As if anti-ObamaCare protesters are unruly street gangs, ABC’s Diane Sawyer, anchoring Sunday’s World News on what she touted as “a night for the history books” and a “seismic night,” impugned the opponents as a bunch of out of control marauders, citing “protesters roaming Washington, some of them increasingly emotional, yelling slurs and epithets.”

Elevating the same day-old despicable actions of a few on which ABC also focused on Saturday’s World News, ABC on Sunday devoted a full story to the topic. David Kerley reported that, “surrounded by angry protesters at the Capitol, someone yelled the N-word at” Congressman John Lewis” and “a few steps below, Representative Emanuel Cleaver was spat on,”while “as openly gay Representative Barney Frank walked the halls, a homophobic slur.”

Kerley began with the Democrats’ exploitation of the Lewis incident. Over video of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer walking side-by-side with Lewis as they joined hands, Kerley hailed “a remarkable scene, a remarkable statement. The Speaker and Democratic leader walking hand in hand to go vote today, with Representative John Lewis, who yesterday was reminded of old battles from his civil rights days.” Over black and white video, Kerley reminded viewers of how Lewis “was beaten by police as he led protesters across the Selma, Alabama, bridge” and so “it was hard to forget the history, as Lewis made that strikingly symbolic walk today.”

Not exactly going out on a limb, but Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume predicted President Barack Obama’s success in getting his health bill passed and signed will lead to “a wave of gushing coverage” for “the determination of this President to see his signature initiative through.” Hume, during the panel segment on Fox News Sunday:

The early political fallout will be, particularly in the media, there will be a wave of gushing coverage. We already saw some, it's already beginning about the tenacity and the determination of this President to see his signature initiative through. It will be said that this was an act of real leadership and he kept on persisting when all seemed lost and there will be a lot of that.

The media’ enthusiasm, however, will not match the public reaction, the ABC News and Fox News veteran forecast, continuing on the March 21 program:

The morning after CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller, in a tweet, slurred anti-ObamaCare protesters with the vulgar “tea bagger” sexual terminology, Bob Schieffer began Sunday’s Face the Nation with how the health care reform debate “that's been rancorous and mean from the start turned even nastier yesterday” with protesters “shouting ‘kill the bill!’ and ‘made in the USSR”’ as they supposedly “hurled racial epithets, even at civil rights icon John Lewis of Georgia, and sexual slurs at Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank. Other legislators said the protesters spit on them and one lawmaker said it was like a page out of a time machine.”

In what way is “kill the bill” nasty?

Though the despicable actions, if true, were committed by a handful out of thousands, Saturday’s World News also used the incidents to discredit the cause of those rallying against ObamaCare: “Protesters against the plan gathered on the streets of the capital where late today we learned words shouted turned very ugly, reports of racial and homophobic slurs, one protester actually spitting on a Congressman,” ABC anchor David Muir announced, repeating: “Late word from Washington tonight about just how ugly the crowds gathered outside the Longworth office building have become.”

Though by their own count “thousands” of anti-ObamaCare protesters gathered outside the Capitol building on Saturday, ABC decided to smear the entire cause by stressing the despicable actions of a handful or even fewer as anchor David Muir announced in setting up the first story on Saturday’s World News: “Protesters against the plan gathered on the streets of the capital where late today we learned words shouted turned very ugly, reports of racial and homophobic slurs, one protester actually spitting on a Congressman.”

Following the lead story on President Barack Obama’s pep talk to House Democrats, and before Jonathan Karl’s count on where the vote stands (he put it at 212 yes versus 214 no), Muir went to:

Late word from Washington tonight about just how ugly the crowds gathered outside the Longworth office building have become. We learned that as Congressman Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri was leaving his office someone in the crowd spit on him. There are also reports of racial and homophobic slurs, one targeting Congressman John Lewis, the famous civil rights champion, and the other involving Congressman Barney Frank. You can listen in for yourself.

“He believes networking in the nude to be an absolute moral good.” Talk about the incestuous relationship amongst sources, policy-makers and members of the Washington press corps, a front page Washington Post story on Thursday, “A Hot Spot for Diplomacy,” uncovered how DC-insiders get together for a weekly sauna session in the basement of Finland’s embassy – with Wolf Blitzer on the TV beforehand as they sip vodka and munch on “a buffet of red gravlax and white trout, shrimp and Finnish meatballs.”

