Michael Kinsley

Maddow Producer: The Real Benghazi Scandal Is the GOP's Investigation, Which Should Be Investigated
By Tom Johnson | October 17, 2015 | 4:45 PM EDT

Michael Kinsley’s second-best-known contribution to political discourse, trailing only the “Kinsley gaffe,” is his observation that “the scandal isn't the illegal behavior -- the scandal is what's legal.” In a Thursday post, Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the TRMS blog, sought to apply Kinsley’s wisdom to the congressional inquiry into the September 2012 Benghazi attack.

“The Benghazi Committee isn’t investigating a scandal. The Benghazi Committee is the scandal,” declared Benen (italics in original). “There’s been some debate in recent weeks about whether congressional Democrats should continue to participate in such an obvious farce. It’s a worthwhile question that deserves an answer.”

The Two Faces of Michael Kinsley on Government Secrets
By Tom Blumer | May 23, 2014 | 3:05 PM EDT

During the Pentagon Papers controversy over the release of Vietnam-related military and other documents in 1971, if a columnist had written that "the private companies that own newspapers, and their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences," and that "that decision must ultimately be made by the government," he or she would have been tagged in the press as a "(Richard) Nixon defender" and "an enemy of press freedom."

How ironic it thus is that Thursday, in his New York Times review of Glenn Greenwald's new book ("No Place to Hide"), current liberal Vanity Fair columnist and former CNN "Crossfire" host Michael Kinsley used that very language as he went after Greenwald, who has been NSA eavesdropping leaker Edward Snowden's go-between for the past year, with a vengeance. And yes, he did it at the Times, the very newspaper which was at the heart of the Pentagon Papers litigation that was ultimately decided in its favor.

NYT Editor: 'I Actually Don’t Think' We 'Reflect a Liberal Point of View'
By Noel Sheppard | August 20, 2013 | 3:16 PM EDT

As NewsBusters previously reported, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan admitted Sunday that her paper has a liberal bias.

In an interview with the New Republic Tuesday, editor Jill Abramson disagreed saying, "I actually don’t think it does":

At Bloomberg, Kinsley Claims 'No Major Terrorist Episodes' on Obama's Watch
By Tom Blumer | October 13, 2012 | 9:10 AM EDT

In an op-ed at "Bloomberg View" on Wednesday evening, editor and columnist Michael Kinsley's headline teased that "Maybe President Romney Wouldn’t Be So Bad," before twice urging readers to vote to reelect President Obama, including in the final paragraph after an alleged parenthetical (and obviously mythical) "Pause for reflection." Ha ha.

What came in between wasn't very funny at all -- and since he's an editor, his view of things presumably has impact beyond his columns. The worst whoppers came in the following paragraph:

Obama Appreciation, Tea Party Bashing on the Cover of the NYTimes Sunday Book Review
By Clay Waters | January 12, 2012 | 10:33 AM EST

Diversity, New York Times style. “Bipolar America,” the cover feature for the Sunday New York Times Book Review, compiles reviews of three new books on Tea Party-related politics, one reviewed by veteran liberal journalist Michael Kinsley, two others judged by Timothy Noah, veteran liberal journalist for The New Republic.

Noah says Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of the strongly titled Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party: From Eisenhower to the Tea Party, "argues persuasively that Republican moderates remained a powerful, even dominant, political force well into the 1970s." But, Noah argued:

Kinsley Claims 'Too Fat' Christie Lacks Self-Control To Be President
By Mark Finkelstein | October 1, 2011 | 9:40 AM EDT

Is Michael Kinsley sure he wants to go down this path?

In a Bloomberg View column and then in a clip run on "Good Morning America" today, the liberal pundit claims Chris Christie is "just too fat" to be president.  According to Kinsley, Christie's weight is evidence of a lack of the self-control necessary to be an effective president.

If self-control is a key requirement for the presidency, I wonder how Kinsley would apply that standard to other recent occupants of the White House?  GMA video after the jump.

Fareed Zakaria: Fox Viewers Don't Watch CNN - Our Competition is NPR and NYT
By Noel Sheppard | July 2, 2011 | 2:44 PM EDT

CNN's Fareed Zakaria made a bit of a Kinsley gaffe Friday.

On NPR's "Morning Edition," Zakaria said, "The people who watch Fox are not going to watch CNN...Our competitors should properly be The New York Times, the BBC, NPR" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Kinsley Mocks Catholic Church, Criticizes Defense of Embryonic Life
By Matthew Balan | January 20, 2011 | 6:45 PM EST

Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley made light of the Catholic Church's process of recognizing a saint in a Wednesday column for the Los Angeles Times, while simultaneously blasting the Church's opposition to embryonic stem cell research, claiming that the religion was a "main impediment" in developing a cure for Parkinson's disease.

Kinsley's Sneering NYT Review Of Bush Memoir Accuses Him Of 'Stealing' 2000 Election
By Mark Finkelstein | December 19, 2010 | 7:42 AM EST

Could Michael Kinsley possibly be any more predictable?  His review of George Bush's "Decision Points," appearing in today's Sunday New York Times, is precisely the smug piece of sneering partisanship you would expect in this paper and from this quintessential liberal MSM elitist.

As the headline indicates, Kinsley flatly accuses W of "stealing" the 2000 election.  Kinsley offers no proof, but surely most of the people who will read this review require none.  They take it as a matter of deep partisan faith.  Speaking of faith, the former Crossfire man is mocking of Bush's.  Consider this excerpt:

"[H]e stopped drinking with the help of God, who spoke to him while he was out jogging. (I make light, but this part of his story is actually fascinating, gutsy and very well told.) Thirteen years later, after he had made a quick fortune buying and selling a baseball team and then had been elected governor of Texas, God told him to run for president."

If Kinsley admired Bush's telling of how his faith helped him to stop drinking, why then would he "make light"?  Could it be that he needs to remind his audience and himself that they are way too sophisticated to take this religion stuff seriously?

Biden Bumbles Into The Truth: Speaks Of 'Illegal Aliens'
By Mark Finkelstein | September 10, 2009 | 7:47 AM EDT

At least he didn't call them "clean and articulate" . . .

Joe Biden has given the latest, best example of the adage that "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth."

Appearing on Good Morning America today to talk up Pres. Obama's health care speech to Congress, the veep praised his boss for debunking various supposedly false assertions, including "how we're going to insure illegal aliens."  Biden was just about to move on when, realizing his crime against political correctness, he revised his remark: "undocumented aliens," quoth the VP.

Michael Kinsley Defends MoveOn’s ‘Betray Us’ Ad
By Noel Sheppard | September 20, 2007 | 5:26 PM EDT

On the eve of the Senate voting overwhelmingly to condemn MoveOn's recent "General Betray Us" ad, Michael Kinsley chose to defend the actions of this far-left group while poking fun at conservatives for being so outraged (h/t NB reader Lee Martin).

In an article published by Time Wednesday, the former "Crossfire" host stated that the ad could be interpreted "merely as questioning the general's honesty, not his patriotism," and that Republicans were suddenly practicing "political correctness" that could turn "discussions of substance into arguments over etiquette."

Here were some of the lowlights: