Posted on 02/04/2008 5:38:10 AM PST by garylmoore
Jay Leno on Friday night reminisced about admiring Tom Brokaw for appearing on the cover of the far-left Mother Jones magazine back in 1983, an interview in which Brokaw denigrated then-President Reagan from the left for "pretty simplistic" values and over how he didn't understand "the enormous difficulty a lot of people have in just getting through life, because he's lived in this fantasy land for so long." With Brokaw on to promote his book, 'Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today,' Leno recalled: "I was just starting out in comedy and you'd been on the cover of kind of a left-wing, really left-wing magazine called Mother Jones. Then I thought this is really, wow, Tom Brokaw, 'cause you would have been the establishment and you're on the cover -- and that seemed, and I always wondered if NBC was annoyed or upset that you had done that?"
Not surprisingly, NBC wasn't bothered at all, Brokaw explained, "but Mrs. Reagan was really unhappy with me" for the interview, in which he acknowledged Ronald Reagan was poor as a child, but expressed how "I always thought that connection to people who were struggling was a little artificial because he really began to make it big at an early age." Brokaw proceeded to recount how he kissed and made up with Nancy Reagan.
[This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Saturday morning on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]
Two quotes from Brokaw's interview in the April 1983 Mother Jones magazine:
# "Pretty simplistic [values]. Pretty old-fashioned. And I don't think they have much application to what's currently wrong or troubling a lot of people....Nor do I think he really understands the enormous difficulty a lot of people have in just getting through life, because he's lived in this fantasy land for so long."
# "But I thought from the outset that his 'supply side' [theory] was just a disaster. I knew of no one who felt that it was going to work, outside of a small collection of zealots in Washington and at USC -- Arthur Laffer, Jack Kemp. What I thought quite outrageous was the business community, which for years carped and complained that it could never get a President sympathetic to its needs, finally got its champion, Ronald Reagan. Then, to its horror, it discovered that he was actually going to press ahead with supply side -- a theory whose disastrous consequences businesspeople began desperately to prepare for, but did not publicly warn the rest of the country about. They knew it simply could not work. But what they did was look to their own little life raft and not to anyone else's."
For more of Brokaw's liberal views, see the MRC's September of 2003 Media Reality Check, "Marking Tom Brokaw's Twenty Years of Tilt: NBC Anchor Boasted 'We've Worked Hard to Drain the Bias' but Viewers Still Swimming in Liberalism," online at: www.mediaresearch.org
For a thorough collection of examples of the antipathy toward Ronald Reagan displayed by journalists over the years, check the MRC's Special Report released just after the 40th President passed away in June of 2004, "Ronald Reagan: The 40th President and the Press: The Record." Go to: www.mediaresearch.org
Leno certainly sees the world from the left, so his interest in Mother Jones is not a surprise, as he revealed his left-wing perspectives in a local newspaper interview back in 2004, an interview in which he boasted of reading Mother Jones. The September 17, 2004 CyberAlert item, "Jay Leno Echoes Howard Dean's Views, Praises Michael Moore," recounted:
Jay Leno is quite liberal, and echoes Howard Dean, a LA Weekly story this week documented. The alternative weekly's Nikki Finke summarized her interview with the host of NBC's Tonight Show: "Jay Leno says, 'I'm not conservative. I've never voted that way in my life.' He 'really worries' what a Dubya victory in November will do to the makeup of the Supreme Court. He believes 'the wool was pulled over our eyes' with the Iraq war. He thinks the White House began using terrorism 'as a crutch' after 9/11. He feels that during the campaign Kerry should 'make Bush look as stupid as possible.' He believes 'the media is in the pocket of the government, and they don't do their job' so 'you have people like Michael Moore who do it for them.' He has on his joke-writing staff a number of former professional speechwriters for Democratic candidates. 'No Republicans.' When it comes to Bush, he doesn't think his politics are much different from Letterman's. 'Does he show his dislike maybe a little more than I do? Probably.' Leno used to read Mother Jones magazine." Plus he took shots at the Fox News Channel and talk radio.
For much more from Leno, check the September 17, 2004 CyberAlert: www.mrc.org
In that interview, Leno remembered: "When I was a kid, I used to read everything: Mother Jones, Time, Newsweek and The New Republic."
Everything except anything not liberal.
The Leno-Brokaw exchange on the February 1 Tonight Show:
JAY LENO: The thing I find fascinating about this book is, you're the same age as my brother, so I see a lot of my life in your life -- in my brother's life -- in this book, in just some of the shared experiences that we have. Like I remember, I was just starting out in comedy and you'd been on the cover of kind of a left-wing, really left-wing magazine called Mother Jones. Then I thought this is really, wow, Tom Brokaw, 'cause you would have been the establishment and you're on the cover -- and that seemed, and I always wondered if NBC was annoyed or upset that you had done that? TOM BROKAW: Well, NBC was not so annoyed, but Mrs. Reagan was really unhappy with me because it was about President Reagan -- and I did have a good relationship with him -- and it was about whether -- He had been very poor for a long time, obviously he had a very difficult childhood, but when he was in his 20s he began to make real money, came out here, he was a contract player. So I always thought that connection to people who were struggling was a little artificial because he really began to make it big at an early age. So I got banned from the White House. She was very unhappy with me, it kind of rolled off his back. Staff members at the White House said to me, we've got to get this corrected. You'll be invited to a White House state diner and you'll have to figure out how or what you're going to say to her. And I'm in the receiving line in the East Room of the White House going up to meet Mrs. Reagan and the President before we went in for dinner. And I was trying desperately to think of what I was going to say and I got right up to her and she was giving me a steely look. I threw up my arms and said "back to square one, Nancy." And she looked at me for a moment, burst out laughing, spread out her arms, she said "back to square one, Tom." And we had a little exchange of a cheek kiss and the next day at the NBC offices in New York I got a White House photo with the two of us with our arms outstretched, she said: "Back to square one, Tom, love Nancy." It's what made her such a great politician. She was so helpful to President Reagan.
Jay Leno is quite liberal
Jay and Tom reminiscing about the good old days?
Is that the mythical Ann Coulter?
Nah, this was before Coulter came out as a Hillary girl.
I always wonder why entertainers are so liberal.
In many ways, the entertainment industry is capitalism to the extreme - if you, the entertainer, can’t fill a need or want in your customers, then you’re nothing. Its straightforward supply and demand, risk and reward. Doesn’t matter how good you think you are - your customers are the ultimate judge.
Why they can’t translate this simple concept to everyone else in the country and to the greater economy is baffling. Only reason I can come up with is that entertainers, taken as a whole, are dumber than a box of rocks.
There’s no penalty for calling it wrong when your a Lib Newsie. You just come in again tomorrow and do it again.
I have written Tom B off long ago because when he interviewed Joe Foss for his book he failed to mention that Joe Foss was also President of the National Rifle Association at one point in his career.
Don’t let this get around, but Jay really doesn’t seem to be as liberal as he purports.
He suggests such only in self descriptive words, but he has even-handedly challenged the Hollywood Left on many occassions, he always treats Bill Maher as a sourpuss confused caged animal reprobate loon, and Jay, unlike any other mainstream media guy was commendably relentlessly viscious in pointing out Bill Clinton’s flaws.
Whereas liberal suck-up, David Letterman did a virtual hands off on anything Clinton-negative (Letterman is a virtual weeny infomercial for everything Marxist. Look at how Letterman fawns over Hillary; look at how Letterman fawns over Dan Rather.)
Although Leno chums up to Brokaw, it may be conversely argued that he sidles so close as to strip away the veneer to show Brokaw for just what Brokaw is.
A regular “Jay walking” segment often employs basic American History questions to point out the extent of cultural rot among an uninformed populace, that seems to suggest that Jay has more of a Conservative mindset than he wants to let on. (Probably a survival tactic for his livelihood in the Lion’s den of Hollywood.)
Shakespeare might sum it up:
As far as his shades of liberalism go, Jay doth protest too much. He may be more like one of us than he lets on.
And people like broke-jaw have to ask why the ratmedia’s numbers are always falling.
Jay has more of a Conservative mindset than he wants to let on.
Thank you for clearing this up for me, I feel better about him now.
So Brokaw thinks that all it takes to become incapable of understanding how hard life can be is to make some money. Sure, Tom, Pres. Reagan just instantly forgot having moved 37 times, his parents having to scrimp just to pay the rent and his dad’s alcoholism.
I can only shake my head at Brokaw who appropriately praised the greatest generation in his book but who couldn’t see the greatness in Ronald Reagan because of a Hollywood salary.
Leno? Nobody is more liberal than Dave Letterman.
remember the O Reilly exchange 4 years back?
O REILLY: “Dave, do you want us to win in Iraq?”
LETTERMAN: ....silence......
Brokaw won’t go away. He probably will never go away.
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