Tavis Smiley of PBS: 'We're All Working For Barack Obama

Chris Matthews won't be working alone.  Back in November, the Hardball host said it was his job to make Barack Obama's presidency a success.  Today, another TV journalist expressed a similar sentiment. Tavis Smiley has declared that "we're all working for Barack Obama" and that "we have to help make Obama a great president." [H/t reader dronetek.]The host of Tavis Smiley on PBS was a guest on…
Mark Finkelstein

Open Thread

NB Staff

N.Y. Times Styles Michelle Obama As 'U.S. Fashion's One-Woman Bailout

Tim Graham

Smith Wants Israel Stopped

We all know that for months, Harry Smith has been demanding that the international community force Hamas to stop shooting thousands of rockets into civilian areas of Israel. So Smith speaks with unique moral authority now in calling for Israel to be stopped.Oh, wait. As far as I know, Smith never uttered a peep of protest over the Hamas bombardment of Israel.  But that didn't prevent the Early…
Mark Finkelstein

Reuters: 8,000 Bosnia Massacre Victims Just Like Gazans

These sort of nonsensical comparisons, filled to the brim with hyperbolic foolishness, is what we get from the anti-Israeli Old Media so often that it almost fails to even surprise at this point. But, here is Reuters again indulging its inner terrorist, just the same. In "Bosnia genocide victims protest Gaza offensive," Reuters reports the over-the-top claims made by Bosnian Muslims that the…
Warner Todd Huston

Richard Gere and Others Take Parting Shots at Bush Admin at Critics' C

Kerry Picket

Bay Area TV Station Notes 'Professional Protester' Influence in Riot

Here's something you don't see every day. A video report about last night's riot in Oakland related to the shooting death of an unarmed man at the hands of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer actually calls it .... a riot. What's more, the reporter notes, as is really often the case in situations such as these, how people he characterized as "professional protesters" egged others on…
Tom Blumer

NPR On Modern America: Lynching Is 'Inescapably Us

Tim Graham

They Never Learn: CNN Withdraws Apparently Faked Video of CPR Attempt

See Jan. 9 Follow-up -- "CNN Doubles Down: Reposts Withdrawn Video of Apparently Faked CPR Attempt on 'Dead' Palestinian Child"Not that it ever really went away, but fake news is back in Gaza, and the worldwide media is being played. Many readers will likely detect the fakery in the linked video pictured on the right on their own (HTs to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs [LGF] and Bob…
Tom Blumer

Time Mag's Joe Klein: 'A Profoundly un-American Administration

Discussing on MSNBC Thursday night his latest screed for Time magazine (“The Bush Administration's Most Despicable Act”), Joe Klein maligned the Bush-Cheney administration, telling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue host David Shuster: “I think this has been a profoundly un-American administration.” Klein, whose piece for the January 19 edition of the magazine contended Vice President Dick Cheney and other…
Brent Baker

Buchanan Accuses Israel of 'Blitzkrieg,' Creating 'Concentration Camp

I like Pat Buchanan. I do. He's wise, funny and charming.  But every so often . . . Like tonight. If Buchanan wants to criticize Israel's conduct of the current war, and its treatment of the Palestinians, so be it. But in doing so, is it really necessary to employ terms associated with the Nazis?  Appearing on "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Buchanan accused Israel of carrying out a "blitzkrieg"…
Mark Finkelstein

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter Slams Sarah Palin as 'So Lame

On Thursday night's "Hardball," Chris Matthews played several clips from documentarian John Zeigler's interview with Sarah Palin, in which the former GOP VP candidate criticized Katie Couric and the press as a whole for bias against her but his guest, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, dismissed Palin's charges as "So lame," and called her "a Nixonian Nanook of the North."The following exchanges…
Geoffrey Dickens

Miami Herald Profiles Former Cuban Revolutionary with Harsh Words for

While Time's Tim Padgett insists that at its 50-year anniversary the Castro Revolution in Cuba "deserves its due," Huber Matos might agree, but for entirely different reasons. After all, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.Matos, who fought alongside the brothers Castro to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, has long felt that the Castros betrayed the Cuban people by…
Ken Shepherd

R.I.P., Rev. Richard John Neuhaus

The conservative movement lost a great intellectual voice on Thursday. The Reverend Richard John Neuhaus died due to complications from cancer at the age of 72. Neuhaus, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of New York, was a well-known pro-life advocate, and founded First Things in 1990, a periodical focused on advancing “a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.” We…
Matthew Balan