The shocking revelation of CIA Director David Petraeus's adultery has rocked Washington and has thrilled the media, perhaps a little too much.
Forget the pain that adultery causes and which Holly Petraeus must be feeling right now. For the Daily Beast/Newsweek's Lizzie Crocker, the whole situation is the perfect news peg to offer aspiring philanderers lessons they can learn from the ex-CIA chief's "rookie mistakes."
With the long-time news weekly on the verge of shifting from a paper publication to an online magazine, the folks at Newsweek have apparently thrown caution to the wind and are publishing whatever they feel like as long as it praises Democrats and hazes Republicans.
Case in point: the cover of the periodical's post-election edition, which shows President Obama dressed like Napoleon Bonaparte in addition to a headline that reads: "GOP: You're Old, You're White, You're History!"
The Des Moines Register shocked many political observers Saturday by endorsing Mitt Romney for president.
Clearly not accepting such a thing, Michael Tomasky, the Obama-loving correspondent for the Daily Beast, came out Sunday claiming the Register's endorsement "is little more than a practical joke":
PolitiFact has received a fair share of criticism from conservatives for their spin-heavy fact-checks. The liberal media, for the most part, has accordingly been dismissive of such conservative complaints. But now even The Daily Beast/Newsweek is joining in on the criticism, with contributor Megan McArdle joining conservatives in noting the fact-checker repeated repetition of a falsehood regarding the Lilly Ledbetter Supreme Court case.
On PBS's Charlie Rose show on Monday, as the group discussed the night's presidential debate, New York magazine's John Heilemann described Mitt Romney's past statements on foreign policy as "relatively harsh and relatively bellicose," as he argued that Romney had faced political "dangers" in his foreign policy positions "because he's been surrounded by some number of neo-conservative foreign policy advisors."
The Associated Press published an article on the reasons for the demise of the print of edition of Newsweek but skipped any mention of the former editor of that magazine, Jon Meacham, who was instumental in ensuring its failure. It's the equivalent of publishing an article on the reasons why the Titanic sunk in which the word "iceberg" does not appear.
What Meacham did to destroy Newsweek was so absurd that he really deserves a plaque in the Bad Business Decisions Hall of Fame. Am I exaggerating? Here is Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post explaining the business "genius" of Jon Meacham in May 2009:
Fox News's Bret Baier quoted NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard on Thursday's Special Report.
In a "Grapevine" segment about Newsweek's announcement that it will be printing its last magazine on December 31, Baier read from the note Newsweek publicists sent Scott Whitlock at NewsBusters from editor Tina Brown in July claiming that this wasn't going to happen (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
In the wake of the announcement on Thursday that Newsweek will cease print publication at the end of the year, Time's managing editor appeared on Morning Joe to swear that his magazine won't be next. Co-host Willie Geist quizzed, "But it's still cost effective for you to print this out every week?" Richard Stengel first admitted "the most expensive single thing" is to physically produce the publication.
He hedged, "And obviously the post office has a lot of trouble." Stengel then insisted the print version of the liberal magazine "becomes a premium product that you get in addition to all the other as specks of Time on every other platform." Offering some empty bravado, Stengel asserted, "We will continue to do well. I've always said like the NBA slogan, there can only be one – and that's us."
When you go to your doctor or dentist's office in January, there won't be a copy of the latest Newsweek waiting for you in the reception area.
On Thursday, the long-embattled periodical announced that its December 31 edition will be the last it prints:
For the past few weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious examples of liberal media bias the Media Research Center has uncovered in our 25-year history, all leading up to tonight’s 25th Anniversary Gala and DisHonors Awards in Washington, D.C.
To close out this series, I’ve pulled together what I consider the 25 most obnoxious quotes of the MRC’s history. It’s a pretty offensive display of smug disdain for everyday conservatives, rabid hatred for conservative leaders, embarrassing sycophancy for liberals, and a little anti-American treason thrown in for good measure.
These worst-of-the-worst quotes and video appear below the jump; or you can check out the year-by-year posts here.
Despite having failed to stop let alone reverse the rising of the seas, Barack Obama has made Newsweek’s newest ten best presidents list, which gives readers a top ten of the chief executives since 1900. Newsweek, whose list unsurprisingly is dominated by liberal Democrats, gave this justification for selecting Obama in a caption in a photo slide:
Picking a sitting president in a tally of the best is tricky – history hasn’t had time to put things in a more sober context. But the historic election of America’s first black president cannot be ignored. That a man whose ancestors included a slave could become the leader of a nation founded to some extent in slavery is as much an achievement for the country as it is a marker for Obama himself. Whether Obama stays or goes, his standing, as a fundamentally groundbreaking president will remain.
Lake noted that the identities of at least four of the participants in the attack on the consulate were found within 24 hours, one of which has been tracked by his use of social media. This of course conflicts with the administration's early story. You may recall that four days after the attack, on Sept 16, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations insisted to CBS' Bob Schieffer that the attack was spontaneous and tied to an obscure video on YouTube.