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I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that a TV host whose idea of a show-closer is tossing wadded-up balls of paper at the camera would indulge in middle-school-worthy taunts about someone's weight. And yet . . . I actually was surprised when on tonight's show, Keith Olbermann unleashed a string of jibes aimed at Roger Ailes' physique. So surprised that when Olbermann first began his barrage, with a comment about Ailes doing something "between pies," I truly wondered whether I had misheard him or perhaps misunderstood his intent. Fat jokes? Could my fellow Cornellian really be stooping that low?

He could. Olbermann's mean-spirited motive soon became manifest. Displaying what was presumably the least flattering photo of the Fox chief he could find [shown here], Olbermann followed that comment with this string of insults:

First from Reuters, which has not always been very even-handed in reporting economic news, a pretty decent report:

Consumers bright, Midwest business strong in Sept

By Ros Krasny

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. consumer spending slipped in August but falling gasoline prices elevated shoppers' moods by September and Midwest factory activity picked up as well, according to reports on Friday that suggested the economy was still motoring along.

Meanwhile, consumer prices outside food and energy edged up just 0.2 percent in August, although year-on-year price gains hit an 11-year high, offering a mixed reading on inflation.

Poor Martin Crutsinger of the Associated Press, on the other hand, must have had a lot of pent-up negativity to get out before the weekend commences, as he took the same data and turned it into what Jim Taranto at Best of the Web described thusly: "If we didn't know better, we'd think we were heading for another Great Depression."

The feminist spirit was alive and well on Friday’s edition of "The View." The women were shocked by the concept of women with concealed weapons, and positively giddy over Ted Turner’s recent remarks that men should be banned from public office for a hundred years:

Barbara Walters: "We particularly like this quote, because we have this remarkable woman on with us today...Ted Turner, when he was talking about the United Nations, said, quote, ‘Men should be barred from public office for a hundred years in every part of the world. It would be a much kinder, gentler, more intelligently-run world. Men have had millions of years and we’ve screwed it up hopelessly. Let's give it to the women.’"

Rosie O’Donnell: "Yeah! I say bravo! Go, Ted."

The "remarkable" woman Walters was hyping was socialist Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, the first female in that country to be elected to that office. During their "Hot Topics" segment, the co-hosts marveled at how an agnostic woman could win the presidency in a "macho, Latin American country" while the United States had yet to elect a female president:

The latest "Media Myth" study from the MRC's Business & Media Institute is out. BMI deputy editor Amy Menefee and researcher Julia Seymour found that the media were quick to hype rising gas prices but slow to recognize the ground-rocketing they've been taking lately.

• In 35 straight business days of falling gas prices, evening news shows emphasized “high” or “rising” gas prices more often than falling prices.
• In half the stories where journalists mentioned falling gas prices, they undermined the news with warnings of future price increases.
• It took NBC three weeks to report falling prices on the "Nightly News." By that time, the average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline had fallen 24 cents.

For more, see BusinessandMedia.org.

As part of Newsbusters’ thorough coverage of the Bill Clinton/Chris Wallace interview, the MRC’s Tim Graham noted that the shock should not have been over Wallace’s questions, but rather the softballs provided by "mainstream" journalists such as Tim Russert. The NBC host asked Clinton brief and not exactly hard hitting queries, including "what do you think is the biggest problem" in the world?

CBS anchor Harry Smith seemed perplexed by an "Early Show" guest who had the temerity to blame Clinton for failing to eliminate bin Laden. MSNBC host Keith Olbermann attacked Roger Ailes, Chairman of Fox News, calling him "Ming the Merciless" for daring to criticize Clinton.

Over on CNN, the cable network joined in on the Fox bashing. "Situation Room" contributor Jack Cafferty described FNC as the "F-word network." (It should be noted that this isn’t the first time Cafferty has used the term, it’s sort of a go-to phrase for the liberal anchor.) CNN also featured yet another story over whether the GOP and "Big Oil" are conspiring to bring the price of gas down and, as a result, help the Republicans in the midterm elections

In other wide ranging bias, despite an underwhelming hurricane season, "Good Morning America" warned about Earth’s "soaring temperatures" and anchor Robin Roberts interviewed a parade of global warming cheerleaders.

Today we're unveiling a new occasional feature, a contest for readers of NewsBusters.

Since Rosie O'Donnell has joined the ABC-syndicated show "The View," tensions have risen pretty dramatically on the set between the co-hosts. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the lone right-of-center host has reportedly brought to tears repeatedly. The rest of the show's staff is also upset.

Your task: Predict who will be the first to leave the show and when. The person closest to the date will become the winner of your very own Rosie O'Donnell doll, voodoo pins not included, and any conservative book of your choosing. (Entries must be posted as comments on NewsBusters before the end of the day Wed., Oct.

On CBS's racially-segregated "Survivor" reality show Thursday night, an Asian man named "Cao Boi" (pronounced Cowboy) went on a rant against the Iraq war and insisted American teenagers are going to be drafted and sent to Iraq en masse -- unless you're privileged, "unless you're Mr. Bush children." He was telling a story about a conversation he had at a restaurant:

“This old man he said, 'I come to United States, I’m so lonely, all my friends are in Vietnam.' He’s like fifty-something. And he just missed the old days. 'But I come to United States for my children’s future.' I go, ‘how old are your children?’ 'Fifteen and sixteen.' HA HA HA HA! Fifteen and sixteen! They trick you. They trick you. He go ‘what’? Fifteen and sixteen, you think in a couple of more years they’ll be in Iraq? ‘I’m sorry. For what?’ You’re Vietnamese. You should know better about war. You should know all about war.”

Here's a blast from the past: The only woman ever accused and convicted of being Tokyo Rose, an anti-American radio announcer during World War II died this week. She was later pardoned by president Gerald Ford after word got out that some of her accusers were lying. Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post's story:

Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino, 90, an American woman branded "Tokyo Rose" during World War II, imprisoned for making treasonous radio broadcasts and decades later exonerated with a presidential pardon, died Sept. 26 at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago. No cause of death was reported.

Although nearly a dozen female broadcasters were given the moniker during World War II, Mrs. D'Aquino was the one most tarred by the name Tokyo Rose, which, along with the name of Japanese War Minister Hideki Tojo, came to personify Axis infamy in the Pacific.

Taunting millions of servicemen with stories of infidelity on the home front, false reports of battle outcomes meant to demoralize them and frequent spins of pop songs to keep them listening, the broadcasts of Radio Tokyo were notorious instruments in the propaganda war. Many American sailors and soldiers found the broadcasts cartoonishly incredible, which Mrs. D'Aquino said was exactly her intention.

The name Tokyo Rose was an American invention. On air, Mrs. D'Aquino called herself "Orphan Ann," a reference both to her favorite radio program as a child and her lonely status as an American trapped in enemy territory. She refused to renounce her U.S. citizenship during the war, and many described her as a victim of her own courage and naiveté.

Just two weeks after Rosie O’Donnell made waves on ABC’s all-female chat show The View for proclaiming that "radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam," the Catholic League is protesting a conversation on Thursday’s show between O’Donnell and co-host Joy Behar about drunken priests and silly Eucharistic rules. (Don’t forget the obligatory Mel Gibson slam.) Sitting with glasses of red wine, the women were discussing a study showing drinking red wine helps preserve memory:

Video (1:01) Real Media (1.65MB) Windows Media (1.87MB) or MP3 audio (281 KB)

Behar: "Don’t you start losing your memory when you’re a drunk? I mean, that’s the first thing that goes."

O’Donnell: "Or you just start spouting anti-Semitic statements. [Crowd laughs, then oohs in shock] Mel Gibson! Mel Gibson! C’mon! Cause they say when you get drunk, the real person comes out. I don’t know about one glass of wine, though."

"A new study says Republicans hate puppies. Don't believe me? Ask Professor Johnson."

