It's that time of year again. Some have vowed to hit the gym more often. Others are swearing off cigarettes. For some, coffee has been replaced with copious amounts of socialist green tea. Still others are signing up for community service projects to help improve the world around them.
Yes, many Americans have made their New Year's resolutions. Perhaps the conservative media establishment should do the same.
Fox News' tear-shedding golden boy Glenn Beck should give up the infamous chalkboard he's used to illustrate wild conspiracy theories and invest the money saved -- he must spend a bundle on chalk -- on a team of full-time fact-checkers. After all, he's become notorious over the past year for letting facts fall by the wayside in his non-stop campaign to tear down the Obama presidency. Such a resolution might even bring back at least some of the 80 advertisers Beck's program lost in 2009 after he called the president a "racist."
Noted sexist (and radio host) Rush Limbaugh should learn from his embarrassing failed attempt to purchase the NFL's St. Louis Rams and pull himself out of the Miss America pageant that he's slated to judge later this year. Limbaugh can use the time he would have devoted to the pageant on some long-needed sensitivity seminars. Yes, 2010 could be a banner year for a reformed El Rushbo if he can manage to string together a few months of abstinence from further racially charged, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Muslim and otherwise hateful remarks.
Serial misinformer Betsy McCaughey -- who has been caught making patently false claims against health care reform time and again -- should take some time off from "policy analysis" and enroll in a Learning Annex class to improve reading comprehension. I'm sure a medical company or the tobacco industry would be happy to foot the bill -- it wouldn't be the first time she's lined her pockets with their cash. In no time at all McCaughey could nip her dirty little habit of making crazy claims about health care reform in the bud. Imagine what she could accomplish by focusing on what's actually written in the legislation being considered -- gone would be claims of "socialized medicine," euthanasia for grandma, and rationed care.
Karl Frisch is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Frisch also contributes to County Fair,a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from aroundthe Web as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, or sign up to receive his columns by email.