Personal Asides: Notre Dame Protest Went Well…Axelrod Slur Against Miss California Contradicts Obama’s High-Flown Rhetoric…How Liberal MSM Almost Gave Us John Edwards.

Notre Dame Protest.

My pro-life activism began right after “Roe v. Wade” in 1973 and granted, when compared to others in the movement I am a relative newcomer—but I have headed two pro-life organizations and have never seen nationally a more successful protest than the one carried out yesterday against Notre Dame for inviting Barack Obama to address its graduation class and to give him an honorary doctorate of laws. Three points:

1.The arrests and disturbances on campus were salutary but there was no violence. 2. A high point was the turn-down of the Laetare medal by Mary Ann Glendon, a high-minded refusal of what was intended as a cynical balancing act by the Notre Dame p. r. department. 3. The coincidental report by Gallup that pro-lifers are now in the majority vs. pro-aborts helped boost the coverage. I thought the coverage by and large was fair and respectful of the pro-life position.

Axelrod’s Slur Against Miss California.

You have perhaps been touched by the words of President Obama at Notre Dame calling for “open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words” in debates on cultural issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Touching. Very touching. But as usual with the Obama White House, they don’t follow their own high-minded advice. Take David Axelrod who just before Obama delivered his stirring encomium, described Carrie Prejean, Miss California, as a dog for the only reason that she opposes gay marriage.

Axelrod whom I’ve debate many times in years past…before he became the media guru to Obama…is reputed for his so-called devastatingly clever wit and is celebrated for brilliant slash and burn tactics. He rarely gets tabbed with the blame because his best lines are usually leaked to favorite media writers without his name attached. But last week he made sure his name was attached. He appeared on the haughty NPR high-brow-toned “Wait-wait! Don’t Tell Me!” When the subject of Obama’s dog came up and how he got his name, Axelrod couldn’t help himself.

He said that he was called in to judge the efficacy of three names proposed for the Portuguese Water Dog who was eventually called “Bo.” Axelrod said his first suggestion was that the dog would be named “Miss California.” An obvious heavy slur at Carrie Prejean…referring to her as a dog, an insult delivered to women by men of another era…meaning ugly, stupid. He imparted that slur to a young 21-year-old whose only offense to extreme radical-liberal sneerers like Axelrod is that she supports marriage’s definition as between a man and a woman. Axelrod’s supposedly devastating barb evoked gales of laughter from the superciliously liberal NPR radio audience.

If I had been on the show with him (as we have in the past) I would have countered with the suggestion that the dog be named “David Axelrod’s Mama.” Meaning that he who calls a beautiful young woman a dog should be termed what he is: a son of a bitch.

Zombie Media’s Responsibility for John Edwards.

In the heat of tumescent passion, liberal media…acting like adolescent rockers who jump excitedly up and down as they wait for the concert to begin…gave us JFK, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—each worst than the last. They very nearly gave us an all-time worst.

I refer to John Edwards who with no legislative record became one of liberal media’s golden boys…rising from a half-term of back bench obscurity in the Senate where he did nothing at all to try for the vice presidency in 2000. . Then he tried again for national office in 2004, becoming the Dem veep nominee with early dibs on the presidential nod four years later.

Edwards claimed to be the son of a South Carolina textile “mill-hand” (actually he was a supervisor). He was the first of his family to go to college, graduating from North Carolina state and the U of NC law school. Specializing in the plaintiff bar, when very young he became a successful personal injury lawyer, trading on his Gentlemen’s Quarterly good looks. He was the first to hire focus groups as ad agencies do to help him adopt down-home language that would impress juries.

