Teach Your Children
The Monitor will return next week to the subject of veteran Israel-basher Mike Wallace. This week, though, with yet another horrific suicide bombing in Jerusalem, it seemed more relevant to focus on the fanatical hatred inculcated in Palestinian young people by their elders.
Media, Dems Team Up Against Bush
Hold the presses for an unusual burst of candor from Newsweek assistant managing Editor Evan Thomas. "The incredible alarm everybody has about how Bush should have known - all of that is baloney," Thomas acknowledged last weekend on the panel discussion program "Inside Washington."
Harmless Humor — Or Insidious Influence?
NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has once again inspired dismay among at least some Jewish viewers who feel the line between simple bad taste and outright anti-Semitism was crossed on the Dec. 17 edition of the long-running show.
A Curious Alliance
Are some conservatives willing to sleep with the devil in order to fight pro-gay legislation? An exclusive report by Evan Gahr on www.JewishWorldReview.com makes the charge that "prominent religious conservatives - Jews, Catholics and Evangelical Christians - are allied with a radical Islamic group to stop gay marriage."
Israelis Worry About Whom?
TimesWatch.org is a website every serious consumer of news should have on his or her 'favorites' list.
The Real Deal
The anticipated or imminent arrival to the major leagues of a Jewish ballplayer is such a relatively infrequent phenomenon that it usually has Jewish fans buzzing - often for the two or three (or more) years it takes for a particular Jewish player to work his way up through the minor leagues.
The Left’s Instinctive Reaction To 9/11
As we mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, it would be instructive to look back at the early reactions to the atrocity on the part of some prominent leftists. It's become something of a mantra on the left that the whole world initially sympathized with the U.S., and that America's image was so irredeemably tarnished only after the evil warmonger George W. Bush trashed the Constitution and sent the American military off to slaughter innocent Muslims in the interests of Halliburton and other capitalist behemoths.
Pro-Kerry Media, Anti-Israel Moore
Maybe you still believe that claims of a biased liberal media are nothing but the deranged muttering of paranoid conservatives.
And it could very well be that you refuse even to entertain the possibility that the mainstream media's coverage of this year's presidential campaign is driven to a large extent by a single-minded determination to send George W. Bush home to Texas and see to it that John F. Kerry is elected the 44th president of the United States.
A Job Well Done By Mike Wallace
Surely any but the most obtuse regular visitors to this space will understand just how painful it is for the Monitor to extend even the slightest praise to "60 Minutes" hatchet man Mike Wallace.
The Left’s Nervous Breakdown
President Bush, writes Graydon Carter, paranoiac editor of Vanity Fair, the magazine that strives mightily to be taken seriously while championing celebrity narcissism and mindless titillation (“Nicole Kidman Bares All,” trills the cover of the current issue, thick as always with ads for perfume, lingerie and high-priced clothes and toys for high-income yuppies and those who aspire to be), “has taken away our civil liberties.”
What Petraeus Really Said
When Gen. David Petraeus was portrayed last month as having made statements suggesting that America’s support of Israel was imperiling the lives of U.S. soldiers, the usual anti-Israel suspects had a field day on blogs and websites. Turns out, though, that the general didn’t quite say what was being attributed to him.
Israel Acts – The Media Howl (Part III)
The Monitor is still trying to catch up with some of the more striking examples of media bias in the coverage of Israel's recent anti-terrorist operations in the Palestinian areas. Topping this week's list is the insufferable Ted Koppel and his separate interviews with Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat, both of which aired on the May 1 edition of ABC's "Nightline."
A Hate-Filled Voice Silenced
Joseph Sobran died last week. Regular readers may recall the Monitor devoting a handful of columns over the years to Sobran's malicious commentary on Jews and Israel. He was a supremely talented writer with a prose style smooth as silk, but sometime in the mid-1980's he descended deep into the fever swamps of anti-Semitism and never resurfaced.
Favorite Websites List
The votes have been received and tabulated, and the winner in the Monitor's first-ever readers' Favorite Websites poll is ... Jewish World Review, the daily webzine that, hard to believe, is the fruit of one man's labor.
