From Monday's broadcast network evening newscasts: CBS and NBC found hypocrisy in Sarah Palin scolding President Obama's incessant use of a Teleprompter while she had “crib notes” written on her hand during her Saturday Tea Party convention appearance, CBS followed by giving Obama two-straight minutes to explain why the public will come around to “connect” with him again and, meanwhile, ABC devoted a full story to “whether Republicans want action or are just the 'Party of No'?”

CBS's Nancy Cordes reported, over a helpful graphic showing the words written on Palin's hand, that while Palin “dismissed the President Saturday night as a 'charismatic guy with a Teleprompter,' she may have been relying on some crib notes of her own.” Cordes concluded: “Her supporters called it an endearing sign that Palin's a real person, while detractors argue it's proof she doesn't know her facts.” On NBC, Brian Williams led the Palin story with how “it happened after a speech where she criticized the President for relying too much on a Teleprompter.”  

Next on CBS, Katie Couric highlighted how, in her pre-SuperBowl sit-down with Obama, she had raised with him that “people are not sure who he is or what he stands for.” Viewers were then treated to a two-minute long answer from Obama, ending with his insistance that when the economy improves “we'll do just fine and everybody will be saying what a connection President Obama has with the American people. Which is what they were saying a year ago.” (“They” being journalists?)

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement “both have far less support in the country at large than a gullible Old Media seems to understand or suggest,” Time magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin asserted on “The Page” while colleague Joe Klein, on Time’s “Swampland” blog, showed fear of the supposedly impotent coalition as he denigrated her Saturday night convention speech as “anti-intellectual drivel,” scolding as “anti-American” those dumb enough to like her:

Those who celebrate Sarah Palin's lack of knowledge as a form of “authenticity” superior to Barack Obama's gloriously American mongrel ethnicity and self-made intellectuality are representatives of a long-standing American theme – the celebration of sameness, and mediocrity, in a country that has succeeded brilliantly because of its diversity and restlessly eccentric genius. Happily, it has almost always been a losing theme. And, indeed, in the truest sense, it can be called anti-American.

Halperin, political director for ABC News until 2007, appeared on the Sunday edition of ABC’s World News where he insisted Palin and tea partiers are “still not big enough or specific enough to do anything but criticize Obama, criticize the government” and while “that creates excitement,” it's “not a national governing movement.”

Democratic operative Bob Shrum, just after Sarah Palin finished her address to the Tea Party convention in Nashville, during the live MSNBC coverage Saturday night anchored by liberal radio host Ed Schultz who noted Palin had cited Ronald Reagan:

The difference with Ronald Reagan was that he always had an alternative vision of where America should go. And what we heard tonight was more a masterful exercise – masterful – in paranoid politics. I mean, she came across to me as a merchant of hate with an oh gosh smile...

Audio: MP3 clip

“The business of this first ever national Tea Party convention is the nuts and bolts of politics, like voter registration,” ABC’s John Berman began his Friday night World News story from Nashville, “but barely scratch the surface, and there's a tone of anger and confrontation.”

Specifically: “The convention's first speaker, former Congressman Tom Tancredo, said that people who voted for Barack Obama could not pass a basic civics literacy test.” Tancredo’s offensive remark: “People who could not even spell the word vote put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House.” Berman pounced on the rhetoric as out of bounds: “The President a socialist, his supporters illiterate? Today, Tancredo stood by those comments.”

Berman showed how attendees shared the bizarre assessment, running soundbites of a man affirming “I believe he is a socialist ideologue” and a woman asserting “You just read his history, he’s a Marxist,” before finding another man to agree that calling the President's supporters illiterate “was probably a little harsh.”

Berman concluded: “One of the goals of this convention is to turn this movement into a political force. The question is, does the harsh rhetoric keep them on the fringe?” Sort of like the media’s condemnation of Americans with which they disagree marginalize their influence?

File under: you read it here first. “The Washington Post ignored a few historical facts when it proclaimed in a front page article Wednesday that President Obama is quote, ‘a rare President who comes from the middle class,’” FNC’s Bret Baier pointed out during his Thursday “Grapevine” segment. Baier explained what escaped Post reporter Eli Saslow:

There have actually been many Presidents who hailed from the middle class. Lyndon Johnson was born in a small farmhouse and worked his way through college. Harry Truman worked for the railroad and lived in hobo camps. Richard Nixon's parents ran a grocery store. Ronald Reagan was born in a small apartment above a bank in Northern Illinois. His father was a salesman. And Bill Clinton was born to a widow in Hope, Arkansas.

