Bill Donohue comments on a New York Times news story on hiring in the next presidential administration:

On the front-page of the November 12 edition of the New York Times, there was a story on how hiring is shaping up in the Trump administration. It noted that three of his children, Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were named to the transition team. “The Trump family, it is clear,” the news story said, “will wield unusual power in the composition of an administration that is already shaping up as remarkable for its clannishness.”

“Clannishness”? Why is that a problem? The New York Times wrote the book on it. The following is a statement I released on October 19. It takes on new significance now that the newspaper is furious with Trump’s “clannishness.”

NEW YORK TIMES ERECTS CEMENT CEILING

Pleas for more diversity and inclusion are a mantra at the New York Times. For example, it demands more inclusion in the Catholic Church’s clergy—women must be ordained—and rails against the glass ceiling in the corporate world that keeps women from reaching the top.

There is one exception: when it comes to hiring a new publisher at the New York Times, it throws diversity and inclusion to the wind. Not only does it confine its search to white boys, it only considers blood relatives. The New York Times is not only a patriarchy, its affection for hiring along patrilineal descent lines is boundless.

Mark Thompson, who heads the New York Times Company, announced today that Arthur Gregg Sulzberger is the new deputy publisher of the newspaper. Thompson is perhaps best known for allegedly covering up the deeds of BBC child rapist Jimmy Savile.

This appointment is critical because it signals the continuation of the Times monarchy: Arthur Gregg’s father, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., is the current publisher, and his son is next in line to succeed him on the throne. Sulzberger Jr. got his job because his predecessor, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, was his father.

A.G., as Arthur Gregg is now known (it was confusing at the newspaper so they settled on his initials), would represent the fifth generation of his family since the Grand Patriarch, Adolph S. Ochs, bought the newspaper in 1896.

To elect Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the Times erected a cement ceiling: the only other two candidates for the job were Sam Dolnick and David Perpich. All three are cousins.

No women were interviewed. No blacks were interviewed. No Latinos (including the undocumented) were interviewed. No Native Americans were interviewed. No Asians were interviewed. No Catholics were interviewed. No Protestants were interviewed. No Muslims were interviewed. No Mormons were interviewed. And to the best of my knowledge, no transgender persons were interviewed.

This triumph of patriarchy was not, however, equally distributed along descent lines: no one from the Ochs family, or any of the other branches of the family, was considered. This is a cement ceiling that even ISIS couldn’t crack.

In keeping with its incestuous tradition, the selection committee included senior executive Michael Golden and his sister-in-law, Trudy Golden. Carolyn Greenspon was on the committee: she is a family trustee and board member of the New York Times Company. Thompson, chief executive of the Company, was also on the committee. No one not from the inner circle of the board, newspaper, or the family, was included.

Who needs affirmative action? Who needs to advertise? Who needs a head hunter? This is an old-boys club par excellence.

Thompson said the selection “was done in an extraordinarily careful, systematic way.” On that, everyone can agree.

It would be instructive to learn what Maureen Dowd thinks about this nativistic, misogynistic, racist, non-inclusive, diversity-be-damned, rigged hiring system at the New York Times. But this is not likely: she has long settled in, and knows exactly what her place is.

“Clannishness.” No organization in the United States basks in it more than the New York Times. Trump could never compete with it.

Bill Donohue comments on electoral results of an interesting kind:

Americans have been told over and over again by well-educated liberals that they need to jettison their tired ways and become more accepting of change. Change, they tell us in their lordly fashion, is difficult, but it is also a reality we need to face.

For example, when we object to art that trashes our religion, we are told we need to become more accepting of works that challenge our values. When parents protest that boys claiming to be girls should not be permitted to shower with their daughters, they are admonished for not getting with the times. And so on.

But the election results tell a different story: It is not the average American who is terrified of change, it is well-educated liberals.