The Best And The Brightest
Every year at this time the conservative Media Research Center compiles the most outrageously biased and stupefyingly dumb remarks made by media people during the previous 12 months. Even the quickest perusal of these gems should forever still any doubts about the media's inherent liberal bias and stupefying shallowness.
A Liberal Gives Bush His Due
An important article in the current issue of The New Republic warrants attention. The piece, "The Politics of Churlishness," is the magazine's April 11 cover story by editor-in-chief Martin Peretz, and it amounts to a lifelong liberal's mea culpa for having prejudged and misjudged President Bush in the area of Middle East policy.
When Lieberman’s Week Of Glory Turned Sour
The announcement by Senator Joe Lieberman that he will not run for reelection when his current term is up in 2012 triggered the Monitor's memories of the highlight of Lieberman's political career: Al Gore's selecting him in August 2000 to be his vice-presidential running mate.
Flashback: Blaming Israel For The Intifada
There are times, admittedly few and far between, when the Monitor is rendered speechless. Such a time came seven years ago this week, with the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada.
Another Media Fabulist Exposed
So it appears the allegations - many of them made by former colleagues - were spot on after all. Jack Kelley, at one time USA Today's star reporter, had this rather unfortunate habit of fabricating events and, apparently, entire stories.
A Blast Of Frigid Canadian Air
Every so often the Monitor features media criticism by the sharp-eyed folks HonestReporting.com. This is one of those weeks. The following article from the HonestReporting website highlights a particularly egregious example of anti-Israel bias on the part of the Canadian Broadcasting Authority.
Surprise, Surprise
No earth-shaking commentary this week, just a couple of items that took the Monitor by surprise. The first was an amusing exchange in the Nov. 6 issue of The New York Review of Books (NYR) between Forward editor J.J. Goldberg and journalist Elizabeth Drew. Here is Goldberg's letter to the editor complaining about Drew's mischaracterization of the Forward:
Media Fickleness
Cleaning out some old files last week, the Monitor was reminded how fickle the media can be in the matter of designating heroes and villains, and how a world leader can go from slug to statesman merely by falling into line with the media’s preconceived notions of right and wrong.
Out Of The Woodwork (II)
As we noted last week, a pro-Palestinian website urged a mass protest of an opinion piece by Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder that appeared in the Jan. 31 issue of The Jewish Press.
More Truth Twisting From The New York Times
Once again the Monitor is forced to change course and shelve some already delayed comments on media coverage of Israel's recent anti-terror military operation. We'll get back to Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel next week, but right now there can be no topic for discussion other than The New York Times and the travesty it has become.
The Left Gears Up For Battle (Part III)
Ordinary Americans are more or less united in the war on terrorism, but one enters an altogether different universe when paying mind to the torrent of recent commentary from left-wing journalists, academics and entertainers.
Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part V)
We left off last week in the midst of the 1972 presidential campaign, one of the more interesting in terms of Jewish voting behavior. On one hand you had the incumbent, Republican Richard Nixon, whose relationship with Israel during his first term was quite solid; on the other you had his Democratic challenger, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, a leading dove on Vietnam with a not especially inspiring record on Israel.
Recommended Websites And Blogs
It's been a while since the Monitor’s last listing of worthwhile websites and blogs. As always, there’s no particular order to the list, and the views expressed on the various websites and blogs do not necessarily reflect those of the Monitor.
More Reaction To Enemies List
The letters just keep coming in response to the Enemies List column and its follow-up. The responses by and large have been friendly in tone, with the majority of respondents agreeing on all or most of the names submitted by their fellow readers. And then there was this, from an e-mail submitted by some mammal identified as Rashid Monsour:
A Diplomatic Memoir Worth Reading
The Monitor never much cared for Martin Indyk during the latter’s service in a variety of diplomatic roles (including ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state) for President Bill Clinton. He seemed to be the very embodiment of the Clinton foreign-policy mindset that had as its centerpiece the pursuit of a nebulous Middle East “peace process” and the elevation of Yasir Arafat to statesmanlike status.
The Goldmann Paradox
Shakespeare had it right. The evil that men do indeed lives after them. Case in point: Nahum Goldmann, who served in a variety of Jewish and Zionist organizational leadership posts from the 1920s through the 1970s.