Monitor

Need further proof of how hopelessly liberal the mainstream media really are? Just consider the coverage of the accusations of incivility and incitement hurled at Republicans and conservatives by Democrats and liberals in the aftermath of the December shootings in Tucson.

Anyone who truly feels betrayed by Ariel Sharon's apparent transformation into a flabbier, more sartorially challenged version of Shimon Peres is either (a) ignorant of Israeli political history or (b) mesmerized by years of watching a master illusionist at work.

The brouhaha over the July 21 New Yorker cover illustration of the Obamas as the epitome of terrorist chic extended well beyond the abbreviated news cycle to which we’ve become accustomed.

A majority of American Jewish voters had deserted Jimmy Carter in 1980, leading to speculation that the Jewish community perhaps was moving away from its longtime loyalty to the Democratic party and rendering obsolete Milton Himmelfarb's famous observation that "Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans."

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.

Every so often the Monitor feels the need to dust off its files on Pat Buchanan and remind readers why Senator Joseph Lieberman and other Washington eminences are dangerously wrong when they insist Buchanan is no anti-Semite. A column he wrote last month on John Demjanjuk provides the latest opportunity to put Buchanan in proper perspective.

Regular readers know by now of the Monitor's high regard for the Media Research Center (www.mrc.org).

There is a widespread impression that prior to June 1967 Israel was beloved by American liberals, who turned lukewarm only when the Jewish state lost its underdog status. While most mainstream liberal politicians at the time were indeed pro-Israel, the same cannot be said for liberals in academia and in an often overlooked but influential source of elite opinion – the major Protestant denominations, which by the mid-1960's were almost uniformly leftist in their political orientation.

Several readers responded to last week’s Monitor on the departure of Dan Rather from CBS News by making reference to Rather’s predecessor, the legendary Walter Cronkite, as some sort of paragon of journalistic objectivity. The Monitor begs to differ.

Michael Kelly was a brilliant writer and editor who coincidentally happened to be an American patriot and a strong supporter of Israel - a combination not commonly found inthe circles in which he traveled.

Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com) reported this week that Peter Jennings actively shaped news coverage in the 1980's so that a communist dictatorship could be portrayed in a more flattering light.

The New York Times never sleeps when it comes to trying to shape the news to fit its all-too-transparent agenda. Reader Tom Furst shared this cogent observation with the Monitor:

Most political observers in Israel feel it’s only a matter of time before Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu gets another turn at the premiership. Nine years after being voted out of office in a landslide defeat at the hands of Ehud Barak, Netanyahu routinely tops voter preference polls – a state of affairs surely owing more to the country’s dearth of leadership than to fond memories of his first term in office.

Don Imus should have been fired years ago. He was a radio host whose sheer inarticulateness may have been even more shocking than his purposeful crudity; an alleged humorist who had said nothing memorable or funny since the dawn of the Clinton era if not earlier.

Freshly minted Democratic heartthrob Wesley Clark has stumbled badly during his first days as a declared presidential candidate.

Readers will recall that a few months back the Monitor had words of uncharacteristic praise for Mike Wallace, who had just conducted an interview with Yasir Arafat that was far more skeptical than the fawning media treatment usually accorded the Palestinian leader.

Ehud Barak may or may not be out of Israeli politics for good, but his recent resignation announcement reminded the Monitor of just how much the man had been willing to give up to Yasir Arafat at the tail end of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Dennis Prager, the sometimes controversial, always thought-provoking radio host and syndicated columnist, wrote a column last week on the legacy the baby boom generation has bequeathed to younger Americans.

Turns out there are real questions about the accuracy of a Quinnipiac poll showing President Obama’s approval rating has fallen to just 52 percent among Jewish voters. As the JTA’s Eric Fingerhut pointed out in a front-page story in last week’s Jewish Press, the Jewish sampling “was derived from a sample of just 71 respondents, for a margin of error of plus or minus 11.6 percent – a sample size that pollsters generally say makes such surveys unreliable.”

The end of George W. Bush’s presidency coincided with the 20th anniversary of Bush’s father taking the oath of office, and it got the Monitor thinking of how one televised performance on the part of Bush Senior cemented his reputation as a president indifferent or even hostile to Israel.

As noted here last week, the Monitor is coming up on its tenth anniversary as a weekly column. The very first Monitor ran the week of July 3, 1998, and on the chance that some (a few?) readers might be interested in what the maiden voyage looked like, it appears below.

The late Michael Kelly was a brilliant writer and editor (The New Republic, The Atlantic) who coincidentally happened to be an American patriot and a strong supporter of Israel – a combination not commonly found in the circles in which he traveled.

Sam Ehrenhalt, whose op-ed articles and letters to the editor always enhance The Jewish Press, has shared with the Monitor a thoughtful note he recently dispatched to New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller.

It was shaping up to be a rather uneventful day until the arrival of a press release from one of the Monitor's favorite Jewish organizations. Laughter may not the best medicine, but it certainly is the best palliative to boredom, and in that sense, at least, the Anti-Defamation League will never be accused of being boring.

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."

Mike Wallace died earlier this month at age 93, and while some may find it preferable to focus on the positive when speaking or writing about an individual on the occasion his passing, the Monitor had little good to say about Wallace while he was living, so why start now?

Even as he left office in January 2002 on a note of unprecedented triumph and popularity, the tone of the New York Times’s editorials and most of its news coverage was startlingly jaundiced.

The Monitor never quite understood the good feelings Condoleezza Rice managed to inspire among so many conservatives for what seemed like the longest time. The woman never uttered a single word on foreign policy – her alleged area of expertise – that could even remotely be described as original, inspiring, or just plain memorable.

With its Oct. 5 front-page story on Rudy Giuliani’s experience hosting an often boisterous weekly call-in show on WABC radio for the better part of his mayoralty, The New York Times found yet one more way to portray the Republican presidential frontrunner as a reckless hothead, reflexively rude and not at all willing to suffer fools (or even just annoying callers) gladly.

With 2013 marking half a century since Kennedy’s fateful limousine ride in Dallas, the current revels are exceeding the revisionist frenzies of years past, with a seemingly endless parade of books, articles and television specials designed to assure us that, despite everything that has come to light about him since his death, JFK was a great president, or at least a very good president who would have been great had his life not been so cruelly cut short.