Tim Graham
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The New York Times isn’t the only media outlet to try to find signs of GOP defeat in the midst of Brian Bilbray’s Republican victory in a San Diego special election for Congress. CBS reporter Jerry Bowen carried a sense of Democrat Francine Busby’s moral victory throughout his story on The Early Show this morning. Bowen began:
Several Washington members of the "mainstream" media elite gave the Washington Examiner their picks for what books they'll be reading this summer.
MRC's Geoff Dickens told me that Geraldo Rivera's syndicated program "Rivera At Large" -- which I'm told airs alongside the network evening news shows on some Fox affiliates -- carried a big segment on the 25th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS on June 1. Rivera found one actress who was an angry activist.
In the latest liberal media press release disguised as a news story, Bill Clinton has now provided his own audio tour of the Clinton library, reports Jill Zeman of the Associated Press from Little Rock, and it seems to have a lot of boasting against Republicans of the "you can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me" variety.
CNSNews.com has an exclusive interview with Ann Coulter today as her book "Godless" The Church of Liberalism" hits the book stores. She tells Randy Hall that abortion is the "virgin sacrifice" of the liberal "religion" she describes in the book. Coulter goes on to say that one of the main goals of the American public education system is to force small school children to become atheists.
In the wake of the Ann Coulter interview on Tuesday's "Today" -- specifically the part where Matt Lauer simply couldn't believe Coulter's attacks on 9-11 widows channeling their grief into anti-Bush attacks on TV news shows -- here are a few reminders of how the Kristen Breitweisers of the world (who endorsed John Kerry in the fall) were given the lion's share of attention by network hosts like Matt Lauer.
While NBC interviewed Joe Scarborough on the "gay marriage" front (and CBS stayed out of the fray), ABC followed up their Claire Shipman report on "Good Morning America" with an interview with very liberal San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Typically, co-host Charles Gibson asked about whether this issue is pandering and good politics for Republicans, but not whether it's been pandering or good politics for Democrats.
While NBC's David Gregory described the marriage-amendment battle as a move to placate conservatives on Monday morning, ABC's Claire Shipman's story on "Good Morning America" highlighted opposition to the amendment within the White House. MRC's Brian Boyd found the labeling imbalance was here, too:
As Mark already noted, NBC’s “Today” hit the Federal Marriage Amendment talk this week as a blatant pandering move to conservatives. MRC's Geoff Dickens reported that this was how Matt Lauer began Monday's show: “Good morning. Wedded blitz: President Bush and Senate conservatives kick off an effort today to ban gay marriage,but is it a marriage of political convenience?"
For you conservatives tired of the to-the-right-of-Attila ribbings, know that liberals sometimes brag up their own ideological bearings. So in the Weekend section of the Washington Post on Friday, obnoxious red-headed comedienne and old "Suddenly Susan" character Kathy Griffin proclaimed: "I'm super, super loudmouth lefty.
People magazine, another publicity engine of the Time Warner empire, gives a box to Al Gore (page 35, I believe) to explain "How I'm Saving The Planet." People asked: "His film 'An Inconvenient Truth' warns about global warming. So what is Gore doing about it?"
Here are Gore's answers for the publicity box:
"1. I turn off lights in my house [to conserve energy]. We're getting sensor switches that automatically turn them off when the room is empty.
2. We got a hybrid car recently.
Elvis Costello in March (on VH-1) at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction concert, before playing with New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint: "I feel very lucky and very proud that music jumped to the aid of New Orleans back in September...But it’s a drop in the bucket for what is needed. There is a lot of things that I could say. I could say something like we are fighting the wrong wars in the wrong countries and not dealing with the people here that are living in this country that are not living right."
This just in from Reuters, dateline Las Vegas: "Addressing the annual convention of CBS affiliates, [Katie] Couric predicted that the 'pretentious era' of the evening-news anchor is going to be a thing of the past." The headline, at least on the New York Times website, is "Couric Hopes to End 'Pretentious Era' in News."
Friday’s New York Times profile of NPR star Garrison Keillor (well, American Public Media, to be exact, but heard on many NPR stations) underlines how public broadcasting can be a very lucrative business. On the cusp of Keillor’s "Prairie Home Companion" movie coming out in a week, Times writer Joyce Wadler traveled to St.
My pal Henry Payne has the definitive cartoon on the Al Gore movie.
Reviewing "An Inconvenient Truth" for the American Spectator, James Bowman doesn't really discuss the film as film, but does scold Gore for making no attempt to engage the public on the question of how much drastic emission-limiting regulations could help, and how much they would cost:
Washington Post film critic Desson Thomson respectfully endorsed Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" Friday, even if he saw it as more a movie about Gore's reinvention that the planet's doom. While he admitted the film was "hagiographic," Gore wasn't wooden, he claimed: "If all college courses had presentations this evocative and sophisticated, no universities would hurt for enrollment."
New York Times columnist and best-selling foreign-policy author/guru Thomas Friedman appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" Thursday, mostly to address the administration's Iran initiative.
Because it’s been so heavily subsidized, you forget that Air America Radio hosts do shameless commercial plugs like any other talk-radio star. I’ve heard Al Franken chat about his Craft-Matic adjustable mattress, for example.