Reporting live from the Berlin Wall NBC's Tom Brokaw, on Monday's "Today" show, never once mentioned Ronald Reagan's name and his role in helping to end the Cold War, but did find time to praise Mikhail Gorbachev and "Today" co-anchor Matt Lauer even wondered if it was "a little egocentric" to look at the fall of the Wall as an "American victory," as seen in the following exchange:

MATT LAUER: I know, I think it may be a little egocentric but I think most Americans look at that event and they think of it as an American victory. When you talk to Germans today, do they view it that way?

TOM BROKAW: Well, they certainly think that the United States played a major role. But the real payoff came later when Germany was peacefully re-united. I said at a dinner last night, the remarkable thing is that no tanks rolled that day, no shots were fired, no East German leaders were hanged in the streets of East Berlin. And you have to give Mikhail Gorbachev a great deal of credit for that, Matt. Because he was in Moscow and he didn't send in the troops and he said to the East Germans, "You need to learn how to reform."[audio available here]

The following is the full segment as it was aired on the November 9, "Today" show:

On Sunday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Chris Jansing filed an unusual report which took a sympathetic look at California taxpayers who are having trouble affording a recent increase in the amount of taxes withheld from their paychecks, as she described the situation as taxpayers "footing the government an interest-free loan, and a lot of people aren't happy about it."

The NBC correspondent used several soundbites of average Californians -- one man even earning minimum wage -- who complained about the situation, with one man comparing the government to a "mafia," and another seeing the government as being like children who think their parents are an endless source of money.

Reporters at the Associated Press are clearly unhappy that Maine voters turned out to refuse to honor "gay marriage" at the ballot box. An AP dispatch two days ago by Lisa Leff and David Sharp suggested conservatives are misleading voters with charges that have "no evidence," like students going on a field trip to a lesbian wedding.

Are they that factually challenged at AP? From Fox News on October 13, 2008, just weeks before the vote on California’s Proposition 8:

First-graders in San Francisco took a field trip to City Hall to celebrate the marriage of their lesbian teacher on Friday, but opponents of same-sex marriage in the state say the field trip was an attempt to "indoctrinate" the students, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The field trip was suggested by a parent at the Creative Arts Charter School, and the school said the trip, where students tossed rose petals on their teacher and her wife as they left City Hall, was academically relevant.

ABC's Brian Ross reported Monday that suspected Fort Hood shooter Nidal Halik Hasan tried to contact people connected to the terrorist group al Qaeda.

Even worse, U.S. intelligence officials were aware of this months ago, and "it's not known whether the military was ever told by the CIA or others that one of its majors was making efforts to communicate with figures under electronic surveillance."

Given media's discomfort with discussing Hasan's Muslim ties, as well as their desire to never point fingers at the Obama administration, it's going to be very interesting to watch how Ross's exclusive report on "Good Morning America" Monday will be covered in the coming days (video embedded below the fold with full transcript):

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Hasan tried to contact al Qaeda over two months ago.

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News...

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.

Someone dropped the ball on this one.

"My dog ate our ratings."

Okay, that wasn't one of the lame excuses that CNN president Jon Klein came up with to explain away that network's drastic plunge in the ratings but the ones he did dream up were equally hilarious. Try this one on for size...their low ratings can be explained away because they don't run cartoons during slow periods. The CNN hilarious excuse entertainment was provided courtesy of this Matea Gold Los Angeles Times story which first listed the ratings woes facing that network:

...the network has lost much of the gains it made during the political boom time. CNN has drawn an average of 932,000 viewers in prime time this year, down 25% compared with the same point last year, according to Nielsen.

The trend has worsened as the year has progressed. In October, it recorded its smallest audience of the year, barely edging out its sister network HLN to avoid placing fourth in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic in prime time. (Among total viewers, CNN still beat MSNBC across all programming, but placed a distant second to Fox News.)

...CNN is even feeling the slump on nights when it is expected to dominate. On Tuesday, it placed fourth with its election coverage, attracting just 826,000 viewers in prime time. Fox News had more than 4 million, while MSNBC drew 974,000 and HLN (which didn't cover the election) had 842,000.

Check out the headline from on the front page of the hard-copy New York City edition of today's New York Times:

The article reports that Nidal Malik Hasan began feeling disgruntled with the Army as far back as 2004.

