Rush Limbaugh and Sam Donaldson made surprise appearances at the MRC's "DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2003," which were presented on Thursday night, March 18, before an audience of about 850 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Following the presentation of the awards, as MRC President L. Brent Bozell III made closing remarks and thanked those who made the evening possible, he was interrupted by ABC News veteran Sam Donaldson, who bound on stage in mock anger, railing at Bozell and the MRC for the attack on the news media.
Bozell soon resumed thanking staff members, only to have the evening's producer, Leesa Kelly, interrupt him a second time to tell him there was someone else who wished to come on stage to make some comments. When Bozell acceded to her request, the theme music to Rush Limbaugh's radio show began to play and an astonished audience quickly comprehended what that meant just as Rush Limbaugh strode on stage, prompting a lengthy standing ovation. Limbaugh proceeded to deliver remarks for about 15 minutes, covering a wide range of topics from the power of the news media to how liberals are afraid of being seen as liberal to the hostility toward him by the local Florida media in covering the prosecutor's case against him.
Friday, March 19, 2004 2:10 p.m. EST DisHonor Awards Roast Media
NewsMax's Wes Vernon attended the Media Research Center's "DisHonor Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2003." Here is his report:
Boston Globe writer Charles Pierce, who posited Teddy Kennedy offering comfort to Mary Jo Kopechne, won the "Ozzy Osbourne Award" for the wackiest quote of the year at the DisHonor Awards dinner Thursday night.
Here is Pierce’s comment: "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought her comfort in her old age."
The audience reacted with a mixture of bewilderment and puzzled laughter, but based on the applause meter, Pierce’s observation in the Boston Globe magazine won hands down.
"Sick!" declared at least one woman in the audience when she heard of the comment.
Pierce won out over keen competition. All nominees appeared in their own film clips. As usual, none showed up to accept the "dishonors."
The other awardees were:
For Parroting Baghdad’s Propaganda, ABC’s Diane Sawyer: "The love that the Iraqis have for him [Saddam Hussein] is so much greater than anything Americans have for their president because he’s been loved for 35 years, the whole 35 years."
Without stopping to mention little details concerning the unspeakable deaths imposed on many of those people who supposedly "loved" the former Iraqi dictator, Dan Harris, on the same program, quoted propagandist Baghdad Bob as referring to the fact that Hussein had won re-election "by a 100 percent margin."
That caused MRC’s co-emcee, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s "Scarborough Country," to comment on how it almost makes one wax nostalgic for the days of "Cook County under Mayor Daley."
Hollywood actress Janeane Garofalo took the "I’m not a Political Genius But I Play One Award" - for saying that President Bush and Saddam Hussein were "both very threatening to world peace" in the "manufactured war" in which American troops surely would be "doomed" - and the "Hollywood Award." She barely nosed out Michael Moore, who insisted the U.S. knew where Osama bin Laden was, but it was "hands off." Why? "Because he’s funded by their friends in Saudi Arabia. He’s back among his sponsors and benefactors. Do you think Osama bin Laden planned 9/11 from a cave in Afghanistan?"
The U.S. "knows where he is," Moore said, and "I don’t think we’re going to be capturing him anytime soon."
Disgraced, ousted New York Times editor Howell Raines received the "Media Know It All Award" at the banquet.
That "DisHonor" was bestowed upon him for making the assertion that since World War II, there had developed "a news reporting craft that is truly non-partisan and non-ideological and that strives to be independent of undue commercial or governmental influence — and we don’t wear the political collar of our owners or the government or any political party.
"It is that legacy that we must protect with our diligent stewardship. To do so we must be aware of the energetic effort that is now underway to convince our readers that we are ideologues. It is an exercise in disinformation of alarming proportions - this attempt to convince the audience of the world’s most ideology-free newspapers [that we are] reflecting a liberal bias."
With a left-tilting worldview reflected throughout its pages from the top headline stories through the feature sections, the book reviews and the Sunday magazine, the MRC audience responded to Raines’ film clip with laughter.
PBS’s Bill Moyers has been a staple of MRC’s DisHonor Awards for years. This year was no exception. He took the "I Hate You
$%*#&@&@! Conservatives Award" for comparing the American flag on many lapels since 9/11 to China’s Chairman Mao putting "a little red book on every official’s desk omnipresent and unread," and adding that "not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us."
The banquet also witnessed a film clip of Cal Thomas interviewing CBS’s Leslie Stahl.
"Can you think of a conservative at CBS News?" Thomas asked.
"Well, I don’t know anybody’s political bias at CBS News," responded Stahl — notwithstanding exposes by former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg, and to say nothing of a retirement party a few years ago for a CBS News correspondent wherein it was implied that of course, no one present could possibly have voted for Ronald Reagan. That would be absurd!
Rush Limbaugh prompted a long-standing ovation with a surprise appearance at the end of the banquet in which he warned that the liberals "haven’t maxed out," having been outraged to discover that they no longer have unchallenged dominance of the media.
Former ABC Newsman Sam Donaldson also made a cameo appearance.
The man who used to shout questions at President Reagan on the White House lawn displayed his own brassy humor with an audience whose political leanings were markedly different from his own.
Donaldson now does his own radio talk show.
The judges who chose the winners included Ann Coulter, Steve Forbes, Lucianne Goldberg, Michelle Malkin and Cal Thomas.
COOL. I missed his show Friday... was he on the air?
Yes. I'm listening to him now.