Rolling Stone Gives Obama Campaign Some Free Damage Control

Back on Feb. 22nd, Rolling Stone published their in depth story (6-pages on the net) about Barack Obama's "charisma" under the title, "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama." However, the story has lately been retitled "Destiny's Child." One might wonder why Rolling Stone made the sudden change avoiding the word "radical"... unless, that is, one were living under a rock and isn't aware of the trouble Barack is lately having with the anti-American and racist ranting of his "spiritual mentor," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

Many hard questions arise over Rolling Stone's self-censorship. Why did they make the title change? Why did they feel "radical" was good this morning, but not later the same day? Does Rolling Stone regret not having the journalistic integrity to stand for what they originally wrote? Why did they not append a notice about the title change to the story? More pointedly, has Rolling Stone registered as official Obama Campaign staffers? After all, they are obviously offering Barack some free damage control.

One of the arguments that Barack Obama has marshalled in his favor as a reason for Democrats to elect him is that he is cool and calm under pressure. He can, unlike Hillary Clinton, remain collected in the face of tough questions. Is that really true, or is it simply the fact that Obama rarely makes himself available for tough questions from the media?

That latter hypothesis acquired some evidence in its favor today as the presidential candidate appeared on Fox News to answer questions about his controversial long-time associate Jeremiah Wright. Watch the video and tell me what you think. Can Obama take a tough pitch or is he a minor-leaguer?

Friday's NBC Nightly News allocated a mere 22 seconds to Barack Obama's condemnation of what fill-in anchor Ann Curry vaguely described as “inflammatory remarks that his long time pastor made about Hillary Clinton and the nation,” but instead of informing viewers of any of those remarks, such as Reverend Jeremiah Wright's suggestion that the U.S. deserved 9/11, the newscast then devoted three minutes to a celebratory piece about how excited Obama's childhood friends in Indonesia are about his candidacy.

In a story which began and ended with a picture of Obama's classmates in front of huge “Good Luck Barry!” lettering, reporter Ian Williams trumpeted the wonders Obama is doing abroad: “The fact that Obama lived in Jakarta and studied at this school has really captured the popular imagination. It's already working wonders for America's battered image here.” A local commentator oozed over how “Obama's candidacy confirms the romantic ideals people like me have held since childhood that America's the land of opportunity.”

Williams concluded with how “friends remember Barry playing barefoot in the paddy fields with a real spirit of adventure,” and so now “hope there'll be no turning back on his journey to the White House. And Barry might attend their next reunion as President of the United States.”

Appearing on the last episode of Tucker on March 14, 2008, Barack Obama fan and LA Times columnist Rosa Brooks grimaces after claiming Obama "probably wasn't listening" in church when Rev. Jeremiah Wright made his controversial statements.

Since 1942, the Ad Council has been creating important public service announcements that have ranged from Smokey Bear's "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires," The Crash Test Dummies, McGruff the Crime Dog, "A Mind is a Terrible Thing To Waste," and "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk."

Sadly, this non-profit organization has not only decided to take on the most recent liberal bogeyman known as anthropogenic global warming, but do so by using young children.

In the ad embedded to the right, a young girl is actually about to be hit by a train to disgracefully demonstrate that our inaction today will kill our children tomorrow. In another, kids imitate ticking clocks as they list the predicted climate change horrors of massive heat waves, severe droughts, and devastating hurricanes:

Oh, baby...what a championship weekend we have ahead of us in college b-ball:

• Atlantic 10 final:
No. 5 Saint Joseph's vs. No. 2 Temple (ESPN, 6 p.m.)
• ACC semis:
No. 1 UNC vs. No. 4 Va Tech (ESPN, 1:30 p.m.)
No. 2 Duke vs. No. 3 Clemson (ESPN, 4 p.m.)
• Big 12 semis:
No. 1 Texas vs. No. 4 OU (ESPN2, 2 p.m.)
No. 2 Kansas vs. No. 6 Texas A&M (ESPN2, 4:20 p.m.)
• Big East final:
No. 1 Georgetown vs. No. 7 Pitt (ESPN, 9 p.m.)
• Big Ten semis:
No. 1 Wisconsin vs. No. 4 Michigan State (1:40 p.m.)
No. 10 Illinois vs. No. 6 Minnesota (4:05 p.m.)
• Pac-10 final:
No. 1 UCLA vs. No. 2 Stanford (6:15 p.m.)
• SEC:
Georgia vs. Kentucky (TBD)
Tennessee vs. Arkansas (TBD)
Mississippi State vs. Georgia/Kentucky (TBD)

Anything else you want to discuss?

As you should know by now, Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has a Wright problem. That would be a Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. problem. It turns out that Barack Obama's "spiritual mentor" has a long, long history of hatred against whites and the history of the U.S.A. But, late last week, news began to surface that one of John McCain's religious supporters, John Hagee, has made many harsh anti-Catholic statements in the past.

As reports of Wright's disgusting, hate filled garbage has made the news earlier last week, many on the extreme left have pointed to the low profile that the McCain story has had as proof that the media is unfair, intimating that the media might even be on McCain's side.

The Associated Press editors tasked in-house "writer" Phillip Elliott to write an article that dispels the "rumors and outright lies" concerning Barack Obama and the perception that Mr. Obama's support of Israel is questionable. The product of that task is what you'd expect from any number of left leaning story tellers in the mainstream media who write about Obama as opposed to journalists, reporters and political observers that actually take the time to research, study and honestly discuss that which they have found.

Elliott took no time setting up the Obama defense from the first sentence, stating that "Barack Obama has a solid Senate record in support of Israel". The rest of the article is essentially an exercise in repetition; repackaging the most often repeated excuses in defense of a man that inexplicably spent 20 years in a church listening to the controversial and dogmatic sermons of his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright honored noted Jew hater Louis Farrakhan and traveled with the Nation of Islam leader to visit Libya's Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi. You know Qadhafi, he's the megalomaniacal leader of Libya that instituted Sharia Law and expelled most all the Jews from his country while simultaneously destroying all their cemeteries. A real humanitarian and man of the people, IN HELL!

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Is the world caving in on the Democrats:

• Democrats in Michigan and Florida struggled Friday to resolve the impasse over their disputed January primaries, coming up with a plan to hold a June primary in Michigan while remaining deadlocked in Florida. Reflecting how tense the situation has become, influential fund-raisers for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton have stepped up their behind-the-scenes pressure on national party leaders to resolve the matter, with some even threatening to withhold their donations to the Democratic National Committee unless it seats the delegates from the two states or holds new primaries there.

• Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo said the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could be ``ruinous'' for the Democratic Party if the contest isn't resolved before the August nominating convention.

Just how bad are things going for our good friends on the opposite side of the aisle? Are we witnessing an historic meltdown of epic proportions, or will this all be worked out in time for the Democrats to come together for the November elections?

Imagine if a comedy script is submitted to a movie producer. It would be about a major newspaper conglomerate so desperate to turn around the plunging circulation numbers of its various newspapers that it hires a wacky radio consultant as a Chief Innovation Officer to help turn it around. The radio consultant is so strange that he believes the way to improve the circulation numbers is to ensure that the newspapers have soul. He plans to do this by treating newspapers as the new rock 'n' roll.  The wacky Chief Innovation Officer announces his plans in a seemingly endless  e-mail message that wanders aimlessly for 5 web pages in which it claims that newspapers need to "morph the soul of Dylan...with with the innovation of Apple and the eccentric-all-the-way-to-the-bank of Bill Veeck." The message also conjures up "theater of the mind," Star Wars, plus a whole host of nearly indecipherable psycho-babble that includes visions of open and closed modes.

I've enjoyed Tucker Carlson's show and can't let it pass into history, as it did last night, without a mention here. MSNBC has said that Tucker will remain at the network as an at-large commentator, and I have a feeling that, liberated from show-host concerns, he might become even more uninhibited in the expression of his quirkily conservative/libertarian views.

So let's usher Tucker out by focusing on one of our favorite nemeses, Rosa Brooks, the liberal LA Times columnist who appeared on the show's final episode. The unreconstructed Obama apologist offered the lamest excuse yet for his failure to have disassociated himself earlier from the ugly rhetoric of Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Barack simply wasn’t paying attention in the pews.

View video here.

If you have liberal friends who try to rebut you and say that the same networks that had largely ignored Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright also ignored John McCain being embraced by harshly anti-Catholic evangelist John Hagee, you can first say that there’s a huge difference between someone’s selected pastor of two decades and a new endorser. A search through network transcripts shows that ABC has not reported on Hagee, although they broke the Wright flap. But CBS has done two stories and NBC, half a one.

On CBS, Jeff Greenfield put together a story that aired on the February 29 Evening News and the March 1 Saturday Early Show. Here’s the Evening transcript:

KATIE COURIC: Meanwhile, earlier this week, the two clashed over Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's support for Obama. Obama ultimately rejected it. Tonight, another candidate and a new endorsement controversy. Here's Jeff Greenfield.

JEFF GREENFIELD: Today it was Republican front-runner John McCain’s turn to answer questions about one of his supporters, Reverend John Hagee, a San Antonio pastor with a worldwide broadcast ministry. Hagee has offered some highly provocative views on a variety of subjects, for instance linking Hurricane Katrina to the gay rights movement.

How's this for a balanced Today panel to discuss the impact of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's extremism on Barack Obama: two liberals who agree it shouldn't hurt him, with one suggesting the situation might even help Obama?

The panel discussion was preceded by a segment narrated by Lee Cowan, the NBC correspondent covering the Obama campaign who has admitted "it's almost hard to remain objective" about Barack. Cowan buttressed his case in that regard. After playing the clip of Rev. Wright using the n-word to make an invidious comparison between Obama and Hillary, Cowan claimed the words were "old." True--if Cowan considers December, 2007, when Wright uttered them--ancient history.

Then it was on weekend co-anchor Amy Robach's interview of Michael Dyson and Melinda Hennenberger. Dyson, who as Robach noted is an Obama supporter, is a Georgetown professor and MSNBC political analyst. He has in the past garnered headlines for his fierce criticism of Bill Cosby, claiming among other things that Cosby "battered poor blacks" with his calls for self-reliance.

On October 22, 2005, my colleague Brent Baker reported Al Franken's disturbing joke to "Late Show" host David Letterman concerning Scooter Libby and Karl Rove being executed for their involvement in the Valerie Plame Wilson affair.

Almost two and a half years later, during an interview on CNN's "American Morning" Friday, Kiran Chetry asked the comedian turned Democrat senate candidate about this exchange.

When Franken had the gall to declare, "I didn't even say that in a joking manner," Chetry challenged him in a way that all media members should whenever a politician on either side of the aisle is so obviously disingenuous (video available here, h/t NBer Woody Boyd):

Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters posted Tuesday on Editor and Publisher's March 11 article listing the four-year circulation changes at the nation's top 20 newspapers, concentrating on the 20% loss at the Los Angeles Times during that period.

What's also compelling is that the Top 20 really has three winners and 17 losers during that four-year time frame, as the chart that follows demonstrates: