Times' music writer Jon Caramanica also details the 2003 battle between the vulgarly anti-war Dixie Chick Natalie Maines and "reliable jingoist" Toby Keith.
ABC Touts Columnist Tom Friedman Seeing Gulf Oil Spill as 'Opportunity'
GMA's hosts and producers know what to expect when they have columnist Thomas Friedman on: Requests for yet more taxes on the American public.
Clifford Ignores Liberal Slant as Culprit in Newsweek's Decline
Stephanie Clifford's front-page piece on the money-losing Newsweek doesn't mention the mag's liberal opinionizing. But she was quick to snidely spot a right-wing slant at Reader's Digest.
NYT Editorial Page: First Amendment Protects Violent Video Games, Not Political Speech
The Times favors free expression in video games: "The Constitution, however, does not require speech to be ideal for it to be protected." But not in speech on issues of the day: "Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy."
Will Closed-Minded Country Music Let Lesbian Chely Wright In?
On the Thursday Arts page, music writer Jon Caramanica profiled a trio of country music's prodigal daughters, focusing first on relatively obscure country singer Chely Wright, who is raising the publicity profile for her comeback album by coming out as a lesbian.
The headline frames the country music community as reactionary and intolerant, an idea not supported by anything in Caramanica's text: “
A Singer Comes Out; Now Will Nashville Let Her Back In?”
By the time the country singer Chely Wright appeared on “Today” Wednesday morning, the secret was out. This minor star of the 1990s and early 2000s was coming out as a lesbian. During her early years in Nashville, “I knew that I needed to hide this to achieve my dreams,” she told the host Natalie Morales.
After noting that Wright's had only one major hit -- back in 1999 -- Caramanica gave the genre some backhanded praise as not as homophobic as it could be:
Rather, Ms. Wright’s high-profile declaration casts a spotlight on the world of country music, which has historically had little room for differences. Ms. Wright’s dissent from the genre’s talking points -- often conservative and religious, though rarely blatantly homophobic -- arrived in tandem with the release of her memoir, “Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer” (Pantheon), and a new album, “Lifted Off the Ground” (Painted Red/Vanguard). But the impact of her story is really more powerful on country music’s monolithic image than on her own image.
Then Caramanica turned to the debut album from the Court Yard Hounds, a project by two out of three members of the once-famous country threesome The Dixie Chicks (absent anti-war singer/songwriter Natalie Maines).
Caramanica did locate a “reliable jingoist," singling out country star and Iraq War supporter Toby Keith, well-known for his criticism of Maines and his passionate 9-11 song, “
Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).”
Ms. Wright’s album arrived on the same day as the self-titled debut album (on Columbia) by Court Yard Hounds, the project by the two-thirds of the Dixie Chicks -- Emily Robison and Martie Maguire -- who didn’t announce, at a 2003 concert in London, “We’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.” (That was Natalie Maines, the group’s main agitator, who doesn’t appear on this album.)
From a financial perspective that sentence cost the Dixie Chicks dearly: once multiplatinum county radio darlings, they’ve been on an extended hiatus and have all but disappeared from many playlists. They entered into a war of words with Toby Keith, a reliable jingoist and pot stirrer, that only ossified their reputations as antitraditionalists. Now Ms. Robison and Ms. Maguire are in an unusual position: exceedingly famous artists attempting to pass for a new act, free of negative associations.
Maines attacked Keith by wearing a T-shirt slogan ("F.U.T.K.") that was an acronym for a vulgarity aimed at Keith.
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ABC Touts Columnist Tom Friedman Seeing Gulf Oil Spill as 'Opportunity'
ABC's Good Morning America on Thursday again brought on Thomas Friedman to lobby for taxes on carbon and oil. Talking to host George Stephanopoulos, the New York Times columnist urged Barack Obama to "use" the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico and push "a bill through the Senate."
Friedman discussed America getting off oil and argued, "Well, ultimately, it's going to require a price on carbon that will stimulate innovation in clean power technologies." He delicately mentioned forcing changes on businesses and taxpayers and touted that other countries "are putting in place, basically, these kind of carbon rules and taxes that give a very clear signal to business, where to invest."
Other than the occasional right-leaning point made by Bill O'Reilly, GMA's hosts don't often bring on conservative guests to promote lower taxes and less government regulation. Yet, Friedman is a favorite of the ABC program.
The columnist appeared on the
September 8, 2008 GMA to make almost the exact same argument he made on Thursday. Talking to host Diane Sawyer, Friedman hyped, "But, you know, there's really no effective plan to make us energy independent without what I call a price signal, without either a carbon tax or a gasoline tax that's really going to shape the market in a different way."
Speaking of the then-presidential candidates, he enthused, "I'm looking for them to tell the truth, which is everywhere in the world, gasoline is taxed except us. You know, gasoline in Denmark is $10 a gallon."
Certainly, GMA's hosts and producers know what to expect when they have Tom Friedman on: Requests for yet more taxes on the American public.
A partial transcript of the May 6 segment, which aired at 7:08am EDT, follows:
HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to turn to the oil spill. Fascinating column yesterday, where you said, "The oil spill was what the sub-prime mortgages were to the markets, both a wake-up call and an opportunity." You said it could be President Obama's most important leadership test.
FRIEDMAN:
Yeah. I really think this is an opportunity. The President has really got to decide how am I going to deal with this spill? Does he really just want to end the oil spill? Of course he wants to do that. Or does he actually want to give birth to a new energy system that will end our addiction to oil. I for one am hoping and urging that he'll do the latter, that he'll use this as a way of pushing a bill through the Senate, that will begin to finally to end our addiction to oil. So, over time, you know, we're not going to find ourselves dependent on these kind of dangerous technologies, that inevitably lead to these kinds of accidents.STEPHANOPOULOS: And to pick up on your previous point, that could involve some pain, higher oil and gas prices.
FRIEDMAN: Well, ultimately, it's going to require a price on carbon that will stimulate innovation in clean power technologies. Now, really, if you look out at the American business communities today, American business leaders understand that, really, every country in the world, Europe, Japan, China, are putting in place, basically, these kind of carbon rules and taxes that give a very clear signal to business, where to invest. We're the only major country in the world, not doing that. And I think it's a real -- it's a real disadvantage. I mean, China's getting ready to clean our clock. How do you say clean your clock in Mandarin, in the next great global industry, which will be clean technology.
Friedman is the second Times columnist to suggest the oil spill had a good side; in her Wednesday online
"conversation" with fellow columnist David Brooks, Gail Collins said one possible "bright spot" of the spill would be a renewed American focus on environmental issues.
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Scott Whitlock is a news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Times Watch on Twitter.
Clifford Ignores Liberal Slant as Culprit in Newsweek's Decline
News that the Washington Post Co. would sell its struggling weekly magazine Newsweek made Thursday's front page in a story by Stephanie Clifford: “
As Newsweek Goes on Block, An Era Fades.”
Clifford attempted to explain the decline of the magazine in general terms (“the American conversation has become harder to sum up in a single cover”). One point unaddressed by Clifford: Newsweek's purposeful shift toward liberal opinion over news-gathering. (Read MRC's Brent Baker on how the Weekly Standard dubbed
“Newsweek” “Obamaweek” in July 2008.) By contrast, in 2009 Clifford had no problem finding a shift to the right at another struggling magazine, Reader's Digest.
Clifford wrote:
For generations, Time and Newsweek fought to define the national news agenda every Monday on the newsstand. Before the Internet, before cable news, before People magazine, what the newsweeklies put on their covers mattered.
As the American conversation has become harder to sum up in a single cover, that era seems to be ending. The Washington Post Company announced Wednesday that it would sell Newsweek, raising questions about the future of the newsweekly, first published 77 years ago.
There's some labeling disparity here, as Clifford finds Time magazine to have historically “a conservative stance,” while Newsweek was merely “more youth oriented” (as opposed to having “a liberal stance”).
Newsweek under The Post became a political counterweight to the Republicanism of Time under Henry Luce. While Time took a conservative stance on the Vietnam War and American culture, Newsweek ran more youth oriented covers on the war, civil rights and pop culture stars like the Beatles (though “musically they are a near disaster,” the magazine said).
....
Newsweek’s circulation was 3.14 million in the first half of 2000. By the second half of 2009, that dropped to 1.97 million. Time’s circulation declined from 4.07 million to 3.33 million in the same period. U.S. News & World Report, the also-ran newsweekly, abandoned its weekly publication schedule in 2008 to become monthly.
Meanwhile, The Economist, which offered British-accented reports on business and economic news, and The Week, an unabashedly middle-brow summary of the weekly news that began publishing in the United States in 2001, were on the rise.
Interestingly, both “The Week,” and “The Economist” have political profiles to the right of Newsweek.
Clifford hinted at the triumph of opinion over news at the increasingly ill-named Newsweek, but didn't specify from which perspective those opinions were hailing:
Both Time and Newsweek were aggressively redesigned. Time, in 2007, changed its publication date from Monday to Friday and added more analysis. Newsweek, in 2009, more or less ceased original reporting about the week’s events, and instead ran essays from columnists like Fareed Zakaria and opinionated analyses.
By contrast, Clifford had no trouble finding a conservative slant at another struggling magazine, Reader's Digest, in a snide June 19, 2009 story initially headlined “
Reader's Digest Moves Right of Middle America.”
NYT Editorial Page: First Amendment Protects Violent Video Games, Not Political Speech
Today's Times makes its editorial priorities clear: It values free speech for violent video games, but not on the issues of the day. Thursday's editorial, “
Video Games and Free Speech,” was launched by news the Supreme Court would review a California law that makes it illegal to sell violent video games to minors:
But video games are a form of free expression. Many have elaborate plots and characters, often drawn from fiction or history. The California law is a content-based restriction, something that is presumed invalid under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has made it clear that minors have First Amendment rights....California lawmakers may have been right when they decided that video games in which players kill and maim are not the most socially beneficial form of expression. The Constitution, however, does not require speech to be ideal for it to be protected.
Too bad the Times doesn't hold the First Amendment in such high regard when it comes to truly important speech: political speech on issues of the day, the most vital kind there is in a democracy.
A January 22 editorial termed the Supreme Court's victory for expanding free speech, in the form of loosening restrictions on companies spending money on political campaigns, “
The Court's Blow to Democracy." The text was no less hysterical:
With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.
Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.
As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.
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