“Reports of a health scare involving talk titan Rush Limbaugh late Wednesday has fans filled with worry, while liberal foes respond with the usual vitriol,” Brian Maloney observed Thursday as he tracked the vitriol:

> Some of the meanest comments found at Washington Post

> Timing is everything: Tina Brown rips Limbaugh on Today show

> Obamacentric: CNN's Ed Henry sees health scare in context of Barack's trip to Hawaii

> Orbusmax: Seattle Times forced to remove nearly 50% of Rush-related comments

> Liberal columnist implores Left to 'stop wishing Limbaugh dead'

> More Twitter hate

On this afternoon's CNN Newsroom, anchor Rick Sanchez briefly updated his audience on Rush Limbaugh's medical condition.  He completed his comments with "We wish him well."  Sanchez's good wishes didn't square with the Twitter messages that crawled at the bottom of the screen for his entire program.

Here is a sampling of the tweets he aired:

rush is an excuse for people to be vicariously racist. I have nothing good to say about him except "gotta love karma"  

Rick can we get some answers on if rush's insur. will pay for his hospital stay if it is found out drugs were a part of this

I don't like to wish bad luck on people, but a 2010 without Rush's mouth going off would be fine with me

under yr new health plan Rush may pay higher premiums cuz of weight. Time to hit the treadmill and lose the weight Rush

May rush be worked on by a liberal democrat, feminist doctor who is pro gun control :)

Despite last year's oral-sex-insult fiasco, left-wing comedienne Kathy Griffin is co-hosting CNN's New Year's Eve coverage with Anderson Cooper again in 2009. On Wednesday night's Anderson Cooper 360, Griffin joked to CNN anchor Erica Hill: "This year, there's a stipulation in my contract, which I'm almost sure is not in yours or Wolf's or Jack Cafferty's, which is if I cuss like I did last year, by accident, I -- I have to write the [pay] check back."

Griffin stood out for calling Carrie Prejean a "moron" for opposing gay marriage, and then displayed her own lack of intelligence by suggesting current FBI director Robert Mueller was actually head of the CIA. Oops. Is that close enough when grading on the celebrity curve? Here's the first half:

ERICA HILL: But what I really need to know, speaking of guys, whose team are you on, looking back at 2009? Are you Team Larry King or Team Carrie Prejean?

THE EVIL LIBERAL MIND!

On this last day of 2009, a quick rundown of the Media Research Center's quote compilations and assessments, issued over the past couple of weeks, on the worst of the media during the year:

♦ From the MRC's News Analysis Division: “Best Notable Quotables of 2009: The 22nd Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting” (thread on NB) as determined in 16 categories (with dozens of videos) by a judging panel of 48 expert conservative media observers. Check the sidebar for links to Fox News segments about the worst quotes. Also, year-end NQ Video Show with MRC staff ridiculing the worst journalists. (Separate public/online ballot results; thread on NB with those winners)

♦ From MRC's Times Watch: “Top Ten Lowlights of the New York Times in 2009.” (Thread on NB)

♦ From MRC's Times Watch: “Quotes of Note 2009, the Worst NY Times Quotes of the Year.” (thread on NB)

♦ From MRC's Business & Media Institute: “Media's Top 10 Worst Economic Myths of 2009.” (thread on NB)

It was a year in which the dominant cultural story was the sad, but eerily almost predictable drug-addled death of Michael Jackson. But there were a few good moments sprinkled in with the outrageous and the tawdry in 2009. My choices for cultural winners and losers this year:

Winner: Farrah Fawcett. Unlike Jackson, she fought and ultimately lost her battle with cancer with extraordinary grace, faith, and dignity.

Winner: "Up." The elite and the people agree that Pixar films are sublimely entertaining. The eight-minute montage near the beginning of this film sweetly chronicling a loving marriage moved millions to tears from coast to coast.

In fact, animated movies continued to earn massive box-office receipts. "Up" drew almost $300 million, "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" came very close to $200 million, and the offbeat "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" grossed more than $120 million.

On Wednesday, former vice president Dick Cheney made the following brief statement to Politico:

[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.

Cheney's statement was made on December 30, and was given in the context of President Obama having waited for three days to personally comment on the Christmas Day terrorist attack on Northwest Flight 253. Cheney was very obviously giving his opinion that Obama prioritizes social reform over national security, pointing to Obama's handling of the Christmas terror attack as proof.

The Daily Beast’s Tina Brown targeted Rush Limbaugh for ruining 2009, particularly after Obama’s inauguration, on Thursday’s Today show on NBC, blaming him for the “big discord and toxic atmosphere in politics,” and likened him to the “the bad fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening” for uttering his famous words about the President, “I hope he fails” [audio clip available here].

Brown slammed the talk show host just hours after he was hospitalized for chest pains. The British-born journalist appeared with commentator Nancy Giles and comedian Andy Borowitz nine minutes into the 8 am Eastern hour for a panel discussion on the past year. Substitute anchor Erin Burnett turned to Brown first and asked, “What do you think was the most important moment of 2009?”

Brown unsurprisingly chose the Obama inauguration, and after gushing over the moment, set her sights on Limbaugh:

For some strange reason, the Daily Kos has gained the reputation in the mainstream media for somehow being composed of "reasonable progressives" in stark contrast to their Democratic Underground cousins whom even many in the MSM will admit are flat out loons. However, certain events prove that the Kossacks are every bit as crazed and full of hate as the DUers. And one such event that has proved this to be true is the reaction of the two sites to the news that Rush Limbaugh has been hospitalized in Hawaii.

Of course there was a DU thread full of hate towards Rush but as you can see in this Kossack thread, they are every bit as hateful as the DUers. Some sanity-challenged sample comments from the Kossacks on the subject of Rush Limbaugh's hospitalization:

He does NOT have a f---ing right to make up s--t and present it as fact to incite his millions of so-called ditto heads to hatred and violence. 

i hope that this piece of human excrement that has lied and lied his way to a fortune is silenced for a long time...eternity

Michael Calderone, Doing it Right

UPDATE #2 - ALSO BELOW THE FOLD.

UPDATE BELOW THE FOLD - THE ESTEEMED MR. CALDERONE RESPONDS.

-------------

CORRECTION: I said the Washington Post was on the hook twice on Calderone's list.  H/t to NBer Dean who pointed out it's three - #s 2, 7 & 10.  A thousand apologies, and thanks to The Man from the People's Republic of Maryland.

Politico's staff reporter Michael Calderone has compiled his list of his top ten Media Blunders of 2009.

I for one think he did a fully fair and more than fairly good job of it. Media Research Center Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham for two thinks so as well.

On his list were the likes of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, the New York Times's Maureen Dowd and CNN. And the Washington Post - twice. Targets all for which you'll find a rich environment here on NewsBusters. And he slammed the traditional media in totality for remaining dockside while the Good Ships ACORN and Van Jones set sail on alternative media seas. He hailed the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and website mogul Andrew Breitbart by name for captaining those stories when the Jurassic Press stood down.

Calderone clips Fox News for what he calls their "Tea Party Trifecta," but he's hardly bashing meritlessly here either. An FNC producer was caught on tape rallying a Tea Party crowd. That is quite a bit over the top. And Sean Hannity did run B-roll from the wrong rally - a more populous one - and was forced to apologize to the world generally and Jon Stewart particularly.

Though Hannity's probably was an honest mistake. The Pulitzer-winning Dowd's excuse for "borrowing" a paragraph from the liberal website Talking Points Memo - that a "friend" had sent it to her - bends the credibility curve downward quite a bit.

Someone at Politico worn-out horsed (See: Definition #3) Calderone on the photograph composite accompanying his article, however. (Said snapshots appear below the fold.) We don't think Calderone chooses what goes with his pieces. Perhaps he should.

On the last day of 2009, The Washington Post revisited the decade from its own narrow liberal persective. Style section writer Dan Zak found "we cheered the inauguration of a black man" and suggested the "we" was appropriate because 93 percent of D.C. voters cast a ballot for Obama. That’s probably a lower percentage than the Washington Post staff. Zak offered Time magazine’s decade-from-Hell mantra as the declaration of Everyone:

Everyone says this decade was the decade from hell, the lost decade [read: Bush], but also the decade of tantalizing evolution [read: Obama]. The capital was the crucible for this paradox. Living the Aughts in the District was like magic realism, like heightened reality, a fever dream the rest of the world was having.

The plane that plowed into the Pentagon carried some of the area's brightest and incinerated some of its bravest, sending our neighbors into battle. In this decade, we built a grand memorial to the Greatest Generation but didn't properly care for the current generation at Walter Reed. We cheered the inauguration of a black man as leader of the free world, even as the capital's HIV rates hovered higher than West Africa's.

After a somber paragraph or two on 9/11 and the Beltway Snipers, there was that dark gash on the globe known as Bush’s war to liberate Iraq:

It all seemed to build toward March 2003, when George W. Bush announced Operation Iraqi Freedom from the Oval Office. His tie was red. Outside the draperied windows, twilight had given way to darkness. Students stopped at TVs in college dorms, nodded or cursed or zoned out, then moved on to their night classes in lieu of joining scattershot protests ("Hey hey, ho ho, we won't kill for Texaco!").

For those of us not connected to the military, what else was there to do those following years except grow numb to the procession of spouses who clutched folded American flags at the edges of graves, to the stream of young soldiers with lost limbs and lost minds?

The city was the engine of war, the repository for its consequences. It bore the symbolic blame for much of the decade's catastrophes (near and far) because whom do we blame if not the government? For the first half of the decade, the city felt industrial, desperate, cold, as clenched as a widow's fist.

That’s a perfect Post summary. There is no noble cause, no battlefield bravery, no tyrant deposed, no democracy born. There is only insanity and death. Earth to the Post: not "Everyone" felt that way. Not "everyone" warmed to the sight and sound of Socialist Workers claiming the war was for Texaco or Halliburton.

Then Zak recalled the supposedly universal joy at the election of Barack Obama:

The scene at 14th and U streets was sensational by anyone's measure. To that point, the decade's mass gatherings had been bilious protests or solemn candlelight vigils for murder victims in the Trinidad neighborhood and for teenage crash victims in the suburbs. If your experience with the District was limited to the Aughts -- if, in fact, 9/11 was your 18th birthday and the start of your first semester of college -- you'd never seen anything like this.

The city exhaled. There was joy in the streets at the epicenter of the 1968 race riots. Something felt completed, tied up in a bow, the polar opposite of the loneliness along Pennsylvania Avenue on 9/11. After all, in this hopelessly Democratic city, 93 percent of voters got their way.

The mobs went to the White House and shouted at it: "Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye." Two months later they shuffled their way onto the Mall for the inauguration. Young boys climbed bare trees to get a look. The mood was jubilant. The air was frigid, like someone had lifted the bell jar off the city.

The economy continued to crumble, and even Washington wasn't immune (scholarships started drying up in this college town, Virginia's unemployment program borrowed $89 million from the federal government). The squabble over health-care legislation dampened Democrats' expectation of change. Hope has only so much patience.

There is no "hope" that The Washington Post would represent itself as something other than the official newspaper of inside-the-Beltway liberalism. They rejoice as the city suddenly escapes a stale trap of Bushism and stand side by side with the "mobs" jeering at Bush to evacuate. But they would present themselves as a force for civility and dignity and nonpartisan independence in national discourse.

Do you think journalists should be banned from purchasing photos and interviews, so-called "checkbook journalism" (a la Jasper Schuringa)? Why or why not?

Ouch!

This video of Russian ex-President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin's response to a question about terrorism at a G-8 summit press conference was posted in early 2008. However, his answer is worth noting now in light of  Barack Obama's rather dispassionate first response to the Nigerian Christmas Day bomb plot terrorist which came off as sounding like a tepid legalistic statement from a deputy district attorney. Here is a transcipt of the question from a French journalist and the blunt response from Putin which stunned  the press conference to silence:

FRENCH JOURNALIST:  ...Don't you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.

From KITV, the ABC affiliate on channel 4 in Honolulu. UPDATED with 6:53 PM HST posting (11:53 PM EST) Wednesday:

Conservative radio talk host Rush Limbaugh [Limbaugh's site] was rushed to a Honolulu hospital on Wednesday afternoon with chest pains, sources told KITV.

