Saturday, June 28, 2008

Bum's Rush

October 7, 2007, by Jonah Goldberg, "How the Dems Plan to Take Down Their Real Opponents, Rush and O'Reilly" at http://www.nypost.com/seven/10072007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/bum_rush.htm


In the parable of the million monkeys banging on typewriters for a million years, the reward is supposed to be the complete works of Shakespeare. But have you heard the parable of the million interns? Here, the prize is Rush Limbaugh's head, and Bill O'Reilly's, and Brit Hume's, and pretty much any other prominent conservative or non-leftist who doesn't kowtow to the Democratic Party and its “netroots" army of Lilliputian cannibals. This, in a nutshell, is the vision behind a group most people have never heard of, at least not until this week, Media Matters for America.

Nearly every day, I get e-mail spam from this alleged “media watchdog" group. It's slightly less formal than the usual son of a Nigerian oil minister with erectile dysfunction and a great stock tip giving me a head's-up about a problem with my eBay account. This spam comes from some earnest p.r. flack letting me know that I might be interested in the latest Very Serious Finding by Media Matters for America. When you actually check out the item, it's usually very stupid or silly or, sometimes, slanderous.

For example, on Sept. 25, Media Matters sent out a note announcing “Fox News panelist Mort Kondracke recently made several racist comments regarding the Jena 6.

Here are some examples of racism on Fox News." What were the racist comments? Simply this: Kondracke said in reference to the racial turmoil then brewing in Louisiana, “It looks as though the people of Jena can solve this on their own." It's a wonder Kondracke even bothered to take his Klan hood off while on camera.

You don't hear about most of this stuff because journalists on the receiving end of Media Matter's junk mail have this rare skill, highly prized in the profession: They can read. And so, most of what Media Matters does is ignored except by the echo chamber of the left-wing blogs and sympathetic pundits. But occasionally, either through luck or distortion, Media Matters hits paydirt.

They were the ones who made the initial stink about Don Imus' “nappy-headed hos" gaffe. Imus may have had that coming, but they also recently tried to paint Bill O'Reilly as a racist dunderhead by slanderously distorting his comments about having dinner in Harlem. O'Reilly's point was that the real middle-class black America is decent and normal, unlike the images found in gangsta rap and the like. Media Matters quoted him as saying he was shocked that none of the black people at a Harlem restaurant talked or acted like F-word-abusing thugs.

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