Sometimes it really is like shooting fish in a barrel, especially when it has to do with Howard Kurtz, who after years of working for the Washington Post, now writes for the Daily Beast.

Howard is tut-tutting today over the egregious hypocrisy of Keith Olbemann:

So is Keith Olbermann now the Worst Person in the World? No, but he made a really dumb mistake.

By donating to three Democratic candidates while covering the midterms on MSNBC, Olbermann crossed a bright journalistic line—even for a commentator whose partisan sympathies are no secret.

The network had no choice but to suspend him, even though he's the biggest draw on NBC's cable channel. "Mindful of NBC News policy and standards," MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement, "I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."

"No choice." No choice at all.

The real forehead-slapper here is that Olbermann donated the legal maximum, $2,400, to Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva on Oct. 28—the same day he interviewed the congressman for Countdown. Viewers, of course, had no way of knowing.

As first reported by Politico, Olbermann also donated the maximum to Arizona Rep. Gabriella Giffords and to Jack Conway, the Kentucky Republican who lost his Senate race to Rand Paul.

It's hard to fathom what Olbermann was thinking, because he must have realized that the donations would show up in federal election records and eventually be made public.

What's more, Olbermann has used the issue of political donations to rip his arch-enemies at Fox News. He pounced on Rupert Murdoch when News Corp., Fox's parent, gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association and another million bucks to the GOP-backing Chamber of Commerce.

Now Olbermann, who's not shy about caustic criticism, faces the inevitable charge of hypocrisy.

Oh, Howard. You really want to go there? You really want to pluck out the splinter in Keith's eye instead of the log in your own?

His mistake is not in the same league as what some Fox contributors have done. Karl Rove raised about $50 million in recent months for an independent group supporting Republican candidates. Dick Morris has raised money, spoken on behalf of candidates and refers to Republicans as "we." Sarah Palin barnstormed the country on behalf of her favored candidates, often of the Tea Party variety.

And one full-time Fox News host, Sean Hannity, has attended GOP fundraisers. Fox allows such activity for talk-show hosts and contributors, whom the network doesn't consider journalists. I've written about this from time to time; few people seem to care.

At CNN, where I host a weekly media program, James Carville and Paul Begala are contributors who also sign fundraising letters for the Democratic Party. If it were up to me, I wouldn't allow any of that.

That's because Howard Kurtz's personal standards are so high. How high are they?

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Kurtz: Conservatives look at this barrage and say "when has Barack Obama ever gotten this kind of media scrutiny?

He really asked that. And he really asked it in the frame of what conservatives might be asking. You know, the conservatives who don't turn on Fox News. Those conservatives. Or would that be "that conservative." That one single conservative living in a treehouse in the middle of the smoldering remains of an Andean jungle, perhaps. That conservative.

Oh, wait.

Does Howard Kurtz not have an intern or two who could actually do some research before he asks ridiculous questions like that? He could just mosey on over to Crooks and Liars or Media Matters or ThinkProgress and browse the archives for a whole treasure trove of piling-on. Let me see what I can find for him without digging too deeply.

There is the recent Sean Hannity effort to smear the President with Breitbartian conspiracy theories in the name of "Vetting Barack Obama," of course.

Or the endless, sensationalized ridiculous stories run on Reverend Jeremiah Wright back in 2008, where Kurtz' very own network ran the most stories. 228 stories from CNN; 213 from Fox News, and a fed-up public who had seen quite enough of the erstwhile and sincere Reverend Wright.

Let's not forget the birth certificate stories, which were so ubiquitous they became the first-required question in everyone's arsenal of Important Things To Ask Barack Obama In A One-On-One Interview.

Keep in mind, the few examples I listed above don't even rise to the level of importance that Mitt Romney's offshore finances and tax returns do, but that doesn't stop Howie from asking the most ridiculous, off-the-wall question of them all as he lifts the heavy jug of conservative water and lugs it down the path for Mitt Romney.

But wait, there's even more.

The other remarkable moment is where Romney Press Secretary Wannabe Jennifer Rubin makes the claim that all of the stories about Mitt Romney's finances are really just press releases from the Obama campaign, echoed out into the news cycle with no foundation.

I realize Ms. Rubin may possibly be the most vapid neocon blogger on the planet, but does she not see the error of her claim? Even if the stories were leaked by the Obama campaign, she shouldn't ascribe conservative media values to them. We all know Fox News carries water for their causes and isn't ashamed to use Romney press releases alongside Breitbart conspiracy theories. The same goes for the Washington Examiner and other tabloid-esque conservative publications.

But is Jennifer Rubin really saying that her own employer, the Washington Post, simply republishes campaign press releases without verifying them for accuracy or fleshing them out? Isn't this really a chicken-and-egg question anyway? Be it campaign or citizen, sending a tip to a reporter isn't a guarantee it'll pan out or pass muster. Isn't that the duty of the reporter, editor and publisher?

Only that stupid question by Howie Kurtz could make the Rubin silliness less vapid. Either Howie's long term memory facilities are shot or he wanted to take the opportunity to absolve Fox News of any bias toward the conservative candidates in this race.

Either way, it's the stupidest question I've heard asked this morning and possibly all week. But then, I've not watched Candy Crowley's show yet, so there's hope.

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This is not a post about Barack Obama's girlfriends. Politico did that last week, and quite badly. What it is, is a post asking why Howard Kurtz, host of a show called "Reliable Sources," gave Politico's reporter a complete pass on his "gotcha" post that got righties riled, but failed to pass the truth test.

Last Wednesday, Dylan Byers wrote what can only be characterized as a junky gotcha piece for Politico. It focused on David Mariniss' upcoming biography on President Obama. Rather than placing his focus on Obama's milestones, Maraniss has focused on his relationships. Vanity Fair published a bit of a provocative (not really) excerpt concerning one of Obama's college girlfriends.

Byers seized on the interview to declare that Obama "now admits to Maraniss that the character was a composite." Subtext: Obama lied to readers of his memoir. And sure enough, the right wing blogosphere jumped right on that subtext, with Drudge leading the way in characteristic 108-point madness. The Drudge headline read "Obama Admits Fabricating Character in Memoir." And so began the "composite girlfriend" meme of last week, much to wingers' delight.

Byers was reluctant to back down from his indictment, and initially only corrected the post to say the second edition of the book had a statement about composite characters. However, he was incorrect about that too, and on Friday an update was added to the post by the editors acknowledging that all editions of the book began with that statement, no lies were told, and the "incorrect information had been removed from the article."

But this is Politico, after all. Byers came back the very same day as the correction with a brand-spanking new article entitled "The dangerous new Obama book." Byers contends it has everyone in the White House quaking in their boots because, well, it will show how Barack Obama "fashioned himself" for the Presidency.

Byers used that disingenuously entitled article to make the case for his own quest for "gotcha journalism."

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Oh, that librul media strikes again...

During the bruising Republican primaries, there was one candidate whose coverage was more relentlessly negative than the rest. In fact, he did not enjoy a single week where positive treatment by the media outweighed the negative.

His name is Barack Obama.

That is among the findings of a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington nonprofit that examined 52 key newspaper, television, radio, and Web outlets.

“Day in and day out, he was criticized by the entire Republican field on a variety of policies,” Mark Jurkowitz, the group’s associate director, says of Obama. “And he was inextricably linked to events that generated negative coverage”—including rising gas prices, the ailing economy, and the renewed debate over his health care law.

In short, while the president was being hammered on both fronts, his message was somewhat drowned out by the volume of news coverage surrounding the GOP candidates.

Surprise! The media doesn't seem to want to offer up "balanced" coverage, do they? They don't want to inform their audience that the president has little to do with rising gas prices, or that the economy is in fact recovering, albeit slowly, or that there are massive lies constantly flung by Republicans over the health care law. No, it's much more interesting to cover the Republican primary as a horse race and to uncritically regurgitate Every. Single. Republican. Talking. Point. without bothering to fact check or place it into context.

And that's why Democratic voters cannot take this election for granted. The media -- by abdicating their jobs -- have muddied the waters. They have made this race far closer than it should be, for their own purposes. And while Obama is nowhere near the progressive hope that some may have thought him to be in 2008, there is no question that the alternative is far, far worse.

Not that the media will ever admit that.

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Playing the refs during elections is nothing new, and that's more or less what Mitt Romney might have been doing when he told Breitbart TV Tuesday there was a "quote, vast left wing conspiracy" shifting the winds of media coverage toward Barack Obama.

Excuse me while I howl with laughter for a minute.

There, that's better. Now Romney was being asked about Media Matters at the time. You know Media Matters, right? They clip actual words that actual people say on the air and broadcast out to viewers. They either let the clips stand as they are or sometimes post a little explanation about how wrong they are. And all the Breitbart TV interviewer was doing was offering up an invitation for Mitt to join the "revoke Media Matters' tax-exempt status" gang on the right. Media Matters is the left side's answer to the right's Media Research Center, and it does great work, but it isn't "media."

Mitt chose instead to criticize all media everywhere for their alleged bias toward the President, which really did a wonderful job of highlighting Howard Kurtz' uselessness for everyone to see. I see at least two important points to make here.

First, if the media was actually doing their job, they'd start calling Mitt and Ann Romney the liars they are. They lie about everything from important policy choices to minor things like the dog on the roof. They lie about what they said, they lie about what they believe, and they do it knowing full well a record is out there contradicting their position of the day.

They can be this cynical because the mainstream media lets them be. They don't actually use the word "lie." They use other, kinder forms to describe what Romney does. I am not talking about things that are at all vague. These are lies like "I never said that the economy got worse under Barack Obama" when he had just said it the day before. The shifting sands under his feet kind of lies that change depending on who his audience is. Those kinds of lies, which get reported as "Did Mitt Romney Misspeak?" or something equally full of milquetoast.

Yet no one in the media, critic or otherwise, will actually step up and call a lie a lie. In fact, US News & World Report claimed the "Etch a Sketch" story was proof positive of bias against Romney, despite the fact that it confirmed the cynical lies this campaign feels comfortable shooting into the mainstream.

Also this week, Mitt lied about his relationship with SB1070 author Kris Kobach, trying to distance himself from Kobach's radical, draconian immigration law and his cozy relationship with ALEC. Yet again, we hear nothing from Kurtz about this, even after Romney somewhat reluctantly admitted that yes, Kobach was an advisor to his campaign.

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Let's begin with this: David Corn's new book Showdown devotes maybe a paragraph to Fox News, but to listen to the cries and howls from Bret Baier and the rest of the Fox team, you'd think the entire book was about it. Here's the teeny little excerpt they're all upset about:

“…Fed by Fox News, they hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7, and it begins to seep in…The Republicans have been at this for 40 years. They have new resources, but the strategy is old,” Corn recounted Obama as saying.

Bret Baier is simply outraged that the president could say something so utterly unfair, so outrageously false about Fox News, and Howie Kurtz rides to the rescue to back him up, taking the quote and expanding it so that it now isn't just "Fox News", but specifically "Fox News hosts."

Of course Fox News hosts don't say it outright. They just let their guests say it and fail to correct them. This is how it's done, and Corn pushed back hard on Baier with example after example after example of how wrong he was. Here is just one paragraph citing a few:

There's more (as Media Matters has documented). Donald Trump, appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show in March 2011, speculated that Obama was hiding his birth certificate because it declared he was born a Muslim. On April 26, 2011, controversial pastor Robert Jeffress onFox & Friends said, "why do 20 percent of Americans think the president is a Muslim? We'll, as my kids would say, duh." Last year, conservative radio talk show host, Lars Larson, echoing a familiar right-wing trope, said on Fox that the president shows "a whole lot of deference to Muslims and seems to forget Christians." Fox folks, of course, have gone wild over Obama's bowing before the Saudi king, and the network in 2008 pushed the false story that Obama attended an Islamic school in Indonesia.

If Howie Kurtz had an ounce of intellectual honesty, he would have given Corn an opportunity to respond to the critics who are willing to carry Fox News' water whenever so ordered. And even more than that, he wouldn't have allowed Baier's qualifying word "host" to have gone by without noting the dishonesty of shifting a quote from Fox News, the organization, to Fox News hosts.

Also? If Kurtz had even an iota of intellectual honesty, he wouldn't bring a commentator from Glenn Beck TV on the show to defend Fox. Glenn Beck and his TV channel are irrelevant, but leave it to Howie and his bookers to try to make them relevant, too. And Howie, this just makes me want to send you rotten tomatoes:

KURTZ: Now, I didn't find any example of a Fox host saying that President Obama is Muslim, so what Bret Baier said is accurate.

Guess what? I didn't find any example of David Corn or President Obama saying that either. I also had a ton of trouble finding any Fox News host who contradicted their guests' claims, but I guess that was something Howie didn't see fit to state for the record.

As we all know by now, Kurtz doesn't really function as a media critic as much as he does a media rehabilitator. It wouldn't do for Fox to be identified as the primary source for so many of the false fearmongering tales that seem to grab their viewers' attention without backing them up and giving them the old rehabilitation pitch. Never mind that senior citizens get so gripped in their fear of Obama the Muslim that they die, rather than go to the hospital. None of that matters so long as Howie can make sure Fox is immune to its critics.

It's really pathetic.

Full transcript follows, via CNN.

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Is there ever a time where Howard Kurtz frames things in a realistic fashion? He sets up this exchange between Stephanie Miller and Michael Medved about Rush Limbaugh with the ongoing false equivalence of the right wing.

Kurtz jumps right out with this question: "Rush Limbaugh apologized, so why is this escalating?"

Gosh, I don't know. Maybe because he didn't apologize and then spent the entire week blaming his predicament on liberals?

Medved jumps out with the claim that the pressure on advertisers will not work. Clearly he has already forgotten about Glenn Beck's exit from Fox News, after he became a money-loser when sponsors were pressured to pull their ads from his show. He also must not have heard about the advertisers' edict that they no longer want to be associated with hate radio.

Through this whole back and forth, Kurtz functions as a Rush apologist. It's utterly disgusting. I hate that Bill Maher called Sarah Palin what he did, but there is a huge difference between tossing that epithet at a public figure once and spending three days excoriating a private citizen. Here's a snippet of that exchange. After pointing out what Maher said, he goes to the clip of President Obama saying he didn't want his daughters treated the way Sandra Fluke was, at which point Medved jumps right on the false equivalence bandwagon:

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Here's a test for you. I'm going to post two quotes from Howard Kurtz, and you tell me which one refers to Rush Limbaugh:

"A lot of broadcasters might have lost their jobs by saying something so stupid, offensive, and misogynistic."

or

"I mean, this is part of what he does. He likes to stoke outrage and draw attention by saying things that are a bit over the line."

Ok, you get five seconds. I'll give you the answer below the fold.

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[H/t David]

Of course, Jon Stewart had already called out Sean Hannity for his selective edit of President Obama's speech Monday -- making it sound as though Obama uttered the opposite of what he actually said. But Howard Kurtz noticed it too, and remarked on it today on CNN's Reliable Sources:

KURTZ: Here's what I didn't like.

Sean Hannity is no fan of Barack Obama, and he's perfectly entitled to bash him night after night. But here's how the Fox News host analyzed Obama's recent speech in Ohio.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS: Now, the president did have a rare moment of honesty during his speech, and I hope voters around the country are watching this --

OBAMA: Taxes are scheduled to go up substantially next year for everybody. HANNITY: All right, that's right. I know the anointed one will make sure that that happens.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: But just a second. Here's a little bit more of what Obama said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Under the tax plan passed by the last administration, taxes are scheduled to go up substantially next year for everybody. By the way, this was by design.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: So Hannity's careful editing just happens to leave out Obama's explanation that the Bush administration had arranged for the tax cuts to expire in 2010, not to mention that Obama wants to extend the tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans while ending them for the wealthiest taxpayers.

Isn't that kind of editing -- what's the word -- deceptive? A tip of the hat to "The Daily Show" for catching that one.

Well, we're glad Kurtz has finally noticed. Because this has been going on for a long time at Fox.

Remember how Glenn Beck did the same thing to Anita Dunn?

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Beck did this repeatedly to Dunn -- as did, indeed, Sean Hannity, who ran the same truncated quote. So did Special Report with Bret Baier.

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Tina Dupuy: Stop calling Republicans 'hypocrites'

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Demeur: Turds dressed like humans

The Agonist: Looking for another fight...

Grist: Chamber of Commerce goes after climate dissenters in its ranks

The Reaction: Right-Left equivalency and the inside-the-beltway stupidity of Howard Kurtz