Media Bias Reigns Over Obama Town Halls

Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Media Bias Reigns Over Obama Town Halls
2. O'Reilly-Olbermann Truce Over?
3. Paula Abdul and 'Idol' Play High Stakes Poker
4. Michelle Obama's Expanding Hollywood-Style Entourage
5. Deceitful Democrats and Machiavellian Media
 

1. Media Bias Reigns Over Obama Town Halls

His media obligation is to provide information for the public.

But in an interview segment on MSNBC, David Shuster asked a question of Democrat Rep. Jim Moran that if raised in a courtroom would be stuck down for speculation, irrelevance, and assuming facts not in evidence.

Before asking Moran a question, Shuster primed the mental pump of the viewing public with this, “We know that threats to President Obama are up by like something 400 percent compared to the Bush administration.”

Shuster was not so subtly spreading the idea that criticism of Obama’s healthcare plan places the president in peril, because the next words out of his mouth were, “Is this [town hall protests] putting our president in some sort of danger because of some wacko that will see this stuff and say, ‘oh, yes, it’s fascism and the way we dealt with Adolf Hitler was to try to kill him, so therefore, let’s do this with our president?'”

Moran grabbed the brainwashing baton and ran with it, saying, “Well, you know, it only took — takes one person. It took one person to shoot Ronald Reagan, Jack Kennedy, and so on. But I think the Secret Service can be trusted to protect the president. But it does discredit those people who are using such extreme measures to achieve an objective, which is really corporate profit.”

How does the sincerely concerned citizen fight back against this kind of manipulation?

Spread the truth and support authentic conservatives on the front lines in radio, TV, and print.

2. O'Reilly-Olbermann Truce Over?

As I reported last week, executives at General Electric and News Corp. made a pact to have hosts Bill O'Reilly (Fox News Channel) and Keith Olbermann (MSNBC) call off their on-air feud.

After the so-called truce, Olbermann came out with personal insults directed at O’Reilly, referring to the “Factor” host as a “racist clown.”

O’Reilly countered with attacks on the parent company, G.E., maintaining that the company, via its media divisions, promoted Obama's election and then sought “to profit from his policies.”

But O’Reilly's assertion didn’t involve personal name-calling like Olbermann’s did. Rather it was based on the fact that the Securities and Exchange Commission fined G.E. $50 million for misleading shareholders.

Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corp., and Jeffrey Immelt, who runs G.E., purportedly still want to smooth out the O'Reilly-Olbermann grudge match.

However, the group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which incidentally is endorsed by well-known left-leaning individuals like Noam Chomsky and Phil Donahue, is apparently displeased with the peace promoters.

The organization encouraged folks to contact G.E., urging it to renounce the agreement with Fox.

G.E. issued a statement characterizing the agreement between the two companies as seeking a civil tone but made it a point to convey that “no one at G.E. told anyone at NBC News or MSNBC how to report the news.”

Fox too apparently felt compelled to clarify that the deal would not impact reporting.

“This has nothing to do with preventing anyone from practicing journalism or interfering with freedom of speech,” a written statement from Fox read. “This is about corporate responsibility. We’ve never suppressed any stories about NBC or G.E. — both organizations are covered as news warrants.”

3. Paula Abdul and 'Idol' Play High Stakes Poker

Salary levels in Hollywood are rarely about mere compensation alone. Instead they’re more often than not about how a celebrity’s paycheck measures up to earnings of perceived peers.

Contract negotiations in Tinseltown have been impacted by the salary contest. One common provision called a “Most Favored Nation Clause” borrows from the world of international trade. When applied to a celebrity’s wages, the provision simply means, “No one can make more than I do.”

Paula Abdul recently found herself in the awkward position of the world knowing that if she returned to “Idol” for another season she’d be making substantially less money than host Ryan Seacrest, a huge diss having been a star judge for eight years.

Paula was reportedly making $2 million in salary and $1.5 million in expenses but wanted a raise. She saw co-panelist Simon Cowell's salary of $30 million and likely thought she could get closer to that figure.

Instead she was offered approximately $5 million, considerably less than Seacrest's $15 million package and eons away from Cowell's overall Oprah-like compensation that is well in excess of $100 million.

Abdul announced the news that she would no longer be a judge on “American Idol” via Twitter.

It could be that after the tweet went out she thought she’d get a phone call from her agent. After all, “Idol” is a bona fide TV phenom, and execs normally don't like changing a winning formula. But the big wheels may have discounted Paula's value because of her intermittent erratic behavior on set and off.

Word has it that Paula is out scouting new judge jobs in the choreographic field. ABC’s entertainment president has reportedly invited her to join “Dancing With the Stars,” as has the executive producer of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance.”

Still, “Idol” management isn’t blinking. Instead it publicly wished Paula the best, and with lightning speed producers went on to contact Victoria "Posh" Beckham and pop singer Katie Perry about filling in as judges for the show’s initial auditions.

Beckham is signaling that she’d love to be Paula's permanent replacement. She told Seacrest on his L.A. radio show that she was “grinning from ear to ear” over the gig. She also revealed that she’d want to carry on Abdul's tradition as the "really sweet" judge.

She talked too about Cowell’s Spice Girls related history, saying, “He is the only man in the music industry who turned down the Spice Girls and said, 'We would never work.'”

Just in case Simon was listening, though, she cleverly added, “But I have so much respect for him.”

4. Michelle Obama's Expanding Hollywood-Style Entourage

America has been enamored with the life story of President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.

The mainstream media have repeatedly reminded the public of the couple’s humble origins on Chicago's South Side and how the two remain in touch with ordinary folks, understanding their suffering in these difficult economic times.

However, the change that was promised by Obama is definitely not reflected in the amount of money being spent on the numerous staffers whose jobs are to fawn over the First Lady.

Even pampered Hollywood celebs, who have entourages that include cooks, clerks and cleaning crews, don’t come close to matching the lengthy list of assistants that the first lady has.

Taxpayer dollars provide a salary pool of $1.6 million a year for 22 staffers who exclusively work full-time for Michelle, this according to FactCheck.org.

Former first lady Laura Bush's staff salary totaled $561,325 per year, according to a salary survey published in The Washington Post in 2004. (FactCheck claims the number is $1.4 million if non-designated staffers are included.)

Republicans were criticized in the past for their “excess,” and that was when economic times were rosier.

But no similar criticism is heard about the Obamas, despite their expensive date nights, extravagant vacations, and designer clothing tab.

Guess we should be thankful that there’s at least some job creation going on in the country, even if it’s mainly in the East Wing.

5. Deceitful Democrats and Machiavellian Media

There's no shortage of chutzpah on the part of the White House, Democrats, and mainstream media.

Even after White House Press fixture Helen Thomas criticized the planting of reporters at so-called press conferences, the manipulation of public events and sentiments continues.

Now we see the president, Democratic Party, and Machiavellian media revving up their propaganda engines to push an unsuspecting public into believing that town hall meetings are staged, rent-a-mobs are bullying congressional members and insurance companies are choreographing the entire scenario.

Democrats, Republicans, independents and others who express concern about the socialization of our healthcare system are getting slimed. Those who speak out at Town Hall meetings are being painted as nothing more than “manufactured protesters.”

But the same politicians and media that are defaming citizens for daring to ask questions were sickeningly silent when members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a.k.a. ACORN, really did fabricate protests at the homes of AIG executives who received bonuses following the government approved TARP bailouts.

Big media covered ACORN’s sham demonstrations while ignoring, or covering with a sneer, the tea parties that spontaneously sprang up from coast to coast.

Despite having contributed to the creation of the mortgage bubble by pushing banks into making sub-prime loans, ACORN “demonstrated” at offices of lenders in Dallas, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New York City, Wilmington, Delaware, Columbus, Ohio, Houston, Little Rock, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Seattle.

The real rent-a-mobs that showed up at AIG executives’ homes arrived in buses.

ACORN also assisted Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in an obscene push to use $1 billion in tax money for so-called affordable housing.

It protested Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s decision to separate illegal aliens from the rest of the inmate population. And it showed up at home of Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie to demand that he pay $8 million in fees to the city of Philadelphia.

A real Orwellian nation is dangerously close.

Keep your NewSpeak dictionary handy.