Free Republic

On July 18, 1969, a couple of nights before Neil Armstrong took that "giant step for mankind," Ted Kennedy took a turn onto a narrow bridge in Chappaquiddick. The passenger in his car that night was Mary Jo Kopechne, a pretty, blond Capitol Hill secretary, just about to celebrate her 29th birthday. The two events are inextricably linked in my mind because my husband, who was a correspondent for a British newspaper, instead of reporting on our glorious odyssey into space, ended up at police headquarters on Martha's Vineyard covering that sordid story. In case you have forgotten or never...

I wish Newsweek’s Mark Whitaker had not used his usual smiley-faced picture in his editor’s desk column this week. It strikes an unusually discordant note in his why-we-didn’t-know-what-we-didn’t-know attempt at an apology for the magazine’s desecration-of-the-Koran rumor printed as fact. Just as discordant in its way is Newsweek’s cover story this week, which happens to be an excerpt from David McCullough’s new biography of George Washington. Part of the selection describes Washington’s character and style. But a major portion of the piece tells the tale that every schoolchild used to know: how Washington and his ragtag, underfed army crossed the...

I'll bet Katie Couric never expected to get the smackdown she received on Monday morning in the pages of the New York Times, inevitably her paper of choice. But TV critic Alessandra Stanley slapped the "Mean Girl of Morning TV" hard and said in print what has been media gossip for months: that NBC is in a panic about the falling ratings of that cash cow, The Today Show. Her Cuteness is no longer the most popular girl in the crowd, with "likeability" ratings in the toilet. In fact, Katie's recent Q ratings were lower even than Dan Rather's. Remember...

According to Time magazine's latest poll, the president has retained the "seismic voter shift" he earned during the Republican convention. He continues to lead John Kerry by eleven points among likely voters. Kerry's support has eroded in every group, and "most notably among women," as Time points out. "In early August, females gave Kerry a sizable lead over Bush: 50 to 36 percent. Now, women favor Bush over Kerry by 45 to 44 percent. Even in Florida, Kerry's 22 percent lead among women has been halved in the last few weeks. In the last presidential election, Gore won women's votes...

“If you want to see media bias in action, write a book about media bias," said Myrna Blyth, who's just emerged from a two-year retirement after 20 years running Ladies Home Journal to kick over the traces with Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America. The book, an industry tell-all with plenty of juicy anecdotes from Blyth's years in the hand-wringing, back-biting world of women's magazines, recently spent almost three weeks on the New York Times's bestseller list. But the review in the New York Times itself was disapproving. Blyth,...

Ms. Information: Making Women Angry and Afraid April 7, 2004 by Carey Roberts An American woman is beaten by her husband or boyfriend every 15 seconds. Domestic violence against pregnant women is responsible for more birth defects than all other causes combined. And violence against women rises by 40% on Super Bowl Sunday. Everyone knew those domestic violence “facts” were true -- until Christina Hoff Sommers came along. In her 1994 book, Who Stole Feminism?, Sommers showed that these familiar feminist fables bore no relationship to the truth. The Sommers book was so persuasive that no one could refute her...

TORONTO - Like a repentant cattle rancher turned vegetarian, Myrna Blyth appears to have turned on her former self. The retired editor of Ladies' Home Journal has written a book dishing scorn on women's magazines - "Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America." Ms. Blyth accuses an entire magazine genre of marketing anxiety in order to perpetuate the myth of women as victims - and the fur's flying. Cosmopolitan's editor, Kate White, accused Blyth of "dragging other people down with her self-loathing." Cindi Leive, of Glamour, said that Blyth was...

<p>Myrna gives us a gossipy blast against such media luminaries as Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Tina Brown, Good Housekeeping's Ellen Levine - oh, I won't go on. But, suffice it to say, I am right there among them in what Myrna conceives as a "liberal cabal" out to turn America's women into miserable left-wingers who believe every word dished out to them about health, weight, looks, sex, love, romance and family values.</p>