Sudden Respect

NBC News interrupted their Saturday night programming of America’s Got Talent to bring a somber and respectful look at the life of John McCain. What NBC didn’t account for, however, was what was playing after their special report was over.

Republican Sen. John McCain, a war hero who suffered five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison camp in Vietnam, and who became an independent, influential senator, has died at 81. The New York Times obituary was broadly admiring. But the Times hasn’t always treated Sen. McCain so respectfully. Look back to the 2008 campaign. Reporters suggestied McCain was…

On Thursday's CNN Tonight, the show not only repeated the debunked myth that the Trump administration treats illegal immigrant children worse than the Obama administration did, but even one of CNN's right-leaning analysts added to the media myth that legal asylum seekers have their children separated from them without making the distinction that those who enter the country legally typically are…

Now that Donald Trump seems ready to name another conservative to the Supreme Court, to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Times suddenly realizes the Court is “polarized” and politicized, and pleads for a court free from ideology. This after years of pushing to discover abortion, gay rights, and universal health care in the “terse, old” document. Chief Washington correspondent Carl…

On Sunday, Washington Post “conservative” George Will won the admiration of his liberal peers when he penned a column calling for the Republican Party to lose control Congress. His anti-Republican screed was featured on CNN’s Inside Politics and ABC’s This Week. But on NBC’s Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd put it up for a panel discussion during the show’s “End Game” segment.

The press is simplistically treating South Carolina Congressman Mark Sanford's Tuesday Republican primary loss as exemplifying the price one pays if one doesn't learn, per the Associated Press, "not to cross (President Donald) Trump." A closer look at Sanford's history illustrates that this is a classic case of sudden media respect which ignores why Sanford was so vulnerable.

More strange new respect for religion -- or at least religious figures who advocate left-wing issues – in Sunday’s New York Times. Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Rome on Pope Francis’s “climate change” crusade and his lecture of corporations in “Pope Urges Oil Executives to Act on Climate: ‘There Is No Time to Lose.’” (Christian conservative opponents of gay marriage and abortion still…

Former President Bill Clinton’s sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky was back in the news on Monday after he lashed out during an interview with NBC News’ Craig Melvin to promote the thriller novel he co-authored with James Patterson. And surprisingly, some members of the liberal media were critical of his attitude towards both Lewinski and Melvin, as was the case during CNN Tonight where host Don…

The New York Times featured a university student in France who has become a liberal hero by embracing a tenet of fundamentalist Islam in the form of a headscarf. It’s jarring to read a Times article so gung-ho in support of a sign of religious fundamentalism, and which criticizes the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo without mentioning the massacre of 12 of its employees by radical…

During a discussion on Tuesday’s edition of CNN’s New Day about whether the Trump administration should publicly apologize for the comment made by White House aide Kelly Sadler that Senator John McCain is dying of cancer, a clash arose between faux Republican and CNN political commentator Ana Navarro and Women Vote Trump co-chair Amy Kremer.

The front of Sunday’s New York Times featured political reporter Jonathan Martin’s tribute to the ailing Sen. John McCain: “At Home, McCain Shares Memories and Regrets.” It has some charming moments, but comes off hypocritical, given the paper’s back and forth feelings for McCain, praising him when he was a threat to more conservative Republicans during the 2008 party primaries, condemning him…

Stirring the political controversy in the Vatican, New York Times Rome bureau chief Jason Horowitz once again gleefully pitted Pope Francis against “ultraconservative” Catholics in Tuesday’s “Pope Puts Caring for Migrants and Opposing Abortion on Equal Footing.” Horowitz used the Pope's newest apostolic exhortation to sharpen the conflict, crediting Francis with "citing vicious examples of…

Donald Trump is not the first President to have been accused of sexual improprieties. When President Bill Clinton faced allegations of sexual harassment from Paula Jones and even a rape charge from Juanita Broaddrick, the media looked for reasons not to cover those charges.

On Wednesday, Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski was repeatedly struck speechless with adoration during an interview with former CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan had scored points with Brzezinski and her compatriots in the past with his verbose tweets attacking the President, some of which Brzezinski had displayed on screen for viewers to appreciate during the interview. Upon encountering Brennan…