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Nets Continue Hammering Indiana Over Religious Freedom Law
On their Monday evening newscasts, the major broadcast networks kept up their attacks on the State of Indiana for having enacted a religious freedom law that aims to protect individuals from government infringement based on their religious beliefs. While ABC, CBS, and NBC mentioned that there are those supporting the law, their coverage continued to veer off in a slanted direction against the law…
Salon Columnist: New Daily Show Host Will Face Right-Wing ‘Backlash'
It’s fair to say most conservatives aren’t big fans of Jon Stewart, but according to TV critic Sonia Saraiya, Trevor Noah, Stewart’s successor as host of The Daily Show, is in for an even nastier response from the right, much of it having to do with his skin color.
Apropos of Comedy Central’s Monday announcement that Noah, a biracial South African comedian, will take over for Stewart sometime…
AP Story on Obama Golf Trip Ignores Journos Hung Out at Shed (Updated)
UPDATE, March 31: This morning in an email, the AP's Lederman pointed me to a Saturday afternoon "Big Story" item time-stamped the day before the report to which this blog post below links. For whatever reason, that earlier "Big Story" item has more detail than what appears, despite the Sunday time stamp, to be Lederman's original report posted at the AP's national site. In that "Big Story" item…
WashPost Touts 'Spa-Like' Abortion Mill's 'Unabashed Approach'
On Monday, the Washington Post's Sandhya Somashekhar zeroed in on the "unabashed approach" of Carafem, Washington, DC's latest abortion center, which, in her words, "reflects a new push to destigmatize the nation's most controversial medical procedure by talking about it openly and unapologetically." Somashekhar, the liberal newspaper's "social change" reporter, spotlighted how the upstart "aims…
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NBC Slams Religious Freedom Law...Then Starts Series on Faith
Early on Monday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host Willie Geist hyped "the growing debate over a controversial law that critics call anti-gay....[who] say it permits businesses, among other things, to refuse service to same-sex couples on religious grounds." Correspondent Gabe Gutierrez followed: "This morning a huge backlash against Indiana's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act and Governor Mike…
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Daily Beast Editor Likens Mike Pence to Segregationist George Wallace
On Monday's New Day on CNN, Daily Beast's John Avlon likened Indiana Governor Mike Pence's defense of his state's new religious freedom law to George Wallace's fight for racial segregation. Avlon asserted that Republican politicians "don't want to say they're in favor of bigotry. So what you get is that incredibly awkward stonewalling by Mike Pence." He added that "this puts him in the same…
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SNL's Violent Opening Skit: Impossible to Imagine If Parties Switched
One of the first rules of genuine comedy is that to be funny, a joke or skit needs to have some basis in truth.
On that primary measurement, the cold open on "Saturday Night Live" last night failed miserably on so many fronts, it's hard to know where to begin. Its most offensive aspect is its portrayal of a Democrat inflicting violence on three Republicans to the audience's pleausre. It is…
Chicago Trib Excuses Emanuel's Ignorance on Origins of Airports' Names
In Chicago, incumbent Mayor and longtime Democrat fixture Rahm Emanuel floated the idea of renaming one of its airports after President Obama. After all, according to Emanuel, both of Chicago's major airports, O'Hare and Midway, are "named after battleships." No they're not, as will be seen after the jump.
The Chicago Tribune's Bill Ruthhart failed to recognize Emanuel's startling gaffe until…
Lefty Writer: Is Francis Catholic? Yes (Unlike Some Recent Popes)
In a Sunday blog post on the New York Review of Books site, historian Wills, who’s written extensively about both the United States and Catholicism, rebuked conservative Catholics who’ve “suggested that [Pope Francis] is not truly Catholic,” asserting that such critics of the pope “are right to be in a panic. They are not used to having a pope who is a Christian. They call Francis a radical…
Online Magazine Hypes 'Yogaphobic' Catholic Priests
Andrea R. Jain bemoaned how a "growing number of individuals and institutions oppose yoga, and actively encourage fear of it" in a Thursday item on Quartz, an online magazine from the parent company of The Atlantic. Despite passing mentions of opposition from evangelical Christians, such as Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler, the Indiana University-Perdue University Indianapolis professor…
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CBS Touts 'Growing Backlash' Against Indiana's Religious Freedom Law
Friday's CBS Evening News played up the "growing backlash" by social liberals against a new law in Indiana that protest the religious liberties of business owners. Correspondent Adriana Diaz spotlighted how "the protests have grown from Indiana's state house to a torrent on social media." She also played clips or read excerpts from statements of four opponents of the law, while only featuring two…
Reviewer Objects That Play Doesn't Portray Scalia As ‘Bigoted Bully'
Mark Joseph Stern argues that a crucial shortcoming of John Strand’s play The Originalist is its out-of-date portrayal of Scalia as “a principled conservative, a brilliant and complex man who resists partisan classification.” Nowadays, however, Scalia’s “ideology…looks less conservative than Republican…Twenty years ago Scalia was the unpredictable justice, the renegade who thought both flag…
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NBC's Mitchell & Todd Realize Nuke Deal Would 'Make Iran Stronger'
Despite having savaged Republicans two weeks earlier for voicing opposition to an Iran nuclear deal in an open letter to the totalitarian regime, on Friday, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd suddenly realized such a deal would be a bad idea.
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Shock: CBS Covers Own Poll on Declining Support for Hillary Clinton
After the network morning and evening newscasts ignored a Reuters poll showing tumbling support for Hillary Clinton last week, the CBS Evening News bucked the trend and covered the results of its own poll that also found dwindling support for Clinton in light of recent scandals. While the program spent only 32 seconds on the results of the poll, anchor Scott Pelley was still able to highlight…
