DOWNLOADS: (106)

PLAYS: (904)

Embed

Under fire for his anti-gay comments on the Hannity show the other night, Fox’s GOP savior, Dr. Ben Carson, forgot all about how he dislikes divisiveness and playing the victim. Instead of taking the personal responsibility he advocates for others, Carson blamed those who were offended for “misconstruing” his remarks that equated homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia. And then he doubled down on them by saying he can’t think of other “examples of variations on marriage and relationships.” Right before delivering an Easter message for the Fox & Friends viewers this morning.

It was telling that while Carson and host Clayton Morris whined about those “politically correct” meanies taking offense, they never re-played those “innocent” remarks that got Carson in so much hot water to begin with. Specifically, he said:

No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality - doesn't matter what they are - they don't get to change the definition.

Jon Stewart nailed it in a scathing takedown: "It's not, you know, whether you're having sex with another consenting adult, or a horse, or a doughnut, it's all the same."

But Morris neatly mischaracterized the outcry by saying Carson is “under fire for some comments he made about marriage this week.”

By the way, much of the protest has come from medical students at Johns Hopkins University, where Carson is a professor of neurosurgery, who feel that he should withdraw as commencement speaker. But it’s not only for his comments about gays. They also feel that Carson has used his platform as a famous neurosurgeon to promote the rejection of evolution and used his platform at the National Prayer Breakfast as a partisan vehicle. They don’t want that kind of partisanship at their commencement.

Predictably, Morris didn’t go into any of that. He was too busy casting Carson as a media victim. “The media seemed to have jumped down your throat pretty quickly. ...Do you think you’ve gotten a fair shake in the media?” Morris prompted asked.

Carson didn’t quite jump through the hoop the way Morris was leading him. But he was more than willing to play the victim, point the finger at others, and then pretend that they were the ones doing the dividing:

Continue reading »

The things your librul media gets worked up about? Golf. Via Kevin Drum:

Over at Politico, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen have a long piece today about press corps unhappiness with their access to President Obama. Their timing is unfortunate, coming just a day after the press corps embarrassed itself by coming completely unglued over.....

.....their lack of access to Obama's golf date this weekend with Tiger Woods. Seriously:

The frustrated Obama press corps neared rebellion this past holiday weekend when reporters and photographers were not even allowed onto the Floridian National Golf Club, where Obama was golfing. That breached the tradition of the pool “holding” in the clubhouse and often covering — and even questioning — the president on the first and last holes.

Yep. They "neared rebellion" not over OLC memos or drone strikes or FOIA tardiness or leak prosecutions, but over their inability to ask Obama questions—tough ones! penetrating ones!—before and after he hit the links. Sheesh.

I wish I knew what to think about this. Does Obama keep a very, very tight rein on press coverage? Yes, he sure seems to. In fact, every president seems to keep a slightly tighter grip on the reins than the previous one. I'm not very happy about that.

At the same time, the reporters interviewed for this piece seem to be weirdly upset over the fact that the Obama White House uses Twitter and Facebook and releases lots of its own photos. Why is this a problem? It's 2013, guys. Why shouldn't a president communicate with the public using whatever mediums the public happens to consume? Over the past century, that's evolved from whistle-stop tours to radio to TV to Facebook, but so what? Why should reporters be unhappy about this?

They also complain that although the president gives lots of interviews (674 in his first term compared with 217 for George Bush), they're mostly with local outlets, not with the national reporters "who are often most likely to ask tough, unpredictable questions." I'd have more sympathy for this if national reporters really did ask lots of tough, unpredictable questions, but I'm afraid I'm mostly on Obama's side on this one:

The president’s staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance....Obama and his team, especially newly promoted senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, often bemoan the media’s endless chase of superficial and distracting storylines.

For evidence of how true this is, check out John Cook's serial tweeting of every inane question that Mike Allen lobbed at President Bush during a May 2008 interview. Start here and work your way down. It's not a pretty sight.

DOWNLOADS: (143)

PLAYS: (1192)

Embed

As Karoli posted a bit earlier, Paul Ryan looked not so vice presidential yesterday when he ended an interview with a local reporter in Michigan after being asked if tax cuts would help prevent gun crime. Although Fox is forever complaining about the media favoring Obama, I half expected the curvy couch crew to break out the pompoms for Ryan.

As Steve Doocey introduced the segment, Fox & Friends producers got right to the point with a chyron saying, “TWISTING HIS WORDS: reporter crosses the line with Ryan.”

The reporter “apparently had some gotcha questions in mind,” Doocey explained - before running the clip. Just in case anyone hadn’t yet gotten it that the reporter was the villain in this story.

For some further Ryan insurance, Gretchen Carlson and Brian Kilmeade made a point of noting that the interview occurred in an important swing state. Fox News liberal-media haters all over knew what that signified: this bit of media malpractice was probably another deliberate attempt to re-elect President Obama.

“Good for Paul Ryan, sticking it to the press,” Doocey said. “The guy obviously had something in mind… It’s exactly the same thing that Newt Gingrich did during the primary debates and was very effective at it.”

Yes, so effective that Mitt Romney is the presidential nominee, not Gingrich. Gingrich isn't even the VP nominee.

Of course, Fox’s idea of gotcha questions seems to depend a lot on who’s doing the asking and who’s getting asked. They were delighted when Univision asked President Obama very tough questions recently. And I don’t recall anyone objecting when Bret Baier used the guise of “viewer email” to ask President Obama very inflammatory questions during his 2010 interview on Fox:

We asked our viewers to e-mail in suggested questions. More than 18,000 people took time to e-mail us questions. These are regular people from all over the country. Lee Johnson, from Spring Valley, California: "If the bill is so good for all of us, why all the intimidation, arm twisting, seedy deals, and parliamentary trickery necessary to pass a bill, when you have an overwhelming majority in both houses and the presidency?"

Sandy Moody in Chesterfield, Missouri: "If the health care bill is so wonderful, why do you have to bribe Congress to pass it?"

Some might call those "gotcha" questions. But Fox didn't.

DOWNLOADS: (229)

PLAYS: (1766)

Embed

On the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), I asked Andrew Breitbart and film director Steve Bannon what would make their upcoming video "exposing" Occupy Wall Street successful despite being panned by critics and audiences for their previous work, "The Undefeated" by about Sarah Palin.

Breitbart immediately went off.

Breitbart: Who's Andrew Metcalf, I want to see, this is always a fun gesture, is that your name?

Me: Yes that's my name, I just checked IMDB and ["The Undefeated"] got a 1.7; on Rotten Tomatoes it got a 0 percent.

Breitbart: Who do you work for?

Lady sitting next to me: Crooks and Liars!

Breitbart: Crooks and Liars, that's it, it's a radical left-wing website, he can answer for himself, the way you've presented yourself you represent Occupy very well.

Me: I'm actually asking a legitimate question, about one of your previous movies being panned by both critics and audiences. What's going to make this one any different?

At that point, Steve Bannon took over and notified me that the Sarah Palin flick did have a broad audience in DVD sales and pay-per-view orders. He said the movie was well-received by conservative critics and there wasn't one factual error in it.

Bannon: Professional entertainment critics, yes, they went after the film quite harshly, just like they did her... I showed the... the useful idiots of the entertainment business that completely vilified and eviscerated a woman that has a track record as a performer that actually stands for a populist agenda... you kind of asked it in a snarky way, but it is a legitimate question.

Continue reading »

Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks was filling in for Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC yesterday, and had on Sam Seder and conservative blogger Matt Lewis about Netroots 2010, Right Online, and media bias.

Lewis actually started arguing that the reason liberals don't have a Breitbart is because we don't need one -- we have the whole liberal media. No, really, he said that.

LEWIS: You don't need Andrew Breitbart. You have the Washington Post and the New York Times and three tv networks. The conservatives had to invent Andrew Breitbart because of the liberal bias in the media for decades. It's only been since the advent of the blogosphere the conservatives hope to keep up.

You don't need him. You've got networks. The Washington Post and the New York Times don't run any -- whatever the liberals want them to run.
It's obvious.

It seems like only yesterday when the Times ran that investigative series exposing false intelligence and urging President Bush not to invade Iraq, doesn't it?

The corporate media has been doing their best lately to draw false equivalencies in their coverage of the recent spike in right wing violence in America. Grasping at any little straw, pundits like MSNBC's Pat Buchanan have even gone so far as to use the Rodney King riots to show how "the left is just as bad." Now, Newsbusters has taken things a notch lower:

Liberals in the media have been busy parading around Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center to bash the right. As befits his organization's MO, Potok, pictured right in a file photo, has done the best he can to link recently-arrested militia members to the Tea Party movement and conservatism generally.

Potok's job may have just gotten a bit harder, and the liberal media may need to find another way to discredit their political opponents. It turns out most of the militiamen were active voters, and at least one was a registered Democrat. Party registrations for the rest are not yet known.

Jacob J. Ward, 33, of Huron, Ohio, voted as a Democrat in the 2004 and 2008 primary elections. He also voted in 10 other elections since 2000. Party affiliation in Ohio is determined by which party's ballot they requested in the most recent primary election.

This amazingly bad article mercifully ends with this belly laugher:

Well that should put to rest the notion that these people were somehow affiliated with or influenced by mainstream conservatives.

Well, there you go. One of these nuts was a registered Democrat so the entire group is actually a bunch of flaming LIBS! No right wing influence here, no siree! Give me a f*&king break!

Hmmm...wasn't some big celebrity entertainer urging his Republican fans to switch parties so they could vote in Democratic primaries back in 2008? Oh yeah, that was Rush Limbaugh. Even if Ward wasn't doing Limbaugh's bidding, and was, at one time, an actual Democrat, his membership in the Hutaree tells me that his real politics had moved hard to the right.