The Post’s Jason Horowitz revealed the activities of “the Diplomatic Finnish Sauna Society of D.C.” which “counts among its 150 members the operatives who make Washington spin: Capitol Hill staffers, public-policy wonks, lobbyists, administration officials -- and reporters eager to pick up some off-message analysis.” The March 18 article named four participants from DC’s press corps: “Rick Dunham, the Hearst Newspapers bureau chief,” “Eve Conant, a Newsweek correspondent,” “Mark Landler, the New York Times diplomatic correspondent” and “Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon.”

Complete with a photo of her late parents, ABC's Jonathan Karl concluded his Friday night story on undecided Democratic House members by conveying the complaint of Pennsylvania's Kathy Dahlkemper, who contended a TV ad about how further government control of health care will lead to delays in cancer treatment as has occurred in Britain, is inappropriate because her parents recently died from cancer.

“Perhaps the most powerful personal story belongs to Pennsylvania's Kathy Dahlkemper,” Karl intoned, pointing out “her father died of leukemia in February, and her mother died just two weeks ago, and  now she finds herself among the undecided Democrats targeted by this ad.” Viewers then saw a very brief clip of an ad from Americans for Prosperity in which a woman maintained: “If you find a lump, you could wait months for treatment and life-saving drugs can be restricted.”

Karl relayed Dahlkemper's indignation: “She says the group that made the ad is wrong, and takes it personally.” In a soundbite, the freshman representing the Northwestern area of the Keystone State squeezed between Ohio and New York, decried: “So, for these ads to come out and somehow say that I'm soft on cancer, after having just lost two parents within the last six weeks from cancer, and with having the record I have really for supporting wellness, to me, is wrong.”

“An incendiary article from a conservative blogger is being strongly refuted today by its target, a charitable foundation backed by talker Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel,” Brian Maloney reported this afternoon on his Radio Equalizer blog. “Posted yesterday by Debbie Schlussel at her site,” Maloney explained, “the piece accuses Hannity of perpetuating 'a giant con' in promoting his annual Freedom Concerts, which benefit the Freedom Alliance. At issue are both the group's expenses and subsequent charitable contributions, which Schlussel believes are questionable.”

Huffington Post, among others, have hyped Schlussel's allegations, which include, that though the Freedom Alliance promised the money raised would pay for the college tuition of children of fallen soldiers and go to severely wounded war vets, “less than 20% -- and in two recent years, less than 7% and 4%, respectively -- of the money raised by Freedom Alliance went to these causes, while millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferry the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style.” Thus, “Sean Hannity’s Freedom Concerts are just a giant con.”

Maloney's post has the refutation from the Freedom Alliance's Thomas P. Kilgannon.

“It's shaping up to be a great weekend here in Washington,” Washington Post business section columnist Steven Pearlstein proclaimed in a piece in Friday's newspaper, and not because of the “spectacular weather,” but because of the likely “vote in the House that would finally have the United States join the rest of the industrialized world in offering health insurance to all its citizens.”

Pearlstein, a former reporter who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, concluded his column by asserting passage would prove Washington is capable of “solving” a major problem and by indulging in self-congratulatory ruminating about how such success would “restore...trust and confidence in ourselves.” More like trust and confidence by journalists in their own influence. His final paragraph:

Most of all, enacting health-care reform would be a desperately needed victory for a political system teetering on the verge of breakdown. Years of polarization, partisanship and stalemate have led to a widespread and cynical belief that Washington is simply incapable of solving any major problem. Passing a health-care reform bill would restore not only a measure of trust and confidence in our political process but also, more significantly, trust and confidence in ourselves.

“Democrats used the word 'giddy' to describe their reaction when they got the cost estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO),” NBC's Kelly O'Donnell relayed Thursday night, but she could have been talking about CBS's Katie Couric and Nancy Cordes who  shared the giddiness in touting the CBO numbers, favorable to Democratic spin on the health bill, without any caveats or reservations -- yet with a dose of exaggeration.

“The price tag certified,” Couric trumpeted in teasing the CBS Evening News before leading with how the CBO “put out a report that may help win over some Democrats,” reciting: “It says the plan, which would cost $940 billion over 10 years, would reduce the deficit over that same period by $138 billion.” She then cited a claim CBO didn't make: “It would cut the deficit over 20 years by more than $1 trillion.”

