Geoffrey Dickens's blog

The entertainment industry is notably short on actors who are confident enough to express any rightward beliefs in notoriously left Tinseltown, but one of the few who does, actor Kelsey Grammer (best known for his role as Dr. Frasier Crane on Cheers and then later Frasier) told the New York Post that once he's done with his thespian career he may end up running for mayor of New York City.

The RightNetwork backer told the New York Post's Sean Daly: "I have had a great career and extraordinary opportunities, but I look at my political aspirations as that last piece of my life -- where I hope to do something good for people and pay back a little."

On Election Day 2010, then-CBS Early Show anchor Harry Smith posed a hypothetical question about newly-elected Republicans to Ann Coulter: “There’ll be a routine vote, for instance, to increase the debt ceiling and the Tea Party guys are going to say, ‘Over my dead body,’ and the government comes to a screeching halt. Then what happens?” The conservative author confidently predicted: “Well, the media will blame the Republicans.”

And that’s precisely what has occurred. A Media Research Center study of the Big Three network evening and morning programs finds that, when it came to assigning blame for lack of a debt ceiling resolution, ABC, CBS and NBC’s coverage has placed the overwhelming majority of the blame on Republicans’ doorstep.

A desperate sounding Chris Matthews, on Thursday's Hardball, began his show by handing out the direct line to Congress as he urged his viewers to stand up against the "Tea Party members" and their "stay-at-home blogging cheerleaders."

Matthews warned his audience that these "blogging cheerleaders" and their GOP Representatives were all too willing to "embrace" economic "calamity" to show how "dedicated they were to not raising the debt ceiling."

(video after the jump)

Six out of seven reporters, called on by Barack Obama at today's press conference, asked a question of the President that came from the left and/or blamed Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans for standing in the way of a deal on the debt ceiling.

Ben Feller of the AP, began the trend of questioning when he asked how Obama was going to deal with Republicans who were "adamantly" opposed to tax increases. CBS News' Chip Reid followed with "isn't the problem the people who aren't in the room, and in particular Republican presidential candidates and Republican Tea Partiers on the Hill?"

It was exactly one year ago today that Lebron James announced he was "taking" his "talents to South Beach" and today TV Newser is reporting that longtime CBS newsman Harry Smith is taking his "talents" of drawing low ratings at The Early Show to NBC News.

Of course Smith will be a good fit, from a liberal bias perspective at NBC, as he spent a good amount of time as host of CBS's morning news show criticizing conservative heroes like Ronald Reagan, while praising liberal icons Barack Obama and Al Gore.

Examples of Smith's bias over the years at CBS after the jump:

Tonight MSNBC's cast and crew will gather in Washington D.C. to celebrate their network being on the air for 15 long years. In that time its hosts, reporters and guests have attacked conservatives and Republicans on everything from impeaching Bill Clinton and conducting a war on terrorism, up to the fight over public unions. All the while some of its reporters and hosts have been thrilled by the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Barack Obama.

For that entire 15 years MRC analysts have been dutifully watching and noting these often outrageous outbursts of leftism from NBC News' cable outlet.

The following collection of the worst MSNBC quotes, year-by-year, is just a sampling of the Lean Forward network's decade-and-a-half long devotion to advancing the cause of liberalism under the guise of journalism.

(video compilation after the jump)

On Monday's Today show, substitute host Savannah Guthrie got snippy with GOP presidential contender Herman Cain as she played up his lack of time in government as a negative and demanded of the former head of the Godfather's pizza chain: "If you were still a CEO, if you were in business, would you hire someone for a key role who had no experience whatsoever in business?"

For his part, Cain jabbed back that his experience as a businessman, away from the Beltway, was exactly what government needed now.

(video after the jump)

On MSNBC you can call a sitting president a "murderous" "fascist" even muse about putting the President on trial for war crimes, so long as that president is a Republican. But if you dare call a Democratic president a "d–ck," as MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin did this morning it's grounds for indefinite suspension.

While calling any president the D-word is probably not showing the proper respect for the office, it has to be asked where does it rank compared to essentially accusing a president of mass murder and war crimes?

Today's official announcement by Republican Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann that she is running for the GOP nomination for President could spawn a whole new round of frenzied attacks by the liberal media on the Tea Party favorite.

A review of the MRC's archives shows a particular disdain for Bachmann coming from the likes of MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who once accused her of being a "zombie," even going as far to ask her on live Election Night coverage if she "hypnotized?" 

Barack Obama's confusing one living American war hero with a fallen one he honored in 2009, has been completely ignored by the Big Three Networks shows, including the same NBC Nightly News that threw a fit over Sarah Palin's recent recounting of an event over 200 years ago, Paul Revere's ride.

Tamron Hall was so taken aback by Chris Christie's "none of your business" response to a voter's question about why he puts his kids in private school that she blurted the New Jersey Republican Governor reminded her of HBO's fictionalized mobster Tony Soprano. Right after playing a brief clip of Christie's "gruff" answer to the voter, Hall stooped to take a stereotypical cheap shot at New Jersey and its governor as she exclaimed: "I thought that was Tony Soprano!"

(video after the jump)

In a June 16 story for the Politico, Molly Ball surveyed the existing GOP presidential field and essentially buried them all as pathetic losers who couldn't even carry their home states. The article headlined: "The GOP's Unfavorite Son Primary" detailed how current candidates Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and even undeclared ones like Rick Perry and Sarah Palin would have trouble winning statewide races.

Yes, you read that right. According to Ball, Perry could struggle to beat Obama in Texas and Palin could fall to the President in Alaska.

Ball began her story this way:

Politico's write-up of Barack Obama's Puerto Rican trip depicted the President as a conquering hero making his long-awaited return to the "adoring island." Carrie Budoff Brown, in her June 14 article headlined: "An Adoring Island Welcomes Obama" painted scenes of jubilation as she wrote Obama was "greeted by thousands of cheering Puerto Ricans," and added: "Much of San Juan appeared to stand still for a few hours, soaking in the brief presidential appearance."  Brown also observed: "Peopled held up signs showing Obama's face superimposed on Superman's body."

It would be unfair to call Jon Stewart a racist but when he mocked GOP presidential contender Herman Cain as essentially an illiterate, on Thursday's show, it has to be asked wouldn't Stewart and his cronies at The Daily Show have satirized any sort of conservative talk show host, like a Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, as a bigot if they had joked that President Barack Obama didn't "like to read?"

After playing a clip of Cain promising to limit congressional bills to just three pages, Stewart attempted to impersonate Cain and then threw up a mock billboard that read: "HERMAN CAIN 2012 - I DON'T LIKE TO READ"

The following excerpt was aired on the June 9 edition of Comedy Central's The Daily Show:

On Thursday's Hardball, Chris Matthews determined that Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner could be in danger of being forced out of Congress by Blue Dog Dems who face uphill battles in red states because, as he put it, "people in the rural areas of this country who are Christian conservative culturally - you can say backward if you want...don't like this kind of stuff."

(video after the jump)

This morning marked Ann Curry's first day as the new co-anchor for the Today show and perhaps as a way of moving on, the longtime newsreader is owning some of her worst gaffes and had this bit of advice for aspiring journalists: "never Google drunk." Curry relayed those words of wisdom in the June 13 issue of Newsweek, where she tallied some of her most embarrassing moments, including the one time she mixed up Wheaton Colleges.

As previously documented by Newsbusters, during a commencement address to students at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, Curry mistakenly listed famous graduates of Wheaton College in Illinois. As seen in the following excerpt, Curry revealed the reason for the error was she was a little bit too tipsy when she prepared her remarks.

In the '80s the liberal media filled the airwaves with tales of woe from the homeless as a way to distract viewers from the runaway success of Reaganomics. In the 2000s, the same media chatted with one frustrated gas station customer after another to slam then-President George W. Bush.

However in 2011, with over 44 million Americans on food stamps, a new high according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (See Table 2), the Big Three broadcast network news programs have been virtually devoid of anecdotal sob stories of moms and dads struggling to pay for their kids' box of Frosted Flakes, as a way to hammer Barack Obama's failed economic policies.

The press is pouting because potential GOP presidential contender Sarah Palin is apparently having a bit of fun with them, by refusing to let them know in advance where she is headed on her bus tour. One of them, CBS News producer Ryan Corsaro, even suggested the former Alaska governor is a
"dangerous" traffic hazard because she is forcing reporters to chase her around like they were paparazzi.

This bit of griping led Rush Limbaugh, on his Tuesday radio show, to amusingly point out Palin, "has rendered" the liberal media "totally irrational," adding:  "She's making utter fools of these people, as they are plunging to new depths to come up with anything they think is legitimate criticism of her. This biggest stretch yet."

In a May 31 CBS News.com article headlined "Sarah Palin's bus tour treats reporters like paparazzi" Corsaro complained:

For many in the media Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's reaction to Barack Obama insistence that his country return to the 1967 borders was out of bounds. ABC's Christiane Amanpour declared she was "stunned" by his "public lecture" of the President and NBC's Andrea Mitchell hissed, "it was really rude," and charged he treated Obama "like a school boy." Mitchell didn't reserve her criticism to Netanyahu as she even went after Republicans who dared to take his side, accusing them of "piling on the President."

(video montage after the jump)

What does it say about incoming Today show co-anchor Ann Curry that even her friends in the liberal media make fun of her? Time's managing editor Richard Stengel, did just that, in his Saturday speech to students at Wheaton College when he poked fun at Curry's confused commencement speech at that same college last year.

Fans of Newsbusters will recall the geographically challenged Curry got the Wheaton College in Massachusetts mixed up with the college of the same name in  Illinois. The mistake actually wasn't that surprising given the fact that Curry once needed her colleague Chuck Todd's help to find the state of Illinois on a map.

As TVNewser's Chris Ariens reported, in his May 21 article, Stengel, a self-described "friend" of the longtime Today snow newsreader, couldn't resist ridiculing Curry:

Normally the announcement that a government official is leaving a post to join a company they had oversight of would invoke cries of crony capitalism from the likes of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, but when that person is joining your company it makes for quite the awkward news brief. Williams, to date, has expressed no outrage at the fact that FCC commissioner Meredith Baker is leaving that job for a gig as senior vice president of governmental affairs at Comcast/NBC Universal, even though just four short months ago she voted to approve the merger of those two companies.

This bit of conflict of interest news was not lost on Fox News' Bret Baier, who reported the story on the May 12 edition of Special Report and Jon Stewart who joked about it on Monday's Daily Show. Since Brian Williams is a self-proclaimed fan of Stewart, going as far to praise him as "indispensable," it has to be asked if he felt a tinge of angst when watching his comedic hero on Monday night.

(video and transcript after the jump)

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, on Tuesday's Colbert Report, featured Newsbusters's publisher L. Brent Bozell in his "The Word" segment that ridiculed those who credit enhanced interrogation or waterboarding in the killing of Osama bin Laden. After playing a clip of Bozell, from the May 6, Fox and Friends, saying waterboarding led to the death of bin Laden and hailing: "Hip, hip hooray to George Bush" Colbert joked: "Yes, three cheers for George Bush! Unless you're in a gagged stress position, in which case try three grunts." 

Colbert then went on to make fun of Donald Rumsfeld, mocking that the former Secretary of Defense must have just taken a hit from a blunt to have, in his view, contrasting views on the interrogation issue, as seen in the following excerpt from the May 17 Colbert Report:

(video and transcript after the jump)

On this weekend's McLaughlin Group Newsweek's Eleanor Clift used the occasion of Barack Obama's immigration speech to opine that Hispanics "know which side, which party is on their side" and implied it's not the GOP as she declared Republican Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona has "negative attitudes" towards them. During a discussion about Obama's immigration speech last week Clift even bragged: "This president has done far more in terms of security crackdown than George W. Bush did."

This was all too much for the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney to bear as he wittily retorted that instead of having an open dialogue with the governor of a major border state like Brewer, the President chose to talk about the vital issue with Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria, as seen in the following May 15 exchange:

The news that CNN's Fareed Zakaria has had private conversations with Barack Obama unveiled a glaring double standard at that network, as back in November 2002, when it was revealed that Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes sent a memo to then President George W. Bush regarding his post-9/11 actions CNN anchors threw a fit.

As the MRC's Brent Baker reported in the November 19 CyberAlert, CNN anchors throughout an entire broadcast day expressed outrage at Ailes' actions, led by Jack Cafferty and Paula Zahn's mocking of Fox News as a biased network, as seen in this November 18, 2002 exchange:

JACK CAFFERTY: Listen Paula, I have a story that may interest you here, a story that might be good for what ails you. That's as in "Roger Ailes," the guy who runs Fox News, that low-budget operation down the street with the red letters.

Former Arkansas Governor and possible 2012 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has produced a cartoon series that offers a decidedly conservative alternative to the typical liberal bilge that kids are inundated with on TV and in schools across the nation and Chris Matthews is not happy about it.

On Thursday's Hardball Matthews played a clip from the kids show that featured an animated Ronald Reagan imparting some inspiring words to the children, after which the MSNBC host railed: "that's right from a Cambodian re-education camp or it's chairman Mao's little red book. What propaganda!"

(video, audio and transcript after the jump)

With Monday's official announcement that NBC's Meredith Vieira will be stepping down from the Today show co-anchor chair in June also came the news that the longtime newsreader of that morning show, Ann Curry, will move up to take her place alongside Matt Lauer to deliver a daily cup of liberal bias to viewers in the AM. MRC has pulled together Curry's most outrageous liberal moments in a new "Profile in Bias."

Since joining the show in 1997 Curry has frequently displayed her own uniquely sappy style of bleeding heart liberalism in her anchor briefs and occasional interviews with presidents and celebrities. Back in 2008 she scolded former President George W. Bush that his Iraq War was bringing "suffering" to the American people but when she chatted with then presidential candidate Barack Obama, in that same year, she tossed softball questions like: "Beatles or the Rolling Stones?" 

Incoming CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley was asked by the Politico's Keach Hagey for his reaction to the MRC's Profile in Bias on him and the longtime 60 Minutes correspondent, who once compared global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers, seemed to deny the charge of liberal bias as he huffed: "CBS has been called liberal for a lot of years," adding, "It probably harkens all the way back to Edward Murrow."

The following is the relevant excerpt from the May 4, Politico.com story:

Today CBS News officially announced that longtime correspondent Scott Pelley will be taking the reins of the CBS Evening News from departing anchor Katie Couric. A review of the MRC's archive reveals Pelley will most likely continue the long tradition of liberal bias advanced by his anchor predecessors Couric, Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite.    

From celebrating the likes of liberal heroes like Hillary Clinton, saying that she is of the rare few that can match Barack Obama's "global star power" to even offering praise of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, depicting him as a "genuinely humble" figure with "no fancy clothes, fancy cars" who was "absolutely incorruptible," Pelley's new stint as anchor promises to be one filled with biased platitudes for those on the left and harsh criticism of the right.

Below the jump are just a couple examples of Pelley's bias over the years, but to see even more outrageous outakes from Pelley's time as a correspondent for the CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes please visit his Profile in Bias page at MRC.org.

For the Washington Post's Petula Dvorak the sight of American college kids celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden outside of the White House gates, on Sunday night, was "almost vulgar." In a May 2 story Dvorak described the scenes of joy as "one part Mardi Gras and two parts Bon Jovi concert" but then went on to say "It felt a little crazy, a bit much. Almost vulgar" and admitted: "my first reaction was a cringe."

Dvorak, then doubled-down on her hand-wringing, saying the U.S. students reminded her of "those al Qaeda-guys dancing on Sept. 11th," before pondering: "Are we simply creating star-spangled recruitment tapes for a new generation of terrorists killing in the name of their new martyr?"