s Morning Joe she was willing to wager a dubious Jonathan Capehart $1,000. Brzezinski’s comments came in response to Politico’s report , highlighted by Mike Allen, that Palin has raised significant money and built a nascent campaign staff. Speaking of fan dances, let’s take a walk down memory lane with this 2004 statement from a certain junior senator from Illinois: I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I’m the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois . . . I am not running for president in 2008. The only reason I’m being definitive is because until I’m definitive you will keep asking me this question, but it’s a silly question. — Sen. Barack Obama, 2004 If only he’d stuck to his word . . .
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Mika: ‘Cut The Crap’ On Palin Prez-Run Fan Dance
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Tagged Breaking News, celeb news, illinois, letting-itself, national-office, News, Obama, People, politics, press, question, sarah, Sarah Palin
Washington Post Magazine humorist Gene Weingarten reacted badly in his Sunday column to the discovery that folk singer Arlo Guthrie is now a registered Republican: “By becoming a Republican, Arlo Guthrie has shredded the last remnants of my faith that our hippie principles had any lasting meaning. How can he do this to us? I’m a peaceable man, but if I had a hammer…” Guthrie didn’t become one of those warmongering neocons. He endorsed Ron Paul for president in early 2008. But Weingarten began with his marijuana-baked enthusiasm for hippiedom, which he clearly still loves dearly: Like many middle-age people, I wear more than one hat. I’m a husband, a father, a journalist, a role model to a generation of idealistic young Americans, etc. But one of my favorite hats, the floppy felt one that still smells faintly of the sweet smoke of a controlled substance, is “former hippie.” We children of the ’60s tenaciously hold on to this self-image, even though our mirrors tell us that in terms of sheer hipness, we look more like Arlen Specter than Arlo Guthrie. Weingarten — who is not simply a yuk-yuk man, but a man who used to edit the Post’s influential Style section — discovered that Arlo Guthrie’s “iconic, self-deprecating, darkly comic, anti-war counterculture masterpiece” of a song “Alice’s Restaurant” didn’t make complete sense as nonfiction. The song no longer seemed to “speak truth to power.” So he called Guthrie up: Me: So, you were arrested for illegally dumping a half-ton of garbage that you scooped up from the floor of Alice’s home, and took away to dispose of as a favor, right? Arlo: Right. Me: And you were nailed by the fuzz because Officer Obie found your name on an envelope in that half-ton pile of garbage and phoned you. And in the funniest line of the song, you solemnly admitted to Officer Obie that you had put that envelope under that half-ton of garbage, right? Arlo: Right. Me: Why was your name in the garbage from Alice’s restaurant? Wasn’t that all Alice’s garbage? Arlo: In 40 years, no one ever asked me that. Me: Well, someone is asking now. Arlo: Bravo. I will hate you forever for this. Me: [Pause] Arlo: Okay, we have to attribute that line to creative license. Obie actually found a paper with Ray’s name — Ray was Alice’s husband — and Ray directed them to me. But it worked better in the song the other way. Me: So, no biggie? A misstatement is okay because it “worked better”? Guthrie didn’t answer, but Weingarten compared his worship of Guthrie’s “counterculture masterpiece” to the miracles of Jesus: Me: I don’t want to overstate my disillusionment here. But this is like hearing Jesus say, “Okay, I didn’t turn the water into wine, exactly. Actually, I just added some Kool-Aid powder and turned it into a nice, refreshing beverage.” Weingarten learned Guthrie’s party affiliation by further complaining: “Did you learn your ethics from your dad [socialist folk singer Woody Guthrie]? Might it be that this land was really made for him and just a few of his cronies?” Arlo responded: “You know, it’s possible. I’ve heard that song sung at Republican conventions.” This means that Arlo Guthrie is actually more light-hearted about his politics than the humor writer is.
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‘If I Had a Hammer’: WaPo Hippie Columnist Would Like to Pummel GOP Folk Singer
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Tagged alice, arlo guthrie, disillusionment, ethics, gene weingarten, jesus, music-industry, politics, song, weingarten, woody-guthrie
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