August 22, 2006

You Go, George!

In today's Grapevine, Brit Hume celebrates a USA today poll that finds a newfound buoyancy in the president's standing among idenpendent voters and women:

The president's approval rating jumped most among independents — up six points to 36 percent. And 41 percent of women say they approve of the job President Bush is doing — his best performance in any poll since January.

Wow... 36 and 41 percent respectively? That is something to cheer about! I realize, of course, that this is just a case of Hume furiously squeezing the lemons that life is handing him in a futile attempt to make lemonade, but still... 36 and 41 per cent? Shows how bad things are for the president when that's supposed to be cause for celebration.

Next, Hume --who for years has denied global warming as ferverently and convincigly as my two and a half year old daughter denies that 8:30 is nightie-night time-- offers up the following nugget of insightful commentary:

Environmental activists who point to Greenland's melting coastal glaciers as graphic evidence of man-made global awrming may have to find another example. That's according to a new study which shows the glaciers have been shrinking since the 1880s.

Danish scientists analyzed 19th century maps and modern satellite images, finding that 70 percent of Greenland's glaciers have been melting regularly for more than 100 years, and shrunk the most between 1964 and 1985.

The scientists conclude that the melt is "the result of the atmosphere's natural warming," along with greenhouse gases which have "aggravated the situation."

Now, one of the goofy quirks about Brit Hume that makes him such a lovable right-wing propagandist, is the way he'll happily and obliviously cite facts and studies that offer a clear refutation to the point he's trying to make, with little or no acknwoledgment of that fact nor any attempt to reconcile the conflict. Here, for instance, Hume insists that environmentalists will have to stop pointing to the melting of Greeland's glaciers as evidence of man-made global warming because a new scientific study concludes that man-made greenhouse gasses are "aggravating" a 130 year melting trend. That's a bit like arguing that a careless speeder who rear-ends the car in front of him isn't at fault, given that the other car was already travelling in that direction to begin with.

Fair & balanced, folks... fair and balanced.

August 3, 2006

The Cowardice of The Hume

It's been several days since the world learned of Actor Mel Gibson's arrest and subsequent drunken anti-semitic tirade which was directed at the officers who arrested him, and yet not a mention has been made of the incident in Brit Hume's Grapevine. This is interesting given that, just a few days earlier, Hume was insisting to his viewers that that the European Left has a problem with rampant anti-Semitism (though the examples he gave were not particularly convincing ones). If Hume is worried about the perceived anti-Semitism of the European Left, then why is he not similiarly concerned about the overt anti-Semitism of the director of "The Passion of the Christ," a Hollywood mega-star and darling of the American Christian right?

This is not the first time that Hume has avoided topical issues that were discussed in recent segments, but which re-appear in a light much less favorable to Hume's ideological project. Readers of this blog (I know you're out there!) may recall that when the Washington Post decided in March to hire conservative blogger Ben Domenech for its online publication, Brit Hume was more than happy to cover the discontent that swelled in the liberal blogsophere as a result. However, when Domenech was fired a few days later among allegations that he had been plaigarizing the work of other journalists since his days as a student-reporter at William and Mary and well into his stint as assitant editor at the National Review, Hume and the Grapevine seemed to have forgotten that Domenech had ever existed (though the scandal was widely reported in the media).