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The three network anchors will travel to Europe and the Middle East next week for Barack Obama's trip, adding their high-wattage spotlight to what is already shaping up as a major media extravaganza. Lured by an offer of interviews with the Democratic presidential candidate, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric will make the overseas trek, meaning that the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts will originate from stops along the route and undoubtedly give it big play. John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor. Obama has "proven...

John Gibson confronts Rev Marty Parrish...

Nothing in the hysteria over last week's Democratic debate – including the unprecedented opprobrium press critics heaped on the ABC moderators – should have come as any surprise. That doesn't make it any less fascinating a guide to current strange notions of what is and is not a substantive issue in a presidential contest, or any less striking an indicator of the delicate treatment Mr. Obama's media following have come to consider his just due. Moderators Charles Gibson's and George Stephanopoulos's offense was to ask questions Mr. Obama didn't want to address. Worse, they'd continued to press them even when...

Take cover, ABC! Incoming! “[Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos] disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself.” – Will Bunch, Philadelphia Daily News “Perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.” – Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher “… all the substance of a Beavis and Butt-Head marathon.” – Walter Shapiro, Salon “… petty, shallow, process-obsessed…utterly divorced from the actual issues that Americans want to talk about.” – Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic “…Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos turned in shoddy, despicable performances.” – Tom Shales, The Washington Post What could ABC’s...

Powerline’s John Hinderaker remarks on the ferocity that journalists re supporting Obama and attacking ABC’s Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for asking Obama about his relations to radical terrorists like William Ayers and to Jeremiah Wright, as well as his remarks about small town people in Pennsylvania. Reporters don’t like it when you pick on their anointed candidate. Joe Klein sums up in the Washington Post. Instead, we are supposed to be terribly interested in the 22nd iteration of their stands on global warming (against), Iraq (against), government controlled healthcare (for), taxes (higher) and other issues that are part of...

<p>Barack Obama seemed puzzled. Angrily puzzled. The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question. At the April 16 Philadelphia debate, George Stephanopoulos, longtime aide to Democratic politicians, was asking about his longtime association with Weather Underground bomber William Ayers. Continues...</p>

Merchants struggling with the slowdown in spending are stepping up promotions to court consumers who are expecting a cash infusion from federal rebate checks. Retailers are already planning major sales and big advertising campaigns in the fierce fight for dollars - even though the government won't start mailing out the checks until May. For merchants worried about a bleak year, this is like Christmas in spring. Store owners have good reason to expect a shopping spree. People plan to spend 40.6 percent, or about $42.9 billion, of the $105.7 billion the government is distributing in tax rebates, according to a...

It's the Friday Finals, the week's winners and losers as chosen by me and Heather and "The Big Story" staff. First the winners and the reasons why....9/11 truthers and Ron Paul. The 9/11 truthers evidently raised millions for Ron Paul. Why doesn't he just admit that he's with them, blaming the U.S. government for the 9/11 attacks?

An Oakdale music store owner was arrested Monday for selling fake versions of the legendary Gibson guitar at his Montauk Highway shop, the Suffolk police said. Investigators seized 15 fake Gibsons from the store, the police said. Bernard Musumeci, 44, of 2 Domino Way, Centereach, surrendered to the police Monday night, and was charged with trademark counterfeiting. After he was released, Musumeci turned over another 18 guitars from his home, and Gibson Guitar Corp. experts will determine whether they're authentic. The arrest came after a two-month investigation by Fifth Squad detectives, working in conjunction with the Nashville-based Gibson company. After...

NEW YORK - One of the small indignities of a high-paying television job is rising after getting home from Texas at 3:05 a.m. for a conversation about why your ratings are going south. Brian Williams dutifully does it, weary voice and all, even if he and NBC can't fully explain why after two years on top his "Nightly News" broadcast has suddenly been eclipsed by ABC and Charles Gibson. "It is predictable," Williams said, the morning after anchoring his newscast from Fort Worth. "This is why I haven't allowed any champagne toasts in the newsroom when the ratings have been...

An attempt by actor and director Mel Gibson to establish a church that would celebrate the Mass in Latin and attract similar believers outside mainstream Catholicism apparently has failed. St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church in Unity will be sold after Saturday's ouster of its priest, a former clergyman of the Greensburg Catholic Diocese, parish members said. Karen Petrone, her husband, Glenn, of Wilkinsburg in Allegheny County, and their nine children attended Mass at St. Michael's until April. They said they stopped because of questions about the credentials of Leonard Bealko, who celebrated Mass each Sunday, officiated at weddings...

A Warning to Brian Williams About Keith Olbermann John Gibson was commenting tonight on Chris Matthews when the topic turned to the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann. We have the audio clip for your listening pleasure.

Political correctness has so disemboweled academic standards that Ph.D. truly means "pile it higher and deeper." Case in point: Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night accused Mel Gibson "of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie" Apocalypto. Estrada, in a superior display of historic ignorance, stated "that representations in the movie that the Mayans engaged in sacrificial ceremonies and had bloodthirsty tendencies were both wrong and racist."Quite to the contrary, archeological evidence of Maya "sacrificial ceremonies" and "bloodthirsty tendencies" are ubiquitous. It all started with the discovery of murals at...

<p>TMZ has learned Mel Gibson exploded in anger last night on a college campus after an expert on Mayan culture accussed him of racially stereotyping the Mayans in the movie "Apocalypto."</p> <p>It happened last night at Cal State University at Northridge in the San Fernando Valley. Gibson was speaking to a film class about his movies, and several members of the Mayan community came to hear the famous director.</p>

Steve Malzberg, one of America's favorite radio hosts, hosts today for John Gibson. Join Steve and his freeper fans at the link below. Steve will be live from 6PM to 9PM EST. Join Steve "the Mutilator" Malzberg and his fans champing at the bit to enjoy the breakfast buffet and cocktails while we bash the liberal media. Yes, liberals are grass, Steve is the mower. What could be more fun? Malzberg's Maniacs are addicted to Steve, so put on your tap shoes, shuffle off to Buffalo or in this case to the internet stream, and enjoy the wittiest fellow on...

From a makeshift pulpit inside an Indiana Quality Inn, a baby-faced priest angrily denounces the Jews, saying they mean to "destroy all Christian nations." In offices in State Line, Pa., an intense, bespectacled man tirelessly recounts how the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia "predicts the anti-Christ will come from Jewry" and warns of the Jews' role in the coming "New World Order." At a gathering near the Philadelphia airport, men in priests' collars and brown monk's robes rage against the "Judeo-Masonic" conspiracy to destroy the Catholic Church, the "Marxist-Jewish" scheme to wreck American schools, and even an elaborate 9/11 plot, "predicted by...

I Listen to Him when Mark Levin is not on,, VERY FUNNY!

Gibson Delivers Another Box Office Win Dec 10 10:36 PM US/Eastern By DAVID GERMAIN AP Movie Writer LOS ANGELES Mel Gibson's bloody epic "Apocalypto" debuted as the No. 1 weekend movie, proving the filmmaker still can deliver a winner despite his drunken-driving arrest and anti-Semitic rant last summer. "Apocalypto," a Disney release set in the Mayan civilization and told in an obscure Mayan language, opened with $14.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. It was a modest haul compared to the $83.8 million opening weekend of Gibson's last movie, the 2004 religious blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ," which went...

Mel Gibson: $8M More to Private ChurchYou may recall Gibson telling the officer who arrested him that he “owned half of Malibu.”  Well, not quite. But as I reported in this space last February, following up on a New York Times report by Christopher Noxon, Gibson has been building a religious retreat in Malibu for some time.  Holy Family is a Catholic church that isn’t recognized by any archdiocese.   Instead, it follows beliefs counter to the 1965 Vatican II Conference, which among other things, absolved Jews of Christ’s death. Instead, Holy Family Catholic Church adheres to 16th century Catholic values.Click...

Some descendants of the Maya tribes depicted in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto have denounced the movie as racist and not representative of their ancient culture. In an interview with Reuters, Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation, said, "Gibson replays, in glorious big budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue." Lucio Yaxon, described by Reuters as a 23-year-old Mayan human rights activist, added, "Basically, the director is saying the Mayans are savages." Today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times noted that...

Release Date: December 8, 2006 Ever since Mel Gibson directed the amazingly successful “The Passion of the Christ,” he has been dogged by questions of whether that film is anti-Semitic in its portrait of Jewish complicity in the death of Christ. He also has been accused of reveling in cinematic violence – an action-movie star who chooses violent roles in front of the camera and violent stories to film as a director. Gibson’s recent outburst after being arrested for drunken driving revealed an ugly streak that emboldened those who believe him to be an anti-Semite. Now, with “Apocalypto,” the filmmaker...

Mel Gibson is sicker than we thought. As his new film "Apocalypto" makes clear, he's not just a drinker and a raving anti-Semite, but a man with a grotesque appetite for human suffering and an enormous talent for exploiting it. There was great violence in "Braveheart," too, but it was cloaked in historical context. And the stripping of Jesus' flesh in "The Passion of the Christ" had the cover of Scripture. But "Apocalypto" exists solely as an action-adventure and a deft cinematic demonstration of man's capacity for cruelty. This is the true passion of Mel. If you can take unflinching...

Let's get right to the point, shall we? About halfway through Mel Gibson's movie "Apocalypto," which opens this week, viewers are treated to a stomach-turning scene of human sacrifice, set in a Mayan city around 1500. It's not revealing too much to say that the movie's hero is captured by a gang of marauders, bound, marched through the jungle, painted blue, and forced to the top of a pyramid where heads roll. In a smaller version of the outrage and skepticism that preceded the opening of "The Passion of the Christ"—is it historically accurate? is it anti-Semitic?—scholars who study the...

Starring Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead, Carlos Emilio Baez. Written by Mel Gibson and Farhad Safinia. Directed by Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson's new movie is a dubiously cautionary historical spectacle that gushes along on torrents of blood. A speculative fable on the fall of Mayan civilization with its eye allegedly cocked toward present geopolitical troubles, Apocalypto will strike some as a comment on the imminent collapse of global society as we know it, and others as a sign that it's already a done deal — surely, this is exactly the kind of gory amusement that jazzed the...

'Apocalypto' Is More 'Mad Max' Than Mayan With the subtlety of several thousand flying mallets and arrows, here comes Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," a two hour plus torture-fest so violent that women and children will be headed to the doors faster than you can say "duck" when the film opens on Dec. 8th. Indeed, 'Apocalypto' is the most violent movie Disney has ever released, with so much blood spurting out of orifices that even Martin Scorsese would blush. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to see heads and hearts removed without anesthesia, then this is the movie for...

NEW YORK - Though he's lost many fans after being captured on video hurling racist epithets at a comedy club audience, Michael Richards has an ally: Mel Gibson. "I felt like sending Michael Richards a note," Gibson says in an interview in Entertainment Weekly's Dec. 8 issue. "I feel really badly for the guy. He was obviously in a state of stress. You don't need to be inebriated to be bent out of shape. But my heart went out to the guy." The 50-year-old actor-director added: "They'll probably torture him for a while and then let him go. I like...

Oh, how the hot and powerful have turned cold and weak -- at least that's the assessment of Mel Gibson by FilmThreat online. The site has named Gibson No. 1 among the "least-powerful, least-inspiring, least-intriguing people in all of Tinseltown." The dishonor comes, of course, because of the anti-Semitic remarks he made during his arrest on suspicion of drunken driving. The site said "who cares" to his upcoming movie, "Apocalypto." Also on the Film Threat's "Frigid 50: The Coldest People in Hollywood" is Borat, because the site says there's no future for him, actress Lindsay Lohan and the Internet phenomenon...

Jewish comedienne Joan Rivers has launched a scathing attack on Mel Gibson, insisting the actor should "die" for the anti-Semitic comments he made to police officers who arrested him for drink driving in July. The outspoken comic urges people to boycott Gibson's TV interviews with newswoman Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America, because the exposure will only help to heal the actor/director's tarnished public image. She tells Celebrity Week: "He is an anti-Semitic son of a bitch. He should f**king die. "I think everyone should not watch the interview with Diane Sawyer. The hypocrisy is what I hate. You know...

Hollywood superstar tells Good Morning America last summer’s anti-Semitic outburst grew out of his concerns over violence raging between Israel, Hizbullah Actor Mel Gibson says his drunken, anti-Semitic outburst at police this past summer may have stemmed in part from lingering resentment he harbored over the barrage of Jewish criticism leveled at his 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ.” In an interview aired Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Gibson also suggested that his statement to police that “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world” grew out of his concerns over the violence raging between Israel...

Want younger viewers for the evening news? Ditch the geezer ads, says ABC World News anchor Charlie Gibson. If networks are serious about luring pre-Social Security eyeballs, they should replace commercials for adult diapers, dentures and "patent medicines" with spots for younger, sexier products, in Gibson's view. The current commercials "bespeak an older audience," says Gibson, in town last week to anchor World News from the National Constitution Center. "I'd rather have car ads. "When you put on ads mostly for medicines, you're saying 'We want an older audience.' I would like ads that say 'We have a younger audience...

Posted by Tim Graham on October 5, 2006 - 14:37. When the story broke in July of 1983 on the sexual affairs with House pages by Reps. Daniel Crane and Gerry Studds, ABC did not fuel days of speculation about whether Speaker Tip O’Neill would resign. (Fun fact: when Studds was censured, Speaker O’Neill did not cast a vote. Three Democrats voted against Studds being censured.) By the time Studds ran in a primary re-election campaign in September 1984, ABC aired a report telling the nation that Studds faced only "a strong sense of loyalty" and forgiveness from the voters in...

Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore unveiled two new projects last night in Toronto: a documentary about the health insurance business called “Sicko” and film that chronicles the aftermath of the 2004 election, entitled “Slacker.” Moore showed clips from both films as part of a special two-hour presentation at the famed Elgin Theater. Larry Charles, director of the new comedy “Borat” and well-known from his work on the TV show “Seinfeld,” conducted the program that also consisted of a long, funny and intimate live interview with Moore.

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Reiner: Gibson, Come Clean on `Passion' LOS ANGELES (AP) - Mel Gibson's apology for making drunken anti-Semitic remarks isn't enough to redeem him, actor-producer Rob Reiner said. The actor also must acknowledge that "his work reflects anti-Semitism," particularly the 2004 hit movie "The Passion of the Christ," Reiner told Associated Press Radio. "When he comes to the understanding that he has done that, and can come out and say, you know, 'My views have been reflected in my work and I feel bad that I've done that,' then that will be the beginning of some reconciliation for him," Reiner said....

Though Katie Couric has yet to take her seat as the new CBS Evening News anchor, the former Today show co-host is already a more familiar personality than her NBC and ABC counterparts. Asked to give their general impressions of each of the three TV journalists in a single word, 66% could offer up an opinion of Couric, compared with fewer than half who could offer a response for Brian Williams or for Charles Gibson. By wide margins, most Americans who know them have positive things to say about each of the new evening news anchors – good is by...

TOKYO -- The hand-aged Gibson Les Paul Special is a replica of the 1960 original, but an American master craftsman made it exactly the way the guitar would look today, complete with aging cracked paint and tiny dents from scuffs and scratches. What's unique, the instrument isn't sold anywhere else but in guitar-loving Japan, where the entire limited edition of the electric guitars is sold out, underlining the nation's never-ending affair with American guitars.

Inquiring minds want to know: Did Red Sox TV guys Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy catch some heat from their NESN bosses for letting “Rescue Me” stars Denis Leary and Lenny Clarke go wild in the broadcast booth Tuesday night? The FX funnymen, who were on the air to promote Leary’s Firefighters Foundation, went on a hilarious three-minute rant about Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis, who is Jewish, and Mel Gibson, who checked into rehab after a drunken, anti-Semitic tirade. Although Orsillo and Remy completely lost it, laughing uncontrollably during the boys’ diatribe, at the end of the bit Clarke...

Mel Gibson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor drunken-driving charge Thursday and was sentenced to three years' probation, the district attorney's office said. Gibson did not appear but entered the plea through his attorney before Superior Court Judge Lawrence Mira, Deputy District Attorney Gina Satriano said in a statement. Two counts in the original three-count complaint were dismissed, and Gibson volunteered to do public-service announcements on the hazards of drinking and driving, and to immediately enter rehabilitation, Satriano said. The arraignment was originally scheduled for Sept. 28 but was moved up at the request of Gibson's attorney. Gibson was stopped...

Sometimes it helps to take a step back and see the big picture. One way my wife does this is by regularly reminding us both of how lucky we are to be Americans. This has the salutary effect of making a lot of our problems---problems that seemed bigger the moment before---appear in a larger context to be not so bad. A lot of people worry about money. As we are chasing it, needing it, not having enough of it, we start to imagine how good it would be to be very wealthy. And I will say that if one starts...

And our experiment we delivered Tuesday night was devastating to Mel Gibson‘s argument. That‘s why Laura Ingraham and John Gibson, the apologists for the deliverer of those anti-Semitic smears, are now attacking me, attacking the staff of my show, and attacking law enforcement officers. It‘s a shame. They owe us all an apology. And if they were man and woman to admit that, like me, sometimes they make mistakes, that‘s what they‘d do. But in this political environment, it doesn‘t seem like intellectual honesty is in great form. Meanwhile, the battle lines in Hollywood over Gibson, whether you‘re for him...

