Flashback: In 2004, Donaldson Yukked It Up at MRC's 'DisHonors Awards'

Flashback: In 2004, Donaldson Yukked It Up at MRC's 'DisHonors Awards'

By Brent Baker (Bio | Archive)
February 16, 2009 - 13:52 ET

After 41 years with ABC News, next week Sam Donaldson will retire from the network, though he will continue to appear monthly on This Week, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported Monday. Often seen by conservatives as the embodiment of liberal media bias -- especially during the Reagan years -- Donaldson was an open-minded guy who respected conservatives and was willing to make fun of himself, so for many years he debated Bob Novak on liberal bias at CPAC and, in 2004, he appeared at the MRC's “DisHonors Awards.”

At our March 18, 2004 gala held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., as MRC President L. Brent Bozell III made closing remarks he was interrupted by Donaldson, who bound on stage in mock anger, railing at Bozell and the MRC for attacking the news media. Donaldson pledged, “I promise you that during this campaign we will treat both sides equally: the compassionate, intelligent liberals and you crazy, right wing kooks will get the same kind of treatment!”

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He also insisted: “This Mark Halperin is going to be fired!” That was a reference to a “The Note” posting by Mark Halperin, then ABC's political director, who conceded that the Washington press corps holds liberal views on all the key issues separating President George W. Bush and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, thus giving an advantage to Kerry and a disadvantage to Bush. Full excerpt in the February 12, 2004 MRC CyberAlert.

Donaldson ended with how he writes under the “pen name” of Charles Pierce. That was reference to the winner of the “Ozzy Osbourne Award (for the Wackiest Comment),” which went to the Boston Globe's Pierce Charles for a January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine profile of Senator Ted Kennedy in which Pierce effused:

If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.

More about that profile and a longer quote in the January 13, 2003 MRC CyberAlert.

—Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center

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Only a liberal could write

February 16, 2009 - 14:01 ET by Richard Romano

Only a liberal could write something like this: Mary Jo Kopechne? The young woman he left to drown while he saved himself? Sounds like a perfectly Democrat thing to do!

It was a pleasure, sort of

February 16, 2009 - 14:11 ET by KC Mulville

Donaldson is a liberal I can live with. He's an over-the-top grandstander, but he always struck me as someone who isn't trying to hurt anyone. He's honest, to the extent that I think he believes what he says (more's the pity). But I think he does what he does because he loves the country, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

If the son of donald would ever read this

February 16, 2009 - 15:57 ET by FastEd

or behave as a "reporter", he would need to ask what type/kind of FRAUD is being presented to the American people. How can anyone take ANY of their elected representatives seriously, if as a fact (for most if not all) didn't have the honesty to at least READ this spending bill? Is it, (he asks knowingly) that knew what was in it, that spending is good, doing the work of the people is bad?

How can any of us actually think that we have representation, from this day forward, knowing that these pseudo-congressmen won't even do the least amount of work, the work they were elected to do, and this is to READ what they are voting for.

FRAUD - we should shot it at every one of those cowardly elected non-representatives, for casting a vote on something they didn't have any intention of reading, just because of their little "group think" club they belong to, while those who hadn't had a chance to be "included", are the ones being called un-partisan. Time to call these non-reps what they are - Liberty thieves, freedom takers and FRAUDS. My two are Lausenberg and Womandez, both of the new Socialist State of Neu Joisey.

There is no sense in being stupid, if you can't prove it! - my dad V

For a liberal, Donaldson

February 16, 2009 - 16:42 ET by rockyracoon

For a liberal, Donaldson has an open mind. I never thought him to be too condescending, or intolerent to other's views. He's one liberal I could live with, he will be missed.

Is there anyone in the main stream communist media to take his place?