Oliver Stone’s outburst of rank anti-Semitism in an interview last weekend with the Sunday Times of London has barely created a ripple in the mainstream media. Just as the sophisticates in liberal media outlets and the Hollywood elite gave a collective shrug of indifference when Mel Gibson issued his original anti-Semitic rantings, we have heard not much at all from the trend setters (too busy with their Roman Polanski victory celebrations?). The ADL issued a statement that nicely sums up what others prefer to ignore:
Oliver Stone has once again shown his conspiratorial colors with his comments about ‘Jewish domination of the media’ and control over U.S. foreign policy. His words conjure up some of the most stereotypical and conspiratorial notions of undue Jewish power and influence.
The myth of Jewish control is an old stereotype that persists to this day. Stone uses it in a particularly egregious fashion by suggesting that Hitler has gotten an unfair shake because of Jewish influence.
This is the most absurd kind of analysis and shows the extent to which Oliver Stone is willing to propound his anti-Semitic and conspiratorial views.
Israel’s Diaspora Affairs and Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein blasted Stone:
“Beyond the ignorance he proves with his comments, his demonization of the Jewish people could be a sequel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the minister said. “When a man of Stone’s stature says such things, it could lead to a new wave of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, and it may even cause real harm to Jewish communities and individuals.”
It’s not like Stone’s interview didn’t have newsworthy remarks:
In the interview, Stone said America’s focus on the Holocaust was a product of the “Jewish domination of the media.” He said his upcoming Showtime documentary series Secret History of America would put Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin “in context.” “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30 [million killed],” Stone said … Stone, who recently met with Ahmadinejad, said American policy toward Iran was “horrible.”
“Iran isn’t necessarily the good guy,” he said. “But we don’t know the full story!”
By contrast, Stone praised Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as “a brave, blunt, earthy” man, who does not censor the Internet in his country.
Stone also raised an uproar when he defended Hitler at a press conference in January.
“Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it’s been used cheaply,” he said at the time. “He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect.”
Maybe it’s Stone’s long leftist track record — who can forget his glowing biopic of Fidel Castro? — that has earned him a pass from the liberal U.S. media.
But maybe there is something else at work. Stone’s venomous rant against “Jewish domination of the media” and his assertion about the “Israel lobby” (“They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years”) are not so different from what comes from the lips of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the writings of the Israel-hating left, and the bile-drenched blogs of those who, for example, claimed John McCain was surrounded by Jewish neocon advisers.
It’s reasonable to conclude that Oliver Stone hasn’t been called out by the liberals — those who advertise themselves as experts on diversity and bigotry — because a great deal of what he said doesn’t sound all that objectionable to far too many of them. And of course, it’s rather embarrassing for those seeking respectability (the “tough love for Israel” gang) to illuminate that anti-Israel venom is, when you scratch the surface, nothing more than old-fashioned Jew-hating.
In politics, nothing is inherently an advantage or a disadvantage. It depends on what you do with it. The Republicans are now making lemonade from the sourness of the MSM. Isn’t that sweet!
Case in point is the Gibson interview. I think everything the MSM had done previously made his condescening attitude as memorable as her supposed gaffe about the Bush doctrine. And that probably fired women up even more. The polls show more or less a dead heat, perhaps with McCain/Palin slightly ahead, but the trend is obvious – Obama is sinking. How far and how fast, and if that is reversible is the question. Barring some sort of October surprise or a major screw up on the Republican side, I should think the debates will be a major advantage for team McCain. They will probably do very well against Obobo/Plugsy and at worst it will be a draw. If the MSM continues to shill for them afterward, then that will be their, and the Dems, complete undoing in’08 and perhaps beyond.
The MSM is corrupt.That is how the people see it.When we talk about changing washington, we are talking more than just politics. The MSM is too stupid to realize that.
My biggest complaint about Bush has been his administraion’s unwillingness to take on the media and instead to think that if you say nothing, the media will go away. Republicans cannot afford to conduct campaigns without a very explicit strategy that treats the media as an enemy and aims to use it against itself. The way McCain so far has done this is one of the things that makes me wildly hopeful and perfectly willing to put aside my doubts about some of his policies. But will he keep it up to the end? I hope he realizes that the media most certainly will. It is now not only openly fighting for Obama, but also for its own dying credibility. I hope that at no point in the next two months, including especially all the debates, will the McCain people see the media as a conduit for their ideas, but instead keep clearly in view the need to prevail over the media and trap it in its own hypocrises and contradictions.
