Hugh Hewitt
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Hugh Hewitt (born February 22, 1956) is an American radio talk show host, author, and blogger. He comments on politics and society from a conservative and Evangelical Christian viewpoint.
Hewitt is also a law professor and Executive Editor of Townhall.com. He is a native of Warren, Ohio.
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[edit] Biography
Hewitt graduated from Harvard College cum laude with an A.B. in Government in 1978. He was Order of the Coif at the University of Michigan Law School and received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1983, magna cum laude, then clerked for Judges Roger Robb and George MacKinnon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1983-84.
Hewitt worked in the Reagan White House in several jobs: Special Assistant to Attorneys General William French Smith and Edwin Meese, Assistant Counsel in the White House Counsel's Office, General Counsel for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He finished his career in the Reagan Administration as Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, having been confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate.
Hewitt returned to California to oversee construction of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace as the Library's executive director from groundbreaking through dedication and opening at the request of former President Richard Nixon, for whom he had worked as a ghostwriter between college and law school in San Clemente, California, and New York City. In 1990 Hewitt sparked controversy by proposing screening of researchers wishing to use the library resources — for example, Hewitt suggested refusing admission to Bob Woodward because he was "not a responsible journalist" — but was overruled by Nixon himself.[1]
When he left the library to practice law, Hewitt also began a weekend radio talk show for Los Angeles radio station KFI, where he broadcast from late 1990 to 1995. In the spring of 1992 he began co-hosting Los Angeles PBS member station KCET's nightly news and public affairs program Life & Times, and remained with the program until the fall of 2001, when he began broadcasting his radio show in the afternoons. Hewitt received three Emmys for his work on Life & Times on KCET, and also conceived and hosted the 1996 PBS series Searching for God in America.
Hewitt is also became a Professor of Law at Chapman University School of Law during that time. He currently teaches constitutional law.[2]
Hewitt is a weekly columnist for The Daily Standard (the online edition of the Weekly Standard) and World. He also occasionally appears as a political/social commentator on programs such as The Dennis Miller Show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Larry King Live, The O'Reilly Factor and The Today Show. On 24 April 2006, Hewitt appeared as a guest on The Colbert Report.
Hewitt became Executive Editor of Townhall.com in 2006, when Salem Communications purchased it and re-engineered it from a web magazine into a conservative new-media and activism forum.
Hewitt has been criticized by Andrew Sullivan, who calls him a "Christianist",[3] a term which Hewitt says Sullivan has never properly defined.[4] When Sullivan appeared on Hewitt's radio show to promote his book The Conservative Soul, a lively exchange resulted, during which Hewitt said Sullivan's book was "intellectually a mess".[5]
[edit] Radio: "The Hugh Hewitt Show"
Hewitt's nationally syndicated radio show, The Hugh Hewitt Show, is broadcast from Los Angeles and can be heard from 6pm-9pm eastern time; 3pm-6pm pacific. The show can be heard on 112 stations on weekdays and is syndicated by the Salem Radio Network.
A self-described "Center-Right" opinion machine and "the best in intelligent political talk," The Hugh Hewitt Show covers a wide variety of subject matter. Although Hugh's background is in law, government, and politics, he also covers American cultural trends and frequently delves into the entertainment industry, offering movie reviews with "Emmett" of "theUnblinkingEye.com" every Friday evening. He frequently critiques the mainstream media on air, often invting journalists to defend their work on the show.
The show is unusual in the talk radio world for the amount of time it devotes purely to guest interviews and the comparitively small amount of time given to call-ins. Recent interviews with Mark Halperin of ABC news and British historian Andrew Roberts lasted the entire three hour duration of the show.
His regular contributors include law professors John Eastman of Chapman University School of Law and Erwin Chemerinsky of Duke University Law School (who Hewitt calls "The Smart Guys"), James Lileks, Mark Steyn, Christopher Hitchens, and Congressman David Dreier (R-CA), as well as frequent callers from around the country.
The show is produced by Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson, and engineered by Adam "the Young Man" Youngman, with help from a revolving cast of interns known only by Hewitt's whimsical nicknames (as this is written, "My Servant 'Moses'", "Austin the occasional intern", Beth, Dustin, and "Robbie the Rookie").
[edit] "New Media"
Hewitt is a long-time proponent and promoter of what Hewitt, among an assortment of other conservative pundits, calls the new media - talk radio and blogs - as a means to balance what many conservatives consider to be left-wing bias in the mainstream media.
In early 2006, he wrote an article for The Weekly Standard titled "The Media's Ancien Régime", in which he outlined his belief that the idea of traditional journalism was being eroded by the ease of information facilitated by the internet:
- There is [now] too much expertise, all of it almost instantly available now, for the traditional idea of journalism to last much longer. In the past, almost every bit of information was difficult and expensive to acquire and was therefore mediated by journalists whom readers and viewers were usually in no position to second-guess. Authority has drained from journalism for a reason. Too many of its practitioners have been easily exposed as poseurs.
A recurring theme on Hewitt's show is criticism of the mainstream media for what he considers to be their liberal bias and lack of transparency, and the unwillingness of its members to answer questions about their own political beliefs. As Hewitt sees it, the modern paradigm of reportage, whereby journalists make a claim to objectivity while never answering questions about their own beliefs, allows a deep-seated culture of liberal media bias to be perpetuated. He is fond of pointing out that financial reporters are never allowed to write about companies in which they have an interest, while political reporters routinely refuse to answer questions that might reveal their own political positions and thus allow the reader to adjust for any bias, whether concious or subconcious, that their reporting might contain.
Hewitt will frequently invite members of the mainstream media on to his show and quiz them about their own political beliefs and why they think those beliefs should remain a secret. Eric Black of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Helen Thomas of the White House Press Corps and Mark Halperin of ABC News, among others, have appeared on Hewitt's show and debated with him the question of whether they should be obliged to disclose their political beliefs.
[edit] Books
- 1987: First Principles: A Primer of Ideas for the College-Bound Student (ISBN 0-89526-793-4)
- 1996: Searching for God in America: The Companion Volume to the Acclaimed TV Series (ISBN 0-7881-9914-5)
- 1998: The Embarrassed Believer (ISBN 0-8499-1419-1)
- 2003: In, But Not Of : A Guide to Christian Ambition (ISBN 0-7852-6395-0)
- 2004: If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It (ISBN 0-7852-6319-5)
- 2005: Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World (ISBN 0-7852-8804-X)
- 2006: Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority (ISBN 0-89526-002-6)
- 2006: A Guide to Christian Ambition: Using Career, Politics, and Culture to Influence the World (ISBN 0-7852-8871-6)
- 2007: A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney (ISBN 1-59698-502-X)
[edit] External links
- Hewitt's blog at Townhall.com
- Hewitt's columns at Townhall.com
- Radioblogger.com (Duane Patterson's blog)
- "The Eye on Movies" A Townhall blog about movies by 'Emmett of the Unblinking Eye'
- "Right Hook" a profile of Hewitt by Nicholas Lemann from The New Yorker, 29 August 2005 (Scanned PDF version)