DOWNLOADS: (811)

PLAYS: (9313)

Embed

Yesterday on Fox News' News Watch program, they teased the above segment by asking the audience: "Why are the liberal media so dismissive to global warming skeptics?"

During the segment itself, host Jon Scott replayed "liberals" like Chris Matthews poking fun at various conservatives who, during the week, attempted to claim that this week's East Coast blizzards were proof that global warming is a hoax. Of course, as it so happens, that was one of the chief talking points all week long for Fox anchors.

Then Scott posed the question to Kirsten Powers:

Scott: Why is it, Kirsten, that you can't be a skeptic about global warming and do it publicly?

Powers responded with some blather about how journalists weren't skeptical enough themselves, and James "Willie Horton's Daddy" Pinkerton predictably chimed in with right-wing talking points about how global warming theory is like a religion. It took Ellis Henican to bring some sanity to the conversation, pointing out that one week of weather does not affect the science of climate, which by definition is something that occurs over many years.

We could answer Scott even more succinctly: No serious skeptic of global warming would try to argue that these storms disprove global-warming theories (as a matter of fact, they tend to confirm the existing models, as we noted previously).

The only people who would try to claim that are clowns -- partisan hacks looking to score cheap political points by promoting and playing a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of climate change.

DOWNLOADS: (866)

PLAYS: (2895)

Embed

Don't you just love how, whenever a liberal figure or a non-Fox media outlet (also known as "the liberal media") is caught in any kind of screwup or criminal activity, it quickly becomes the No. 1 Topic of Discussion at Fox?

But when right-wingers are caught with their pants down (e.g., see John Cornyn) or in the criminal cookie jar, there's some minor mumbling, a few quick reports, and then silence at Fox.

So we watched Fox yesterday to see how they would handle the news that their beloved Hot Young Investigative Journalist, James O'Keefe, Slayer of ACORN, had been arrested by the FBI for attempting to wiretap the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu.

There was a brief report on Shep Smith's news show (in which the reporter assured us that we would need to get some context first), followed by a similarly brief overview on Special Report with Bret Baier, and then wrapped up a short segment on Greta Van Susteren's show, in which she mentioned that O'Keefe had appeared on Fox "many times."

But on Fox's prime-time opinion shows, its big ratings drivers, the shows that had most avidly promoted O'Keefe and his brand of "investigative journalism" -- Glenn Beck, The O'Reilly Factor, and Hannity -- there was nothing. Not. A. Single. Word.

Color me surprised.

Some Guy's Blog: Happy Thanksgiving!

James Fallows has been posting on how our myopic media manufactured a failure out of Obama's China trip

Angry Bear: Another Reagan myth bubbling back to the surface

cab drollery: They Knew

The Sardonic Sideshow: Has the American Dream drifted north?

onegoodmove: The Right Side of History (h/t reader Geoff)

DOWNLOADS: (1701)

PLAYS: (4187)

Embed

Sarah Palin thinks she's got it covered now in explaining why she did so badly when interviewed by actual journalists in her failed vice-presidential campaign last year. She went on The O'Reilly Factor last night and told BillO that a simple foreign-policy question like Charles Gibson's query about the Bush Doctrine was just a "gotcha technique" by the liberal media (instead of a routine question intended to ascertain her bearings on foreign policy).

And Katie Couric? That was just a reaction to Katie's snotty questions:

O'Reilly: Katie Couric's a different story. Katie Couric asked you an easy question and you booted it, governor.

Palin: I sure did.

[Plays video]

COURIC: What newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them ...

O'Reilly: Why did you boot it? I mean, if somebody asks what do you read, I say I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, I could reel them off in my sleep, you couldn't do it.

Palin: Well, of course I could. Of course I could.

O'Reilly: Well, why didn't you?

Palin: It's ridiculous to suggest that or say I couldn't tell people what I read. Because by that point already, although it was relatively early in that multi-segmented interview with Katie Couric -- it was, it was quite obvious that it was going to be a bit of an annoying interview with a badgering of the questions. It seemed to me that she didn't know anything about Alaska, about my job as governor, about my accomplishments as mayor or governor, my record. And a question like that, though, yeah, I booted it, I screwed up, I should have been more patient and more gracious in my answer, it seemed to me the question was more along the lines of -- Do you read? How do you stay in touch with the real world?

O'Reilly: See, that was your inexperience.

Palin: It was my inexperience with having to deal with a condescending, badgering line of questioning. No -- no reflection at all on my inexperience in terms of administrative record or accomplishments or vision for America.

Pardon me while I call b-llsh-t. "What kinds of things do you read?" is a stock question of the political journalist when querying candidates, particularly those new on the scene. And as you can see from watching the clip that O'Reilly shows, there was nothing high-handed or suggestive of "Do you read?" in Couric's question.

You can watch the longer clip of this portion of the interview here. Palin is not bridling at Couric's arrogance -- she's drawing a blank and reaching for straws.

But in Palinopia, of course, she's just being "human." And I guess that's right, to an extent -- since prevaricating and dodging and making up lame excuses is part of the human condition too. Just not a very attractive or inspiring one.