Compare and contrast how ABC conducted the Obama and Palin interviews. When Obama mispoke about his “Muslim religion”, it was corrected by the interviewer. When, when did that ever happen to a Republican? Never! Remember the Reagan line, “I am from the IRS and am here to help you.”
Conservatives/Republicans/McCain-Palin supporters have to realize that we are at war with the media because they have declared it upon us. If it wasn’t before Palin, it’s so self evident now. It presents a challenge, however, that cannot be met with McCain/Palin themselves entering the battle. One very impressive aspect of the interviews with that guy Gibson was how Palin showed no hostility toward his questions. She wasn’t snippy or sarcastic. That’s the way these two should respond(as was McCain on that silly program with those women.) It’s up to everyone else associated with the campagin, however, to unleash on these fakers. The counter attacks upon the media ought to be an integral part of the McCain campaign strategy.
I think you hit the position of Hillary supporters on the head. My wife and I began this campaign as moderate-liberal Democrats supporting Hillary, with our video recorders set to get Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. We haven’t watched either of them since New Hampshire. We now are regular Fox viewers. We have shifted to moderate conservatives over the course of this election. I think there are many others like us who have been driven toward the Republican-conservative camp by the MSM, the contempt of DailyKos and MoveOn types, and the hard left that has captured the Democratic party.
McCain has tried to turn Obama’s strengths against him. First, Obama’s celebrity, and now the support Obama gets from the major news media. It’s clever political judo. Obama and his news media allies have tried to turn the choice of Gov. Palin from a strength to a disadvantage for McCain, with what success you may judge for yourself.
Anybody seen Michelle Obama in the past week? She did not show up for the 9/11 memorial and I have not seen any TV sound bites of her? Has she been disappeared?
The McCain camp hasn’t really “convinced” the voters of anything. The MSM has. The attacks have been so transparently biased and brutal that voters (many of them only recently directing a focused attention toward the campaign) hardly could have failed to recognize such. Your suggestion that voters “seem to be buying it” is wrongheaded and trivializes what is occurring. It implies that the tidal wave of revulsion being displayed against the media is primarily the result of a mere act of persuasion, a successfully waged political strategy. It is not. It is the result of an accurate judgment by the people that the media has abandoned its civil duty to inform the public and encourage open, vigorous, fair-minded debate in favor of manipulative, deliberate distortion of reality in order to promote its own goals. The media has only a few duties to the citizens, and it has failed in all of them while deliberately violating the public trust. McCain is merely fighting back, as would anyone so viciously attacked. The public recognizes what is happening and is on his side. As long as such a situation persists he will win every battle and the war itself, since the ultimate prize sought is to be gained only via public opinion. As I wrote in another post, if the election is to be decided on whether or not John McCain has the courage to hold his ground, to be steadfast, to fight back, then I like our chances. I like them very much.
John Burack, I agree with you totally. This is my biggest problem with the Bush Administration as well.
But if anyone thinks that McCain is now with conservatives totally, they are mistaken. If he wins the election, his media enemies are going to be pleasantly surprised at many of the things he does. Conservatives are going to feel betrayed, but trapped.
I agree with Paul Zisserson that McCain and Palin should, to the extent they are able, remain “above the fray.” John McCain presented himself before a huge audience at the convention in a clear, honest manner. Let that image be the one the public carries with it on Nov. 4, not that of a bickering politician. One of Sarah Palin’s many appeals is her freshness, her positive enthusiasm. Turning her into the traditional VP “attack dog” would only degrade and minimize her. McCain seems now to be winning the battle to be seen as the agent of “change.” One of the most basic changes longed for is that we cease to conduct our political life in the muck. Let McCain offer this to the public by means of his example, and Palin as well. Obama on the stump lately has been all but unhinged. I see no real prospect that he will grow any the more calm if the polls continue as they have. Sit back and let the public witness his deterioration (after all, his demeanor has been much of his appeal). As for the surrogates, their counterattacks should be calculated and telling, not merely reactive (as have been the counterattacks of the Democrats). They need at least to take the time to aim.
bd, “But if anyone thinks that McCain is now with conservatives totally, they are mistaken.”
Of course the word “totally” is well-considered, but I think it tends to undermine the point you are making. No one can or should expect “total” agreement between his druthers and a candidate’s. “Betrayal” is far too strong a description of what we may reasonably expect from a President McCain. John McCain is not some sort of impostor. His policy instincts are fundamentally conservative, as he has demonstrated at least a thousand times in 26 years. That’s good enough for me.
As for Sarah Palin, the Left cannot abide the horrifying prospect of a true feminist, the one they’ve been yammering about and yearning for these 40 years now, coming to national office as a conservative Republican. Yikes! That’s got to hurt. They will never leave her alone so long as they draw breath.
For decades the usual suspects (NOW, Planned Parenthood, etc) have defended the dubious proposition that a feminist must fit a narrow description of a woman, that she should appear cerebral and miserable like Steinem or foul-mouthed like Goldberg or doctrinaire like Clinton or have the maternal instincts of a man like Greer.
Sarah Palin is the back of a hand across their teeth. She is not what a woman is supposed to be, yet she is like what most women prefer a woman to be: bright, beautiful, energetic, successful off her own bat, and most importantly, not miserable but, instead, radiantly happy. The threat she poses to gender feminists is lethal, depend upon it.
BD, victory will have to be followed with a vast by Conservatives to make sure the McCain/Palin administration is staffed by reliable Conservatives, and this time, not incompetent cronies who will mortify us.
There’s ALL KINDS of talen in the GOP, and we need to make sure that McCain/Palin chooses from amongst the best.
Id est, no Andy Cards, no Scott McClellans, no Karen Hughes’, no Condis, no Armitages, no Wilkersons, no Nick Burns’, none of those types need apply!
The MSM’s complicity in its own delegitimization reminds me of the lemming rush to the sea. It’s not so much that the MSM is a conscious conspiracy that everyone thinks the same way. Like Democrats, to put it briefly.
Anybody seen Michelle Obama in the past week? She did not show up for the 9/11 memorial and I have not seen any TV sound bites of her? Has she been disappeared?
She’s trying to figure out how to return all the new linens that just arrived with the Big O presidential seal on them.
I think the MSM’s power has been diminished greatly by the past three presidential elections. The hanging-chad coverage, the reflexive attacks on the SwiftVets, Dan Rather’s ludicrous TANG episode, and now the utterly incurious behavior towards an admitted drug user and neophyte…all these have weakened it to the point where Evan Thomas’s 15 points is probably at best 5. This is why the GOP usually does better when it gets it three days of sunlight every four years. It makes the information received at the convention all the more urgent because it is less redundant to the contrary message the MSM is constantly beaming out to the sheeple.
When he is elected, I would like to see McCain do an old-style press conference every morning with maybe five or 10 writers and no cameras. He could take questions for 20 minutes and then go about his day. The press secretary and all his spokesmen could be fired. If they hit him with something unfair, he can just tell them to shove it. The candor alone would overcome any gaffe potential. Oh, and he should tell the New York Times to get out of the White House. Any organization that prints government secrets can’t be trusted that close to the president.
There is no doubt that press management has been Rove’s absolute worst area. He was quoted as saying, “That’s just the water in which we swim,” meaning press bias. But that is just an awful approach. Bush has been so vilified that he has withdrawn into his shell, and been largely ineffective for the past two years. This is a shame.
I think a whole lot of people recognize the following perfectly well:
1. Genuine MSM bias
2. Opportunistic whining about unintentional gaffes, from both sides
3. Whether #2 is coming from the actual candidates, or from supporters not under their direction
You really have to stick your fingers in your ears, squeeze your eyes shut, and talk yourself into drinking anyone’s Kool-Aid. Most people haven’t. Most people instantly recognize 1, 2, and 3, and evaluate them at their proper worth.
Today’s NY Times and WaPo articles about alleged cronyism by Gov. Palin underscores the ongoing Trooper Gate investigation underway in Alaska.
But look who’s whining, it’s the mainstream media who bleeds their bias on the front pages and lead stories on television news.
Pity the Alaskans who have to endure the hordes of news investigators going through their trash in search of “the truth” about Gov. Palin. Of course, the media and/or Democrat investigators collectively go over the same grounds over-and-over in order to find some nugget to justify their jobs and associated expense.
To paraphrase an old maxim, “With enemies like these, who needs friends?”
One can only hope that the MSM isn’t clever enough to learn from this experience and to develop a more subtle brand of bias.