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Ben Carson seems to be joining the likes of Michele Bachmann and Howard Dean on the list of presidential candidates who generated a lot of early buzz but became distant also-rans well before a nominee was chosen. According to Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins, Carson’s campaign also offers yet more proof that conservatives tend to be easy marks for scammers.

“The libertarian-conservative ethic of ‘get rich any way you can’ combined with a stubborn dismissal of objective fact makes political conservatism especially ripe for con artistry,” argued Atkins in a Saturday post. “It’s no accident that the tea party has been home to one grifter after another making a quick buck…Fox News itself is a long con perpetrated on fearful, older white Americans with the goal of making Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes rich while keeping Republican politicians in power.”

A time-honored tactic in political TV ads is to use contrasting degrees of photographic exposure, one bright and snappy for your candidate and a darker hue, sometimes even going to old-fashioned black-and-white, for your opponent.

On December 29, at the Washington Post's Wonkblog, Max Ehrenfreund cited a conveniently timed "study" which looked at 2008 ads produced by and on behalf of GOP presidential candidate John McCain, and concluded that the McCain campaign and its supporters, by using such a tactic, were engaging in racism:

In December, major media outlets gushed over Barack and Michelle Obama “opening up like never before about all of their favorite things of 2015" to People magazine. A cynic could say their picks weren’t very shocking – they liked Bruno Mars and Kendrick Lamar, and movies like The Martian and Inside Out. They might have been honest picks....or they could be calculated to say “See? We’re just like you folks.”

People also questioned a pile of presidential candidates, too, but the laughs in her office were all with Hillary’s answers.

The rich are "horrible people" -- at least those who lean to the right -- declares economist turned pompous New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in Friday’s “Privilege, Pathology and Power.” The text box: “Can we survive rule by self-centered billionaires?” (Liberal billionaire activist George Soros had no comment.) Krugman channeled opportunistic moralism, citing “science” to confirm his prejudices that rich people who disagree with him politically are bad, bad folks, though Krugman is no prince of humility and civility himself.

As night fell on Christmas Eve, National Public Radio was in its usual holy-day mode, using your tax dollars to mock the traditional Christian creed. This time they promoted an activist movie called The Danish Girl, yet another alleged “true story” about artist Einar Wegener, a married man who wanted to be a woman named Lili. An earlier NPR commercial – sorry, “underwriting announcement” – said he was the first recipient of “gender confirmation surgery.”

Paging Mr. Orwell – it’s NPR on line 1. Focus Features – part of the Comcast “diversity and inclusion” empire of propaganda – is calling this maiming of the male body “gender confirmation surgery.”

The Wall Street Journal ran a blockbuster story Tuesday afternoon ("U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress") about how the Obama administration's National Security Agency's "targeting of Israeli leaders swept up the content of private conversations with U.S. lawmakers." In other words, the NSA spied on Congress. As talk-show host and commentator Erick Erickson drily observed: "Congress began impeachment proceedings on Richard Nixon for spying on the opposing political party."

Whether or not Congress has the nerve to defend itself and the Constitution's separation of powers, what the Journal reported is objectively a major story. Yet the Associated Press ignored it on Tuesday, and most of Wednesday. Finally, at 7:15 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, the AP ran a story by Erica Werner — about how Republicans are planning to investigate the matter.

On December 22, Kyle Drennen reported  NBC’s Today devoted two full reports to President Obama appearing on Jerry Seinfeld’s web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Once again, Obama plays the part of comedian instead of chief executive, and the networks come running. On December 31 – the day the Seinfeld show was available online – all three networks aired gushy reports.

The longest on Thursday was on CBS This Morning, with Chip Reid reporting from Hawaii with the rest of the “working” White House press corps. It was almost four minutes.