When celebrity news happens, South Park is ready! We all saw them make fun of Tom Cruise last year but now Comedy Central is digging up an older episode to go along with this whole Mel Gibson thing. On Wednesday, the network will air 2004's The Passion of the Jew, which poked fun at Mel Gibson back when The Passion of the Christ was all the rage...

TWO INCIDENTS occurred on July 28. Both took place on the West Coast; both involved an American venting his hostility to Jews. But only one of them became, in the days that followed, the big national story about anti-Semitism. The other was treated as a serious but local matter, and drew only modest coverage around the country.

DID Mel Gibson mean it? Did he mean it when he said, according to a sheriff’s report of his arrest on suspicion of drunken driving, that “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world”? Or when he asked the arresting deputy, “Are you a Jew?” snip... So where, exactly, did those words come from? ...snip...Was this alcohol-fueled soliloquy an ugly insight into Mr. Gibson’s character — in other words, in vino veritas? Or was it just the tequila talking? Science, as it happens, has been hard at work trying to understand ...if...alcohol can make people do, and...

I'm not being sacrilegious; I mean this admonition literally and reverentially. I know both individuals personally, Mel and Christ – and my friend Mel is no anti-Semite. He worships and magnifies the most famous Jew who ever lived, Jesus of Nazareth, whom millions and millions call ''Christ,'' or Messiah. So do I. We've both committed our lives and eternal destiny to this rebbe (rabbi), this central figure of human history, the One from whose earthly life our calendar has been constructed. This year is 2006, A.D. – anno domini, ''the Year of Our Lord.'' The Year of the Jew who...

The Talmud famously says that a man is known in three ways. What he says when he is drunk, what he says when he is angry, and what he spends his money on. On all three counts, it appears that Mel Gibson has sadly shown his true colours. Upon getting arrested for drunk driving, in his inebriated state, he allegedly said something to the effect that "f---ing Jews are responsible for all the world's wars." In his anger, he asked the arresting deputy if he himself was Jewish. And, of course, he spent $25 million (U.S.) of his own money...

MEL Gibson once had close links to the Australian League of Rights, a Far Right group notorious for its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. The league claims the world is run by a secret society of Jews. The Hollywood star's foray into Far Right activist politics in Australia occurred in 1987 when he campaigned for a friend, Rob Taylor, who stood unsuccessfully for the northern Victorian federal seat of Indi. Charles Pinwill, a former Queensland state director of the League of Rights, said he knew Gibson's father, Hutton, and said Gibson was interested in the league's ideas. "They were...

Mel Gibson has become the designated Hitler-of-the-Month for August 2006, displacing both Saddam Hussein and Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the previous front-runners. However, conservative Christians, before rushing to condemn or defend their fallen hero, might ponder the incident for a moment, before presuming to form an opinion. To give credit where it is due, Zev Chafets, in his LA Times commentary “Slurring More than His Words”, makes several valuable points. To begin with, Mr. Gibson’s first line of defense—the Tequila made him do it—is absurd. As Chafets commnts, “Evidently Gibson wants people to believe that, although he personally loves Jews, the...

In a full page ad in Thursday's Variety, an entertainment industry trade paper, the actor says, "I, Rob Schneider, a 1/2 Jew, pledge from this day forward to never work with Mel Gibson, actor-director-producer and anti-Semite." Comedic actor Rob Schneider denounced fellow actor Mel Gibson in a letter, saying that he would never work with the Academy Award winner. "I, Rob Schneider, a 1/2 Jew, pledge from this day forward to never work with Mel Gibson, actor-director-producer and anti-Semite," said the letter, which bore Schneider's signature. The declaration was published as a full page ad in Thursday's Variety, an entertainment...

Actor and director Mel Gibson is in trouble with the Jewish community again. In 2004, Gibson produced a movie based on the death of Jesus, The Passion of the Christ, which was both highly successful and controversial. Many people felt the movie depicted Jews in hateful stereotypes and would stir up anti-Semitism among Christians, who were the film's target audience. But even for those who rejected claims that The Passion was anti-Semitic (as I did when the film came out), Gibson's vicious tirade against Jews a few days ago when he was arrested for drunken driving leaves little doubt about...

Gibson's remarks were disgraceful. But is Gibson now to be disgraced? And who is qualified to make that judgment?