Left-wing operatives, like those who run Politico, are intentionally attempting to create their own reality. In the same way the left turned “30 Rock,” a show that ranked 106 in the ratings last season, into some sort of cultural phenom, the idea here is to push the political and social values of something no one watches into our country’s cultural and media narrative as though it’s something it’s not — popular.

Politico loves Stephen Colbert because Stephen Colbert loves Barack Obama and is waging war against the Right and free speech. America, however, is, to be kind, indifferent to Colbert. 1.44 million viewers and only half that among the 18-49 group, does not make you King of anything.

But Colbert knows how to play the game and understands that if he wants these kinds of hollow accolades and the opportunity to push his left-wing agenda and to have history revised in his favor, he must appeal to the right people, and the right people are not THE people; the right people are the left-wing elites who infest our corrupt media.

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It’s hard for the Activist Old Media to out-do itself with their leftist bias, but the Romney tax returns have them freaked out.

This fits right in their wheelhouse of deception and class envy.

The latest is an ABC story with this headline. “Romney Failed to Disclose Swiss Bank Account Income.”

Sounds serious there. Sounds like they finally busted Mitt and they are preparing the graphics and music for the hour-long prime time special showing him doing the IRS perp walk.

Five paragraphs into the story you find out the amount is $1,700 dollars. Now, $1,700 is more than most recent Democrats candidates for president donate to charity in a year, but on Romney’s tax returns to find a missing $1,700 dollars is like finding a penny in the cushions that you forgot to report. I guess the dollar amount is not important (unless its somebody making too much money,) it’s the headline they were after here.

Better get top terrorist reporter Brian Ross out of the Caribbean and off to Switzerland to uncover this latest Romney plot.

NBC’s Brian Williams called Romney’s wealth “unimaginable.” Unimaginable? How you doing Brian in your luxury Manhattan apartment? Ask your neighbor Beyonce if you can borrow some sugar.

Better send that crew back to Mexico to see how the branch of the Romney family is doing down there and demand they tell you how much money they make off their citrus farms. You left that out of the last story you did on them.

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Steven Crowder shares the fall-out of calling out the bias in “The Daily Show,” which prides itself on “moderation” and pretending to lampoon both sides.

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My own politics began to mature while in college when simply publishing a letter to the editor from a student the academic Left rightly saw as an enemy resulted in their launching an all out effort to destroy my reputation. It wasn’t that I agreed with the student. All I did was acknowledge his right to be heard in one instance, regardless of how repulsive some of his other views may have been.

The academic Left, more so than the student body, went after me, not the student. They simply refused to accept that someone with the authority to act as a gatekeeper of sorts as regards to different viewpoints would dare give voice to someone they strongly opposed. I found their approach so stifling and, in essence, evil for trying to destroy me, though only a mere messenger, I began my journey toward the Right as I explored my differences with the Left. But it has always been their willingness to stifle free speech that led me to see the Left as a far greater threat to individual liberty in America than is the Right.

Over the years, that understanding of the Left has continued to be reinforced, not refuted. And there are some prime examples of it in today’s news cycle.

Progressive Republican Lisa Murkowski has forced a Right-leaning talk radio host off the air in Alaska, simply because he disagrees with her. Yet, she is attempting to portray her opponent, Joe Miller, as seeking to do the very thing of which she is guilty.

Meanwhile, Comedy Cenrtral has embraced the misguided and repugnant notion that it can control the media, even on public property. That instinct isn’t only illiberal, it’s un-American. Thanks to new media it will not work. See link, or below for Big Journalism’s own live-blogging of yesterday’s event in DC. (more…)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

—–

Suggested topics of discussion:

1. Was Jon Stewart telling the truth when he told the news media “Restore Sanity and/or Fear” wasn’t a response to Glenn Beck’s wildly successful and apolitical “Restore Honor” event?

2. Why is Sheryl Crow a star?

3. How many parents are using the rally as a rare opportunity to air out the basement where their slacker/loser thirtysomething child dwells?

4. Are the guys in raincoats from Media Matters? (more…)

**Update**:  CNN fires Sanchez. From the Hollywood Reporter:

CNN issued a statement Thursday announcing that anchor Rick Sanchez is no longer with the network after giving a radio interview in which he insinuated Jon Stewart was a bigot and CNN was “run by Jews.”

“Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company,” the statement read. “We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.”

