S.E. Cupp: Liberal Media Can't Deal with 'Pretty, Conservative Women'

http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/cupp-conservatives-media-women/2010/04/16/id/356010
S.E. Cupp: Liberal Media Can't Deal with 'Pretty, Conservative Women'
Friday, 16 Apr 2010 07:49 PM
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By: Jim Meyers

Commentator S.E. Cupp tells Newsmax that Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann come under constant attack because the liberal media can’t deal with “pretty, conservative women” who espouse traditional values.

Cupp also says Barack Obama has followed a “black liberation theology” that she calls an “extreme version of Christianity,” and describes why Christianity is under assault from the mainstream media.

Cupp is co-author of "Why You're Wrong About the Right." She has been published in the New York Daily News, Human Events, American Spectator, Townhall, and elsewhere, and is also a regular commentator on Fox News and a Newsmax contributor.

Her latest book is “Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity.”

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Cupp was asked why former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been such a lightning rod for the liberal media.

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“I think for many reasons,” she says. “One, the liberal media always have a difficult time dealing with pretty, conservative women. They just don’t know what to make of it. She can’t be that smart because she’s too pretty. She can’t be galvanizing because she’s too dumb.

“Two, they’re frustrated by the fact that this is a self-made woman. They spent eight years telling us that George W. Bush was this nepotism experiment gone wrong. Well, here’s a woman who came from nothing, who worked her way up to become a successful wife and mother, had an amazing political career — the first female governor of Alaska and the youngest.

“This is unequivocally an accomplished woman, and the right kind of accomplished woman if you ask the liberal media — the kind that did it on her own. That bothers them because they really dislike her policies.”

Commenting on why conservative women like Palin and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann draw such vicious comments from the left, Cupp remarks: “I think it takes a lot of courage in today’s day and age to stand up as Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have and say look, I believe there’s a traditional role for the family. I believe in traditional values. I’m a proud Christian.

“That is an act of courage today, sadly. And I think the liberal media wants to position a Bachmann or a Palin as somehow backwards or lost in time, unsophisticated, a relic.

“Conservatism rightly resists the changing tide, the changing social mores. The whole idea of conservatism is to preserve what we think is good. So these flag bearers like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, women no less, I think are really throwing mud in the eye of the liberals who would rather see them locked up in some museum.”

Cupp maintains in her book “Losing Our Religion” that the mainstream media in America are openly hostile toward Christianity. She explains why:

“I think the media is socially secular and increasingly so, and I think the judgment and the morality inherent in Christianity or any religious system is really threatening to a secularist movement like the media. If the media can go on unjudged, I think that makes them fairly happy.”

The evidence for this anti-Christian bias “is everywhere,” Cupp maintains.

“I knew what I was getting into when I started researching this book, but I did not know the scope and scale until I really got into it. It’s not just The New York Times and CNN and MSNBC, places you’d expect. It’s on the blogosphere. It’s online. It’s the Huffington Post. It’s Salon.com. It’s USA Today. It’s radio. It’s everywhere. You really have to look hard not to find it.”

The “worst offenders” include be Salon.com, Cupp says. “CNN is pretty bad. The New York Times is pretty bad only because of the clout and influence that paper has. You would expect them to be a bit more responsible. MSNBC is terrible. Some of the talking heads there like Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews — these guys really have it out for Christianity.”

Asked why Cupp, as an atheist, would write a book so strongly defending Christianity, she said: “I am an atheist but I’m not one of those militant atheists. I simply don’t believe. I envy the faithful. I’ve always defended religious freedom. I’m grateful for mine and I’m grateful for everyone else’s.

“I defend especially Christianity in this country because it seems to be under attack, and I’m bothered by the idea that the media has taken a side in this fight. I’m really bothered as a writer, as a member of the press, that the Fourth Estate has become so openly hostile to 80 percent of the country. This is a huge majority. And 90 percent of the country believes in God.

“To go after a majority like this means they’re really not a representative media. They don’t deserve to be called mainstream.”

Cupp has said Barack Obama has an “affinity for radical Marxist theology.” Asked to elaborate, she says: “If you look at some of his own testimony about his religious education, whether in his book or his speeches, he discusses at length his decision to follow black liberation theology, the kind of Christianity espoused by Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright and a number of other well-known pastors around the country.

“Obama describes it as not particularly a Christ-driven move on his part but as sort of a recognition of the black social causes of the time. That’s what really drove him into Christianity. When you actually read about it, it’s far more radical than the Pentecostalism of Sarah Palin or the Baptism of a Mike Huckabee. Yet those folks are constantly painted by the liberal media as being fanatical and fringe.

“If anyone bothered to look at Obama’s black liberation theology, they would have no choice but to recognize that it’s an incredibly radical — and I would even say extreme — version of Christianity.”