Free Republic

(Note: This is sarcastic humor, for those challenged in ID-ing such material.)

Could it be that news producers who showcase attractive female anchors have goals beyond simply relating information? Let’s hope so, for their sake, because a new study finds that men remember less of the news when it’s read by an “anchorette”* wearing tight clothes and red lipstick than when its presented by the same woman in a shapeless jacket, without lip color. Three hundred ninety men and women watched a real-life, attractive 24-year old news anchor present items about such subjects as the United Way, interest rates, and bird watching. She was made up in either a purposely “sexualized” or...

Liberals in the media and government are befuddled, trying to stop the Tea Party movement. At every turn they have attempted to discredit the movement, and at every turn they have failed. On tax day in 2009, the media and Democrat politicians alike turned to the slightly vulgar epithet “tea bagger” and attempted to laugh at the protesters as if they had discovered a little inside joke that showed they were smarter than the average mainstream American. When the let’s snicker at the tea bagger approach failed, the same crowd turned to accusations of racism as if to malign one’s...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Syria sought to discredit a U.N. probe into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Monday, after a man who purported to be a crucial witness claimed that he gave false testimony implicating Damascus. The probe's finding that Syria must have known about — and may have been involved in — Rafik Hariri's Feb. 14 assassination has "completely collapsed" because of the revelation, said Ibrahim Daraji, spokesman for the Syrian inquiry into Hariri's murder. "Politically and judicially ... I believe the report has been dealt a knockout blow," Daraji said of the probe's findings, delivered to the...

When you think of a government information office, do you think of much more than dusty information pamphlets and glossy tourist brochures full of pleasant platitudes, putting the best face forward on a particular nation? Such is perfectly natural for friendly, and even some not-so-friendly nations, because that's what government information offices normally do. But Venezuela's Marxist government has an entirely different idea. The innocuously named Venezuela Information Office in Washington, D.C. is an aggressive Cuba-style PsyOps and disinformation operation sponsored by the Venezuelan government. Its operatives not only seek to get the Venezuelan government's castroite message out to the...

Many on the left, most visibly Presidential contender John Kerry, often claim that the "coalition of the willing" is weak and that participation from the international community has been minimal if anything. Opponents of President Bush use such claims in order to discredit the legitimacy of this noble endeavor for freedom. It may not be such a bad idea to look at the state of our coalition, not in an effort to attack President Bush, but rather to conduct a healthy reassessment and critique of the coalition and our allies. Several weeks ago, Michael Rubin returned from the Coalition Provisional...

Dear Friend, Today marks the end of the dishonest and disgusting smear campaign against John Kerry and his crewmates from Vietnam. This morning on the front page of the Washington Post, one of the central figures in the effort to distort John Kerry's military service was completely discredited. Watch the new ad from JohnKerry.com The group behind this smear campaign calls itself "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." But the truth is the last thing they are interested in. President Bush refuses to condemn this group. He wants them to do his dirty work. But this effort to distract attention from...

Driven by its eagerness to discredit the Bush administration, the New York Times has misread a recent Justice Department report on alleged government abuse of terror suspects. More important, the paper’s front-page smear set off a chain reaction of imitation news articles across the country, parroting the Times’s error. Thus has the war on the war on terror been waged—with misrepresentation, group-think, and blinding bias. The Times announced on July 21 that the Justice Department’s inspector general had “received 34 complaints of civil rights violations by department employees that it considered credible.” Lest the reader miss the significance of this...