The Dallas Morning News has selected the “Illegal Immigrant” for its “Texan of the Year”:

He is at the heart of a great culture war in Texas – and the nation, credited with bringing us prosperity and blamed for abusing our resources. How should we deal with this stranger among us?

[…]

We can’t seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody’s figured out how. He’s the Illegal Immigrant, and he’s the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year – for better or for worse.

Michelle Malkin has much more about that, here.

A couple of weeks ago, Time Magazine named Vladimir Putin it’s “Person of the Year.” (More on FHK, here.)

Both publications claim objectivity, and insist that the bestowments of these titles are not meant to “honor” the individuals selected for these titles - but let’s get real. When you put someone on the front page of your publication, and give him or her a “….of the year” title, it’s usually some type of “honor,” unless you’ve called them “Jerk” of the year, or “Mooch” of the year, or “Evil Dictator” of the year, or something similar.

Why does our American media hold up international criminals in a place of esteem, while running ads like the one placed by MoveOn.org, in the New York Times, running down American heroes like General Petaeus?

Why is it that, as Richard, of Freedom Zone wrote:

We have all by now become well accustomed to the news media’s publishing propaganda as ‘news’ and “twisting” the story of success in Iraq into, what AJ Strata describes today as being “under the keyboard of a single media ideologue.” It has become clear that the media is willing to not only color the affiliations and descriptions of the players to fit the media’s anti-American, pro anti-war agenda (you gotta give them credit for their imagination - such as when they refer to sunni insurgent terrorists as “concerned citizens”), but also completely misrepresent situations and events.

In a telling interview of William Bennett, of the Washington Post, said, “I don’t think US should be the leader of the world,” and speculated he felt that the world may be headed toward American imperialism (h/t WorldNetDaily).

Oliver North, in a 2005 article critical of the leftists in America, wrote about the mainstream media:

Now, add to these insults new injury from the old left. Last week in Washington, the Center for American Progress hosted what they called the Campus Progress National Student Conference. Bill Clinton was there. So was my former media colleague Paul Begala. Other attendees included former Clinton chief-of-staff John Podesta, Congressman Barney Frank and a handful of conservative students from the Campus Leadership Program and Young America’s Foundation. One of them kindly brought me one of the “publications” handed out to participants - an anti-military, anti-American screed entitled “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste: A Guide to the Demilitarization of America’s Youth and Students.”

The editors of this “enlightened” journal claim that the ” glorification of the military ignores the fact that most positive change in the United States has come from people standing up to the government, big corporations, and other forms of organized violence and crime.” It then offers tips on how to protest all things military.

Booker T. Stallworth, in a 2006 article in Human Events summed it up this way:

…The media use “1st Amendment” as their sole justification for their anti-American bias. The right of free speech is at the core of what makes us a great country and unique from our enemies; however, a proper understanding of liberty must always include the principle that with freedom comes responsibility.

While the press should never be a lapdog to any administration, reporters and editors should nonetheless never forget that they are Americans first and foremost. This is the proud history of wartime journalism in America; it predates the flag-wearing news anchors on September 11, the visibly joyful correspondents who danced with East and West Germans as a wall crumbled down, and the gutsy reporters stationed in a London under siege during WWII.

It’s a legacy as old as the Republic….