Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Yours truly is a Republican, yet, just like my Democrat colleagues in the news media, I am able to maintain my professional distance and objectivity. So I can say Fox cable news really is “fair and balanced” – relatively speaking.
I issue this unsolicited defense of the network because I discern a pattern in the criticism of its coverage as “conservative.” The fact is, most of the networks – cable and broadcast – are so far left that the center looks right.
The pattern I’m talking about came into sharp focus when I watched one of those segments in which the news anchor talks with spokesmen for the Republican and Democratic parties.
At one point, the Democrat answered a question and then began a rambling and irrelevant attack on George W. Bush.
The anchor interrupted, telling him correctly that he was “off topic,” to which he responded loudly, “How come every time you criticize George Bush you’re ‘off topic’?”
This line was clearly prepared and rehearsed in advance, with the goal of making the news operation appear unfair.
The reflexive criticism of Fox is constant and uniform, indicative of the ideological discipline of the Left. Nobody has to hold a seminar to tell Democrats what to say: A few opinion leaders get on the tube or are quoted in the New York Times, and that’s the only cue the followers need.
I see the same tactic from the leftists at the campus where I teach. When student reporters ask these “progressives” to explain themselves, they complain about “this line of questioning.” It’s part of their training. (By the way, I’m progressive. Anybody out there not want to be progressive?)
One is reminded of the “brain bug” in “Starship Troopers” (perhaps the worst movie ever). Whatever the brain bug thought, the soldier bugs carried out.
If you watch Fox, keep an eye on such broadcasts. Let me know if you see the same pattern. Let us predict it will become more pronounced as November approaches.
Who are you kidding: There was an image for you – John Kerry standing next to President Reagan’s casket, eyes closed as though in prayer.
(Made you think of Shakespeare: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”)
It wasn’t out of respect, because Kerry and his Democratic colleagues never respected the man. It wasn’t out of affection, because they not only didn’t like him, many cordially hated him.
It was, of course, out of political necessity, and the result of a rather tough call. The choice was to go and look like a hypocrite or stay away and risk alienating all the “Reagan Democrats” who still are out there.
Kerry and his handlers came down on the side of hypocrisy – naturally.
Then there was Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, magnanimously agreeing that if the Reagan family didn’t want any Democratic speakers at the great man’s funeral, it was their right. How generous. How presumptuous.
I didn’t much like Reagan when he was governor of California. After all, he thought the Free Speech Movement protesters sitting in at the Cal administration building should be arrested.
It was an understandable antipathy. After all, nobody at Cal taught us the United States was a nation of laws, and if you broke them you should expect to be busted. Fortunately, it was a lesson I learned after graduation, in the school of life.
Our California judiciary: Warner Brothers Television has lost a sexual-harassment lawsuit at trial and on appeal. It seems the writers for the popular sitcom “Friends” frequently made ribald jokes during their script-writing sessions.
Although the jokes weren’t aimed at the plaintiff, she sued, charging the jests created a hostile work environment. The courts found in her favor, ruling the First Amendment applied to offensive speech in the workplace only when it was “necessary.”
The case is now before the state Supreme Court, where one hopes the Constitution will get more respect.
More culture: I don’t watch “Friends,” though I have seen a couple of episodes, in both of which approximately 30 seconds passed before the first sexual double entendre. Which brings me to “Deadwood,” the high-production-value HBO series loosely – very loosely – based on the characters who made that Wild West town famous.
I have been unable to sit through more than a few minutes of any episode, but it has inspired me to create the game of “Deadwood Roulette.”
In this diversion, you flip to this program – perhaps between innings of a ball game – and count the seconds before the first F-bomb in the script. Apparently the writers believe the reference to fornication constituted approximately a third of any discourse during those times.
The longest F-free stretch I have recorded was 32 seconds, when I tuned in during an atmospheric shot of Deadwood denizens slopping through muddy streets.
Give it a try. Let me know how it times out. The prize for the shortest span will be … Well there is no prize. But let me know anyway – along with your views on the state of popular culture.