Let's see, there are 525,948 minutes in a year. If Hasan's been feeling "tension" for about five years, that makes about 2,629,740 tension-filled minutes.  And during that entire period, he only engaged in a homicidal rampage for seven minutes.  I mean, come on, he was only a murderer for some tiny, tiny fraction of 1% of the time!  

"Sesame Street" producers are getting criticized for a parody that suggested Fox News was "trashy," and the ombudsman for PBS says that the criticism is justified.

Foxnews.com reported that in a two-year old episode that was rebroadcast on October 29, Oscar the Grouch starts the Grouch News Network, or GNN. The skit later featured CNN’s Anderson Cooper filling in for Oscar as he chats with "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather-Not."

But when another green grouch Muppet caller decides that the news is not grouchy enough, she says she is changing the channel to Pox News. "I am changing the channel," the irate muppet says. "From now on, I am watching Pox News. Now there is a trashy news show."

PBS ombudsman Michael Getler, like many viewers, thought he heard "Fox" instead of "Pox," but regardless, he suggested it wasn’t classy to suggest Fox was "trashy" in front of the little ones:

The Republicans may have won huge victories in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday, but Time's Joe Klein still thinks the GOP is "an extremist shard of a party that is essentially a regional southern party in the country."

I guess the 66 and 60 percent of independents who voted for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia and New Jersey respectively on Tuesday are also part of this extremist regional southern party.

Alas, such facts didn't enter into the discussion on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" when Klein showed how one's political biases can easily trump logic (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 4:18, file photo):

Several weeks ago, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann used the bizarre – and arguably disturbing – term "big mashed-up bag of meat with lip stick on it" to refer to Michelle Malkin as he slammed the conservative blogger, leaving some wondering where his idea for such a crude term came from. This question remains unanswered, but, notably, on Sunday’s Football Night in America on NBC, as he recited plays between the Houston Texans and the Indianapolis Colts, Olbermann used a similar term to refer to Kris Brown of the Houston Texans after he failed to score, calling Brown "a big bag full of mashed-up Kris Brown," as he was lying on the ground. (Hat tip to Clint Bradford for emailing in the tip.)

It was on the Tuesday, October 13, Countdown show on MSNBC that Olbermann compared Malkin to a "big mashed-up bag of meat with lip stick on it" during the show's "Worst Person in the World" segment.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the November 8 Football Night in America pregame:

The latest Pew poll found people see Fox News as conservative, but Time media writer James Poniewozik noted large numbers also thought the major networks were liberal. That must mean it’s time to assert the media has a "moderate bias." This is defined, as liberals usual define it, as pretending conservative idiocy isn’t idiocy:

As anyone following health reform knows, centrism is a political position too. And you see moderate bias — i.e., a preference for centrism — whenever a news outlet assumes that the truth must be "somewhere in the middle." You see it whenever an organization decides that "balance" requires equal weight for an opposing position, however specious: "Some, however, believe global warming is a myth." (Moderate bias would also require me to find a countervailing liberal position and pretend that it is equivalent to global-warming denial. Sorry.)

Last month liberal media members armed with false allegations of racism went into a full-court press to prevent Rush Limbaugh from becoming an owner of the St. Louis Rams.

On Tuesday, the owner of basketball's Los Angeles Clippers settled a multi-million dollar discrimination lawsuit wherein it was alleged that he had for years tried to keep blacks and hispanics out of his apartment buildings.

This is actually the second such suit Donald Sterling has settled in the past four years.

Despite this, America's television news media, which had a field day going after Limbaugh last month, completely ignored the story.

Bucking the trend was sports columnist Dan Wetzel (h/t Shekhar Jain):

On Saturday’s Huckabee show on FNC, host Mike Huckabee interviewed the former executive director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan Texas, Abby Johnson, who became a pro-life activist after witnessing an ultrasound of an abortion while she assisted in a procedure. She charged that the abortion provider tries to "increase the number of abortions they do" for the purpose of making money, and described the emotional experience of watching an unborn baby at 13 weeks pregnancy "trying to get away" as its life was being ended. Video of the interview can be found here.

Johnson: "I saw the probe going into the woman's uterus. And at that moment, I saw the baby moving and trying to get away from the probe. ... And I thought, 'It's fighting for its life.' And I thought, 'It's life, I mean, it's alive.'"

She soon continued:

"The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate."

That's not a quote from National Review, the Weekly Standard, NewsMax, or World Net Daily.

Such was the opening paragraph of a truly surprising Associated Press article published moments ago: