Don Imus Shocked by Newsweek Columnist's Socialism
Last Friday morning Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, fresh from an interview with the former communist leader, exclaimed, to the astonishment of Don Imus: “He’s only the most important political leader alive in the world today!”
Alter insisted on Friday’s MSNBC simulcast of the Imus in the Morning radio show, that “if I look back over my lifetime who is the world leader who changed things the most and I don’t actually think it is a close call.” Alter related how he and Gorby commiserated about “how much credit Reagan gets for ending the Cold War” when Gorbachev “could have easily said he’d send the Red Army into Eastern Europe, crush what was going on there and we’d still have the Soviet Union.”
Here is the April 27 exchange in full:
Alter, referring to the lesson Gorbachev provided his kids who were present for the interview: “I told them, I think they will remember it for a long time, you know. He’s only the most important political leader alive in the world today, historically speaking I guess I would maintain, don’t you think?”
Imus: “Gorbachev?”
Alter: “Yeah, you look at what he did.”
Imus: “No, I wouldn’t agree but maybe I don’t know enough about it. He just seemed like a guy with a blotch on his head. He is not happening.”
Alter: “No, he’s not happening now.”
Imus: “He couldn’t get it done there. I mean-”
Alter: “No, he is not happening now. I am talking about if you look over the course of our lifetimes, who was the most, well, you go back to Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt…..but for me if I look back over my lifetime who is the world leader who changed things the most and I don’t actually think it is a close call. I mean one of the things that Gorbachev and I talked about was how much credit Reagan gets for ending the Cold War. Needless to say Gorbachev didn’t think uh, didn’t think a lot but he could have easily said he’d send the Red Army into Eastern Europe, crush what was going on there and we’d still have the Soviet Union. We’d still have this basically, you know the era of stagnation continuing and we could have a Cold War going on to this day.”
Imus: “[Heavens], you really are a communist. We were just kidding around. We’ve just been kidding.”
Alter: “No, no, seriously. How do, how do you, what do you think would have happened if Gorbachev had been a hard guy?”
Imus: “No, he would’ve got his ass kicked. Squished him like the bug that he is. He’d have another blotch on his head.”
Imus is a lot more in touch with reality than Alter.
(This report courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
by Bill Fancher
(AgapePress) – May is “Victims of Pornography Month.” A coalition of anti-porn groups launched the promotion last week at a news conference on Capitol Hill, where Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America said research shows there is great damage that stems from pornography.
“The average age of a child's first exposure to hard-core pornography is eight years old. Seventy-five percent of convicted rapists admit that they were acting out what they had seen in pornography. Eighty percent of child molesters admit their spiral down began with pornography.”
According to Wright, the victims of porn are everywhere. “They are the men whose fantasies become addictions. They are the women and children whose bodies are used like disposable items. They are the daughters who are taught that the only way they can be loved is through seduction and sex,” she says.
“They are the families whose security and self-esteem are destroyed because one [family] member cannot see a person's unique dignity, but rather sees them as objects to be used. And it's our society that pays the price in increased crime.”
Wright urges people at the local level to do what they can to fight the porn industry invading homes through the television and music industries and the Internet. She says it is time for the Bush-Ashcroft Justice Department to do something the Clinton-Reno department would not do: enforce the illegal porn laws already on the books.
Another organization is anxious for that to happen. The National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families claims Bill Clinton and Janet Reno ignored the problem of illegal porn for eight years, so the group's director, Rick Schatz, will be demanding some action from the new administration.
“We intend to make very specific requests of the President and of the Attorney General,” Schatz says. “We're not willing just to sit back and hope that good things are happening. We're going to take a proactive approach to meeting with these people.”
Schatz says the anti-pornography movement will not “tone down” its efforts to remove pornography just because President Bush feels the same way about the dangers of porn. Schatz says he wants to see results. That is why his organization is promoting its “Model Cities” program as a successful method for reducing pornography. He says the program will show local groups how to get rid of the porn influence in their community based on what has worked in similar-size cities.
“Nobody's going to get rid of all the pornography in their back yard — that's not going to happen. With the Internet now, you've got pornography everywhere. But significant impact is the question, and all of our cities are having very significant impact,” he says. “We believe we have a strategy that can make a difference in communities across the country. We're very, very excited about that, and we're seeing good results everywhere.”
Schatz's program started with a handful of cities, but now has an expanded goal of 150. Each will produce a manual of what worked in its area. Those manuals will be provided for other communities.
