The Journolist excerpts are more than a smoking gun. They are a crime scene. The gun is smoking alright, but there before our very eyes , also lies the corpse of feigned objectivity, dead from a self-inflicted wound. It's heart may still be beating, but it's fading fast. The guilty party's attempts at pre-emptive damage control reek of desperation. Their protestations that comments were taken out of context are laughable, because that's what mainstream journalists do! They take quotes out of context.
9:31 PM 06/20/2010
The former Washington Post columnist William Raspberry wrote a piece in 1999 that was so honest and courageous about the origin of so much that is wrong with our society that I used to keep it folded up in my wallet, until it was too yellowed and dog-eared to read anymore. It was called, “The Parable of the Elephants.” It told the story of the Kruger National Game Preserve in South Africa, where the elephant population had outgrown the ability of the park to sustain the herd. A decision was made to move some of the young adolescent male elephants to Pilanesberg, a new game preserve. But within months, park staffers at Pilanesberg were alarmed to learn that 39 rare white rhinos were dead. Rangers at first suspected poachers in the deaths, but the rhinos’ prized horns had been left intact. Rangers set up hidden video cameras and tracking devices and eventually discovered that the young male elephants were going on “wilding” binges, chasing down the rhinos, stamping them to death, and otherwise wrecking havoc in the park. Scientists concluded it was a case of an “overdose of testosterone.”
12:00 AM 06/14/2010
Dear Maureen:
12:00 AM 05/20/2010
I’ve written often in these columns about the stifling and paralyzing effects of political correctness on our culture. Political correctness is a deceit. It is a lie. It is an Orwellian form of propaganda. It is censorship. It is a giant elephant at the cocktail party in your living room that nobody will see, nor smell, nor hear, nor speak of, despite its trumpeting, stinking, imposing presence before your very eyes, ears and nose.
9:27 AM 05/07/2010
The game of lacrosse originated with Native Americans , largely the Huron and Iroquois tribes. Westerners—missionaries and fur trappers—first saw it in the 1600’s. The Indians would play the game as symbolic warfare, with hundreds of men at a time, for days on end, with fields that knew no boundaries. Some historical records suggest that they would sometimes play to the death.
12:00 AM 05/04/2010
I went to the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday. Driving home afterwards, I came away more convinced than ever, that the mainstream media is on its deathbed. This is not a new revelation, but this year’s dinner left me seeing a crystal-clear image of the grim reapers slow knock on Big Journalism’s door.
12:00 AM 04/30/2010
When you work as a TV news anchor you are sometimes subjected to “coaching” by consultants to improve your delivery. When I first started out in this business, I once hired my own—a highly respected coach in New York who had worked with the best.
12:00 AM 04/27/2010
Let me say right here and now that even though I’m anonymous: Anchorman is not going to be drawing any pictures of the prophet Mohammed any time soon. None. Not in a bear costume, not with a turban shaped like a bomb, not in any way shape or form.
12:00 AM 04/20/2010
To: Kathleen Parker
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Washington Post
re: your Op-Ed, “Don’t Reload. Speak Out.”
12:00 AM 04/16/2010
Anchorman: Well, Doctor, you see, it’s been an especially stressful week.
12:00 AM 04/06/2010
In the old Soviet Union it was not uncommon for opponents of the state to be branded as mentally ill and to be carted off to the gulag for some badly needed “therapy.” Today in the tense climate of American politics there is a milder, yet troubling reliance on the part of left and right to play the “crazy card.” You've heard them all. “Right-wing nut,” “Nutroots,” “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” “Cable Network MSLSD,” “Republi-tard,” “Dim-ocrat.” It goes on and on. Even among academic sophisticates, there is a similar game. It involves the typically flawed “scientific” study that finds one side of the political spectrum—always the opposite side from where the researcher stands—to be of lower I.Q., lacking in brainpower, and achievement. Mentally deficient. Pinhead. Whacko. Dolt. Retard.
1:25 AM 03/26/2010
“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio.”
1:00 AM 03/23/2010
As I sat down to read the teleprompter in my newscast the first day after the House’s passage of the health bill, I could have predicted this story would be included, produced by the late-night writers and producers, all of them vetted for the “proper” way of thinking. Here it is for your reading pleasure: obligatory, boilerplate unquestioning mainstream media stuff, in the exact form it scrolled across the teleprompter today.
2:12 PM 03/20/2010
In the press gallery of the House of Representatives, off the beaten path of tourists, and accessible only to those with proper credentials, hangs a large photograph of a herd of cows. They’re standing in a haphazard semi-circle, gazing into the camera lens with that vacant stare that cows generally have. The caption under photo reads, “Press Conference.” The photo is shot from the position of someone who would have called the press conference. It’s easy to imagine that person standing before the herd, taking a deep breath and beginning. “Thank you for coming this morning ...”
12:00 AM 03/18/2010
I confess, I’m utterly flummoxed by health care reform and what’s going on in Congress.
12:00 AM 02/26/2010
On Nov. 23, 1986, CBS’s “60 Minutes” broadcast a 17-minute segment, “Out of Control,” about a rash of reports of a “sudden unintended acceleration” problem with the Audi 5000. It was presented by correspondent Ed Bradley, a man who now stands in the annals of TV journalism as a revered and legendary figure.
12:05 AM 02/18/2010
On Tuesday morning of this week, for the first time in more than a week, I saw a Fairfax County school bus on its rounds -- a scheduled two hours late on account of an overnight dusting of snow. But at least it was moving for the first time in a week since our double dose of winter weather dumped almost 3 feet of snow in our area. The bus had a thick layer of compacted , hard snow on its roof as it pulled out of its hibernation. None of the 173,573 people employed by Fairfax County schools had bothered to clear off, what authorities like to call, a "missile" should it take off and strike something or someone.
12:30 AM 01/19/2010
One cardinal rule of journalism is that reporters shouldn’t give or receive money, favors or services from anyone or any organization connected to stories they report on. In fact, many news organizations require their reporters to sign “pay for play” agreements that expressly prohibit such arrangements. Crossing that line is a firing offense in many news organizations.
2:35 AM 01/15/2010
The following was written by a well-known news anchor from a top-10, big city station:
