On Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN, Dr. Gail Saltz blasted Fox News contributor Dr. Keith Ablow for his jab at Michelle Obama's weight: "To be criticizing people, kind of, willy-nilly is – I don't think meets the Hippocratic Oath." She played up how Dr. Ablow previously hinted that Vice President Biden might have dementia, and claimed that the psychiatrist violated "American psychiatric guidelines, which is not to diagnose someone that you have ever met." [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
Host Brian Stelter wondered if there's "this urge to be entertaining; to be provocative; to be outrageous." Dr. Saltz asserted that she tries "very hard every day to resist that," and that "any professional wants to express their opinion that has nothing to do with medicine, they have to carefully take off their doctor hat, and make it clear that they're doing so." The CNN guest should take her own advice, as she diagnosed conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh as a "bully" in October 2009:
Keith Ablow
Remember the J. Crew pink toenail controversy? MRC’s Culture and Media Institute started a firestorm of controversy last spring by drawing attention to an ad in which Jenna Lyons, J. Crew president and creative director, was painting her son’s toenails pink.
The caption in that ad read: “Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.”
The Daily Mail and Huffington Post reported that Lyons is leaving her husband for her lesbian lover.
As NewsBusters previously reported, Bill Maher last Friday disgracefully attacked Bristol Palin saying, "The s--t doesn't fall far from the bat."
On Wednesday's "Fox & Friends," noted psychiatrist Keith Ablow analyzed the behavior of HBO's "Real Time" host concluding that the comedian has a deep-seated hatred of women and absolutely no regard for life (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Say what you will about NBC's Today show but they recognize a ratings winner when they see one and they demonstrated that, when they invited Fox News host Glenn Beck back for a second appearance on Wednesday's show. However with that second guest spot came another opportunity to accuse him of fomenting hate.
In the 7am half hour Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira accused Beck of contributing to "a dialogue of hate" that led to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and in the 9am hour it was her colleague Natalie Morales' turn to make that ugly inference as she pressed Beck: "How do you respond to the accusations...that people make" since the Tucson shooting "that you may be somewhat to blame?"
This time around, Beck took a back seat to his co-author psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow who offered this professional diagnosis for those critics that blame Beck and other conservatives like Sarah Palin for the tragedy in Arizona: "Refer them to me, they're crazy."
(video, audio and transcript after the break)
Fox News host Glenn Beck showed up on Wednesday's Today show to promote his new book The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, but it was NBC's Meredith Vieira's misperceptions of him and conservatives as a whole that Beck was forced to try to change. After an initial discussion about Beck overcoming his personal struggles, Vieira brought Beck into the debate over whether conservative talk provoked the Tuscon shooter Jared Loughner, as she charged: "You talk about spewing anger in your personal life but also in your professional life, Glenn. I mean there are people who've criticized you and said...you're part of the problem in terms of anger...you've added to this dialogue of hatred."
Beck deftly responded that anything he may have said was not any worse than what Vieira has heard from the likes of Jon Stewart or on The Simpsons, as seen in this fiery exchange:
(video, audio, and transcript after the jump)