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Frank Rich

• October 20 -- A Ridiculous Rant on Bush's "Outright Assault" on the Press
Columnist Frank Rich argues the Bush administration is engaging in a scary, Nixonian type campaign of press intimidation and gives ten examples -- none of which hold up.

• October 12 -- Still Hunting Fox News
Frank Rich's latest "arts" column features an attack on Fox News viewers: "If you limit your diet to Fox and its talk-radio and blogging satellites, you may think that the only pressing non-Laci Peterson, non-Kobe, non-hurricane stories are 'Rathergate' and the antics of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

• September 8 -- "War Hero" Kerry vs. "Sissy" George Bush
Frank Rich is back from vacation and in full foam: "Only in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man."

• June 28 -- Criticizing Michael Moore: As Phony as John Ashcroft
Arts editor and columnist Frank Rich criticizes Michael Moore, but only to compare him to John Ashcroft.

• June 15 -- Reagan and Bush, "Panderers to the Religious Right"
Frank Rich, who's never made a secret of his distaste for the Reagan administration, revels in the former president's "performance chops," if only to make Bush look callow by comparison.

• June 1 -- Frank Rich's Pornographic Hypocrisy
Editor Frank Rich contemptuously dismisses conservatives who dare link the prisoner abuse of Abu Ghraib to pornography: "The hypocrisy of those pushing this line knows few bounds." Yet the left-wing essayist Susan Sontag, so admired by Rich, made precisely the same argument in the cover story of the NYT magazine.

• May 24 -- Rich Pets Michael Moore's "Goat"
Frank Rich praises left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9-11," taking Moore's bad-faith assumptions on faith and chortling over Moore's cheap-shot techniques that make Bushies look dumb.

• May 17 -- Jessica Lynch Gone Bad
First it was Abu Ghraib and My Lai: Now Frank Rich is comparing Abu Ghraib abuser Lynndie England to rescued POW Jessica Lynch and warns of "our country's descent into the gulag."

• May 10 -- Abu Ghraib = My Lai?
Frank Rich compares the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

• April 7 -- Frank Rich's Ill Humor
Frank Rich contrasts Richard Clarke's 9-11 "apology" with Bush's light-hearted performance at an annual correspondents' dinner: "A nation of viewers that had watched a public servant mourn the unnecessary loss of American life on 9/11 now saw the president make light of the rationale that necessitated the sacrifice of an additional 500-plus Americans (so far) in the war fought in 9/11's name."

• March 24 -- Fleischer Rebuts Krugman
Ari Fleischer responds to Paul Krugman, who accused the former White House press secretary of warning people "to accept the administration's version of events, not ask awkward questions" after Fleischer said "Americans need to watch what they say" after 9-11.

• March 22 -- Rich Liberal Triteness
Frank Rich describes “one of the most hysterical outbreaks of Puritanism in recent, even not-so-recent, American history” and administers another beating to “The Passion.”

• March 16 -- Rich on Bush, "The Divider"
Frank Rich laments Bush has "turned out to be as much a divider as a uniter."

• March 8 -- Gibson's Movie a "Joy Ride for Sadomasochists"
Frank Rich sees "The Passion of Christ," a movie on which he has expended thousands of harsh words over the last several months. But that's nothing compared to the vitriol unleashed in his "review."

• March 2 -- Marriage Defenders and the Return of George Wallace
Frank Rich hooks gay marriage to the civil rights movement--and compares marriage defenders to Southern segregationists.

• March 1 -- Hope He Didn't Bet on the Oscars
Frank Rich's poor box office insight on "The Passion."

• February 23 -- "Loony" to Link Fonda and Kerry?
Frank Rich writes of those who would link Jane Fonda to John Kerry: "[Kerry] appears as a blurred extra sitting several rows behind her in a photo of an antiwar protest held two years before her famous, self-immolating trip to Hanoi. This is guilt by association so loony that even the perpetrators of the Hollywood blacklist might have found it a stretch." But Kerry and Fonda both spoke at the rally.

• February 16 -- Don't Let Your Kids Watch the Super Bowl
Discussing the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction," Times editor turned arts columnist Frank Rich got to the left of socially liberal pundit Andrew Sullivan: "If parents really cared, why wouldn't they just pull their kids away from the set?"

• February 3 -- Gay Marriage Ban "Discrimination"
Frank Rich calls a gay marriage ban "discrimination."

• January 26 -- Another Vietnam Rerun from Frank Rich
Is Iraq another Vietnam? Frank Rich sees parallels--and brings up the "imminent threat" canard to boot.

• January 19 -- Pope "Unwittingly Hawks" Mel Gibson Movie?
Editor Frank Rich spins a conspiracy theory about the Pope giving Gibson's movie on Jesus a thumbs-up: "The ailing pontiff has been recruited, however unwittingly, to help hawk 'The Passion of the Christ.'"

• January 5 -- Defending "The Reagans" Once More
TV critic Alessandra Stanley: "It is hard to get too indignant about CBS's lapse after a year that included…the cancellation of the mini-series 'The Reagans,' after a lobbying effort by right-wing groups who never saw the film."

• December 15 -- Frank Rich's Exquisite Timing
Columnist Frank Rich equates the war in Iraq with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy--and truly breaks a leg: "In the final installment, the pre-eminent heavy of the first two parts, the evil wizard Saruman has vanished--as out of sight, if not mind, as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein." Readers who had the TV on that morning knew otherwise.

• November 19 -- AIDS "Angels" vs. "Rancid" Reaganites
Editor Frank Rich pens a poisonous, 2,200-word excoriation of the Reagan administration's attitude toward AIDS in a hagiography of HBO's adaptation of the anti-Reagan gay advocacy play "Angels in America." Rich writes: "This epic is, among other things, a searing indictment of how the Reagan administration's long silence stoked the plague of AIDS in the 1980's....it accurately conveys the rancid hypocrisy among powerful closeted gay Republicans in Washington as AIDS spiraled."

• November 11 -- “Right-Wing Bloviators” Pressured “Craven” CBS
Editor Frank Rich notes approvingly that the TV movie on Jessica Lynch portrays the rescued POW “as a lowly pawn of larger, mysterious forces operating in the shadows, whether in Baghdad or Washington” and lambastes “craven” CBS for caving to “right-wing bloviators” on the Reagan miniseries.

• October 28 -- Quagmire on the Times Copy Desk
The ghosts of Vietnam haunt the Times copy desk. Frank Rich's anti-Bush Sunday column is typically over the top, but the accompanying headline goes even farther: "Why Are We Back in Vietnam?" Rich's actual article says: "The war in Iraq is not remotely a Vietnam."

• September 22 -- Frank Rich’s Mel Gibson-baiting
Times Arts editor Frank Rich resurrects his charge that Mel Gibson is guilty of “Jew-baiting.”

• September 16 -- Frank Rich: Triumph of a Willful Bush-Hater
Associate editor Frank Rich returns in full rant, calling the recent TV movie on 9-11 “propaganda so untroubled by reality that it's best viewed as a fitting memorial to Leni Riefenstahl.”

• August 11 -- Rich Goes Quayle-Hunting Again
Frank Rich takes on those who suggest gays raising children isn’t ideal: “Those who in 1992 cheered Dan Quayle's argument that TV's Murphy Brown was unfit to raise children…must now illogically argue that the single mothers they once vilified are preferable to two-mom or two-dad households.” Is it really that illogical?

• August 6 -- Frank Rich’s Persecution Complex
Times editor Frank Rich attacks as anti-Semitic Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie on the last hours of the life of Christ, claiming its “real tinder-box effect could be abroad, where anti-Semitism has metastasized since 9/11.” But in the past liberal Rich has ridiculed the idea that movies cause violence. And his criticism is particularly hypocritical considering his discussion of 1995’s pro-gay, anti-Catholic Church movie “Priest.”

• June 23 -- A Gay Old Time at The Tony Awards
Associate editor Frank Rich’s column celebrating the gay-dominated Tony Awards takes the opportunity to blast the “gay bashers” and “homophobic rantings” of the right.

• March 31 -- Petered Out
Frank Rich’s Advocacy for Arnett and Jennings Turns Embarrassing. 

• March 24 -- President Bush, “Con Man?” That’s Rich
New Times associate editor Frank Rich compared President Bush to a con-man movie character in the movie “Chicago.” After accusing the president of “moral arrogance” concerning the Iraq war, Rich described Bush’s prime-time news conference: “Like their ‘Chicago’ counterparts, the Washington press corps were more than willing to buy fictions if instructed to do so by the puppeteer.”