David Frum

Variety Columnist Accuses FNC of Racial Motivations, Provides Zero Quotes from Actual Programming
By Lachlan Markay | August 10, 2010 | 11:39 AM EDT
Variety Magazine TV critic Brian Lowry - formerly a reporter for NPR and the Los Angeles Times - surely was not a member of JournoList. But he sure writes like he was. Lowry took a page directly out of the Spencer Ackerman Guide to Dubious Racism Accusations in his most recent column, claiming the Fox News Channel caters to racial fear and resentment to sell its brand.

Lowry provided no examples to back up his claims. He did not give voice to any opposing views. The only evidence he offered to back up his accusations were quotes from "thoughtful conservative" (read: not-so-conservative conservative) David Frum and liberal Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent.

In true JournoLista fashion, Lowry cited Fox's coverage of the New Black Panther scandal at the Justice Department as evidence of the channel's attempts to "delegitimize Obama" by stoking racial fears. Just as Ackerman advocated with the Jeremiah Wright scandal, Lowry cried racism in order to avoid any actual discussion of this administration's strange affinity for racialist radicals - or any of Fox's actual coverage of the scandal.

Meet the Conservative Intellectual Elite: Kathleen Parker, David Frum, Christopher Hitchens?
By Clay Waters | June 17, 2010 | 11:19 PM EDT
There's one big problem with the presentation of “The Party, In Exile," Pamela Paul's snobby but interesting front-page Sunday New York Times Styles section piece on a D.C. garden party featuring so-called conservatism in exile. As KarolNYC noted on her Twitter feed  -- it doesn't feature many actual conservatives.

The caption under John Cuneo's illustration made the disparity clear: “Insiders On The Outside: Members of the conservative intellectual elite at a party include, clockwise from left, David Frum, Michael Oren, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Laura Ingraham and Kathleen Parker.”


Of those six names, only one (Laura Ingraham) would be unanimously waved in to a garden party strictly for “conservatives.” The prolific, peripatetic, atheist writer Christopher Hitchens, is a long-time socialist who allied with conservatives on the Iraq War and some other issues (Paul noted he is a member “of the disenchanted left”).
Still at It: David Frum Takes Shot at the Club for Growth
By Jeff Poor | June 13, 2010 | 2:29 PM EDT

It's called "Left, Right and Center," which claims to be a "civilized yet provocative antidote to the screaming talking heads that dominate political debate." But there's not a whole lot of truth in advertising for KCRW Santa Monica's radio program, which is also podcasted on the Internet.

The show normally features Robert Scheer, editor of the left-wing investigative Web site Truthdig.com and a former Los Angeles Times columnist, representing the left. Matt Miller, a former Clintonista and senior fellow at the left-wing Center for American Progress represents the so-called center. And former Washington Times editorial page editor and visiting senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation usually represents the right. And for whatever reason, HuffPo editor Arianna Huffington is included to represent what they call the "independent progressive blogosphere," as if that is somehow different from the "left."

For the June 11 edition of this show, both Blankley and Miller were away and replaced with David Frum, a recently terminated fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, representing the "right" and Lawrence O'Donnell, of MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" fill-in fame, representing the "center." And it was on the broadcast Frum used the platform to take a shot at the Club for Growth.

Frum's Review of Rush Book Ignored New Liberal Quotes, For and Against
By Tim Graham | May 26, 2010 | 4:04 PM EDT

David Frum has responded on his own site Frum Forum to the NewsBusters post on his nasty Limbaugh book review in The Washington Post. For starters, he claimed that he focused on Limbaugh's ornate digs because this is "really the only news" in the Zev Chafets book.

To claim there’s no news in here is to admit you skimmed it. I wish Frum had plopped in the Post this snippet from pages 139 and 140 and pondered what it says about the Left:

Some, like Professor Todd Gitlin of the Columbia School of Journalism, think the government should take Rush off the air. "Limbaugh is a liar and a demagogue, a brander of enemies, a mobilizer, and a rabble rouser," Gitlin told me. He conceded this would constitute a government limitation of free speech. "The corner that right-wing radio has on the medium is a warping factor in our politics," he says. "Limbaugh is truck-driver radio. His voice is the voice of resentment, or in Nietzche’s sense, ressentiment – it sounds better, more venomous, in French...

