MRC-TV: Bozell Addresses PBS Editing Out Tina Fey’s Anti-Palin Jokes at Mark Twain Prize Ceremony
Upon receiving the Kennedy Center's Mark Train Prize for American Humor on November 9, comedian Tina Fey trashed Sarah Palin in her acceptance speech.
By the time PBS broadcast the taped ceremony, the taxpayer-subsidized network had edited out some of Fey's harsher jokes that maligned the former Alaska governor.
NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell appeared in studio on today's "Fox & Friends" to address the controversy, lauding PBS for doing the right thing by making those edits.
[Video follows after page break]
NewsBusters.org – Exposing Liberal Media Bias
PBS EDITS Tina Fay’s “Sarah Palin” Insults During Broadcast of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize
PBS “air brushes” Tina Fay’s comemnts to distort the liberal image.
After the NPR debacle, PBS running scared and felt the need to edit Tina Fay’s so-called comedy routine slamming Sarah Palin that was supposed to be humor. So why did PBS edit out parts of Tina Fay’s rant? We second the question posed at News Busters, what happened to Fay’s repulsive comments passed off as humor about rape kits, lesbians, and evolution jokes against conservative women?
Fey, this year’s recipient of the prize, caused a few ripples during her acceptance speech at the ceremony on Tuesday when she mock-praised “conservative women” like Sarah Palin, whom Fey has so memorably impersonated on “Saturday Night Live.”
Watch the full episode. See more Mark Twain Prize.
The Sarah Palin slams begin around the 12:20 mark
“And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women – except, of course -those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff,” Fey said. “But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years – whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know – actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.”
But that’s not what viewers heard when PBS and WETA (channel 26) broadcast an edited version of Fey’s speech on Sunday.
The part about rape kits and evolution was gone, leaving only Fey’s more harmonious — and blander — comments about Palin and politics: “I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn’t thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight. My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that ever happened to me. All kidding aside, I’m so proud to represent American humor, I am proud to be an American, and I am proud to make my home in the ‘not real’ America. And I am most proud that during trying times, like an orange [terror] alert, a bad economy or a contentious election that we as a nation retain our sense of humor.”
Was PBS shielding its viewers from Fey’s more pointed remarks?
“It was not a political decision,” responded Peter Kaminsky, one of the broadcast’s executive producers. “We had zero problems with anything she said.”
Sure it wasn’t after the firestorm at NPR after their poor handling of Juan Williams. Not political? Of course they had no issue with what she said, what do you think they were honoring for? How about the fact that what Fay said was offensive, even for the likes of the Kennedy Center who honored Tina Fay for her very political comments made about Palin. BTW Tina, damn, what up with that hair? Will she soon be mocking MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow?
As stated correctly by Big Government, hey PBS do not edit Fay’s comments about Palin on our account. We want America to see how hateful the comedy of Fay is and how you Libs try and paint, or in this case air brush, a distorted picture.
The Real Prize: Redistricting
Nick Baumann: “Forget the Senate and House. That’s short-term thinking. The real prize in Tuesday’s midterm elections is the power to draw congressional seats and determine the country’s balance of power for the next decade.”
“If either party can achieve what politicos call the ‘trifecta’ — control of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature — in a given state, it will be able to draw congressional districts within that state unencumbered by any need to compromise with the other party. That’s the kind of power that creates electoral maps like the one former GOP Majority Leader Tom Delay helped bring to Texas in 2003 — a map that pushed four of the state’s Democrats out of their seats.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
Chinese Dissident Dedicates Nobel Peace Prize To Tianamen Square Victims
The Chinese government was already upset over the fact that jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Liu’s response to the award is unlikely to please them at all:
Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo has tearfully dedicated his award to victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, activists said, as his wife was held under house arrest on Monday.
“This award is for the lost souls of June Fourth,” the US-based group Human Rights in China quoted Liu Xiaobo as telling his wife Liu Xia, referring to the bloody June 4, 1989 crackdown on democracy protests at the vast Beijing square.
Meanwhile, news of the award has led to the Chinese government cracking down on Liu’s wife:
Via her Twitter account, Liu Xia said she had been placed under house arrest at her Beijing home both before and after travelling to the prison in northeastern China where her husband is being held to inform him of his prize.
“Brothers, I have returned home. On the eighth (of October) they placed me under house arrest. I don’t know when I will be able to see anyone,” said the Sunday night Twitter posting.
“My mobile phone has been broken and I cannot call or receive calls. I saw Xiaobo and told him on the ninth at the prison that he won the prize. I will let you know more later. Everyone, please help me (re)tweet. Thanks,” she said.
Liu Xiaobo’s wife was taken to the prison under police guard, his lawyers said at the weekend.
At least two dozen police, plain-clothes officers and other security personnel were seen deployed Monday at the compound where Liu Xia lives, interrogating returning residents and preventing journalists from entering.
Calls to her mobile phone were met with a recording saying it was out of service.
As I noted on Friday, it’s unlikely that Liu will be allowed to leave China to receive his award, at least not under circumstances that would allow him to return there after the Nobel ceremonies were over. Nonetheless, it’s fairly clear from the reaction in Beijing, and Liu’s reference to events that took place 29 years ago, that there still remains a strong desire for freedom in some parts of China. Let’s hope that this prize will bring them closer to achieving their dreams.
The Not Your Job Prize
Tim Cavanaugh is awarding it to pols who take stances or make promises utterly disconnected from what they'll actually be empowered to do if elected. This installment goes to a California gubernatorial candidate who touts her support for Israel.
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Fed Nominee Whom Sen. Shelby Deemed Too Unqualified To Confirm Wins Nobel Prize
Richard Shelby thinks this Nobel laureate is unqualified to set monetary policy.
Earlier today, Federal Reserve Board nominee Peter Diamond won the Nobel Prize in Economics along with two of his colleagues. Yet, despite the fact that President Obama nominated this Nobel laureate to the Fed nearly six months ago, his nomination is currently being blocked by just one senator. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) believes that this year’s winner of the highest honor in the economics profession is unqualified to actually set economic policy:
[U]nder an arcane procedural rule, the Senate sent Mr. Diamond’s nomination back to the White House on Thursday night before starting its summer recess. A leading Republican senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, said that Mr. Diamond did not have sufficiently broad macroeconomic experience to help run the central bank. […]
As Mr. Shelby noted, Mr. Diamond is not a specialist in monetary economics — the control of the supply of credit and the setting of interest rates — which is the Fed’s traditional purview. But of the five current governors of the Fed, only two, Mr. Bernanke and the vice chairman, Donald L. Kohn, are academic economists who specialize in monetary economics. The other three include a former community banker, a former Wall Street executive and a legal scholar.
Shelby, of course, has a history of this kind of abuse of the Senate Rules to prevent eminently qualified nominees from being confirmed. Earlier this year, Shelby briefly took over 70 nominees hostage in an attempt to strongarm the administration into awarding a $ 35 billion defense contract to his state — although he later lifted these holds once they became politically embarrassing.
But Shelby, of course, is only able to get away with these kinds of shenanigans because the Senate’s rules are shockingly easy to abuse. Indeed, while it is common wisdom that 60 senators are required to get virtually anything done, the reality is much bleaker — most Senate business now requires all 100 senators to consent.
The reason for this is because dissenting senators can force the Senate to waste hours or even days effectively doing nothing in order to pass a single bill or confirm a single nominee. Indeed, as a recent Center for American Progress white paper explains, there isn’t enough time in two entire presidential terms to confirm all of a new president’s nominees by the time that president leaves office:
In other words, the entire government can be hollowed out by a tiny group of senators with a vendetta. Today, Sen. Shelby thinks that a Nobel laureate doesn’t know enough about economics, so that nominee must languish without an up or down vote. Tomorrow, another senator could disapprove of a nominee’s haircut, and that alone may be sufficient to spike the nomination.
Peter Diamond Wins Nobel Prize
Here I go spending the day walking around Jaffa and Tel Aviv and only now do I get back to my hotel to find out that the Sveriges Riksbank decided to pole a finger in the eye of Richard Shelby and the US Senate and give the Nobel Prize in economics to a troika of economists, including Barack Obama’s stalled Federal Reserve nominee Peter Diamond.
That narrow political context aside, the larger political context is that the three are cited for the work in trying to understand stick wages, job search, and unemployment which is certainly a timely topic. Meanwhile, I’m sure there are lots of bloggers out there with a more informed take on this work than I have.
Why China Sees the Nobel Prize as a Threat
The problem for the regime is not that the Nobel Prize violates its principles by going to a dissident, but that it confirms those principles which are a threat to the ruling Communist dictatorship.
American Thinker Blog
Larry Diamond wins the Nobel Prize, continues being blocked by the Senate
For months now, Sen. Richard Shelby has been blocking the nomination of economist Peter Diamond to join the board of the Federal Reserve. “I do not believe he’s ready to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board,” Shelby said, “I do not believe that the current environment of uncertainty would benefit from monetary policy decisions made by board members who are learning on the job.”
Today, Diamond won the Nobel Prize in economics. Of course, Shelby never said he wasn’t a “skilled economist.” He said he didn’t know monetary economics. But that’s also self-evidently foolish: Before serving on the Federal Reserve Board, Elizabeth Duke worked at a bank. Kevin Warsh worked for George W. Bush. Sarah Bloom Raskin was a financial regulator in Maryland. Ben Bernanke was an economist, and before that, one of Diamond’s students.
No one prepares for the Federal Reserve Board by serving on the Federal Reserve Board. Shelby’s argument against Diamond is simply cover for his actual objections against Diamond. One of those objections is simple partisan politics. But another, I’ve heard, is odder: Diamond has done a fair amount of work in behavioral economics (for instance, here). That’s been true for a number of the administration’s recruits, including Peter Orszag, Jeff Liebman and Cass Sunstein. As such, behavioral economics itself has become polarized among Republicans, and Shelby now considers it a red flag for potential nominees.
Here’s a post from Tyler Cowen on Diamond’s academic work and influence. Diamond has published in many areas, but two particular points of expertise are labor markets and entitlement programs, both of which the Federal Reserve will need considerable knowledge of over the next few years. Without Diamond — or someone like him — on the Board, it’s not exaggeration to say they’ll be learning on the job.
A Nobel Peace Prize About More than Good Intentions: Financial Times Deutschland, Germany
When President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, there was a lot of criticism. While Barack Obama’s intentions seemed great – many said he hadn’t actually done anything. Not so for this year’s winner. Financial Times Deutschland columnist David Bocking writes that this time around, the Nobel Committee awarded a man that has risked everything – including his life – to promote freedom and democracy in China.
From the Financial Times Deutschland, columnist David Bocking writes in part:
In selecting Liu Xiabao, the Committee honors a man who has long confronted China’s communist leadership. This honor is a political signal, as it was last year when the award went to Barack Obama. But while the U.S. president was honored almost exclusively for intentions, Liu has paid a high personal price for his beliefs and actions for many years. In 1989 he was one of the leaders of the student protests at Tienanmen Square. Just five months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chinese citizens dared to criticize the lack of freedom in their country.
In contrast to the peaceful revolution in the German Democratic Republic [East Germany], protesters in China were literally mowed down by tanks. An unknown number of people died that day and there followed a wave of arrests in which Liu also fell victim. While East and West Germans were embracing each other, China’s political opposition feared for their lives. Of course, Oslo could also have honored the successful German revolution, in which case an East German civil rights activist would have deserved the prize at least as much as Helmut Kohl. But especially now, remembering the Chinese revolution sends a stronger signal.
In regard to whether the award shows ‘Western arrogance,’ Bocking writes:
Awarding Liu the Nobel Prize has nothing to do with Western arrogance. Politically, China remains a developing nation, a fact that was demonstrated most recently by Liu’s re-imprisonment at the end of last year. If Beijing – at events like the recent summit with E.U. nations, for example – seeks more recognition as an industrialized nation, then it must also submit to criticism of its domestic polices.
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