New on December 28: Top media dopes and their wacky words of 2015. The quotes in the MRC’s “The Audacity of Dopes Award for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year,” starting with Vox.com’s Dylan Matthews who denounced the American Revolution as a “mistake” because, among other reasons, it has made government too small. (MRC’s Best of Notable Quotables year-end awards)
You could hear it in her voice. Hosting Meet the Press on Sunday, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was clearly exasperated by Donald Trump daring to warn Hillary Clinton he would raise Bill Clinton’s “penchant for sexism” if he campaigns for her. Mitchell was so annoyed by it that she brought it up during three segments. First, with Bernie Sanders, she let out a loud sigh in highlighting Trump “attacking” Bill Clinton: “Are we going to get into an argument not only of sexism between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton but, eh, Donald Trump attacking Bill Clinton?”
“At the very top of my naughty list” for the year, the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes announced on the Christmas Day edition of FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier, are “the mainstream media.” Hayes cited how “the coverage of President Obama and Hillary Clinton in particular this past year has been abysmal,” pointing to the failure to correct Obama’s “unequivocally wrong” assertions about Guantanamo and how, re Benghazi, “the media basically celebrated the fact she had won a victory over those mean and evil Republicans.”
An amusing video collection as we enter the last shopping day before Christmas: From ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live last week, clips from some of the wackiest product offers in TV ads. Kimmel dubbed it the “As Seen on TV Gift Guide” with the “must-see items of 2015.”
Headline atop the page two “Voices” column in Tuesday's USA Today by Trevor Hughes, the Denver-based correspondent for the newspaper: “How I came to decide to buy a gun.” “After months of soul-searching, I’ve decided to buy a handgun,” Hughes began, later making an obvious point so many journalists would prefer to avoid: “You don’t see terror attacks in this country on areas where there’s lots of armed men and women. Instead, it’s those soft targets that get hit.”
Seemingly unable to tell the difference between a man who affirmatively asserted racist assumptions about the physical abilities of a whole race and a man doing his job by pressing lawyers about a contention in a brief, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd smeared Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: “I couldn’t help but think of Al Campanis on Nightline.” Ted Koppel, a panelist on Sunday’s show who interviewed Campanis on ABC’s Nightline back in April of 1987, agreed: “You know, it’s funny. I was thinking of Al Campanis too.”
Demonstrating there’s no space between liberal politicians and major media figures – once they feel free in retirement to express their true views which guided their news judgments during their careers – long-time ABC News correspondent and anchor Charlie Gibson on Wednesday afternoon dismissed the relevance of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails or Benghazi: “I don’t think there’s anything to Benghazi and I don’t think there’s anything to the e-mails.”
Previewing last Monday’s episode of FX’s Fargo, set in 1979, I highlighted a promotional clip in which a man declared “I’m not shaking” Ronald Reagan’s hand because Reagan “made a movie with a monkey. It wouldn’t be dignified.” In fact, the November 9 episode presented Reagan as a charismatic figure whose “shining city on a hill” speech, at a campaign stop in Minnesota, moved the man to tears. And, when Reagan later approached the man, he eagerly shook Reagan’s hand.
A promo run at the end of last week’s Fargo, to plug tonight’s (Nov. 9) new episode on FX, showed Ronald Reagan, in 1979, shaking hands at a campaign stop as a character out of his earshot declared: “I’m not shaking his hand.” Asked why not, the man explained: “Because the man made a movie with a monkey. It wouldn’t be dignified.”
Another Hollywood liberal infatuated by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Actress Jill Hennessy, best-known for starring roles in NBC’s Law & Order and Crossing Jordan, hailed Hillary Clinton: “I just think she has accomplished more than most people accomplish in about five lifetimes.” But she was quick to also trumpet Bernie Sanders: “I find him really inspiring. I think he’s tremendous.”
Comedian Amy Schumer got a surprise during Saturday Night Live when the Manhattan audience didn’t display much enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton. In her monologue, she set up a series of jokes by relaying how “I just met Hillary – yeah, I was pretty psyched about that.” After a smattering of applause, she noted her disappointment with the audience: “A little discouraging, the amount of applause.”
On the Monday night debut, with a new host, of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, Trevor Noah didn’t display previous host Jon Stewart’s obsession with the Fox News Channel, but he did continue Stewart’s liberal politics. Noah, who promised at the top of the show that he would “continue the war on bullshit,” soon delivered a line favorably comparing socialist Bernie Sanders with the Pope before offering very unoriginal ridicule of “radical conservatives” over the departure of House Speaker John Boehner.
Proving he’s a liberal first and a comedian second, Stephen Colbert, who had a very friendly session last Friday with socialist Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, was more hostile on Monday night to the political positions of Republican presidential contender Senator Ted Cruz, whom he described as “far right.” Colbert pushed him to match Ronald Reagan by agreeing to raise taxes and offer amnesty before challenging him on gay marriage.
NBC’s Jimmy Fallon began his Wednesday night sit-down with Hillary Clinton by contrasting her supposed vast experience with the leading Republicans who, he declared, “have no experience.” Fallon told her “the two leaders over there on the Republican Party, one is a real estate mogul. The other guy is a neurosurgeon.” He then touted her: “You were a Senator, you were First Lady, Secretary of State. Is it possible that you have too much experience to become the President of the United States?”
Three days before CNN’s Republican presidential candidates debate, Jake Tapper, the moderator of it, predicted at least one of those on stage will try to distract from the real issues by attacking him. “I anticipate that at some point somebody is going to take a shot at me as the straw man, as the stand-in for the media writ large,” Tapper forecast Sunday morning from the site of the debate, the Reagan Presidential Museum and Library.
TBS’s Conan commissioned a song on behalf of Rhode Island’s leading candidate for President, Democrat Lincoln Chafee. FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier made a clip of that parody song, “Let’s Get Lincoln Chafee to One Percent!” its end of show kicker this past Monday night where fill-in host Shannon Bream facetiously pleaded: “One percent. You want a man to have a fighting chance.”
At the end of an interview with Vice President Joe Biden centered around the loss of his son, Beau, CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert made clear where his political interests lie as he cited Thomas Jefferson is imploring the liberal Democrat to join the presidential contest. After Biden recalled how his mother told him “everybody’s equal,” Colbert chimed in: “There’s another person who said that and that’s Thomas Jefferson and this is why I think people want you to run for President.”
Stephen Colbert largely kept his liberal politics in check on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS, at least in the Tuesday night debut, not producing the highly political program conservatives feared would emerge after Colbert rid himself of the conservative buffoon act he offered on Comedy Central. Overall, a much sillier and artificial program than David Letterman’s old show.
A Tuesday USA Today preview of the movie Truth, which presumes Dan Rather’s 2004 “Memogate” hit piece against President George W Bash was accurate, conveyed the hostility of actor Robert Redford, who plays Rather, toward Bush. But Redford also undermined the “truth” premise by relaying that “loyalty” was Rather’s main motivation in defending his flawed story.
From Thursday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, an imaginary Trump for President ad – playing off Donald Trump's constant vague promises of delivering all things “great” and “best.”





















