-Caveat Lector-
Subject: MRC Alert Special: Bozell Columns on NPR's Kroc and Jindal v Duke
***Media Research Center CyberAlert Special***
8:10am EST, Wednesday December 3, 2003
Today, three recent Creators syndicate columns by MRC
President L. Brent Bozell: "NPR's Kroc-Pot Bubbles Over," "Bobby
Jindal vs. David Duke" and "Hosannas for the Homosexual
Revolution"
For the archive of Bozell columns:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/archive/newscol/welcome.asp
Now, the text of three recent Bozell columns, from oldest to
newest:
> Bozell's November 11 column, "NPR's Kroc-Pot Bubbles Over"
National Public Radio is not only a broadcast boutique operated by
and for liberals, it's now flooded with more cash than it could
possibly ever need, thanks to a liberal philanthropist. Last week,
the estate of Joan Kroc, the wife of McDonald's franchising genius
Ray Kroc who died last summer, announced an award of $200 million
to NPR.
Joan Kroc rose to public prominence when she was the first
American to donate a fat million dollars in 1987 to the Democratic
National Committee. She said she was appalled by "an unwarranted
and excessive increase of our military weapons" under President
Reagan and "by the use of military force as our first priority in
carrying out U.S. policy abroad," extending from Lebanon and Libya
to Grenada and Nicaragua.
Joan Kroc was a Carterite peacenik, a major donor to Jimmy
Carter's political rehabilitation center in Georgia. With her
millions, she endowed two "peace" institutes of the Dennis
Kucinich variety at Catholic universities, one at Notre Dame and
the other at the University of San Diego. The San Diego
institute's recent events calendar included a speech by Australian
radical Helen Caldicott, who advocates the elimination of all
nuclear weapons. When Mrs. Kroc died a month ago, Scott Appleby,
the Notre Dame institute's director, proclaimed she was
"single-minded in her dedication to eliminating the threat of
nuclear weapons and all forms of deadly violence."
In short, Joan Kroc was a Mommy Peacebucks. Her massive favoritism
toward NPR leads to the inescapable conclusion that she felt that
putting her money on "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition"
and "Talk of the Nation" was in line with the rest of her
political giving. It was, she hoped, just another effective avenue
for defunding the Pentagon and lobbying against American military
action of any kind.
So what does this say about NPR?
Let's leave our senses for a minute and enter a strange
alternative universe. Imagine that the generous conservative
philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife left one tenth Kroc's amount
to NPR in his estate. You know exactly what would happen, from
coast to coast. The political left would rush to the rooftops to
proclaim, in a panic, that NPR was being dangerously compromised,
politicized, dragged to a right-wing extreme. Everywhere, there
would be a call for NPR to honor its commitment to objective
journalism by returning that gift.
So where are they now with Kroc? Most reporters are not just
comfortable with this cozy leftist arrangement, they're awed by it
all. The Washington Post published (without giggles or groans) a
Kroc spokesman insisting "She loved NPR and its unfiltered
presentation of the news....It wasn't liberal and it wasn't
conservative. It was as objective as you're going to find."
Let's be clear about something here. NPR didn't need that money.
They report their annual budget is $100 million a year from public
and private sources, more than enough for even lazy liberals to
run a radio network. So it begs the questions: in an age of
roaring budget deficits, shouldn't we be reducing the federal
outlay to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by an
equivalent$200 million? By $100 million? By $10 million? Dream on.
In Public Broadcasting Economics 101, there is no such thing as
enough. Public broadcasters seek to maximize their funding in
nearly all cases. Like a thirsty sponge, they will absorb money
from federal, state, and local governments, and then turn around
and beg and plead their way through pledge drives for every
private dollar they can get their hands on.
What did NPR do with its Kroc gift? They quickly announced they're
putting $175 million in trust, and then just drawing on the
interest payments of about $10 million a year. That's not taxpayer
relief. That's not pledge-drive relief. It's hoarding.
NPR spokeswoman Jessamyn Sarmiento told local stations there's no
new money for them: "By no means does it mean that people should
stop thinking that their local public radio station is going to
continue to need their support."
NPR President Kevin Klose painted reporters a surrealist picture
of the NPR budget: "beginning in the late '70s and through the
sequential years, the amount of federal support directed to us has
disappeared to almost nothing." Truth serum, please? The
Corporation for Public Broadcasting sends large chunks of taxpayer
change to local public-radio stations, and they send a pile of it
back to NPR headquarters as "program fees." Their federal take has
to be at least 15 to 20 percent of their budget, but their
budgeting is a confusing mess designed to give reporters
headaches.
Through all the public-relations fog, the Kroc donation doesn't
help NPR be more accountable, more privatized, more localized, and
certainly not more fair and balanced. It just makes NPR a fatter,
and even more liberal, sacred cow.
