The easiest stereotype of a Huffington Post article is a raging screed against conservatives written by a gasbag celebrity. Take Steven Weber, the former star of the sitcom Wings. His funeral for the Republican Party is promoted on the Huff-Po homepage with these words:

The Republican Party is like a dying tyrant, mad with syphilis, ironically like that very Stalin they would accuse their enemies of associating with.

That's how they scream "read more." It's so stereotypical it makes you think that Arianna's hired some 20-year-old intern in the basement to write a sort of Mad Libs parody of....mad liberals. But Weber was only getting started. From Stalin, it continued:

On Wednesday’s No Bias, No Bull program, CNN anchor Roland Martin forgot the first part of his show’s title and featured three “progressive Christian” guests who all criticized the “religious right” and affirmed his view that you can “love God, go to church every Sunday, and not be a die-hard social conservative.” He did not host one religious conservative on his panel. The anchor even promised to check up on the three and “see if you guys are able to put this [progressive Christian] movement together, and we’ll follow it to the conclusion.”

Martin began the segment, which started 41 minutes into the 8 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program, with his usual criticism of social conservatives: “I’m an evangelical, but I think the faith should focus on more than just abortion and whether marriage should just be between a man and a woman. As police brutality, poverty, funding inequality in our schools, the high infant mortality rate in our inner cities -- they’re all issues that I, as a Christian, care about, but they rarely top the religious right’s agenda.” He then asked as his general question to his guests, “So, is there a place for progressive evangelicals in this country?”

As you might expect, all three of his guests -- the Reverend Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church, Reverend Serene Jones, president of the Union Theological Seminary, and Frank Schaeffer -- all answered this question affirmatively, and each one had their criticism of religious conservatives. Martin first asked Schaeffer if he believed that “progressive Christians have been meek and silent, and frankly, being bullied by social conservatives into submission.” Schaeffer not only acknowledged that he believed this, but later went so far of blaming the “religious right” for the Iraq War and the bad economy. He even accused them of being “anti-American,” because in his view, “they hate pluralistic diverse America. What they want is a homogenous white America most of the time.”

In the wake of last Saturday's tragic cop killings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, left-wing new and old media representatives claimed the assailant was incited by supposedly false assertions from conservative talkers that President Obama was going to tighten gun laws.

One such outlet, the George Soros-funded Clinton front group Think Progress, offered the following hysterical headline hours after the shootings:

Right-wing’s false claims that Obama will take away guns ‘has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms.’

Yet, five days later, TP expressed concern the President is going back on campaign promises to -- wait for it! -- reinstate the assault weapons ban:

MSNBC anchor Peter Alexander was more interested Friday afternoon in a Karl Rove v Joe Biden cat fight than in the accuracy of Biden's claim which prompted Rove's rebuke of him for telling a “lie” -- which led guest Ari Fleischer to scold the media for not checking into Biden's allegation. Indeed, MSNBC framed the segment around Rove's words, “Rove: Biden Is a Liar.” When Alexander asked if it is “appropriate for Karl Rove” to call a Vice President “a liar?”, Fleischer shot back: “Well, for heaven's sake, that's just about the only word Democrats wanted to use when they were talking about George W. Bush.”

Alexander began the segment, in the 3 PM EDT hour, playing the self-serving anecdote told by Biden in an interview earlier this week for CNN's The Situation about how, in an Oval Office meeting on an unidentified date, when President Bush told him “I'm a leader,” Biden had retorted: “Mr. President, turn around, look behind you, no one's following.” Alexander wanted to know who would benefit politically -- “Are these fights good for the GOP or for the Obama administration?” -- prompting Fleischer to wonder:

My question is, where is the press in all of this? If Dick Cheney had said that he had a private meeting with Bill Clinton and he in that meeting told Bill Clinton that Bill Clinton was wrong, I think all the press would have said to Cheney, “When did you do it? Back it up. Where are the dates?” There's no scrutiny here for Joe Biden....

It's not often during midday cable news broadcasting you get to see raw emotion from one or two of the hosts. However, when President Barack Obama gets snubbed, there are exceptions to the rule.

On MSNBC on April 10, co-hosts Contessa Brewer and Carlos Watson put their disapproval on display for viewers to see while reporting a decision by Arizona State University not to award Obama an honorary degree for speaking at the school's commencement next month.

"In other news, President Obama will be giving the commencement address at Arizona State University on May 13^th. But the president will not be getting an honorary degree according to the school. Here's why, quote, ‘While President Obama has already achieved remarkable success including becoming the first African-American president, his greatest work is yet to come. We will be delighted to consider him for an honorary degree once he leaves office at the end of the presidency.'"

For a network that calmly bowed to the "advantages" of totalitarianism in Cuba's natural-disaster preparations, it was a bit shocking to hear National Public Radio anchor Melissa Block pressing a leftist congressman on Tuesday's All Things Considered about Cuban repression.

Employing what should be the standard practice of presenting the opponent's position, in this case on normalizing relations with Cuba and the Castro brothers. She found that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, touring Cuba with the Congressional Black Caucus, may be a "Democrat" but he celebrates a "diversity" of government styles, including lock-step communism:

BLOCK: Well, congressman, you well know that supporters of current Cuba policy -- supporters of the embargo -- say that if you lift sanctions you are going to just aid and justify a repressive regime. You're going to kill any hope of democracy. Now that regime will just use more resources to become more oppressive than it already is.

CLEAVER: Well, the world operates at its best when there is diversity. Every nation does not need to be like the United States. And frankly we already have diplomatic ties to repressive nations. And frankly if there is repression in Cuba, we didn't see it. We mingled with Cuban people. I preached at an Episcopal Church, Sunday, where we were told that there was no freedom of religion, which is not true.

President Barack Obama talks to France's President Nicolas Sarkozy after crossing the "Two Banks Bridge" on the Rhine river in Strasbourg April 4, 2009.

“I’ll take an order of fries, a kid’s meal, and some sexy women with square butts, please.”

CBS “Early Show” hosts Maggie Rodriguez and Harry Smith giggled at the new commercial for the Burger King kid’s meal featuring sexual images inappropriate for children, including sexy women in tight outfits dancing to a parody of the notoriously raunchy tune, “Baby Got Back.”

Aimed to promote the new 99 cent children’s meal, Burger King has teamed up with Nickelodeon in a new commercial appearing on adult programs that features the popular cartoon character, SpongeBob SquarePants.

“The Early Show” noted April 10 segment that several parents groups are outraged because the commercial reflects an adult club scene in which the fast food chain’s “King” character plays a DJ remixing Sir Mixalot’s “Baby Got Back” with the lyrics changed to “I like square butts and I cannot lie.” The “King” character is seen touching and “measuring” a woman’s square behind with a tape measure.

"Dr. Laura Schlessinger is an Elitist, a Hypocrite, and Flat Out Wrong," reads abortion monger Bonnie Erbe's April 10 blog headline.

The PBS "To the Contrary" host and contributing editor to U.S. News & World Report launched into a four-paragraph attack on the author and conservative radio host, and as usual, she not only breathed left-wing fire at a conservative target, she was factually inaccurate (paragraph breaks removed, emphasis mine):

"Detroit succumbs to city's French origin" 

As the French did last century, Detroit has become the first to surrender to socialist-based occupation this century.

http://www.michnews.com/Guest_Commentary/ms4709.shtml

During the 7:00 p.m. hour of Saturday’s CNN Newsroom, anchor Don Lemon pushed the view that Barack Obama should try to emulate European gun laws as a way of reducing gun violence in America as he discussed the subject with four guests. During an interview with former FBI agent Gregg McCrary, who expressed support for an assault weapons ban, Lemon suggested Obama learn from the Europeans: "The one person who can probably weigh on this and may have the most influence is the President. Since he's over there in Europe now, and they're, you know, they're not perfect, but it seems that their gun laws seem to be at least working in a way that ours are not."

While Lemon tried to sound nonpartisan at times – once declaring, "We're just trying to find a solution here. No one is on one side or the other. We just want a solution" – and seemed to try to quell accusations of partisanship and liberal and conservative labels, at one point he seemed to single out conservatives to chide for criticizing liberals for advocating more gun control:

Every time we do something on gun control, it always boils down – when it comes to the e-mail, at least – that I get, we get as a response, it's a conservative issue or it's a liberal issue. "Liberals want to ban guns and take away my rights," conservatives say, "this is my right." But no one has the right to terrorize and kill people. And you heard the FBI agent say, people are being killed. Not conservatives or liberals.

You could almost hear "How dare he!" being uttered by the left-wing establishment when Politico reported April 9 that a Republican congressman identified a specific number of "socialists" in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a speech he gave at his home district, Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., the ranking Republican, Rep. Barney Frank's (D-Mass.) counterpart, on the House Banking Committee, said there were 17 socialists among him and his colleagues in the House.

Some in the media were also disturbed by Bachus' remarks and expressed dismay on MSNBC April 10. Emily Heil, a frequent guest on MSNBC and "Heard on the Hill" columnist for Roll Call, expressed her shock that Bachus would use "socialist" for a description of some members of Congress. MSNBC's Peter Alexander asked Heil what sort of backlash Bachus might face.

