Summer 2007: What Am I Reading?

This Summer I have been reading a few books that I have long had on my list of should read. They have included Michelle Malkin's Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, Laura Ingraham's The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places & Shut Up & Sing, & Bernard "Bernie" Goldberg's Bias & Arrogance. (Politically Michelle Malkin & Laura Ingraham are conservative, Bernie Goldberg is liberal.)

Short revue, READ THEM ALL!!! They will raise a lot of good questions & lead you to question a lot of what is being presented by the Main Stream Media on the news.

Before I go into greater depth on a couple of thoughts that have crossed my mind I think a little bit about my political background is in order. I grew up in Oelwein, IA as a (back then) moderate Democrat. I remember helping out in 1964 at the Dem HQ (8 -9 yrs old at the time.) I grew up in a politically active family. As I grew up I continued to work for a variety of Democratic candiates & for the party. In college I was a member of the College Democrats & in 1976 I was involved in my 1st Iowa Caucus (I supported Carter.) I remember attending the '76 DBQ Co. Convention where a friend & I were going arround trying to get signatures on a petition to add a Pro-Life amendment to the party platform. It was there I ran into my 1st "I'm personally opposed but I can't impose my morality on others." bit of hypocracy from the Franciscan Sisters here in DBQ. In retrospect, that was my 1st inkling of the direction the Democratic party was going. I was also on the Democratic Central Committee for a while.

By 1980 I was aware that Pres. Carter had reneged on his Pro-Life promises & I did what up to then was the unthinkable. I voted for a Republican, Reagan, for president. As the 80s went on I stayed registered as a Democrat, but I voted for fewer & fewer Democratic candiates as it became clearer & clearer how far to the left (esp on the Right to Life issues) the party & candidates were drifting. I wasn't changing in my views, unless you count becoming more convinced that Defending Life from conception on a change. I was still fairly moderate. But, I was becoming less & less welcome in the Democratic party for holding views that used to be mainstream Democrat (Pro-Life, vouchers etc.). In 1988 I temporarily changed my registration to attend the Republican caucuses. I changed back after. In 1992 I permanantly switched over to the Republican Party because it was clear that I could accomplish something there in the fight to defend life. I became a member of the Republican Central Committee & was eventually asked to become advisor of the Loras College Republicans.

Dring these years I also became more & more convinced that the Catholic Church's teachings on life & morality were correct. I saw how prophetic Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae was. The things he warned would happen as a result of incresed use of artifical birth control came to pass. Then along came Pope John Paul & his teachings on the Theology of the Body that were solid & accurate reflections on Catholic theology in relation to marriage, sexuality & reproduction.

1 of the most interesting things I have discovered over the past few years is how much closer the Republican Party platform is to the teachings of the Catholic Church (Not that it is perfect, there is room for improvement.) than the Democratic Party's. The Catechism of the Catholic Church & the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church are 2 books I have found extremely useful in finding out what the Church truly teaches. This, along with actually studying what the documents of Vatican II said showed me what the real "Spirit of Vatican II" was. & IT WASN'T WHAT A LOT OF LIBERAL CATHOLICS CLAIMED IT WAS. It was what EWTN & the Pope & Cardinal Ratzinger were saying. & I saw how the MSM loved to distort what the Pope said, esp when it didn't line up with their viewpoint. (Read the posts on this, esp what the Pope has really said about capitalism that I have written for more on this.)

As I said, I see myself as a moderate Republican as well as an orthodox Catholic. The trouble is those on the political left, with the aide of the press have defined their views (which have kept moving farther & farther to the left & away from moderate) as moderate, middle of the road. By their definition I am now somewhere to the right of Il Duce. I am not & they are NOT moderate. They are radically to the left & totally out of the mainstream of political thought. Those who are extremely left in the Church have tried to do the same. Again they are the ones out of the mainstream. I stick with Papa Benedetto & follow his guidance as Chief Shepherd to ensure I am in line with what the Church has taught for 2000 yrs.

By now, I think you will have figured out where I am heading, the message found in the books I have been reading. I have talked about it before, how the Main Stream Media (MSM) is so out of the main stream. Why? because they have so sold out to the left & the PC message that rather than evenhandedly report the news, they will slant it to uphold the Pro-Choice (abortion), radical feminist, radical gay, anti-gun, & other PC groups they are in bed with.

