Michael Eric Dyson successfully filled in for Ed Schultz on the June 8 edition of The Ed Show by continuing the tradition of blaming America’s problems on Republicans and ranting about their heartlessness. For this show, Dyson chose to focus his opening monologue on blasting “the party that claims to believe in family values and Christian charity” that also calls for Obama to tighten border security and deport illegal immigrants crossing the border.
Dyson stated that “maybe it's time for people of faith to come forward to show conservatives what true compassion means.” He completed his attack on conservative devotion to religion by asking his liberal viewers to text their answer to his poll question “is compassionate conservatism dead?” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
Media Diversity
Ronan Farrow devoted a significant portion of his July 9 show to attempting to coopt the storied heroism of Raoul Wallenberg to spin the Mexican border crisis. The MSNBC host invited the US Ambassador to Sweden Mark Brzezinski and Swedish Ambassador to the US Bjorn Lyrvall onto Ronan Farrow Daily to discuss the accomplishments of the Swedish humanitarian who saved thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust and the Congressional Gold Medal to be awarded to his surviving half-sister.
After the interview, Farrow turned to his two favorite liberal pundits, Karen Finney – of the canceled Disrupt news show – and Howard Fineman of The Huffington Post for their analysis about how we should take to heart the “lesson of Raoul Wallenberg” not to “turn away these people as they’re being persecuted.” [See video below. Click here for MP3]
Andrea Mitchell devoted three minutes of the July 7 edition of Andrea Mitchell Reports to assist Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards in promoting the abortion-clinic chain’s latest publicity gimmick.
What’s more, instead of inviting a conservative pundit on to rebut the guest or perhaps attempting an unbiased, tough-but-fair interview in the first place, Mitchell tag-teamed with Richards in denouncing the conservative wing of the Court – and logic would dictate, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer as well. [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
Jon Stewart fell back to his partisan comfort zone on the Thursday, June 26 edition of The Daily Show. Despite Tuesday’s brief respite into the realm of poking fun at his own party, the Comedy Central host spent the opening monologue of his show blasting Republicans for being “warfare queens.”
Stewart ended his rant by telling Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to “go f*** yourself.” Classy. [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
Following the death of former Senator Howard Baker on Tuesday, all three major broadcast networks praised the influential former White House Chief of Staff during their June 26 evening newscasts for his ability to compromise with Democrats. Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News even went so far as to describe him as “a Republican so moderate it might make him a Democrat today.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
On the June 27 edition of CBS This Morning, co-host Norah O’Donnell lamented "there’s a lot of people who miss the Howard Bakers of the world. We could use more of them in the Senate for sure."
Only MSNBC’s token failed congressional candidate can make Ronan Farrow seem less partisan. On the June 26 edition of Ronan Farrow Daily, guest host Kystal Ball did everything she could to downplay the latest unanimous Supreme Court decision which corrects executive overreach by President Obama while simultaneously demonizing Republicans.
When Republican strategist John Feehery called the verdict “a significant victory for the legislative branch,” Ball replied that “it's important to remember the context of where this case and this decision came from.” She agreed with Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau that the case “starts and ends with Senate Republican obstructionism” and emphasized that the new filibuster rules mean that as long as “the Democrats are in power in the Senate, this isn't going to have such a large impact on the president directly.”[See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
During MSNBC Live’s coverage on Thursday of the newest circuit and appeal court decisions to overrule bans on same sex marriage in Utah and Indiana, former CBS This Morning correspondent Betty Nguyen gave platform to Democratic strategist and chair of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund Steven Elmendorf and Aisha Moodie-Mills, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. No conservative voices were heard.
Instead, the two guests spent over four minutes discussing how “Republicans are too busy playing politics with people's lives” and are “on this, kind of, brink of not being relevant.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
On the June 24 edition of Hardball With Chris Matthews, the MSNBC anchor invited Adam Brandon of the Tea Party organization FreedomWorks onto the show in an attempt to portray the Tea Party as targeting black voters in the Republican Mississippi primary run-off. Matthews claimed McDaniel’s supporters were citing a “Jim Crow-era law from 1942" to try to stifle votes by African-American voters for Sen. Thad Cochran (R).
Of course the law in question is not racist in construction, but is rather intended to prevent Democrats or Republicans from utilizing crossover strategic voting in another party’s primary. It is obviously unenforceable due to the secrecy of the ballot. However Matthews went out of the way to characterize how the Tea Party is abusing this law as a way to stop Black Democrats from voting, stating that “Mississippi's attorney general” is on edge, and “fears racial profiling...and intimidation tactics might be used to suppress the black vote.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
In the June 24 edition of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, the Comedy Central host spent the first 10 minutes of his show mocking the blatant incompetence of the IRS. Even though Jon Stewart did say Republicans were “d***s” to the IRS commissioner during the hearing, he spent most of the segment making fun of the IRS’s “unacceptable” behavior which “borders on criminal idiocy.”
While Stewart accepted that “computers do crash,” he yelled that it should takes less time than the “gestat(ion) period of a manatee” to find that information out. But according to the liberal comedian, what takes the scandal beyond the realm of “annoying” was that the IRS, “The government agency whose entire business model release on forcing Americans to live as borderline hoarders” only keeps backup tapes for six months. [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart took a break from spouting his left-wing version of the news to interview Bill Maher, HBO’s favorite atheist talk show host. When the host of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart asked Maher if he ever felt he had affected real change in the political world, he replied that the “needle has moved” away from religion and towards legalization of drugs, two of Maher’s pet political prerogatives.
Maher continued his anti-religious spiel claiming that America is often behind in “the case in social issues” due to its “God-fearing” people. The Real Time host bashed Hillary Clinton for saying her favorite book was The Bible, even insulting President Obama for “spouting spiritual bulls***.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio.]
Joy Reid has never been afraid of stating her true opinion of the Republican Party. On the June 23 edition of her eponymous program The Reid Report, the MSNBC host invited colleague Chris Hayes of All In With Chris Hayes to talk about his newest segment, “Behind The Color Line,” which investigated de facto segregation in American schools.
When Hayes told Reid that this segregation was occurring in her hometown of New York City Reid sought to clarify, “The blue state, New York, and you're talking about this. So it's not parents who are making these decisions based on race.” Reid’s implication, of course, is that if it were in a red state, de facto segregation would obviously be due to racist Republicans. [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden abetter and columnist of The Guardian, appeared on the June 20 edition of Real Time With Bill Maher determined to defend Snowden as a patriotic whistle blower. The agitated liberal journalist called “total bulls***” on Real Time panelist Paul Rieckhoff, veteran and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, for questioning Snowden’s true motives in fleeing to Russia.
Later in the segment, Rieckhoff questioned how Greenwald could “know that the information that he revealed did not cost American lives,” after Maher quoted Richard Clarke’s official statement that “what Snowden revealed has helped the terrorists.” The journalist shot back, “what American lives?” According to Greenwald, the Snowden investigative committee was merely “reading from the script they always read from” to prevent “transparency” in the government. [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]