Cordes pegged  $1.3 trillion as “the amount by which the final health care bill would reduce the deficit over the next 20 years,” bucking up the CBO's credibility: “That's according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which is trusted by both parties as the authority on budget matters.”

In a bizarre choice, ABC News President David Westin has decided to make Christiane Amanpour, CNN's New York City-based international affairs correspondent, the host of ABC's Washington, DC-based This Week -- thus passing over many qualified ABC journalists in favor of replacing a Bill Clinton operative with the wife of an operative for both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Amanpour is married to Jamie Rubin, Assistant Secretary of State for public affairs during the Clinton administration and an adviser in 2007-08 for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. (Of course, until early January, the show was hosted by George Stephanopoulos, a 1992 Clinton campaign operative and subsequently a top Clinton White House adviser.)

At 3:28 PM EDT today, TV Newser reported Amanpour accepted the slot and that Jake Tapper will helm This Week until she takes over in August. Do Sunday morning interview show viewers really desire more international news from someone unfamiliar with domestic politics?

A quick perusal through the MRC's Notable Quotables archive confirms her standard liberal outlook on the world:

She told Hillary Clinton “a lot of the women that I meet from traveling overseas are very impressed by you and admire your dignity,” scolded Mikhail Gorbachev by raising how he's been “criticized heavily by those who say you opened a pandora's box,” argued the press was “muzzled” and not tough enough on President George W. Bush, warned of scary “totalitarian” Christians and, quite oddly juxtaposed French President Nicolas Sarkozy's criticism of rioters with his welcoming of Barack Obama. Plus, she justified awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize: “He’s obviously done something very significant” since the U.S. now has a “new relationship with the rest of the world.”

Nonetheless, last year she insisted: “Nobody knows my biases.”

Recycling a theme which President Barack Obama used last year at media dinners, that shows self-awareness of how journalists are allies, headlining Wednesday night’s Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner carried live on C-SPAN2, Vice President Joe Biden quipped those in the audience are Obama’s “base.” One of Biden’s lines:

The truth is I can't believe I'm here with you guys tonight. Here I am, the first Irish Catholic Vice President in the history of the United States of America. Barack Obama, the first African-American in the history of the United States of America. He's hosting a St. Patrick's day dinner and I'm here with you all [audience laughter]. Go figure. He's with my base, I'm with his.

That elicited groans from the audience of journalists at the Washington Convention Center. Too close to the truth?

CBS and NBC, which have delivered very friendly interviews with President Barack Obama (link below the jump to examples), on Wednesday night characterized Bret Baier's sit-down with Obama for the Fox News Channel as “contentious,” while ABC decided to devote nearly two minutes of World News (1:50) to Obama's college basketball tournament choices.

Anchor Diane Sawyer teased at the start of the March 17 newscast, “Top picks: Stream of consciousness as the Fan-in-Chief completes his college basketball bracket.”

On the NBC Nightly News, Kelly O'Donnell referred to the “contentious interview with Fox News.” Chip Reid, on the CBS Evening News, added a modifier as he saw “a very contentious interview.”

The ABC story on Obama's basketball picks consisted of highlights from corporate cousin ESPN's session with Obama as he filled out a big bracket chart, and World News included Obama's spelling challenge. “Should be an R in there,” ESPN's Andy Katz corrected Obama upon spotting how the President had misspelled “Syracuse” as “Sycacuse.”

(Click on screen shot for a larger jpg image of Obama's misspelling.)

“Based on some mild and indiscernible shouts by people in a hallway outside the office of a House member,” NewsBusters noted Tuesday night, “CBS's Chip Reid tried to discredit anti-ObamaCare protesters,” claiming the Tea Party activists “tried to lobby undecided Democrats. At times, it got ugly.” (Watch the video to assess the commotion Reid characterized as “ugly.”)

But in today's Politico newspaper, Marin Cogan relayed how “staff members for Democrats reported orderly, even polite conversations with protesters.” In her article, “Dems play nice with tea partiers,” Marin not only did not cite any ugliness, she discovered the protesters were so calm that they were actually bored by them: “'It was like a high school classroom,' an aide to one lawmaker who hosted tea partiers noted glumly. 'It was so boring.'”

By a 12 point margin, those asked, in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, called “Barack Obama’s health care plan” a “bad idea” (48 percent) over a “good idea” (36 percent.) Yet, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Tuesday evening skipped that verdict as he declared “people are evenly split” on “the President’s health care reform plan.” From the accompanying graphic, viewers could learn Williams was referring to what people say about enacting it: “pass” (46 percent) vs “don’t pass” (45 percent).