Paramedics responded to the call at 2:41 p.m. [7:41 PM EST] at the Kahala Hotel and Resort.

Limbaugh, 58, suffered from chest pains, sources said. Limbaugh was sitting in a chair in his ninth-floor hotel room at the Kahala when emergency crews arrived, sources said. He told medical crews that he was taking medication for a back problem, sources said.

Paramedics treated him and took him to Queen's Medical Center in serious condition. He will not be released from the hospital on Wednesday night, sources said.

He was seen golfing at Waialae Country Club earlier this week. The country club is next to the Kahala Hotel and Resort...

NEW: KITV-TV has posted video of a story. NEWER: TMZ's post, which the site will update. NEWEST: Radio Equalizer: "Rush Health Scare Worries Fans, Emboldens Enemies"

UPDATE, 2:20 AM EST. On Limbaugh's site:

ALERT: Rush was admitted to a Honolulu hospital today and is resting comfortably after suffering chest pains. Rush appreciates your prayers and well wishes. He will keep you updated via RushLimbaugh.com and on Thursday's radio program.

After the break, below: Links to Honolulu news sources.

Representative Pete Hoekstra recently indicated that the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 should be a clue that helps the Obama Administration ‘connect the dots' on terrorism.

While that remains unlikely with an administration more obsessed with right-wing extremists, man-caused disasters, and the impeccable success of our counterterrorism systems, perhaps it's time to start holding the main stream media accountable for their own inability to connect certain dots. 

Such is the case of the media's handling of Anwar al-Awlaki...

Unlike CBS and NBC, ABC on Wednesday night reported on criticism from the right of how President Barack Obama is addressing terrorism, but correspondent David Wright tried to discredit the critics' points by reacting with astonishment and sarcastic snipes. Astonishment: “Do you really feel like President Obama has made the country less safe?”

Sarcasm: Rebutting former Bush speech writer Marc Thiessen's bewilderment (“Why are we taking a terrorist who just tried to bring down a plane and telling him, 'You have the right to remain silent'? That's insane”), Wright disparaged the point with an extreme exaggeration of the alternative which reflected the left's caricature of the pre-Obama policy: “So you say water-board him, torture him?” (Wright did at least allow Thiessen to explain: “You don't have to water-board him and torture him. You have to question him.”)

Without pointing out how President Obama described Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as “an isolated extremist,” a “suspect” and a “passenger” who “allegedly” tried to ignite an explosive device, Wright recited former VP Dick Cheney's comment that President Obama “seems to think if we get rid of the worlds ‘War on Terror,’ we won't be at war” and then countered by reading the White House's retort, “We are at war. The difference is this: President Obama doesn't need to beat his chest to prove it.”

UPDATE, Jan. 1, 2010: This post at BizzyBlog shows that the there was recognition of likely Al Qaeda involvement in two separate press reports based on sources in a position to know on Christmas evening. Thus, the administration's delay in acknowledging that reality was actually three full days.

In their initial December 26 report ("Passengers’ Quick Action Halted Attack") on the attempted terrorist attack on Flight 253, New York Times reporters Scott Shane and Eric Lipton told readers that the "episode .... riveted the attention of President Obama on vacation in Hawaii."

In an article later that day ("Officials Point to Suspect’s Claim of Qaeda Ties in Yemen"), Lipton and Eric Schmitt reported that:

.... officials said the suspect (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) told them he had obtained explosive chemicals and a syringe that were sewn into his underwear from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with Al Qaeda.

The authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection .... But a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said on Saturday that the suspect’s account was “plausible,” and that he saw “no reason to discount it.”

Any reasonable person would say that this second report establishes "reason to believe that there is some linkage" between the suspect and Al Qaeda, and that a "riveted" president would have known that there was "some linkage" by Saturday night. That's why the following opener to a Washington Post item by Anne E. Kornblut dated yesterday is especially hard to take:

MSNBC.com’s Steve Adubato went so far to compare Sarah Palin’s notoriety to a reality show during a segment on Wednesday’s Today show on NBC. Adubato acted as an apologist for Levi Johnston’s move to open his child custody dispute with Bristol Palin: “Sarah Palin’s reality show that she’s been on for the past couple years...It has an impact on this baby as well....and it’s not good for the kid either.”

The MSNBC.com “media analyst” and former Democratic politician appeared with former prosecutor Wendy Murphy just after the bottom of the 7 am Eastern hour for a panel discussion about the Johnston-Palin custody case. After asking Murphy about Johnston’s move to open the case, substitute anchor Erin Burnett turned to Adubato for his take. “Steve, what’s your point of view? I mean, it’s pretty clear he [Johnston] wants it open because he sort of wants to build his brand and his name and a reality TV career but that’s a high standard. I mean, why should they allow it to be open?”

Adubato almost immediately set his sights on Sarah Palin and her apparent role in the custody dispute: “Listen, Sarah Palin is a major figure in this...she’s said things about this kid. The daughter Bristol has said things about this kid. Here’s the problem: you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be Sarah Palin, use your public platform to trash this kid in certain cases, and then say- you know, for the right of the kid , who’s one, let’s make sure that we keep it private....I understand this kid’s smart enough- his lawyers are smart enough to take advantage of the fact that they’ve trashed him publicly. It’s his only platform.”

MSNBC, "the place for politics" strikes again, this time with character assassination in the name of same-sex marriage.

On the Dec. 29 broadcast of "The Rachel Maddow Show," Maddow took aim at former Bush administration Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, now a Fox News contributor. She noted his prior opposition to same-sex marriage, which according to Maddow's citation of The Atlantic magazine, was done only to win elections.

"In the Karl Rove political playbook, more than one chapter covers the tactic of gay-baiting, which Mr. Rove has used to notorious electoral effect," Maddow said. "To quote a 2004 profile of Mr. Rove in The Atlantic magazine, quote, ‘One constant throughout his career is the prevalence of whisper campaigns against opponents. Often, a Rove campaign questions an opponent's sexual orientation.'"

On December 22, the networks calmly, briefly, and quietly acknowledged the news that the government revised its economic-growth number for the third quarter downward, from 3.5 percent to a less impressive 2.2 percent. As 2009 comes to a close, the media elite are showing enormous patience with the pace of a recovery, without any troublesome talk of whether Barack Obama’s dramatic expansion of government is helping or hurting the economy.

Back in 2004, when unemployment was 5.4 percent instead of the present-day 10 percent, these same networks were comparing George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover. The government announced 250,000 new jobs were created, but the anchormen talked incessantly about how Bush was losing unemployed voters in Ohio. The Business and Media Institute found 77 percent of reports on economic indicators on ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC (as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post) were negative that summer.

So, will Janet and company learn from their "one mistake," or will it be repeated until they do? I wish I knew.

 

2009 began as a year of smiles at the Times, with rapture over the "historic" Obama administration. Reporters showered partisan praise on Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and first lady Michelle Obama. Meanwhile, the Times resolutely buried emerging left-wing scandals over ACORN and Obama adviser Van Jones. But the smile curdled into a defensive snarl during the long hot summer of "angry," "white," and "bitter" tea party protesters, while Times columnists blamed conservative talk show hosts for a spate of ideologically motivated killings.
 
But perhaps the apex of outrage at the Times in 2009 was a textbook case of liberal hypocrisy. In Timesland, unions are vital to the lifeblood of a sound economy -- just not at the Times itself.

In ascending order of awfulness, here are the Top 10 lowlights of the Times in 2009 (you can also read all the gory details at Times Watch).

What effect do you think the congressional health care overhaul will have on the 2010 midterm elections?

Numerous police visits to his home, reported gunshots and screaming, attempted burglaries, loud arguments, reported assaults, whispers about having sex with young men.  North Carolina state senator R.C. Soles certainly leads an interesting life.  Soles is the Democratic caucus chairman in the Senate, but you wouldn't know that by reading today's dispatch from the Associated Press. 

"No re-election bid for NC pol who shot intruder" begins:

North Carolina's longest-serving state senator won't seek re-election next year as he faces possible criminal charges over a shooting at his home in August.

Sen. R.C. Soles said in a statement Wednesday he won't seek a 22nd consecutive term. He was first elected to the General Assembly in 1968, more than four decades ago.