Geoffrey Dickens's blog

The donations to the global warming cause keep coming in from NBC. On this morning's "Today" show, the band Maroon 5 came on to tease their upcoming performance on the show but couldn't leave without the "Today" show cast urging them to plug their partnership with a liberal environmentalist organization, that gets $1 from every Maroon 5 ticket sold.

When the band's lead singer, Adam Levine, urged viewers to buy tickets for their tour, "Today" co-host Ann Curry mentioned viewers could see the band for free at their August 17th performance on the Rockefeller Center Plaza. However Today's weatherman, Al Roker, quickly rectified Curry's inadvertent undercutting of the cause, as he reminded viewers: "But buy a ticket because a dollar goes to Global Cool."

Picking up where last night's Nightly News left off, NBC's Today show continued the "tipping point" line of attack on pushing for troop withdrawal from Iraq. Opening this morning's Today show, NBC's Matt Lauer greeted viewers with the following question: "Good morning, if not now, when? The White House says it's not considering pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq right now but with sinking approval ratings and defections from his own party is it just a matter of time before the President changes course?" Then, teasing an interview with White House press secretary Tony Snow, Lauer all but declared defeat:

Sting and his wife, environmental activist, Trudie Styler, were welcomed like old friends by Today co-host Ann Curry, on NBC's prime-time coverage of Live Earth. Curry, who has gushingly interviewed Styler before, implored the rock star and his wife to send a message to all those participating in the "rising fervor" for the environment. However, Curry worried that "fervor" would cool as she asked the 80s pop icon: "Well the iron is hot. People are listening. Irons cool, Sting. So what is the strongest thing you can say tonight to people listening?"

The following is the full interview as it occurred around 8:24pm on NBC's live July 7th coverage of the Live Earth concert:

Appearing with Today co-host Ann Curry during NBC’s exhaustive coverage of his Live Earth concert, Gore gave a shout out to the network for its donation to his global warming cause, as Gore told Curry: "Thanks for what NBC has been doing." Curry, as expected, didn’t exactly deliver a hard-hitting interview and even pressed Gore about running for president.

Curry to Gore: "A lot of people want me to ask you tonight if you're running for President. And I know what you're answer is gonna be, believe me. I gotta ask you though. After fueling this grass roots movement if you become convinced that without you there will not be the political will in the White House to fight global warming to the level that is required, because the clock is ticking. Would you answer the call? Would you answer the call, yes or no?"

Meredith Vieira invited on singer/songwriter Paolo Nutini to perform on this morning’s Today show but didn’t let the artist get away without using his spot on the upcoming Live Earth concert, as an excuse to plug NBC Universal’s sweeping coverage of the Al Gore musical marathon for the planet. Before Nutini sang he and Vieira discussed the importance of saving the Earth in the following segment of the July 3rd Today show:

Meredith Vieira: "They are calling it a worldwide event to save the planet and this Saturday more than 100 musical acts will perform in eight cities across seven continents. The Live Earth concert series will bring attention to the issue of global warming. And among the performers, Scottish singer/songwriter Paolo Nutini."

Chris Matthews, presumably away on vacation, handed the reigns of MSNBC's Hardball to Democratic activist Reverend Al Sharpton. The first two guests, in the first half-hour, of the Sharpton hosted July 2 episode, were Democrats - Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe. The hot topic of the discussion with Dean was about how the John McCain campaign and the GOP, overall, were suffering in their fundraising efforts. The following "hardball" segment, with McAuliffe, featured the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman crowing about her fundraising success.

After the McAuliffe segment, Sharpton, actually interviewed a Republican. Predictably, Sharpton's questions to presidential candidate, Representative Duncan Hunter, were tougher than the ones to his Democratic colleagues. Following the Hunter segment, Sharpton quickly returned to his Democratic friends, as he invited on Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Chris Dodd.

NBC's announcement that Today news anchor and Dateline host Ann Curry (file photo from 2006 at right) will co-anchor NBC's prime-time simulcast of Al Gore's "Live Earth" concerts on Saturday is an obvious indicator that it won't just be a rock concert. It will include gooey interviews where celebrities and rock stars will be praised for their global conscience.

Curry's big prime-time gig could be a reward for the one-sided environmental activism she's long displayed at NBC's morning show. In her time at Today, Curry has brought her trademark sappy personality along with the expected liberal bias to numerous environmental interview segments. In the last five years, Curry often revealed her soft spot for all things green. 

Still stoking the flames of the fire it started on its cable outlet, MSNBC, NBC kept pushing the Ann Coulter vs Elizabeth Edwards fight, this time on this morning’s Today show. Substitute host David Gregory invited on Elizabeth Edwards to continue to bash Coulter on her "hate language." And while the on screen headline asked, "Out of Control? The Politics of Ann Coulter," 'Today', once again, never bothered to mention the Edwards campaign's own "out of control" bloggers.

To his credit Gregory did ask about Edwards using Coulter as a fundraising tool and noted the hypocrisy of John Edward's $400 haircut and his large speaking fees for a poverty group. However Today refused to identify either Edwards as a liberal but repeatedly labeled Coulter as "conservative," and even tagged her as a "flamethrower."

Chris Matthews followed-up his, now infamous, staging of the Ann Coulter vs. Elizabeth Edwards throwdown by inviting on John Edwards to join his wife in the pile-on of the conservative columnist. On tonight's Hardball, Edwards condemned Coulter's "hate-mongering" but Matthews never brought up the fact that Edwards' own staffers spewed some pretty hateful things, or that Matthews on the very same show compared conservative students to violent inbred hicks. While Matthews did mention Edwards campaign has used Coulter to raise money, most of the interview was full of softballs.

Update with transcript of Matthews on MSNBC appended below.

After yesterday's ambush of Ann Coulter by Elizabeth Edwards on Hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews was rewarded a victory lap by Meredith Vieira on this morning's Today show. Matthews crowed that Edwards came out the winner, long after he stacked the deck against the conservative columnist with the surprise call-in, from John Edwards' wife, on a live show. Like a bribed referee in a fixed match Matthews, proverbially, raised Edwards' hand in victory as he blared: "Elizabeth Edwards has won this round."

The following is the full transcript of the segment, first noted here, as it occurred on the June 27th Today show.

On tonight's Hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews blind-sided his guest, conservative columnist Ann Coulter, with a live call from Elizabeth Edwards. The wife of presidential candidate John Edwards proceeded to demand Coulter stop her "personal attacks" on her husband, but Coulter shot back that at least she wasn't "bankrupting doctors by giving a shyster, Las Vegas routine."

The following is the full transcript of the exchange as it occurred on the June 26th edition of Hardball:

Chris Matthews: "You know who's on the line? Somebody to respond to what you said about Edwards, yesterday morning, Elizabeth Edwards. She wanted to call in today, we said she could. Elizabeth Edwards go on the line, you're on the line with Ann Coulter."

TV Newser has a speculative piece that Rosie O'Donnell may be headed to NBC/MSNBC as part of a daytime/night-time deal that will allow the former co-host of The View to play nice during the day with a celebrity-focused show and then spew her liberal rants, ala Keith Olbermann, in the evenings. The following is the article inspired by FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman.

Rosie: Proud As A Peacock?

FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman "guesses" Rosie O'Donnell is going to NBC/MSNBC.

Carrying the left's water, on this morning's 'Today' show, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell furthered the liberal spin of Dick Cheney as a dark and sinister force inside the White House. While refusing to label Melanie Sloan and Michael Blanton as the known liberals that they are, O'Donnell cited them, along with the Washington Post's Barton Gellman, in a segment that portrayed Cheney as a "master of stealth." In the story about Cheney withholding documents from the National Archives, O'Donnell aired three soundbites opposed to Cheney but only aired one from a Cheney advocate, White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino. 

Chris Matthews actually came out for a pardon for Lewis "Scooter" Libby, but he had a catch, "Send him to Iraq." On tonight’s Hardball the MSNBC host, during a discussion about whether Bush should pardon Libby, threw out the following wacky proposal on the June 21 edition of his show:

Chris Matthews proposed to former Cheney aide Ron Christie and former Assistant Attorney General Robert Raben: "I got an idea, I got a solution. Pardon him but send him to Iraq in uniform and put him on the front. Send him to the front. He supported the war, send him to fight it! Hey look a lot of guys have to go fight that war, didn't do anything wrong....In the old days the judges would take a working class kid who got into a scrape with the law and say, 'Junior want to go jail or do you want to go join the Army?' They should say the same thing to Scooter Libby. 'Want to join the Army?'"

Related MRC content linked below.

NBC Today co-host Meredith Vieira opened her Today at the Pump segment cheering the recent decrease in gas prices as "sweet relief" but then wondered: "Would we be better off...if gas prices were even higher?" On this morning's Today show, Vieira invited on Chevron’s CEO, David O’Reilly, to harass him about getting America off its "dependence" on oil and cited critics of Chevron’s allocation of profits to find alternative sources of energy as merely, "symbolic."

The following exchange occurred on the June 21st edition of Today:

Vieira: "Would, would we be better off, sir, if gas prices were even higher, if it were four, five, six dollars a gallon? Wouldn't that provide the incentive we need to come up with alternative forms of gas and to stop this dependence that we have on foreign oil?"

Chris Matthews couldn’t contain his giddiness, first noted here, when he praised Michael Moore’s Sicko movie on tonight’s Hardball. After he sent his correspondent, MSNBC’s David Shuster, to chase down Moore on Capitol Hill and get an exclusive rant from Moore against the "rackets" that are American health care companies Matthews yelped: "You know I gotta agree with him on this stuff. I gotta agree with him. He's got a case and health care in this country is not working."

The following is the full segment including Shuster’s interview with Moore as it occurred on the June 20th edition of Hardball.

When Hillary faked a Southern accent in Selma, Alabama the major network morning news shows, *for the most part, ignored her blatant and awkward pandering but when Hillary and Bill played like Tony and Carmela Soprano in a campaign ad, meant to humanize Hillary, it drew widespread praise on those very same shows.

On this morning's Today show, co-anchor Matt Lauer declared it, "a hit" and "clever" while fellow anchor Meredith Vieira exclaimed she "loved" it. On ABC's Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos called it "effective" in "showing that she's also a human being who can laugh at herself." Over on CBS's The Early Show, Bob Schieffer called the ad, "hilarious," and cheered: "I think it's one of the cleverest things I've seen in a long, long time."

This morning's 'Today' pumped Hillary Clinton as the next nominee of the Democratic Party and even used two former Clinton flacks, Lisa Caputo and Dick Morris to posit she may be unbeatable in the general election. In fact Today co-host Meredith Vieira acted as a third flack as she called Hillary the "Teflon Candidate" and noted two recent anti-Clinton books haven't "made any dent in her popularity."

First up, at the top of this morning's Today, Vieira greeted viewers with Hillary's inevitablity: "And Senator Hillary Clinton definitely on a roll. A new poll out today shows her lead widening. So why is she doing so well and can she go the distance?"

File this one under the "no duh" department. On tonight's Hardball, Chris Matthews attempted to outline his stance on illegal immigration but prefaced it by declaring: "I don’t want to be the conservative here. I’m not comfortable playing that role."

Matthews uttered what has to be the Understatement of the Week, during an exchange with Ron Reagan Jr. and former John McCain spokesman Todd Harris, on the June 12th edition of MSNBC's Hardball.

Chris Matthews: "But let me ask you guys, I don’t want to be the conservative here. I’m not comfortable playing that role. I’m just not comfortable playing it. But I would like to see a liberal policy of immigration, a liberal policy of letting people come into work but dammit, enforce the law and stop the B.S.! Stop the undocumented workers and the clever language used. All the time, anything but enforcing the law."

Tim Russert invited on longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas on his CNBC show over the weekend to promote her new book but Thomas used the hour to praise the Clintons and smear Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The former UPI correspondent slammed Reagan declaring, "I think that the poor did not prosper under him at all," and charged the press was too soft on George W. Bush demanding that they should've asked the hard question: "How can you justify killing thousands of people to get one man? Who are we to depose anyone?'" But when it came to the Clinton administration, Thomas thought the press was too hard on the Clintons saying Whitewater amounted to "nothing," and pouted: "the Clintons suffered a lot."

Bush is officially a lame duck, well at least that's what the Big Three network morning shows would have you believe. This morning White House spokesman Tony Snow appeared on NBC's Today, ABC's Good Morning America and CBS' The Early Show and was hit with one common question: is Bush a "lame duck?"

First up on NBC's Today show, co-host Matt Lauer threw the following questions at Snow:

Lauer: "Tony if he, if he can't convince the skeptics, if he can't accomplish this, if he can't get immigration reform passed, you know what they're saying, is it time for him to concentrate full-time on his presidential library?"

There's nothing like a Republican turning on his President to get liberal reporters tongues wagging. On this morning's Today, co-host Meredith Vieira along with Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell repeatedly whacked President Bush over the head with Colin Powell's criticism from his Meet the Press appearance.

In the 7am half-hour of the program, the Vieira first teased the segment this way:

Vieira: "President Bush's former Secretary of State Colin Powell is speaking out for the first time in a long time and his former boss cannot be happy about what he is saying."

Then Mitchell opened her report with Powell's laundry-list of complaints:

On tonight's Hardball Chris Matthews invited on actor Ben Affleck to pontificate on the 2008 presidential race and while the liberal actor stuck to safe, conventional wisdom observations on the likes of Rudy, Hillary and Barack he couldn't resist a pointed jab at the current administration. When Matthews recited an emailer’s question about impeaching President Bush, Affleck reasoned it wasn’t necessary since Bush and Cheney are "going to go down in history as having presided over one of the worst administrations in American history."

The following is the full exchange as it occurred on the June 7th edition of MSNBC’s Hardball:

Chris Matthews: "Scott Trent of North Carolina: 'Mr. Affleck, what is your opinion on the possibility of impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney? Do you support impeachment for the crimes of the administration?' That's Trent, Scott Trent of North Carolina."

If this morning's Today show segment on Cuba is any indication expect Matt Lauer's visit to the communist country tomorrow to gloss over much of Fidel Castro's brutal regime. Previewing the Today show anchor's trip, NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported on Castro's health and actually highlighted an unidentified Cuban citizen wishing Castro well as he exclaimed: "I care about him. I love him!"

Judging from Mitchell's report 'Today' viewers may also get more than their fair share of Cuban mouthpiece Ricardo Alarcon tomorrow, as the Cuban National Assembly president was featured as the go-to-guy for the latest on Castro's health. While Mitchell did air one soundbite from Condoleezza Rice criticizing the regime, she then went on to depict Cuban opinion on Castro as merely "divided." Neither Mitchell nor Lauer bothered to mention critics of Castro often end up being imprisoned or worse.

If there was one thing the 'Today' show wanted its viewers to know about comedian, turned failed Air America radio host, turned Senate candidate, Al Franken, it's that he's really "smart." Profiling his Minnesota Senate seat run, the Today show cast went out of their way to prove the Saturday Night Live alum's candidacy was serious by emphasizing Franken was, indeed, "smart."

Not once, not twice, but three times this morning's Today tagged Franken with the "smart" label. First up, 'Today' co-host Meredith Vieira, in her tease of the upcoming Franken piece proclaimed of the creator of Stuart Smalley: "He's a smart guy!" Then later, Franken impressed Today's national correspondent Jamie Gangel with his smartness as he doodled a map of the U.S. from memory:

Jamie Gangel: "What some people may not know, Franken is smart, Harvard smart. A math whiz who aced the SATs and it turns out not bad at geography, either."

Al Franken doodling: "It's a circus trick. I can draw all 48 contiguous states from memory in about two minutes."

On the May 19th edition of Fox News Channel's Geraldo at Large, host Geraldo Rivera went on another pro-illegal immigrant rant. Commenting on the debate over the new immigration bill Rivera declared: "The deal beefs up border security, at the same time it allows millions here, illegally, to emerge from the shadows." Rivera then went on to spotlight the story of one illegal that was stuck in the "shadows."

The following is the full segment as reported by Geraldo and his brother and fellow Fox News reporter, Craig Rivera:

Geraldo Rivera: "So now up-front tonight the President praised senators of both parties for crafting a potential fix for the nation's broken immigration policies. The deal beefs up border security, at the same time it allows millions here, illegally, to emerge from the shadows. But whether Congress will pass the controversial bill into law is far from certain. Here's the President from his Texas ranch where he and the First Lady are spending the weekend."

Updated with video below fold.

NBC's Matt Lauer spared no punches when he interviewed John Edwards on this morning's Today show, trouble is they were mostly left jabs. After a David Gregory report on the war funding bill, the Today co-host didn't waste any time launching into Edwards as he demanded to know why his fellow Democrats had to "cave-in."

Lauer: "David calls it a compromise, whatever we call it, let's talk about this deal that was struck in Congress. They, basically, the supplemental funding bill has 18 benchmarks the Iraqis have to hit on political progress, security, economic progress. Reports from the White House to Congress, July 15th, September 15th. But, and this is a big but, the headline here is no deadline for U.S. troops. Why did the Democrats cave-in?"

Over the weekend Chris Matthews asked the panel on his syndicated program to answer Hillary Clinton's call to help find an official song for her campaign and while Matthews and most of the media panel suggested songs that stressed Hillary's perceived positives, NBC's Andrea Mitchell topped them all when she offered Helen Reddy's 70s' feminist anthem: "How about 'I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar?'"

When New York Times columnist David Brooks, the one resident conservative on the panel, suggested a not so celebratory song title, Hall&Oates 80's hit, "Maneater," Mitchell cringed, letting out a painful: "Oooh!"

The following exchange occurred on the May 20th edition of the syndicated The Chris Matthews Show:

On this morning's Today show NBC's Ann Curry revealed her green-streak as she pedaled her way on a "people-powered blender" to save the environment. Appearing with the co-founder of Ben&Jerry's Ice Cream, Jerry Greenfield, Curry gushed over the company's liberal causes and even mounted a stationary bike to blend smoothies and boasted: "You see, you can save the environment! It is possible!"

Video (1:24): Real (2.32 MB) or Windows (2.65 MB), plus MP3 (1.24 MB).

The question about whether Bill Clinton will be a hindrance or help to Hillary's campaign has been decided and the final verdict is in, Hillary "benefits" with having Bill on her side. Well at least that's what two of the top opinion-shapers at NBC News have decreed. Appearing on last night's Hardball, NBC News' Washington bureau chief Tim Russert marveled, along with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, at how Hillary Clinton will get the best of both worlds with Bill on her campaign.

According to Matthews and Russert not only will Hillary gain from the "Clinton record," but she won't be hurt by any extramarital dalliances by the former President as both claimed Hillary actually "benefits" from her "victim" status. In fact don't expect any questions to Hillary about Bill's personal life next time she appears on Meet the Press, as Russert proclaimed: "She doesn't even have to talk about it." The following conversation occurred on the May 14th edition of MSNBC's Hardball.