PBS's Gwen Ifill has apologized for using the sexually-charged derogatory term "Tea Baggers" during last Wednesday's broadcast of "The NewsHour."
According to the PBS ombudsman, responding to an e-mail message from a NewsBusters reader, Ifill didn't know what it meant.
Apparently, she's just as clueless about current events as ABC's Charlie Gibson.
Before we get there, here's what Ifill said last week on a television station funded with your tax dollars:
On Tuesday night, PBS’s NewsHour discussed the Sotomayor nomination with a panel including Jenny Rivera, a former Sotomayor clerk and head of the Center on Latino and Latina Equal Rights. You could hear the latest buzz words on diversity being used. The addition of Latina diversity brings a certain "integrity" to the Supreme Court, which suffers from an "insularity," from being encased in a bubble:
CBS Face the Nation anchor Bob Schieffer held his fifth Schieffer symposium at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth on Wednesday, and his panel was completely chosen from the set of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: anchor Gwen Ifill and columnists David Brooks and Mark Shields. Associated Press covered it, but not so much on the issue of liberal bias.
During a segment on the “Reliable Sources” hour of CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, PBS’s Gwen Ifill and Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson agreed that it was fine for President Obama to call on Sam Stein of the Huffington Post at his first press conference, and that the correspondent’s left-wing question on a proposed “truth committee” investigation into the Bush administration was “perfectly reasonable.” Carlson also agreed with host Howard Kurtz’s assessment that the “White House press corps not exactly rolling over for the new president.” Her response: “Never do, do they?”
To the trend-setters on the set of The Daily Show, white-mocking prayers are adorable, and experience in race-baiting churches is an "enormous advantage" for Barack Obama. When liberal PBS Washington Week host Gwen Ifill showed up on Tuesday to plug her "Age of Obama" book, Jon Stewart suggested Rev.
If you were dying to know what Gwen Ifill was thinking when the controversy arose about her so-called Obama book and how that might have effected her ability to moderate the 2008 vice-presidential debate - now's your chance.
Ifill, the host of PBS's "Washington Week" appeared at the Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 24 to promote her new book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." The book was a focal point of controversy last fall and questions were raised as to whether Ifill could be an impartial moderator of the vice-presidential debate, even though she had a book that featured Barack Obama set to come out after the election.
In that appearance, Ifill claimed she didn't believe the book inhibited her ability to moderate that debate and pointed out her ability to overcome racism as how she dealt with the controversy - by strapping on her "blinders." She also took a couple of passive jabs at former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin - commenting on her "thin" biography and remarking on Palin's debate performance.
The liberal media elite piled into David Bradley's Embassy Row mansion in northwest Washington DC on Monday night to celebrate PBS anchor Gwen Ifill's book The Breakthrough, touting the ascent of black Democrats in the Age of Obama. (FishBowl DC has a nice photo of the hope-and-change Barack Obama cookies at the party.)
So didn't writing this book taint her as a debate moderator? Ifill told the book party crowd no, the "truth" won out and the question-raising conservative bloggers (like NewsBusters) lost. From the New York Observer:
Back in September on the eve of the Vice Presidential debate, conservative bloggers had attacked her impartiality as a moderator, alleging that her book about Mr. Obama would bias her in the Democrats’ favor.
"Of course, there was the moment when everyone decided they knew what the book was about before I had even finished writing it," said Ms. Ifill on Monday night. "I thought, 'Well that’s fine. Truth will out. I will just survive it.' And I did."
PBS Washington Week host Gwen Ifill participated in her monthly Internet chat at washingtonpost.com on Thursday, and committed at least one noticeable error.
As Americans across the fruited plain worry about their jobs and how they're going to make ends meet during the current recession, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman showed Sunday morning just how separated from reality and the common man he actually is.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist said that he wasn't worried about how expensive president-elect Barack Obama's economic rescue plan might get, but instead that the problem will be "finding enough stuff to spend on."
How'd you like to have that problem this holiday season?
With total disregard for what Americans are going through, and an almost unthinkable ignorance of the government's current budget, Krugman responded to host George Stephanopoulos's question about whether he's sticking to the $600 billion economic recovery spending projection he offered on the program a month ago:
In the midst of a discussion about President-elect Barack Obama's national security team, Washington Week host Gwen Ifill on Friday night's program sought confirmation for her theory that “what people are beginning to say is that this President-elect should be President now” as “people are saying why isn't Barack Obama leading the fight about the auto-makers?” 
There was one player on the stage in St. Louis on Thursday night that really failed to meet the standard of professionalism and national leadership: moderator Gwen Ifill. Her questions often failed the first journalistic test: they failed to press the candidates to take or defend a stand, instead of letting them unload their talking points. One came across as just plain incoherent: "Governor, on another issue, interventionism, nuclear weapons. What should be the trigger, or should there be a trigger, when nuclear weapons use is ever put into play?" That unfairly put Gov. Palin into a stumbling mode as she tried to figure out: what on Earth was bumbling Ifill trying to say?
While she offered a pile of liberal-tilting questions, Ifill offered Biden only one question from the right, about raising taxes on people making over $250,000 a year: "Why isn’t that class warfare?" Sadly, she didn’t let the sharp question stand. In the next sentence, before Biden could answer, she then went on to slam McCain’s health-care tax proposal as possibly "taking things out on the poor."
But the worst, most politician-indulging questions came at the end. This was the most distasteful question of the night: how would you abandon your running mate’s legacy if he croaked?
This morning, Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, appeared on Fox News's Fox & Friends to answer a few questions about tonight's vice presidential debate between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senator Joe Biden.
Grabbing the headlines the past few days has been the news that Gwen Ifill, debate moderator, has written a book subtitled "The Age of Obama" which is set to be released on the day of the inauguration of the next president in January. A win by Barack Obama could positively impact book sales and have caused some to question the impartiality of Ifill.