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In a column appearing in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post, Peter Perl, the paper's director of professional development, heaps scorn on Tom DeLay and in particular on his strong religious beliefs. The column approaches parody, so much does it seethe with secular, elitist condescension.

The headline sets the tone: "DeLay's Next Mission From God".

Excerpts:

• "DeLay may be leaving Congress, but he will be back with a vengeance [note choice of phrase], in a new and potentially more powerful role, because he is a ferociously determined man who believes he is on a politico-religious mission from God."
• "DeLay's crusade [again note choice of term] will not be sidetracked by the acts of mortals such as states' attorneys, crooked lobbyists and disgraced former staffers who are poised to testify against him. In DeLay's world he answers only to a higher power, and his personal Armageddon has only just begun."
• "He will artfully squeeze a load of money from the Christian Right as he makes his thunderous argument from multiple pulpits in the weeks and months ahead."
• "The new Tom DeLay will combine aspects of the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and Lee Atwater, the late right-wing political consultant with the legendary killer instinct."
• "Looking back, I see DeLay as a somewhat pathetic figure."
• "What struck me as truly pathetic, though, was his shambles of a family life."
• "We will see DeLay constantly smiling as he delivers his message because in his heart he knows that we hopeless sinners will always hate the messenger."

In keeping with the religion-themed nature of Perl's column, let's undertake a little exegesis of his parting shot at DeLay - that he will be "constantly smiling because . . . he knows that we hopeless sinners will always hate the messenger." If DeLay is a devout Christian - as is the gist of Perl's column - why would he believe that sinners are "hopeless"?

Here's a few more recent examples of impending "Today" co-host Meredith Vieira sounding liberal on ABC's "The View," courtesy of the MRC Cyber Alert archive:

June 9, 2005: Vieira insisted to Sean Hannity that Hillary’s no puppet of her husband, and whacks away at abstinence-only sex education: "Why does the federal government deny funding then in terms of [sex education] classes for kids if they don't preach anything other than abstinence?"

January 22, 2003: As "The View" crew ganged up on pro-life actress Jennifer O'Neill, Vieira argued: "But prior to abortion becoming legal that’s when things were really secret much more so than after it became legal, and very dangerous. So there is going to be abortion one way or the other."

Any faithful watcher of “The McLaughlin Group” knows that one of the most transparently biased members of the antique media over the past two decades has been Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift. Week in and week out, Eleanor rips apart every Republican on the political landscape while oozing nothing but adoration for those on the opposite side of the aisle even when they are found guilty of serious transgressions.

Clift’s op-ed posted at Newsweek’s website on Friday is a fine example. After somewhat misrepresenting the seriousness of the recent allegations that have emerged from Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff I. Lewis Libby concerning unclassified information from a National Intelligence Estimate by President Bush, Clift went right into a stump speech: “The only way the American people can stop Bush’s imperial expansion of power short is to turn out in massive numbers to take back one or the other body of Congress from Republican control.”

When things got a bit contentious this morning between conservative Jim Pinkerton and liberal Ellen Ratner on Fox & Friends Weekend's 'Long & the Short of It' segment, Pinkerton proposed a peace plan that other warring parties might well wish to adopt: "let NewsBusters.org sort this out."

The bone of contention was just what what it was that President Bush declassified - some would say leaked - and that Scooter Libby is in turn alleged to have provided to the press - presumably in the person of Judy Miller of the NY Times.

Ratner: "This was a Nixon bad-list kind of trick [presumably a reference to Nixon's 'enemies' list] to get . . . "

Host Kiran Chetry [back from maternity leave - and beautiful as ever, I might add]: "Why?"

Two conservative writers have harshly criticized the instant reaction of bloggers and commentators to the propaganda tape that captors made kidnapped Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll make in Iraq before she was released. In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby opined:

I have always believed that racing to report a story makes a lot more sense than racing to express a point of view about it. No doubt there are some sages who don't need time to reflect -- or to wait for more facts, or to see how a story turns out -- in order to generate some well-chosen words of genuine wisdom. My own experience is that insight and good judgment don't usually work that way. I find that thought and a bit of distance vastly improve the odds of coming up with something worth saying -- and that rushing to tell the world what to think of the latest headlines makes for shallow, half-baked, or unfair commentary.

Reminiscent of Al Franken on the Late Show last October, on Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, actor Ben Affleck charged that President Bush “probably also leaked” Valerie Plame's name and so “if he did, you can be hung for that! That's treason!” In full rant, an apoplectic Affleck asserted: “You could be killed. That's not a joking around Tom DeLay 'I'll do a year, I bribed the state officials with corporate money.' That's like they shoot you in the battlefield for doing that.”

Affleck appeared on Maher's panel with Senator Joe Biden and Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner. A couple of minutes later, after Sammon suggested Tom DeLay's resignation means the loss of a “poster boy for the left” so they can't use him anymore to raise funds, Affleck besmirched DeLay as a “criminal” while simultaneously demonstrating his political naivete. Though the Texas redistricting orchestrated by DeLay made his district less Republican, Affleck contended: "Tom DeLay personally gerrymandered that district so severely that it looks like a map of Italy....There won't be a Democrat elected in that seat for a thousand years. You can't say he's the poster boy for the left. He happens to be an incredibly powerful Republican who is a criminal and now you blame Democrats for pointing it out!"