The actual question presented a stark alternative of endorsing the status quo: “Do you think it would be better to pass Barack Obama’s health care plan and make its changes to the health care system or to not pass this plan and keep the current health care system?” Yet the one-point gap was the closest-ever in the poll as “better to not pass this plan, keep current system” grew to 45 percent from 39 percent last September, a trend neither Williams nor Chuck Todd pointed out.

Williams did highlight how “most people tell us they don’t approve of the way President Obama has handled the health care issue, but,” he couldn’t resist adding, “they disapprove of how Republicans in Congress have handled it by an even wider margin.” (This post updated below with response from Todd.)

Based on some mild and indiscernible shouts by people in a hallway outside the office of a House member, CBS's Chip Reid on Tuesday night tried to discredit anti-ObamaCare protesters, claiming “at times, it got ugly.”

Reid recounted: “Outside the Capitol, a few hundred members of the conservative Tea Party movement called on Congress to kill the Democratic health care reform bill as Republicans urged them to keep fighting.” Following a clip of Republican Congressman Mike Pence, Reid announced over the hallway video: “Moving inside, they tried to lobby undecided Democrats. At times, it got ugly.” Then, leading into pro and con TV ads, Reid asserted: “The angry war of words over health care reform in Washington is echoing across the nation.” Watch the video to see what CBS considers “ugly” behavior. (MP3 audio clip.)

After citing “a growing controversy over a parliamentary maneuver the Speaker may use to get reform passed,” Katie Couric had introduced Reid by maintaining that “as a vote nears, the tension, confusion, and anger are all building.” Reid agreed: “The closer we get to a vote, the nastier the debate becomes. Some on Capitol Hill say it gives new meaning to the expression 'March Madness.'”

[UPDATE: “CBS Charged Anti-ObamaCare Protesters Acted in 'Ugly' Manner, But Politico Found Them 'Polite' and 'Boring.”]

Perfectly timed for the week President Barack Obama is pushing the House to vote on ObamaCare, on tonight’s (Tuesday) episode of CBS’s The Good Wife, set at a Chicago law firm, the lawyers “battle a health insurance company that refuses to pay for urgent in-utero surgery.” The CBS.com plug for the March 16 episode: “In an emergency courtroom set up in a hospital, Alicia and Will battle Patti Nyholm and an insurance company that refuses to pay for life-saving in-utero surgery.”

The last time I critiqued The Good Wife (“CBS Drama Showcases Blank Book that Mocks Palin as Empty-Headed Dunce”), NewsReal blog’s David Forsmark contended the program “is both politically and (more importantly) dramatically complex” and deserves credit for showcasing liberal hypocrisy.

So, I’ll hold out hope this episode will deliver more than just simplistic vilification of an insurance company and might, given the plot involves “in-utero surgery,” also forward pro-life perspectives. Watch and see.

While ABC and CBS on Monday night focused on President Barack Obama's “final push” for his health care bill and the plight of Ohioan Natoma Canfield, Obama's poster woman for victims of rising health insurance premiums, NBC anchor Brian Williams touted how at “one last campaign-style rally,” in suburban Cleveland, “a shout-out from the audience gave him a chance to road test a new catch phrase: 'We need courage.'”

Viewers saw a clip of Obama bemoaning “a lot of hand-wringing going on” in Washington, DC, interrupted by a woman's voice from the audience at the Walter F. Ehrnfelt Recreation and Senior Center in Strongsville: “We need courage!” To cheers, a delighted Obama picked up on her prompt: “We need courage. That's why I came here today. We need courage!”

If “courage” as a catch phrase sounds familiar, it's the one word with which Dan Rather ended his newscasts in the mid-1980s, an ending he resurrected on Wednesday, March 9, 2005 when he signed-off forever from the CBS Evening News. (MRC CyberAlert item)

Three weeks after the mother on ABC’s Brothers and Sisters (“Nora Walker” played by Sally Field) fretted over the GOP “denying global warming,” the ABC drama on Sunday night featured an episode centered around her daughter, “Kitty Walker-McCallister,” a Republican candidate for Senate in California played by Calista Flockhart, coming under attack from conservative rubes who think she used her influence to get the visa renewed for her older sister’s French boyfriend, “Luc.”

At a campaign event with mini-video camera-toting bloggers visible, protesters boo and repeatedly chant: “America for Americans!” as they hold up signs, such as “FRENCHIE GO HOME!!!” and, with a mustache added to Kitty’s face, “Hi Kitler!” Just like the real media’s slander of Tea Party protesters.

Kitty’s husband whom she is running to succeed, incumbent “Senator Robert McCallister,” played by Rob Lowe, charges: “It’s just the conservative purity police trying to purge the party of lily-livered Republican moderates.” Kitty complains to her sister, “Sarah Walker,” played by Rachel Griffiths: “I am fighting for my political life with a bunch of ultra-conservative yahoos who want my head because you decided to fall in love with a guy who has immigration issues.”

Audio: 90-second MP3 clip that matches the video highlights from the March 14 episode.

In 2008, just four years after leaving NBC News, Jane Pauley gave the maximum allowed donation to Barack Obama ($2,300) and campaigned for him in her native Indiana where she proclaimed “I want to see the cool, steady hand of Barack Obama on that Bible on Inauguration Day” and predicted Obama will be “an exceptional” President, enthusing: “I so look forward to it!”

On Tuesday morning (March 9) Pauley reappeared on the Today show, which she co-hosted from 1976 to 1989 before spending more than a decade with Dateline NBC, as the narrator of a new monthly segment produced by the liberal AARP, “Your Life Calling Today,” about those 50-plus reinventing themselves. “We are welcoming back a very, underline ‘very’ good friend and familiar face around here, Jane Pauley,” Matt Lauer announced, explaining “she’s been working with AARP which has produced and sponsored a new series of reports for us.” Her first report looked at a woman who “left a lucrative career so she would have more time to knit socks.”

Not exactly hard-hitting political reporting, but it gives me a hook to share some 2008 video of Pauley praising Obama as she made appearances on his behalf. “Pauley called the last eight years a mistake and says America must make the right choice come election day,” WISH-TV channel 8 reporter Phil Sanchez related on the Indianapolis CBS affiliate’s Sunday, September 21, 2008 newscast. Just over a month later, following an event in Bloomington, sporting an Obama button she told Indiana University’s public TV station, WTIU:

When conservatives take to the House floor to criticize the news media’s liberal distortions, that’s not newsworthy to NBC, but Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News made time to showcase an unhinged liberal Democrat, Representative Patrick Kennedy, screaming against the media during House floor remarks in favor of a Dennis Kucinich-backed resolution to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, a fringe proposition which was soundly defeated 356 to 65.

Left wing blogs, such as Huffington Post, also jumped to publicize Kennedy’s rant, with Talking Points Memo calling it “a must-see moment.”

Anchor Brian Williams characterized Kennedy’s yelling tirade as “a gripping moment,” describing how Kennedy railed against “U.S. strategy in the war, then he turned on the news media and how few have bothered to show up to cover the debate.” Williams’ embracing set up, with “Speaking Out” as the on-screen heading:

There was a gripping moment this afternoon here in Washington. It happened on the floor of the House of Representatives as the House was debating withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Congressman Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat who represents Rhode Island, the son of the late Ted Kennedy, got up and gave a loud, emotional and angry speech about U.S. losses in the war, U.S. strategy in the war, then he turned on the news media and how few have bothered to show up to cover the debate.

ABC and CBS on Tuesday night picked up on the cause of a small anti-health insurance industry protest in DC organized by left-wing labor groups, but instead of denigrating them as the networks did with much larger Tea Party and anti-ObamaCare rallies, the two newscasts empathized with their cause, each relaying an anecdote about a victim of the current system. Both ABC’s Jonathan Karl and CBS’s Nancy Cordes did, however, proceed to point out the small profit margin for health insurance companies.

“Taking their cue from President Obama, protesters took their complaints about insurance company premiums and excess profits to the insurance industry and the streets,” ABC anchor Diane Sawyer announced. Karl noted the ideology of the “coalition of liberal groups” and recognized “the attacks are pretty harsh. They're accusing the insurance company CEOs of bribery, money laundering and manslaughter.” But he then showcased “Leslie Boyd, whose son Michael died of colon cancer after he couldn't get insurance or afford a colonoscopy.”

