Views expressed in guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media.
Visit the complete Guest Column archives.
America’s Pravda: The New York Times Smears Hannity
Guest Column | By Jeffrey T. Kuhner | February 8, 2007
Since the fall of communism, The Times has consistently done the bidding of the New York liberal intelligentsia.
The New York Times is trying to destroy the reputation of Sean Hannity. Last week, the country's leading liberal newspaper attacked the popular conservative radio and TV host.
A Times reporter, Alessandra Stanley, criticized Mr. Hannity's new Sunday program on FOX News, "Hannity's America." According to The Times, Mr. Hannity erred while he exposed the dangerous and degrading nature of the world's oldest profession. In a recent show, he visited the Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada, in which he interviewed several prostitutes. He even had the temerity to suggest that they find a safer and more respectable line of work. For feminist libertines like Ms. Stanley, this is heretical.
"While Mr. Hannity, who attended Roman Catholic parochial school, interviews scantily clad prostitutes, ostensibly urging them to quit and go to law school, the camera slowly moves from prostitute to prostitute, lasciviously lingering over the one with the largest, most exposed breasts," Ms. Stanley writes.
Mr. Hannity is therefore being faulted for showing semi-nude women during his investigation of a Nevada brothel. What was his crew supposed to film--nuns praying the rosary? The story was about the sex trade in America, which means it must inevitably contain sexually explicit images. Ms. Stanley's criticism was puerile, baseless and detached from reality.
Ms. Stanley's article is a perfect example of the seminal problem plaguing The New York Times. The Times has long ceased to be a credible, objective news organization; rather, it is the ideological print vehicle for America's transnational liberal elites. For decades, The Times has not engaged in serious investigative reporting but in political propaganda.
In the 1960's, The Times led the charge for U.S. troops to withdraw from Vietnam; its writers promised there would be no real strategic and moral consequences. Instead, the declension of American power from Southeast Asia led to a regional holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese and Hmong tribal people were murdered and ethnically cleansed by Vietnam's victorious communists; over one million boat people fled Vietnam in make-shift rafts, risking their lives to escape the new totalitarian regime. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge exterminated over 2 million people. As this was happening, The New York Times' columnist, Anthony Lewis, for example, denied that atrocities were even taking place in Vietnam or Cambodia. He couldn't admit it, for to do so would eviscerate the liberal myth constructed by The Times' editors.
During the 1980s, The Times consistently railed against Ronald Reagan's anti-communist foreign policy. The paper advocated appeasement, "strategic engagement" and "dialogue" with the Soviet Union. The fundamental assumption which underlay most of the reporting was that the U.S.S.R. was a legitimate power--rather than a police state responsible for the deaths of over 60 million of its citizens and which had enslaved the peoples of Eastern Europe. When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet empire imploded, it was evident to all that The Times' writers had been utterly detached from reality.
Since the fall of communism, The Times has consistently done the bidding of the New York liberal intelligentsia--it propped up Bill and Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that they presided over the most corrupt and scandal-ridden administration in U.S. history; it has turned a blind eye to the growing threat of Islamic fascism; it has sought to undermine the Bush administration's war on terrorism; it has led the chorus demanding the U.S. withdraw from Iraq (again promising that there will be no long-term strategic and moral consequences); it has promoted the radical social agenda of gay marriage, euthanasia, and abortion on demand; and it has served as the mouthpiece for environmental extremists who decry the evils of man-made "global warming."
The Times likes to present itself as America's "paper of record." Sadly, it is only the "paper of record" for our liberal elite. Just as Pravda was the official organ for Russia's communist elite, The New York Times is now America's Pravda--full of lies, inaccuracies and ideologically driven news coverage, but essential reading to find out what the next marching orders are for leftist internationalists.
Pravda, however, was never considered to be a serious, honest newspaper; and neither should The Times be viewed as credible. More importantly, just as Pravda writers were unable to understand the failures of communism and what was really happening in the world, The Times--its editors and journalists whose brains are utterly marinated in post-modern liberalism--are unable or unwilling to grasp the emerging collapse of their anti-religious, anti-family, and anti-American worldview.
With the exception of decadent Western Europe and the Democratic Blue States such as California, New York and Massachusetts, the overwhelming majority of societies in the world are profoundly conservative. People's lives are centered on God, country and family--these are the eternal, historic values that provide existential meaning and purpose. They are also the values that contemporary liberals are hell-bent on destroying.
For The Times, this is why conservatives like Mr. Hannity must be discredited. He represents and champions everything they detest. Mr. Hannity's message of pride, patriotism and faith is a direct threat to The Times' radical secular agenda. Moreover, his growing popularity reveals that his message is resonating with Americans. In contrast, The Times is a spent force; its circulation and influence is in decline.
Yet it is not just envy and resentment that is driving The Times' witch hunt against Mr. Hannity and other representatives of the "New Media" such as Insight; The Times' writers are also motivated by the fear that he--and others like him--will derail the liberal media establishment's mission of getting Hillary Clinton into the White House.
During the 1990s, no major paper in this country whitewashed and downplayed the myriad scandals plaguing the Clinton administration more than The Times. Its reporters and editors know full well that a Hillary presidency will present an opportunity to implement every single one of the Left's goals: universal health insurance, national day care, gay marriage, economic interventionism, high taxes, and a passive, multilateral foreign policy.
Mr. Hannity is not only a conservative populist, but an Irish brawler who is not afraid to challenge the Clintons. In fact, he has repeatedly said that his "mission" is to stop Hillary from winning the presidency. This is the ultimate reason The Times is looking for every opportunity to undercut his influence. Ms. Stanley practically admits as much.
"Perhaps the most damning evidence against Mr. Hannity is his insistence on attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton," she writes. "Real conservatives welcome Senator Clinton's presidential candidacy, calculating that she is too polarizing a figure ever to win in a general election. But on the very weekend Senator Clinton made her first primary trip to Iowa, Mr. Hannity headlined his show with an expose of the Clinton administration. Showing an edited scene from the much-disputed ABC mini-series ‘The Path to 9/11,' Mr. Hannity made the case that Mr. Clinton failed to eliminate Osama bin Laden during his presidency, then pressured ABC to recut the film to omit scenes that made his administration look ineffectual."
The Times, along with their allies in the Democratic Party, know perfectly well that the Clintons' weak spot is 9/11. Even the Clintons seek to distort the past. This is why, for example, when FOX News' Chris Wallace asked Mr. Clinton about his failure to capture Osama bin Laden, the former president famously (or infamously) blew his top. For this impotence in confronting terror is the Clintons' Achilles Heel: herein is the stark failure of the Clinton presidency.
Throughout the 1990s, as the public heard one scandal after another, the Democrats and the liberal media establishment kept repeating the mantra that character and morality does not matter; all that matters is policy success. "It's the economy, stupid!" went the line. Creating the veneer of an administration characterized by peace and prosperity, the liberal elite sought to portray the Clinton presidency as one of the most successful in the 20th century.
In fact, the very opposite was true. The Clinton presidency was one of the most disastrous. As our Islamofascist enemies declared war on America--the fall of Afghanistan to the radical and virulently anti-American Taliban, the first 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the 1996 terrorist attack at Khobar Towers, the 1998 bombings of our embassies in East Africa, the 2000 suicide assault on the U.S.S. Cole, the proliferation of A.Q. Khan's black market nuclear weapons network, the establishment of terrorist thugs in the Palestinian territories, the explosion in funding to radical Madrassas and mosques all over the world by Saudi Arabia, the emergence of al Qaeda cells in the Balkans and Caucasus, and the growing tide of Islamic extremists in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and even here at home--Bill Clinton did nothing. His administration failed to take serious and effective action to stem the rise of Islamist terrorism. The president was preoccupied with polls, phony diplomacy and sex scandals. The administration's incompetence and negligence laid the groundwork for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately, Mr. Clinton--and by extension, Hillary--shares much of the blame for the 3,000 Americans who were slaughtered on that fateful day.
The Democrats, the liberal media establishment and The New York Times want to obscure this from the American public--especially since the failure to stem terror was the greatest scandal of the Clinton years. Just as The Times sought to destroy and discredit Mr. Clinton's critics during his presidency, they now seek to do the same to Hillary's critics. This is the deeper meaning behind The Times' smear job against Sean Hannity. They fear him, they resent him and they hate him because he is not afraid to challenge the Clintons directly and without equivocation; he is not afraid to be a true, tenacious journalist.
In short, just like the anti-communist dissidents were routinely smeared by Pravda, America's anti-liberal dissidents are routinely smeared by The New York Times. In the end, Pravda could not sustain the corrupt communist regime; and The Times will also fail to sustain the corrupt liberal regime. Anti-communists used to wear Pravda's insults and attacks as a badge of honor. My recommendation to Mr. Hannity is that he does the same with the insults and attacks which keep coming from America's most famous paper of recorded lies and errors.
The original article can be found at http://www.insightmag.com/
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is the editor of Insight (http://www.insightmag.com)
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
0 Comments | Post a Comment
