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2. NPR's Nina Totenberg Lambastes Tax Cut as "Really Stupid" NPR's Nina Totenberg denigrated the tax cut which passed the Senate as "really stupid," not because the size was half of what President Bush advocated, but because it's still too big. 3. Texas Dems Who Fled Earn CNN's "Political Play of the Week" Democrats in Texas used extra-legal means to shut down the legislature and prevent the vote on a redistricting plan, but the networks are still more interested in demonizing conservatives in Washington and treating the Democrats as heroes. ABC's Terry Moran lectured Ari Fleischer about how "members of his own political party, at a time of war" had "the gall to use federal resources designed to protect the country against terrorists in order to pursue partisan political objectives." NBC's Tom Brokaw focused on the same supposed misuse of the Department of Homeland Security. And CNN's Bill Schneider awarded the Texas Democrats the "Political Play of the Week," as he marveled at how the "renegade representatives ended up looking like heroes." 4. FNC Expert Faults Military-Belittling Stories About Lynch Rescue Retired Army special operations Colonel David Hunt, Friday morning on FNC, denounced the Toronto Star and BBC stories, which ABC picked up, that the U.S. military concocted a fairy tale about the dangers in rescuing of POW Jessica Lynch when, in fact all the armed men had left the hospital before they arrived so they faced no danger or hostility. "This is just poor reporting," Hunt maintained on the May 16 Fox & Friends, "there's nobody, no military former or current that they bothered to talk to." Hunt asserted that "there were 25 to 30 guys, armed, both fedayeen and army, Iraqi military outside and inside the hospital." 5. Lange Lets Loose Against Bush Again in Commencement Address Actress Jessica Lange used her commencement address at Marlboro College in Vermont on Sunday to denounce the Bush administration. The Rutland Herald reported that "she likened the war in Iraq to Richard Nixon's 'ruthless' bombing of Vietnam. She said executive orders and judicial appointments were eroding women's rights." The Brattleboro Reformer relayed how she charged: "'Once again, the poorest and most disadvantage are the ones being left behind,' she said, a play on the title of the Bush administration's education law, No Child Left Behind." 6. FNC's Newswatch Discusses Two Topics in CyberAlert Last Week You read it here first. FNC's Fox Newswatch did segments on Saturday about two topics first raised in CyberAlerts last week: Diane Sawyer claiming the Jayson Blair scandal could not occur in television news and Michael Moore contending to Bob Costas that the Bush administration knows to whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. 7. SNL Mocks NY Times Ad: "I Like the Fabricated Interviews..." Saturday Night Live mocked a New York Times ad: "Hi, I'd like to start getting home delivery of the Sunday New York Times. I like the fabricated interviews, he goes straight for the plagiarized articles." 8. Letterman's "Top Ten Surprises in the New Hitler Movie" Letterman's "Top Ten Surprises in the New Hitler Movie."
A perfect model of liberal media bias was displayed by Sunday's This Week with all three journalists in the mainstream media denouncing a tax cut and the one radio talk show host, the only one who does not report news stories for a mainstream outlet, defending a tax cut from the hostile onslaught. During the roundtable segment on the May 18 ABC show, host George Stephanopoulos marveled at how Bush won a tax cut vote in the Senate given the size of the deficit, how it's "weighted to the rich" and the public would "prefer" the money go to health care. Westwood One Radio talk show host Laura Ingraham countered each point and suggested that "class warfare" is a losing argument for Democrats, which prompted Nightline correspondent Michel Martin to fire back: "It's not about class warfare, it's about values." Soon, Joe Klein of Time, fresh from writing a cover story on how Democrats can win, complained that "we have 50 states...and many cities that are in real trouble and the federal government could help them out by funding, you know, public works projects." (As cited in the May 14 CyberAlert, over a photo of FDR, Time's cover story mourned: "Why They Don't Make Democrats Like They Used To (And How to Fix It)." Time's assigned adviser to Democrats, Joe Klein, declared inside: "Ever since the George McGovern disaster of 1972, the party has routinely chosen technocratic moderates for standard-bearers." Mondale and Dukakis were "moderates"? Klein also considered Bob Graham to be more conservative than President Bush and preposterously tagged Howard Dean as a "fiscal conservative." For details: www.mediaresearch.org [1] ) Stephanopoulos set up the May 18 discussion about how the Senate passed the "third largest" ever tax cut: "He did this in the face of three big arguments against the tax cut: That it's going to increase the deficit, that it's weighted to the rich and that the American people would prefer, you know, to spend the money on health care, education, other priorities. How does he do it?" Ingraham suggested polls show most support the tax cut, that tax cut supporters should concede it probably will increase the deficit, but that doesn't matter economically, and that class warfare is not working since every parent will get $400 immediately, and the rich will get a bigger cut because the wealthy pay more taxes.
