TV Newser reports that reader reaction to the Playboy magazine interview in which MSNBC star Keith Olbermann wackily claimed that Fox News was more dangerous than al-Qaeda was so bad, Playboy went looking to recruit a positive letter-writer for balance.

[A]n anonymous emailer directed TVNewser to BloggingOlbermann.com, a fan site of Olbermann's. Becky, who runs the site, tells the story of how Playboy editor Chip Rowe contacted her looking for a positive letter in support of Olbermann to offset the slew of negative letters Playboy received...

More from an industry insider: "The more glaring issue here is that Olbermann's Al Qaeda comment was so over the top that Playboy had to resort to asking one of his rabid fans to find one person to say something positive about him."

But there's more. Keith-loving blogger Becky was allowed to use a phony surname in her letter:

Just how far are media outlets willing to go to advance a liberal agenda?

Well, consider if you will a major wire service changing the picture included in an article about rare snows in Baghdad, Iraq, several days after said article was published.

For some background, on Friday, NewsBusters drew attention to an Agence France-Presse article concerning the first snow in Baghdad for at least 100 years.

The picture included with this AFP piece is featured above right. Nice little snowy scene, yes? Makes you want to put your Christmas lights back up.

Unfortunately, if you click on the link to that AFP article now, this is the picture available (h/t NBer Popular Technology):

Catching up with an article in last week's Weekly Standard (but with Mitt Romney making his last stand in Tuesday's Michigan primary it remains topical), veteran Washington journalist Fred Barnes, a regular panelist on FNC's Special Report, asserted that the press corps “loathes Romney for moving to the right on social issues.” In “The All-Too-Resistible Romney: He has everything going for him but voters,” Barnes, Executive Editor of the magazine, marveled:

I've been amazed at the raw antipathy that so many otherwise reasonable people in the media feel toward Romney. The word they use is "inauthentic." But all presidential candidates are inauthentic to one degree or another. Even Mr. Straight Talk, Senator John McCain, talks differently today about tax cuts and immigration than he used to, but the press doesn't hector him about it. There's something unique about Romney that repels the press...

When one of Tucker Carlson's guests this evening ventured into the racial minefield that our political landscape has become, the show host chose not to join him on the perilous journey . . . .

Carlson began a segment by reading the recent statement by Michelle Obama displayed here.

View video here.

David Crary of the Associated Press, in an article asking if sexism or racism is more "taboo" in the context of the recent war of words between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, concluded that "both are alive and well." It appears, though, judging by the use of quotes from feminists including Gloria Steinem and Kim Gandy, it seems that Crary is taking the apparent sexism against Hillary Clinton more seriously.

The first half of Crary’s article focused on the sexism component of the discussion. Crary quoted Steinem’s claim in a recent New York Times article that "gender is 'probably the most restricting force in American life' — more so than race." He then quotes Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, who "suggested there was little point in ranking them," and NOW president Kim Gandy, who is of the view that while racism may be "somewhat coded," there’s still "an awful lot of explicit sexist stuff."

Crary then spent six paragraphs on criticism of Hillary Clinton that has apparent sexist overtones.

• Barak Obama will be the Democratic nominee for President, but Islamists will declare him a de jure Muslim (believing that as a child in Indonesia he was considered a Muslim under Indonesian law) and a fatwa will be declared against him that if he fails to reject Christ and resume his Muslim faith, that he will face summary execution the moment he steps foot in a Muslim nation or within arms length of any faithful Muslim. This will be seen as a foreign policy liability in his bid for the Presidency. He will choose Maria Shriver (first lady of California and a Kennedy) as his running mate.
• Hillary Clinton will be investigated for campaign finance violations, but NOT be indicted on a technicality, but several of her key people will be indicted and be forced to resign and her presidential champaign will lose traction and fall behind due to opposition against her within media circles.
• John Edwards will drop out of the Election after super-Tuesday and endorse Obama.

-----------------More----------------------

Is the "Today" show obsessed with the Democratic race? Judging from Monday's show it appears so. On the day before an important primary for Republicans in Michigan, NBC's "Today" devoted almost seven minutes to the fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton compared to just 33 seconds to the GOP race. In fact "Today" devoted almost eight more minutes to the Detroit Auto Show in Michigan, than they did to the Republican primary in that same state.

A lot of journalists have written off the possibility the economy can avert a recession.

However, it isn't conventional wisdom that the economy is heading for a recession outside of the journalism world.

Jack Welch, author of "Winning," appeared on MSNBC's January 14 "Morning Joe" to discuss the economy, the presidential race and professional football. Welch told viewers he didn't anticipate a recession.

"No, I don't think we're going to hit recession, but it's going to feel like it," Welch said. "Things are slowing down dramatically, as everyone knows. But I think we'll weather this thing and the global economy will keep us alive. So, we will not have a technical recession, but it will sure as hell feel like one."

On January 9, a California appeals court struck down San Francisco's 2005 ban on handguns, citing that local governments lack authority under California law to enact such a ban (h/t NewsBusters reader John Kernkamp).

While this is a state law struck down on state constitutional grounds, not the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, it is a major victory for gun rights advocates -- in a liberal Democratic state no less -- in a presidential election year in which the Supreme Court of the United States is hearing a 2nd Amendment case in March (District of Columbia v. Heller).

Yet while the San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko covered the story on January 10, I'm having trouble finding any coverage elsewhere in the media. When searching Nexis, I found no coverage of the San Francisco gun ban story in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, nor broadcast networks ABC, CBS, or NBC.

