Sean Penn has wrapped filming of "Milk," a biopic of slain gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, and when filming a climactic scene, Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Penn gave an "impromptu speech Milk would have loved," which included heavy Fox News-bashing:
"I almost wish Jerry Falwell were alive to see this. Almost," Penn shouted to the crowd. After dropping some names of conservatives who are still with us - "Bill O'Reilly, who is too stupid to talk about," and "Sean Hannity, the butt boy of Rupert Murdoch," Penn said, "We know something more. We know their end is near."
Does that mean the end of their influence? Or is Penn encouraging something more final?
At ABCNews.com, Susan Donaldson James reported that Penn "narrates a new anti-war documentary that alleges U.S. presidents since Kennedy have manipulated the public to wage wars."
This week, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" has been released for home entertainment to distributors like Amazon and Best Buy and on Netflix. The film premiered in New York City, Saturday.
Penn, 47, has toured Iraq twice -- once just before the Bush administration stepped up drumbeats for the war in December 2002, and also as a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle...
Penn has been a growing political force in Hollywood. That is no surprise, considering Penn's roots: His father, actor and director Leo Penn, was blacklisted in the 1950s for his support of Joseph Stalin.
The film is based on a book by far-left activist and author Norman Solomon, who has accompanied Penn to Iraq.
Late in the piece, James interviewed MRC's Rich Noyes for an alternative point of view:
"The left has claimed that the media didn't do enough to stop the war in its tracks," he told ABCNEWS.com. "But if you go back to the questions asked and the articles that were written and the news that aired, there were great skeptics, adversarial coverage and even hostile news coverage."
The most aggressive, Noyes said, was Peter Jennings of ABC News. "We have pages and pages of quotes."
Despite the media's attacks, Noyes said the media historically has had a "liberal tilt."
Since the onset of the war, the media have been even more anti-government, according to Noyes. By 2004, with coverage of scandals like Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, the negative stories "more than outstripped the coverage of Medals of Honor winners and Silver Stars," he said.
"The vast array of coverage showed soldiers as anonymous or victims of policy perpetrators or misdeeds," said Noyes. "This sort of bad news hurt the morale of the country."
(Hat tip on the SFGate article: Thomas Stewart)