Not surprisingly, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh had some choice words Monday for the media's epic fail concerning their hunt for dirt in the recently-released email of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
Probably the best line concerning this disgraceful episode was, "Palin did better in her public colonoscopy than Katie Couric did in hers" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
In the wake of the release of 24,000 emails from the office former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the media’s obsession with the former Vice Presidential candidate has reached such a fever pitch that even Morning Joe can no longer stand it.“Did you see the obsessive countdown to Sarah Palin's e-mails being released? Did they not make themselves look like fools and - and just prove - and again we have been harshly critical of Sarah Palin, but did the media not prove how biased , over the top biased they’ve been every step of the way on Sarah Palin?” host Joe Scarborough said this morning.
(video after the break)
When lefties Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore think the media's Palin Derangement Syndrome has gone too far, you know the press are hitting new depths of indecency.
Judging from the couple's Twitter accounts, the recent feeding frenzy over the former Alaska governor's email was all they could stand:
Imagine a Republican president giving a speech on tough economic times in which he claimed that the plight of Americans who are hurting is what is on his mind every day as he walks to the Oval Office. Imagine that same Republican president, in that same speech, bragging that he has "a better plane" and "a bigger entourage" than when he was a candidate. Now imagine the howls from the MSM about such president's vainglory and insensitivity.
President Obama gave just such a speech today. Speaking at a plant in North Carolina about the tough economic times, PBO claimed that "what drives me every day as I walk down to the Oval Office" is the need to provide jobs and economic security for Americans.
But Obama opened his speech by bragging that "I have a better plane" than when he visited the same plant three years ago as a presidential candidate. Later, in explaining that he had brought the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness with him to North Carolina, Obama boasted "I travel with a bigger entourage" than he did as a candidate.
View video after the jump.
It's Sunday evening. What better way to wind down the Lord's Day than tuning into National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" for an unbalanced story on the "ordination" of four supposedly Catholic women "priests"?
Yesterday evening, NPR's Lily Percy profiled two of four women "ordained" in a "Roman Catholic Womenpriests" ceremony on June 4 held at St. John's United Church of Christ church in Catonsville, Md. For good measure, one of the ordinands, Patti LaRosa, is an openly-practicing lesbian. While Percy noted that Catholic canon law recognizes the priesthood is solely for baptized men, she gave listeners the impression that women's ordination was a form of civil disobedience that may one day lead to change in ordination standards:
Michael Shear, chief writer for the New York Times’s “Caucus” blog, sounded sarcastic and bitter, almost angry, at the opening of the paper’s last “Caucus” podcast on Thursday about having to talk about the Anthony Weiner sex scandal.
Host Sam Roberts: “But you pointed out that this is a particularly inopportune time for this latest sex scandal to break in Washington. Why is that?”
Michael Shear: “Lots of policy and we’re going to start with the sex scandal! That’s fine. Yeah, it’s not a good time for Democrats.”
So what vital hard-core political news did Shear spend the entire following day covering to compensate for having to discuss Weinergate? The three-year-old trove of Sarah Palin emails from her time as Alaska governor.
The June 13 edition of MRC’s Notable Quotables has now been posted over at www.MRC.org, showcasing the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes from the liberal media over the past two weeks. This edition features: CNN’s Piers Morgan snootily slamming the Tea Party as “not the brightest” and perhaps similar to the mobs Hitler and Mussolini employed in the 1930s; MSNBC’s Martin Bashir seriously arguing that Sarah Palin is a criminal because of the American flag painted on the side of her tour bus; and news reporters fretting over Weinergate, worried that President Obama might lose a “very important" left-wing critic now that a “rising star” of the Left has become tainted by scandal.
The entire package (including four videos) is posted at www.MRC.org (click here for the nicely-formatted three-page PDF); here are some of the highlights:
Remember the movie "Say Anything"? Same can be said for Cenk Uygur's approach to criticizing Republicans.
Chatting with his MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow on her show Friday night, Uygur apparently forgot he was on the air and described President Obama's opponents in a way one might expect if the audience consisted solely of liberals. (Then again, it was MSNBC).
Here's what Uygur told Maddow about Republican efforts to retool Medicare before it spends itself broke, followed by his overwrought description of Obama's "enemies" (video below page break) --
Openly-gay CNN anchor Don Lemon dug back to a May 16 interview with liberal Joy Behar to smear GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum just before Monday night's Republican primary debate. Behar then said of the socially-conservative Santorum that he "seems like a big homophobe," and Lemon made sure Friday to reference that smear and put Santorum on the defensive.
As NewsBusters reported Friday, Lemon badgered Santorum in an airport over his positions on gay marriage. The CNN segment featured an abbreviated portion of the interview, and Lemon aired the extended version Sunday evening on the 7 p.m. EDT hour of Newsroom.
A Baptist preacher calling a sinner to repent and trust in Jesus Christ for salvation is hardly news. Except, perhaps, when it's done via Twitter.
USA Today religion blogger Cathy Lynn Grossman yesterday took seminary president and Twitter user Albert Mohler to task for this tweet sent on Saturday:
While grilling former Pennsylvania Senator and presidential hopeful Rick Santorum on NBC's Sunday Meet the Press, host David Gregory was skeptical of the idea that Americans should be able to choose their own health care plan: "They're better off with the freedom that they've got in the vagaries of the private insurance market?"
Gregory was responding to Santorum's criticism of ObamaCare: "[Obama] doesn't believe Americans can actually make decisions for themselves, that he has to tell you how much money you're going to, you're going to spend on health care." After doubting the value of freedom in choosing medical insurance, Gregory pressed: "But you'd repeal the President's healthcare plan totally? Even covering pre-existing conditions, which most Republicans agree with?"
According to MSNBC's Thomas Roberts, who last week seemed to enjoy correcting Sarah Palin for her historical "flub," President Lyndon Johnson "was never actually elected Commander in Chief." The cable anchor relayed that piece of false information on Monday in a segment downplaying the chances of another Texan, potential 2012 candidate Rick Perry.
In fact, Lyndon Johnson won the 1964 election in a landslide, capturing all but six states. Discussing Texas, Roberts announced, "President Lyndon Johnson was from Texas and he was never actually elected Commander in Chief."
[See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted a reluctance on the part of Associated Press reporters to describe the farm involved in "the world's deadliest known outbreak of E. coli" as "organic."
The wire service issued two additional reports this morning, both of which failed to use the "O-word." The case for the use of the word in these reports is as strong, if not stronger, than it was in the seven items discussed yesterday. Beyond that, AP, along with the rest of the press, has failed to explore the possibility that Germany's 1950s-era outlook towards farming practices may have helped to create the conditions allowing such an outbreak to occur.
For general discussion and debate about politics, the economy, sports, and whatever else tickles your fancy.
Possible talking point: Should a gay judge have recused himself in California's Proposition 8 case?
Much of the media made fools of themselves with their excited obsession over the release of Sarah Palin’s gubernatorial e-mails, but NBC News went the furthest, sending, as did CNN, reporters to Juneau as the network uniquely led its Friday night newscast by hyping the non-news as a major event. “On the broadcast tonight,” anchor Lester Holt heralded, “mail call. Thousands of pages of e-mail from Sarah Palin's time as Governor. What we're learning about her tonight.”
Following a story from “national investigative correspondent” Michael Isikoff in which “MSNBC.com investigative reporter” Bill Dedman had the gall to complain “we waited longer for these records than Sarah Palin was Governor, almost a thousand days,” NBC’s David Gregory recognized, in an understatement: “As Mike and his team are finding, not a lot of bombshells here.”