Jon Stewart, on Thursday's Daily Show, repeatedly mocked Rick Perry for his, as he put it, "brain turd" moment at this week's CNBC debate. However, Perry wasn't the only GOP candidate Stewart made fun of. Everyone from Perry to Santorum took a hit. The only candidate Stewart didn't mock was Mitt Romney, whom the Daily Show host declared to be the winner of the whole race. "It's over! Indecision 2012 Mercy Rule Edition. Because in presidential primaries, as in little league, if one team is up 10-0 in the third you call it a day an you head over to Friendly's for some Fribbles and some food poisoning."
Stewart initially teased his audience with the Perry clip by calling it: "Rick Perry's now infamous ABC Wide World of Sports agony-of-defeat-worthy brain turd." Then he went on to savage the other GOP contenders on his November 10 show. (video after the jump)
Michele Bachmann
In an interview with Michele Bachmann on Friday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer's first four questions pushed Bachmann to comment on the Herman Cain controversy: "As the only woman in this race, I just would like your perspective on all this....Do you think you are hearing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from Herman Cain?"
Bachmann repeatedly told Lauer: "I don't have any comment on this particular issue." However, Lauer persisted: "Is a subject like sexual harassment, and if there – especially if there is more than one instance of it, even back in the '90s, is it a game-ender if it's proven to be true?"
Although there are no limits to what Bill Maher will say about conservatives, it appears some of his audience members have a shred of decency that he doesn't.
When the host of HBO's Real Time made a gay joke involving Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus and Moammar Gaddafi being sodomized with a stick after his capture, some audience members actually booed (video follows with transcript and commentary):
The Washington Post's Express tabloid profiled British-accented Daily Show star John Oliver on Thursday, reveling in how he covered Sarah Palin's "flag-draped liberty coach" bus tour and told Jon Stewart on the Rupert Murdoch-harming News of the World phone-hacking scandal "I'm about to give you a schadenfraude-gasm, Jon."
He's no fan of the Republican presidential field: "I think all the candidates [are] very gifted at inspiring comedy from abject despair. Michele Bachmann certainly has a special quality to her. Her speeches are like semantic palindromes; they make exactly as much sense when you read them backward as when you read them forward." The paper didn't ask for Obama jokes.
There are softballs and then there are softballs.
On Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory teed one up for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that was specifically designed to mock the Republican presidential candidates while allowing her to brag uninterrupted about the foreign policy successes of Barack Obama (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Hours before Republican presidential candidates faced off in Tuesday's debate in Las Vegas, Martin Bashir took a swipe at six of them.
On the MSNBC program bearing his name, the host said that since Mitt Romney is "the inevitable candidate," the rest of the contestants are auditioning "for future employment" at Fox News (video follows with transcript and commentary):
According to MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann"don't even understand basic policy, basic economics, basic foreign policy." The Morning Joe anchor on Tuesday expounded on a Politico op-ed in which he denounced a number of the GOP presidential candidates as "clownish characters."
When MSNBC executives deny their network is dominated solely by liberals, they often reference Scarborough. However, the former Republican Congressman has been aggressively negative towards the GOP field. On Tuesday's show, he mournfully wondered, "What's wrong with a political party that Michele Bachmann takes the lead and Herman Cain takes the lead?" [MP3 audio here. See video below.]
Brian Maloney at the Radio Equalizer blog caught another jaw-dropper on the Stephanie Miller radio show. On the October 7 morning show, Jim Ward, Miller’s Rich Little-ish sidekick and cartoon “voice actor,” wished someone would feed Michele Bachmann “some listeria-filled canteloupe.” That's wishing-someone-dead talk. The current listeria death toll is 23.
After a clip of Michele Bachmann insisting that less regulations would mean that employers like she and her husband could create more jobs, Miller chimed in:
Early this morning, I noted how two AP writers seemed to be hoping that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will be the Republican Party's presidential nominee, in the process ignoring inconvenient facts like his failure to get over 25% in any poll covered at Real Clear Politics since mid-July while failing to even mention Herman Cain's name until the report's eleventh paragraph (a Rasmussen poll today breaks Romney's three-month dry spell, showing him at 29%, tied with Herman Cain). Sadly, what the AP writes is important for readers to know, because the wire service's copy is read and relayed without question by most of its thousands of subscribing outlets.
Not that learning about the following is anywhere near as important, but in case you're wondering about the GOP presidential nominee preferences and perceptions among several of the pundits at the Washington Post, wonder no more:
Hardball host Chris Matthews honestly believes that Rep. Michele Bachmann's "devil's in the details" joke about Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan may be something more sinister, or at least cynically calculated to appeal to "strange, far right" Christian voters.
"Well, last night, Congressman and David, they were supposed to stick to economics, but of course Michele Bachmann couldn't avoid religious concerns," the MSNBC host complained to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and David Corn of the left-wing magazine Mother Jones on his October 12 program. [MP3 audio available here for download; Video follow page break]
PBS's Charlie Rose opened last night’s Bloomberg/Washington Post GOP presidential economic policy debate by noting the round table format was like a “kind of kitchen table where families for generations have come together to talk and solve their problems.”
But through much of the debate it sounded more like Thanksgiving dinner with your liberal aunt and uncle as panelist Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post hammered the candidates from the left and moderator Charlie Rose used a 27-year-old Reagan sound bite to push candidates to come out in favor of tax increases.
On Friday's Early Show, CBS's Erica Hill advocated for a liberal pet cause, urging Michele Bachmann to allow children of illegal aliens to receive in-state college tuition. Hill also spotlighted Gov. Rick Perry's attack on his competitors in the GOP presidential race on this issue: "Basically, [Perry is] saying to the other eight folks on the stage there, including yourself, that you don't have a heart."
The anchor raised the immigration issue towards the end of her interview of the Minnesota representative. Hill first quoted Gov. Perry's line on the in-state tuition issue from the previous night's debate: "He said, 'If you say we should not educate children who come into our state by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart.'" She then made a budget-based appeal to the Republican: "I know you said you don't want any resources to go to illegal aliens or their children. Why not, though, give them a tuition break now, rather then, perhaps, down the line, having to hand over unemployment, or even welfare?"