On Friday, the CBS Early Show and NBC's Today avoided any discussion of the Democratic Party's racial insensitivity in trying to get black Florida senate candidate Kendrick Meek to drop out of the race. On ABC's Good Morning America, co-host George Stephanopoulos quoted Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on that very issue. All three network morning shows conducted interviews with Meek, but only Stephanopoulos asked if the candidate was offended by the notion that Democratic Party officials were trying to force him out: "Michael Steele put out a statement last night where he said, 'Even the conversations sent a... continue reading
Apparently one of the most pressing issues in the California senatorial race is whether or not Sarah Palin is "too extreme." Good Morning America's Robin Roberts on Friday pressed Carly Fiorina twice on that issue, insisting on knowing why the former Alaska governor hasn't been campaigning for the Republican. She demanded, "We know that Sarah Palin has visited California recently, but she was not campaigning for you. Why not Sarah Palin? Is she too extreme for you ?" The co-host followed-up: "Down in Florida, Charlie Crist had an ad campaign saying Sarah Palin is just too extreme for some Republicans... continue reading
New York Times Arts reporter Patricia Cohen has paused her patrolling of the intolerant conservative intellectual beat to flatter Obama and his fellow liberals on the front of the Thursday Arts section. Cohen profiled Harvard historian James Kloppenberg, getting an ovation from an audience of Manhattan liberals for gushing over President Obama the "pragmatic...open-minded" intellectual: " In Writings Of Obama, A Philosophy Is Unearthed ." When the Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg decided to write about the influences that shaped President Obama's view of the world, he interviewed the president's former professors and classmates, combed through his books, essays, and... continue reading
In the span of a mere 50 seconds on Thursday's NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell managed to apply a conservative ideological tag four times to Pat Toomey, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, yet she failed to issue even a single label for liberal Democratic candidate Joe Sestak. Sitting at the anchor desk with Brian Williams, Mitchell made clear Toomey "is a Republican fiscal conservative who was fiscally conservative before the Tea Party was cool," soon repeating, in the narration for her story, how "Toomey is a former Congressman and a fiscal conservative " - all before driving... continue reading
On Thursday's Newsroom, CNN's Fareed Zakaria endorsed a predictably liberal solution to get the American economy moving again: enact more taxes and implement new government programs. Zakaria called for a national sales tax and advocated new government spending on "research and technology" and "upgrading the infrastructure." The CNN host also labeled tax cuts "bad stuff." Anchor Ali Velshi brought on Zakaria during the last segment of the 2 pm Eastern hour to discuss his upcoming cover story for Time magazine, " How to Restore The American Dream ." Velshi labeled the article a "must-read" and first asked his guest, "I... continue reading
Andrea Mitchell on Thursday made no secret of the contempt she held for a new ad Republican Sharron Angle is running in Nevada, deriding it as "beyond the pale." The MSNBC host announced that so many people are "outraged" over the campaign spot she slammed as a "Halloween show." The commercial, which the senatorial nominee just began airing, features images of illegal immigrants crossing the border and complains about Harry Reid record. Mitchell, interviewing the Washington Post's Dan Balz, fretted, "A lot of people say that this is the closest thing we have this year to a Willie Horton or... continue reading
New York magazine's John Heilemann apparently thinks Barack Obama hasn't been liberal enough, as he told NBC's Matt Lauer, on Thursday's Today show, the "centrist" president was compelled to go on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to fire up his young supporters because they lost faith in their "progressive champion." After Lauer relayed a point Stewart made during his interview with the President, that voters were disappointed by Obama's "timidity", Heilemann agreed as he explained: "I think there's also kind of a fundamental confusion about who the President is. A lot of young voters...thought that he was a progressive... continue reading
All three morning shows on Thursday covered Barack Obama's appearance on The Daily Show Wednesday night, but only Good Morning America's Jake Tapper stressed that comedian Jon Stewart's complaints represented the unhappy left. Tapper recounted of Stewart: "One of America's foremost political humorists, who seems to root for the President, demonstrated one of the major problems Mr. Obama is facing in the run-up to the midterm elections, a disappointed base." The ABC journalist played previous clips of previous Daily Show appearances to highlight the comic's past enthusiasm for Obama. In a montage, Stewart gushed, "You definitely also have a little... continue reading
On Tuesday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric warned of violence against abortion doctors, based flyers being circulated by a pro-life group: "Their pictures are showing up on posters. Now doctors who perform abortions fear for their lives." The posters in question did not call for any violence whatsoever. Despite that fact, Couric later introduced the story by declaring: "Now some doctors in North Carolina...fear they're being marked for murder." Correspondent Michelle Miller reported: "They look like wanted posters from the wild west, but they're not photos of criminals, but of doctors in North Carolina who perform abortions." She noted... continue reading
Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, not so cryptically compared the actions of Republican volunteers to that of Nazi-style tactics from the 1930s as he claimed the restraining of a MoveOn.org activist by a Rand Paul supporter reminded him of what "we saw from hoodlums in the thirties in another country I will not mention" and added: "I mean it isn't far from what we saw in the thirties, where all of a sudden, political parties started showing up in uniform." Matthews who was joined by Salon's Joan Walsh and the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, even went on to claim physical... continue reading