MediaWatch: January 1993
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: January 1993
- No Liberal Labels for Redistributionists
- NewsBites: Holiday Homeless Hype
- Revolving Door: Schram's Spin
- Networks Predictably Erupt Over Iran-Contra Pardons
- 20/20 Host Slashes at GOP
- Cummins on Crime
- Not Enough Details on Iran-Contra, But "Bastards" Kept Honest on Ads
- Janet Cooke Award: Time's Lance Morrow, Margaret Carlson Promote the Clintons
20/20 Host Slashes at GOP
Hugh Fumes
Hugh Downs, the long-time host of ABC's 20/20, used an ABC Radio commentary program, Perspective, to launch a scandalous attack against the religious right on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Demons were the theme of his lecture: "The danger with the majority of human-spawned demons is that they are perpetuated by sane, and not insane, people."
Downs attacked Pat Robertson: "He may one day be elected President of the United States of America, and this very real possibility says more about the degradation of American values than 1,000 television situation comedies. American values have indeed degraded. They have degraded from precise, clear-headed common-sense awareness to fuzzy-brained superstitious nonsense."
He attacked the "war on drugs," falsely claiming: "Billions of dollars are cut from American schools, health care, aid to the elderly, in order to wage a battle against imaginary Satanic forces and legions of demons. Our reaction to these demons have created a crime problem out of what is essentially a medical and social problem. And America refuses to confront its inner demons and to back off of ineffective approaches. Instead, we regress into the family."
"Regress" into the family? Downs repeated himself for emphasis: "During times of social stress, humanity usually regresses into the family. Nobody denies that proper family values are worth having and protecting. The argument is over how the term is wielded; whether the motivation is broad, generous-hearted, and liberating, or narrow, dogmatic, and designed to control the lives of others."
He continued: "In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan urged the nation to adopt family values and to return to old-time religion.
Similarly, Adolf Hitler launched a family-values regimen. Hitler's centered on his ideas of motherhood. Fanatics in the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party, the Hezbollah, or any other intolerant organization, refer to themselves as religious warriors. As warriors, fanatics censor the thoughts of others and love to burn books. In the modern United States, new proponents of family values continue this tradition of fear and intolerance." Stalin had a five-year economic plan, and so does Clinton. By Downs' logic, that means something.
