Today Show Brings Back Glenn Beck to Bash Him Some More

Say what you will about NBC's Today show but they recognize a ratings winner when they see one and they demonstrated that, when they invited Fox News host Glenn Beck back for a second appearance on Wednesday's show. However with that second guest spot came another opportunity to accuse him of fomenting hate. In the 7am half hour Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira accused Beck of contributing to…
Geoffrey Dickens
January 19th, 2011 4:28 PM

Send the Beast to Weight-Watchers

Want to end the rage? Starve the government.
Dan Kennedy
January 19th, 2011 4:06 PM

‘Skins’: A New Low, Even for MTV

MTV has bumped up the smut and sleaze level on television with its new show “Skins” – a take off on a successful BBC series. The scripted show’s attempt to portray the real lives of high school students showcases casual sex among minors without consequences, a 16 year-old child purchasing four ounces of marijuana, an adult woman stripping for an underage peeping tom, parental verbal abuse, an…
Erin R. Brown
January 19th, 2011 3:13 PM

Pro-union Harper's Publisher Changes Tune as His Employees Unionize

If liberalism is more "academic" than conservatism, it's because it looks a lot better in a classroom (or a newsroom) than it does in real life. Just ask Harper's Magazine publisher John "Rick" MacArthur. In a recent article, New York magazine detailed an ongoing fight at Harper's between MacArthur and his recently-unionized staff. MacArthur fought hard against unionization, and is now trying…
Lachlan Markay
January 19th, 2011 1:58 PM

Michael Moore Flummoxed by Link Between More Guns, Less Crime

From the files of clippings I've saved over the years, one of my favorite headlines -- "Prison populations, costs climbing: $40b a year spent on inmates despite falling crime rate," as published in The Boston Globe on July 28, 2003. Yes -- "despite". Not the only time I've seen a headline along these lines, though less often nowadays, its idiocy becoming too obvious to ignore. As if to…
Jack Coleman
January 19th, 2011 1:08 PM

NBC Awards Obama Four More Years? Vieira Wonders if Hillary Will Stay

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on all three morning shows, Wednesday, but only Meredith Vieira on the Today show seemed to assume a second term for Clinton's boss, Barack Obama. After questioning how long she'd stay in the job, the NBC co-anchor wondered, "Do we expect any time soon that you are planning to retire like defense Secretary Gates?...How about the second term?" On…
Scott Whitlock
January 19th, 2011 12:39 PM

CNN's King Apologizes For Guest's 'Crosshairs' Term

On Tuesday's John King USA, CNN's John King issued a prompt on-air apology minutes after a guest on his program used the term "crosshairs" during a segment: "We're trying to get away from using that kind of language" (audio available here). This action stands in stark contrast to an incident over a year earlier where former anchor Rick Sanchez took four days to apologize for using a unconfirmed…
Matthew Balan
January 19th, 2011 12:37 PM

On Today: Glenn Beck Beats Back Meredith Vieira's Charge of Hate Talk

Fox News host Glenn Beck showed up on Wednesday's Today show to promote his new book The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, but it was NBC's Meredith Vieira's misperceptions of him and conservatives as a whole that Beck was forced to try to change. After an initial discussion about Beck overcoming his personal struggles, Vieira brought Beck into the debate over whether conservative…
Geoffrey Dickens
January 19th, 2011 11:08 AM

Anti-Wal-Mart Leftists Literally Target D.C. Developer's Home with Cro

Apparently the folks at WalMartFreeDC.org didn't get the memo from the liberal media about crosshairs being verboten in political speech. [Related story at TheBlaze.com has more information] The website for Wal-Mart Free DC prominently features the Wal-Mart smiley-face icon at the center of crosshairs in an advertisement for a "March on the Developer's House" in Northwest D.C. tomorrow at 7…
Ken Shepherd
January 19th, 2011 11:00 AM

Lawrence O'Donnell Yells at Arizona Congressman for Not Agreeing With

In a fine example of the new civility at MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday actually yelled at an Arizona Congressman who didn't agree with him about the need for gun control following the shootings in Tucson. The discussion on "The Last Word" really got heated after the host made the case to Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) that additional security at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.) Congress…
Noel Sheppard
January 19th, 2011 9:39 AM

Open Thread: Congresswoman Says Repealing ObamaCare Violates Constitut

Seriously. The congresswoman is the ever-entertaining Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson-Lee. The American Spectator has the story: Arguing that the Commerce Clause provides the constitutional basis for ObamaCare, Jackson Lee said repealing the law by passing Republicans' H.R. 2 violates both the Fifth Amendment's right to due process and the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.
NB Staff
January 19th, 2011 9:32 AM

MSNBC’s O’Donnell Blames Bush & GOP for Deaths in Tucson, ‘Soull

 Catching up on an item from the Tuesday, January 11, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC host O’Donnell blamed President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress of 2004 for some of the deaths in the Tucson shootings because they did not have the "basic human decency" to renew the assault weapons ban and require Jared Loughner to reload his weapon sooner. O’Donnell talked of learning…
Brad Wilmouth
January 19th, 2011 9:05 AM

New York Times Lectures on Civility Only Apply to Republicans, Apparen

Metaphors are only acceptable in the hands of trained New York Times journalists: “Republicans say they do not intend to change the name of the proposal, titled the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. Some Democrats have suggested that the ‘job-killing’ language was particularly offensive after the shootings, but Republicans rejected that notion.” -- Congressional reporter Carl…
Clay Waters
January 19th, 2011 8:47 AM

Did Clooney Just Say Multi-Culturalism Doesn't Work

It's one thing for my favorite political podcaster, the National Review's John Derbyshire, to assert, as he is often wont to do, that multi-culturalism doesn't work.  But George Clooney? Yet that was the point the actor seemed to make, appearing on Morning Joe today to discuss the recent referendum in which the people of southern Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede from the north. View…
Mark Finkelstein
January 19th, 2011 8:42 AM