In a short time he became the hottest trial lawyer in the south: winning verdicts of $152 million. Thirty percent and more would go to the winning lawyer which enabled Edwards to amass a fortune of nearly $50 million. In January, 1997 he took the case of a 9-year-old girl seriously injured by a faulty swimming pool drain. In his summary statement to the jury, Edwards brought up his 16-year-old son Wade who had been killed in a Jeep accident a year before. Now listen carefully because you will hear this again: Edwards said he was so torn up by the loss that he climbed up on the mortuary slab and held the dead body tightly in his arms, pledging to validate his dead son’s great promise by eternally representing people victimized by big business…as with the case of his little girl client.



The jury wiped its eyes of flowing tears and gave him a victory. With that verdict alone he won $25 million in compensatory damages, the biggest jury award in North Carolina history.

Now, fiery, young (45) and pencil-thin, frequently primping his boyish hair style before the mirror, with a finely chiseled profile, natural smile and slim torso that competed with Tom Cruise, he was (a) a recognized trial lawyer, (b) very wealthy and (c) a 3-time state marathon finisher. So he decided to run for the Senate in 1998, billing himself first as a lawyer for the hard-pressed middle class…but later after focus groups weighed in, portrayed himself as advocate for the poor and powerless, soft-pedaling that his practice was based on suing doctors and driving up health costs for hard-pressed citizens while earning himself millions.

Ex-poor boy now lawyer for the poor: This tag is what attracted big liberal media. He beat 51% to 47% a lackluster 70-year-old Republican hog farmer incumbent with the antebellum mint julep name of Lauch Faircloth who embodied the old, rural, conservative, pitchfork North Carolina that new voters wanted to shrug off.

Right off the bat, Edwards shocked observers by pursuing a far-out liberal tack in the Senate for a senator from North Carolina—but he wanted to serve only one term and either go up or out. He became vehemently pro-abortion and pro-gay rights, urging repeal of the Defense of Marriage act under Clinton, opposing a proposed amendment defending marriage as being only between a man and a woman, endorsing “universal health care,” casting votes at odds with his state including supporting a liberal trade bill with China even though his state’s textile industry could lose much.

Edwards’ term would expire in 2004 so he had to get a move on. In 2000 he strove to become Al Gore’s veep nominee at the Dem national convention. He wasn’t picked but spoke to delegations in Massachusetts, New York and California, adopting a cosmopolitan approach with a stem-winding style tuned to a honey-flavored southern accent and got marked as a comer. He sold his law practice for $5 million and bought a $3.5 million mansion in the high-toned ultra-liberal Georgetown section of Washington where denizens drink together and empathize about the black, poor and dispossessed—but where none live.

As his term wound down, hustler in a hurry Johnny Edwards did all the things hip liberal candidates must do. He flew to England to talk with Tony Blair. He got on Comedy Central to trade jokes with Jon Stewart. He burnished his liberal credentials by joining with the teachers’ unions to oppose school vouchers. He prepared for the 2004 presidential election where he strove to be different from others in the Democratic pack. Enunciating for the first time that “there are two Americas, one for the rich and powerful and the other for the poor,” he intrigued the New York Times because of his litmus-test liberalism, highly unusual for a southerner. The paper was thrilled, calling him “the next Bill Clinton”—proving to be righter than it knew. Vanity Fair said he was “the perfect politician.” People magazine named him “the sexiest politician” in its “sexiest people alive” issue.

All the while, he collected tons of both hard and soft money from the trial bar for his “New American Optimists” PAC and set up an exploratory committee for president in`04. He revved up the phrase “ordinary people” in every speech, promoting the “two Americas,” declaring George W. Bush ran a government for insiders. In essence, he ran a populist, left-of-center campaign…differing from other challengers (Sen. John Kerry [Mass.], ex-Gov. Howard Dean [Vt.], Gen. Wesley Clark,[Ark.] Cong. Dennis Kucinich [Ohio], Sen. Joe Lieberman [Conn.] ex-House majority leader Dick Gephardt [Mo.], Rev. Al Sharpton,[NY] ex-Sen. Carol Moseley Braun [Ill.] and Sen. Bob Graham [Fla.]) articulating a wide southern “yawl” accent causing some major Dem strategists to believe his persona could attract some southern and northern states which might otherwise go to Bush.

In the 2004 presidential primary heat he faced a John Kerry who initially had experienced a tough time resurrecting a campaign that sputtered in the field—but Kerry got the engine going to win the Iowa caucuses (Edwards placing second). But then Kerry really triumphed in New Hampshire and went on to win smashing victories in Arizona, South Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada and Wisconsin to win the nod. Edwards was totally out of gas at the end but the final vote totals showed he had run second to Kerry nationally.

Immediately, Edwards put on his earnest, hangdog look and sought to importune his way onto the ticket as Kerry’s vice president, letting Kerry in on the supposed hitherto secret fact (remember this from his earlier personal injury trial summation?) that in 1996 after the car accident that took his son’s life, he had climbed onto the mortuary slab next to the body and promised he would spend the rest of his life…not fighting exploitative big business but to serve America in government…begging Kerry to give Edwards that chance to serve the country by naming him his vice president.

The only trouble was that like others in the Senate, Kerry had heard Edwards use the story before and was turned off by the cynically maudlin appeal. Yet at the end he gambled on the possible appeal Edwards would have in marginal states and picked Pretty John for veep.

With the Kerry-Edwards loss to Bush-Cheney in 2004 (Bush 50.7% with 286 electoral votes; Kerry 48.3% with 251), Edwards, now a private citizen, went back to the drawing board for a run in 2008. The day after his concession speech, he appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live! and said his wife, Elizabeth, had breast cancer. That story drew national headlines and sympathy. Further, he said he renounced personal injury law but would do largely philanthropic work. He took on some highly visible lectureships with universities. outlining programs he said would “end poverty.” He came out against the appointments of John Roberts and Sam Alito to the Supreme Court to further massage the liberal vote for `08. At the same time, his wife Elizabeth endorsed same-sex marriage.

Now, rich as he already was, he decided to rustle up some cash.

So he invested some of his personal funds with, and became senior adviser to, the Fortress Investment Group in Manhattan. Ah but a mistake. It developed the company…specializing in sub-prime loans…foreclosed on dispossessed and homeless victims of Hurricane Katrina. When the Wall Street Journal reported this, Edwards announced he would donate money to help the Katrina poor. So he invested $100,000 in the radical group ACORN, thus ingratiating himself with the radical leftwing community group.

Now he prepared for the big denouement of his life. A private citizen but as one who had benefited hugely from favorable media in his scant, unproductive Senate term, he was off and running in 2007 for president in 2008. On March 22, 2007 in the middle of his presidential campaign, he announced that his wife’s breast cancer had returned and was diagnosed as Stage IV with metastases to the bone and possibly the lung. No longer curable but however treatable, the story gained national coverage. The duo said they would however go on with the campaign as partners. The media was ecstatic.

There was only one problem. He and his wife had a secret. In 2006, Edwards had conducted a sexual affair—and very possibly sired a child--with a female campaign video-photographer. He told his wife, then continued with the affair… all the while playing the family man candidate, devoted to his cancer-stricken wife who courageously campaigned with him…the two playing a ruse on their campaign staff, donors and the media. They continued his campaign for president and hers for First Lady, , reasoning that, after all, Bill Clinton had survived Gennifer Flowers so why couldn’t he?

The first glimmer of the truth came in October, 2007 from a very unpopular, racy rag and to the eyes of many a somewhat disreputable source—The National Enquirer. The Enquirer is not a paper you want to be seen perusing while on a bus. Still, it had broken numerous stories and it is a testimonial to the refusal of the mainstream media to be detoured from their ideology that the story was ignored from the fall of 2007 until July, 2008.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News, chief Washington correspondent and host of Face the Nation…and a close friend of Edwards’…said to radio host Don Imus that he was going to ignore the story since rumors pop up every day. That was nothing less than unethical big media collaboration with a presidential candidate. Whenever you see Schieffer on the Sunday network, remember, he deserves to have been fired for journalistic malpractice.

But even without media’s investigation, the campaign seemed to go pfffft. Pretty John was beaten soundly by Obama and/or Hillary Clinton. He ran 2nd in Iowa, 3rd in New Hampshire, 3rd in Nevada, 4th in South Carolina (Edwards’ home state) and 4th in Florida. Obama was almost tied with Clinton but the heart of the Democratic party was with the first African American to be a major presidential candidate. Edwards was all but a dead letter—but there was always the vice presidency with Obama!

Then Edwards was discovered by the self-same Enquirer reportorial team visiting his ex-mistress and her child at midnight at the Beverly Hilton hotel! He was cornered by the rag newspaper at her hotel in the middle of the night, stammered, ran into the Men’s Room and hid, calling hotel security on his cell phone to escort him out without answering questions.

Now the liberal media couldn’t ignore it and so on August 28, 2008 John Edwards was forced to admit to ABC News that his earlier denial had been a lie. He denied he was the father of the baby. An associate of a personal injury law firm close to Edwards named Andrew Young, manfully claimed he was the father. But that dodge didn’t wash. He was so happily married that nobody believed him.



Blaming himself for being afflicted with narcissism, Edwards did the obvious: he took himself out of the veep pool. But narcissism kicked in again and days later he put himself back in the Dem veep pool, saying “I’m prepared to seriously consider anything, anything [Obama] asks me to do for our country.”

But John Edwards’ presidential joy-ride was over.

Now feds are studying whether election laws were broken due to $100,000 payments were made to his mistress from his campaign fund which is against the law, the law mandating if found guilty he will serve a maximum of 10 years and pay a $10,000 fine. Elizabeth Edwards has launched a nation-wide media tour to sell her tell-all book. On Oprah! she said she doubted the baby is John’s. That was a mistake, triggering the ex-mistress to demand a DNA test to prove whose baby it was: for the first time she said it was Edwards’.

Now consider: Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if, as much of the liberal media wanted, he had been elected president or vice president? That he wasn’t is not the fault of Big Mainstream Media which flunked the test media are supposed to fulfill: examining candidates on character and fitness. Rather than do that, much of Big Media, notably Bob Schieffer, aided and abetted deception and ruse.

The moral of the Edwards story for us to ponder: He almost made it to the top because of the corrupt liberal media. The same media which terms abortion “choice” and sodomy a “civil right.” And have huckstered for us a President Obama who, like Edwards, had not completed his first Senate term and who under normal circumstances…if powerful media were not interfering with cries of “racism”…could very well be disqualified from service under the Constitution’s Article II—refusing to corroborate the requisite that a president must be a “natural born” citizen: accepting a facsimile of his original birth certificate. A charge that would have been lodged against anyone else is not going to be accepted by big media against Obama because they have decided that a challenge is code for “racism.”



Thus with media’s cooperation…indeed active collaboration…we have a president who says he will not rest he reformulates the American economic system to the sub-status of socialized Europe with a tripartite formula: nationalized health, federalized education from k-1 to college and a cap and trade carbon cash-cow tax that pays for the other two.

How to beat this leftwing media cycle of deception? Electing good people is key. But remember from this old cynic who has spent almost all his life either in media or politics: all politicians…Dems and Republicans, conservatives and liberals… are bottom-feeders, meaning they jostle each other at the trough to slurp up support and all but 1% say what they think will please. So at the top is where the substantive change should come: and that means reforming the culture-- radically formulating our education, revitalizing our religious zeal, patronizing only media outlets that love their country, seeing that our youth learn U.S. history, that they nurture belief in God and…choosing the best and brightest not necessarily for the purpose of running for office… but even more essentially, to go into journalism where they follow the ethical canons of news reporting and analysis.

In summary: pick good candidates and vote. But join with others to revolutionize the culture, return journalism to what it once was by making the necessary changes at the top.