MSNBC's Monica Novotny on Friday highlighted a dubious Vanity Fair piece lamenting the "cost" of the Republican Party opposing Barack Obama's agenda. The News Live host talked to writers Duff McDonald and Peter Keating about their contention that the "party of no" has cost taxpayers $1.34 billion. Apparently, the GOP and various conservative organizations total this much by not supporting health care or the stimulus. Never mentioned in the article or during the segment is the fact that Obama's spending on those two items alone will end up costing taxpayers $3.3 trillion, 2500 times the amount of the expensive Republicans... continue reading
"There aren't a lot of African-American men at these events," NBC News reporter Kelly O'Donnell, a white woman, told Darryl Postell, a black man at a Tea Party rally held Thursday in Washington, DC, pressing him, in an exchange she chose to include in her NBC Nightly News story, to address her prejudiced assumptions: "Have you ever felt uncomfortable?" Postell rejected her loaded premise that race must divide Americans: "No, no, these are my people, Americans." O'Donnell's story noted "skepticism over how the Tea Party is judged and labeled," letting an attendee assert: "We're not racists, we're not any of... continue reading
On Hardball: Slamming Republicans as 'Un-American' Is Fine, But Don't Dare Talk About Obama That Way
Liberal Salon.com editor Joan Walsh appeared on the April 14 edition of Hardball and mocked Sarah Palin for suggesting that some of Barack Obama's policies are un-American. She sneered that this was "ridiculous" and attacked, " The choice of un-American is a typical Sarah Palin, divisive thing to say ." However, the same Joan Walsh appeared on the December 30, 2009 Hardball to talk about the Republican response to the thwarted Christmas plane bombing. She ranted, "The climate right now is that Republicans use everything they can to undermine and delegitimize this President. And it's actually un-American. It's traitorous in... continue reading
A visibly perturbed Jay Barbree, during MSNBC live coverage on Thursday, called out Barack Obama for making cuts in NASA that could result, as he claimed, in 9,000 employees losing their jobs even though during the campaign, as the long time NBC correspondent reported, the President "told 15,000 workers here at the Space Center that if they would vote for him, that he would protect their jobs." This sent MSNBC live anchor Alex Witt immediately into administration defense mode as she asserted: "I will say on behalf of the Obama administration, they contend that 2500 new jobs will be created."... continue reading
While the tea party movement began to take shape in late February of 2009, the CBS Early Show did not offer a complete story on it until nearly 14 months later, with co-host Harry Smith declaring: "Today is tax day, April 15th. And thousands of tea party activists are headed to Washington...a new CBS News/New York Times poll is showing us just who these passionate conservatives really are." Various co-hosts, correspondents, and guests certainly mentioned the tea party on the CBS morning show over the past year, but Thursday's broadcast was the first to provide a report that actually focused... continue reading
NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Thursday's Today show, delivered a snarky piece about Sarah Palin "making millions on books" and "highly paid speeches"going as far to portray the former Republican Alaskan governor as a diva who demands a Lear jet and "bendable straws" for her water bottles at appearances. However Mitchell was singing a different tune back in 2001 when a former Democratic officeholder, in this case Bill Clinton, cashed in, as she hailed on the August 7, 2001 NBC Nightly News : "The self-declared Comeback Kid,' a hero to his new office neighbors in Harlem, now breaking a world record,... continue reading
MSNBC's Savannah Guthrie on Thursday conducted a sycophantic interview with Michelle Obama, urging the First Lady to complain about the "uglier side" of the health care debate. The Daily Rundown co-host sympathetically asked, " There was a lot of vitriol, some pretty hateful things said. And I wondered what your feeling was about that? " [Audio available here .] Guthrie continued, "Was it hard to stand by and listen to some of that?" Offering the First Lady another softball, she reiterated, " Hearing some of the uglier side of it, did that make you angry? " The questions didn't get... continue reading
"A CBS News/New York Times poll out tonight finds 18 percent of Americans support the movement," Katie Couric announced at the top of Wednesday's CBS Evening News as the newscast provided a surprisingly neutral summary of the findings in the new survey , though reporter Dean Reynolds couldn't resist asserting "there is some inconsistency in the Tea Party viewpoints. For example, for all their anger at what they see as ever-expanding government, 62 percent of them think Medicare and Social Security are worthwhile programs, perhaps because 75 percent of them are over 45." Or, since they aren't anarchists, maybe they've... continue reading
Bill Maher and Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, denigrated Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as merely "attractive" women with very little smarts with the HBO host even going as far to use a vulgar euphemism to describe them as he claimed: "They're attractive especially to the Republican Party, which is not known as a party that really does well with the opposite sex. Usually they're doughy white men and I think they look on Michele Bachmann and, and Sarah Palin, as you know, M.I.L.Fs and I agree, they're Morons I'd Like to Forget." That remark even drew an "Oh my... continue reading
During a discussion of John McCain's drift rightward on Wednesday's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle smeared the Arizona Senator as more scared of Republican primary challenger J.D. Hayworth than he was of his Vietnamese torturers. Barnicle mocked, " The ultimate sadness is that, here, in the 21st century, running for re-election, he shows more fear of J.D. Hayworth than he showed toward his captors in North Vietnam. " [MP3 audio available here ] "That is really sad," added Barnicle. At this point, the show ground to a complete stop. Seemingly stunned by the journalist's comments, co-host Mika Brzezinski sputtered,... continue reading