John R. Guardiano
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Don’t Even Pretend to Be Fair–Part IV: Unbalanced, Inaccurate, and Unfair
Fox News’ Clayton Morris thinks he’s all it. But in reality, Morris epitomizes how badly biased and unfair the Big Media has become — especially on military and cultural issues like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
How badly biased is the media’s coverage of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? Why, it’s so bad that even Fox News has become politically correct on the issue.
On a recent Fox & Friends, for instance, America’s supposedly “fair and balanced” network aired this bit of conventional wisdom with retired Army Colonel David Hunt.
Fox & Friends host Alisyn Camerota began the interview by promising viewers a “closer look at the origin and the pros and cons,” of the policy, but then proceeded to deliver neither. What Fox viewers got instead was Hunt’s one-sided diatribe against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Don’t Even Pretend to Be Fair–Part III: Lie, Discredit, and Deceive
John F. McManus, a retired military officer and now President of the long-discredited and non-influential John Birch Society, is the media’s idea of a traditional military spokesman.
Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2
The media’s willfully biased and deliberately distorted coverage of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is unprecedented, but hardly unique. Indeed, in Parts I and II of this series, we examined the Washington Post’s badly biased symposium on “how to change” “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The Post blithely assumes, of course, that this policy needs to be changed.
The Post, however, is not alone in its slavish devotion to the left-wing cultural zeitgeist. The Capitol Hill newspaper, The Hill, for instance, also published a symposium (on Feb. 2) entitled, “The Big Question: Is this the end of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ ban?”
Of course, there is no real “ban” on gays serving in the military; that’s just a liberal scare word designed to instruct readers about how to think about this issue. In truth, thousands of gay men and women serve honorably and without incident or problem.
Super Bowl Lessons for the Right, Part I: Teams, Not Individuals, Win (and Lose) Championships
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning’s disastrous game-changing and game-losing Super Bowl interception underscores the need for better teamwork in both sports and politics.
Click here for Part II
The Super Bowl is quickly fading in our collective memory but the lessons gleaned from this year’s stunning loss by the favored Indianapolis Colts should not be forgotten.
To the contrary, those lessons need to be remembered and heeded: because they have much to teach the political Right — starting with Peyton Manning’s disastrous interception, which a Saints defensive back returned for a decisive, game-changing and game-winning touchdown. And the lesson is this:
Just as football is a team sport; so, too, is politics and public policy. And just as no player — no matter how talented — can win a game on his own, so too is it impossible for a single part of a political coalition to prevail alone. The coalition must be mutually reinforcing, with strong and welcomed contributions from all of its disparate factions and members.
I say this because although Manning has been the subject of considerable opprobrium, the interception really wasn’t his fault.
Who should be formulating military social policy: trained military professionals and “boots on the ground,” or political hacks and consultants like Ed Rogers (above)?
The media wants to avoid a substantive discussion about open homosexuality in the military. That’s why they focus ad nauseam on the politics, and not the merits, of the issue. Case in point: the Washington Post’s Feb. 7 symposium on “How to Change ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”
Indeed, virtually all of the Post’s contributors are preoccupied with the political implications of the issue, and not what it might mean for the readiness and well-being of the U.S. military. Scott Keeter, for instance, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, notes that:
Support for allowing gays to serve openly in the military has been stable for several years and is significantly higher in many polls than it was when President Bill Clinton raised the issue in the 1990s.
GOP political consultant Ed Rogers agrees:
The cynic’s first rule of politics is: “Be for what is going to happen.” And it is inevitable that gays will openly serve in the U.S. armed forces.
This, in a nutshell, captures the Left’s — and, therefore, the Big Media’s (because the Left and the Big Media are one and the same) — entire approach to this issue:
The media has told us what the Navy’s top admiral, Mike Mullen, thinks about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”; but why is the media censoring other, contrary military voices?
Regardless of whether you are for or against open homosexuality in the military, you have to be dismayed at how badly biased media coverage of this issue has become. Indeed, it seems that, to the Big Media, there is only one legitimate and morally correct point of view, and that is to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and to allow gays to serve openly within the ranks.
The Washington Post, for instance, published a symposium on Feb. 7 entitled, “How to Change ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’” Not one of the Posts’s six contributors defends the current policy of permitting gays to serve discreetly, but not openly – and none of the contributors even tries to grapple with the arguments and reasons for keeping the U.S. military free of open homosexuality.
Instead, the contributors all blithely assume that every bright and reasonable, good and decent person must be all for allowing gays to serve openly — and that opponents of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” must be reactionary reprobates.
In fact, one contributor, Michael Buonocore, dismisses supporters of the current policy as mere obstructionists who have “petty concerns,” which the senior brass would do well to immediately bulldoze over and destroy.
