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Press Fawns Over Minn. 'Black Lives Matter' Rally, Ignores 20K 'All Lives Matter' March
By Tom Blumer | August 31, 2015 | 3:00 PM EDT

On Saturday, "more than 20,000" people — perhaps as many as 25,000 to 30,000, according to some police — marched through the streets of Birmingham, Alabama at a Glenn Beck-led "Restoring Unity" rally chanting "All Lives Matter." The event has been described as possibly "the largest march in Birmingham since the civil rights marches of 1963."

Searches at Google News and at the Associated Press's main national and "Big Story" sites indicate that no establishment press outlet gave the rally national coverage. The AP only managed to push out terse three-paragraph and seven-paragraph local stories. Meanwhile, a Reuters story on the less than peaceful march by the "Black Lives Matter" crowd attended by an estimated 325 (compared to an expected 900) in Minneapolis was carried at Yahoo News and the New York Times (at least).

LA Times Reporter: CMP's Anti-Planned Parenthood Vids Are Like 'Discredited' Swiftvets 'Smear'
By Tom Blumer | August 22, 2015 | 1:11 PM EDT

Well, this was inevitable. On the same day that the Center for Medical Progress exposed the CEO of former Planned Parenthood partner StemExpress laughing "about shipping whole baby heads," a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, in what I have beeen told is a front-page story, has compared CMP's video campaign exposing the commerce in baby body parts to the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth's campaign. The Swift Boat Vets' effort successfully exposed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's serial lies about his service in Vietnam and his smearing of Vietnam veterans as war criminals after he returned.

Times reporter Maria L. La Ganga joined the paper in 1981, and "has served as San Francisco bureau chief, edited in the Business section and pitched in on five presidential elections." Even if one of those five elections wasn't 2004, and even if she didn't dig into conflicting claims over whether Kerry truly earned the Vietnam War medals he received, it's virtually inconceivable that she doesn't know about his frequently stated "Christmas in Cambodia" lie.

AP Shows Double Standard in Covering State Planned Parenthood Fetal Parts Followups
By Tom Blumer | August 8, 2015 | 11:56 PM EDT

The Associated Press has demonstrated a double standard in covering developments in various states in the wake of the gruesome Planned Parenthood videos posted by the Center for Medical Progress. Bad news for Planned Parenthood gets only local coverage. Exculpatory news, even if artificially concocted, gets national exposure.

In Florida, a statewide review of the state’s 16 Planned Parenthood facilities ordered by Governor Rick Scott led to four citations, as reported at Townhall: "[T]hree were conducting procedures that were outside of their licenses (a.k.a late-term abortions) and the last one was improperly logging the disposal of infant remains." The AP treated this news as a local story. Meanwhile, news that there have been no transfers of fetal tissue from the three abortion facilities in Kansas has been posted at both the wire service's main national site and at its "Big Story" site.

Taiwanese Animators Declare Trump Winner of GOP Debate
By P.J. Gladnick | August 7, 2015 | 9:31 PM EDT

Whether or not you agree with the assessment of the Taiwanese Animators that Donald Trump won Thursday's Republican presidential debate in Cleveland, I think we can all agree that their video is quite funny in a vaudvillian sort of way. It  was also quite astounding in that only hours after the debate the video was up and running on YouTube. So watch and enjoy.

How to Do a Donald Trump Impression
By P.J. Gladnick | August 2, 2015 | 11:18 AM EDT

Are you a professional comedian or someone who just wants to entertain your friends by doing a Donald Trump impression? Well I have huge news for you. HUUGE!!!

Voice impressionist Eric Harthen has produced a How To video for folks wanting to do an impression of The Donald. This instructional video will probably come in handy right after this Thursday's presidential debate among the Repulican candidates. Harthen's video explains how to position your mouth with pronounced bottom front teeth while talking. In addition, he covers the proper decibel level of the voice. Finally, don't forget to get the correct Queens borough (not guttural Bronx) accent correct when doing the impression.

Fiorina Rejects Tapper's 'Rape/Incest' Bait, Attacks Hillary Clinton's Abortion Extremism
By Tom Blumer | July 23, 2015 | 3:18 PM EDT

The press's favorite abortion questions usually have nothing to do with the 700,000-plus terminations of preborn babies' lives which take place each year in the U.S. (Note: The real figure is likely quite higher, because reporting is voluntary.) Especially when the person interviewed is a Republican or conservative, abortion questions focus heavily on the fewer than 1% of all abortions which are performed because of rape and incest. This is the equivalent of a news organization focusing all of its attention on a single house fire while an entire city a few miles away burns out of control.

2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina had no interest in playing this game with Jake Tapper on Tuesday. In the process, she put on a clinic which should be mandatory viewing for any Republican or conservative who is in or wants to have a career in politics.

Now ESPN's Stephen A. Smith Is Catching Flak for Insisting That 'All Lives Matter'
By Tom Blumer | July 21, 2015 | 7:31 PM EDT

ESPN analyst and reporter Stephen A. Smith, apparently in reaction to seeing anyone who dares to say the words "all lives matter" in succession getting mercilessly attacked, pushed back hard today against the censorship and intimidation of the "Black Lives Matter" crowd in three tweets. The first: "Where is all the noise about #BlackLivesMatter when black folks are killing black folks?" The second: "There's nothing wrong when a presidential candidate says 'All lives Matter'!" The third: "I'm a black man. Of course I know #BlackLivesMatter. You can't boo a presidential candidate just b/c he says 'all lives matter'."

Only in the la-la land of the perpetually aggrieved would someone saying that "All lives matter" be interpreted as really meaning that they don't genuinely believe that black lives matter. But, as would be expected, Smith, who is black, is catching flak for this, just as he did when he went on the air and ranted against those who blame all of their woes in life on racism in May of last year. That video will appear at the end of this post. 

Press Loved O'Malley's 'Climate Change Plan' in June, Ignores His Linking It to the Rise of ISIS Now
By Tom Blumer | July 21, 2015 | 11:16 AM EDT

In June, Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley unveiled a "climate change plan." The press loved it. Glowing articles appeared in many place, including the Washington Post, USA Today, The Hill and the Huffington Post, whose Kate Sheppard wrote that the former Maryland Governor had "Just Set An Extremely High Bar ... For 2016 Democratic Contenders."

Well, if they're so wired into climate change, why are they ignoring O'Malley's claim yesterday, in an interview with Bloomberg News, that climate change, aka the sanitized term for global warming, is largely responsibe for the rise of ISIS? Answer: Embarrassing comments by leftists are ignored until a Republican or conservative criticizes them. Then the story can be admitted into the news as a "so-and-so attacks" item.

CNN, Leftist Hacks Attack CBS's Major Garrett For Asking Obama Tough Questions
By Tom Blumer | July 15, 2015 | 8:28 PM EDT

Journalists and lefitsts (but I repeat myself) are hopping mad.

They're not mad at President Obama for failing to make freeing American hostages held by Iran an issue in negotiations with that nation. Instead, they're furious at Major Garrett of CBS News for daring to ask Dear Leader a question about it, even though in the process Garrett got a clearly irritated Obama to make news by admitting, and then trying to justify, his team's failure to make such an effort.

Jon Stewart Mocks NY Times Coverage of Rubio, Leaves Key Points on the Cutting Room Floor
By Tom Blumer | June 11, 2015 | 11:50 PM EDT

If you're Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, you know you have to do the occasional segment going after the establishment press or left-wing groups to maintain appearances.

The James O'Keefe-ACORN saga in 2009 was one such instance. If Stewart hadn't dealt with it, his pretense of being supposedly fair to both left and right would have been blown out of the water. The incredibly petty New York Times reports on Marco Rubio's traffic tickets and finances fit the media version of the "We'd better do something with this or else" template. The video which follows the jump shows that Stewart only had a pair of strong moments, while missing at least a couple of key opportunities to make important points with humor.

Halperin Lamely Apologizes 'To Those Offended' by His Outrageous Grilling of Cruz
By Tom Blumer | May 11, 2015 | 6:52 PM EDT

Today, Bloomberg TV's Mark Halperin inadequately apologized for his conduct and line of questioning during an April 30 interview of GOP presidential candidate which came off as rude and racist to many who saw it — well, basically because it was.

As Tim Graham at NewsBusters noted on Sunday, and as will be seen in the video following the jump, Halperin engaged in a "prove-you're-a-Cuban" line of questioning, and did so with "a grim visage during these questions, like ... an interrogation, not a friendly chat":

'Oberlin Choir' Ridicules School's Feminist 'Victims' of 'Microaggressions'
By Tom Blumer | May 10, 2015 | 9:57 AM EDT

One of the more simultaneously annoying and alarming developments on college campuses these days is how the idea of "microagressions" has regained visibility after four decades of previously well-deserved obscurity, largely under the establishment press's radar. Almost no one in "the real world" would know what microaggressions are if it weren't for stories and critiques at center-right media outlets and campus watchdog groups.

Cut through the clutter, and it's quite easy to see that "microaggression" is really a tool used by so-called "victim classes" to allege unconscious discrimination or "marginalization" in virtually anything people they don't like might say. The idea has taken particular hold at Oberlin College, where iconoclastic feminist Christina Hoff Sommers appeared last month. Fortunately, there are still sane people with a sense of humor about all of this. That cadre includes the "Oberlin College choir."