Culture Warrior (3 page)

It is fair to say that the print press
desperately
wanted Air America to succeed. Meanwhile, conservative talk radio
is
a huge success just about everywhere in the United States. How many newspaper articles have you seen about that? Chances are, none lately.

There is no question that the vast preponderance of America's newspapers have a liberal editorial philosophy. Papers like the
Boston Globe,
the
Washington Post,
the
Baltimore Sun,
the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
the
Miami Herald,
the
New Orleans Times-Picayune,
the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
the
Kansas City Star,
the
Minneapolis Star Tribune,
the
Houston Chronicle,
the
Denver Post,
the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
the
Oregonian,
the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
Sacramento Bee,
the
Los Angeles Times,
and on and on and on. In fact, the only national paper with a conservative editorial page is the
Wall Street Journal.
Locally, liberal papers outnumber conservative sheets about ten to one.

Some newspapers, like the
St. Petersburg Times,
no longer even try to hide their secular slant.
Factor
viewers may remember how angry I was when Florida prosecutor Brad King refused to charge three individuals who helped the killer of nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford evade capture. King's action was as disgraceful a law-enforcement decision as I have ever seen. Little Jessica was brutally murdered by John Couey, who initially confessed to holding her captive for days in a small mobile home just yards from Jessica's house before suffocating the girl. Subsequently, Couey wrote me a letter stating that the others did help him evade police and, according to Couey, one of his “roommates” even knew Jessica was being held captive. But Brad King let the three go.

After I reported that terrible story and slammed King, the
St. Petersburg Times
attacked me personally. It is my opinion that the paper was totally in the tank for King, and its far-left editorial posture bled over onto its news pages. How dare O'Reilly make judgments about this case? He's just a conservative windbag. Let's get him. So they tried. To this day, I consider the
St. Petersburg Times
to be the nation's worst newspaper. There is no sense of fair play in the paper at all, and ideology slants its hard-news coverage. It's disgraceful.

If you still don't believe that the American media slants left-secular, then I'll try one more time to convince you. A media study based at UCLA and released in December 2005 concludes: “Almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.”

The coauthor of the study, UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose, summed up his study this way: “I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left, because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican. But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.”

The other coauthor, University of Missouri economist Jeffrey Milyo, was also blunt: “There is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all [the media] lean to the left.” The UCLA study identifies
The CBS Evening News,
the
New York Times,
and the
Los Angeles Times
as the most liberal news operations in the country (I know, you're shocked). Only Brit Hume's program on Fox News and the
Washington Times
were found to tilt right.

By the way, if you dispute the UCLA study, let me throw one more set of facts at you. In addition to being ultrasupportive of the secular-progressive movement, the
New York Times
uses its opinion pages to savage powerful people with whom it disagrees (almost always conservatives). And we're not talking polite debate here, either; we're talking “rip their throats out” verbiage.

The
Times
employs four columnists who utterly despise the Bush administration: Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and Frank Rich. In the year 2005 and the first two weeks of 2006, these individuals filed an astounding 149 columns lambasting the Bush administration; that was 47 percent of their entire work output. I mean, how much loathing do you need? The
Times
should just put up a daily headline on its op-ed page: “WE HATE BUSH.” Why bother with the repetitive analysis? And remember, the
New York Times
is the Big Kahuna among the secular media; that paper sets the agenda for the S-P press.

So here's my conclusion based on the data: U.S. journalism is essentially in the grip of a pack mentality. Most media people are well educated and many come from affluent homes. Also, a good number are urban dwellers who see themselves as sophisticated gatekeepers of the common good. These people don't really have much in common with the “folks,” but hey, everybody needs a guiding light to deliver them from the traditional darkness, right?

The split between “we” the people and the media is especially severe in the spiritual arena. A survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors shows that the rate of atheism among journalists is about 20 percent, significantly higher than among the general population, where it stands at about 9 percent. When one in five media warriors does not believe in the existence of a supreme being, it's not hard to figure out why many press people support secular causes like unrestricted abortion, gay marriage, and restraints on public displays of faith.

This media “group-think” mentality is so powerful that even some establishment journalists are dismayed. Marie Arana, a
Washington Post
editor, was quoted in her own paper as saying: “The elephant in our newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions…. We're not very subtle about it at this paper. If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal,
progressive
[my emphasis], a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings at the
Post,
watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats.”

Asked for a reaction to Ms. Arana's comments,
Washington Post
editor in chief Leonard Downie replied that he was “concerned” if some staffers openly displayed political preferences. But Downie went on to say that his newspaper has “a diverse staff when it comes to ideological backgrounds.”

Sure, and I'm Puff Daddy or whatever his name is this morning. Just imagine if a
Washington Post
reporter waltzed into the newsroom tomorrow and said: “Man, I love that
O'Reilly Factor
! What a great program!” That would do the guy's career a lot of good, don't you think?

Now, I know perfectly well that most Americans are not locked onto newspaper editorial pages—certainly not the way I am—but consider this: The same kind of group-think you have on the opinion pages is often on display throughout the rest of the paper. This is especially true among feature writers like book, movie, and TV critics. It is here where the culture war sappers do their finest work.

In his book
Hollywood Nation,
author James Hirsen did some terrific research. Going through America's largest newspapers, he compared the reviews for Michael Moore's movie
Fahrenheit 9/11
to those of Mel Gibson's film
The Passion of the Christ.

Surprise. The critics, showing that group-think tendency again, loved Moore and hated Gibson. Here's a sample taken from Hirsen's book:

         

• the
New York Times
's A.O. Scott called Moore a “credit to the Republic” but found that Gibson had “exploited” the death of Jesus.

• the
Washington Post
's Ann Hornaday called
Fahrenheit
Moore's “finest artistic moment.” She criticized Gibson for bad history.

• the
Los Angeles Times
's Kenneth Turan said Moore presented a “persuasive and unrelenting case.” But Gibson's film was “inaccessible for all but the devout.”

• And the
Boston Globe
's Ty Burr urged readers to see Moore's movie but warned people that
The Passion
would leave them “battered and empty-handed.”

         

Hirsen lists many other Gibson slams and Moore hurrahs to make his case that newspaper critics and feature writers are overwhelmingly liberal and many are committed secular-progressives. Why should you care what these people write? Because they can set trends, demonize projects they don't like, and define success in our popular culture. In other words, they have power. It is true that the folks have the final say (Gibson's
Passion
was an enormous success), but too many writers on popular culture are in the business of promoting the secular and damaging the traditional. No question.

The atmosphere has become so poisonous that I now rarely talk to the print press, and, as you know, I am a major blabbermouth. I've been burned time and time again by writers who took my words out of context and provided snide commentary leading into my quotes. Again, not whining—just reporting. Believe me; I have the clips to prove the case that pervasive secular bias is rampant in America's print press. Here's still more evidence, in case you are not believing me. (Is that even possible?)

The Tribune Company out of Chicago runs a chain of newspapers, primarily liberal, throughout the United States; papers like the
Los Angeles Times,
the
Chicago Tribune,
the
Baltimore Sun,
and
Newsday
on Long Island. Business at those papers, and many others in the United States, is not good. So the Tribune Company laid off almost one thousand workers.

That, of course, is a sad situation, but one group was particularly outraged. MoveOn, a far-left outfit dedicated to advancing the S-P cause and assassinating the characters of traditional Americans, presented Tribune CEO Dennis Fitzpatrick with a petition demanding that the cuts be stopped. MoveOn claimed the downsizing “undermined important watchdog journalism.”

Sure. If you believe MoveOn cares about “watchdog journalism,” you probably also believe George Clooney wants me as an overnight guest at his Italian villa. The fanatical S-P organization clearly knows that the newspapers run by the Tribune Company are a reliable S-P ally. Do you think MoveOn would petition against cuts on the
Wall Street Journal
editorial page? If so, you might also believe Howard Dean and I go camping together each summer in the Green Mountains. Bottom line: The more American newspapers decline, the worse things will be for the S-Ps, unless a miracle happens and newspapers become more fair and balanced.

                  

                  

In addition to the overwhelming liberal presence in print, TV comedians like David Letterman, Jay Leno, and the cast of
Saturday Night Live
all lean to the left, as do their stables of gag writers. If you think such people are not important to the culture wars, you've been in a coma for the past ten years. Huge percentages of Americans, including many people in their twenties, report that they get much of their “news” from TV comedians. That might sound like a joke, but it's absolutely true.

It's also true that on any given night, TV political humor is spread all around the ideological spectrum. But do the body counts: It's the conservatives who are mocked the most. The cumulative effect of print and TV commentary that largely denigrates conservative thought and traditional values cannot be overestimated. It builds up in the minds of many Americans. It becomes huge.

At this point, however, it is important to reiterate that the culture war is
not
between conservatives and liberals. Although it's true that most conservative Americans tend to be traditionalists, there are many people who hold liberal political views who are appalled at the goals and tactics of the secular-progressive movement. Perhaps the best example of this is Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who, of course, ran for vice president on the Al Gore ticket (Gore is very S-P). Lieberman, and others like him, respect the nation's religious traditions and do not want radical changes in our established societal mores. They are liberal traditionalists. Another example would be Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, a traditional guy who is also a committed Democrat.

It would be a big mistake, then, for conservative traditionalists to make enemies out of liberals who still see their country as a good and worthy enterprise. They should be welcomed into the fray. No, it is the people who see America as evil that traditionalists should be concerned about. It is the radicals who want a complete overhaul of American culture and law who are the targets of this book, not liberal thinkers. For example, I firmly believe John and Robert Kennedy would be traditional culture warriors if they were on the scene today. JFK wanted you to “do” for the country, while RFK was a staunch Catholic who had a blood feud with Castro. Ironically, the traditional posture of the Kennedy brothers might pit them against their youngest sibling, Teddy, one of America's biggest S-P enablers.