With Friday's admission by liberal activist Curtis Morrison for having bugged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office in April, there are some liberal media members that owe the Senator an apology.
One is certainly Howard Fineman, the editorial director of the Huffington Post, who on April 10 wrote the following (emphasis added):
Former Newsweek editor Howard Fineman on Monday predictably worried that Republican "nativism" in the wake of the Boston bombing will imperil the chances of immigration reform passing. While discussing the issue on Hardball, the political director of the Huffington Post complained, "I think that's sort of the impulse behind Chuck Grassley. It's the impulse behind Rand Paul, who is one of the renegades who says 'let's stop immigration reform.'"
Connecting Boston to the immigration debate, Fineman fretted, "And what proponents of reform here have to worry about is this sort of notion of nativism coming up again and people just saying, 'No, let's stop.'" Incredibly, the liberal Fineman tried to give advice to the Republican Party: "But Rand Paul doesn't have the interests of the Republican Party at heart...People like Rand Paul are not interested in the future of the Republican Party." Who believes that Fineman cares about the future of the GOP?
When a secret, closed-door conversation about campaign strategy is recorded, illegally, and put out in the public domain, it's a significant story about invasion of privacy that should generate media attention. But of course, the target of the recording in question was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), so naturally the liberal media are turning a critical eye on him rather than the group that made the illegal recording.
On Saturday’s Today, NBC brought on the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman to spin the controversy into a story about McConnell’s weaknesses and wrongdoings. Co-host Erica Hill started by asking if the conversation was recorded illegally. Fineman danced around the matter with an evasive answer: “Well, that's an open question... In Kentucky law and federal law it's possibly illegal, but that's open to question because the person recording it could also hear it.”
"No chance anyone’s looking for a nekkid picture of Mitch McConnell.”
As amazing as it might seem, such was actually said by MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball Monday (video follows with transcript and commentary):
According to TV critic David Zurawik, MSNBC's hiring of ex-Obama officials David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs makes the so-callend news network almost "a bona fide organ of state propaganda."
Hours after this was published Monday, Hardball's Chris Matthews offered his services to Hillary Clinton - along with those of MSNBC contributors Howard Fineman and Joan Walsh - in order to get her elected president in 2016 (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
Chris Matthews on Sunday actually joked about whether or not it was good that media mogul Rupert Murdoch is still going strong despite being in his 80s.
Not surprisingly, the panelists on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show also thought this was a hoot (video follows with transcript and commentary):
It’s been four years since President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney left the White House, but MSNBC’s Chris Matthews can’t miss an opportunity to trash the former vice president every chance he has. After playing a recent soundbite of Matthews's favorite bete noir, Matthews asked Howard Fineman, the editorial director of the Huffington Post, “Where do you learn to be that evil?”
Speaking to his all-liberal panel, which included Joan Walsh of Salon.com, Matthews went on a bender against Cheney from everything from the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame -- he blamed the wrong person for it, by the way -- to the decision to go to war with Iraq. Matthews began his spittle-laced rant:
The media's hatred of the Tea Party knows no bounds.
On Sunday's syndicated Chris Matthews Show, the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman said, "The Tea Party people are not here to legislate. They're here to demonstrate" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Is it the media's responsibility to worry about Barack Obama's legacy?
The Huffington Post's Howard Fineman seems to think so, and told MSNBC's Chris Matthews Thursday that gun control is "legacy material" for the President (video follows with LexisNexis transcript and commentary):
Former Newsweek editor Howard Fineman apologized on Monday for his "inadvertent smear" against Grover Norquist. First reported on NewsBusters, Fineman appeared on the December 3 Hardball and slammed the President of Americans for Tax Reform. The journalist railed, "A long time before the Tea Party existed or had a name, Grover Norquist, the famous anti-tax lobbyist in Washington, was running around beginning to enforce, ayatollah-style, his edict about taxes."
Four hours after the comment, Fineman tweeted an apology, allowing, "Apologies to Grover Norquist and his Muslim wife for inadvertent slur on #MSNBC #Hardball, calling him 'Ayatollah' of GOP anti-tax movement."
[UPDATE: Fineman apologized. For more, go here.] MSNBC contributor and Huffington Post editor Howard Fineman on Monday smeared Grover Norquist as "ayatollah"-like for his opposition to higher taxes. Talking to Hardball's Chris Matthews, Fineman fumed, "...A long time before the Tea Party existed or had a name, Grover Norquist, the famous anti-tax lobbyist in Washington, was running around beginning to enforce, ayatollah-style, his edict about taxes." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
According to Fineman, this Middle Eastern-style pledge "has really become the core identity of the modern conservative Republican party." Anchor Matthews ludicrously described GOP fidelity to Norquist as "human bondage."
The Huffington Post's Howard Fineman said Sunday that Democrats in Kentucky are hoping actress Ashley Judd will run against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2014.
This happened on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):