Meanwhile, as the Chronicle's Egelko noted in a January 14 story, San Francisco's district attorney has filed a friend-of-the-court brief backing the District of Columbia in its appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the District's 1976 handgun ban:

While covering the murder of Marine Maria Lauterbach on Monday’s CBS "Early Show," Co-host Julie Chen used the opportunity to level broad charges against the military and its handling of sexual assault cases: "What did the Marines do to protect her, and when did they do it? It's a question we've heard asked for -- of the military for decades." This was followed by a report by CBS Correspondent David Martin, who agreed with Chen: "You're right, the military has long been accused of mishandling sexual assault reports, and there are now some protective measures in place."

Martin moved beyond Lauterbach, who reported being raped by the murder suspect, Cesar Laurean, last April, to other reports of sexual assault in the military:

MARTIN: Earlier in the Iraq war, revelations that there had been more than 100 sexual assault cases in Kuwait, Iraq , and the rest of the Persian Gulf, coupled with complaints from female service members that the male-dominated chain of command did not take their allegations seriously, brought this charge from Senator Susan Collins.

So much for feminism. On the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" this weekend, CNN's senior political analyst, Gloria Borger admitted she felt like Hillary Clinton was being ganged up on by "the guys." During a discussion about how female voters in New Hampshire reacted to Hillary Clinton being criticized by her political opponents, Borger seemed to undercut the whole concept of women wanting to be treated as equals, in effect saying, sometimes you just can't pick on the girl.

The following exchange occurred on the January 13, edition of "The Chris Matthews Show":

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I want the two women to talk about this. This is a time of exposed nerves. I know so many women who read the papers, keep up with events as much as all of us do who have very complicated feelings about her, and not necessarily positive, yet in the maelstrom of this past weekend in New Hampshire, they began to say, "You guys are killing this woman, stop it."

Time magazine’s package of campaign news this week comes with a commentary from liberal writer Dahlia Lithwick (usually read at the Slate website). The headline was “The Tracks of Her Tears: When Hillary (nearly) wept, women voters saw not just be femininity but also her humanity.” Dahlia saw Hillary mist over in New Hampshire, and what soon followed was resentment at anyone who saw calculation or manipulation when “she finally lowered her cast-iron shield” and grew emotional:

But the gender card resonated, mostly because it turned the men around Clinton into brutes. Whether it was Obama's sounding a rare sour note by assuring the candidate she was "likable enough" or John Edwards' implying that her Portsmouth tears rendered Clinton somehow unfit for the "tough business" of governance, every woman who's ever been asked whether it's that time of the month must have felt some kinship. (Italics hers.)

Only the left and their lapdogs in the media can construe a story about a construction worker that was falsely accused of sexually molesting a girl in a school where he was working as a call to further restrict construction workers who are contracted to work in schools. The Baltimore Sun gives us this tale of a world upside down in a society that cannot seem any longer to understand what should be focused upon and what should not.

Apparently, some middle school girl in Perry Hall Middle School in the Baltimore, Maryland suburbs decided it was a neat idea to claim she was sexually attacked in one of the school's bathrooms by a "construction worker" who was doing his work inside the school. So, the police dutifully detained the construction worker in question and began their investigation. It turned out, however, that surveillance tapes showed that the worker in question could not have done what the girl claimed. On cross examination, the girl's story collapsed and she recanted the claims. Lastly, no physical evidence was found to substantiate the attack.

Now, what do you think nearly half the Sun's story was about? Was it about how this nasty little cuss of a girl caused so much trouble with her lies? Was it that the school apologized to the construction worker for his discomfort? How about the police? Did they apologize to the worker and demand the school address the situation? Parents? Did parents get up in arms about how this worker was so mistreated?

No. None of that.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to summit Mt. Everest, died last week. CBS's Katie Couric noted the passing in her January 11 "Notebook" at her Couric & Co. blog, but in doing so made a gauzy reference to New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D). Curiously, Couric failed to note that the latter once falsely claimed her parents named her after the New Zealand adventurer. In fact she was born years prior to Sir Edmund's famous climb.

Here's the transcript:

Roland Martin, a CNN contributor and talk radio host out of Chicago, blasted Hillary Clinton and some of her supporters on Monday’s "American Morning" over recent comments they made about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama. Martin, responding to Clinton’s comment that MLK’s dream " began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964," countered by bringing up the former First Lady’s youth. "[H]ad Hillary Clinton's choice for president in '64 actually won, you never would have had civil rights bill, because she was a Goldwater girl." Throughout the segment, Martin sounded like an Obama supporter.

I found a surprising article in the New York Times, one that probably shocked its liberal-leaning base.  

The headline was slanted, but  this January 11 article was a thoughtful assessment of the unintended, but predicted, consequences of the state laws banning US horse slaughter.

With the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act that would ban the export of US horses for slaughter before Congress, the Times dove right into this activist Thunderdome. The NYT revealed after the state bans, unwanted horses face “more grueling travel” and are shipped to Canada or worse, “gruesome deaths” in Mexico, where their spinal cords are severed with knives (bold mine).

The American slaughterhouses killed horses quickly by driving steel pins into their brains, a method the American Veterinary Medical Association considers humane. Workers in some Mexican plants, by contrast, disable them by stabbing them with knives to sever their spinal cords, said Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University..

If you think this cannot happen here, then let me remind you that there are American judges who believe "emerging international opinion" is a legit basis for deciding American law. The "emerging international opinion" in the west is that people should be fined or sent to jail for offending certain protected groups. Article may open in the middle of the page, so you may have to scroll up to read it.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/019553.php#comments

Newsweek's "Conventional Wisdom" column is a weekly window into the leftist soul of the editors at the weekly magazine. This week's CW is no different, as it insults the GOP conservative base as "nativist" while boosting Sen. John McCain, disses conservative Fred Thompson, lauds Hillary Clinton's "blood, sweat and tears" win in New Hampshire:

Hillary

Blood, sweat and tears humanize her enough for N.H. win. But S.C. on 1/26 looks daunting.

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