President Barack Obama's comedic Achilles' heel has been an open secret for nearly eight years.
It took that long for one satirist to target it. Obama's ego became inescapable.
Someone finally noticed this week. Was it Trevor Noah, Bill Maher or the team at Saturday Night Live? Surely HBO’s John Oliver found it first, right? We’re told he’s brilliant by a fawning press. Turns out it was Joe Dirt himself, SNL alum David Spade, who made the call.
NewsBusters has been revealing the winners and top runners-up for each category in the MRC’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “Ku Klux Con Job Award,” for smearing conservatives with phony racism charges. Winning this category: Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, who on April 8 let loose a litany of complaints about the modern-day GOP, and claimed they were “really the party of Jefferson Davis.”
Did you hear the story about the conservative city councilman who was so incensed at his private-citizen critics that he or she published their names and addresses and accused them of racism in the process?
Of course you didn't. If it happened, press coverage of "right-wing intimidation" would be everywhere. Instead, "doxing," the term given to such exposures, is a technique predominantly practiced by hardened leftists and even occasionally by their politicians, more often than not with little in the way of media or other repercussions. One such person who appears to be skating virtually scot-free is Minneapolis City Council member Alondra Cano.
The focus of NBC’s “Shots and Salsa” episode of the big-box-store comedy Superstore was racism. According to Amy (America Ferrera), the request from her boss, Glenn to pass out salsa samples is racist because she is a Latina. She refuses and the boss goes to another Latina, Carmen, who is willing to do the task.
What do you do if you are a liberal governor trying to present the public image of a concerned environmentalist and then get caught red handed using state employees to find oil on your personal property? Why you have Adam Nagourney of the New York Times perform spin control to paint a picture of yourself as a rugged outdoorsy type surviving as a nature boy on that very same land you wanted to exploit for an accursed fossil fuel. First we find Jerry Brown with his hand caught in the petroleum cookie jar as reported by Breitbart on November 5 followed by the nature boy spin control just now provided by the New York Times.
After serving as the virtual mouthpiece for the "there is no crisis!" crowd for at least a decade since George W. Bush's attempt to partially privatize Social Security in 2005, someone at the New York Times has finally recognized that there is one — but still won't level with readers about the system's true condition.
Eduardo Porter "writes the Economic Scene column" for the Times. Before that, "he was a member of the Times editorial board, where he wrote about business, economics, and a mix of other matters." As such, he may well have been the author of some of the Old Gray Lady's opinion pieces opposing any kind of meaningful reform of out-of-control entitlement programs while its reporters gave favorable treatment to demagogues like Harry Reid.
In his new documentary, Where to Invade Next, Michael Moore jaunts around Europe showcasing what he deems enlightened social and economic policies, including Italy’s lengthy paid vacations, Norway’s treatment of prison inmates, and France’s school-lunch program. New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden observed that Moore’s “examples…are cherry-picked to make American audiences feel envious and guilty.”
On Monday, Salon ran an interview with Moore in which he talked about the movie as well as the U.S. presidential campaign. One of his comments: "I also think it’s a little gauche for Americans to point out to anybody in the world what their problems are at this point…I think we need a little time in the timeout room, you know what I’m saying? A little chill-down from running around the world: ‘You need democracy! Now you need democracy!’”
Just like the old saying goes: “If you can’t beat em,’ then take lame, snarky shots at them on Twitter.”
Since the Democratic Party tries to win national elections by cobbling together a coalition of minorities (including union members, feminists and climate change fanatics), it came as no surprise when Hillary Clinton's campaign staff attempted to reach out to blacks by combining their logo with elements from the Kwanzaa celebration.
The result was the usual capital “H” with an arrow in the middle – ironically pointing right -- with the seven candles representing the Nguzo Saba, or principles, of Kwanzaa.
Unfortunately for Clinton, this effort to show a bit of cultural competency has backfired.
According to NewsBusters' own Blonde Gator, Hillary Clinton has, in the 8-1/2 months since she declared her candidacy, committed 51 gaffes and goofs. That's an average rate of six per month. Imagine how many there would be if Mrs. Clinton genuinely campaigned among the people instead of among preselected groupies.
One of her latest gaffes, which occurred last week at an elementary school in Iowa, was a humdinger. Predictably, the establishment press almost completely ignored it, while a couple of journalists who noticed the center-right's reaction tried and failed to excuse it.
Reviewing the new drag queen-centered Broadway show Kinky Boots in Monday’s New York Times, critic Ben Brantley chose to dedicate a few paragraphs to the bizarre suggestion that the show should make one think “that maybe all those grumpy guys who populate the Republican debates might be a lot looser if they traded in their navy suits for rainbow-colored ball gowns.”
As I noted in a pre-Christmas post, "The desperation is palpable at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, over how the Christmas shopping season is going."
Desperation has clearly descended into outright deception at the wire service, where an unbylined story claims that spending is up 8 percent, but that the source involved "does not include spending by dollar amounts." As will be shown shortly, this is a clear attempt to make this year's Christmas shopping season look more than twice as good as it was expected to be.
Talk about burying your lede. Yesterday the Washington Post's Matt Schudel penned a 43-paragraph obituary marking the passing of Fernande Grudet, the "Famed proprietor of [a] Parisian brothel" which counted diplomats, European nobility, businessmen, and politicians among its clientele. Schudel waited, however, until paragraph number 20 to disclose that President John F. Kennedy was reputed to have once been a customer.
In 1998, ABC briefly appointed little-known Kevin Newman to succeed Charles Gibson as a co-host of Good Morning America, which lasted about seven months, when Gibson was returned to the show. On Monday’s GMA, Newman starred in a story promoting his new memoir with his gay son Alex, called All Out: A Father and Son Confront the Hard Truths That Made Them Better Men.
ABC reporter Juju Chang noted that the son wrote of “feeling suicidal” despite a “tremendous amount of tolerance” from his parents when he came out as gay. Alex said he had some pieces of evidence that his father “disapproved of the lifestyle,” but then an “evolution” took place, complete with syrupy keyboard music.
So much for believing you were straight.
According to HuffPost Live host Josh Zepps, “almost everyone” has the capacity to be attracted to the same sex at some point in life.
In a segment entitled “QueerView: Year in Review,” Zepps interviewed a lesbian woman, a gay man, HuffPost Live’s bisexual host Alex Berg and a man who is now living as a woman to hear their take on the milestones and issues defining the LGBT rights movement in 2015.