New York Times

Pretty Dern Selective On Sunday, NewsBusters' Brent Baker noted how unhappy actress Laura Dern is with the 2000 presidential election ("Dern 'Devastated' by Florida 'Because There Were Uncounted Votes'"). Dern plays then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in HBO's "Recount," which first aired on Sunday. Dern's displeasure has an apparently limited focus. A review of the CNN program…

On the weekend when America finds her citizens taking just a little time out of their cluttered and busy lives to pause and memorialize the sacrifice of those who have served and protected us all, the media always sees fit to make their observance of Memorial Day the issuance of stories about how bad our solders are, how bad they have it, or how bad they deserve to be treated. This year is no…

It's Memorial Day, and the good folks at the New York Times thought it appropriate to not only attack the President's position on a new G.I. Bill, but also to despicably lambaste him for "[h]aving saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war," and "having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways."On Memorial Day!Thankfully, White House press secretary Dana Perino has…

With HBO's 'Recount' movie (airing Sunday and Monday night at 9 PM EDT/PDT) sure to rekindle claims that Al Gore would have won if only the U.S. Supreme Court had not “stopped the counting,” a reminder that both recounts conducted by major media outlets in 2001 determined George W. Bush would have won anyway. Two stars of the film have fueled the re-writing of history with actor Kevin Spacey, who…

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said Sunday that Hillary Clinton blaming her campaign woes on gender bias is "poppycock" that is "very damaging to feminism," and that the former first lady "has a history of covering up her own mistakes behind sexism." As this appears likely to be an important issue for Democrats to resolve in the months before Election Day, Sunday's "Meet the Press" devoted…

Guess Which Party, and What Label? Here are Old Media excerpts relating to recent presidential contenders you might find interesting. First, here's the Associated Press from May 15 (fourth short item at link): The United Steelworkers union endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president Thursday, giving the Illinois senator a powerful advocate in attracting blue-collar voters. The endorsement…

Cindy McCain, the wife of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, released a summary of her 2006 income tax return Friday prompting media members to quickly make negative comparisons between what she revealed and what Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) wife disclosed to the public in October 2004.Most notable was the New York Times which in characterizing Teresa Heinz Kerry's 2003 income as being…

My circle of friends lost a fine man, a husband and father of several children, to brain cancer not long ago. He fought with courage and optimism, and received fine treatment, but the disease simply proved too strong. I sympathize with the plight facing Ted Kennedy, his family and loved ones. I'd add that in the course of the current coverage, I've learned of Kennedy's admirable history of…

Old Media has mostly ignored Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's poor showing among non-African-American voters, even though it was obvious way back in the early-March Ohio and Texas primaries. To the degree that there has been coverage of the situation at all, it has been presented as if there is something wrong with the voters, not Obama himself or his "message." Clay Waters at…

New York Times Congressional reporter Carl Hulse on Thursday paid tribute to Sen. Ted Kennedy, diagnosed earlier this week with an inoperable brain tumor, in "Kennedy: A Little Like Everyone, a Lot Like No One Else." But Hulse went beyond acknowledging Kennedy's influence as a legislator to push the famous Massachusetts' senator's big-government worldview: "And if some of his solutions cost the…

Here's a novel idea: in order to save the world from global warming, people who regularly exercise should have to pay a carbon tax for their selfish and egotistical burning of extra calories.Sound crazy?Well, as "Freakonomics" co-author Steven D. Levitt satirically laid out in a New York Times piece Tuesday, this actually makes about as much sense as any of the other absurd solutions being…