Tom Brokaw took the occasion of the ceremonies attending the death of President Ford to take shots at the foreign policy of both Presidents Ford and Reagan. Speaking with Chris Matthews on MSNBC during the 6 PM ET hour, Brokaw observed:

"President Ford and Henry Kissinger, fairly I think you can say, were over-infatuated with the Shah of Iran. Iran was an important launching pad for the United States should a war with the Soviet Union break out. It was also the source of great oil [sic], but there was already at that time very strong evidence in Iran that there was an Islamic uprising that eventually overthrew the Shah of Iran."

The Shah fell largely because Jimmy Carter abandoned him. Is Brokaw saying the US should have jumped earlier on Ayatollah Khomenei's bandwagon?

Entertainment Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker put both Keith Olbermann and Rosie O'Donnell on his Best of TV List for 2006.

6 Countdown With Keith Olbermann MSNBC  The best anchor in the biz right now books off-the-beaten-pundit guests, refuses to maintain the ridiculous pose of ''objectivity,'' and is funny as hell. Which is where some of his competitors wish he'd go.

7 The View ABC   Detonate the small nuclear bomb called Rosie O'Donnell and watch a mere chitchat show explode with barbed wit and fierce sociopolitical debate. She's forced Elisabeth Hasselbeck to try to learn how to form coherent thoughts, made a revitalized Joy Behar her ally in common sense, and frequently left her boss Barbara Walters speechless.

Newspaper cultural critics often seemed to be bringing their politics and not just their artistic senses to the table when judging the "best" products of 2006. Friday’s Weekend section of The Washington Post compiled a set of lists of the best in art, music, and movies, and some of the Post critics were dropping some liberal (and radical, even Marxist) politics into their choices. The music critics were the most political. Curt Fields had two liberal/radical Bush-hater favorites on his Best list:

7. Dixie Chicks. The trio had several quality moments, including its defiant "Not Ready to Make Nice" single and the intriguing "Shut Up & Sing" documentary. But best of all was the way the Dixie Chicks appeared onstage at some of their live shows to the strains of "Hail to the Chief."...

9. The Coup, "Pick a Bigger Weapon." This Oakland, Calif.-based act mixes revolutionary politics, humor and sweet beats. Smart and catchy, a rare double. Plus, it has the song title of the year, "Babyletshaveababybeforebushdosomethingcrazy."

Here's another angle on a story previously covered by NB's Tim Graham.

Friday's New York Times editorial (requires registration) makes it clear, without having the courage to specifically say it, that it opposed the impending execution of the Iraqi dictator, even characterizing the three-year legal process as "The Rush to Hang" him.

The Times may have taken it too far this time. I would think more than a few in the Manhattan wine-and-cheese set, even those who oppose the war, will be astute enough to substitute the name "Osama bin Laden" and his "orchestration of the 9/11 attacks" for "Saddam Hussein" and his "vile and unforgivable atrocities" in the Times' Friday editorial. Here are a couple of easy examples:

Atheist activist Sam Harris recently proclaimed on National Public Radio that America needed a lot more mockery of religious belief. "I think the criticism of irrationality just has to come from 100 sides all at once,” he declared. “In the entertainment community, maybe you'll just have people making jokes that are funny enough and true enough so as to put religious certainty in a bad light."

Harris said he’s been trying hard to make contacts among the mind-benders in the news and entertainment media to find those God-scorning people who feel “a profound sense of relief that comes with hearing somebody call a spade a spade.”

At the top of the Saturday Washington Post Style section is the headline "The Hard Core of Cool: Confidence, Grace, And Underneath It All, the Need to Be Recognized." Right next to the headline is a Reuters photo of Sen. Barack Obama, his head tilted up and eyes gazing toward the heavens. It's an essay by Metro section columnist (and former Post reporter) Donna Britt, part of the Post's ongoing "Being A Black Man" series.

Britt theorized that while white, Latino, and Asian men "have been deemed cool, black men remain cool's most imitated, consistent arbiters. I mean, there's cool -- and then there's brothercool. (Italics hers.) Think of Barack Obama's instantaneous ascension to 'coolest man in Congress.'"

Free speech is certainly wonderful to watch when practiced by one in possession of compelling ideas mixed with two doses wit and a splash of sarcasm. Such was the case on Thursday evening when comedian Dennis Miller was given the stage on “Hannity & Colmes” to pontificate anew with nary a discouraging word from the resident liberal antagonist (video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated):

Looks like they found evidence of water on Mars, but unfortunately, they also found a sucker fish in water, so we're not allowed to study it any more.

Do you know why I'm no longer liberal? Because I wanted to stop my sentences one word short of the word "but." You know, as a liberal, I found myself using the word "but" more frequently than a proctologist filling out his day planner.

Then, Miller made an observation that most NBers are likely to find somewhat objectionable:

On CBS's "Saturday Early Show," co-anchor Tracy Smith offered a look ahead at the year 2007. The show consulted a set of experts for what would be hot and happening in the new year. In between predictions about a hot stock market and more wines in capped bottles, there were liberal sentiments thrown in, and not just the one where "earthy crunchy" and organic would be in.

Hotline's John Mercurio predicted that Al Gore would get an Oscar nomination for his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," which would spur interest in a Gore 2008 presidential campaign. Soul singer Gladys Knight talked gauzily about how we should all show more love and have an end to all wars. Tracy Smith popped back in to applaud a "lovely sentiment from Gladys Knight."

Most NBers are familiar with an hysterical interview that former Partridge Family star Danny Bonaduce had on the streets of Hollywood with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist two weeks ago. On Thursday, Bonaduce was on “The O’Reilly Factor” with guest-host John Kasich to discuss the incident (video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated):

I tell you what happened was I think I was eating dinner -- or lunch, rather, at an outdoor cafe. And I think this guy who -- I don't know if he believes in what he's doing or thinks he's helping, but I think, my belief was what he was saying was blatantly anti-American.

If you make the sitting president a murderer, you make my little brother-in-law who I've known since he was 6 a murderer, because he's on the ground in Iraq for his second tour and he's been shot.

Then, Bonaduce went after other Hollywoodans:

This morning's "Today" show characterized the execution of Saddam Hussein with a multiplicity of negative terms. According to NBC reporter Richard Engel, reporting from Baghdad:

"The Iraqi government is now going to great lengths to say that this execution was carried out with the utmost respect for human rights; that it was a very organized, precise event. However, interviews that we've conducted with witnesses, judges and other people who attended and followed all the proceedings say it was much more emotional and chaotic."

Continued Engel: "The execution was primitive and vindictive. "

Engel stated that the site of the execution was one of Saddam's most notorious intelligence headquarters in Baghdad, where Shia radicals were executed, "Shia from the same party now leading the Iraqi government." As video of Prime Minister Maliki, a Shia, flashed on the screen, Engel concluded: "today was their revenge."

View video of Engel here.

Just deserts were dished out to one Saddam Hussein last night. Few deserved it more than he.

There is no reason for me to recount his many crimes against humanity here, but it is a good thing he has paid for his evil -- and paid with his life.

That is all that needs to be said about that...

But, in reading the AP's story by Abdul-Zahra, something else comes to the fore that is vexing to anyone looking for truth in the media. Of course, truth is always in short supply from our friends at al-AP, but with Abdul-Zahra's report we see a constant misuse of the English language.

While channel surfing looking for information on saddam's execution, I turn to CNN. The two bozos on there had to include in the same sentence that Saddam Hussein had been executed and this was the deadliest month in Iraq for US troops and another car bomb went off today. As if to say, "see we didn't accomplish anything by doing this"

TheOperative

The AP is out with a small profile on Saddam Hussein and sure enough they managed to get in a blurb that falls minutely short of painting him as a popular figure in their closing paragraph.

While he wielded a heavy hand to maintain control, Saddam also sought to win public support with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports and shops and on Iraq’s currency.

What was the point of closing out an otherwise well written article with the above statement? Does the reporter actually believe that the Iraqi people made the decision to put Saddam's mug on the currency or that they erected statues out of something other than fear?

Don’t forget that Saddam Hussein received something like 100% of the polls in the 2002 "referendum" that granted him another seven years of power. Sure, none of the families of the millions killed in his name or the hundreds of thousands of people who have been reported to have been starved, tortured and brutalized by those loyal to Saddam bothered to come out and vote against him - he was a damn likable guy.

CBS broke into programming at about 10:18 Eastern time to report that Saddam Hussein had been executed. The short Special Report was drily anchored by Katie Couric, but included a brief interview with the typical Democratic expert: Richard Holbrooke, an Assistant Secretary of State and U.N. Ambassador under Bill Clinton. Couric left out the worked-for-Clinton part. Unsurprisingly, Holbrooke said the execution of Saddam would have absolutely no effect on the dire situation in Iraq for President Bush:

“In the long term, it doesn’t change anything…He was a dead man walking. And so in the end for President Bush, Katie, the crisis, this emergency he’s facing, the policies he has to announce shortly, are not going to be changed by what happened today.”

Words fail (direct image link):

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.