"Sure, well I think people are going to be pressing him on this and I think it was really a surprising thing to say - to say something that sort of inflammatory with that level of specificity, with providing an actual number," Heil said.

A search of Nexis between April 7 -- the day when pirates seized the U.S.-registered and American-crewed Maersk Alabama -- and today, April 10, shows that both the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times failed to even mention President Barack Obama in their stories on the ongoing hostage situation. The New York Times did, once, in a page A6 April 9 story by Mark Mazetti and Sharon Otterman, but it came 15 paragraphs into the 26-paragraph story and served to explain Obama's absence in the ongoing U.S. response:

At the White House, military and national security officials tracked the developments from the Situation Room, and they provided several briefings to President Obama and other administration officials throughout the day.

Mr. Obama first learned of the hijacking early on Wednesday morning after he returned to the White House from his overseas trip, and he later convened an interagency group on maritime safety, aides said. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said, ''Our top priority is the personal safety of the crew members on board.'' 

Basically, the nation's top three newspapers are letting President Obama off the hook from any scrutiny regarding his involvement or lack thereof in the ongoing hostage situation. 

"Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran appeared on the Media Bistro's "Morning Media Menu" podcast on Friday and simultaneously defended an ABC colleague and attacked Rush Limbaugh. While telling host Steve Krakauer that White House correspondent Jake Tapper has been unfairly criticized by liberals for being tough on the Obama administration, he noted conservative praise for the journalist. Moran (see file photo above) complained, "If Tapper was covering Bush, Limbaugh would call him a traitor. And that's just the way it is."

Moran did add, "And it's not just Limbaugh, it's the other side too." But that is still a rather harsh charge to level against the radio talk show host. He also trotted out the standard journalist talking point that "no matter what you do, one side or the other is going to detest you." It's hard to imagine many liberals being too upset with Moran, however. He has developed quite a habit of fawning over Barack Obama. In another Media Bistro podcast, on February 20, he compared the President to George Washington and said that the White House was a "step down" for the new Commander in Chief:

As was usually the case during Bill Clinton's presidency, the ascendancy of Dear Leader Barack Obama means that we will often have to consult the output of center-right commentators, and of course the Media Research Center and its affiliates, to cut through the establishment media's puffery to pick up even the most basic pieces of news.

Charles Krauthammer's column today in the Washington Post on the results of Obama's just-completed European Adventure is one such raw news source.

I have bolded items in the excerpt below that represent news that was either not reported or vastly under-reported by what's left of the establishement media (there are even more examples at Krauthammer's full column):

"Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer previewed her ABC special "If I Only Had a Gun" on Friday's edition of the morning show. No voices from the NRA or any pro-Second Amendment group were featured in the clips shown. Instead, there was generous footage of a previous special in which ABC producers hid empty (but real) guns in toy chests and showed video of young children playing with the weapons. (Who would put a gun in a toy box?) The ABC graphic for the segment hyperbolically read, "'If I Only Had a Gun': Children's Obsessions With Guns." [audio available here]

The segment also showcased a faux-school massacre situation in which Joey, a college student, was given a Glock with plastic bullets as a fake "killer" stormed the classroom. The young man got his weapon entangled in his shirt and was "killed." Sawyer narrated, "Joey struggles to get his gun out. But it's stuck in his shirt. He can't even get it out to aim it. Had this event been real, Joey would have been killed in the first five seconds." She added, "Or there's a chance the bad guy would simply have taken his gun from him."

CRITICAL UPDATES at end of post!

Joe Romm's debate defeat tour hysterically continued Thursday when he went against his own decree forbidding further references to Marc Morano at his Climate Progress blog by eviscerating the New York Times for having the nerve to write about -- wait for it! -- Marc Morano.

Oh the humanity!

In a tirade that would most certainly make Tonya Harding proud, Romm scolded Times author Leslie Kaufman in a piece deliciously titled "In a stunning journalistic lapse, the NY Times gives credulous coverage to Swift Boat smearer Marc Morano, the Jayson Blair of global warming":

The MEDIA is doing it's best to destroy America. NEWS (North, East, West & South) information is no longer information but OPINION BASED AGENDA REPORTING.

HOW DO WE STOP THIS ATTACK??

I can only think of one truth left in America today and thats "MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND", in my opinion TEA PARTIES are great, but the main stream drive-by media IS NOT GOING TO COVER THIS STORY, it doen't fit the agenda.

