A new low for ABC News? ABC decided Saturday to bump its daytime soap operas (and, in the MDT/PDT, a re-run of The View -- so that's an upside) to provide live coverage at 1 PM EDT/12 PM CDT/11 AM MDT/10 AM PDT (9 AM for Sarah Palin and, so everyone in the U.S. is covered, that's 7 AM in Hawaii, thus bumping GMA) of Tuesday's memorial service for Michael Jackson at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

It won't be an ABC entertainment division production, but an ABC News broadcast. As reported by TV Newser and announced by David Muir on Saturday's World News, which already had a graphic for “Remembering Michael Jackson” with an image of Jackson standing in for the “I” in Michael, Charles Gibson will anchor.

A night after NBC White House reporter Chuck Todd predicted Sarah Palin will now make fundraising appearances for GOP candidates where she'll draw in “car-wreck watchers,” Todd's colleague, NBC's Mike Viqueira, after relaying how Alaska's Lieutenant Governor “says the decision was vintage Palin,” asserted over video of Ross Perot dancing: “Others describe her performance yesterday as erratic, comparing it to Ross Perot's on-again/off-again presidential run in 1992.” Unlike Palin, Perot did leave and enter the presidential race months before the election date.

Viqueira, Capitol Hill producer for NBC News who regularly appears on MSNBC, earned rare air time on the real network's NBC Nightly News because of the holiday, and proceeded to highlight how “Democrats, meanwhile, are questioning Palin's motives.” So who are these “others”? Viqueira's press corps colleagues? After all, as Rich Noyes reminded us in “Notable Quotables Flashback: Ten Months of Media Scorn for Sarah Palin,” when John McCain named Palin last year Newsweek's Eleanor Clift revealed the media reaction: “It’s been literally laughter...in very, very many newsrooms.”

Picking up on how CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux hailed, as “a bold display of presidential concern,” President Obama hugging a woman at Wednesday's health care forum, Jim Pinkerton, on FNC's Fox Newswatch, pointed out that “in the middle of all of this Stalinesque fakery at this town hall meeting” Malveaux's characterization “is like Stalin putting Ukrainian family victims on his lap during the '30s.” To illustrate, FNC producers displayed a vintage poster showing Stalin hoisting a little child who held up a Soviet flag.

During a discussion on the program aired Saturday afternoon about how all the questions at the town hall with Obama were pre-selected from online postings or came from invited guests, Pinkerton, a Newsday columnist, raised what Malveax said which NewsBusters had recounted: 

In the middle of all of this Stalinesque fakery at this town hall meeting -- when Obama hugged that woman who was a plant, her cancer was real enough, but her being there was a total artifact of planning -- she [Suzanne Malveaux] said, quote, this is a quote “bold display of presidential concern,” end quote. Again, this is like Stalin putting Ukrainian family victims on his lap during the '30s.

Sarah Palin's “bombshell” holiday announcement that she will resign as Governor of Alaska managed to trump Michael Jackson as the lead on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts Friday night as NBC's Chuck Todd predicted she will now make fundraising appearances for GOP candidates where she'll draw in “car-wreck watchers.” CBS reporter Nancy Cordes reflected the tone of the stories when she described “a rambling, at times confusing announcement,” while on all three newscasts Palin's decision was called “bizarre.”

NBC News White House reporter Chuck Todd, who suggested she decided to quit so she could “make a lot of money” on the speaking circuit free of ethics complaint hassles, also predicted she will bring in big crowds at fundraisers for GOP candidates which will also entice those not so impressed by her:

She may spend the next year campaigning for Republicans all across the country. She's probably going to be the person that can attract the largest crowds, some of it is car-wreck watchers -- you know, they just are coming, kind of curiosity-seekers. It doesn't matter. She can attract a lot of people.

Audio: MP3 clip (16 seconds)

The Washington Posts's first ever “chief digital officer” came aboard the newspaper, where he also oversees Newsweek's online efforts, after three years of working diligently to help elect liberals and Democrats to office -- including Barack Obama. A short profile of Vijay Ravindran, in the July issue of Washingtonian magazine, noted that “Democratic strategist and entrepreneur Harold Ickes,” a veteran of the Clinton administration and 1996 re-election campaign, enlisted “Ravindran to build Catalist, a national voter database for Democratic candidates and liberal organizations. From the fall of 2005 through the election of Barack Obama, Ravindran built systems for Catalist.” His title at Catalist: Chief Technology Officer.