Baier quipped: “So, maybe not so rare.”

Not a move by a political correspondent, but it counts nonetheless. “Former Washington Post film critic Desson Thomson will join the Obama administration and head to London as a speechwriter for Ambassador Louis Susman,” a big Obama fundraiser, Washington Post “Federal Eye” blogger Ed O'Keefe reported on Monday in a post I saw highlighted on DCRTV.com.

O'Keefe elaborated: “Thomson, who grew up in Surrey, England, worked for The Post from 1983 to 2008, most recently as a film critic for the Weekend and Style sections.”

By O'Keefe's count, “Thomson is one of at least 14 journalists to join the Obama administration, with virtually all of them serving in a communications capacity,” and, intriguingly, O'Keefe asserted “other reporters at national outlets are known to be considering similar roles.”

My Revolving Door list from late July of last year when it stood at 12. MRC BiasAlert item updated with a 13th revolver.

ABC, CBS and NBC all aired full stories Tuesday night on Admiral Mike Mullen’s testimony against “don’t ask/don’t tell” before the Senate Armed Services Committee, but only ABC led with the comments from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) as anchor Diane Sawyer called it “a dramatic day on Capitol Hill” and reporter Martha Raddatz trumpeted: “This will be dramatically-debated for days to come, but what we heard today from the military on Capitol Hill was truly historic.”

Katie Couric set up the CBS Evening News story: “It's been U.S. policy for nearly 17 years now, gays and lesbians may serve in the military but only if they keep quiet about their sexual orientation. Today, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made an impassioned plea to Congress to change the law.”

On NBC, Brian Williams drew historic parallels: “62 years ago today, President Truman ordered the Defense Secretary to take the needed steps to remove discrimination in the military. He was talking about race. Today the topic was sexual orientation, specifically the Clinton-era policy known as 'don't ask/don't tell,' a policy that is now on borrowed time.”

Cautioning the Obama administration's “deficit projections...are just that, projections,” NBC's Chuck Todd on Monday evening bought into the White House's claim that Democratic health care reform bills that would add millions to the system are actually spending reduction measures, as he warned: “If health care doesn't pass, because this budget assumes health care will pass, that's yet another $150 billion that would be tacked on to the deficit.”

ABC's Jake Tapper also passed along the ludicrous contention, but at least stressed Obama's team is assuming passage of “reform” that's very unlikely to be enacted: “The President outlines a number of measures to reduce the deficit, over $1 trillion worth. But Diane, perhaps the most surprising, the budget assumes a savings of $150 billion over the next ten years from health care reform, legislation that is at the very best -- at the most optimistic -- on life support on Capitol Hill right now.”

In a contribution to the Boston Globe Magazine published nine days before the January 19 Senate election won by Republican Scott Brown, veteran Globe Magazine writer Charles Pierce ridiculed the idea Brown could win, in a piece formulated as a letter to Brown:

Well, we’re almost here, aren’t we? The end of a long, arduous, four-month campaign for a Senate seat that you have approximately the same chance of filling as you did the pilot’s chair of the Starship Enterprise.

The cocky Pierce wasn’t done, writing in his weekly “Pierced” column toward the front of the January 10 magazine:

The notion that Massachusetts would elect a Republican to fill the seat left vacant by Edward Kennedy was the property of people who buy interesting mushrooms in interesting places. You might as well expect the House of Windsor to be succeeded on the British throne by the Kardashian sisters.

Barbara Walters began her This Week interview with Massachusetts Senator-elect Scott Brown by reciting his “fascinating resume,” including how “at 12 you were arrested for shoplifting” and “at 22 you posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine,” before she proceeded to press Brown from the left to distance himself from, or denounce, the Republican Party positions on abortion, same-sex marriage and “don’t ask, don’t tell.” She pushed him: “Are you out of step with your party, or do you think that the party has to broaden and change its platform?”
 
Given “Massachusetts requires that all residents purchase health insurance” and “you voted for that plan,” a befuddled Walters wondered: “So why doesn't it make sense that all Americans have health insurance? Why isn't what's good for Massachusetts good for the whole country?” When he affirmed opposition to the national Democratic plans, an astonished Walters pleaded: “Goodbye to the whole plan?”

Walters recited President Obama’s contention his administration has captured or killed more al-Qaeda than did the Bush administration in 2008, so: “Do you think that the President has made the country more safe?”

She soon informed Brown that “you replaced a beloved figure,” as she ruminated: “How do you think that Senator Ted Kennedy would feel about your election? Do you think he'd be disappointed?” (MP3 audio of this question; video below)

“Tonight, the President takes on his Republican opponents face to face and fact by fact,” Katie Couric teased at the top of Friday’s CBS Evening News in setting up an anti-Republican zinger from President Barack Obama: “That's factually just not true. And you know it's not true.”

Reporting on Obama’s appearance before GOP House members at their retreat in Baltimore, Chip Reid was in awe of Obama and delivered lines that might as well have been formulated by White House Press Secretary Roberts Gibbs:

♦ It was extraordinary. And it was a command performance by the President. In fact, some Republicans are wondering if they made a mistake by allowing TV cameras in the room.

♦ It was on health care reform where he finally revealed his exasperation with Republican attacks.

♦ Throughout what was essentially a policy debate, the President demonstrated intimate knowledge of the issues....And deep familiarity with Republican positions.

♦ Republicans were on their best behavior. There were no “you lie” moments. But when the President thought the last question was unfair, he let him know it.

♦ Here at the White House, some believe this could be a game-changer for the President. As one official put it, this is the best thing the President has done in a very long time.

Senator Scott Brown, the victorious Republican in last week's special election in Massachusetts who has re-written the political landscape, is scheduled to appear tonight (Thursday) on NBC's Jay Leno Show. After turning down the Sunday shows this past weekend, this will be his first time on a national television program.

He'll field questions in the “Ten @ Ten” segment, in which the guest commonly appears via satellite, to answer ten questions posed by Leno. The feature usually airs toward the end of the hour-long 10 PM EST/PST, 9 CST/MST show. (With Leno moving back to 11:35 PM EST after the Olympics to host the Tonight Show, this will be the last Thursday night edition of the program which will end next Wednesday night.)

UPDATE: ABC's This Week on Sunday, hosted by Barbara Walters, will have Brown as an "exclusive" guest.

Flashback to September, with video: “On Leno's Show, Limbaugh Runs Car Over Al Gore – Then Backs Up and Does It Again”

Nightline anchor Terry Moran started laughing Wednesday night just as George Will finished his critique of President Obama’s State of the Union address while Democratic activist Donna Brazile was also not impressed by Will’s assessment. Leading into the chortling from Moran, who is reportedly under consideration to take over This Week, Will wrapped up:

Finally, he said at one point that we are going to freeze government spending for three years. That’s just not true. We’re proposing to freeze one-sixth of government spending for three years. Finally, the motif of his talk was Washington is tiresome, annoying and dysfunctional -- and Washington should have more of the nation’s revenue and a bigger role directing its affairs.

Was Moran scoffing at Will’s evaluation of Obama’s speech, just amused by Brazile’s disdain for Will as Will spoke which Moran, but not the audience, could see -- or just reacting to something else in the studio? You watch and decide.

Following President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, on CBS Katie Couric revealed her reading interests as she endorsed the take on Obama from a liberal New York Times columnist: “Well, as Tom Friedman said, 'he's better at making us smarter than making us angry.'” (Friedman's actual assertion in his January 27 column: “He is so much better at making us smarter than angrier.”)

Then, after the Republican response, Anthony Mason recited as relevant the very skewed findings of a CBS News/Knowledge Networks online poll only of those who watched Obama, nonetheless touting how 83 percent approve of Obama's “proposals made in his speech,” with disapproval from a piddling 17 percent. As evidence Obama “may have made up sound ground” with the public, Mason juxtaposed how for “shares your priorities for the country” Obama jumped to 70 percent for viewers of his speech compared to the 57 percent determined in an earlier national survey. (The online posting contends both numbers are just for those who watched.)

Scott Brown replacing Ted Kennedy in the Senate really irritates the Washington press corps, as evidenced by Washington Post business section columnist Steven Pearlstein, who in Wednesday's paper cited Brown's victory as an example of the “wretched” state of the nation while he scolded Massachusetts voters for selfishness in picking Brown to replace Kennedy who had fought “for social justice.”

In “The State of the Union speech Obama would give in a more honest world,” Pearlstein, a former reporter who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, recommended President Obama begin: “My fellow Americans, the state of our union is...well, quite wretched at the moment.” Amongst the “wretched” indicators:

Massachusetts, which for nearly half a century proudly sent a senator to Washington to fight for social justice and universal health care, has chosen as his replacement someone who campaigned in effect on the slogan “We've got ours, so the hell with everyone else.”

Diane Sawyer's interview with President Barack Obama wasn't nearly as sycophantic as the one conducted last Wednesday by George Stephanopoulos, with Sawyer posing mostly informational inquiries about the direction he'll set out in the State of the Union speech as she also raised the huge deficits and whether all future meetings about health care will “be on C-SPAN” as he had pledged?

But she presumed some of the anger at him wasn't his fault -- “People think you must say at the end of the day, this is not who I was in 2008, these deals with Nebraska, with Florida” -- and empathized with the “buzz saw bruising” he gets, so: “Ever in the middle of all that's coming at you, do you think maybe one term is enough?”

In a second segment aired at the end of Monday's World News, she wondered whether he favors the Colts or Saints in the SuperBowl (Saints) and “what's been the most important and useful thing” Michelle Obama has “said to you?” (Help Sasha with basketball shots.) In her “if you were a tree, what kind would you be?” moment, a beaming Sawyer held up photos of Obama at the inauguration and his first congressional speech and wondered: “What would you say to him?” (Obama: “You're going to look older in a year.”)

The front page of Monday's Washington Post featured an adulatory tribute to President Barack Obama's brilliance in gathering information so he can take care of the little people, a tribute enabled by sycophantic assessments from friends and those on Obama's payroll which reporters Anne Kornblut and Michael Fletcher eagerly advanced. “The seeker as problem-solver,” read the front page headline which carried this sub-head: “In his decision-making, Obama turns to both the famous and the unknown.” (Online headline: “In Obama's decision-making, a wide range of influences.”) Headline across the top of the jump page: “In his decision-making, a diversity of inspiration.”

A “president who persists in seeking his own information, beyond what is offered to him,” the Post's reporting duo noted, “has created an impression that Obama is cool and detached.” But, “it is an image his advisers and friends reject” as “they paint” a “portrait of a president who is deeply moved by the struggles of average citizens who stand up at town hall meetings or write thousands of letters to the White House -- 10 of which he reads each day.” And, the “reporters” gushed:

When he turns to solving problems through policy, he reveres facts, calling for data and then more data. He looks for historical analogues and reads voraciously.

In fact, his brain-power is on Einstein's level: “'This is someone who in law school worked with [Harvard professor] Larry Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein's theory of relativity,' said senior adviser David M. Axelrod. 'He does have an incisive mind; that mind is always put to use in pursuit of tangible things that are going to improve people's lives.'” How inspirational.

With the exception of George Will, the panel on ABC’s This Week (hosted by Terry Moran) roundtable insisted Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Senate seat victory was less an anti-liberal or anti-Obama vote than simply a “pox on both your houses “and “throw the bums” out choice when Democrats happened to be in power. (On Face the Nation, Nancy Cordes described Brown as a “true Republican moderate” and dreamed he “could make being a moderate cool again.”)

Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson also contended people really want ObamaCare and so the White House, Donaldson asserted, should have pushed it more “vigorously” and he despaired that “Republicans were able the make the idea that being on a government health program is terrible. How absurd.”

ABC News veteran Roberts declared of Brown’s win: “I think it's much more the process than the substance” as voters said “‘a pox on both your houses. You know, we don't like any of you guys’” since “when you ask which party do you trust more with various issues, the Republicans do worse than the Democrats. So it's not a Republican tide, but it is a ‘throw the bums out’ tide.”
 
The retired ABC newsman Sam Donaldson echoed it was “throw the bums out” and “the bums at the moment happen to be in. They're the Democrats. And, therefore, I don't care what your name is, or how much experience you have or don't have, or what your positions are even. You're the other guy.” Former George W. Bush campaign chief Matthew Dowd agreed “it wasn't a Republican victory. It was a victory for an outsider.”

Quip of the day, from columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday's (January 22) Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC. Baier wondered: “Conservatives, pretty good week?” Krauthammer affirmed:

You know, this is an amazing week. Massachusetts goes Republican, health care dies and the Supreme Court unshackles the First Amendment. It's the best week I've had since spring break in medical school -- and I don't even remember it [laughter from other panelists].

And there was another item which you mentioned: Air America, the liberal talk show network went out of business -- which is a redundancy because nobody was listening anyway.

Even more unhinged than usual, and that’s saying a lot, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann delivered a tirade Thursday night in a “Special Comment” in which he declared the Supreme Court’s ruling, that corporations have a free speech right to participate in elections, was “a decision that might actually have more dire implications than Dred Scott.” High on sanctimony, Olbermann charged:

This is a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little actual democracy is left in this democracy. It is government of the people by the corporations for the corporations. It is the Dark Ages. It is our Dred Scott.

In full paranoia, Olbermann warned: “Be prepared, then, for the ban on same-sex marriage, on abortion, on evolution, on separation of church and state....for racial and religious profiling, because you've got to blame somebody for all the reductions in domestic spending and civil liberties, just to make sure the agitators against the United Corporate States of America are kept unheard.”

And he tossed in some insults of the tea partiers: “Be prepared for those poor dumb manipulated bastards, the Tea Partiers, to have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system. And then be prepared to watch them be banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American Freedom.”

The unencumbered ability to sway voters is great for the news media, but journalists are outraged others could re-acquire the same First Amendment rights. Instead of painting a victory for free speech in the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations, non-profit groups and unions can spend money to influence elections, the Thursday broadcast network evening newscasts feared a ruinous future:

“Opening floodgates” to “big money” with “corporate interests having even more of a say” by “attacking political candidates,” resulting in “the real danger...that the candidates are just going to get drowned out” as “special interests” may “take over political campaign advertising.”

“On that subject of big money and power,” ABC anchor Diane Sawyer intoned, “a blockbuster decision from the Supreme Court today opening floodgates for companies and unions to spend all the money they want attacking political candidates.” On NBC, anchor Brian Williams previewed “the news today that will result in big companies and corporate interests having even more of a say in American politics and campaigns.”

The day after President Barack Obama's policies were rebuked by the voters of one of the most liberal states when Massachusetts picked a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy, the White House turned to former Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos as their preferred vehicle to forward their spin as Obama sat down for an interview with the ABC News journalist.

An accommodating Stephanopoulos, in the excerpt run on Wednesday's World News, failed to consider Obama's policies were too liberal as he asked the chastened President to confirm he was “surprised and frustrated by the vote” and to agree “this has been about the most packed year of your life” and “the most fulfilling?” Obama, naturally, concurred with the puffball inquiry.

The toughest Stephanopoulos got was to advance the notion Obama was a victim of his own ambition: “In your inaugural address, you said then, 'there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans.' Looking back now, don't those critics have a point?” Stephanopoulos also cued up Obama with an informational request: “ What is the strategy on health care going forward? A lot of people have talked about getting the House to pass the Senate bill.”

ABC on Monday night again empathized with the Obama White House’s disbelief that they could lose “Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat” -- and thus ObamaCare -- if Republican Scott Brown beats Democrat Martha Coakley in Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts. George Stephanopoulos saw a “Shakespearean” tragedy just over a week after PBS’s Judy Woodruff, on ABC’s This Week, described such a scenario as “a tragedy of Greek proportions.”
 
Stephanopoulos conveyed on Monday’s World News how “Democrats in the White House and Capitol Hill are braced for a shattering loss. And it's really hard for them to wrap their head around it, the idea that...health care reform may be in peril because Democrats can't hold the seat that Teddy Kennedy held for nearly half a century. You know, one White House official summed it up in a single word: ‘Shakespearean.’”

During the roundtable on the January 10 This Week, CNN and NBC veteran Woodruff despaired: “I was just going to say, quoting somebody in the White House, a tragedy of Greek proportions if Ted Kennedy's successor is the one, is the one who was responsible for the death of health care.”

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Mark Halperin of Time and formerly with ABC News, hailed President Barack Obama: “He's done, I think, an extraordinary job running the government...under difficult circumstances. He managed the economic crisis and kept the world from going into a depression...” The co-author of the new book, ‘Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime,’ however, didn’t see everything as rosy: “The problem has been is he's not inspired the country to feel a sense of optimism and renewal and to be unified in a bipartisan way.”

During the same roundtable, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward rejected the notion Obama is any kind of a “European socialist,” taking on Charles Krauthammer’s characterization: 

There was a column The Washington Post Friday in which Charles Krauthammer tried to essentially say he is a European-style socialist because of health care and he's trying to do these other things. Now, I'm trying to do a book on President Obama, and calling him a European socialist is just not even in the ballpark...

Actually, Krauthammer never used the term “socialist” as he contended Obama wishes “to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity” and the 2008 election “was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy. “

Far-left actor Danny Glover, during an online interview this week, proposed global warming caused the devastating earthquake in Haiti. FNC caught up with the silliness Friday night, as Jim Angle led the “Grapevine” segment:

Actor Danny Glover says the earthquake in Haiti is a result of global warming. Glover told GRITtv that it could have happened to any of the Caribbean island nations, quote: “They are all in peril because of global warming.” Then, he lamented the failure of the climate summit in Copenhagen. As a result of that failure, he says, “this is what happens.”

The ludicrous Glover quote in full, from the interview with the leftist GRITtv (conducted by phone from Seattle with Laura Flanders), which was posted on YouTube on Wednesday, the 13th: