Ask anyone under 40 to identify Paul McCartney or "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and the odds are you'll get a blank look in return. Ask someone under 30 to describe the Soviet menace and you may well get the same response. The first one is harmless ignorance, and some might argue the second one is as well. After all, it's over and we won, right?
Looking back at our popular culture in 2014, it appears that Hollywood's power is on the wane. Politically, the leftist celebrities and the "Rock the Vote" gang couldn't help dig the Democrats out of their rut. Even that paragon of permissiveness Sandra Fluke couldn't exploit her Limbaugh-victim aura to win a state Senate seat in libertine California.
Historians will record that 2014 was a terrible year for liberal Democrats, not just at the polls but also in the news. The networks spent most of the fall campaign pretending there wasn't a fall campaign, and for good reason. Obama's Hope and Change aura had completely sunk into the muck as Obama's honesty and competence both took a hit in the hard news of ISIS and Ebola.
The widespread reporting on hacked emails from Sony Pictures -- spurred by the upcoming release of an allegedly funny movie about assassinating North Korean despot Kim Jong Un -- might encourage some gloating from people who would like to bring Hollywood down a peg. But hold the schadenfreude. The media's ethics -- or seeming lack of ethics -- are troubling.
Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are polar opposites, a Tea Party conservative and an Occupy Wall Street socialist. Then there are the similarities: Both were elected in 2012, both have Harvard on their resume and both are mentioned as presidential material. But the media's read of the two demonstrates an unquestionable slant.
No parent wants to consider the travesty that when he sends his 18-year-old daughter to college, she could be vulnerable to sexual assault. But in the increasingly punitive atmosphere surrounding sexual-assault allegations, he should also fear sending his 18-year-old son to campus, where he may be falsely accused of rape.
It's an obvious rule: Never pick on a president's family.
Elizabeth Lauten, the formerly unknown "communications director" for two-term GOP congressman Stephen Fincher resigned after a national-media feeding frenzy over some stupid words about the president's daughters on her personal Facebook page.
After the 2012 campaign, liberal journalists swarmed around Republican Party chair Reince Priebus offering what was called an "autopsy" on every way Republicans failed, with a special emphasis on more outreach to minority voters. Democrats and their media enablers painted a picture of demographic doom for an aging white Republican base.
On the Sunday before the election, CBS "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer unloaded one of those pompously "progressive" end-of-show commentaries about how our democracy is being ruined by money. "The right to vote is our proudest possession, but the way it has become debased by money shames us all."
Liberals have this terrible and annoying habit of congratulating themselves for their intellectual heft merely because they hold liberal views. Once this arrogant notion reigns, it's tough for liberals to acknowledge when one of their own says something so remarkably untrue and stupid that it makes you wonder just how ignorant is the liberal really.
