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Michael Medved

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Michael Medved

Michael Medved (born October 4 1948) is an American, conservative radio talk show host, film critic and author.

Early life

Medved was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in San Diego, California, where his father worked as a scientist for the defense contractor Convair and later for NASA. Medved attended Palisades High School after his family moved to Los Angeles. He entered Yale University as an undergraduate at age 16, graduating with honors in 1969, and then went on to Yale Law School.

After his first year at Yale Law, he took time off to serve as head speechwriter for a Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, and then spent the next four years as a speechwriter and political consultant, never returning to finish his law degree. Following his campaign work (including brief service as an aide for Congressman Ron Dellums), Medved worked in advertising and coordinated a minority recruitment campaign for the San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley police departments. After writing more than 40 articles for the bestselling book The People's Almanac, Medved wrote What Really Happened to the Class of '65? with David Wallechinsky. Focusing on the effect of the 1960's counterculture on thirty of his high school classmates, the book became a bestseller in 1976, rising to number three on leading bestseller lists. It also became the basis for a weekly TV series on NBC that ran for 13 weeks in 1978.

He then followed with The Shadow Presidents: The Secret History of the Chief Executives and Their Top Aides (1979), a critically acclaimed look at all of the leading White House assistants since the beginning of the official Presidential staff in 1857. For the book, Medved conducted exclusive interviews with chiefs of staff for Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. His resulting friendship with Ford's chief of staff, Dick Cheney, led to Michael's first affiliation with the Republican Party and to his campaigning for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In 1984, Medved authored another bestseller, Hospital: The Hidden Lives of a Medical Center Staff, which provoked extensive discussion in Time magazine, on ABC's Nightline, Good Morning America and elsewhere. The book focused on thirty people who worked together in various capacities at the same California teaching hospital.

Movie reviews

Medved's experience with the television adaptation of Class of '65 led to several opportunities as a screenwriter (for feature film projects and TV miniseries), and to his membership in the Writers Guild of America. He also collaborated with his brother, Harry Medved, on four internationally popular satirical books about the most embarrassing achievements in movie history: The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (1979), The Golden Turkey Awards (1980) and The Hollywood Hall of Shame (1984) and "Son of Golden Turkey Awards" (1986). While promoting these books on radio and TV interviews, Medved won a weekly job reviewing new movies on CNN (1980-1983) and then hosted a top-rated weekly half hour show on British network Channel 4 called The Worst of Hollywood. His commentary on what he considered to be bad movies, particularly in "The Golden Turkey Awards", established cult status for Plan 9 from Outer Space (selected by the Medved Brothers as The Worst Film of All Time) and its director, Ed Wood (selected as The Worst Director of All Time).

In 1984, Medved joined Sneak Previews, the weekly movie review show originated by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, co-hosting the program for twelve years with Jeffrey Lyons.

In 1993, Medved became chief film critic for the New York Post, a position he held for five years, during which he reviewed more than 700 movies for the newspaper.

More recently, Medved has played a prominent role in some movie-related controversies. Medved became an outspoken defender of Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ (2004) which was criticized as anti-Semitic by many prominent Jewish groups. After Mel Gibson's DUI arrest in July 2006, Medved wrote that he felt "betrayed" by Gibson's anti-Semitic outburst and urged Gibson to seek "reconciliation" with the Jewish community.[1]

Some film critics, led by Roger Ebert and Jim Emerson, attacked Medved for allegedly disclosing climactic plot twists of Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby while condemning the marketing for the picture as "deeply misleading." Medved condemned the promotional campaign for "Baby" for obscuring the film's dark "right to die/assisted suicide" themes while selling the picture as a Rocky-esque tale of a plucky female underdog in the boxing arena.[2] Medved said that he carefully avoided revealing the final turn in the plot but felt honor bound to inform his listeners and readers about the movie's content and provocative point of view. Roger Ebert criticized Medved, saying he is "a political commentator and no longer a film critic."[3]

Medved has noted that just positioning itself as a "family" or "values" oriented movie will not necessarily insure either aesthetic quality or box office success. He has praised movies for their artistic value even though he disagrees with the underlying political messages (e.g. the gay-themed romance Brokeback Mountain, and The Motorcycle Diaries about the early life of Che Guevara). Additionally, he has criticized Sean Penn and Tim Robbins's politics, while praising their work as actors and directors.

Talk radio and political commentary

During the controversy involving Hollywood vs. America, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh featured an interview with Medved in his Limbaugh Letter and then asked Medved to guest-host his talk show. Medved went on to serve as a fill in for Limbaugh on some thirty occasions, eventually getting an offer to host his own local show on a major Seattle station. In his 2005 autobiographical book Right Turns: From Liberal Activist to Conservative Champion in 35 Unconventional Lessons, Medved says he welcomed the chance to escape "the movie ghetto" and to speak to a wide audience about the broader issues that had long been a focus of his written commentary and books. Within six months of launching the radio show (July 31, 1996), Medved was winning his time slot in Seattle and won a syndication agreement through Salem Radio Network.

His three hour daily show is now broadcast on 200 stations coast to coast and reaches more than 2.5 million listeners. For ten consecutive years, Medved has been listed by Talkers magazine as one of its "Heavy Hundred" most important American talk show hosts, and recently tied for eighth place in its ranking of talk hosts by audience size.[4] Medved identifies the show as "Your Daily Dose of Debate" and features free-wheeling arguments with disagreeing guests and callers. He describes himself as "your cultural crusader on politics and pop culture" and the show focuses on that intersection between current events, politics, American history and the entertainment industry. Medved's radio show also offers at least four reviews per week of new movies or DVD releases. Once a month, when a full moon is on the sky, the program offers "Conspiracy Day" where callers from across the country expose what they consider the "hidden forces" behind "perplexing and painful present events." Medved's radio show often focuses on listeners calling in and debating issues with the host. The show has welcomed left-wing guests such as Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, John Shelby Spong, Oliver Stone, Warren Beatty, Ralph Nader, Senator Barbara Boxer, Al Gore,Madeleine Albright, George Galloway, and Al Franken, among many others. Medved has also welcomed right-wing guests such as Robert Spencer, and other conservative voices from politics and pop culture. Medved has supported other conservatives when they have been criticized such as Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

Medved writes a regular column for USA Today and is a member of that newspaper's Board of Contributors. He also writes occasional op-ed pieces for The Wall Street Journal and blogs daily at conservative website Townhall.com.

Medved co-founded Pacific Jewish Center, a synagogue in Venice, California, with his friend and teacher, Rabbi Daniel Lapin. For fifteen years, Medved served as president of PJC (noted for its outreach to unaffiliated and disconnected Jews) and spearheaded the revival of traditional Jewish life in beach communities of Los Angeles. In Right Turns, he specifically links his intensifying commitment to prayer and observance to his increasingly conservative political outlook.

Medved has been married for 22 years to clinical psychologist Dr. Diane Medved (bestselling author of The Case Against Divorce and four other books) and they have three children.

Medved is a right wing radio personality that is pro immigration reform, in contrast with other conservative radio personalities and in conflict with the bulk of Michael's listeners.

Books

Trivia

References

  1. ^ Medved, Michael (2006-08-22). "Reconciliation should follow Mel's Malibu meltdown". USA Today. Retrieved 2007-01-22.
  2. ^ Medved, Michael (2005-02-17). "My 'Million Dollar' Answer". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2007-01-22.
  3. ^ Ebert, Roger (2005-01-29). "Critics have no right to play spoiler". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2007-01-22.
  4. ^ "The Talkers Magazine Heavy Hundred Class of 2005". Talkers. 2005. Retrieved 2007-01-22.
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