WaPo Ombudsman: David Frum's Hostile Limbaugh Book Review Should Have Come with Disclaimer
By Tim Graham | May 26, 2010 | 1:28 PM EDT

Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander responded online to yesterday’s NewsBusters post on Frum’s Tuesday Style section review of the new book Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One. Alexander wondered "Was Frum too biased to review book on Rush Limbaugh?"

He suggested the problem wasn’t Frum’s anti-Limbaugh bias, but that the Post should have disclosed something to readers about Frum’s record of lamenting Limbaugh -- such as suggesting he's "kryptonite" for Republicans. The book review editor claimed she was somehow unaware of their corporate cousin Newsweek’s "Why Rush Is Wrong" cover story last year:

Post Book World Editor Rachel Shea said she was unaware that Frum had written last year's critical Newsweek piece, which was headlined: "Why Rush is Wrong." But she said she was aware of debate Frum had stirred over how the GOP could best position itself with voters. And she said The Post chose Frum precisely because "it's no surprise where he was coming from."

A Bad Joke: WaPo Assigns Limbaugh Book Review to Rush-Hating David Frum
By Tim Graham | May 25, 2010 | 8:35 AM EDT

The Washington Post knows how to thrust two middle fingers in Rush Limbaugh's face. They decided to put a book review of the new Zev Chavets book on Limbaugh on the front page of Tuesday's Style section, reviewed by....David Frum, the Republican establishment's leading Rush-hater.

This is a little like assigning a Bill Clinton book review to Jim Clyburn, so he can call him a racist again for 1,000 words. There's more hate than light. Frum gnashes his teeth hardest late in the review, jealous that he, the wise and humble Frum, is not acknowledged by all as the country's leading conservative intellectual:

Chafets acknowledges that Limbaugh has no conception of fairness or objectivity, that he is not an original thinker, and that he is prone to "hyperbole, sarcasm, and ridicule, none of which is meant to be taken literally."

CNN's Kurtz: Do Conservative Commentators Want a Successful Terrorist Attack?
By Noel Sheppard | May 9, 2010 | 1:50 PM EDT

Howard Kurtz on Sunday actually asked if right-wing pundits are hoping for another successful terrorist attack against our nation in order to harm President Obama politically?

Potentially even worse, this disgraceful question was posed to a far-left leaning blogger who certainly was going to say "Yes."

Discussing the media's coverage of the Times Square car bomb attempt with his guests on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Kurtz asked if conservative commentators risk "looking a little churlish if they complain about a bomb that didn't go off?"

What ensued will likely make a lot of those commentators as well as NewsBusters readers quite upset (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

NY Times Suggests Modern Conservative Movement Lacks Intellectual Sophistication, Willingness to Compromise Principles
By Jeff Poor | April 28, 2010 | 4:39 PM EDT

So what happens when you put the likes of David Frum, Bruce Bartlett and now apparently Jim Manzi - pseudo-conservatives with a penchant for criticizing Republicans and other conservatives all in the same place?

You have the makings of a New York Times hit piece on conservatism. In the April 27 issue of the Times, a story in its Style section of all places by Patricia Cohen, singled out and accused a number of conservatives of "closed-mindedness" or as the article claimed "epistemic closure."

"It is hard to believe that a phrase as dry as ‘epistemic closure' could get anyone excited, but the term has sparked a heated argument among conservatives in recent weeks about their movement's intellectual health," Cohen wrote. "The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism's proud intellectual history."

Mediaite Attempts to Elevate Pseudo-Con David Frum to Biblical Status
By Jeff Poor | April 2, 2010 | 3:04 PM EDT

Is it possible to be so wrapped up in a media culture that one could minimize a sacred religious holiday in a shoddy attempt to write a clever headline? Mediaite's Tommy Christopher and his editors seemed to have pulled this feat off.

Christopher, who has had a much-publicized run-in with Andrew Breitbart, has a new hero, former American Enterprise Institute scholar David Frum. Christopher elevated Frum to messianic status in a Good Friday April 2 post headlined "Did David Frum ‘Die' For GOP's Sins?" specifically praising the former AEI scholar for his appearance on Comedy Central's April 1 "The Colbert Report."

According to Christopher, Frum still wants to be a conservative and hasn't converted to the liberal ideology, like others have before him. He argued that lends credence to Frum, who is more known for levying criticisms about conservatives and Republicans, and not his conservative world view. (As if being popular with the liberal blogosphere was a badge of honor.)

David Frum: Joe Klein's Kind of Conservative
By Ken Shepherd | March 26, 2010 | 2:49 PM EDT

Time's Joe Klein took to his magazine's Swampland blog yesterday evening to defend former AEI scholar David Frum.

In doing so, Klein [pictured in file photo at right] contrasted Frum with "extreme" conservatives who were "pretty close to Jonestown" by "drinking their own kool-aid." Not only is the former Bush speechwriter a friend whose thinking he respects "even when we disagree," Klein argued that Frum is the Right's Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a genteel intellectual who bucked his party on some tenets of its orthodoxy but ultimately was vindicated by history:

I have some experience with a party intent on committing suicide. The Democrats were profoundly self-destructive when it came to race and crime in the 1970s and 1980s. They nearly excommunicated Daniel Patrick Moynihan--one of my mentors--because he told the truth about the impact of out-of-wedlock births on the black family. Over time, Moynihan's thesis was proved by sociology--and supported by prominent AFrican-American [sic] progressive scholars like William Julius Wilson--but he was never really welcomed back into the fold. And he didn't really care. Because he knew he was right.

NYT's Nagourney Runs With Anti-Limbaugh Frum to Show 'Drawbacks' of GOP's Obama-Care Stand
By Clay Waters | March 23, 2010 | 3:31 PM EDT
In Tuesday's front-page "political memo" in the New York Times, "For G.O.P., United Stand Has Drawbacks, Too," chief political reporter Adam Nagourney, like much of the mainstream media, used Republican critic David Frum to represent the responsible "conservative" wing of the party to bash lack of Republican support for Obama-style health care reform. Frum has blamed talk radio and Fox News for Republican defeat on ABC News and other outlets, as noted by MRC's Brent Baker.

Nagourney's front-page editorializing began in the very first paragraph, accusing the G.O.P. of misleading the public about the health plan (as if anyone currently truly knows what the bill will do):
Passage of the health care legislation challenges the heart of the Republicans' strategy this year: To present a unified opposition to big Democratic ideas, in this case expressed in a stream of bristling anger and occasional mischaracterizations of what the bill would do.
After admitting that Republicans feel optimistic about their electoral chances in November, Nagourney quoted at length the media's newest favorite Republican, David Frum, a Republican writer who has devoted much of his time lately to railing against Fox News and talk radio conservatives.
And in a week when Democrats are celebrating the passage of a historic piece of legislation, Republicans find themselves again being portrayed as the party of no, associated with being on the losing side of an often acrid debate and failing to offer a persuasive alternative agenda.
ABC Highlights Frum’s Charge Fox News and Selfish Limbaugh to Blame for Health Defeat
By Brent Baker | March 23, 2010 | 2:42 AM EDT
Looking at the state of both parties after President Obama’s health bill win in the House, ABC’s Terry Moran elevated the view of “prominent conservative” David Frum, author a year ago of Newsweek’s “Why Rush is Wrong” cover story, who blamed Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for what he’s dubbed the GOP’s “Waterloo.” On Nightline, Moran contended “anger, stoking it, expressing it, riding it...was the Republican strategy to defeat health care. And over the weekend all that anger got ugly, as some Democratic Members of Congress were called vile, racial and anti-gay slurs.”

But, he warned, “in the wake of the Democrats’ victory, some Republicans are not sure all that anger makes good politics,” as if Limbaugh and other conservative leaders advocated yelling the “slurs.” Moran relayed how “Frum says the real leadership of the Republican Party during the course of the health care battle was not to be found in the halls of Congress, but on the air waves” since “it was talk radio and Fox News, Frum argues, that drove the GOP strategy.” Moran paraphrased Frum’s take: 
It sounds like you're saying that the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, hijacked the Republican Party and drove it to a defeat?