August 25, 2006

Well, we are back after a short technical hiatus. On the News Roundup this Friday you didn't hear what you didn't hear in the last few weeks either. You didn't hear:

• Anything about the troubling, to say the least, anti-semitic comments by Chris Matthews of Hardball about Sen. Joe Liberman loss to Mr. Lamont's democracy by cybermob:

"The body language of the two is so different. You have this very wasp-y fellow, Lamont, very calm, very casual, very St. Paul's almost in the prep school sense, Lieberman of course is the schmaltzy ethnic guy, the Uncle Tonoose, you know, the guy that's very much kind of lachrymose in his almost postnasal drip voice of his, but he doesn't look happy." Of course, when Lieberman was running with Vicepresident Gore, Mr. Mathews did not say that. All of a sudden Sen. Liberman was reduced to a semitic stereotype. By the way, have you heard incessant, day after day demands for an apology from Mr. Mathews in the media? I don't think so.

• Anything about the remarks made by former American U.N. ambassador and civil rights leader Andrew Young:

"Those are the people who have been overcharging us — selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs, very few black people own these stores." By the way have you heard incessant, day after day demands for an apology from Rev. Young in the media? I don't think so.

• Anything about Mayor Nagin of New Orleans:

"You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair." All of a sudden the World Trade Center site is no longer the place of great human loss but just a hole in the ground. Do you think that anybody else would get away with that kind of bitter insensitivity? And, by the way have you heard incessant, day after day demands for an apology from Mr. Nagin in the media about this and his previous racists remarks about New Orleans? I don't think so.

• Anything about former Clinton camp commander Lanny Davis op/ed article about his dismay at the amount of anti-semitic remarks against Sen. Lieberman in the most popular Democrat/liberal websites and blogs. Although Mr. Davies was acting like the shocked French inspector in Casablanca, since during the Clinton years he was one of the original creators of the "attacks of personal destruction", nevertheless he has been gentleman enough to see the chickens coming home to roost.
• Anything about Sen. Biden's insensitive remarks about Pakistani immigrants, and prior to that, anything about Sen. Clinton's insensitive remarks about hard working immigrants from India. By the way have you heard incesant, day after day demands for an apology from Sen. Biden or Sen. Clinton in the media? I don't think so.
• Anything about left wing icon German writer Gunter Grass' belated admission that he was a member of the SS in his youth. By the way, do you recall the treatment Karl Waldheim got for having served in the regular German army? Or the present Pope?

This is no knit-picking on the Diane Rehm show per se, but since many of the best examples of the liberal media gather there it is illustrative of liberal media bias. When Sen. Lott made an off the cuff remark on a birthday celebration for Sen. Thurmond with words to the effect that American society wouldn't be in the mess it is had Thurmond been elected president, Sen. Lott not only was made to apologize for two weeks but also lost his position as leader of the Senate. However, when Sen. Christopher Dodd in a similar event said the former Klan leader Sen. Bird was a "man right for all times" the news didn't last more than a day. Was Sen. Bird the right man for the Civil War times, the Jim Crow times, the Civil Rights struggle times?

At least in today's show Mr. David Corn, the Ann Coulter equivalent of the liberal left, admitted that there is "enough demagoguery on both sides". That is something coming from someone who has a book titled "The Lies of George Bush".

On August 18th, when we started this blog, one of the guests in the News Roundup was White House Press Secretary harasser par excellence and rude de jour Mr. David Gregory of NBC. In the segment dedicated to the emergence of blogs was Arianna Huffington. It was really, really amuzing to hear them speak about civility in public discourse.

Mission Statement

On August 18th 2006, the Diane Rehm Show on NPR (hereinafter called Nationally Paid Radio) had a segment on the emergence and proliferation of blogs and the alternate or citizen’s media. That gave me an idea. What about a blog about the Diane Rehm Show?

Don't get your hopes up if you are an extremist. I like the show. I'm a regular listener and occasional caller, although by virtue of how NPR is funded I am also a yearly financial contributor, and thus feel entitled to have a say so about its programming.

Diane Rehm hosts a show that is civil, "classy", intelligent, varied, relevant, and completely different from the “shout you down” “run-of-the-mill” shows that pass for “talk-shows”. The show is as elegant as the host herself. But there is a slight flaw: it leans liberal. Let’s be frank.

Besides the fact that most guests are of a liberal bent, and the fact that most topics are introduced by way of adjectives which betray that bias—there’s not one week that goes by that one doesn’t hear a topic introduced as “the Bush administration...”—the best example of the bias is in the weekly News Roundup (hereinafter called the Weekly Gang-up). The composition of that panel is typical of what can be seen in the rest of the mainstream media (hereinafter called the Old Media, or Liberal Media). It is usually a 3 against 1 ratio, that is, three liberals including the host and one token conservative.

Usually (although not done so much anymore) the three liberals are introduced without the nomination of liberal before their names, while the conservative is customarily introduced as “conservative commentator or writer so and so.” The implication is that the firsts are, of course, neutral and objective journalists. Because we enjoy The Diane Rehm Show and because we believe that a healthy unbiased media is healthy for Democracy, and because we contribute with our taxes to the airing of The Diane Rehm Show we therefore declare ourselves “Self-Appointed Ombudsman” of the best variety show on radio.