According to CNN exit polls, self-identified liberals voted for Clinton over Trump, 84 percent to 10 percent. Among post-graduates, they broke for Clinton over Trump by a margin of 58 percent to 37 percent; the disparity was no doubt even higher among those in the social sciences and humanities.

Now consider the four most important characteristics about the candidates that voters were asked to rate.

When voters were asked which candidate “cares about me,” they selected Clinton over Trump, 58 percent to 35 percent. By a margin of 66 percent to 26 percent, she beat him on the issue of who possesses “good judgment.” When asked who has the “right experience,” Clinton creamed Trump, 90 percent to 8 percent. How, then, did he get elected?

On the issue of who “can bring change,” voters chose Trump over Clinton, 83 percent to 14 percent. Exit polls also showed that most voters wanted someone with leadership more than any other attribute.

Looks like those who are scared to death of change—the change agent’s name is Donald Trump—are not moderates and conservatives, it’s well-educated liberals, the very elites who like to lecture the rest of us on our need to accept change.

To show what a nice guy I am, if I had the time, I would conduct a workshop for them on how to overcome their metathesiophobia, or fear of change. (I confess I had to look it up.) No matter, I’m too busy getting used to the new environment myself to find time even for a breakout session.

Bill Donohue comments on Macy’s financial health and why it is of interest to the Catholic League:

Macy’s is in trouble not only for unleashing its Thought Police against innocent workers, it is hurting financially.

Despite being pounded by Catholics, the mega-department store continues to stand by its decision to fire an Hispanic Catholic store detective for simply disagreeing with its policy of allowing cross-dressing men to use the women’s bathroom; the employee agreed to enforce the policy, but that wasn’t good enough—his mere beliefs were enough to have him canned.

The third quarter numbers are in, and they are not encouraging: Macy’s sales and profits both slid.

Its sales were off 4.2 percent, marking the seventh straight quarterly decline. Its profit of $17 million sounds impressive until we learn that it was $118 million a year ago; shares dropped from 36 cents to a nickel.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is two weeks from today. If it were honest, it would feature a float of cross-dressing men hanging out in a women’s fitting room, thus inviting children to ask what’s going on.

Just as bizarre, Macy’s is making its workers show up on Thanksgiving. It did so last year—for the first time—but this year it is opening two hours earlier. This is yet another sign that it is both ethically and financially challenged. Catholic staffers would be making a great statement if they just happened to call in sick.

Contact Macy’s Group Vice President: holly.thomas@macys.com

Bill Donohue comments on Donald Trump’s victory:

I tweeted the following on November 4. “Bill Kristol, who has been wrong all along, now says Hillary will win bigger than Obama did in 2012. My takeaway—it’s good news for Trump.”

The eggheads blew it. This election proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Ivy League pundits and scholars are anything but the independent thinkers they claim to be. Indeed, they function more like a herd.

Most of the chattering class never served a day in the armed forces, or even took a swing at a baseball, so pampered has their lifestyle been. From the National Review and the Weekly Standard, to the New Republic and the Nation, the softball kings and queens need to do penance: they need to sit down and talk to the proletariat. George Will—are you listening?

The day before the election, I emailed some friends about the outcome. In two of my missives, I said, “Look for a Trump upset tomorrow”; the other two said, “I think the pollsters are all wrong. Predicting a Trump victory.”

What did I see that others didn’t? Over a year ago, I said neither Jeb Bush nor Hillary Clinton would get elected. Why? Voter fatigue—we’ve had it with the two families. Jeb got .2 percent of the primary vote and Hillary is still in disbelief.

In early 2016, I commented on Trump’s strengths. My first article appeared on February 10, “Elites Don’t Get Trump’s Appeal”; it drew a favorable response from Trump. My next piece, published on April 22, read, “Trump Taps Into Mass Distrust.” On June 2, I wrote, “Trump is a Man of the People.” The titles convey my central point: Trump resonates with angry voters, most of whom have been treated like dirt by the establishment.

The eggheads got it wrong from the get-go, beginning with the primaries. To wit: If Hillary Clinton couldn’t win in Michigan and Wisconsin, she was in deep trouble come November. Moreover, I reasoned, many of those same Democrats who voted against Clinton in the primaries were poised to do so a second time. They did.

If the eggheads weren’t so drunk on polls, they would have asked themselves over the summer why all the polls on the Brexit vote were wrong. Similarly, they would have questioned why the polls on the peace deal championed by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos were all wrong; his side was slated to win by a margin of better than 2-1.

Another factor that should have meant something to the eggheads was the survey this fall that showed that 75 percent of the public said the media are biased against Trump. If they can’t understand what that means, they should retire.

Among those who blew it was University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato: “Sabato’s Final Call: Hillary Wins Big, 50-50 Senate.” Here’s another keeper: “Emerson College Polling Predicts Massive Electoral Win for Clinton.” Reuters told us, “Clinton Has a 90 Percent Chance of Winning.” Huffington Post was even dumber, claiming, “98% Chance of a Clinton Win.” The same website also ran a piece by an Ivy professor titled, “Yes, Folks, It’s President Hillary.”

If these sages were lawyers, they would be disbarred for incompetence.

On election day, a poll produced for ABC told us that early voting heavily favored Clinton, 51-43 percent. Slate, the left-wing website, boasted that it teamed with a novel pollster to offer brand new insights on voter behavior, rendering accurate projections in real time. It was another monumental failure.

One might have thought that the folks at Politico would have connected the dots on election day when it reported that those who had already voted said that more than anything else, they wanted “strong leadership.” Yet it posted a picture of Trump saying it would take a “miracle” for him to win. Has anyone ever credited Hillary with “strong leadership”?

One egghead who at least admitted he lives in an intellectual ghetto is David Brooks of the New York Times. He confessed in April that he had spent “large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata—in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own.”

I wrote to him commending him for his honesty, offering a tonic. “Now you need to visit a working-class pub and meet real people—their anger explains their draw to Trump.” Alas, there is no evidence that he ever left his carrel in the library.

Politico has two stories today saying how the Anthony Weiner Wikileaks story really hurt Hillary. Her camp is blaming Comey. They should instead blame her for using her private server. Had she not done so, the FBI wouldn’t have seized the computer owned by Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin.

It was the NYPD that alerted the FBI—it was looking for child porn on Weiner’s laptop—and it was me who filed a formal complaint against Weiner for suspected child sexual abuse. I suspect the eggheads would call that karma. Cheers!

Bill Donohue comments on last night’s Comedy Central show, “Tosh.O”:

“Tosh.O” is one of the many vehicles Comedy Central uses to mock Catholicism, and host Daniel Tosh delivered again last night.

He used a woman calling herself “Empress Gail” to spout a vile routine about Jesuits, one that descended into disgusting references to bodily fluids, human excrement, and grotesque sexual practices. She topped it off with a reference to the animated cartoon mouse Angelina Ballerina as “the new antichrist” who “actually just went and raped Pope Francis.”

Only a sick mind would find this funny, but then again humor is clearly not the point. The point is to offend Catholics. As they proved last night, Tosh and Comedy Central are obviously willing to go as deep into the gutter as they can.

Contact Jeremy Zweig, Vice President, Corporate Communications at Viacom: jeremy@viacom.com

Bill Donohue comments on the ABC-TV show, “The Real O’Neals”:

This sorry show, based on the life of a sexually challenged, raging anti-Catholic bigot, Dan Savage, is on its last legs.

As I said last week, the show is “off to a bad start.” I noted that it was “lagging behind its competition on the other networks, and losing viewership from ABC’s preceding program.”

It is now being reported that ABC has ordered only three additional episodes, a sure sign it is floundering. If the show weren’t in trouble, it would air 22 times; as it stands now, there are only 16 scheduled.

ABC has 19 scripted shows this season, and the “O’Neals” is 6th from the bottom. Moreover, it is doing much worse than last season—it is the lowest of any ABC comedy on Tuesday.

As one media site said, its ratings last season were so anemic that it “could have been cancelled last May.” Another media outlet put it this way: “The Real O’Neals was renewed despite pretty thin ratings last season, as ABC took a chance on a marginally rated show it owned, presumably hoping it would build on its first season.”

So why wasn’t it cancelled last May? It wasn’t because ABC took a chance on it rebounding. No, the decision not to cancel was based on politics: ABC did not want to appear giving in to pressure from organizations such as the Catholic League. We not only pounded the “O’Neals” for its bigoted-themed script, we took out an op-ed page ad in the New York Times denouncing it.

We knew that being so public in our condemnation was risky: it was sure to be met with resistance by the corporate boys and girls at ABC. But it was still worth a shot. Besides, we are used to taking the long view, betting that if its rating did not spike in a new season, it was done.

Now that the end is near, we are salivating at the bit. Shamelessly.

Tell the ABC chief that we are not going away: ben.sherwood@abc.com

Bill Donohue comments on remarks made by President Barack Obama in his interview with Bill Maher that were cut from Maher’s Nov. 4 show:

Not all of the comments made by President Obama in his interview with Bill Maher were aired on Maher’s HBO show. Fortunately, the ones that were cut are available on You Tube. Here are some statements made by Obama that were not aired:

“I think we should foster a culture in which people’s private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected and that’s the kind of culture that I think allows all of us to believe in what we want. That’s freedom of conscience. It’s what the Constitution guarantees and where we get into problems typically is when our personal religious faith or the community of faith that we participate in tips the fundamentalist extremism in which it’s not enough for us to believe what we believe but we start feeling obligated to hit you over the head because you don’t believe the same thing or to treat you as somebody who’s less than I am.”

This is remarkable for several reasons. The man Obama is talking to is a raging anti-Catholic bigot; he has relentlessly used his show to portray all priests as predators. Maher obviously does not respect people of faith, especially Catholics, yet Obama speaks to him as if he were a Boy Scout. This demonstrates how utterly vacuous his comments are.

Obama’s embrace of conscience rights is also phony. In 2009, he told the graduating class at the University of Notre Dame that when considering healthcare policies, we need to “honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause.” If he had made good on his pledge, the Little Sisters of the Poor wouldn’t have been forced to sue him.

When Obama talks about “fundamentalist extremism,” he only notes religious extremists (even then he is careful when speaking about radical Islamists), never acknowledging the role that secular fundamentalists have played. Who does he think was responsible for the totalitarian carnage of the 20th century? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were not animated by religious extremism—they committed genocide in the name of atheism.

The biggest mistake Obama made was giving legitimacy to a hater. That he did so speaks volumes about his alleged sensitivity to bashing people of faith.

Bill Donohue comments on Hillary Clinton’s speech at an African American church in Philadelphia yesterday:

Hillary Clinton took her campaign to Mount Airy Church of God in Christ yesterday afternoon. According to one report, “she urged parishioners of a black church in Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane neighborhood to choose ‘hope over fear’ and vote to send her to the White House.” Another story described how she stood “at a wooden lectern in the center of a purple-carpeted altar,” making her pitch to the faithful.

There has been no complaint from the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Atheists, or any of the secular humanist organizations. The Philadelphia media, including the Inquirer, have said nothing. Yet some Catholic bishops have been roundly criticized for merely advising parishioners to consider the right to be born as the preeminent right when casting their vote.

If keeping church and state separate is important, and it is, then those who egregiously cross the line—on either side—should be sanctioned for doing so. But when it comes to turning a black church into a campaign stop for Democratic candidates, the liberal establishment goes mute.

What’s driving the silence is obvious: white racism and political partisanship. So much for fidelity to the First Amendment.