END Reprint of first of three columns
> Bozell's November 18 column, "Bobby Jindal vs. David Duke"
There may not be much news in an oath-taking, but Arnold
Schwarzenegger's brief inauguration as Governor of California drew
more national media coverage than the entire campaigns for
governor in the states of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Both Kentucky and Mississippi switched to Republican governors on
November 6, a historical feat in Kentucky since they hadn't
elected a Republican governor since 1967. But Governor-Elect Ernie
Fletcher has never starred in a movie as a killing machine from
the future.
Last Saturday, 32-year-old Republican Bobby Jindal lost the
Louisiana governor's race by about four points to Democrat
Kathleen Blanco, the 60-year-old Cajun Lieutenant Governor. Of the
major networks, ABC's Mike Von Fremd was the first reporter to
cover that campaign -- the morning before the voting started.
This inaction is a little shocking, concerning how sensitive the
media purport to be about "diversity," at least of the gender or
skin-color variety. Von Fremd noted that in either outcome in
Louisiana, the governor would be a first, either the first female
or the first non-white governor. To see Jindal as an attractive
story based only on his "non-whiteness" would be offensive, even
as it should make him newsworthy by the usual easy-bake
affirmative-action formula. Jindal is an Indian-American raised in
Baton Rouge by immigrant parents. How's that for a first?
But there's more. At 24, he wrote Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster
brimming with ideas for the state's health care system. Foster was
so impressed he put him in charge of the Department of Health and
Hospitals, and Jindal brought the agency out of bankruptcy, and
turned a $400 million deficit into a surplus by figuring out how
to cut expenses. In 2001, he came to Washington to be an assistant
secretary in President Bush's Department of Health and Human
Services. In short, Jindal is a whiz kid, a potential Republican
Party star.
But our liberal media isn't exactly interested in finding any new
Republican stars -- unless they're located somewhere in the Jim
Jeffords part of the ideological spectrum. Their lack of interest
in Jindal is an outrage...especially when you consider how they
beat the national Republican Party black and blue with sticks and
stones in the Louisiana governor's race 12 years ago, when
white-supremacist "Republican" kook David Duke oozed into a runoff
election.
Reporters not only tripped over each other in leaping to cover
that off-year race, but they demonstrated great aggression in
stapling Duke's racist politics to Bush the Father's 1988
campaign, which grew infamous for somehow making a victim out of
Willie Horton, who mercilessly stabbed a service station attendant
to death, but got weekend passes from Gov. Michael Dukakis.
On NBC, reporter Lisa Myers charged all the modern Republican
presidents with race-baiting: "Richard Nixon preached law and
order in the wake of the Watts riots....Ronald Reagan told the
story of the welfare queen....George Bush was accused of playing
racial politics when he made a national figure out of this
Massachusetts convict [Horton]."
In Time magazine, Washington reporter Dan Goodgame announced:
"Demagogues don't yell 'nigger' or 'Jew boy' anymore. They've
learned better...[Duke] traded in his bigoted rhetoric for a slick
new glossary of coded appeals to racial resentment, market tested
over the past two decades by mainstream conservative politicians."
Twelve years later, the national Republican Party could again be
stapled to the Louisiana nominee -- a young, brainy,
Indian-American, Catholic-convert, health-policy wonk ^ because
this time, unlike Duke, he had the GOP behind him. But that
apparently would make the GOP look too diverse, and make
conservatives look like they're not slack-jawed racists. That
might displease the media's celebrated black leader of the moment,
Al Sharpton.
The most amazing part of the Jindal story is watching how
liberal-media types twisted themselves into pretzels in case
Jindal actually had won. In the New York Times a few weeks ago,
editorialist Adam Cohen claimed that since African-American
candidates have done miserably statewide, "If Mr. Jindal wins, it
may mean not that race no longer matters in Louisiana, but simply
that....Asian-Americans now fall on the white side of the racial
divide."
Cohen concluded that Jindal would be a "hollow symbol of
inclusion" unless he could win over a majority of African-American
voters: "If the Republican Party really wants to be inclusive, in
Louisiana and nationally, it needs to start finding nonwhite
candidates that nonwhites want to vote for." As a modern political
fact, Jindal would have to run as a liberal Democrat.
Despite getting the endorsements of many black Democrats,
including New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Jindal was able to win only
nine percent of the black vote. Media silence triumphed again.
Isn't there a fascinating political story in there for national
reporters to investigate?
END Reprint of second of three columns
> Bozell's November 26 column, "Hosannas for the Homosexual
Revolution"
To those who think the endangered species known as the Liberal
Republican has become extinct, please take a look at their
laboratory of social engineering: the Supreme Court of the
People's Republic of Massachusetts.
