According to a MSNBC host, the racist outbursts of the character Archie Bunker can be felt in opposition to the President's amnesty plan. Ninety two year-old producer Norman Lear appeared on Monday's edition of The Cycle and journalist Blake Zeff sneered, "I think Archie Bunker still resonates today because you still have people in America who think the way Archie did." 

NPR’s Diane Rehm Show on Wednesday featured an hour with two liberal Hollywood activists – TV producer Norman Lear and actress Kathleen Turner, both in Washington for a People For The American Way event. Guest host Terence Smith (formerly a correspondent with CBS and PBS) honored them both by offering softball questions and opportunities for them to bash Mitt Romney, his adviser Robert Bork, and pro-life advocates.

Smith ran several clips of old Lear sitcoms from the Seventies, including the seminal abortion episode of "Maude," including the actress Adrienne Barbeau lecturing her mother (the title character) that abortion is no longer a dirty word and it’s as easy as going to the dentist:

Oooooh!

You're so angry and stupid that...you're GONNA EXPLODE!!!

That sums up the incredibly embarrassing childish critique of Rush Limbaugh by Norman Lear. Not one issue was mentioned. Ironically Lear slammed Limbaugh for being like an uncontrollable kid yet it was Lear himself who lowered himself to using slams that most folks haven't heard since sitting in a grade school cafeteria and hearing the children ragging on each other.  Even for the Huffington Post, Lear's childishness is over the top. The only reason I can think of about why the editor gave his piece a pass is that Lear is a celebrity. And in case you think your humble correspondent has exaggerated about the content-free childishness of Lear's slams against Limbaugh, here is his entire brief schoolboyish mudsling:

Folks, I'm worried about Rush Limbaugh. Has anyone ever exploded, you know, burst apart, like if we humans had seams and they just burst open and guts and shit shot out in every direction?

Has that ever happened to anyone any of you have ever known even in the wildest of election seasons? 'Cause listening to Limbaugh in my car today, carrying on about Obama with less than 2 weeks to the midterms (and I'm someone who's heard him a lot and knows what a screamer he is) how he can carry on like the kid you knew up the block who could stand there and holler dumbness until his face got red as a radish --oh, My God, is that where "redneck" comes from?! -- and today, riding with my car windows down, I thought "This guy is gonna split a gut so bad I better put my car windows up even if I'm in LA and he's broadcasting from Florida.

 

ABC was embarrassed last week by NewsBusters’ exposure of how their new senior medical editor, Dr. Richard Besser of the federal Centers for Disease Control, donated $400 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, presumably an indication of his political sympathies. An ABC News spokeswoman, Cathie Levin, defended Besser to the Associated Press, arguing that he’s a doctor “whose job it is to give impartial and unvarnished advice and he’ll be able to do the same for a television audience.”

Maybe Besser can indeed separate his political views from his reporting on health care, but a review of campaign finance records at OpenSecrets.org finds that CBS’s Dr. Jon LaPook and NBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman have also chipped in their own cash to Democratic — but never Republican — candidates. And both correspondents, along with Besser’s future ABC colleague, Dr. Tim Johnson, have showered the liberal Obama health care plan with fawning press. Details: