Culture Warrior (6 page)

And these Internet guttersnipes will turn on their own in a heartbeat, as
Washington Post
ombudsman Deborah Howell found out in January 2006. Ms. Howell made the mistake of pointing out that indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff funneled money to Democrats as well as Republicans. Even though that is true according to prosecutors, the far-left smear merchants organized a personal attack campaign against Ms. Howell. The result: The
Post
had to shut down its Web site after Howell was inundated with obscene threats. George Soros must be very proud.

But give S-P general Soros some credit for strategy. In just a few short years, he has developed a defamation pipeline that can instantly injure anyone in the United States. He has also used organizations like the NAACP and, ironically, the Anti-Defamation League to do his bidding, as both organizations have used quotes from far-left Web sites he has funded.

To sum up, Soros is a smart, ruthless ideologue who will stop at nothing to advance the secular-progressive offensive. He has no scruples, ethics, or sense of fair play. The guy reminds me of Colonel Banastre “Butcher” Tarleton, the most justly hated Redcoat during the Revolutionary War. Soros and Tarleton can both be associated with take-no-prisoner policies: In both cases, their prey, whether traditionalists today or colonial rebel fighters in the eighteenth century, were simply people trying to strengthen their country.

I mean it. For traditional-minded Americans, George Soros is public enemy number one. Without his unlimited cash (along with that of Peter Lewis), the S-P movement could not attack so readily and so effectively—and with such venom. Soros envisions a libertine society that soaks the rich (except for him) and forms no judgments on personal behavior. His one-world philosophy would obliterate the uniqueness of America and downsize its superpower status. His secular approach would drastically diminish Judeo-Christian philosophy in America and encourage his own spiritual philosophy: atheism. George Soros is truly an imposing force, and his elite media allies are making him even more so. We ignore him at our peril.

He who controls the air is likely to win the battle.

—THE ART OF CULTURE WAR,
O'REILLY TZU

Most politicians in America, with the obvious exception of the President, hold only casual power; that is, they can make small changes and minor contributions to the country in their various capacities. The media hold the ultimate power to persuade. Without control of the mass media, the secular-progressives will never achieve power in this country, because, as I've mentioned earlier, most Americans are traditionalists and don't want drastic change.

But guess what? The mass media are not “most Americans.” They consider themselves smarter than the average bear (that's you) and are tilting toward the S-P agenda more than ever before. The battle over Christmas in 2005 was the most illuminating example of this; we'll deal with that incredible controversy shortly.

Over the past ten years, I have fought scores of battles against my peers in the media, and, as mentioned, I put their support of the S-P agenda at about 75 percent. My analytical conclusion was reached the hard way—I have been hammered each time I put forth a traditional point of view or championed a traditional cause.

For the past thirty years, television news has been dominated by left-leaning individuals who gave the S-P leadership hope. If the TV big shots sympathized with liberal causes, the S-P generals rightly reasoned, then the door was ajar for a more radical message, but that message had to be marketed with a delicate touch. Full-blown radical thought along the lines of Noam Chomsky, for example, would be impossible to place on the TV news. No, small doses of secular-progressive philosophy would be presented under the guise of liberal politics, and gradually the nation would be more open to things like gay marriage and legalized drugs. The strategy has worked very nicely, indeed.

                  

                  

Just for fun and insight, let's profile some of America's most powerful electronic media people vis-à-vis the culture war. As the title of this chapter says, some of these are the “enablers at the top”—people whose S-P proclivities set the tone and agenda for their powerful news organizations. I will analyze only people I know personally. We begin at the very top—the network anchors.

         

Dan Rather:
A lifelong Democrat, Mr. Rather is an emotional reporter who often does not even attempt to hide his feelings. He lost his job on
The CBS Evening News
because of the President Bush/ National Guard fiasco. You could not have missed this debacle, but most of the public read the situation wrong. True, Rather too eagerly smelled a huge story and has little use for George W. Bush, but he did not intentionally put a fake report on the air, as alleged in many conservative precincts. Instead, Rather left the micro work to his producer, Mary Mapes, who, in the end, could not authenticate key documents essential to proving the main point: that President Bush had used connections to avoid going to Vietnam in the sixties. As you know, Mapes was fired over the botched story, Rather demoted. Sad, but a fair outcome, because the stakes on that story were so high. It could have tilted the presidential election.

Dan Rather's S-P leanings overrode his basic instincts for impartial reporting.

Some believe what happened to Dan Rather was his karma. I can't argue with that. Rather did have it in for the committed right wing in this country much more so than he did for the committed left. I believe he thought he tried to be fair, but his emotions and the liberal culture he worked in often overrode that effort.

Here's some personal backup for that opinion. As a young correspondent working for CBS News in the early eighties, I put together a tough report on the summer homosexual invasion of Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Every weekend in the season, thousands of gays would descend on this small Cape Cod town, which was originally a Portuguese-American fishing village. While most of the gay visitors behaved themselves, some partied very publicly and explicitly. My crew filmed some pretty shocking stuff in the streets, and then we interviewed people in both camps. Predictably, most Provincetown officials back then were outraged at the sexual carnival, while gay leaders defensively chalked it up to a few idiots. Besides, they said, don't heterosexuals exhibit similar behavior on spring break?

My report was fair and balanced, but the footage of gay misbehavior was disturbing even though we blurred it on the TV screen. Dan Rather and his executive producer, Howard Stringer (now CEO at Sony), watched the piece, then promptly killed it. One of their minions told me it was too explosive and Rather and Stringer simply did not want the heat they anticipated from gay activists. End of story, literally.

I believe, though I could be wrong, that if some conservatives had been caught misbehaving on camera the story would have run. Or if gays had been the ones imposed upon, the story would have aired. But the Rather crew did not want to scrutinize the behavior of a highly vocal minority group. This is the kind of tilt that has been going on at CBS News for decades. The operation leans left, no question, and the aforementioned UCLA study backs that up. In the past, CBS News has been far more ready to promote a secular cause than a traditional one, and as managing editor, Dan Rather had a strong hand in shaping that situation. Maybe the new management at CBS News will change that culture; however, the hiring of Katie Couric to take Rather's place on the
Evening News
anchor desk is an interesting choice.

Ms. Couric is a decidedly liberal thinker. I've been interviewed by her a couple of times on the
Today
show and there's no question that her sympathies lie on the left. How dedicated she is to any agenda is hard to tell. Ms. Couric has broad audience appeal, and I believe CBS would have hired her even if she were a conservative, because her talent can translate into ratings. It will be fascinating to see if traditionalists get a fair shot on her broadcast. It will be to Ms. Couric's credit if they do.

         

The late Peter Jennings:
For some reason, Peter liked me while many at ABC News, where I worked in the mid-eighties, did not. Like Dan Rather, Jennings was a tough, hardworking reporter, but he was far more interested in foreign news than the culture war in the United States. I think it pretty much bored him to tears.

Although Peter surrounded himself with liberals, he did have friendships with people like the conservative writer John Leo. Above all, Jennings liked feisty, challenging individuals. Despite what some conservatives believe, he was in no way an ideologue.

The late Peter Jennings.

In his private life, Peter Jennings was politically correct and probably favored Democrats most of the time. But I never saw Peter Jennings shade a story toward the S-P cause or denigrate a conservative for a point of view. I spoke with the man regularly. He did have a traditional streak in him, but largely kept it to himself. Jennings often watched
The Factor
and was greatly amused by the battles we fought—constantly telling me that I was completely insane to take on the elite media. But he was always supportive of me both publicly and privately, and he didn't have to be—there was nothing in it for him. Jennings may have been a bit too patrician for the hard right (some took it as condescension), but to me he was a straight shooter to the end, advancing neither secularism nor traditionalism on the air.

         

Tom Brokaw:
I know him but have never worked with him. Still, I consider Brokaw the most liberal of the three network titans (this may surprise Dan Rather). His remarks to the press about the Fox Newschannel have bordered on the snide, and I resent it. For years, NBC News stopped just short of declaring itself a fellow traveler of the left. To be fair, Brokaw never crossed the ideological Rubicon, but he often went out of his way to read copy that was shaded progressive. He had full editing power and could have been more neutral.

Having retired from daily broadcasting, Brokaw is now a man-about-town in New York City and his social set is primarily liberal. I don't consider him a committed culture warrior, but I do believe his heart is with the progressives. I could be wrong, but don't bet on it. In March 2005, secular-progressive columnist Maureen Dowd of the
New York Times
actually floated Brokaw's name as a possible Democrat presidential candidate. That wouldn't automatically make him an S-P officer, but it does give you an indication of where he lives politically. Ms. Dowd is not going to become your champion unless you have solid S-P credentials.

Tom Brokaw, the most liberal of the network titans, in unaccustomed company: with me and Fox Newschannel boss Roger Ailes.

Ted Koppel:
A straight shooter, but you don't know where his gun is holstered. Plays it close on ideology and seems to dislike most of those holding power; in other words, Ted's a bit of a cynic (not a bad thing when your job is to watch the powerful). Very smart and well read, Koppel is definitely not a culture warrior and probably couldn't care less who wins the fight. I've never seen Koppel allow himself to be used on the air, but one of his former producers, a guy named Rick Kaplan, is a fanatic leftist who would smear any with whom he disagrees in a heartbeat. I know; I worked with Kaplan at ABC. How Koppel could work with an individual of this low character is one of the great media mysteries. I respect Koppel but could never really trust his fairness because of the Kaplan factor.