Bill Donohue comments on news stories linking Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, to Satanism:

There is no evidence that John Podesta ever participated in, or was a devotee of, Satanism. But that doesn’t close this issue entirely.

Here are some of the more hysterical headlines:

• “John Podesta’s Ties to Dark Satanic Cult”
• “John Podesta and the Dems Are into Sex Cults and Satanic Rituals”
• “John Podesta Attended Satanic ‘Spirit Ritual'”
• “Podesta Takes Part in Satanic Rituals”
• “Podesta Participates in Bizarre Satanic Performance”
• “Clinton Campaign Chief Participated in Occult Magic”

None of this is true. What we know from the latest batch of Wikileaks emails is that Podesta’s brother, Tony, was sent the following email by Marina Abramovic on June 28, 2015: “I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is joining?”

What is “Spirit Cooking” and who is this woman? There is no generally accepted definition of “Spirit Cooking”; it appears to be part of Abramovic’s own lexicon used to describe her cooking.

Abramovic’s idea of “Spirit Cooking” involves such concoctions as the “Essence Drink.” It involves mixing “fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk.” Another one of her signature recipes includes “fresh morning urine.”

There is no doubt that Abramovic is fascinated by kinky sex, the scatological, violence, and masochism. She is a performance artist who seeks to explore the physical and mental limitations of the body. Among her stunts are the following:

• Leaping across flames in front of an audience
• Losing consciousness while performing
• Taking drugs for catatonia and schizophrenia while performing, leading to violent behavior
• Inviting the audience to use whips, scissors, a scalpel, and a loaded gun any way they want
• Beckoning the audience to “manipulate her body”
• Stripping naked and “devaluing into an image” as “the Madonna, mother, and whore”

So it can safely be said that Abramovic, who was beaten by her mother, has her share of problems. But is John Podesta associated with any of this?

There are other emails that were released today that show a friendly relationship between the two of them. Did he go to the “Spirit Cooking dinner”? We don’t know. But it is also wrong to say, as some are now saying, that “this dinner had absolutely nothing to do with devil worship.” There is no evidence to support that statement either.

What we know is that Podesta, who just recently was described by the International Business Times as a “practicing Catholic,” runs in some unseemly circles. Personally, I never met a “practicing Catholic” who associates with occult gurus such as Abramovic.

With regards to the Clinton team, the number-one issue for the Catholic League is the lack of media interest in Jordan Weiner, son of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin. The complaint that I filed with the authorities in New York led the NYPD to scour the computer owned by Weiner and Abedin, the result being that the FBI was notified of emails related to Hillary Clinton and her private server. That is a huge development, but it is separate from the well being of Jordan Weiner.

Bill Donohue comments on “The Real O’Neals” poor ratings:

Four episodes into its second season, Disney/ABC’s “The Real O’Neals” continues its dismal performance in the ratings.

Tuesday night’s audience of 2.78 million was its lowest yet for the new season. Each week it has lagged behind the ratings of its competing shows on CBS and NBC. More significantly, it is losing an average of close to one million viewers per week from “Fresh Off the Boat,” the show that immediately precedes it on ABC.

This is the same ratings pattern that afflicted “O’Neals” in its first season: lagging behind its competition on the other networks, and losing viewership from ABC’s preceding program.

Perhaps its ratings aren’t improving because its scripts aren’t improving, as Tuesday night’s episode demonstrated. It featured a bumbling, confused priest who had married the parents years earlier even though he had “never seen two young people so not in love.” He then gave them terrible counseling when their marriage was in trouble, and reacts to news of their divorce by shrugging, “Oh well. I tried.” But all ends happily, with a family “divorce ceremony,” mom in her wedding dress and son Kenny presiding, bible in hand.

Is it any wonder that this show—inspired by anti-Catholic bigot Dan Savage—cannot gain any traction in the ratings? Its juvenile humor and shallow mockery of Catholicism are not working.

Contact Disney-ABC chief: ben.sherwood@abc.com