To that, Martin retorted: "It's not about class warfare, it's about values. What's the appropriate use of this very rich country's resources? And I think the argument comes down to tax cuts for a segment of the population versus other services-" Public works projects -- just like those enacted by the last President Time magazine considered worth emulating.
NPR's Nina Totenberg denigrated the tax cut which passed the Senate as "really stupid," not because the size was half of what President Bush advocated, but because it's still too big. On Inside Washington over the weekend, Totenberg whined: "It's only on paper half of what he asked for because it assumes that they'll phase out the tax cuts in three years on dividends and that's not going to happen. So he's going to get most of what he wants in this tax bill. That's number one. And number two, the amount in this tax bill is about what the deficit is. I speak as the frugal one in my family and I think this is a really stupid way to run a budget."
Democrats in Texas used extra-legal means to shut down the legislature and prevent the vote on a redistricting plan -- fleeing Austin to Oklahoma so they could avoid capture by Texas Rangers -- but the networks are still more interested in demonizing conservatives in Washington and treating the Democrats as heroes. ABC News reporter Terry Moran lectured Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at Friday's White House briefing: "Is the President troubled at all that members of his own political party, at a time of war, days after Americans were killed in a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, would have the gall to use federal resources designed to protect the country against terrorists in order to pursue partisan political objectives?" Catching up to Dan Rather from the night before, on Friday night, without having ever explained how current gerrymandering has resulted in a situation which Democrats control a majority of Texas U.S. House seats though Republicans candidates earn the most votes, NBC's Tom Brokaw focused on the supposed misuse of the Department of Homeland Security to track down the miscreant Democrats. And CNN's Bill Schneider awarded the Texas Democrats the "Political Play of the Week," as he marveled at how the "renegade representatives ended up looking like heroes." Friday's CyberAlert explained: Democrats in Texas employed extra-legal means to thwart the will of the majority by leaving the state in order to prevent a quorum, but on Thursday night, CBS portrayed U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as the ogre by focusing on his supposed misuse of federal resources to track down the fleeing Democrats. Earlier, Bob McNamara made DeLay the heavy as he falsely referred to how "DeLay's redistricting Texas power play is designed to add as many as seven more GOP seats to a state congressional delegation Republicans already control." CBS ignored how, as Fred Barnes explained on FNC, previous Democratic gerrymandering means that though the GOP captures the most House votes in Texas it has a minority of seats. CNN's Bruce Morton relayed how a left-wing columnist, unlabeled, charged: "These are Shiite Republicans." For more: www.mediaresearch.org [2]
Moran: "We went over this a little bit yesterday with Scott, but I wanted to ask you about it, as well. The use -- or abuse, I suppose -- of the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center, now under the Department of Homeland Security, for partisan political purposes -- does the President support an investigation as to how, at a time of war, the Department of Homeland Security's resources could be abused like this by Republicans in Texas?"
Moran wasn't even able to convince Peter Jennings of the newsworthiness of his whining, since World News Tonight did nothing on it on Friday night, but on the May 16 NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw intoned: Earlier, on CNN's Inside Politics, MRC analyst Ken Shepherd noticed, Bill Schneider awarded the "Political Play of the Week" to the Texas Democrats.
Thanks, in part, to media reinforcements.
Retired Army special operations Colonel David Hunt, Friday morning on FNC, denounced the Toronto Star and BBC stories that the U.S. military concocted a fairy tale about the dangers in rescuing of POW Jessica Lynch when, in fact all the armed men had left the hospital before they arrived as so they faced no danger or hostility. "This is just poor reporting," Hunt maintained on the May 16 Fox & Friends, "there's nobody, no military former or current that they bothered to talk to." Hunt asserted that "there were 25 to 30 guys, armed, both fedayeen and army, Iraqi military outside and inside the hospital." As highlighted in the May 8 CyberAlert, ABC and Peter Jennings picked up on the claims to illustrate more military incompetence: Unnecessarily breaking doorknobs. Recalling the rescue of POW Jessica Lynch, Jennings asserted: "Now we hear that it may have been less dangerous and maybe even less challenging than Central Command first told us." David Wright noted that the U.S. "soldiers broke down doors in the intensive care unit," but, he insisted, "they could have just asked where she was" since, people at the hospital told him, there were no Iraqi soldiers in the building. Over video of punched out doorknobs, Wright complained that "the hospital still bears the scars of that midnight raid. The administrators had to sell precious drugs to pay for the damage." For more: www.mediaresearch.org [3] The next day's CyberAlert pinpointed a Toronto Star story as what spurred ABC: MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Thursday night inadvertently outed ABC's Peter Jennings as to how a piece on Wednesday's World News Tonight belittling the U.S. commando rescue of POW Jessica Lynch, because of how no Iraqi military were in the hospital, aired two days after a story with that theme ran in Jennings' hometown newspaper, the Toronto Star. But that Star story was not obsessed, as was ABC, with how commandos unnecessarily broke doors. Toronto Star reporter Mitch Potter mentioned broken doors just once in his article and that did not occur until the 20th paragraph. For more, and an except from, and a link to, the Toronto Star story: www.mediaresearch.org [4]
Tri-host E.D. Hill set him up, as taken down by MRC analyst Patrick Gregory: "The BBC is reporting that according to one Iraqi doctor that they've named that they interviewed, that nothing like that happened -- that all of the enemy had left the hospital two days before, that the American soldiers were shooting blanks, and that Jessica had no shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound, and it was all like a Hollywood movie."
For the online version of the BBC's May 15 story: news.bbc.co.uk [5]
Actress Jessica Lange used her commencement address at Marlboro College in Vermont on Sunday, from which her daughter was graduating, to denounce the Bush administration. The Rutland Herald reported that "she likened the war in Iraq to Richard Nixon's 'ruthless' bombing of Vietnam. She said executive orders and judicial appointments were eroding women's rights." The Brattleboro Reformer relayed how she charged: "'Once again, the poorest and most disadvantage are the ones being left behind,' she said, a play on the title of the Bush administration's education law, No Child Left Behind."
At the MRC's "DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2002," held in March, Lange won the "I'm Not a Geopolitical Genius But I Play One on TV Award" for this outburst at a September, 2002 film festival in Spain, as captured by the syndicated TV show, Inside Edition:
For a rundown of the DisHonors event and RealPlayer videos of all of the award category quotes: www.mediaresearch.org [7] In a speech that mixed the personal and the political, actress Jessica Lange urged the Marlboro College Class of 2003 to battle injustice while remaining alive to the moment Sunday. A Hollywood star by way of rural Minnesota, Lange quoted another artist from that state when conferring her blessings on the 74 graduates, one of her whom was her daughter. "I wish you all the courage to have an adventurous heart," Lange told an overflow crowd at the Person's Auditorium. "And as Dylan said, 'May you stay forever young.'"... Shura Lange Baryshnikov, whose father, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, attended the graduation ceremony, wrote about the role of women in the United States, with an emphasis on issues surrounding motherhood. Lange cited that project when telling an anecdote about filming a movie recently in Montgomery, Ala. When returning from the set, she passed a strip mall that contained a day-care center. A sign outside the center boasted that it was open until midnight. "It made me very sad," Lange said. Lange said she felt for both the children at the center and the parents forced to consign them there so they could most likely work minimum-wage jobs. "Something's really terribly wrong," Lange said, noting that the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty among major nations. Lange went on to condemn the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policies. She likened the war in Iraq to Richard Nixon's "ruthless" bombing of Vietnam. She said executive orders and judicial appointments were eroding women's rights. The public schools, meanwhile, are being forced to meet tough new standards at the same time that Washington is denying them the resources they need. As for the environment, the national forests are being logged at an alarming rate. "The list goes on and on and on and on," Lange said. "Now is the time to be vigilant. Now is the time to act. This is the world you are inheriting." While she urged the graduates to take social action, Lange also offered them some advice with a Buddhist flavor. "Just be present," she said. "Don't be rigid in your expectations."... Sounding like Dylan again, Lange urged her audience to be "receptive to the winds of change." "Everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing," Lange said. "The only thing we really have is now."... END of Excerpt
For the story in full: www.rutlandherald.com [8] Criticism of President Bush, hope for a better future and repeated odes to the quickly changing times marked the 56th commencement ceremony at Marlboro College Sunday as the school awarded 74 degrees. The ceremony, which featured a speech by Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Lange, was also the last for college president Paul LeBlanc, who announced last month he would step down after seven years.... The big draw of the day was Lange, whose daughter, Shura Baryshnikov graduated from the college that day with a bachelor's degree in American studies and women's studies. Lange compared the graduating seniors of today to where she was after finishing college in 1972. Then, the Vietnam War was in its seventh year and President Nixon had authorized bombs that killed thousands of civilians all in the name of stopping the communists. Today, she said, President Bush authorizes the dropping of bombs to kill thousands in the name of stopping Saddam Hussein. But Iraq is not the only battlefield in the world right now, she said. Women's reproductive rights, civil liberties and the health and education of children all over the world are under attack, she said. Lange said she recently drove past a child care center in Minnesota and saw a sign saying "Now open until midnight." She said the sight made her feel bad for the children who are raised without seeing their parents and for the parents who have to work menial jobs in order to survive. "Once again, the poorest and most disadvantage are the ones being left behind," she said, a play on the title of the Bush administration's education law, No Child Left Behind.... END of Excerpt
For the story in its entirety: www.reformer.com [9] Rutland Herald: "Lange cited that project when telling an anecdote about filming a movie recently in Montgomery, Ala. When returning from the set, she passed a strip mall that contained a day-care center. A sign outside the center boasted that it was open until midnight.
Brattleboro Reformer: "Lange said she recently drove past a child care center in Minnesota and saw a sign saying "Now open until midnight." Marlboro College's Web site, which may at some point post the text of Lange's remarks: www.marlboro.edu [10]
You read it here first. FNC's Fox Newswatch did segments on Saturday about two topics first raised in CyberAlerts last week. -- The FNC announcer plugged an upcoming segment: "ABC's Diane Sawyer says what Jayson Blair did couldn't happen on television. Could it? Did it?" From the May 13 CyberAlert: ABC's Diane Sawyer contended on Monday's Good Morning America that the Jason Blair/New York Times type of fabrication "is much less likely to happen" in broadcast journalism "because you've got so many people working on every story that there are more people to ask questions." But that doesn't keep viewers from getting fabricated stories produced by groups of TV producers and reporters working in concert, such as Dateline NBC's exploding pick up trucks or the incident involving Sawyer herself, ABC producers participating in a scheme to make Food Lion look bad by working with disgruntled union workers. See: www.mediaresearch.org [11] -- Host Eric Burns set up a subsequent segment: "First, filmmaker Michael Moore blasted President Bush for the war in Iraq at the Academy Awards. Now he's told interviewer Bob Costas that the President knows where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but refuses to go after him because the Saudis are providing money to bin Laden and the Saudis are our allies." From the May 12 CyberAlert: To the astonishment of Bob Costas, Friday night on HBO, far-left crank/movie producer Michael Moore claimed that the Bush administration "absolutely" knows where Osama bin Laden is located and doesn't go after him "because he's funded by their friends in Saudi Arabia!" Moore speculated: "Do you think that Osama bin Laden planned 9-11 from a cave in Afghanistan? I can't get a cell signal from here to Queens." See: www.mediaresearch.org [12]
Saturday Night Live's mock newscast, "Weekend Update," featured a take-off on the New York Times radio and TV ads featuring a wife recounting, as she orders home delivery, which sections she and her husband enjoy on Sunday morning. Tina Fey, held her closed hand to her ear to suggest talking on the phone and Jimmy Fallon, playing her husband, leaned into the shot. Fey then joked: "Hi, I'd like to start getting home delivery of the Sunday New York Times. I like the fabricated interviews, he goes straight for the plagiarized articles."
From the May 16 Late Show with David Letterman, prompted by the CBS movie, Hitler: The Rise of Evil, the "Top Ten Surprises in the New Hitler Movie." Late Show Web page: www.cbs.com [13] 10. Small mustache result of practical joke by drunken fraternity buddies 9. Hitler is captured after being recognized from deck of "Nazi Most Wanted" playing cards 8. He trademarked the word "Hitler-riffic" 7. Hitler tries to use his newfound powers to help Morpheus destroy the Matrix 6. Evil manifests itself in young Hitler after he is voted off "German Idol" 5. Hitler replaced by guest-Fuhrers during bout with Shingles 4. Favorite food? Fish sticks 3. Hitler furiously stocking bunker with delicious chocolate Yoo-Hoo 2. Scene where CBS fires executive who decided to make a Hitler movie 1. Middle name: Dwayne Part one of CBS's Hitler movie aired on Sunday night. Part two will air on Tuesday night. -- Brent Baker [14]
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Schneider began: "Well, since when do you get the [political] play of the week for walking off the job? Since Texas Democrats did just that this week. Walking off the job can get you called some rude names in Texas." 
