Ann Coulter and John Cloud
For those of you who do follow politics, which I normally don’t deal with here on the blog, there’s an interesting piece in Salon that talks about Ann Coulter’s “fall from grace” and it mentions a Time Magazine article that focused on Coulter, by John Cloud. Coulter is a conservative right wing pundit. I’m not sure exactly what Cloud is.
While the Time story gave Coulter cover for her noxious commentary, it caused John Cloud a world of hurt from critics who weren’t as impressed with his light treatment of his subject. Media critic Brendan Nyhan wrote:
After working on Spinsanity for more than three years, I’ve seen a lot of bad political journalism. But John Cloud’s article about Ann Coulter in Time still shocked me (note: it’s not online yet for non-subscribers, unfortunately). It manages to bring together everything that’s wrong with contemporary political coverage: the obsession with being counter-intuitive; the pervasive unwillingness to check facts; and the focus on “fairness” and “balance” rather than critical reporting. A non-journalist might ask an obvious question: Why write a cover article about Ann Coulter in the first place? It’s widely understood that she’s a shrill, destructive demagogue. But to Cloud the distaste that both liberals and conservatives show for her is “suspicious”:
I never took Ann Coulter seriously. Who does? And I actually stopped reading Time Magazine altogether because of John Cloud.
You can read the rest here. And here’s more about the John Cloud piece.
Christian Goes Berserk Over Marriage
Here’s a link to a piece where a Christian extremist recorded herself ranting about legalized same sex marriage. I can’t imagine putting anything like this up, in public, for the world to see. But there you are.
“This is a really sad day for me,” Rommel begins. “Everything that God created his church to be — as man as woman — Adam and Eve — Five justices decided that God was wrong!”
What then follows are four and a half hilarious tear-filled minutes of regurgitated Fox News propaganda and a nonsense prayer about America’s decidedly secular founding fathers.
“God did not change! His word is truth!” Rommel sobs. “And God says that marriage is between a man and a woman! … I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what you think about my opinion because, you know what? I could really care less!”
Well.
You can read more here. My only comment is that I’d like to clarify that it’s not just Fox news putting a spin on things. They are all doing it, especially CNN. Unfortunately, in order to be well informed nowadays you have to read beyond what’s in the mainstream media, including the article to which I just linked.
Miss USA Pageant Loses Openly Gay Host
Miss USA host, openly gay Thomas Roberts, is backing out of hosting the show for reasons that seem to be related to Donald Trump.
The host of MSNBC Live with Thomas Roberts was to have returned for the second year and be teamed with Cheryl Burke of NBC’s I Can Do That for the 12 July event.
Both are now out following NBC’s decision to sever business ties with pageant owner Donald Trump. Trump has been under fire since making highly controversial comments about Mexican immigration when announcing his presidential bid.
To be honest, I have no idea who Thomas Roberts is because I don’t watch MSNBC at all anymore, and I never followed “Miss” pageants of any kind.
But it is interesting to note this…how Roberts got the job hosting Miss USA.
The newsman had lobbied for the job back in 2013 when Miss Universe was held in Moscow. Original hosts Andy Cohen and Giuliana Rancic had dropped out because of an anti-gay propaganda law passed in Russia earlier that year.
I just find it interesting the way some people choose their convictions the way most of us choose our socks.
Of course things in Russia have only grown worse for LGBT people since 2013 so I guess that excuse for showing Russia gay people from the US didn’t work out after all. I’m with Andy Cohen and Giuliana Rancic on this one. They did the right thing.
You can read more of this here.
