Media Mash: Republicans Smeared as Terrorists Edition

This week's boomlet of smearing Republicans as fiscal Wahhabis and budgetary suicide bombers was the top agenda item when MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on the Hannity show's "Media Mash" segment Thursday night. First, they discussed how Chris Matthews repeatedly called Republicans terrorists who want to "abolish" the federal government at the mere prospect that they're resisting tax hikes.

Bozell remarked that on MSNBC, Mark Halperin was banned indefinitely for calling Barack Obama a crude anatomical term for “jerk.” But an MSNBC host can repeatedly call conservatives a band of terrorists out to destroy America, and that’s just another day at the office. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

From there, it was Newsweek's editor Tina Brown comparing Republicans to "suicide bombers" on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Isn't that a fine way of displaying the Newsweek brand? Brent reminded Fox watchers that this is the same Tina Brown that at the end of 2009 trashed Rush Limbaugh for creating a “toxic atmosphere” around Barack Obama’s inauguration – the “festival of hope” – by saying “I hope he fails.” (She said he was “like the bad fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening.”)

Finally, Sean and Brent discussed Bob Schieffer's questioning on Sunday's Face the Nation, where both Republicans and Democrats were pushed around for daring to make any spending cuts at all. Brent said just as the networks can't seem to describe a conservative except as a radical extremist, the networks can't seem to find a regular spending cut. They're all "draconian" cuts. Schieffer just can't acknowledge what Hannity underlined: governments can't just spend themselves into a debt crisis and never put on the brakes.