Let me make it clear, I agree with Bernie Goldberg when he says there is no vast Left Wing conspiricy. There isn't. Rather, they walk so in lockstep with each other that there is no need to. & there-in lies the problem. As Bernie Goldberg points out in his books & Laura Ingraham hits on a lot in her book on Hillary, the MSM doesn't question anything from the left. It blindly accepts & parrots whatever they want.

A couple of good examples of this are mentioned in Arrogance. The OJ Simpson murder trial should have been about a woman who, after years of being battered was finally killed by her batterer. It had NOTHING to do with race. But, because OJ was considered a hero by many the media was told to ignore that & turn it into something racial, which it wasn't. Then there was the handling of President Clinton. Plain & simple, he raped, sexually assaulted, &/or sexually harrassed quite a few women. He also lied under oath. But, because he was a Democrat who was pro-choice he was given a pass. Here is how I see the handling of these events: In handling them the way they did, the MSM & the Left betrayed every woman who had been battered, raped, sexually assaulted or harrassed so that they could keep in power.

When I was in college I was on the staff of The Lorian for a couple of years. My junior year it was edited by a friend of mine, Alan Boyle. 1 of the things I learned from him was that the truth & accuracy were what was most important. He confirmed what I saw in the movie Teacher's Pet. In that movie Clark Gable plays a hard boiled newspaper man who put strong emphasis on hard work & finding out "Who, what where when & why?", esp "Why?" This is something that most modern reporters, print & broadcast, seem to avoid with a passion. If they did, they would be faced with facts that counter their preconceived ideas. & undermine a lot of what the Left claims is correct. What I learned from him is why I try to quote accurately. It is why I do my best to include a link to the original article, esp if I use a small quote. I want to be sure that any bias I have is kept from innacurately presenting the facts.

& many a time they go well beyond that. They intentially take things out of context to misrepresent what was really said. The examples I give in other posts on the Pope that I refered to earlier are excellent proof of this. & it isn't just the Pope, anyone who is not in agreement with them they misquote, ignore or even slander.

In the Pre-Revolutionary era & well into the 20th Century the press didn't cover the way it leaned. You knew what was their slant was & could check out papers from both sides to get an accurate picture. TV news did its best to accurately present the news. But somehwere in the early 70s the MSM denied any bias & hid its, by then, mostly left wing slant. When Fox News & talk radio came along, their stranglehold was broken. & they hated it. The MSM doesn't see why they have lost viewers/readership is because if its bias & arrogance at pretending it isn't there. 1 of Fox's greatest strengths is that even though many of its newscastors & reporters are on the right, it does try to be fair & balanced. Alan Colmes, Susan Estrich & so many others from the left are given equal time with the likes of Sean Hannity & Michelle Malkin.

1 of the greatest examples of left wing bias & hatred of the right, esp President Bush & how destrctive it can be is found in what happenned to Dan Rather. Dan Rather did an excellent job of going after Nixon in the 70s. But over the years he failed to see that he was becoming exactly like Nixon. Anyone who disagreed with him was an enemy to be destroyed, no matter what. So when he was presented with false military records of Pres. Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, he thought could torpedo Bush's reelection in 2004. He ran with them instead of checking them out & verifying that they were real. They became his downfall like Watergate became Nixon's. & like Nixon, he has never come to grips with the truth, that he brought about his own destruction.

I could go on about how far out of touch the leftist elites are. Instead, I recommend that you read the books that I mentioned at the start of this post. They do an excellent job of expanding on what I have talked about here.

The MSM is at a crossroads. It can continue to lie about its biases & arrogance. In doing so, it will become more & more irrelevant. Or, it can honestly face them & deal with them. The left won't like it. Too bad. We need a press that is willing to go after the truth, not a political objective. At times that will mean putting the right on the hot seat, other times, the left. The 1st Amendment was designed to protect a press that didn't always agree with those in power.

This also means that the MSM has to quit fearing Fox & talk radio. They are the balance to their biases. & are needed. The biggest mistake that could be made today would be to reimpose a "Fairness Doctrine". It isn't needed. There are enough outlets out there functioning as the press did in the early days of our country to give all sides & let the average person make up his or her own mind.

Depending on what it chooses the MSM will take its place in the dialog on issues or it will contnue in its arrogance & become more & more irrelevant. The MSM's monopoly on the news is permanantly broken. & the truth is much better for it.