Valentine’s Day is probably not the day most people would pick to remember the marriage of John and Jacqueline Kennedy. But on Feb. 14, CBS spent more than eight minutes recalling how it was the 50th anniversary of CBS’s “historic” TV tour of the White House with Jackie. They brought on liberal historian Doug Brinkley … Read more
Super Bowl XLVI was a good football game, marred once again by the bohemian elite at NBC. NBC could have prevented, but failed to stop, the broadcast of a female rapper “flipping the bird” at 114 million viewers during Madonna’s halftime show. It was another “fleeting expletive” of the hand-gesture variety, and somehow, despite elaborate … Read more
Late-night comedians historically have relished the opportunity to poke fun at politicians. Sometimes they savage them. In the Obama era, they haven’t been so enthusiastic about any of it. A recent study of political jokes on three late-night shows (Letterman, Leno and Jimmy Fallon) by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that Barack … Read more
It’s inevitable that the joy and national unity over the killing of that monster bin Laden would cool. Already we’re debating the journalistic and political ramifications. On Wednesday, President Obama told CBS he wouldn’t “spike the football” by releasing photos proving Osama is dead. I agree with the president, as much as that pains … Read more
“To assert no falsehood, and hide no truth,” was the motto of many journalists and papers when modern journalism was first setting up. The line is paraphrased from Cicero, though I am copying from the Mercurius Caledonius of Edinburgh, launched in 1661. Not untypically, this journal was conducted by a comic playwright — the errant … Read more
CBS reports that almost 40 percent of pregnancies in New York City ended in abortion in 2009, according to the city’s health department. Out of 225,667 recorded pregnancies there were 126,774 live births and 87,273 abortions. Archbishop Timothy Dolan joined with other religious leaders yesterday calling for efforts to make abortions “rare:” “I re-affirm Cardinal … Read more
This heartbreaking CBS report of a woman suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s has been making the rounds the past couple of days. It follows the story of Jan Chorlton, an energetic news reporter who was diagnosed with the disease at the young age of 55. Now, at 60, she lives in an assisted living facility, … Read more
It’s just not the Super Bowl without controversial advertising! But this year’s most talked-about ad is coming from an unlikely source: A national coalition of women’s groups called on CBS on Monday to scrap its plan to broadcast an ad during the Super Bowl featuring college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, which critics say is … Read more