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Is the recession ending?

President Obama's top economic adviser said that in the "next few months" the economy will no longer be in "free-fall" as the administration's fiscal stimulus measures and efforts to stabilize the financial markets take effect. The sense of a ball falling off a table, which is what the economy felt like since the middle of last fall, I think we can be reasonably confident that that's going to end in the next few months, and that you'll no longer have that sense of free-fall," Lawrence Summers said Thursday at that Economic Club of Washington.

Hmmm. In February and March as porkulus and the budget were being discussed, the world was close to coming to an end if we didn't spend a ghastly amount of money. Now, just weeks later, things are looking up? Maybe we should suspend ALL of the outlays that haven't yet been dispersed if that's the case?

Closing question -- Is this: wishful thinking and part of the administration's recent attempts to jawbone an economic recovery; exemplary of how disingenuous the "world is coming to an end if we don't mortgage our future" claims were, or; both? 

Hours from the premiere of his MSNBC cable show Monday night, radio host Ed Schultz told listeners what they can expect on his television show (click here for audio) --

If it's successful then I think you win because I know what I'm going to be talking about, I know what kind of stories I'm going to be looking for. And I want to make sure that the Democrats don't get weak knees on the Employee Free Choice Act.

Yet it was Schultz whose knees grew wobbly after the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Rush Limbaugh on the so-called Fairness Doctrine in February.

Not only did Limbaugh leave Schultz the most unhinged he'd been since McCain picked Palin, Schultz vowed to respond in print, telling his listeners he'd been in touch with a Wall Street Journal editor about writing an op-ed in the Journal.

Five years after The Passion of the the Christ conquered the multiplex, it might be instructive to recall the media coverage as Brent Bozell chronicled it in two columns. He offered tribute to Mel Gibson and a rebuke to godless Hollywood in the week before the movie came out:

The mass unveiling of Mel Gibson’s cinematic vision of "The Passion of the Christ" on 2,000 screens – a massive debut for a foreign-language film with subtitles -- has the entertainment elite a bit frightened. After all, how many decades have elapsed since Hollywood has been in any way associated with Christian orthodoxy?

The one who is not frightened is Gibson. He is a man who has made his own brave and generous sacrifice, putting tens of millions of dollars and his own film career on the line for a daring and controversial cultural event. He is a man who can sit in front of Diane Sawyer as she looks like she’s sucking on a lemon and honestly proclaim his humble Christian beliefs, to be a "fool for Christ" before the world.

On this Good Friday, many churches will be offering screenings of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, now five years old. It's easy to forget how feverishly the liberal media insulted the film and its maker. Three days before the film came out on Ash Wednesday 2004, CBS "humorist" Andy Rooney railed on 60 Minutes:

“I heard from God just the other night. God always seems to call at night. ‘Andrew,’ God said to me. He always calls me ‘Andrew.’ I like that. ‘Andrew, you have the eyes and ears of a lot of people. I wish you’d tell your viewers that both Pat Robertson and Mel Gibson strike me as wackos. I believe that’s one of your current words. They’re crazy as bedbugs....Mel is a real nut case. What in the world was I thinking when I created him?’”

In our 2004 Special Report on religion coverage, Ken Shepherd and I reported on how the number of stories on religion increased, due in part to controversy over The Passion. But then we explored the tone of that coverage, a tone hostile to Christian orthodoxy:

In what almost seems a gleeful pronouncement, The New York Times trumpeted America's powerlessness over the recent capture by pirates of a captain of a U.S. run freighter on the high seas. With an April 9 headline that blares, "Standoff With Pirates Shows U.S. Power Has Limits," the Times almost seems to revel in that taking down of an arrogant America by mere pirates in power boats.

It's quite hard not to feel that the Times is celebrating the enfeebling of the "world's most powerful military," here.

Our friend from Detroit, Jacob Appel, thinks that gays need government reparations and the Detroit Free Press was so enamored of his idea that it published his plea in its April 7 issue. One has a suspicion that they missed a deadline because this story would have more properly been published on April 1, a day well known as April Fool's Day. This one simply must be a joke.

Appel is so filled with absurd pronouncements, anti-hetero bias, and outright hatred in his piece that one simply cannot take his central thesis seriously. But his mode of thinking here does highlight the illogic of his position on the issue, so it is instructive to review it.

Topics in today's show: Geithner wants to replace more CEOs, Ward Churchill wins his court case, The Obama administration ditches the term "War on Terror", and TV Land announces a dating show for cougars.

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Starring: Jodi Miller
Director: Bruce Roundtower
Executive Producer: Matthew Sheffield