On CBS, Katie Couric set up the story on how “angry protesters targeted the insurance industry.” Cordes found “eleven-year-old Marcelas Owens” who “flew here from Seattle” because “his mother Tiffany lost her job and the health insurance that went with it after a prolonged illness caused her to miss work. She stopped going to the doctor and died at 27 of pulmonary hypertension.” The kid [in the screen capture] delivered a perfect soundbite: “She ended up passing away because she didn't have the equal rights to health care as some people with more money.”

“During the presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama often used the phrase ‘fired up’ to do just that to the crowd. Democrats have been openly wondering when he was going to bring that campaign energy and fire to an issue like health care reform,” Brian Williams announced at the top of Monday’s NBC Nightly News,” and “today the President chose an event at a quiet Philadelphia suburb to get loud. He made his case and he rallied the troops and now readies to head into battle yet again on this topic.”

ABC’s Diane Sawyer noted “the President made a direct attack on the health insurance industry, accusing companies of putting profits before patient care” -- which means he was just catching up with Sawyer’s agenda. A couple of weeks ago, Sawyer demanded to know who will “keep insurance companies from jacking up premiums while making huge profits?” and touted “the growing outrage at insurance companies, the ones that raise premiums on ordinary Americans while racking up big profits.”

Jon Karl asserted Obama “hopes to tie into some of that Tea Party anger by focusing on a group that the White House believes is even more unpopular than Congress” as Karl championed a far-left group’s upcoming protest with “wanted” posters “that will highlight the CEOs of the health care companies making the argument that they are the ones to blame.”

Not the biggest deal, but emblematic of how the Washington press corps consider anyone to the right of center, no matter if barely so, to be a “conservative,” while anyone who strays at all from a perfect liberal line is not worthy of an ideological label.

Setting up Sunday’s Face the Nation, CBS's Bob Schieffer described guest Evan Bayh simply as “the Indiana Democrat” while tagging Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is every bit, if not more, off the conservative reservation as Bayh is off the liberal one, as a “conservative Republican.” Schieffer:

Today on Face the Nation: Is Washington broken? We'll talk to Evan Bayh, the Indiana Democrat. He's become so disillusioned with the Senate he's leaving, but he's still trying to find a way to ease the partisan rancor by teaming with conservative Republican Lindsey Graham who’s also here to talk about that...

It wasn’t on the Fox News Channel (FNC) nor a Fox News production carried on Fox (such as Fox News Sunday), but President Barack Obama received a warm and appreciative session with John Walsh, marking the 1,000 edition of America’s Most Wanted, an entertainment program carried by the network which has failed to air the Obama press conferences shown by ABC, CBS and NBC.

Walsh began by offering Obama “congratulations on all the work you’ve been doing since you were President” and proceeded to praise “the work you’ve done with the Recovery Act,” aka the stimulus monstrosity, “but I know first-hand from the rank-and-file cops on the street what you’ve done for law enforcement on the local and state level.” After Obama recounted how the funding prevented layoffs amongst local police departments, Walsh reaffirmed: “I know first-hand the law enforcement community respects you and is appreciative of you getting that bill through in these tough economic times.”

The host of America’s Most Wanted on Fox also hailed Obama as “a very loud voice for victims, which is much appreciated from the victim community,” and admired him: “I know your daughters are proud of you, but you send a loud message and I feel the same way.”

On this past Tuesday’s episode of The Good Wife on CBS, viewers were treated to a scene in which a ballistics expert opens a gift, from a partner of a law firm, to find a book about Sarah Palin made up of, he discovers by thumbing through it, blank pages “satirically representing,” Amazon.com explains, “the mind and thinking of Sarah Palin.” The book, ‘Going Rouge: A Candid Look Inside the Mind of Political Conservative Sarah Palin.’

In the March 2 episode, Chicago law firm partner “Diane Lockhart,” played by Christine Baranski, engages the ballistics expert to help her with a murder trial. In her office, he notices a picture, on her credenza, of her with Hillary Clinton. Visiting him at his home office on a farm, she notices on his credenza a photo of him next to Palin: “Is that photo-shopped? You and the Barracuda?” He doesn’t deny he “photo-shopped” it: “No, she’s at a pro-life rally.”  
 
After his testimony exonerates her client, he sends her a gift in a box: Sarah Palin’s biography: Going Rogue, promptly her to chuckle. In return – the scene in the accompanying video clip – he sends her the book ridiculing Palin. He opens the box, picks up the book and discovers all its pages are blank.