Catalist, which dubs itself “The Future of Progressive Organizing,” lists a who's who of left-wing groups and causes on its client list, from ACORN and the AFL-CIO to Wellstone Action, with MoveOn.org, the National Resources Defense Council and Obama for America (the official Obama campaign) alphabetically in between.

In an interview last November with the “Sepia Mutiny” blog about South Asians, Ravindran recounted his political/career odyssey, including how “I feel somewhat embarrassed that I didn't appreciate the Clinton years.”

The unemployment rate in June jumped to 9.5 percent, the highest since 1983, as 467,000 jobs were lost, yet the CBS Evening News managed to air a story that didn't mention President Barack Obama or his “stimulus” bill while the NBC story only touched Obama's policies by running a soundbite of the President defending the lack of positive impact so far from his policies: “It took years for us to get into this mess and it will take us more than a few months to turn it around.” CBS reporter Anthony Mason remarked: “Hopefully it's a one-month blip.”

In contrast, ABC anchor Charles Gibson teased Thursday's World News: “Tonight, job jolt. Unemployment reaches a 26-year high. Where are all those jobs the economic stimulus was supposed to produce?” Setting up ABC's lead (CBS and NBC began with Michael Jackson), Gibson proposed: “The rising unemployment raises questions about the economic stimulus, which was supposed to create jobs.”

Network reporters swooned over President Barack Obama hugging a woman, who has cancer and lacks insurance, at his Wednesday “town hall” on health care, as both CNN -- where Suzanne Malveaux heralded the hug as “a bold display of presidential concern” -- and NBC failed to point out how all the questions (just seven in total) were pre-selected or from members of pro-Obama groups. Instead, NBC's Savannah Guthrie showed a kid in a video (“My mommy and daddy have small businesses, and we need health care”) before she touted how Obama “solicited questions on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and in person, with a hug for a woman who says she cannot pay her medical bills,” while CNN's Ed Henry related “he fielded questions from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and a live audience.”

CBS's Katie Couric showcased “an emotional moment” when “a 53-year-old cancer patient described her battle to get treatment she can afford.” Couric relayed how Obama “called her exhibit A in a system that's too expensive and too complicated,” but at least, unlike NBC and CNN, Couric noted the woman “is a volunteer for Mr. Obama's political operation Organizing for America” and “the White House invited her to attend.”

Filling-in as anchor on CNN's The Situation Room, Suzanne Malveaux painted Obama as a combination of General Patton and Oprah as she set up Henry in the 6 PM EDT hour:

President Obama has a message for some critics. He will get his way. Today he made a bold promise regarding health care reform. And, in a bold display of presidential concern, the President comforted a sick and emotional woman.

“Another case of Sarah Palin derangement syndrome has reared its ugly head,” FNC's Bret Baier announced Tuesday night in citing Todd Purdum's lengthy piece in the August issue of Vanity Fair magazine, “It Came from Wasilla.” Purdum, a New York Times reporter for 23 years until leaving the paper in 2006, is married to ex-Clinton White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers.

In the “Grapevine” segment, Baier recounted how Purdum was appalled by “a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded,” quoted “an anonymous friend of presidential nominee John McCain as referring to Palin as quote, 'little shop of horrors,'” and charged “that on the campaign trail aides quote, 'worried about her mental state: Was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression?'” Plus, “quote: 'No political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than her own ambition.'”

In “Liberal Media and GOP Hacks vs. Palin” on the Weekly Standard's blog, Bill Kristol denounced the “hit piece” from the “lefty” Purdum:

You don't have to be a big Palin fan to recognize the article is full of dubious claims, and is dependent on self-serving stories provided on background by some of the people who ran the McCain campaign into the ground.

In the midst of pretty balanced ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscast stories on the Ricci reverse discrimination case involving New Haven firefighters, who were victorious, one quibble: CBS's Wyatt Andrews framed the ruling as issued by the Supreme Court's “conservative” justices and opposed not by liberals but by “civil rights leaders,” as if the majority of justices who ruled against the racial discrimination were not advancing civil rights.

Andrews announced that “in a close 5 to 4 decision, the court's swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, sided with conservatives,” before he set up a soundbite from a representative of the NAACP: “Civil rights leaders also predicted an era of confusion over when minorities are protected and when they are not.” The NAACP's John Payton declared: “I think it hurts the cause of having a discrimination-free workplace.”

Neither ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg nor NBC's Pete Williams applied a conservative or liberal label.

NPR's Nina Totenberg scolded the more adversarial approach some in the White House press corps took to President Obama during Tuesday's press conference, but on Inside Washington this weekend columnist Charles Krauthammer rejected the notion the media's honeymoon is “over,” as he cracked: 

The hot sex is over, they're in the cigarette stage right now. You get a question or two that's slightly obstreperous, but the adulatory coverage is still all wall-to-wall.

That's a comedic improvement over what he offered Tuesday night on FNC when he suggested “it looked as if the stupor that the press has been in for the last six months is lifting slightly,” before he quipped: “I say that as a psychiatrist who has a lot of experience in watching these things.”

Film producer/director Oliver Stone, a far-left promoter of conspiracies who is working on a sequel to his 1987 'Wall Street' movie, declared on Friday night's edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher that “Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch” and “I really think George W is dumber” and so, after producing movies on the CIA conspiracy to murder President Kennedy and a dark look at President Nixon, he won't create a movie on Ronald Reagan because “by doing the W movie I kind of put all my efforts behind dumbness.”

Stone, who earlier in the pre-taped show made up of three one-on-one interviews Maher conducted (other two were with Cameron Diaz and Billy Bob Thornton) characterized President Obama as no better than Bush (“a sneak Bush administration with different words”), also asserted: “I do think Nixon is the father of Reagan and I think Reagan's the father of Bush. There's sort of a very strong line.” Whatever that means.

Audio: MP3 clip (55 secs, 340 Kb)

Noteworthy from Friday night's broadcast network evening newscasts which, a day after his death, spent 95 percent of their air time on Michael Jackson -- all but 1:03 of ABC's approximate 22 minutes was devoted to Jackson, all but 34 seconds of CBS and all but 1:22 of NBC, for 2:59, less than three minutes in total for all news beyond Jackson:

♦ Only ABC's World News reported how Monica Conyers, a Detroit city councilwoman married to powerful U.S. House Democrat John Conyers, pled guilty to accepting bribes. But anchor Charles Gibson, who on Wednesday night made sure to identify Mark Sanford as “a rising star in the Republican Party,” failed to name the party affiliation for either Monica Conyers or John Conyers, and neither did any on-screen graphic. Speaking of Detroit, last year, when Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with felonies, Gibson (as well as the CBS and NBC anchors) didn't consider Kilpatrick's party worth mentioning.

♦ ABC also uniquely found a little time, a mere 20 seconds, to mention House action on President Obama's “cap and trade” bill. As noted by the MRC's Business and Media Institute, for months the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts have barely covered the bill “that would cost each family $1,241 a year.” CBS and NBC kept up the near-blackout again Friday night. Gibson outlined how “the bill would impose limits pollution from power plants and factories and force a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” but also noted: “Critics charge it will drive up energy costs for consumers.”

“President Obama's response to the government crackdown has been criticized by some Republicans as timid,” Katie Couric noted on Wednesday's CBS Evening News as she featured a retort: “Today, in an exclusive interview with CBS News, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair came to his defense saying he believes the protestors understand the tough position the President is in.”

Following a single soundbite from Blair, Couric plugged more on the Web: “For more of my extended conversation with Tony Blair, you can go to our Web site at CBSNews.com.”

Hours before ABC's Wednesday prime time special with President Obama from the White House, Questions for the President: Prescription for America, a World News piece conveyed the public's doubts that Obama will achieve his goals, but also endorsed Obama's premise that something must be done as reporter David Wright focused on concern over rising costs and a family without insurance before concluding: “Expectations are low, but the need is obvious.”

From Lynchburg, Virginia, Wright reported how “some folks here clearly have their doubts President Obama is going to be able to fix the health care system” as “some worry about big government programs, others that they'll pay higher taxes in the end.” But, he stressed, “Democrats and Republicans alike here told us they hope he can fix it because something needs to be done. Kimberly Gambiladi (sp?) is a stay at home mom. Her husband got laid off two months ago. Now the whole family has no insurance.”

Wright moved on to “a civil engineering firm with 85 employees” where “business has dropped off during the recession. But health premiums haven't.” After the stay at home mom with no insurance  admitted “I don't have the answer. Hopefully, somebody will,” Wright delivered his closing line: “Expectations are low, but the need is obvious.”

In the wake of the revelations about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, considered a potential 2012 GOP presidential contender, Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart declared on MSNBC: “Maybe what the Republican Party is going to have to do is skip a generation and wait for the Meghan McCains to come of age so that they can run for office and take over the mantle of the party.” Capehart proceeded to pass along “a little joke” from Post colleague Charles Lane who “said at the rate Republicans are going, the only marriages that will be worth anything are the gay folks getting married in Vermont.”

At about 3:13 PM EDT, anchor Tamron Hall prompted Capehart's comments as she raised the name of the liberal younger McCain in forwarding the view the party must move left: “We've seen a lot of young Republicans, Meghan McCain and some others who've come out and said listen, this party has to modernize. They can no longer turn their backs on gays and tout family values as the way in.”

HBO's Real Sports promised a look at an “inspirational therapeutic program” in which wounded warriors are able to go diving in the “pristine” coral reefs off of the Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba, but Bryant Gumbel and correspondent Jon Frankel couldn't resist piling on left-wing cliches about “one of the most controversial places on Earth,” “the most infamous military base in the world” where “the heat here, this month, will reach a hundred degrees, [and] the glare of world criticism is even hotter” since “Gitmo is notorious for the detention camps put here after 9/11.”

Frankel, a veteran of CBS, ABC and NBC, wasn't done as he explained the detention camps were “put here by the Bush administration on the notion that this place is not America after all and thus not under the purview of U.S. law. The result: Hostile detainees on the inside and international anger from without.”

CBS, of all news outlets, is setting a high standard for ABC to meet Wednesday in its broadcasts from the White House. On Tuesday night, just a week after a “Reality Check” on how President Obama's claim that his government-expansion health care plan won't hike the deficit doesn't match reality, the CBS Evening News aired a story on how his plan would likely force many to lose their current health insurance and/or doctor.

Katie Couric noted “72 percent of Americans say they favor a government plan that would compete with private insurers,” but “at the same time, nearly two-thirds are concerned that would reduce the quality of their own health care. And some experts believe they're right to be worried.”

Sharyl Attkisson featured the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon, who explained: “Employer premiums will go up and employers might respond by dropping coverage entirely. So if you're one of those unfortunate workers, then it will be a government policy that ousted you from your health plan.” Attkisson added: “And if you do choose a public plan, you may want to keep your favorite doctors, but they may not want to keep you. Under government health care, they could be paid 20 to 30 percent less.” Attkisson pointed out how “Obama also scoffed at claims that a public plan would put private insurers out of business,” but she countered: “The answer, say critics, is that the government has many tools to get an unfair advantage and undercut private companies.”

Columnist Charles Krauthammer noted on FNC's Special Report that while “there wasn't exactly aggressiveness on the part of the press with a couple of exceptions” during the afternoon presidential press conference, “it looked as if the stupor that the press has been in for the last six months is lifting slightly.” Krauthammer quipped: “I say that as a psychiatrist who has a lot of experience in watching these things.”

Earlier in the program, Brit Hume declared “the head over heals phase of the honeymoon with the press is over” and he speculated: “I think the reporters down there were tired of being criticized for being soft on Obama.”

“She fell for his worldly sophistication” while he “admired her work helping ordinary people,” gushed a front page Friday New York Times story on Gwendolyn and Kendall Myers, both charged with spying for communist Cuba for nearly 30 years. Deciding “to give the second half of their lives new meaning,” the couple found themselves “disillusioned with the pace of change in Washington” so they once moved to South Dakota, Times reporter Ginger Thompson charmingly related, where “they marched for legalized abortion, promoted solar energy, and repaired relations with six children from previous marriages.” How loveable. (Screen shot is from MSNBC on Friday highlighting the article.)

The Times story arrived 12 days after a front page Washington Post piece, “A Slow Burn Becomes a Raging Fire: Disdain for U.S. Policies May Have Led to Alleged Spying for Cuba,” in which reporters Mary Beth Sheridan and Del Quentin Wilber managed, though the couple's betrayal of their country (and the people of Cuba) started during the Carter administration, to include a shot at former President George W. Bush as the cap to a lead paragraph of, in the Weekly Standard's assessment, “Updikean brushstrokes.” To wit:

He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. “We were all appalled by the Bush years,” one said.

ABC's This Week roundtable took up the media's favoritism toward President Obama. George Stephanopoulos marveled at “how obsessed the President and White House are with Fox News,” prompting George Will to observe that's because “it's the discordant note in an otherwise harmonious chorus.” New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, however, cautioned “don't confuse attention with love” as he maintained of Obama's coverage: “I don't think...it's been unskeptical or uncritical.” Indeed, Keller insisted, “he's getting examined pretty microscopically.”

Sam Donaldson cracked up the panel with a back-handed slap at the White House press corps. Asked how they are doing, Donaldson proposed before being drowned out by guffaws led by Stephanopoulos: “I think it's doing okay. I mean, they're going to come to life as the public gets more skeptical-”
 
(Fox News Sunday also had a segment on the media's love affair with Obama. Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard saw “a clear ideological affinity for Barack Obama and his programs” as well as “a huge do-something bias” for government action to solve perceived problems. NPR's Mara Liasson predicted: “I think the honeymoon is probably going to wind down sometime this fall.”)

The media are so far into the tank for President Obama that even the fairly liberal Juan Williams decried:

We are going towards a weekend of high tide for kowtowing to the Obama administration. He's all over CBS this weekend and then he's going to be all over ABC. I don't know what's going on with big media in this country.

The brief assessment from Williams, a news analyst for NPR and former Washington Post reporter, came in response to Chris Wallace's request for ten-second “lightning round” offerings at the end of Friday's Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC.

Sticking up for European socialism, Friday night on HBO's Real Time, BBC America's Katty Kay contended the “idea of demonizing” a “public option” for U.S. health care “as some sort of step toward socialism -- it just seems to me so out of touch with reality.” That's because “in Britain we have a purely public plan and even the Conservative Party calls it one of our great national treasures,” while other European nations “that have some sort of a public plan actually, you know what, they seem to like it” since “it seems to actually work pretty well and no one wants to get rid of it.”

The fact Britain's Conservative Party doesn't oppose that nation's nationalized health system says more about how far the party is to the left than anything about the benefits of the system.

Friday's World News carried a 15-second promo, the first I've seen, for Wednesday night's controversial prime time special, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America.” Over video of President Barack Obama, ABC exulted in how “Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer take you inside his house” for “a television event” where “President Obama answers all of your tough questions about your health care.”

(Below the jump: Look at how ABC News has incorporated Obama's image into their graphic plugging the June 24 special.)

Script of the narration:

What's more important than having good health care when you need it? Nothing. That's why Wednesday at 10 on ABC Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer take you inside his house: The White House, for a television event as President Obama answers all of your tough questions about your health care.

Centering its story around a man unable to get “affordable” health insurance after a battle with cancer, Thursday's NBC Nightly News devoted its “In-Depth” segment to the “public option,” what anchor Brian Williams innocuously described as “a government insurance program similar to Medicare, but available to those under 65.” NBC didn't mention conservative concern such a program would become a “slippery slope” toward a single-payer system since the government could under-price private insurers.

Reporter Robert Bazell focused on Chuck Bille, who “at 61 loves the outdoors and feels healthy, but Bille had leukemia that is now in remission. And recently, he was laid off from his job that had provided health insurance.” Bazell contended “covering people like Bille who can't get affordable insurance is one of the most contentious issues in health reform,” so “some want a new government program, similar to Medicare, as an option for those who can't get or don't want employer-based insurance.” A university professor then enthused: “It could offer much broader coverage, more benefits, more services, deeper coverage, thereby allowing people a choice of a product that actually is tailored to their needs.”

“The honeymoon is coming to an end for President Obama,” NBC's Chuck Todd fretted Wednesday night in summarizing a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. “But,” Todd rebounded, “it's not personal. It's professional as now the public appears to be judging the President on some of his actions.” Citing “growing concern about the budget deficit and some of this government interaction into the economy on things like GM,” Todd empathized with how “Obama is now dealing with a public that is judging him more and more for the actions he's taking, and not just the promises he's made.” Underpinning that theme, NBC put “Down to Business” on screen over video of Obama walking.

Todd declared “a solid majority – 56 percent – approve of the job the President's doing,” though “that's down five points from a month ago.” Nonetheless, Todd assured NBC Nightly News viewers, “the President still is personally well-liked,” but he now must deal with how people “have raised their expectations.” As for “how much the President is taking on, the public clearly approves. 60 percent believe his focus should be on a whole range of issues at once.”

