Howard Portnoy's blog

There is no escaping the fact that, where Benghazi is concerned, there is blood in the water and the mainstream media has (at long last) picked up the scent. Yesterday, the sharks representing the three major TV networks circled Press Secretary Jay Carney, bombarding him with questions that were uncharacteristically tough.

ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who broke the story that the talking points underwent twelve revisions, had the aspect and attitude of a man scorned and determined to set the record straight as much to clear his own name as to ascertain the truth. When Carney attempted to weasel out of his claim earlier in the week that the White House had merely made minor “stylistic” changes to the talking points, Karl was adamant and unrelenting.

In a column published Friday, Megan Garber, a staff writer at “The Atlantic” proffers some sage advice to members of the media: Stop pinning labels on people whose names end up in the headlines because of dastardly deeds. The title of piece — “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?” — is meant as an admonition. And so are the opening paragraphs, which catalog all the things “we think we” know about the brothers Tsarnaev (Tamerlan was a “gifted athlete” and “very religious,” Dzhokar is “very quiet” and career-oriented).

Although some of the descriptors she cites are well-documented (for example, “Dzhokar received a scholarship from the City of Cambridge”), she dismisses all in the third paragraph as “provisional facts,” adding:

First the news, then on to the political fallout.

One of the two suspects sought by the FBI in connection with Monday’s bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon is dead this morning after a high-speed late-night car chase culminating in a firefight with FBI and local law enforcement. The other is on the lam, believed to be armed and dangerous, and the entire city of Boston is on lockdown.

Some people clearly just don’t know when to quit. One of them is comedic actor Jim Carrey. Believing he had tapped into the elusive humor in the debate over gun control, he concocted a scathing 5-minute sendup of people who believe in the Second Amendment — and predictably received flak. Now he is attempting to rebut his critics.

The problem with the country music video that is the centerpiece of the bit is not, as many have suggested, a quatrain in which Carrey riffs on a quote by the late actor and NRA member Charlton Heston. The lyrics, which follow (and provide the video’s title, “Cold Dead Hand”), are actually sort of clever:

It’s nice to see that members of the mainstream media are keeping an open mind as the Supreme Court begins hearing arguments today in the first of two cases that could reshape how America defines marriage.

Exhibit A is TIME magazine’s Joe Klein, who appeared on this morning’s “Morning Joe” to share his utter disbelief that there was any need for the high court to entertain arguments against the obvious constitutional right of homosexuals to marry.

Golly, what an upbeat guy MSNBC’s Ed Schultz is! If anyone else in broadcast “journalism” had just been handed a one-way ticket from primetime to Siberia, he’d probably be distraught. But not the roly-poly Schultz.

He used the waning seconds of his last weekday-at-8:00 appearance not to wax nostalgic and thank loyal viewers but to say this:

Incivility. It is a word that tripped off the lips and pens of liberal commentators great and small after the deadly 2011 shootings in Tucson that ended the political career of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. One of the most vocal critics of the right’s incivility in word and deed was The New York Times, which ran more than one finger-wagging editorial and found column inches for more of the same from its opinion columnists.

So what ever happened to the left’s j’accuse campaign? It was buried under an avalanche of its own shameless and uncivilized behavior that ranged from death threats to candidate Mitt Romney leading up to last November’s election to tweets of ‘F**k white people’ in response to Obama’s victory.

In case you missed it, the February jobs report on Friday contained some encouraging news. National Journal’s Michael Hirsh wrote that the BLS numbers gave President Obama “what he’s wanted for four years: an unemployment rate that’s below where he started as president, 7.7 percent.” But Hirsh was guarded in his optimism, also acknowledging that “things are not really as good as the numbers suggest, and they are all but certain to get worse.”

No such considerations entered into the mind of Chris Matthews Friday night when he wondered aloud on “Hardball” when Republicans were going finally make sure that Obama got “credit for this amazing economy that’s coming back.”

If you’re going to hurl insults petulantly at someone with whom you disagree, it helps if (1) you have some evidence to support your insinuations, and (2) the descriptors you use can’t be easily turned back on you.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell failed on both counts on Thursday’s “The Last Word.” The hot-tempered O’Donnell, who famously challenged Mitt Romney’s son to a fist fight on air, went off on a tangent on Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who shook up Washington on Wednesday with his 13-hour filibuster. Seemingly oblivious to the praise Paul’s old-school performance earned from hard-left opponents such as erstwhile Obama green energy czar Van Jones and the protest group Code Pink, O’Donnell tossed out words like “infantile” and “empty-headed” to characterize the senator.

An article in Monday’s U.S. News & World Report by Ken Walsh, a veteran journalist who covered five presidencies, notes a growing “unhealthy antagonism … between the West Wing and the mainstream media.” If the assessment is accurate, it could mean that the press, after four years of mindless obeisance to this administration, is finally ready to provide frank coverage, warts and all.

The sea change, if one is in the cards, started with the now-infamous brouhaha involving another old hand, Bob Woodward, and White House economic adviser Gene Sperling. Since Woodward publicly asserted that he was threatened by the administration, a number of White House correspondents have come forward to affirm that the press has long been expected to show deference and go with the administration-provided narrative or keep quiet.