Eric Zorn, in the keynote speech at the Media Relations Faculty Recognitions Luncheon at DePaul University, says journalists and professors need each other. Journalists are not respected as knowledgeable in any field, and professors have no mouthpiece for their ideas. A reporter can increase the credibility of a story by getting a professor to attest to the "trend" being claimed, while the professor gets his name in something other than the campus paper or a tiny academic journal.

An editor driving to work notices that there are lots of pre-fab garden sheds in backyards along the way. A growing number, he suspects.

So he summons a reporter when he gets to work and assigns him what I’m calling a “more and more.”

Liberal billionaire George Soros is quitting politics, probably putting down that toy to play with some others, like most billionaires with short attention spans. As financier for much of the Left wing's activities, it'll be interesting to see how various liberal groups will deal without a Soros to suckle on, including our friends at Media Matters.

Reports the New York Post:

September 29, 2006 -- Billionaire liberal financier George Soros, who spent millions of his fortune trying to oust President Bush in 2004, yesterday said he hopes to stay out of politics from now on.

"In the future, I'd very much like to get disengaged from politics," Soros said at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting on the Upper East Side. "I'm interested in policy and not in politics."

As Clarice Feldman points out here at The American Thinker, after weeks of front page coverage of allegations of racism against Senator George Allen in the Virginia Senate race, the Washington Post suddenly reversed course and used an editorial to suggest enough is enough, but only after serious allegations of irresponsible and potentially racist behavior on the part of Democrat Jim Webb surfaced.

After countless front page Washington Post stories overplaying Sen. Allen’s “Macaca” remark, and extensive coverage of charges against Allen, obviously orchestrated by Professor Sabato (who seems to have retreated from claims suggesting he had personal knowledge of Allen’s racism), a story has emerged about Webb’s racism which is more direct and damning.

Thursday's CBS Evening News pondered the new technology used by political campaigns at YouTube, but national political correspondent Gloria Borger dwelled on the videos embarrassing to Republicans -- Sen. George Allen's "Macaca" remarks, a Florida House candidate's blacks-can't-swim comment, and Sen. Conrad Burns snoozing. (There was fleeting attention on the George W. Bush-Joe Lieberman "kiss" and its clearly Bush-loathing flavor.)

At least when CBS's The Early Show had Bill Plante study the phenomenon on Tuesday morning, he balanced Allen with a Democrat, Sen. Joe Biden joking about needing an Indian accent to walk into a 7-Eleven. Borger underlined Allen as an idiot: "Virginia Senator George Allen has become a poster child for what can go wrong when a candidate gets caught saying something stupid...the controversy paved the way for new charges this week that Allen has a racist past."

This one’s really good, folks. Writing in Friday’s FrontPage Magazine, Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn Law School Henry Mark Holzer made the case for why the New York Times should be indicted for violating the Espionage Act (hat tip to American Thinker):

It is an article of faith on the Left and among its fellow travelers that the Bush administration stole two elections, made war on Iraq for venal reasons, tortured hapless foreigners, and conducted illegal surveillance of innocent Americans. A corollary of this mindset is that the press, primarily the Washington Post and The New York Times, has a right, indeed a duty, to print whatever they want about the administration—even if the information compromises national security.

Holzer marvelously responded to this absurd notion:

Open for comment.

Note: NB is looking for military, ex-military and former intelligence community members to write about the media's coverage of military and intelligence issues. If you're interested, email newsbusters@mediaresearch.org

When the Pope recently accused Muslim extremists of using violence to advance their ends, they responded . . . with violence. Not to compare myself to the Pontiff, but I recently accused a liberal columnist of being consumed with Bush-hatred, and she has now responded . . . by cataloguing the many things she hates about Bush.

Last week I posted an item, Bush-hating Rosa Brooks No Dissent, critiquing a column by Rosa Brooks of the LA Times. Brooks has fired back with another column today, I'm No Bush Hater, ostensibly seeking to refute my criticism.

In today's Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan sounds a pessimistic note about today's media landscape. Sparked by former president Bill Clinton's contentious interview with Fox's Chris Wallace, she hails the demise of the liberal elites who monopolized America's political agenda through control of the media but bemoans what she believes to be the proliferation of cultural detritus. I'll have more on this later but I thought it's worth putting out right now. Do you think she's right or wrong?

An excerpt:

The new media did not divide us. The new media gave voice to our divisions. The result: more points of view, more subjects discussed, more data presented. This, in a great republic, a great democracy, a leader of the world in a dangerous time, is not bad but good.

But nothing comes free. All big changes have unexpected benefits and unanticipated drawbacks. Here is a loss: the man on the train.

Forty and 50 years ago, mainstream liberal media executives--middle-aged men who fought in Tarawa or Chosin, went to Cornell, and sat next to the man in the gray flannel suit on the train to the city, who hoisted a few in the bar car, and got off at Greenwich or Cos Cob, Conn.--those great old liberals had some great things in them.

One was a high-minded interest in imposing certain standards of culture on the American people. They actually took it as part of their mission to elevate the country.

There is potentially no more deplorable aspect of politics in the new millennium than the backwards-looking blame game played by both Parties on a daily basis. Whether it’s the economy, taxes, budget deficits, or corruption, members on both sides of the aisle always have an extended finger ready to accuse the other for the problems in the world.

In the past four weeks, a new category for contestants has been created: The bin Laden’s-Still-Alive Blame Game.

When Doves Lie

It is certainly no great surprise that once all the faux hawks – the doves that felt so threatened by the 9/11 attacks that they actually wanted to respond militarily – started feeling less vulnerable, the country would return to its 9/10 divisions. However, nobody could possibly have envisioned that five years later, the political parties would actually be debating who was more responsible for the national tragedy that fateful day.

Here's a shocker: Oliver Stone doesn't like President Bush or the Iraq war. More of a shock is his remark: "Terrorism is a manageable action. It can be lived with."

Is it just me or does that seem surprisingly honest for a media liberal to admit he feels this way?

Filmmaker Oliver Stone blasted President Bush Thursday, saying he has "set America back 10 years." Stone added that he is "ashamed for my country" over the war in Iraq and the U.S. policies in response to the attacks of Sept. 11.

"We have destroyed the world in the name of security. [...] From Sept. 12 on, the incident (the attacks) was politicized and it has polarized the entire world," said Stone. "It is a shame because it is a waste of energy to see that the entire world five years later is still convulsed in the grip of 9/11.

This morning's big political news at 'Today' was the Bob Woodward book, State of Denial. Turf battles and rivalries in a White House - who would have thought it? Dems are presumably clinging to it as the Last Best Hope for Liberal-kind.

But in terms of revealing the liberal MSM mindset, I found much more interesting a few off-the-cuff comments made by members of the Today cast. At the end of the first half hour, the entire gang gathered on the studio couch, and talk centered on a just-completed segment on a proposal in NYC to ban the use of trans-fats by city restaurants.

Rejection is painful. Spurned suitors often-if-contradictorily condemn the very object of their affection, while reserving a good measure of bile for their successful rivals. Democrats have suffered lots of unrequited political desire in recent years, and the strain is really starting to show. We all know about Bush Derangement Syndrome. Yesterday I described a new strain, Gas Price Derangement Syndrome, and mentioned an even more insidious disease afflicting many on the left - Controlled Demolition Dementia.

Today comes more evidence of the left's painful struggle to deal with its diminished standing and repeated rejection at the polls. In the subscription-required Why Voters Like Values, Times columnist Judith Warner claims that "the Christian right's ability to stir voter passions is based not on values, but on psychology." Warner describes having bravely gone inside the belly of the conservative beast, recently attending a Values Voters Summit in DC, and declaring it "imbued with so much intolerance and hate." This is presumably in contrast with liberal love-ins at Daily Kos, Moveon, etc., where Bush & Co. are regularly depicted as liars, murderers, Hitlers, etc.  For that matter, Warner herself doesn't adumbrate many shades of gray in painting those on the right as filled with hatred.