FNC's Bret Baier on Wednesday night highlighted how the former top editor at the hardly conservative San Francisco Chronicle wrote a blog entry (Tuesday morning NB post by Noel Sheppard), “Love or Lust, Obama and the Fawning Press Need to Get a Room,” in which Phil Bronstein suggested “the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we're the girl” and asked: “Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?”

Using that as a segue, Baier picked up on a quote first reported by NewsBusters as he related how Newsweek's Evan Thomas “provided yet another example of the mainstream media's presidential crush” when Thomas oozed: “In a way Obama's standing above the country, above, above the world. He's sort of God.”

Bronstein, now Executive Vice President and Editor-at-Large at the Chronicle after several years as Executive Editor, is probably best-known outside of San Francisco for getting bitten on the foot in 2001 by a Komodo dragon at the Los Angeles zoo, an incident which occurred during his marriage to actress Sharon Stone.  

Baier's “Grapevine” item on the Wednesday, June 10 Special Report with Bret Baier:

The Executive Vice President of the liberal San Francisco Chronicle newspaper says the press is not covering President Obama objectively. In a piece titled, "Love or Lust, Obama and the Fawning Press Need to Get a Room," Phil Bronstein writes: "This guy is good. Really good. And frankly, so far, we're not...the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we're the girl…” Quote: “We're even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?"

Meanwhile Newsweek editor Evan Thomas has provided yet another example of the mainstream media's presidential crush. He said on MSNBC, quote: "I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above, above the world. He's sort of God."

That made at least the third FNC program to cite the Thomas quote first reported last Friday night in Kyle Drennen's NewsBusters post, “Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: Obama Is ‘Sort of God,’” with video of the comment made on that day's Hardball.

Monday's O'Reilly Factor played that video rendered by NewsBusters Managing Editor Ken Shepherd and less than an hour later Sean Hannity featured the video in the “Media Mash” segment on his show as he cited NewsBusters.org as the source. Video of the Hannity segment.

Many others have picked up on the quote, including Rush Limbaugh (who sourced the MRC.org version) and “Best of the Web Today” on Monday; as well as Michael Gerson in his Wednesday Washington Post column.

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