Posted on 02/10/2002 4:56:18 PM PST by The Drowning Witch
The sound of the ax is heard now throughout the land, and depending on where you sit on the political continuum, you may perceive the sound as one of righteous sharpening or one of endless grinding. But there is no doubt as to the targeted necks: Bill and Hillary Clinton are first in line, followed closely by Big Media, political correctness and the '60s in general, or at least the revolutionary and self-indulgent portions.
In one of those strange alignments that happens every so often, three of the top 10 New York Times nonfiction best sellers are attacks on what the authors (Pat Buchanan, Barbara Olson and Bernard Goldberg) see as liberals run amok. A little further down the list are two more (by Bill O'Reilly and Peggy Noonan). Add to those two biographies of strong presidents (John Adams and Teddy Roosevelt) and three books honoring America's response to Sept. 11, and you've got a star-spangled hammerlock on what Americans are reading.
These are "books about American greatness, books that assault the Clinton legacy and the liberal elites who embody it, and above all, books about strong moral character and how to achieve it," Stanley Kurtz wrote in a recent National Review Online column. "Of course, none of this means that conservatives have won the culture war," he continued. "But it surely means that the culture war is far from over, and that the pendulum is swinging mightily in a conservative direction."
Swinging is certainly a good way to describe some of these books, not in a sexual sense but in the manner of a good fist fight. Pat Buchanan, whose 1992 Republican National Convention speech put "culture war" into the national lexicon, has always been a brawler for his beliefs, and his "Death of the West" continues (and in some cases recycles) his carpet-bombing approach. Likewise the late TV commentator Barbara Olson, who was a passenger on board the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, and whose book reaming the Clintons is as mellow as Mike Tyson with a toothache.
But the surprise has been Bernard Goldberg's "Bias," No. 1 on the Times list, and the odd duck in this lineup because it was written by an avowed Democrat. Goldberg was a correspondent for CBS News for 28 years and one of its stars, but he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece in 1996 accusing his institution of liberal bias. It was brave, but not the brightest career move, and Goldberg writes that he paid dearly. Shunned by most of his colleagues, he resigned in 2000.
Goldberg settles some scores with anchor Dan Rather, portraying him as "the Dan," a Godfather-type character who rules CBS News like a Tony Soprano in a tailored suit, brooking no dissent from underlings. This is not even a new take, but Goldberg moves on to more worthy efforts. The TV networks, he believes, don't really favor one party or politician over another, as some conservative critics have charged. "Real media bias comes not so much from what party they attack," he writes. "Liberal bias comes as the result of how they see the world," especially through politically correct lenses.
The centerpiece of his argument is network coverage of the homeless and AIDS in the 1980s and '90s. In both cases, he contends, coverage focused on victims who appeared closer to the mainstream of viewers, which gave a skewed picture of the majority of people who were homeless or HIV-positive. TV news did this in part because it was listening too intently to advocacy groups, Goldberg writes. There is more, some of it padding, but much of it worth heeding.
Dan Rather also takes some lumps in O'Reilly's "The No Spin Zone," joining Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Sean Combs and of course, the Clintons and anyone near them. Largely a rehash of his popular Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor," the book vibrates with O'Reilly's gruff Irish wit and elbows-on-the-bar social criticism. And although he's the conservatives' darling, he isn't afraid to call out Laura Schlessinger on day care or President Bush on capital punishment. Just one caveat about O'Reilly: He sometimes refers to himself as the Zone, which makes him sound like some sort of comic-book hero.
"He's running on equal parts patriotism and skepticism," novelist James Ellroy writes in a wonderful afterword about the author. "The book pinpoints the fatuous nature of liberal-conservative discourse . . . [and] shows us how much our society is ruled by blindly followed and reflexive political classification."
If O'Reilly evades easy classification, Ronald Reagan personifies classic conservatism. In "When Character Was King," former speechwriter Peggy Noonan ("What I Saw at the Revolution") offers a loving biography of the former president, whom she calls "the last great man." In Noonan's starry, starry eyes, Reagan has not done one single thing wrong in 90 years; "Character" is not as clear-headed and sharply observed as "Revolution" was. But when she visits him in his Alzheimer's twilight, there isn't a tear-jerker in Hollywood to compare to the overwhelming emotional wallop.
As much as Noonan loves Reagan, Barbara Olson hated the Clintons. "The Final Days," which she completed just before her untimely death, is as vituperative as any book ever written about the couple. She certainly had plenty of raw material to work with, especially the 140 pardons Clinton issued on his last day in office, and she works it relentlessly.
After these four books, it comes as a shock to read Pat Buchanan's assertion that "conservatives have lost the moral certitude they had when they were young and theirs was a fighting faith." Whether you agree or disagree with O'Reilly, Noonan and Olson, moral certitude seems in abundant supply.
But Buchanan's vision is much darker than the others, built on population statistics that show birthrates declining in Western industrial countries and increasing in Third World countries. The only way to save ourselves is by American women having more children, he writes. But one wonders how badly he even wants to save the country since it is, he states, "a cultural wasteland and a moral sewer . . . not worth living in."
Buchanan makes even some fellow conservatives uncomfortable, and his attacks on immigrants here, especially Mexicans, probably won't win him any Rose Garden invitations in the near future.
Phil Kloer writes about popular culture for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Clearly it wouldbe better for leftist slime to wake and become thinking human beings but it is not my choice to make. The article alleged an open season. There had been posted some of the signs of the a real open season I just thought to mention some of the other signs of an open season. We are not there yet I do not look forward to such a situation but I think some leftists are really pushing to have a civil war in this nation.
Stay well - stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
I think what Goldberg should have said was that
real media bias is reflected in the party they attack,
and, that party consistently being the conservative party,
indicates the presence of liberal bias.
In other words, they certainly DO favor one party
or politican over another.
Buchanan makes even some fellow conservatives uncomfortable, and his attacks on immigrants here, especially Mexicans,
probably won't win him any Rose Garden invitations in the near future.
Pat Buchanan is a closet Goebbels.
That would be a gross error on their part.
Words mean so much to them. O'Reilly (et al) take their precious ammunition and blast there asses on paper. The only thing worse?
They're MAKING MONEY!! [ GASSSSSP ]
Little do they know that we have our own infrastructure, and that if we take the field, no amount of obsequy will preserve their future.
This article is a round-about way of someone on the Left finally admitting that Conservatives are "better read" than are the Lefties.
Sure, our views dominate the top ten in books about which we choose to purchase, but the real surprise is that we are so pummeling the Left that they are forced to admit it...
The centerpiece of his argument is network coverage of the homeless and AIDS in the 1980s and '90s. In both cases, he contends, coverage focused on victims who appeared closer to the mainstream of viewers, which gave a skewed picture of the majority of people who were homeless or HIV-positive. TV news did this in part because it was listening too intently to advocacy groups, Goldberg writes. There is more, some of it padding, but much of it worth heeding.
"Republic.com exposes the drawbacks of egocentric Internet use, while showing us how to approach the Internet as responsible citizens, not just concerned consumers. Democracy, Sunstein maintains, depends on shared experiences and requires citizens to be exposed to topics and ideas that they would not have chosen in advance. Newspapers and broadcasters helped create a shared culture, but as their role diminishes and the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving. In their place will arise only louder and ever more extreme echoes of our own voices, our own opinions." - from a review of Republic.com (Sunstein, U of Chicago)
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A recent book by Cass Sunstein [University of Chicago] Republic.com was a hitpiece on websites like Free Republic. While crafting an excellent theory, Sunstein was wide of the mark, and Bernard Goldberg's book proves this.
What we actually have in this country is a Daily Liberal Me ("the Daily Me' is a term used by Sunstein to describe indulgence in information all of a kind, all from one type of source), imposed by the countless graduates of the liberal journal factories.
SO: 'Goldberg exposes the drawbacks of egocentric mainstream media use, while showing us how to approach the mainstream media as responsible citizens, not just concerned consumers.'
The Daily Liberal Me
Oh, you should have seen them before 9/11....then again, you probably have....
I haven't checked lately, but I know that on the fiction side, where there is less openly left/right ideology visible, The Lord of the Rings with its unquestionable allegiance to traditional virtues, has returned to the best seller list. All of this beats having Norman Mailer and books worshipping the Kennedy's dominating the best seller lists, that's for sure.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
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