Tim Graham
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On his PBS show Monday night, Tavis Smiley welcomed liberal former Sen. Bill Bradley to discuss his political agenda, which began with repealing the Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United decisions on campaign financing. But what stood out most was Smiley ripping the Tea Party as more Republican than American.
Bradley suggested “even” the Tea Party are Americans first. “I’m just not sure that I’m persuaded,” Smiley said.
When the New York Times warned it had been handed a “super PAC” memo suggesting someone, somewhere might plot to make a “hardline attack on Obama” with Wright sermon soundbites, MSNBC expressed outrage hour after hour. But scandalized liberal journalists had no appetite for a different behind-the-scenes Reverend Wright narrative. In Ed Klein’s new book “The Amateur,” he interviewed Rev. Wright on tape for three hours. The most shocking revelation: suggestions that Friends of Barack were trying to suggest Wright take some “hush money” to shut up for the rest of the 2008 campaign. Media interest? Pretty much zero.
Let’s imagine for two seconds what would happen if a friend of George W. Bush – even a disgruntled ex-friend of Bush – gave an interview to an author charging that Team Bush offered him money to shut up and go away during the 2000 campaign. Who would not expect that would have been screaming-siren top news?
On Daily Kos, Jesse LaGreca calls himself “Ministry of Truth.” That moniker certainly doesn’t match his latest blog post, headlined “Young Scott Walker downplays KKK Grand Dragon David Duke's extremism”.
Using a very selectively edited video, LaGreca asserts “Walker can beat up on labor rights but he couldn't bring himself to bad mouth another Republican, even if that Republican is a self avowed white supremacist.” But in the actual video, Walker attacks Duke as a neo-Nazi and compares him to cannibal killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Gay "American Idol" runner-up Adam Lambert (touted by fans as "Glambert") knows he'll have a sympathetic ear at National Public Radio. On Sunday night's All Things Considered newscast, anchor Guy Raz promoted Lambert's latest album as a "great record."
As the interview drew to an end, Raz must have tried his hardest to craft the softest, slightly stupid-sounding question about the lyrics, which protest the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality. "I wonder whether you're addressing that issue"?
As much as Obama supporters like the Rev. Al Sharpton take exception to the haters who use the president's full name -- "Barack Hussein Obama," most recently disdained in the Ricketts super PAC memo revealed by the New York Times -- what about liberals who make fun of the name "Willard Mitt Romney"?
No one is fonder of that playground ridicule that Rev. Sharpton, who loves referring to Romney as "Willard" on his MSNBC talk show "Politics Nation." In fact, an MRC analysis of the last 25 Sharpton shows -- from April 16 through May 18 -- found Sharpton tossed the name "Willard" 194 times, or almost eight times a show. Friday's program contained 16 "Willards."
The cover of this week's edition of the alternative newspaper Washington City Paper carried the promo "Theater: Euripides and Mitt Romney." Turn to page 31, and the headline is "Bully Mammoth."
Openly gay NPR movie critic Bob Mondello is also the longtime drama critic for the City Paper, and he can't see a new staging of "The Bacchae" by Euripides without thinking of the recent Washington Post "expose" charging Romney cut the hair of fellow prep school student John Lauber in a fit of juvenile homophobia:
Rush Limbaugh is probably not shaking in his boots about the latest National Organization for Women “Enough Rush” campaign. MRC-TV correspondent Dan Joseph found seven women outside WMAL radio begging “Get him off the air!”
Joseph made trouble with the tiny group by asking if they’re protesting Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a “slut,” will they also be calling for an end to the Ed Schultz show after he called Laura Ingraham a “slut.” They refused to compare the two:
On Sunday, Washington Post sports columnist Mike Wise protested the long-standing Baltimore Oriole fan habit of yelling “Oh!” for Orioles at the end of the National Anthem (at “OH say does that star-spangled banner yet wave....).
Wise is not a fan. He argued persuasively that the anthem is meant to unite Americans, not divide them among sports teams. But the ending was a bit harsh, with Wise suggesting he’d like to set the offending Oriole fans...on fire?
Somehow, The Washington Post always picks Sundays for articles on how God makes mistakes. Screaming at the top of Sunday’s paper was a picture of a little girl getting her head buzzed with the headline “TRANSGENDER AT FIVE,” and “She first declared she was a boy when she was 2 years old. Her parents brushed it off by slowly concluded this wasn’t just a phase." This wasn't news. It was propaganda, and if you don't like it, they dare you to cancel your subscription.
The article, by liberal Post columnist (and former reporter) Petula Dvorak, naturally referred to how everyone has grown to know “transgenders” from Chaz Bono on “Dancing with the Stars.” It also repeatedly rejected scientific fact in referring to this troubled girl in male terms like “he” and “his” – including the “instructional” video the Post put online.
Politico media reporter Dylan Byers is impatient with the media: “When will we talk about Mormonism?”
He means the negative stuff: “I’m talking about a national conversation about the Mormon faith, including its past practice of polygamy (which was renounced by the church in the 19th century) and its exclusion of African Americans from the priesthood (until 1978). That sort of thing.” Does he watch anything?
ABC News is hawking this stupid headline on their Facebook page Sunday: "Obama, America's first Amish president?"
Olivier Knox breezily reported his findings from the sappy spectacle of The View appearance: "Obama said this week that his daughters can use their cell phones only on weekends, are banned from Facebook, can't watch TV and are only allowed on the computer during the week when they have to do their homework." And that is Amish....how?
The Radio Equalizer blog finds leftist radio talker Randi Rhodes slowly losing her mind over the finding that Trayvon Martin had traces of marijuana in his system when he was killed. She expected that finding "means that conservative pundits are going to try and turn this into a sequel to 'Reefer Madness.' The THC could have been from 30 days ago."
Somehow, this became an occasion for Rhodes to trash Mark Levin for doing his radio show from his home in northern Virginia. His convenient studio location makes him a "pothead" of some sort:
The "mainstream media" claim that they finely sift information to offer their customers only the most trustworthy information. That obviously does not apply to Politico or their reporter Ken Vogel. On Saturday, they stooped to an article headlined "Marco Rubio as vice president: the Bilderberg conspiracy?"
Vogel even included this line: "Paranoid? Perhaps. But like any good conspiracy theory, there’s just enough there to stoke questions." Then there was plenty of publicity for the "Bilderberg obsessives" and radio host Alex Jones:
A small group of conservative protesters greeted HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – a woman whose own bishop excommunicated her – to speak at the Catholic Georgetown University. The group made the front page of Saturday’s Washington Post – and the caption highlighted “A small group of abortion foes, nearly all of them men” protested.
This is not the way the Post covered Occupy DC: “A group of free enterprise foes, nearly all of them white...” Post reporter Jenna Johnson set the scene as Sebelius was heckled:
In an appearance on NPR's Diane Rehm Show on Tuesday, longtime Newsweek correspondent Eleanor Clift offered one surprising bit of understatement: "Obama and his people ran a brilliant campaign and yet it's hard to look at the last three years, four years in the White House, and think that they governed with equal brilliance."
Other than that, it was a constant drumbeat of predicting Mitt Romney is going to be sunk for going too far to the right:
Matthew Balan noted earlier today that CBS This Morning loved Jay Leno’s joke that Chris Matthews offered so many wrong answers on “Jeopardy!” he was offered a job at Fox News.” We're not so sure Charlie Rose should be laughing it up at Fox when not only is CBS's perpetually low-rated morning show getting thumped by ABC and NBC, but is even getting spanked by a cable morning show -- on Fox.
TV By The Numbers reports reported that Nielsen’s latest numbers that came out just yesterday noted that for 18 weeks straight, “Fox & Friends” has been beating CBS This Morning in total viewers in five of the Top 20 markets around the country. Not only have these same market leads sustained for all 18 weeks, since CBS re-launched this new program, but FOX & Friends is now also beating what CBS in the key advertising demo (25-54) in Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta and Detroit. But CBS is still boasting to advertisers.
Since The New York Times decided to put Reverend Jeremiah Wright back on the nation's agenda, it's important to note that some voters (especially the youngest new voters) may not understand what happened in the last cycle. The most important part for them is this: Barack Obama said in a widely hailed speech on March 18, 2008 that "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He then disowned him on April 29, and finally cut ties to the church entirely on May 31. None of his craven (if very delayed) moves were forced by the networks, which covered them like a sad family decision.
A 2008 Media Research Center Special Report studying ABC, CBS, and NBC news broadcasts revealed that a viewer watching only broadcast TV news would have received a very limited (and even censored) version of Wright’s most outrageous sermons. Key findings:
On Thursday night’s “Politics Nation,” Rev. Al Sharpton began by accusing someone else of having a “long history of fear and smear.” Put "Sharpton and Tawana Brawley" in Nexis. Sharpton never brings up her (and his) phony story.
Like the other hosts on MSNBC yesterday, Sharpton was pounding away at the New York Times story on the Ricketts Memo and Jeremiah Wright: “Tonight's lead, fear and loathing from the campaign trail. For decades, the Republican party has thrived on tearing down Democrats in presidential elections. Today, the GOP may be writing an ugly new chapter in their long history of fear and smear.” It’s as if MSNBC is offended anyone is actually running with the intention of defeating Obama:
Since the 9-11 truther MSNBC contributor who calls himself Toure is in the spotlight, I’d just like to add his appearance on Al Sharpton’s Politics Nation on Tuesday night. He came to proclaim that Obama’s performance on “The View” was masterful: “He was just calm and cool with it. I mean, like I thought there was a really nice way of presenting himself.”
In fact, he predicted “If Mitt Romney cannot lay out a plan, a credible plan for America and convince that he can make that happen, then you know, the [Obama] likability is going to crush him.”
Jim Romenesko.com reports that at least one joke ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel planned for the White House Correspondents Dinner was deemed unacceptable for the political elite. In an interview on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show, Kimmel said he ran jokes by ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper and other reporters.
Tapper & Co. flagged a joke about Newt Gingrich’s campaign being so dead Rick Santorum wanted to show it to his kids – a play on the Santorum family’s decision to show their stillborn son Gabriel to his brothers and sisters: