Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright isn’t impressed with the blow-by-blow horse race coverage of the primary season and blames the media.

Albright revealed that to an audience January 19 at a Borders bookstore in Tysons Corner, Va., outside of Washington, D.C., to promote her new book “Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership.”

She said the media weren’t asking the right questions when it came to assessing the candidate’s “critical thinking skills.”

[Click here for audio.]

The weekend of January 19 - 20 might go down as the moment in history when the liberal media collectively told former President Bill Clinton to shut up.

Possibly the best example occurred on "The Chris Matthews Show" Sunday when Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution actually stated, "Sometimes I think that Bill Clinton ought to be put in the Nutty Old Geezer Club along with Andrew Young for some of the dumb things he's said lately."

For those that have forgotten, Young is the former Atlanta mayor that recently stated, "Bill [Clinton] is every bit as black as Barack [Obama]...He's probably gone with more black women than Barack."

This statement by Tucker followed other such incidents, including, as NewsBusters reported, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter publishing an article Saturday expressing grave concern that the former president's recent antics were harming Hillary's campaign. Hours later, the panel on ABC's "This Week" shared similar misgivings regarding Clinton's recent "temper tantrums."

Wonderfully, exiling the former president to the Nutty Old Geezer Club was just the beginning of the Bill bashing on Sunday's "Matthews" program:

It has become infinitely clear that America's media are deeply concerned former President Bill Clinton's recent antics on the campaign trail threaten Hillary's chances of winning the White House.

Not only was this subject addressed at length on the Sunday political talk shows, but also Newsweek's senior editor Jonathan Alter wrote an article Saturday amazingly titled "Leading Democrats To Bill Clinton: Pipe Down."

While you check that link to verify my veracity - believe me, I won't be offended! - Alter began (emphasis added throughout):

In 2006, movie mogul James Cameron lent his name to a "documentary" detailing the "discovery" of the tomb of Jesus Christ and his family. The film was widely panned by archeologists, Christians, Jews and non-believers alike and the evidence of the find has been shown to be highly suspect. But, this doesn't seem to bother Time Magazine as the monthly is reviving the story once again in Jesus 'Tomb' Controversy Reopened, a story by Tim McGirk. Naturally, the entire article is written from the perspective of those who take the anti-Christian position on the story and Christians are presented as rejecting the "find" merely out of blind belief while those supporting the interpretation of the find as that of Jesus' final resting place are presented as serious scientists and academicians.

Catch this first paragraph:

As NewsBusters readers are infinitely aware, the use of the word "delicious" has been a source of some controversy at this website.

Either by e-mail, private message, or in comments sections, some have requested an immediate cessation of the appearance of this adjective in my articles.

There have even been some blog posts at other websites concerning this matter, including one Canadian liberal that strongly recommended I get a thesaurus.

On the other hand, many readers have commented that they like this descriptive, and see it as being one of my signatures. In fact, some have voiced satirical frustration at its absence.

With this in mind, I almost fell out of my chair this morning when Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources" said the following:

A truly extraordinary thing happened Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week": the panel and the host seemed to agree that former President Bill Clinton's antics on the campaign trail are hurting Hillary's chances of winning the Democrat presidential nomination.

Maybe even more surprising, the editor of the ultra-leftwing publication "The Nation," Katrina vanden Heuvel, quoted someone close to the Clinton campaign as having said, "People are looking at him like a little league dad who's having these temper tantrums in every state."

Making matters worse, George Will referred to the former president as "an Olympic-class whiner," while host George Stephanopoulos said, "Some people are concerned about this, even inside the Party," and fretted, "I have no indication at all though that President Clinton's going to stop."

I kid you not.

Without further ado, and for your entertainment pleasure, here's a partial transcript of this truly delicious panel segment (video available here, relevant section begins at minute 7:25):

About a week ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested in a UK Telegraph column that allowing hospitals to harvest organs from dead patients without their prior consent or their families' post-mortem consent might be a good idea.

Mr. Brown's occasion for bringing up the topic was telling, and perhaps explains why Brown's proposal got very little coverage in the US:

This year will be the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service: a year to celebrate and thank all the staff who run our hospitals, clinics and GP practices; but also a year in which to renew the NHS for the 21st century, because I believe that only by renewal can we make the NHS even more relevant for future decades than it has been in the past.

..... we may need to do more to encourage more of us to donate (organs. In Britain we have 14.9 million people on the organ donor register - which is around 24 per cent of the population. In terms of actual donors (not just people willing to give, but those whose organs are actually used) we have a rate of about 13 donors per million in our population. This compares with about 22 per million in France, 25 per million in America and around 35 per million in Spain - the best in the world.

That is why I want to start a debate in this country about whether we should take steps to move towards a new system designed to enable far more of us to benefit from transplant surgery - one that better reflects survey findings that around 90 per cent of us are in favour of organ donation.

In the past few decades, as political correctness has taken hold of virtually every industry, folks involved in sports and sportscasting that have made racist or sexist remarks on camera have typically been fired or forced to make public apologies.

Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder's termination by CBS back in 1988 is a fine example, with the recent two-week suspension of Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilghman being another.

Yet, given what happened on an Atlantic City dais on January 11, where a high-profile ESPN anchor went on an alcohol-induced tirade which included a vulgar reference to Jesus Christ, it appears public antitheism is not politically incorrect.

After all, until this moment, you probably hadn't heard about this incident, and the person involved apparently has not been publicly admonished for her behavior by her employer.

While you consider such a double standard, Press of Atlantic City reported on January 12 (h/t NB reader Andy Traynor, readers are warned that vulgarity and blasphemy appear after the jump):

Chris Mathews Sunday morning show talked about bill's role as first man and
they all agreed he would eclipse a vice president and maybe even Hillary. They
all agreed this would be a positive thing.

How in the world doesn’t the fact our constitution prohibits a 3rd term come
up in the conversation. I can say with 100% certainty that if Laura Bush
ran the media would be in an uproar about George getting back in. It seems to
me this is a serious question that needs to be raised.

It's Championship Sunday: Do you know where your bigscreen TV is?

I gotta say that I'm more excited about today's conference championships than any in years, mostly because of the old school nature of the Giants taking on the Packers on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. Honestly, for a real football fan, with all these new stadiums, some of them indoor, many with astroturf, does it get any better than this?

Add in the whole story line of an aging Brett Favre, having been written off by so many sportswriters, fans, and pundits, possibly taking his team back to the Super Bowl. If that's not why we watch sports, what is?

So, who do you like here, and why?

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Romney takes Nevada, McCain wins South Carolina, Thompson does poorly...again.

How are NBers feeling about the primaries at this point? Most conservatives are not behind McCain for a variety of obvious reasons. Are you with such GOPers, or more friendly to a McCain candidacy, and why?

On the other hand, despite how the media are covering it, one really has to see Romney as the frontrunner inasmuch as he keeps on racking up delegates. How do you feel about Mitt as the nominee? Do you see him doing well at the national level?

Finally, has Huckabee's train hit a brick wall? Is Thompson done? Has Giuliani made a mistake banking on the bigger states and ignoring these early primaries, or is he still lurking in the wings with a serious chance?

The Republicans had two contests for delegates on Saturday, but many pundits played the game of playing up the hotly contested race, and playing down the "little-contested" race, even though they equally count at convention time. In this case, it also means playing up media favorite John McCain and playing down media un-favorite Mitt Romney. Here's AP reporter Tom Raum:

Among Republicans, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney cruised to victory in the little-contested GOP Nevada caucuses.

But McCain's victory in South Carolina could shake up the GOP contest and give him political grasp. McCain won in New Hampshire but placed second to Romney in Michigan.

This kind of punditry, assuming McCain's victory is the one with the "grasp," ignores the actual delegate count. According to CNN on Sunday morning, Romney has 72, McCain has 38, and Huckabee has 29.

At about 9:10 Eastern time on Saturday night on MSNBC, NBC's Tim Russert was discussing the Democratic race and the Nevada caucuses, and suggested that Bill Clinton could be seen as racially divisive, trying to drive apart blacks and whites, as signified by his 1992 campaign speech denouncing rapper Sister Souljah. It was famous enough that they started calling it a "Sister Souljah moment" when you spoke out against your own base.

It's tough to come to Bill Clinton's defense, but a little context was missing. If Clinton was seen as divisive by the Jesse Jacksons of the world (let's grant that), what on Earth was Sister Souljah? What was said? She said this in The Washington Post: "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" Clinton picked up on that and shot back days later: "If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech."