Peter Sasso's blog

ABC's Robin Roberts treated Michelle Obama to a thoroughly positive (and at times gushing) interview on Thursday's "Good Morning America," sympathizing with Mrs. Obama about negative ads against her husband and "The New Yorker" cover which cast her as a black militant. Roberts also touted how Michelle Obama "has turned her attention to...improving the lives of military families," and asked about "Obama family vacation traditions," such as heated games of Scrabble.

Throughout the nearly 6 minute session, Roberts posed no questions about the controversies that have dogged Mrs. Obama on the campaign trail, such as her statement that this year -- as her husband runs for President -- is the first time she has been proud of this country.

ABC’s “Good Morning America” hosted Fox Business anchor/managing editor Neil Cavuto on Wednesday morning — by himself with no liberal counterpart! While co-host Diane Sawyer peppered Cavuto with questions based on the idea that the economy was a disaster and Barack Obama was being unfairly attacked by John McCain, Cavuto offered a healthy alternative not typically seen on ABC.

Sawyer suggested Obama’s claim that motorists inflating their tires could create an oil savings equal to the amount that might be obtained by offshore drilling was “factually true” while McCain’s mocking of Obama was a “stunt,” and dourly observed that consumer confidence was at “almost a 22-year low.” But Cavuto rejected Sawyer’s pessimism:

If people have a feeling that things are so miserable, why are they buying $300, $400 IPhones with very expensive contracts. Why are they spending so much at the movie theaters? Why are they still going out in record numbers to restaurants?...When people are surveyed Diane on this stuff, it's very important to distinguish between someone saying we think things are lousy but when they're asked about how are you doing, they say, well, you know, not that bad, not that bad. There is a difference.

  If a tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it fall, did it really fall? If a supporter of a campaign scores a vitriolic tune and nobody reports the lyrics, does the song matter? MSNBC hopes not.

On the July 31st "Morning Joe" during the "News You Can't Use" segment, co-host Willie Geist brought attention to a recent rap song penned by platinum selling rapper and Barack Obama supporter, Ludacris . The song calls for Senator John McCain to be paralyzed. Geist first attempted to down play the hate-filled nature of the song by saying "I think it's an actual controversy. Isn't it? Some are saying it is."

Geist proceeded to play only a short non-offensive part of the song. Guest-host David Shuster agreed that the tame lyrics MSNBC selectively showcased were "pretty good."

On the July 30 "Morning Joe" esteemed New York Times list best-selling author Pete Hamill filled in as a co-host and with one extremely blockheaded statement proved once and for all that very smart people can say very stupid things. The former editor-in-chief of the New York Post tried to pin defeat in Vietnam on John McCain.

Hamill delivered the obtuse statement at the end of a discussion about Barack Obama's hubris. That talk was centered on a Washington Post article that claimed Barack Obama opined "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

...but not by name.

Keith Olbermann’s tired hour-long rehashing of liberal talking points on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” are legion and often unremarkable in and of themselves. Same noise, different night. But it is noteworthy when a fellow MSNBC host has had enough and calls out Olbermann. That is exactly what happened when “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough rebuked the “Countdown” host for a misplaced attack on Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the opening of Olbermann’s July 22 “Countdown.”

Olbermann began his show by ridiculing McCain for claiming that the surge was responsible for the success of the Anbar Awakening. Olbermann opined:

In the past rocker Neil Young has been about as consistent with his political opinions as Barack Obama has been on the his relationship with Rev. Wright. The mercurial Young was on the top of his game yesterday during the “Charlie Rose Show”. At one point during the interview Young appeared to regret past remarks that castigated President Bush:  

Criticizing the President and doing this and that and talking about things in the first person and getting right in there. It is like I got sucked into it. I was part of the turmoil myself. Which I wasn't happy about, and I am not happy about it now. But it happened.

The only thing that the mainstream media love more than liberal politicians are, well, Hollywood liberals turned politicians. So it’s not the least bit surprising that ABC’s "Good Morning America Weekend" aired a report this past Saturday exalting the merit of comedian Al Franken’s Senate run in Minnesota. The puff piece sounded more like an Al Franken commercial than a piece of objective journalism.

Reporter Bill Weir’s first objective was to recast the nomadic comedian as a proud Minnesotan. The report showed Franken bowling a strike at "At Texatonka Lanes where he learned to bowl" and then concluded with a tour of Franken’s "boyhood home". The report attempted to describe Franken’s childhood if it was ripped from the passages of the famous Minnesota-inspired novel, "Main Street." But Weir focused on Franken’s childhood in Minnesota because Franken has spent the vast majority of his adult life away from the very state he now hopes to represent in the U.S Senate. By trying to paint Franken as a proud Minnesotan, "GMA Weekend" was glossing over criticism that Franken is a celebrity carpetbagger.

MSNBC has recently taken their negativity to a whole new level of fear mongering with a promotional ad peddling their election coverage. The ad features reporter Andrea Mitchell narrating the voiceover:

People really care because our kids are falling behind in school. Because health care is no longer affordable, we’re at war, the American economy is in trouble.

While MSNBC had a bullpen of biased reporters to pitch the promo, Andrea Mitchell was the natural closer.

In May she implied Republicans might cheat if the election is close in November.

Last week at NewsBusters we noted how conservative commentator Pat Buchanan on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" summed up global warming hysterias as just another "neo-Marxist idea for the transfer of wealth and power from people to elites." Now it seem that rival cable morning show "American Morning" has proved his point by highlighting a Japanese group fighting modern-day convenience with a vengeance.

On today’s "American Morning," CNN highlighted a group taking global warming hysteria to a whole new level of absurdity. The group called "Slow Life" says "the earth can't keep up with the speed of modern living. The environment losing ground to conveniences like the power hungry vending machines found on every Tokyo street corner, gas-guzzling cars and life’s outright excesses."

CNN’s Kyung Lah tried to link fast-paced lifestyles to global warming. Aside from interviewing one regular person on the street who claimed she could not afford to live a slow life, the only other person interviewed by CNN for the story was a professor sympathetic to the "Slow Life" gospel. The irrational professor claimed, "The problem is wealth. Actually it is wealth that has been producing poverty and that has been causing environmental crisis."

While guest hosting Wednesday’s "Morning Joe", former General Electric CEO Jack Welch condemned global warming, the very theory MSNBC has been peddling for years. GE, of course, owns MSNBC; the rebuke of MSNBC’s favorite alarmist hypothesis came in a segment where hosts share noteworthy editorials. Welch decided to share an opinion piece from Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal aptly titled "Global Warming As Mass Neurosis." Welch informed the audience that the article has "a lot of technical numbers here to show you that NASA overstated what's happening." Welch summarized the article by saying "And they got an argument that states that global warming is the attack on capitalism that socialism couldn't bring"

After Jack’s synopsis, co- host Pat Buchanan interjects his belief that global warming is "a neo-Marxist idea for the transfer of wealth and power." Jack Welch jumps in to agree saying "Right" Pat Buchanan then decides to carry his rebuke even further by saying "And At the end global elites, and they’re, you know they’re gonna to dictate to all of us because of this phony idea that we're all in some eminent danger. I agree with that 100 %." Welch, the former GE CEO enthusiastically jumped in to agree saying "Absolutely!"

On Saturday’s "Good Morning America," ABC News managed to set a new gold standard for biased reporting on global warming when they aired a tendentious report on the "sensitive and emotional and loving" polar bear that "has become the iconic face of climate change".

The report, by reporter Bill Blakemore failed to include any critics of global warming and neglected to highlight a recent study indicated that the polar bear population is actually rising. Indeed, ABC decided to ignore the facts in order to present an emotionally-charged story with a predetermined message.

Maybe the mainstream media are growing tired of hackneyed images of Barack Obama appearing in Christ-like poses, because now the Obama-friendly scribes at Rolling Stone have crafted an even more preposterous way of peddling the junior senator from Illinois: his image on a magazine cover devoid of any headline.

Yes, the cover of the most recent edition of Rolling Stone features a giant picture of a grinning Barack Obama without any headline attached to it. It is the second Rolling Stone cover for Obama in just a matter of months, following up on a cover that portrayed Obama with an otherwordly aura emanating from behind him.

Sen. John McCain is still awaiting his first Rolling Stone cover and the editors can't use age as an excuse. After all, Keith Richards has appeared there numerous times.

Yesterday we at NewsBusters noted how Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell is backing an effort to move an up-or-down vote on the Broadcasters Freedom Act (BFA), currently stalled in the House of Representatives. Later that evening on his June 11 radio program, conservative talk show host Mark Levin issued a warning- urge your congressman to support the Broadcasters Freedom Act, or you risk sitting idly by as liberals led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) annihilate free speech on America’s radio waves.

The BFA is a response to the expiration of last year’s one year moratorium of the Fairness Doctrine. That measure passed the House with a 309-vote majority. With so many members of Congress supporting free airwaves just one year ago, one might assume this year’s permanent defense of free speech would fly through the House. Yet the Democratic leadership is blocking the legislation from reaching the House floor for a fair vote because as Levin says "they know it will pass."

Below are Levin’s relevant remarks, audio available here: