Ann Coulter says: Moyers 'biased'? Say it ain't so!
Moyers 'biased'? Say it ain't so!
By Ann Coulter
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Bill Moyers, the former host of the PBS program "Now With Bill Moyers," referred to the American-led war in Iraq as doing "to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us."
He called American flag pins "a little metallic icon of patriotism" comparable to Mao's Little Red Book being displayed on every Communist Party official's desk in China.
Moyers denounced Condoleezza Rice for her ineptness in not preventing the 9/11 attack, despite a clearly worded memo stating: "Bin Laden determined to attack the United States." As Rice said, "I don't think you, frankly, had to have that report to know that bin Laden would like to attack the United States."
In his lengthy diatribe against Rice, Moyers said she had cried wolf, intentionally misleading "America and the world about the case for invading Iraq." But as regular viewers of PBS know, in fact, we invaded Iraq for oil.
Yes, precisely. That's why U.S. forces seized Iraq's oil fields right after Baghdad fell, confiscated their vast oil reserves -- and now we can buy all the gasoline we want here at home for just pennies a gallon any time we want.
Moyers responded to the 2002 midterm elections in which Republicans bucked history by gaining seats in both the House and the Senate by warning Americans: "(I)f you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture."
Moyers also said the agenda of the coming theocracy "includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich." (And we'd appreciate it if you poor people would fold the bills a little more neatly before mailing them in next time.)
As the extra little cherry on top, all Moyers' nut conspiracy theories were being broadcast on PBS, subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer. Not only that, but Moyers takes a cut of every video of his show sold and he has family members on the payroll. Let's see now: a corrupt, partisan demagogue and his family caught feeding at the taxpayers' trough. Let's just hope he never took a free golfing trip to Scotland.
When Ken Tomlinson, chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, suggested that PBS was maybe a smidgen left of center, Moyers began his lengthy public nervous breakdown.
In a speech to the National Conference on Media Reform -- a conference dedicated to increasing liberal representation in the media from 94.6 percent to 99.8 percent -- Moyers said his critics were "obsessed with control, using the government to threaten and intimidate" -- almost as control-obsessed as 45 senators trying to tell 55 senators (or is it 14 telling 100?) which judicial nominees are acceptable.
The "threat"? Provide balanced programming or stop expecting subsidies from the U.S. taxpayer.
According to Moyers, the reason these right-wing radicals focused on him is that he "didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism."
These contemptible "rules of Beltway journalism" apparently consist of reporters completely ignoring important conspiracy theories regularly featured on Moyers' program and instead functioning as "government stenographers" -- as Moyers called one reporter for The New York Times, no less.
Moyers did live by one rule of old-media journalism: He believed he should not need viewers to have a TV show. During fundraising drives, scores of local PBS affiliates would drop Moyers' program for fear of driving away donors.
But the absence of an audience is no concern for liberals. After all, Air America is still on air. How about making George Soros pay Moyers' salary? Then at least he'd have a little less money to spend on wrecking the country.
Hey, maybe that's what Moyers meant about the Republican government transferring money from working people to the rich.
Ann Coulter, a lawyer and political analyst, is a columnist for Human Events.