Reality catches up with CBS News which on Tuesday night ran a “Reality Check” story on how a new CBO report shows President Obama's claim that his government-expansion health care plan won't hike the deficit doesn't match reality. So, will ABC News display similar skepticism when it broadcasts GMA and World News from the White House next Wednesday, culminating in a prime time hour, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America”? (ABC's Jake Tapper on Monday night briefly cited the CBO report, but ABC and NBC were silent on Tuesday evening.)

Fill-in CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor announced “there are growing concerns that President Obama lacks a realistic plan to pay for this sweeping reform.” Reporter Wyatt Andrews related “how the nation really pays for health reform just got a shocking wake-up call. The Congressional Budget Office, CBO, said Senator Ted Kennedy's health care proposal could cost one trillion dollars over ten years, and 36 million Americans would still be uninsured.” Andrews proceeded to note how Obama “claims he can achieve reform without raising the deficit,” but, he asserted, “the fact is, this means raising taxes.” Andrews also pointed out that Obama's “more than $600 billion worth of spending cuts” to Medicare and other programs don't comport with inevitable resistance from hospitals.  

Online, the CBSNews.com headline over the Andrews story presumes Obama's plan is necessary: “How Will We Pay For The Health Care Plan?”

FNC's Catherine Herridge traveled to Bermuda to meet the four Chinese Muslim Uighurs just released from Guantanamo Bay and she elicited from them that living in China is worse than life at Guantanamo. Talking to them through an interpreter at their new home, a pink bungalow with a swimming pool, Herridge reported how she “asked which was worse: Life at Gitmo versus China?” The interpreter relayed, over the voices of all of the men talking: “Of course it's China. There's no guarantee for human rights there.”
            
So, there's a new angle for the media: Guantanamo as a bastion of human rights protections. Not really much of a surprise in contrast to China, but it took a FNC reporter to frame the comparison between a U.S. military-run detention center and a communist nation.

President Barack Obama created “a very tender moment,” as he addressed the American Medical Association in Chicago, and “was right on target at reaching out to the heart of most physicians” ABC's Dr. Tim Johnson beamed on Monday's World News in reaction to fill-in anchor George Stephanopoulos paraphrasing how Obama told the doctors “our health care system should let them be healers, again, instead of bean counters.”

Johnson is a long-time advocate for a major expansion of the government's role in health care. On the March 1 World News, Johnson complained: “We spend more than twice as much per person on health care in this country as the average of all other industrialized countries, yet we’re the only one that doesn’t have universal coverage. That’s a national shame.” A few days later, Johnson participated in Obama’s health care forum, then expressed awe: “I was blown away by President Obama’s grasp of the subject, how he connected the dots, how he answered the questions without any script.” More in the MRC BiasAlert by Rich Noyes, “ABC Picks Universal Health Care Fan for Obama Health Care Special.”  

“David Letterman is making a full-throated apology for his controversial joke about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter,” TV Week reported a short while ago. “During a taping of tonight's [Monday 6/15] edition of his CBS Late Show, Letterman went much further than his last explanation of the joke, in which he quipped that a baseball player had 'knocked up' Palin's daughter,” Josef Adalian wrote.

Though Palin and conservatives were outraged and demanded an apology and retraction for a “joke” seemed aimed at the 14-year-old daughter though Letterman said he was referring to the 18-year-old daughter, it took the liberal columnist Mark Shields on PBS to convince Letterman he had a problem. Letterman will explain (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

With Sarah Palin condemning David Letterman's joke about her daughter, a look back at some of Letterman's previous hostility toward Palin after she emerged as the GOP's VP nominee -- as documented, with video, in previous NewsBusters posts.

Last September, Letterman sarcastically complained that if a President McCain “drops dead...don't you want your President to have had the presence of mind to have chatted to her teenaged kids for five minutes about birth control?” He soon sneered: “They don't sell Trojans in Alaska? Come on.” In October, without recognizing any irony given Barack Obama's inexperience, Letterman wondered if the nation can risk “a beginner in the passenger seat” and, in a sexist cheap shot, imitated Palin adjusting her hair during a 9/11 crisis as he impersonated her voice: “How's my hair?”

On Monday's show, Letterman's monologue included: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning her daughter was knocked-up by Alex Rodriguez.”