Personal Asides: The Chicago Daily Observer’s Launch was Successful…Some Flubs but We’re Out There…Uncovered by Most of the Media—Rudy Giuliani Winning Over the Evangelical Pat Robertson…Is the “New York Times” Slowly Coming Around?

www.cdobs.com

Amid all the minor blips, one thing showed clear in the launch yesterday of the Chicago Daily Observer. There is hunger out there for diversity in editorial treatment…for not the same-old, same-old big government, boilerplate liberal approach to society and public policy. We need spell-check and proofreading but our intentions are good.

We actually had somebody saying that Bill Heirens is as guilty as sin of killing and dismembering Suzanne Degnan rather than the old format of pandering to so-called Northwestern University “reformers’ who want to let everybody out of jail. We actually had somebody report that Chicagoans on Michigan Avenue look like slobs, chewing bubble gum, nestling up to IPods with their fat tummies hanging over their jeans, showing midriffs emblazoned with tattoos. We actually had somebody saying that the problem with the Illinois GOP is its utter repugnance to ideas and its temptation to campaign merely as the non-Blagojevich party.

This stuff is just the beginning of what Chicago has long missed. In its stead is a so-called “Sun-Times” white liberal “columnist” bleating that, hey, maybe Al Sharpton coming here will do some good, despite the fact that he is nothing more than a black David Duke bigot…the columnist so traumatized by liberals that he cannot bring himself to criticize anyone black…the “columnist” married to a “Tribune” editor who shares the same views. That’s what we mean by ideological inbreeding.

So it’s not the same-old, same-old politically liberal newspaper-monopoly politically correct gruel that has for far too long passed as substitutes for cognitive nutrition. And thanks for a host of well-wishers including old reliables Frank Nofsinger and Pat Hickey!

Try a look-see at some alternative commentaries and diversity from the Big 4 liberal dailies in the Chicagoland area by going www.cdobs.com .

The good news: We haven’t been tempted to publish Garrison Keillor yet.

Giuliani and Robertson.

Another indication that the so-called “mainstream media” are out of touch and asleep in covering vital aspects of politics is the news…largely uncovered by them…that Rudy Giuliani scored a coup with an address to a crowd assembled at Regents University by Pat Robertson…the crowd composed of evangelicals and social conservatives. The meeting seemed to point to a definite anomaly with Giuliani. “Can a Republican candidate who supports legalized abortion ands civil unions for homosexuals win over a critical voting bloc that ardently opposes both?” as the evangelical magazine “World” reported. The magazine ran a double handshake with grins all around featuring Giuliani and Robertson.

“A handful of evangelical leaders unequivocally say no,” reported “World” whose founder and editor is Marvin Olasky, a Jewish convert to evangelicalism. James Dobson has said: “I cannot and will not vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. Itr is an irrevocable decision.” Agreeing with Dobson is Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention who said: “I wouldn’t even consider voting for him.” Tony Perkins compared Giuliani to the Potomac River—appealing from a distance but polluted upon closer look.

The prominent magazine typified Giuliani’s appearance this way:

“As his speech unfolds, Giuliani makes a compelling case for maximum concerns over national security, In a chilling story about the morning of 9/11 the former mayor of New York City reminds the crowd that he confronted the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history. He recalls standing at the bottom of the north tower of the World Trade Center shortly after the attack, watching a man jump from one of the top floors. `I realized that this was much worse than anything we had seen before,’ he said.

After the talk, Charles Dunn, dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent said he was impressed with Giuliani’s performance at the school. “I think he really showcased his appeal to social conservatives,” he told “World.”

New York Times.

As a steady reader of “The New York Times” which I balance with perusals of “Human Events” and “The Wall Street Journal,” I am struck with a slow, very gradual attempt by the newspaper to try to reach the leftmost part of the center…which is unusual to say the least for the Gray Lady.

The other day it ran as an Op Ed Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. Both critics of the Iraq policy, they just returned from a trip to Iraq. The two Brookings Institution analysts have a change in heart. They now maintain that “we are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least on military terms…we were surprised by the gainswe aw and the potential to produce not necessarily `victory’ but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”

I read the original article but haven’t heard much about it around media circles here. Why not? You tell me. If that foreign policy expert Steve Huntley in the “Sun-Times” commented on it, I haven’t seen it and will stand corrected if he did.