I didn't think anyone could really be offended by Karl Rove's "dancing" to a comedic rap routine at this week's Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner. Well, aside from maybe Julia Louis-Dreyfus (whose "Seinfeld" character Elaine Benes has been dethroned as World's Worst Dancer).

I was wrong.

According to Politico's Helena Andrews:

A popular listserv for the younger members of the National Association of Black Journalists (which this reporter is a member of) was abuzz early Thursday morning: Was it funny, offensive or just stupid?

Some compared the sketch to a modern-day minstrel show, others tried and failed to muster indignation against it and still others wondered whether the critics were simply over-thinking.

Sometimes, Fox News Channel brings to the surface powerful stuff that you would never see on "60 Minutes." FNC is promoting Sunday night's edition of "Hannity's America" featuring exclusive interviews with some of the passengers who were on the plane with the Flying Imams when they got kicked off the plane in the Twin Cities last November. FNC promises they tell quite a different story about what happened than the Imams and the folks at CAIR. The passengers are so scared about CAIR's lawsuit and harm coming to their families that they would only speak to Hannity's people anonymously.

The show airs Sunday nights at 9 PM and midnight, Eastern time.

Here's something you don't often see from the MSM: A story on how an increase in the minimum wage will impact a small business. The CBS affiliate in Des Moines, KCCI, talks to the owner of two Dairy Queen franchises in the city about the increase, which takes effect in Iowa on April 1. Iowa minimum wage workers will be getting $6.20/hr., up $1.05. Stage two will take effect next January 1, when the minimum climbs to $7.25/hr.

Bart Warford says prices went up 5 to 7 percent on March 1, and may go up again when stage 2 kicks in.

I thought it was refreshing to see a member of the MSM feature this side of the story.

For some reason, I don't have the menu bar to embed a link, so copy and paste the URL into your browser:

http://www.kcci.com/...

Via Greg Pollowitz at NRO's Media Blog, let us reflect on the National Organization for Women issuing a report finding deeply ingrained sexism in the coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The NOW gang resents candidate profiles "that trivialize female politicians by focusing on their clothing, hair, or taste in home décor, and those that position gender as her most important characteristic, playing on gender stereotypes in order to call into question her ability to provide strong, effective leadership."

Let's take the second complaint first. Since when has NOW -- which even endorsed the hapless Carol Moseley Braun for president in the 2004 cycle when she had as much chance of being elected president as write-ins like Ryan Seacrest did -- ever failed to position gender as a woman's "most important characteristic" when deciding between liberal candidates? (We understand they would never vote for Phyllis Schlafly.)

So far, no Ivy League profs have responded to Rosie O'Donnell's royal command for an explanation from physics experts,but scientific mag “Popular Mechanics” did in their March 30 article. They don't wear elbow-patched tweed coats, but hopefully she will consider them authoritative. Last week, while discussing her pet 9/11 conspiracy theories, Rosie O’Donnell issued an imperial demand that someone “(g)et a physics expert here from Yale, from Harvard. Pick the school!” to explain how, in addition to other wacky ideas, “for the first time in history, steel was melted by fire,” causing World Trade Center Tower Seven to mysteriously collapse.

Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh.

This week, the Media Research Center celebrated 20 years of busting news bias. At the annual MRC 20th Anniversary Gala, Conservative legend Rush Limbaugh brought down the house with his closing speech on the success of the alternative media.

Welcome to Hillary TV: All Hillary, All The Time

On Monday, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received a gift from "Good Morning America": A 30 minute "town hall" infomercial where a GMA host lauded the New York Senator for being ahead of her time.

For weekend discussion and comment.

With the Democrats back in power, network anchors are dwelling lovingly on congressional hearings now with liberal stars like Al Gore and Valerie Plame. They've shown no loss of appetite for hearings on the U.S. Attorney-firings scandal, deemed a “constitutional crisis” by NBC Wednesday night. But ten years ago, when a Republican Congress prepared subpoenas for the Clinton White House on receiving political contributions from China, viewers heard the networks sing a very different tune.

