Just weeks after MSNBC's David Shuster was suspended for suggesting the Clinton campaign had "pimped out" former first daughter Chelsea, a comedienne on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" called nuns "b****es."

Tina Fey, the star of NBC's "30 Rock," came back to her television launching pad last evening to make a strong appeal to women around the country to vote for Hillary Clinton in upcoming primaries.

As part of her stump speech, Fey said the following (readers are warned about mild vulgarity as well as sacrilege):

As NB's Matthew Sheffield wrote last week, rocker/activist Bob Geldof praised President Bush for doing more for poor Africans "than any other president so far." Geldof also chided the American press for not reporting enough on the efforts by the President to deliver billions in aid to fight disease and poverty in the ailing continent.

Now look at this awful cartoon by syndicated cartoonist Joel Pett from this past week. Apparently in the eyes of Pett, the President's unwavering commitment to Africa is no more significant than a small bouquet of flowers. Ugh.

Media watchers have been asking themselves since Barack Obama became the front-runner to win the Democrat nomination for president when the press will turn against him and start treating the junior senator from Illinois like a candidate instead of a rock star.

The worm might have turned on Sunday's "This Week," when, as my colleague Brad Wilmouth reported, Cokie Roberts actually used the feminist card to trash Obama for Hillary's sake.

Almost as tasty, about three minutes later, a discussion about how Obama is beatable as the Democrat candidate began with Cokie saying (video available here, relevant section begins at minute 12:30):

Might the MSM be miffed at the prospect of Ralph Nader making problems for the Dem candidate?

Ralph Nader will always have a place in Republicans' hearts for his yeoman work in Florida in 2000. But Democrats and the MSM apparently aren't looking so kindly on the hard-left crusader. Consider this comment from CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider [file photo] on this morning's Late Edition, commenting on Nader's announcement on today's Meet the Press that he was again running for president.

JOHN KING: Is there a niche for Ralph Nader that could actually have an impact on the race?

BILL SCHNEIDER: It's a disappearing niche. In 2000 when he ran, he got about 2.8 million votes. In 2004, he got fewer than half a million votes. I imagine anyone left who's going to vote for Ralph Nader are probably people who wouldn't vote if Ralph Nader weren't running. They're the real die-hard. He really has gone over the past eight years, back in 1996 as a green candidate. He's gone from being a revered, national icon to something of a public nuisance.

 

During the roundtable segment on Sunday's This Week, ABC's Cokie Roberts pointed out Barack Obama's rarely mentioned liberal voting record, calling him "squarely on the left of the Democratic party," and contended that the Illinois Senator, "oddly enough given the rhetoric, has not reached across the aisle and worked with people in the other party to get things done, which [Hillary Clinton] has done." Minutes earlier, sounding defensive of Clinton while raising the possibility that she could see a resurgence of support from white women a la New Hampshire, Roberts referred to Obama as "this cute young man" pushing Hillary aside with "sweet nothings" after all the New York Senator's years of hard work: "Here is this woman who's worked hard, she's done it all the way you're supposed to do it, and then this cute young man comes in and says a bunch of sweet, you know, nothings, and pushes you out of the way. And a lot of women are looking at that and saying, 'There goes my life.'" (Transcript follows)

During the four weeks preceding February 20, New York Times Company stock had been staging a nice comeback.

Lord only knows that the company's long-suffering shareholders, who before then had seen the share price drop more than 70% since June 2002, a point in time that roughly coincides with the onset of the Old Gray Lady's seemingly intractable case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, welcomed any kind of reversal of fortune.

For a while, they had it. From a intra-day low of $14.01 on January 23, the stock rose over 50%, closing at $21.07 last Wednesday.

But on Thursday and Friday, that climb was halted abruptly, and partially reversed. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.4% in those two days, and the S&P 500 dipped 0.5%, NYT stock dove almost 9.7%, closing Friday at $19.03.

Ahh, liberal "tolerance." I've written before (here and here) about how our "NewsBusted" comedy show just drives liberals nuts. Today I have another installment of anger and rage from the party of love and peace.

It's axiomatic. Whenever something even slightly conservative becomes popular, it simply incenses liberals--especially if they are the target of humor. The comments are often very similar in nature (the left is big on independent thought after all), especially in their heavy reliance on profanity, although the most recent batch appearing on the YouTube page of our most recent "NewsBusted" episode does bring in a few new themes this week.

First the stereotypical: All conservatives are evil and therefore can never be funny:

Rush Limbaugh fans have often heard the conservative talk radio host suggest that people who consider themselves politically moderate just can't make up their minds on important issues of the day.

A recent study about ideological differences which drive more liberals to seek Ph.D.'s than conservatives might offer some answers as to why that is.

Published by the American Enterprise Institute, "Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don't Get Doctorates" presented some pretty compelling ideas about what's causing the liberal bias problem at America's colleges and universities (emphasis added throughout):

It now appears, as predicted by yours truly two weeks ago today, that Hillary Clinton will not be our next president, and that Barack Obama is going to be Democratic Party's presidential nominee.

This means that it must be time for Old Media to start playing robust defense on his behalf.

Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press got Old Media off to a "great" start in that regard this morning, as she linked criticism of Obama's patriotism strictly to conservatives, rewrote the history of the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry, played a game of misdirection regarding the candidate's failure to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem, and made excuses for Michelle Obama's quarter-century gap in her pride in being an American.

Pickler's report, entitled "Conservatives Say Obama Lacks Patriotism," starts thusly:

After a lengthy hiatus due to the Hollywood writers' strike, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" returned to the airwaves last evening, and began with a skit deliciously mocking CNN's recent debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

SNLer Kristen Wiig I believe, apparently impersonating CNN's Campbell Brown who hosted the debate -- although looking much more like Suzanne Malveaux -- introduced the festivities by comically and quite accurately stating (h/t Tim Graham):

Like nearly everyone in the news media, the three of us are totally in the tank for Senator Obama. Now let's meet the candidates. Just four years ago, Barack Obama was known only as a brilliant, charismatic and universally admired member of the Illinois State Senate. Today he is one of our nation's truly visionary leaders. And soon, knock on wood, the first black president of the United States.

NewsBusters has on numerous occasions reported how media are trying to frighten Americans into radically altering their lives or else suffer irreparable harm at the hands of the liberal bogeyman global warming.

At times in the past couple of years, the scare tactics have been akin to a 1950s horror movie, including somewhat hysterically a film being released wherein oil workers in Alaska were actually killed by Mother Nature supposedly rising up to defend herself from climate change.

On Wednesday, USA Today added giant snakes to the equation, using the frightening imagery of Burmese pythons -- which can grow in size to 20 feet and 250 pounds -- roaming America if citizens don't immediately change their wicked carbon dioxide emitting ways (emphasis added, h/t NBer Brau):

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: socialized medicine under Obama and Clinton (paragraph break removed):

Among the sharpest policy disputes between Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is whether all Americans should be required to get health insurance, as Sen. Clinton proposes. She has said repeatedly that her plan is the only one that would cover everyone...Now, after months on the defense, Sen. Obama is hitting back by emphasizing the downside of her policy: mandating insurance means penalties for those who fail to get it. His policy requires parents to insure their children, with penalties for those who don't, but his mandate is much less sweeping than the one proposed by Mrs. Clinton, which affects all Americans.

Hillary's plan is estimated to cost $110 billion a year; not sure about Obama's. Regardless, are we really heading down this path if Hillary or Obama win the White House? What will the actual cost of such a program be? How high will the taxes of working Americans have to go to fund such a program, and how much a hit will the economy take as a result? Finally, if this really happens, are we heading back down the path to socialism that Reagan got us off of in 1981 signaling the beginning of the end of capitalism and democracy in this nation.

Anti-American snarkiness has reared its ugly little head in this London Times travel story by Tom Chesshyre, "Tourism 'golden era' ends in Cuba." Apparently, Mr. Chesshyre believes that life under Fidel Castro's oppressive regime was a "golden era" for visiting that island. Yes, how quaint to see dilapidated buildings and people whose diets are severely restricted by government rationing. The Times seems to fear that these "good times" may soon be coming to an end and urges visits there before the atmosphere is ruined by the American tourist "invasion":

Travellers interested in visiting Cuba are being advised to go now before an invasion of American tourists begins.

If that sound isn't the fat lady clearing her throat, it might be the MSM humming Hillary's dirge. Consider, for example, ABC national political correspondent Jake Tapper's Good Morning America segment today on the differences in tone between the Obama and Clinton campaigns. After playing footage of an angry Hillary waving allegedly misleading Obama campaign literature and then of a relaxed Obama laughing it off, Tapper had this to say.

JAKE TAPPER: There's a difference between a winner's confident stride and the strained scurrying of the also-ran.

View video here.

At a campaign event in Ohio on February 23rd, Hillary Clinton displays allegedly misleading Obama campaign literature. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland looks on.

In his culture column this week, Brent Bozell explored how the Academy Awards have trended dramatically toward nasty art films that are not embraced by the masses. This is quite a contrast to a new anti-Oscar of sorts: the Dove Crystal Seal, issued by the Dove Foundation, which awards movies for being family-friendly. Brent notes that the standards are different, that a film can be a great artistic achievement and not be good for children, but the Oscars used to go to family films at times, and that's not so true now.

The first Dove Crystal Seals were awarded to hit movies like Disney's "Ratatouille," "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," and "The Game Plan" with the Rock, as well as Walden's religious picture "Amazing Grace." Brent found that inspirational subject matter makes the nation's film-critic tastemakers choke and say "ugh, Hallmark." For example:

The British Telegraph ran a truly gut-wrenching article Friday about an artist that hanged herself in England a few weeks ago because she couldn't bear the fact that she had aborted her twins.

Be forewarned: anyone on either side of the abortion debate who reads this piece will do so with tears in his or her eyes.

After your emotions for this poor woman pass, ask yourself whether our pro-abortion press would handle this story with the reverence and respect the Telegraph did (h/t NBer saw the light):