Ken Auletta reports that Williams had agreed to a suspension but “wanted a declaration by NBC that he would return as an evening-news anchor.” NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke, “torn between wanting to take a hard line and feeling compassion for Williams,” sought Brokaw’s counsel regarding the matter. After Brokaw said he was “concerned about the effects of Williams’s actions on the reputation of the rank and file in the news division,” Burke decided to make the suspension “non-negotiable.”
New Yorker
By Rich Noyes | December 20, 2014 | 1:17 PM EST
On Thursday, the Media Research Center announced our “Best Notable Quotables of 2014,” as selected by a distinguished panel of 40 expert judges. Over the next several days, we’ll present these Notable Quotables as a way to review the worst media bias of 2014. Today, the winner and top runners-up for this year’s “Obamagasm Award.”
By Tim Graham | December 9, 2014 | 8:04 AM EST
Yahoo shared the latest unfunny “Borowitz Report” by “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” creator Andy Borowitz. The headline was “Fox: Obama Seeks Advice On Establishing Monarchy” over a picture of the president meeting with Prince William.
Get it? Fox News is crazy and thinks the president wants to go around Congress and make all the laws unilaterally. Wait, where’s the funny part?
By Tim Graham | December 4, 2014 | 5:33 PM EST
The secular left really hates the Duggar family of TLC’s “19 Kids & Counting,” and finds their very strict dating and courtship rules incredibly bizarre. The December 8 issue of The New Yorker features gay playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick’s satire titled “The Duggar Family Kama Sutra.”
The ongoing gag is the Duggars are almost asexual, and their marriages are barren. Under a list of sexual positions, they mock the supposed lack of sex
By Tom Johnson | December 2, 2014 | 9:44 PM EST
John Judis of the New Republic and Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker believe that young black men often get a raw deal from police, but aren’t convinced that Wilson’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown fits into that paradigm.
By Tom Johnson | November 29, 2014 | 4:17 PM EST
In his rave review of Katha Pollitt’s book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Adam Gopnik argues that “the choice—the only actual choice, in the world as it really is—is between safe, legal abortion and dangerous, illegal abortion. Everything else is just misogyny, cruelty, and superstition.”
By Tom Johnson | November 16, 2014 | 2:41 PM EST
Michael Specter comments that Francis “believes that science, rational thought, and data all play powerful and positive roles in human life,” but that the two GOP senators “seem as if they do not.”
By Tom Johnson | October 22, 2014 | 1:43 PM EDT
The New Yorker editor and former Washington Post reporter contends that “the most overstated notion” about the late Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee “was the idea that he was an ideological man. This was a cartoon.”
He and Post publisher Katharine Graham, though “often seen as ferociously committed liberals…were, in fact, committed to the First Amendment.”
By Tim Graham | October 20, 2014 | 10:36 PM EDT
The New Yorker magazine was a fierce opponent of President Bush (starting with Jane Mayer’s attacks on Bush anti-terrorist policies) and is now a enthusiastic supporter of President Obama. The latest proof comes in an article on Obama’s judicial legacy by New Yorker writer (and CNN legal analyst) Jeffrey Toobin.
Like many a liberal journalist, Toobin wants to help the president pretend that conservatives are extremists and liberal Democrats are “centrists” who are focused on competence, not ideology:
By Tom Johnson | August 8, 2014 | 7:35 AM EDT
A great many movement conservatives weren’t fans of Richard Nixon’s presidency, to the point that some of them, including William F. Buckley Jr., William Rusher, and M. Stanton Evans, backed a 1972 primary challenge to Nixon by Rep. John Ashbrook of Ohio.
But has Nixon, despite his ideological squishiness, greatly influenced today’s Republican party? New Yorker blogger Jeff Shesol says he has. In a Wednesday post, Shesol, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, essentially asserted that modern conservatism consists of Ronald Reagan’s principles but Nixon’s attitude, specifically his “sour brand of politics: the politics of resentment.” Parading one’s resentments, Shesol remarked, “has become a kind of reflex on the right, to the point of self-parody.” From Shesol’s post (emphasis added):
Clinton White House Speechwriter: Conservatives Favor Judicial Activism As Long As Rulings Go Their Way
By Tom Johnson | July 19, 2014 | 6:08 AM EDT Jeff Shesol, a presidential speechwriter during Bill Clinton’s second term as well as a book and comic-strip author, posted a piece Friday on The New Yorker’s website about “how Republicans have learned to stop worrying and love the lawsuit” – or, less charitably, about conservatives setting aside their traditional opposition to judicial activism whenever an activist decision would benefit them.
Shesol argued that on matters such as Obamacare and gun control, “the right is having it both ways when it comes to the courts…[C]onservatives are doing exactly what they say the left has long done: rushing to litigate political questions, elevating all manner of disputes to the level of high constitutional principle, and asking judges to settle (or revisit) policy arguments that ought to be resolved by legislators or voters.”
By Tom Johnson | July 18, 2014 | 2:10 PM EDT
In a Friday-morning post, Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall likened the Tea Party to pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine who apparently are responsible for the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Marshall wrote, “Here we have them break into nursing homes to photographs [sic] senator's comatose wives; there Putin gives them heavy armaments designed for full scale land war in Europe.”
Marshall’s post in its entirety (emphasis added):