Where There’s A Will…
If George F. Will comes across to some as a starchy combination of ministerial and professorial, he can blame it on his genes: The longtime columnist is, after all, the grandson of a Lutheran minister and the son of a philosophy professor.
Media For Kerry
Another week another clip file bulging with fresh examples of the media's accelerating campaign in support of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. In fact it's difficult to recall a presidential race where the media's liberal spin was both so blatant and so early in coming.
Web Favorites, Expanded & Updated
It’s time again for the Monitor’s latest listing of worthwhile websites and blogs. (As always, there is no particular order to the list; names appearing toward the top are not necessarily more valuable than those closer to the bottom.)
Not Exactly A Collector’s Item, But…
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.
None Dare Call It Treason
Controversial pundit Ann Coulter's best-selling book Treason has raised the ire of liberals, and not a few conservatives, who feel she wields too broad a brush in painting Americans on the left side of the political divide as unpatriotic - even, as the title implies, treasonous.
Media Swoon For Moore
What was that about the media not having a liberal bias? For a few months back in 2003, left-wing pundits and authors, reacting to a spate of books documenting the unmistakable leftwardtilt of the country's prestige media outlets, began putting forth the argument that their side was the one getting the short end of the stick.
Hillary Reopens Old Wounds
Back in late 1999 through the fall of 2000, when Hillary Clinton was first running for the U.S. Senate, this column had some uncomplimentary things to say about the then-first lady. From time to time since her election, readers have wondered whether the Monitor had any second thoughts, especially given Sen. Clinton’s generally solid foreign policy record.
Reform Gellman Puts Orthodox Colleagues To Shame
As reported in last week's Monitor, a number of prominent politically conservative religious leaders - including several Orthodox rabbis - opposed to legislation promoting gay marriage have aligned themselves with an organization that, according to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, is distinguished by "its ideological support of Islamic terror groups."
A Statue For Condoleezza?
Now that Hamas has taken over Gaza, further exposing Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah as ineffective and quite possibly inconsequential players, its leading lights might want to erect a statue of Condoleezza Rice somewhere in beautiful downtown Gaza City.
That Bogus Yaalon Quote
It took The New York Times long enough to issue a correction concerning Rashid Khalidi's Jan. 8 op-ed column. Those of you who read the Monitor’s Jan. 16 column (“What Did Moshe Yaalon Really Say?”) will recall that Khalidi, the Columbia University professor of Arab studies and Barack Obama’s longtime friend, acquaintance or friendly acquaintance (depending on whom you asked and when) cited an incendiary statement allegedly made in 2002 by former IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon:
“The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”
Misreading The Road Map
The July 4th holiday having thrown the Monitor off schedule, this week's column is placed in the capable hands of HonestReporting.com.
Hateful Cartoon; Liberal Hypocrisy
Dick Locher, a cartoonist for Tribune Media Services, touched off a mini-firestorm last week with a blatantly anti-Semitic editorial cartoon that ran in the May 30 edition of the Chicago Tribune.
McCain: Kerry Revisited?
Arizona Sen. John McCain, the early front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, had a potential John Connally/Mike Dukakis/John Kerry moment earlier this month, and hardly anyone seems to have noticed.
Buchanan Revisited
The Monitor requests some forbearance from readers; with preparations in high gear for an extended 10th anniversary column which, barring catastrophe, will appear as the front-page essay in the July 4 issue, this week’s offering is a reprint of a piece that garnered significant reader feedback when it first appeared several years ago.
ADL’s Misleading Media Surveys
The Anti-Defamation League, fresh off its lamentable stint as unwitting public relations apparatus for Mel Gibson, has, yet again, demonstrated a jaw-dropping inability (or perhaps a cynical unwillingness) to differentiate between a newspaper's news coverage and its editorial views.
Bush-Basher Nadler To UN: Help!
New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler is one of 13 Congressional Democrats now on record as believing that the United Nations - cesspool of corruption and hypocrisy, comfort station for thugs and dictators of every ideological stripe, breeding ground for anti-U.S. and anti-Israel sentiment - is better qualified than American officials to oversee the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
When The Media Turned
As Israeli officials continue to warn of the unacceptability of a nuclear-armed Iran, the 28th anniversary of Israel’s June 7, 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor approaches. The world of course was outraged at Israel’s effrontery, with the usual suspects – European leaders and the liberal media – leading the way.
Non-Fiction, We Presumed
There's nothing worse than finding an error of fact in a non-fiction book. It sort of makes the reader wonder whether finishing it is worth the effort. The Monitor has had several such unpleasant moments in recent weeks while perusing books ranging in tone from silly to somber.
Lieberman Gave A Thousand Dollars To Whom?
When five-term Alabama congressman Earl Hilliard, widely considered one of Israel's most implacable foes on Capitol Hill, was defeated in a Democratic primary last June, the news was greeted with unconcealed glee by pro-Israel organizations and activists across the country - many of whom had worked hard to unseat him.
Et Tu, Mario?
"You can't ever make serious progress against terrorism unless you deal with Israel. We are not dealing with Israel. We've backed away. We're afraid of the political consequences."
The Schwarzschild Award
The winner of the Monitor’s fourth annual Henry Schwarzschild Award for most offensive comments by a Jew in the public spotlight is David Landau, editor of Haaretz, Israel’s leading left-wing daily. The prize is awarded to the person who, by his or her statements, displays contempt for the Jewish people, disregard for historical truth, a desire to sup at the table of Israel’s enemies, or who otherwise plays into the hands of the enemies of Jews and Israel.
The Media’s 40-Year War Against Israel
Hostility to Israel is generally not thought of as a job requirement for American journalists who cover the Middle East, but it might as well be. That this was not always the case simply confirms how drastically the media climate has changed over the past four decades.
The Tarnished Idol
Well, now, that didn’t take long, did it? Less than two months into Barack Obama’s presidency and the doubters are already coming out of the woodwork – among them several big-name pundits who, just an hour or two ago (or so it seems) were still in full swoon mode for the Miracle Man sent to lift and cleanse us from the hellish Bush-Cheney miasma.
Some Reactions To The Speech
The reaction to Obama’s big speech in Cairo last week broke mainly along predictable political lines. If you liked Obama before the speech, you probably liked all or most of his address; if you viewed him with any degree of wariness before, chances are he said nothing to make you change your mind.
Israeli/Nazi Analogy Old Hat By Now
It would be fair to say that the recent demonstrations in cities around the world during which Israel was likened to Nazi Germany, and Israeli soldiers to Nazi storm troopers, created a fair amount of angst among an appreciable number of Jews. But as this is hardly a new phenomenon, the surprise really lies in why so many Jews continue to be surprised.
Chauncey Clark, Time Traveler
Freshly minted Democratic heartthrob Wesley Clark has stumbled badly during his first days as a declared presidential candidate.
Edward Klein On Obama And Wright
Wright, Klein writes, “became far more than a religious and spiritual guide to Obama; he was his substitute father, life coach, and political inspiration wrapped in one package. At each step of Obama’s career, Wright was there with practical advice and counsel…. It would be no exaggeration to say that Jeremiah Wright…prepared him to run for president.”
Roger Cohen Digs Himself Deeper
A few weeks back (Feb. 27) the Monitor characterized a Feb. 23 piece by New York Times columnist Roger Cohen on Iranian Jews as reminiscent of “the naïve and insidious reporting by such legendary Times dupes as Walter Duranty and Herbert Matthews, whose whitewashing, respectively, of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and ‘30s and Fidel Castro in the 1950s will stand forever as monuments to the argument that the self-described ‘paper of record’ is often anything but.”
The Abu Ghraib Times
How obsessed has The New York Times been with Abu Ghraib? Between May 1 and May 27 the paper featured the prisoner abuse scandal on its front page virtually without letup and almost always above the fold.
Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part VIII)
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."