Largely appointed by a string of constitutionally lackadaisical
Republican governors, these judges have bowed their heads like
puppies waiting to be petted by the national press, ruling four to
three that the cramped institution of marriage as we've known it
through millennia is no longer socially useful. In fact, it's
downright discriminatory, Bull Connor in a bad tuxedo. Pull back
the fabulous velvet curtain as they introduce, "Gay Marriage"!
Predictably, our national media greeted the news with their usual
hosannas for the homosexual revolution. Newspapers everywhere
featured the gay plaintiffs in Massachusetts in embraces of
celebration. The political battle was between "gay activists" (no
ideology there?) and "conservatives." Unlike partial-birth
abortion stories, no one feels the compulsion to add quote marks,
or "so-called," or "what proponents call," as the liberal
linguists twist the dictionary definition of marriage.
At Newsweek, they used a less-than-neutral quote for their
headline: "^My Mommies Can Marry.'" Wire services popped their
corks with the usual words, a "historic," and yes, "landmark"
decision. This is now so common in judicial circles that stricter
constructionists now call it "landmarkism" -- the spectacle of
judges stretching constitutions into Silly Putty in a bid to be
hailed as the next Historic Liberator.
What the journalists would not discuss was the obvious concept
parading down the street: judicial activism trampling the
democratic process. Ten years ago, the Supreme Court of Hawaii did
the same thing, finding the "right to gay marriage" in some
marginal penumbra, but then the voters of Hawaii (and now 36 other
states) responded by pushing for defense-of-marriage amendments.
Reporters ought to put down their pom-poms long enough to take a
hard look at some polls. NBC's Jim Avila noted the Pew poll that
Republican voters overwhelmingly oppose what proponents call "gay
marriage," by almost 80 percent. Democrats are split down the
middle: 48 percent opposed, 46 percent in favor.
But Avila failed to note how the leaders of the Democrats -- the
Party of Gay Pandering -- are looking at a very bumpy road. That
same Pew poll showed opposition is highest in those living in
rural areas (against by 69 to 22 percent). But candidates and
consultants better also notice the resistance of the majority of
those in suburbs (54 to 38 percent against) and urban areas (52 to
36 percent against). Or look at the minority opinion, since
Democrats think minorities are in their back pocket. A Wirthlin
poll from last spring for the Alliance for Marriage found 63
percent of Hispanics and 62 percent of blacks favored a
constitutional amendment defending marriage.
But the polling news gets even worse when you consider which side
has more passion, more fire. Pew reported that among those who
oppose the idea, nearly six in ten say they feel strongly about it
(35 percent of the total population express this view). Among
those who favor "gay marriage," fewer than three in ten say they
strongly support the proposal (nine percent of the total). Eighty
percent of church-goers oppose "gay marriage," and there are a lot
more church-goers in America than there are gays.
So the Democratic establishment is disco dancing on the barricades
of the extreme. They're not the only ones. Liberal reporters are
clueless as to all the opposition. Old Newsweek hand Evan Thomas
confessed, "I really don't get this whole debate...anything that
promotes commitment between couples, and helps the institution of
the family, is a positive thing."
>From this left-wing corner, beware of the labeling games to come,
where enacting 95 percent of the gay-left agenda makes you a
"moderate." On his report, NBC's Avila split the Democrats between
"liberals" like pro-gay purist Dennis Kucinich and "moderates,
like Richard Gephardt, who stopped short of backing gay marriage."
If Newt Gingrich had said in the 1990s that he only wanted to
slice 95 percent of Medicare spending, would they call him a
"moderate," too?
As the courts of ultraliberal states seek to impose their
immorality on society, liberals ought to be preparing for the
backlash, for their pendulum is swinging way too far to the left.
It's judicial legislating like this decision that says to the
average God-fearing American that liberals are not simply for the
separation of church and state. They are for the separation of
church and society, pouring acid on our spiritual foundations,
masking their contempt for God in their preaching for moral
equivalence. They believe extremism in the defense of sin is no
vice, and never mind the consequences.
END Reprint of third of three columns
-- Brent Baker
>>> Support the MRC, an educational foundation dependent upon
contributions which make CyberAlert possible, by providing a tax-
deductible donation. To safely and securely donate via PayPal:
https://www.paypal.com/xclick/[EMAIL PROTECTED]&i
tem_name=Media+Research+Center&item_number=Media+Research+Center&n
o_note=1&tax=0¤cy_code=USD
Or, if you can't get the lengthy link into your browser's
address line, go to the MRC's home page
( http://www.mediaresearch.org ) and click on the gold "Support
the MRC" logo in the top right corner. That will take you to the
same place.
To subscribe to CyberAlert, go to:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cybersub.asp
Or, send a blank e-mail to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"I pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to
the REPUBLIC for which it stands, one Nation under God,indivisible,with
liberty and justice for all."
visit my web site at
http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon My ICQ# is 79071904
for a precise list of the powers of the Federal Government linkto:
http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon/Enumerated.html
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
