Somebody check the calendar. Aren't we almost in 2012? Yet there's Kathleen Parker on Chris Matthews's weekend show today, still gushing over Barack Obama like a member of the liberal media in the deepest throes of 2008 Obama-adulation.
After extolling Obama's foreign policy approach as "cool" [mangling a basketball metaphor along the way], Parker defiantly declared: "I know everybody's going to say [I'm] an Obama lover. Whatever." Video after the jump.
Kathleen Parker
By Mark Finkelstein | December 18, 2011 | 8:34 AM EST
By Noel Sheppard | November 13, 2011 | 3:21 PM EST
Moments after being introduced by Face the Nation host Bob Schiiffer as a "conservative" columnist, the Washington Post's Kathleen Parker on Sunday referred to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich as a "misanthrope" - aka a mankind hater (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Kurtz Spends 22 Minutes on Cain Allegations With No Mention of Media's Coverage of Clinton Sex Scandals
By Noel Sheppard | November 6, 2011 | 7:33 PM EST CNN's Howard Kurtz considers himself to be a media analyst, yet on Sunday's Reliable Sources, he spent 22 minutes discussing Politico's hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain without once mentioning how the press handled Bill Clinton's actual sex scandals.
The program began:
By Mark Finkelstein | March 8, 2011 | 7:59 AM EST
All you need to know about why people on the right were dissatisfied with Kathleen Parker as the supposedly conservative counterweight to Eliot Spitzer on the pair's recently-canned CNN show was crystallized on Morning Joe today. The panel unleashed an absolute gush-a-thon over Parker, Mika Brzezinski declaring her "one of my favorite people" and Willie Geist describing her as "a great writer."
For good measure, the MSNBC folks delighted in dumping on rival CNN. Mike Barnicle took top trash-talking honors, claiming Parker had been "brutalized" at the network.
View video after the jump.
By Tom Blumer | February 25, 2011 | 11:22 PM EST
CNN announced tonight that Kathleen Parker is leaving Parker/Spitzer:
CNN co-host Kathleen Parker leaving show
Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Kathleen Parker, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who co-hosted CNN's 8 p.m. show, is leaving just five months after the show debuted, the company announced Friday.
"I have decided to return to a schedule that will allow me to focus more on my syndicated newspaper column and other writings," Parker said in a statement.
By Matthew Balan | January 21, 2011 | 2:33 PM EST
On Thursday's Parker-Spitzer, CNN's Kathleen Parker acted as an apologist for Rep. Steve Cohen's uncivil comparison between Republicans and Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels: "He was talking about the saying that if you repeat a lie over and over and over again, it becomes the truth. I don't think he was necessarily saying Republicans are Nazis- come on!" (audio available here)
Parker and co-host Eliot Spitzer devoted the first full segment of their 8 pm Eastern hour program to "zeroing in on a couple of examples of where it's [political rhetoric] gone wrong," and brought on Tea Party critic and CNN contributor John Avlon for an extended version of his "wingnuts" segments from American Morning. Before even getting to Cohen's remark, the three spent most of the 10-minute segment critiquing Rush Limbaugh's recent stereotyping of the Chinese language and Alabama Governor Robert Bentley's inaugural address where he stated that non-Christians weren't his "brothers and sisters," as if those two examples were somehow on the same plane as the Tennessee Democrat's invective.
Unsurprisingly, Avlon blamed Limbaugh and other talk show hosts for the heated political rhetoric, and the two CNN hosts concurred:
[Video embedded below the page break]
By Matthew Balan | January 12, 2011 | 9:16 AM EST
CNN's Jeffrey Toobin falsely claimed on Tuesday's Parker-Spitzer that Barack Obama is "against gun control." Toobin also seemed to lament that the conservative position on the Second Amendment has become the "conventional wisdom" in politics: "This is how much gun control has fallen off the map politically- that the idea that more guns will mean more protection is widely believed" [audio available here].
The senior legal analyst for the liberal network appeared during a segment at the bottom of the 8 pm Eastern hour to "break down some of the legal issues" related to the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Host Kathleen Parker first asked Toobin about the interview of gun rights advocate Alan Korwin in the previous segment: "You just heard us interview this pro-gun fellow out in Arizona. Are we all going to be safer if we're all packing heat?"
The liberal talking head launched into his take on gun politics:
[Video embedded below the page break]
By Matthew Balan | January 7, 2011 | 1:34 PM EST
On Thursday's Parker-Spitzer, CNN's Eliot Spitzer lashed out at President Obama from the left, going so far as to accuse him of forfeiting his campaign promises, simultaneously attacking the Tea Party movement in the process: "He...let the Tea Party- one of the most vapid, puerile groups out there, without meaningful ideas- take over those voices for transformation, and now, he is embracing their agenda."
Spitzer led the 8 pm Eastern hour with his critique of Obama naming William Daley to be his next White House chief of staff: "You know, I don't think anybody is going to view Bill Daley as the enemy. I think everybody agrees that Bill Daley is an honorable guy...The problem I have with this is that Bill Daley, ideologically, is simply not what this president ran on....This is no longer change you can believe in....This is somebody who has been a senior executive at Morgan Chase- no longer the concerns of the middle class, no longer carrying the banner that got him elected."
By Matthew Balan | January 4, 2011 | 7:43 PM EST
CNN's Eliot Spitzer on Monday's Parker-Spitzer bizarrely labeled former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney "very conservative" on Monday's Parker-Spitzer as he cited the prominent Republican's support for legislation similar to ObamaCare: "I think it was interesting...that Governor Romney, a very conservative Republican, embraced the notion of the individual mandate as a governor" (audio available here).
Spitzer and co-host Kathleen Parker brought on Congressman-Elect David Schweikert just before the bottom of the 8 pm Eastern hour to discuss congressional Republicans' aim to pass a repeal of ObamaCare during the upcoming session. During most of the interview, the former Democratic governor of New York pressed the Arizona Republican about the individual mandate. Midway through the segment, the CNN host asked, "But wasn't the idea behind the individual mandate basically saying to people who do not buy insurance, since you're going to get the care, we're going to charge you something so that when you get it...you've paid for it. Isn't- is that a notion you think is fair at its root?"
[Video embedded below the page break]
By Brad Wilmouth | December 30, 2010 | 3:11 PM EST
Appearing as a guest in a pre-recorded interview on Wednesday’s Parker-Spitzer on CNN to promote his film The Social Network, television and film producer Aaron Sorkin trashed Sarah Palin as an "idiot" and a "mean woman." Sorkin: "Sarah Palin's an idiot. Come on, this is a remarkably, this is a remarkably, stunningly, jaw-droppingly incompetent and mean woman."
After the former producer of the television series The West Wing complained that the religious right had attacked the show as "anti-God," he also went after the GOP as the segment neared its end. Sorkin: "But the Democrats may have moved into the center, but the Republicans have moved into a mental institution. Okay? So I'll take the Democrats."
As co-host Eliot Spitzer started the interview by asking Sorkin about his views about the Obama administration, the liberal producer seemed to admit to having gotten a "goose bump experience" from President Obama in the past as he evaluated Obama’s current performance: "I think what a lot of people feel like they're missing is the goose bump experience that he gave us during the campaign."
By Noel Sheppard | December 21, 2010 | 10:31 AM EST
St. Louis Tea Party co-founder Dana Loesch took on CNN's Eliot Spitzer Monday evening in a classic battle between Right and Left.
From the opening bell, Loesch gave Spitzer a much-needed education on how extending existing tax rates isn't a tax cut (video follows with transcript and commentary):
By Tim Graham | December 18, 2010 | 2:59 PM EST
CNN's failing and flailing Parker Spitzer show ended Friday night with the supposedly (at least slightly) differing hosts joining in a round of Hosannas for the Kennedys, making the common error that there's been a Kennedy serving on Capitol Hill for 53 years straight. Wrong. There was a hole from 1960 to 1962, while Ben Smith warmed JFK's seat for Teddy.)
Kathleen Parker thinks Palin's too dumb for national office, but all the copy editors at CNN couldn't Google the Kennedys to get these facts straight. Parker lamented how the Kennedys were giving way to lesser, more regressive political families like Ron and Rand Paul:
SPITZER: Time for "P.S.," our postscript. Today marked the end of an era as Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy, Teddy's youngest son, packed his bags, the last Kennedy still in office in Washington, D.C.
PARKER: It seems unimaginable. Since 1947, when John F. Kennedy became a congressman at age 29, there has always been a Kennedy serving on Capitol Hill.