ABC wondered whether subpoenas and hearings weren't democracy in action, but a waste of America's resources. On the April 10, 1997 World News Tonight, anchor Peter Jennings promoted a story: “When we come back, two investigations of fundraising abuse, two of them on Capitol Hill. Is it a waste of time and money?” Reporter John Cochran underlined the problem of GOP partisanship: “Dan Burton is a hard-charging partisan and has resisted investigating anyone but Democrats.”

Back in December I wrote an item entitled Darfur Warriors of the Boston Globe, describing the newspaper's call for muscular action to end ethnic strife in that region of Africa. Earlier this month, the Globe was back on the case, as I described in The Darfur Double Standard: Globe Calls for Intervention.

Well, you might say, like child like parent. The New York Times, parent corporation of the Globe, is out with an editorial this morning, Talking Darfur to Death, very much along the same lines.

The Times politely writes off UN expressions of concern and Arab League diplomacy. Instead, it demands "concerted international action, including a strong protective force." Note that word: "force." Call it protective, but "force" inevitably implies guys with guns. And to what end? To stop the killing of innocent civilians in the ethnic, largely intra-Muslim, strife that grips Darfur. The parallel with the situation in Iraq is striking. Yet in the Darfur case the Times demands an international force, whereas in Iraq it of course is demanding that the international force in place withdraw post haste.

On Friday morning's "Early Show," CBS co-host Harry Smith was hot on the tornado beat. "As we've reported, a huge storm in the middle of the country is blamed for four deaths in three states. The storm caused 65 tornadoes in just one day. It's just the beginning of tornado season, but we have already seen more than 300 of them and it is likely to get even worse as we get into April and May, the prime tornado months."

He brought on Warren Faidley, who he said "calls himself an extreme weather journalist. He's been chasing tornadoes for some 20 years now and he joins us this morning." Smith asked vaguely why the increased tornadoes, but when the answer he wanted wasn't obvious enough, he pounced: "You talked about El Nino. It's hard to talk about climate and not talk about global warming. Do you think that has anything to do with it?

MRC's Matthew Balan discovered on Friday's "Today" that the latest conventional wisdom among the liberal news manufacturers at NBC is that Rudy Giuliani's struggling under a wave of forthcoming media frenzies, while John Edwards has made an Elmer's Glue bond with the American people with his "60 Minutes" interview with his wife about her cancer. First, the decline and fall of Rudy:

MEREDITH VIEIRA: “I want to switch gears here, Tim, and talk about the 2008 campaign. Two candidates, in particular making news this week, Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards. Let's start with Rudy Giuliani, if we can. Reports today, that when he was mayor of New York City, he knew that Bernard Kerik had a relationship with a company suspected of ties with organized crime, or to organized crime, before he appointed him as New York City police commissioner. He also said in an interview that if he is elected to the White House, he could see his wife Judith having a role in Cabinet meetings. How would assess his campaign at the end of this week? Headed in the right direction?”

Should air around 9:30 p.m. EDT tonight, a producer told me in an e-mail.

But before you tune in, drink up our Rosie O (two cans short of a) Six Pack:

• Rosie's Blog Claims 'British Did It On Purpose' and Are Running 'False Flag Operations' With British Sailors In Iran
• Rosie Sees Only Evil in US, Not Iran, Speaks on 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
• Rosie on Attorney Firings: False Facts, Bizarre Comparisons, and Impeachment Call
• Rosie Implies Captured Brits Are A Contrived 'Gulf of Tonkin' For War With Iran

On Monday, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) got a "town hall" meeting with a hand-picked audience on "Good Morning America."

But the royal treatment Clinton receives in the mainstream media isn't shared by even some staunch liberals who make ink in the nation's newspapers everyday. Including at least one who pays the bills with the cartoonist's pen, generally liberal artist and blogger Darrin Bell, creator of "Candorville."

It's not the first time Bell has lampooned Clinton, but check out the March 30 installment, where he makes fun of Hillary's penchant for trying to be all things to all constituents, envisioning Clinton trying to pander to a Palestinian-American and an Israeli-American at the same time.

Bell's cartoon follows two days after the March 28 "'South Park," in which Clinton was portrayed unflatteringly, sporting rather large hips (calling to mind radio host Mark Levin's label "Her Thighness" ) and speaking in a faux Southern drawl.

TownHall blogger/vlogger Mary Katharine Ham and trusty sidekick Katie Favazza attended our 20th Anniversary Gala and DisHonors Awards ceremony last night. They produced a special MRC Gala edition of the HamNation vlog showing the highlights of the evening.

You can find Ham's blog post with video here.

You can visit Ham's YouTube page for video here.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is in for a world of hurt from his former constituents should he center his 2008 campaign on his handling of 9/11 and its aftermath, the Associated Press is reporting. But in his March 30 article, reporter Larry McShane left out some crucial facts about two people he cited in his story to bolster that point: Sally Regenhard and Hank Sheinkopf.

Let's begin with Regenhard. She's portrayed merely as the angry, distraught mother of a NYC firefighter who perished on 9/11.:

"If Rudolph Giuliani was running on anything but 9/11, I would not speak out," said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was among the 343 FDNY members killed in the terrorist attack. "If he ran on cleaning up Times Square, getting rid of squeegee men, lowering crime _ that's indisputable.

"But when he runs on 9/11, I want the American people to know he was part of the problem."

Actual caption:

White House Senior Advisor Karl Rove (R) performs a rap dance alongside NBC White House correspondent David Gregory during the entertainment section of the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner at a hotel in Washington.

Never ever blame the victim, isn't that what people say about crime victims?

Apparently no one told CNN, because this morning on "American Morning" Soledad O'Brien and Stephanie Elam attacked TJX Cos., the parent of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls among other stores, accusing the company of dishonesty after the company suffered massive data theft by hackers.

"None of these companies are ever forthcoming about it," O'Brien said in a huge generalization. "You always have to uncover it, investigate it, dig and dig and dig and then eventually they come up with a number which is probably a little on the low side."

"Minding Your Business" reporter Stephanie Elam agreed, complaining about the length of time it took TJX to disclose that 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers had been stolen affecting nearly 500,000 customers.

Below are some excerpts from Rush Limbaugh's acceptance spech given March 29, 2007, as he received the first annual William F. Buckley, Jr. Award for Media Excellence. You can watch the video at MRC.org. I took the liberty of putting some items in bold for emphasis:

Thank you all very much. I know it's late. Brent told me to cut my speech to forty-five minutes, rather than the hour and a half I was going to go. I, there have two references tonight to my humility, and I'm sorry the cover's blown.

Cal Thomas had to leave. He had to catch a plane, but he came by and told me he wasn't going to be able to hear my humble remarks. Brent has referred to it.

I, I, I'm a little stunned by it, because it's, it's been referenced also tonight I think by Cal that I do satire. And the humility that, that, that I, I think I bring to what I do is borne of really the roots of this award.

When, when Brent called me and said we've, we've got this new award, the William F. Buckley, greatest conservative in the world award, and you've won, won the first one. I think that's what he said when he first posed it. And I said, 'well, that fits.' A little humility there.

I said that is amazing, I, you know, we conservatives don't get many awards, but we actually have an audience. These PBS people and NPR people give themselves all these awards, but nobody's ever seen the shows that get awarded.

We actually have an audience, and so we are a threat, and we don't get awards. It's an honor to get an award. It really is.

MRC's Gala is the "conservative Oscars," the MRC is a "important resource," and Keith Olbermann is about as popular as Haman at a Purim celebration. Those are just some of the observations from conservative bloggers about the MRC's 20th Anniversary Gala.

Media strategist David All called our Gala featuring the DisHonors Awards the "Conservative Oscars" and added these observations right after the dinner:

UPDATE 11:03 PM: A few quick random thoughts…
…Wheel…of…fortune… Pat Sajak, yes, that Pat Sajak, totally owned (PWN3D?) the audience. He made a joke about YouTube, which of course grabbed my attention. And he made quite a few tasteful fat jokes about Al Gore. Honestly, tough to believe, but the guy had us all rolling.

Blogging Bloggy Bloggers …Lots of YouTube references throughout the night, though oddly, not a single reference to a blog. There was however practically a standing applause when Neal Boortz said that, “thanks to alternative media, we don’t need [the mainstream media] anymore.”

Last Night the MRC hosted its 20th Anniversary Gala, featuring the ever-popular DisHonors Awards. The DisHonors mockingly award liberal media fixtures for the worst incidents of bias or buffoonery in the mainstream media from the year prior. This year was no exception.

Below are a list of the award categories and their winners. They link to the MRC pages containing the worst of the worst in media bias from 2006.

God, I Hate America Award

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., New York Times publisher, for his May 21, 2006 graduation address in which he apologized to SUNY-New Paltz graduates that they were "graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land."

Editor's note: The following post is adapted from a speech given by Brent Bozell at last night's MRC gala where Rush Limbaugh was awarded our first-ever William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence.

An awful lot has been said, and should be said, about this thing we call the New Media — that healthy, enlightening, inspiring, and simply refreshing Arctic blast of fresh air that has done so much to bring perspective, and simple common sense to the American public conversation.

In a very real sense, William F. Buckley Jr. started it all. His was the first television show dedicated to the proposition that the conservative position on the issues of the day mattered, and deserved a hearing, and for 33 years his ‘Firing Line’ delivered unlike any show of its kind, before or since.

Then there was National Review, the flagship publication of the movement founded 52 years ago, and which has delivered the intellectual sustenance for so many, including the man who went on to become the greatest president of the 20th century.

Where would the conservative movement be today without this alternative media? I shudder to think, which is why it is high time this movement recognize, formally, the extraordinary accomplishments of so many extraordinary people who day and night deliver our message to millions.

After our big party, I found this joke pretty appropriate for this week's joke:

One night a man got really drunk one night in his local pub. The barman refused to serve him any more alcohol and told him he should be heading home. The man thought this was a good idea so he stood up to leave but fell over straight away. He tried to stand up again but only fell over again. He thought if only he could get outside and get some fresh air he'd be grand.

So he crawled outside then tried to stand up and fell over again. In the end after falling over lots more he decided to crawl home. When he got back to his house he pulled himself up using the door handle but as soon as he let go he fell over again. He had to crawl up the stairs and managed to fall over onto the bed and fell asleep. When he finally woke up the next morning his wife asked him what he was doing at the pub last night. He denied it but she thought differently...

In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank strikes a blow for objective journalism in his "Taking One for the Team, When He Could Remember."

Kyle Sampson, former aide to Attorney General Gonzales, testified Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cutting to what genuinely matters, Milbank writes: "Sampson was indeed a bit pudgy and jowly, and he spoke in a nerdy voice that sounded strange coming from a man whose combative e-mails had been released by the Justice Department in recent weeks."

This isn't the first time Milbank felt the urge to call a Republican a nerd. He said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was one when Alito was nominated. As I pointed out at the time, it's not likely Milbank himself would be confused for James Bond.

Milbank also highlighted how many times Mr. Sampson's memory failed him during the seven hours of testimony: "He used the phrase 'I don't remember' a memorable 122 times."

That may be memorable, but it's hardly a Washington record. Former President Bill Clinton, in his Paula Jones' deposition, couldn't remember 267 times. Of course, Clinton didn't say "I don't remember" that many times, only 71. He offered some variety with not recalling, not recollecting, not having any memory, not having direct knowledge and not having any idea. Clinton, who in high school was a drum major and won first chair in the state band's saxophone section, could never be accused of nerdiness.

Majority also believe there is too much sex on television, that the world was literally created in six days as stated in the Bible and that the government should encourage school prayer.

Got you. I just demonstrated a common tactic of today's activist media. The play book is simple, hook you in with a leading headline/byline combo and use that as foundation to present poll results within the limiting confines of my own personal agenda. While the headline and byline are technically correct you will soon see that those touting the Yale poll completely ignore these "less than liberal" results while spicing up the responses about global warming through the use of definitive sounding catch phrases such as "tidal wave of public sentiment". (yeah that makes it true)