Nine days after the Tucson shooting, the front page of The Washington Post kept relentlessly recycling the debunked view that "vitriol" was the real cause of Jared Loughner's Safeway shooting spree. In a story headlined "A place where passions run high," reporters Kimberly Kindy and Philip Rucker explained Giffords couldn't even shoot a campaign commercial without some foam-flecked conservative attacking her: A moderate Democrat in a classic swing district, she walked a main street where American flags hang outside shoe stores and barber shops. A voice-over emphasized her strengths: independence...courage...integrity. The camera rolling, a man stormed out of the Gadsden... continue reading
On Monday's CBS Early Show, after reporting claims from Ron Reagan Jr. that President Ronald Reagan may have had Alzheimer's Disease while in office, co-host Erica Hill asked other son Michael Reagan about those accusations: "And your brother has said this is just his own feeling.... Could it be possible there may have been something else? Could he [President Reagan] have had dementia?" Michael rejected the notion: "No, he didn't have dementia. Look what he accomplished in the last four years of his presidency. Reykjavik, START agreements, all the things he accomplished. The speech at the Berlin Wall in 1987... continue reading
For the second time in less than 24 hours, ABC identified Michael Reagan as a "conservative," but failed to identify the left-wing ideology of Ron Reagan Jr. Monday's Good Morning America played up the "clash" between the adopted son Michael and Ron, author of a new book that claims his father, the 40th president, had Alzheimer's during his time in the White House. Correspondent Claire Shipman explained, "It's another feud in an often fractious family. In a series of tweets over the weekend, Michael Reagan, the former President's son and a conservative commentator, accused his stepbrother Ron of trying to... continue reading
Picking up on "a family feud" fueled by a decision by ABC News to promote Ron Reagan Jr's new book in which he insists his father displayed symptoms of Alzheimer's while in his first presidential term, ABC anchor David Muir, who failed to identify Ron Jr. as a liberal, reported "Ron's conservative half-brother Michael Reagan is blasting him." Muir highlighted Michael's devastating tweet: "My brother was an embarrassment to his father when he was alive and today he became an embarrassment to his mother." After citing another tweet in which Michael charged "my brother seems to want to sell out... continue reading
Two particularly peculiar bits of reasoning Friday night from Bill Maher on the season premiere of his HBO show, Real Time with Bill Maher , starting with his bizarre explanation for why Jared Lee Loughner was able to commit mass murder. After panelist Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large for Thomson Reuters, trumped how her native Canada has "universal health care," Maher jumped in to assert: Because we don't have government health care, that's one reason why a crazy person gets a gun because, you know what, it's hard for a crazy person to get a job, so therefore it's hard for... continue reading
On Friday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Mark Phillips declared how the beatification of Pope John Paul II to sainthood was moving "at break-neck speed" and noted that "Groups protesting the Catholic Church's child abuse scandal are urging the Vatican to slow down the process." Despite the protests, Phillips remarked that "the current pope, Benedict XVI, seems determined to charge ahead with the canonization of his extremely popular predecessor." Earlier in the report, he suggested John Paul II's road to sainthood was a short cut: "It normally takes centuries for major Church figures to reach sainthood and join the saintly statues... continue reading
On Friday's CBS Early Show, co-host Erica Hill noted President Obama "calling for a little bit of a detente" in the wake of the Tucson shooting and wondered, "is this civility going to last?" Political analyst John Dickerson argued: "There will be one small test next week as House Republicans bring up the repeal of the health care bill." Dickerson criticized the name of the repeal legislation: "What used to be called the 'Job-Killing Health Care Bill,' which now of course has - operates in a much different context." Hill followed up: "Can the President make that, I guess, good... continue reading
In the wake of last Saturday's shooting spree in Arizona, MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing on Friday wondered if the phrase "jobs-killing health care" bill is now taboo. Speaking to a former speechwriter for Condi Rice, Jansing also speculated as to whether Barack Obama's address at a memorial service will "take some of the wind" out of the Republicans' sails. Talking to speechwriter Elise Jordan, Jansing warned, "... Are you bothered at all by the fact that they refused to stop calling it a jobs killing health care repeal in this current environment? " Shifting into a discussion of who would... continue reading
On MSNBC's Jansing & Co. on Thursday, anchor Chris Jansing and l iberal columnist Karen Hunter took turns ripping apart Sarah Palin's call for civility in an Internet video posted yesterday morning in the wake of the Tucson shooting. The morning after President Barack Obama delivered a well-received speech at a memorial service for the victims of a rampage that left six dead and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) critically injured, Jansing recited a quote from Joan Walsh, editor of the left-wing Salon.com, to criticize Palin. "You know, Mark, times of tragedy are times when we judge our leaders," remarked Jansing... continue reading
During a bipartisan panel discussion with members of Congress on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric asked about the role of political rhetoric in the Tucson shooting, to which Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz replied: "After my daughter heard...Gabby [Giffords] had been shot, the first thing she asked me was...'Mommy, are you going to get shot?'" Schultz went on to recall: "...the next thing she said to me was - and this is where you don't realize how closely they're watching - 'But Mommy, Florida's going to pass an immigration law like Arizona and then people are going... continue reading