The CBS Evening News may have only devoted 13 seconds to the deaths of seven soldiers in Afghanistan, but the producers of CBS's Sunday Morning should be commended for giving Martha Gillis, the aunt of an Army Lieutenant killed in Afghanistan the same day Jackson died, an “opinion” segment in which she conveyed the frustration of military families over the media's misplaced priorities.
Sarah Palin's “bombshell” holiday announcement that she will resign as Governor of Alaska managed to trump Michael Jackson as the lead on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts Friday night as NBC's Chuck Todd predicted she will now make fundraising appearances for GOP candidates where she'll draw in “car-wreck watchers.”
Network reporters swooned over President Barack Obama hugging a woman, who has cancer and lacks insurance, at his Wednesday “town hall” on health care, as both CNN -- where Suzanne Malveaux heralded the hug as “a bold display of presidential concern” -- and NBC failed to point out how all the questions (just seven in total) were pre-selected or from members of pro-Obama groups.
Film producer/director Oliver Stone declared on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher that “Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch” and “I really think George W is dumber” and so, after producing movies on the CIA conspiracy to murder President Kennedy and a dark look at President Nixon, he won't create a movie on Ronald Reagan because “by doing the W movie I kind of put all my efforts behind dumbness.”
Friday's World News carried a 15-second promo for Wednesday night's controversial prime time special, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America.” Over video of President Barack Obama, ABC exulted in how “Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer take you inside his house” for “a television event” where “President Obama answers all of your tough questions about your health care.”
To hearty laughter to what sounded like anchor Wolf Blitzer (who would have a live mike, but listen and judge for yourself), CNN's Jack Cafferty on Tuesday afternoon asked on the Situation Room whether viewers would “rather just stick needles” in their eyes than listen to Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich?
On Real Time with Bill Maher, D.L. Hughley -- the actor/comedian who had a show on CNN -- insisted “you never saw drugs or drive-byes or homeless people” in inner-cities before Reagan “cut” social programs and became “the Moses of...greedy white men.” Jeremy Scahill predicted people will drag the new Reagan statue “through the street like the Saddam statue with some kid hitting it with a shoe.”
The Goode Family, a half-hour animated comedy show which spoofs the politically-correct and environmental do-good thinking of a liberal family which considers its lifestyle superior to “abstinence people” who “wear flag pins,” debuted this past Wednesday night on ABC. I cobbled together a little under three minutes of what I thought were the funnier and most-damning parodies of liberal thinking.
Displaying a caricature of a celebrity enraptured by President Barack Obama, although apparently quite serious in the underlining attitude he conveyed in an over the top manner, on Friday's Larry King Live actor Denis Leary proclaimed: “I think that President Obama is the greatest President in the history of all of our Presidents and that he can do no wrong in my book.”
CBS bewildered over where Obama's Supreme Court nominee stands. “Pundits usually label judges as either liberal or conservative, but that won't be easy with Judge Sotomayor,” Katie Couric propounded before Wyatt Andrews concluded: "Obama has found a judge with 17 years experience but no clear ideology on discrimination, gay rights, or abortion and who can't be easily defined by political labels."
