What Pain "Hurt" Hillary? Gumbel's Reagan Insult; FNC Picked Up Dirkhising

1) Hospital mistakes kill, but ABC and NBC Monday night didn't agree on how many. On the WTO the broadcast networks focused on liberal protesters with just ABC citing protest from the right.

2) NBC's Stone Phillips portrayed Hillary as a victim, asking Gail Sheehy: "Of all the pain she has been through, what do you think hurt the most?" Instead of seeing as damaging the news that she pushed bombing, Phillips approved: "Hillary the fighter."

3) Bryant Gumbel's ultimate insult: "We haven't seen that much schmaltz since Ronald Reagan's 'Morning in America.'" Gumbel also read from Father Andrew Greeley's new book in which he called Republicans "the self-righteous, the haters and the racists."

4) June Gumbel won't give Bryant a divorce: "People just accept infidelity from celebrities like it's okay or fashionable -- I think it's disgusting."

5) FNC picked up on Dirkhising. Bret Baier: "Some see a double standard when the alleged villains, not victims, are homosexual, providing a possible answer to the question of why Jesse Dirkhising's case hasn't made national headlines."

6) Gun deaths in the U.S. are down 20 percent. ABC gave the discovery a mere 12 seconds.

7) Inspired by Hillary Clinton's claim she'll run, Letterman's "Top Ten Announcements Mayor Giuliani Would Like To Make."

>>> Now online: The November 29 Notable Quotables, the MRC's bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media. Edited by Tim Graham in my absence last week, the latest issue begins with this quote noticed by the MRC's Jessica Anderson from ABC's Charlie Gibson to William Safire on the November 18 Good Morning America: "Bush is using this term 'compassionate conservative' as he campaigns, which is an interesting juxtaposition of two seemingly contradictory terms." Other quote headings include "Reagan, Thatcher Deep?"; "Congress Wasn't Liberal Enough"; Kerry, The Ultraliberal 'Centrist'"; "Steve Forbes, Hard-Core Slasher"; "Mr. Starr, Admit You're a Zealot" and "Boys Are Different...And Inferior.
    To read the issue posted by the MRC's Andy Szul, go to:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/nq/1999/welcome.html <<<

1

A National Academy of Sciences report on how thousands die because of accidents caused by hospital personnel led Monday's ABC's World News Tonight and the NBC Nightly News, but the two shows didn't agree on the range of how many die. (CBS also led with death as Dan Rather announced: "A CBS News exclusive tonight: The discovery of secret killing fields used by Mexico's narco-thugs to bury dozens of their murder victims inside Mexico just across the U.S. border.")

    ABC's Peter Jennings told viewers: "The academy study estimates today that more than 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 120,000 people, die every year because people make mistakes." NBC's Robert Bazell offered the same low-end number but differed on the high-end, relaying: "Experts say between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die from mistakes every year in hospitals alone, making hospital errors the eighth leading cause of deaths, actually ahead of traffic accidents, breast cancer or AIDS."

    Both CBS's Dan Rather and NBC's Tom Brokaw uttered the rhyme "Battle in Seattle" Monday night, while an ABC graphic stayed with the less lyrical "Seattle Battle" as all three broadcast evening shows featured preview stories about the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting. CBS's Rather and ABC's Jennings stressed the concerns of the liberal protestors, though ABC's subsequent story did mention how some conservatives also oppose the WTO. Rather also offered an altruistic description of the WTO's goals, though he highlighted how it's "big" and "business-oriented."

    ABC's Jennings benevolently summarized the intent of the protestors:
    "Job security, working conditions, civil and religious rights, the quality of food and the environment, even the basics of democracy. People concerned about all of those issues have descended on Seattle this week, one of the country's great trading cities, because the World Trade Organization is meeting in Seattle to plan for its next round of negotiations. Thousands of demonstrators have gone to complain bitterly about the new rules of a global economy...."

    In the subsequent story ABC's Deborah Wang ran through the causes celebrated by protestors, such as saving the rainforest, protecting labor union members, denouncing child labor and Third World exploitation. But she added a group ignored by CBS and NBC: "There are also conservative Republicans who think the WTO has too much power."

    Over on the November 29 CBS Evening News John Roberts focused only on the liberals: "The President has made it clear that opening new global markets is crucial to the future economic prosperity of America. But when he arrives at the WTO summit here in Seattle he'll be met with a storm of protest over the environmental and social cost of that prosperity."

    Dan Rather followed up: "Just what is the World Trade Organization? It is a big, powerful, business-oriented international institution, dedicated primarily to elimination if possible, otherwise reducing, tariffs on international trade."

2

Hillary Clinton is Bill Clinton's "enabler" who demanded dirt be dug up on women with whom she knows he's had affairs, but NBC's Stone Phillips wondered: "Of all the pain she has been through, what do you think hurt the most?"

    Monday's Dateline NBC featured Gail Sheehy's first network appearance to promote her new book, Hillary's Choice. The liberal author is hardly a Hillary antagonist, but she reveals some damaging information. At least what should be damaging, but not to NBC or Phillips.

    After Sheehy told him that after eight months Hillary broke her silence toward Bill only so she could demand that he bomb the Serbs, a request with which he complied, Phillips failed to pounce on the disclosure of how a decision, to put U.S. personnel in harms way and make war, was made. Instead, Phillips approvingly reacted to Sheehy's story: "Hillary the fighter."

    For the November 29 prime time piece, Phillips began by recounting how Sheehy watched in 1992 as Hillary attacked Gennifer Flowers and ordered dirt be found to discredit Flowers. Phillips outlined Sheehy's theory that Hillary suffers from an "addiction" to saving Bill Clinton because she lacked her father's approval during childhood. She was unable to please her father, but she can please Bill by forgiving him and therefore serves as his "enabler."

    So, in Sheehy's theory, Hillary's deliberately turned a blind eye to Clinton's philandering. But, that almost didn't work in 1990 when he fell in love with a woman who later became known in the Jones case as "Jane Doe #1." That relationship brought the Clintons close to separating, but she told Bill that if he broke it off she would give him cover for his presidential run.

    In other words, Hillary was complicit in an ongoing policy of lying for years in order to make herself First Lady. Nonetheless, Phillips painted her as a victim, asking Sheehy: "Of all the pain she has been through, what do you think hurt the most?"
    Sheehy answered by claiming Hillary really didn't believe the Lewinsky allegations: "That he let her go out and lie for him." When she went out on the Today show and, you know, made it sound as if she totally believed him, she did not know that he was lying to her."

    Sheehy went on to insist that Clinton didn't tell her until August 1998, just before he told the public. Hillary hit Bill in anger and then didn't speak to him for eight months.

    Phillips then got to what should have been played as the book's biggest revelation: "Sheehy says the silence wasn't broken until March of this year when Mrs. Clinton, traveling in Africa with daughter Chelsea, was disturbed by reports that ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was escalating. According to Sheehy, Mrs. Clinton made series of phone calls urging her husband to take action and bomb."
    Sheehy: "She said now we cannot allow this at the end of a century that has had the Holocaust. Bite the bullet Bill Clinton."
    Phillips approvingly replied: "Hillary the fighter."
    Sheehy agreed: "Hillary the fighter."
    Phillips: "Sheehy says the next day President Clinton announced he was recommending a bombing campaign."

    But that was it on that topic as Phillips moved ahead to Hillary's first love, David Rupert.

3

Bryant Gumbel delivered the ultimate insult to Al Gore Monday morning: He equated a Gore ad with a Reagan one. Later in the show, Gumbel happily read aloud Father Andrew Greeley's denunciation of Republicans as "the self-righteous, the haters and the racists." Gumbel feigned disagreement with such a broad attack, but Greeley's thinking actually matches what Gumbel has expressed in the past.

    -- Doug Bailey, Executive Publisher of the Hotline and a founder of freedomchannel.com, came aboard in the 7am half hour on November 29 to discuss presidential TV ads. After Bush and McCain ads, Gumbel played a new Gore spot which featured scenes of his life -- with pictures of his wife and kids -- over music. The ad ended with "Happy Thanksgiving" on screen, which prompted Gumbel to remark:
    "We haven't seen that much schmaltz since Ronald Reagan's 'Morning in America' fluff."

    -- In the 8am half hour liberal Father Andrew Greeley appeared to talk about his new book: Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest.
    Gumbel soon got to Greeley's rebuke of Republicans: "Another potential divisive point, your take on politics. I'm going to read from this. You write that, your words: 'The Republicans tend to be the party of the affluent, the self-righteous, the haters and the racists.' And then add: 'Is it a mortal sin to vote Republican? Probably, but most who do are probably excused because of invincible ignorance.'"
    Greeley: "I said that, did I now?"
    Gumbel: "Yeah, you did. You want me to show you in the book?"
    Greeley: "No, I said it. I'm a Chicago Democrat, you know."
    Gumbel: "Yeah, but Father, I mean the 'party of the self-righteous, the haters, the racists?'"
    Greeley: "Have you been watching television lately Bryant? You seen some of those folks? They hate the Chinese, they hate immigrants, they hate unions. So, I don't know."
    Gumbel: "All Republicans, Father?"
    Greeley: "The people that represent the party in Congress do anyway."
    Gumbel may have pretended to be uncomfortable with Greeley's mean-spirited characterization of Republicans, but Greeley's views aren't that much different than those espoused by Gumbel. Back on the November 9, 1994 Today, the morning after the GOP won control of the House, Gumbel demanded of just elected Republican J.C. Watts, who is black:
     "You're aligned with a party which owes many of its victories to the so-called religious right and other conservative extremists who are historically insensitive to minority concerns. That doesn't bother you?"

4

Speaking of Bryant Gumbel, time to catch up on an item from a couple of weeks ago. Mrs. Gumbel isn't too pleased that Bryant has moved on to another woman and she has no intention of giving him a divorce.

    MRC analyst Mark Drake caught this November 18 story in the New York Daily News about an item in People magazine. Reporter Leo Standora wrote:

Bryant Gumbel's extramarital love life is getting lousy ratings from his estranged wife, who refuses to step aside and grant the CBS morning host a divorce.

"I'm a very devout Catholic -- I find it difficult to dissolve a marriage," June Gumbel told People magazine, speaking out for the first time since she and her husband split in 1997.

"I am just as married as I was 26 years ago," she insisted.

Friends say Gumbel, 51, seems to be in a "really serious" relationship with Hillary Quinlan, who quit her job as a financial researcher and left Chicago this year to be with him.

What's June Gumbel's take on the romance?

"People just accept infidelity from celebrities like it's okay or fashionable -- I think it's disgusting," she said. "I don't think you can have happiness with someone else on the pain you've caused your family."....

    END Excerpt

    Sounds like June Gumbel shouldn't be as much of a fan of Bill Clinton as is her husband.

5

ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN may not care, but last Tuesday FNC gave some air time to the murder of Jesse Dirkhising, the 13-year-old boy in Rogers, Arkansas made into a sex slave by two gay lovers and then murdered by them. As noted in previous CyberAlerts, the lack of media interest in this case stands in contrast to the media frenzy over the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard, which was quickly labeled a hate crime and blamed on anti-gay rhetoric from conservatives.

    For two examples of this blame-shifting and a Washington Times article with an overview of the Dirkhising case, go to:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19991025.html#4

    The Shepard and Dirkhising crimes may not be equally newsworthy, but the other networks have not judged Dirkhising's case less newsworthy and offered a few stories about it. So far they've refused to touch it at all.

    Tuesday night November 23 the case finally got some play with FNC's Bret Baier picking up on a possible media double standard. In his piece for the 7pm ET Fox Report, transcribed by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth, Baier began by explaining what happened to Dirkhising: How he was killed on September 26 and how police found him "lying naked on the floor of the bedroom, covered in feces." Baier added that "after hours of sexual torture, the boy suffocated on his own underwear" which one of the men had stuffed in his mouth.

    Baier moved to how the national media have avoided the gruesome crime:
    "Jesse Dirkhising now rests in a small cemetery outside of town, a simple burial that, like his horrific death, largely went unnoticed. For Jesse Dirkhising, there were no candlelight vigils attended by thousands. No protests in the streets. No calls for legislation. There were no network television specials. In fact, outside of northwest Arkansas, there has been almost no news coverage of this case.
    "Compare coverage of this case to the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay man murdered in Wyoming last year. Shepard's killing was motivated by discrimination against homosexuals. Police say Dirkhising was killed by sexual predators who are homosexual. Some see a double standard when the alleged villains, not victims, are homosexual, providing a possible answer to the question of why Jesse Dirkhising's case hasn't made national headlines."
    Brent Bozell, Chairman of the Media Research Center: "Is it because they were gay? I suspect so. When you've got an AP wire dispatch that talks about the story and doesn't even mention that they were gay. That's like doing an obituary on Walter Payton and not mentioning that he was a football player. Is it because the gay lobby has gotten the news media so darn intimidated that they wouldn't report this? I think that's pretty fair speculation."
    Baier concluded by referring to the two men charged: "[Davis Don] Carpenter and [Joshua] Brown are now facing the death penalty. Dirkhising's family is trying to face life without their thirteen-year-old son. And Rogers, Arkansas, is facing the fact that life will never be the same in this small town."

+++ See one of the men charged in this crime and a chunk of Baier's story. Tuesday morning the MRC's Andy Szul and Eric Pairel will post a RealPlayer clip of this FNC story and a still shot of one of the men, who is unidentified, being escorted by two police officers. Go to: http://archive.mrc.org

    Other past MRC reports on this case:

    -- November 15 CyberAlert item: The Washington Post's ombudsman took on the MRC: "Those who are inclined to believe the David Dukes, Joseph Farahs and Tim Grahams of the world," who say the Jesse Dirkhising murder "has been suppressed so that homosexuals won't be portrayed negatively." Go to:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19991115.html#2

    -- Brent Bozell column: "Time.Com Dismisses Dirkhising." Go to:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/columns/news/col19991115.html

    -- Brent Bozell column: "No Media Memorial For Jesse Dirkhising." Go to:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/columns/news/col19991029.html

6 

In the midst of a year filled with media demands for more gun control to protect the children at America's high schools and adults in the workplace, the reality is gun deaths are way down in the U.S. How do I know this? Because I caught a 12 second item from ABC.

    On the November 18 World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings reported: "The Centers for Disease Control reports today that between 1993 and 1996 the number of people killed by guns in the country went to its lowest level since the 1960s, down more than 20 percent."

    I bet if the report had discovered a 20 percent hike in deaths from guns ABC would have given it a lot more than a piddling 12 seconds and CBS and NBC wouldn't have ignored the finding.

7

Prompted by Hillary Clinton's statement last week that she "intends" to run for the Senate, from the Late Show with David Letterman the "Top Ten Announcements Mayor Giuliani Would Like To Make." Here they are, as presented on November 26 by New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani himself:

10. "On my way over here, I jaywalked 17 times."
9. "Last night at this time, I was passed out in a jacuzzi full of gravy."
8. "I love the nightlife -- I love to boogie!"
7. "When faced with a tough decision, I ask myself, 'What would Mayor McCheese do?'"
6. "Thanks to me, now there's 70% fewer dead guys riding the subways."
5. "We're painting New York City next week, so everyone will have to stay in Newark for a few days."
4. "Man, do I loves those adorable Pokemon!"
3. "You're looking at the new lead singer of Van Halen."
2. "Thanks to Epilady, my legs have never been so smooth."
1. "I'm engaged to Jerry Seinfeld."

    And from the Late Show Web page, some of "the extra jokes that didn't quite make it into the Top Ten."
-- "At some point early next year I may or may not make an announcement about something."
-- "Mention my name during your next mugging, get 10% back!"
-- "Tomorrow only, the Lincoln Tunnel toll is payable in Skittles."
-- "All next week, guys named Lyle ride the subway free."
-- "From now on, a 1000% tax on people named 'Hillary'."
-- "When Y2K hits, I'll be in the Bahamas, suckers!"
-- "The Staten Island Ferry is now clothing-optional!"

    Hillary might make fewer gaffes if she followed #7. -- Brent Baker

3

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