Tag: television

As I see it, in the current battle for public opinion Sarah Palin has defeated her harsh and unfair critics. After the January 8 shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others in Tucson, Arizona, some television talking heads and members of the blogosphere denounced her and held her in part responsible for creating a climate of hatred that resulted in the mass attacks.

Approximately 15 years ago Ken Wiesen, the man responsible for resurrecting Turkish Taffy, was reminiscing with a friend about their childhood favorites and he was confident that while Bonomo's signature product could not be found in the New York area, it had to be available somewhere. Wiesen headed for an Internet caf? and was shocked to discover that the candy was still the subject of Internet chatter - from people who were lamenting its loss, to others who were looking to locate the sugary treasure, plus people who were drawing up petitions to bring back Turkish Taffy.

Turkey has long been one of Israel's most important allies. While one is predominantly Muslim and the other Jewish, the two countries have prided themselves in maintaining their secular democracies. But our friendship has been strained recently with an appalling level of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric coming out of Turkey.

C-SPAN often teeters on the brink of self-parody, particularly when the hosts of its interview programs stare impassively at the camera while yet another crazed caller recites chapter and verse of the latest conspiracy theories involving the Trilateral Commission 9/11 being an “inside job” or the Bush family's Nazi/Saudi/Zionist/ KGB/CIA ties (choose one or more and don't think twice about any seeming contradictions).

Many of us who are children of the '90s - or who had children in the '90s - remember the popular television show "Blossom," which starred Mayim Bialik as a teenager confronting, and trying to survive, adolescence. After years away from Hollywood, Bialik now finds herself back in the spotlight with multiple guest-starring roles on cable and network TV shows. But there's another, more important part of her life to which Bialik has returned.

I confess: I live in Boro Park and I own a television. I don't readily volunteer this information to my religious compatriots, but if anyone would ever ask, I wouldn't lie about it, either. To me, owning a television and lying about it are on two altogether different levels, commandments-wise. But thankfully, the question has never arisen.

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Those of us who grew up when television was considered kosher in its black and white days remember "The Stratton Story," a 1949 movie that aired often on TV in the '50s starring Jimmy Stewart as Chicago White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton, who lost a leg in an off-season hunting accident in 1938 near his Greenville, Texas home.

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.

As an evangelical Christian, Cal Thomas – author, syndicated columnist, television talking head – brings to his work a deep religious commitment combined with a sophisticated media sensibility. His worldview is governed by biblical absolutes, among them the unshakable conviction that the Jews have a divine right to the Land of Israel.

There was no escaping the news of Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke last week. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, the Internet — all were chock full of breaking stories; backgrounders on Sharon’s life; sound bites from doctors, Israelis, Arabs, Jews in New York, and various Jewish organizational types desperately trying — without much success — to seem even a little bit relevant.

The good news is that the ratings for Phil Donahue's new MSNBC talk show are nearly invisible; the bad news is that MSNBC gave this raving anti-American, pro-Palestinian leftist a platform in the first place, reconfiguring its entire nighttime lineup around him and terminating the program hosted by the pro-Israel Alan Keyes in the process.