****

Rick Sanchez, the dumbest man on television, has often been unable to control either his brain or his mouth, but when the two of them operate in tandem, oh brother. This time, it’s Jon Stewart who’s set him off. From Mediaite:

I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

Always fun when lefties start to turn on each other, playing — naturally! — the race or ethnicity or victim card.

Hear for yourself: (more…)

Just weeks after Comedy Central executives censored a program because of its depiction of Muhammad, the network has announced it has a new cartoon series in development that could not be more disrespectful of Christianity. Entitled “JC”, the show will depict Jesus living in contemporary New York City trying to “escape his father’s enormous shadow.”

Comedy Central’s long history of defaming Christianity.

Putting aside  Comedy Central’s religious insensitivity, it takes a lot of guts to attack Christians and wimp out to violent Muslim fanatics. (more…)

That would be Ross Douthat of the New York Times, the center-right Op-Ed columnist who looks like Attila the Hun next to his allegedly conservative stablemate, the pathetic accommodationist, David Brooks. Writing about the most recent episode of South Park, which sought to elide post-9/11 proscriptions against joking about Islam by not depicting Mohammed, he writes:

These gimmicks then prompted a writer for the New York-based Web site revolutionmuslim.com to predict that Parker and Stone would end up like Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker murdered in 2004 for his scathing critiques of Islam. The writer, an American convert to Islam named Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, didn’t technically threaten to kill them himself. His post, and the accompanying photo of van Gogh’s corpse, was just “a warning … of what will likely happen to them.”

This passive-aggressive death threat provoked a swift response from Comedy Central. In last week’s follow-up episode, the prophet’s non-appearance appearances were censored, and every single reference to Muhammad was bleeped out. The historical record was quickly scrubbed as well: The original “Super Best Friends” episode is no longer available on the Internet.

Sgt. York

Well, that’s America in 2010 — almost a full decade after we were attacked, we cower in fear of the people who attacked us; Sgt. York and Audie Murphy would be so proud.  Why, it would be as if, after the attack on Pearl Habor in 1941, the country suddenly banned all depictions of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, ceded Hawaii to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and went on a prolonged sushi orgy. (more…)

That sound you’re not hearing is the media, holed up in their towers along Sixth Avenue and across the street from the old Show World Center porn palace on Eighth Avenue, noisily rising to the defense of Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the South Park creators who recently upset the tender Muslim sensibilities of this guy:

That would be Zachary Chesser, or as he currently styles himself, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee.  This 20-year-old from Fairfax, Va., trolling away on his blog, was able to get Comedy Central to censor one of the most popular and lucrative shows in its lineup merely by suggesting that Stone and Parker might meet the same fate that befell Theo Van Gogh when he “outraged” Muslim sensibilities.

Most of the stories so far have been along the lines of this one from the Los Angeles Times, which examines the “dilemma” media companies face in dealing with controversial subject matter: (more…)

In light of the news about Comedy Central’s astounding cowardice in the face of some veiled threats from Troglogyte Central, my thoughts turned to this movie, and not just because I wrote the sequel:

Forget the famous love story this time, and see Casablanca for what it also is: a great World War II movie, in which the alienated ex-pat Rick Blaine finally realizes that his policy of sticking his neck out for no man is just not going to fly; when the rusty scimitars come out, you don’t have to stick your neck out to get your head sawed off.

Remember, these threats allegedly came from an American named Zachary Chesser, who styles himself Abu Talhah al Amrikee — his adopted name, “al Amrikee,” means “the American” — who is living in this country.

Mark Styen gets it.  He spoke about what a crucial moment the Comedy Central espisode was this afternoon while guest-hosting the Rush Limbaugh show, and writes about it here: (more…)

The mythical figure of the war correspondent has a special place in the history of American journalism. The images are indelibly etched in memory: Edward R. Murrow broadcasting live while Nazi planes showered London with bombs; Ernie Pyle telling the personal stories of life in the trenches and ultimately paying for those stories with his life; and in today’s war with the jihadists, Michael Yon’s amazing reports from Afghanistan. This kind of fearless reporting made for journalist-heroes: courageous men and women that all Americans could admire.

Contrast Murrow, Pyle, et al with the cowards populating today’s mainstream media outlets. Everyone in the media today – whether new or old – is a war correspondent, in fact if not in name. The war is here, around the globe and most of all within our borders, courtesy of bullies and thugs who have spent the better part of thirteen centuries killing non-believers and trying to force a backward, hateful ideology cloaked in the robes of religion upon the world. Yet, though this war includes not only body counts, but ultimately threatens the existence of the free press itself, the mainstream media meekly cowers as the foundations of free speech and a free society are worn away by Islamic gangsters. (more…)

While doing research for my upcoming book, tentatively titled Programming America (Harper Collins, due 2011), the inside story of the politically-motivated evolution of television from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Sex and the City and the very real bias of the industry against conservative content and creators, I interviewed Doug Herzog, President of MTV Networks Entertainment Group. He oversees Comedy Central, and he was kind enough to grant me some time and consent to taping our conversation on June 22, 2009.

During the course of that conversation, I asked Mr. Herzog about the network’s decision to censor South Park in April 2006 – in particular, the network shut down a segment that featured a cartoon image of Mohammed.

Here’s the audio:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

SHAPIRO: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the controversy that surrounded the South Park/Mohammed controversy. How did that come about and what was the real story there?

HERZOG: The real story was the story you know, which is that the guys wanted to depict Mohammed and the network wouldn’t let them. And that was the whole story. And while I think if we had to do it all over again we would do it differently, that was the decision we made at the time. And I regret it somewhat but I’ve made worse decisions in my life. (more…)

In the past year, we’ve had plenty of opportunities (and reasons) to criticize Jon Stewart’s routine attacks on conservatives, talk radio, Fox News and other opponents of reflexive liberalism.

But not today.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
South Park Death Threats
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Put in the difficult position to address his network’s controversial decision to censor a “South Park” episode that mocked Islamic extremists, he deftly put the network’s decision in context, back-handedly criticized it but summed it up with an adroit, “But hey, they write the checks.” (more…)

Except to say that I never thought I would see the day when Americans would so meekly accede to threats, or even hints of violence, this news from Comedy Central is hardly surprising anymore.  From the Hollywood Reporter:

‘Muhammad’ now a dirty word on ‘South Park’

Now “South Park” can’t even say the words “Prophet Muhammad.”

After last week’s episode of the Comedy Central series sparked a threat (and yes, it was certainly a threat) from a radical Islamic website, the network has cracked-down-for-their-own-good on creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone during last night’s continuation of the show’s storyline.

For their own good… right.

For those who missed the drama, the show’s 200th episode last week mocked the one “celebrity” that the series has been largely unable to depict, the Prophet Muhammad, who was hidden from view in a bear costume. A U.S.-based website RevolutionMuslim.com then warned Parker and Stone they could end up like Theo Van Gogh (the Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by Muslim extremists after depicting Muhammad on his show) and even posted the address of the show’s production office. The site has since been shut down.

In case you’ve forgotten, here’s what happened to Theo Van Gogh for the crime of making a movie that criticized Islam: (more…)

Bernie Goldberg is a master of hyperbole. Jon Stewart is a master of deflection. For those of you who missed the action, the Goldberg-Stewart Wars have heated up again over the last couple of days, with long-range missiles volleyed back and forth between The O’Reilly Factor studio at Fox and Stewart’s camp over at Comedy Central.

The latest skirmish began Monday night when Goldberg described Stewart’s softball interview of the Times’ Frank Rich as a “lap dance,” adding that Stewart “practically had your tongue down his [Rich’s] throat.”

Goldberg not only knows hyperbole, he wields it as if he invented it. Just look at the title of his most recent book—A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.

But Stewart, a smart and funny man with impeccable comic timing, is equally skilled in the art of diversionary tactics. He launched a counterattack on Tuesday. His flippant rejoinder to the Rich French kiss salvo was—referring to past interviews with conservatives on his show—that he and Bill Kristol cavorted in “the Champagne Room,” and he and John McCain were “f—ing like bunnies.”

(more…)

As you know, more young people get their news from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show that anyplace else. For a sizable swath of the population, it hasn’t happened until they’ve seen it on Stewart’s Comedy Central show, and that includes reading about it in the New York Times. So when Stewart takes on the high-minded, but utterly false, media meme of those “racist tea-baggers,” so assiduously peddled by tired old white men of the Times like Frank Rich, people are going to notice.

Guess what?  They just noticed.

Click on the link and watch the opening segment with Wyatt Cenac, making good ribald fun of the MSM tropes that the Tea Partiers hate black people and gay people.  Of course, this being Stewart, there’s a good deal of Fox News bashing as well

But the larger point it this: when you’ve lost Jon Stewart — when a fake newscaster gets closer to the truth than the “real” newscasters — then the MSM’s fast-fading pretense to authority has just about disappeared.

Let the ridicule begin!