Video clip of Affleck talking about hanging and shooting Bush for treason (35 seconds). Real (1.1 MB) or Windows Media (1.25 MB), plus MP3 audio (200 KB).

Completely off-topic but since it's a weekend, here goes. It seems as though the "Star Wars kid," a roly-poly French Canadian boy whose awkward copying of a light saber fight made him into an ironic web celebrity, apparently wasn't happy with being made the object of fun. (Or was it that the petition to get him into the third SW prequel failed?)

In any case, Ghyslain Raza, now 18, reached a settlement with three former schoolmates who put out the video which has since spawned scads of derivative works. The deal, whose terms are not known, averted a lawsuit that was supposed to go to trial Monday. Canada's Globe and Mail has the story:

Lawyers for the three schoolmates had suffered a setback after they were not allowed to introduce as evidence a transcript of a phone conversation Mr. Raza had with a blogger, Jishnu Mukerji.

The blogger had posted a transcript of the exchange on the Internet.

Conducted a month after the video and parodies of it began circulating, the conversation has Mr. Raza calling the spoofs "interesting" but not expressing much distress. [...]

In the transcripts, Mr. Raza said the experience left him unable to attend school.

"It was simply unbearable, totally. It was impossible to attend class," Mr. Raza said.

Camille Paglia, the famed, feminist social critic that calls herself a Democrat, gave an interview to The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, recently (hat tip to Radio Equalizer) in which she attacked a wide array of American media icons. For instance, she stated that the writing of The New York Times was, “‘Upper middle class comfortable elitist liberalism.'"

She then blamed a lot of the left’s difficulties on Hollywood: “‘It's the reason my party, the Democratic Party, is in such bad shape. It's because of the insularity and the arrogance of those views.’"

What do you think about Al Franken, Camille? “‘Good lord! I want to fall asleep. Narcolepsy.’"

And the radio station that carries his swill? “‘It's even slower than NPR. Like a record being played at the wrong speed.’"

As for the perky "Today"...errr "CBS Evening News" host, Paglia isn't impressed:

A March 29 article published by the Free Market Project addressed the recent full-court press by the media to advance the concept that global warming is an imminent threat to our planet. From television reports, to lead articles at major magazines, March was a month filled with madness not just on the basketball court.

Yet, a recent Gallup poll reported by Editor & Publisher indicated that Americans aren’t buying into the insanity: “Contrary to what one might expect, Gallup found that while public concern is higher than in 2004, it is ‘no higher than it has been at several points in the past.’ In fact, Americans are more worried about water pollution, air pollution, and toxic waste than global warming.”

Do you mean that Americans are starting to ignore media propaganda? It appears so:

The Bush administration and all Americans got great news on the economic front Friday when the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 211,000 jobs were added in March while the unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent, the lowest level in four-and-a-half years. Yet NBC didn't see a booming economy. “President Bush used the jobs numbers as a starting point for a new push to try to convince Americans that the economy is, in fact, on a roll,” NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams noted before adding a “but,” as in: "But as NBC News chief financial correspondent Anne Thompson tells us tonight, the economic picture is a bit more complicated." Thompson highlighted how “a new poll out today shows 59 percent of Americans disapprove of the President's handling of the economy." After relaying how Bush blames Iraq for that, Thompson ran a soundbite from an economist who blamed slow wage growth before she recited her own litany: “Also dragging down attitudes, rising health care costs and gas prices. The nation has a negative savings rate, and household debt...is at record levels and could squeeze already strapped family budgets as interest rates continue to rise.” Thompson ended her piece with a quick look at a Massachusetts computer company which is hiring.

At least NBC gave its viewers the basic numbers of the day before trying to discount them. Friday's CBS Evening News didn't utter a syllable about the jobs/unemployment numbers, yet Bob Schieffer's show found time for a second night of coverage of how Bush “authorized leaking classified information” and for a piece on an orphanage in Kenya for elephants -- and that was even before two fluff “Assignment America” segments. ABC's World News Tonight allocated 25 seconds to the unemployment/jobs numbers as anchor Elizabeth Vargas pointed out the 31 consecutive months of job growth. (Transcript of NBC's story follows.)

Let’s see if I have this correct: According to Katie Couric, the future anchor of the CBS Evening News, a town with Catholic themed values is bad, but Al Jazeera is a "voice of reform?" The April 7 edition of NBC's Today featured Couric’s skewed take on a new English version of the network:

Couric: "Analysts claim that unlike most media in the Arab world, Al-Jazeera is a voice of reform, offering uncensored political dissent and debate."

Now, don’t forget, this is the network best known for carrying long videos of bin Laden and grisly images of murdered American soldiers.

During his final commentary segment, in which Geraldo Rivera praised the role of the Catholic Church in the immigration debate, the sometime boxer took a swing at CNN's Lou Dobbs.

"Now as Congress approaches a compromise that rejects the severe and mean-spirited sanctions advocated by people like the shrill CNN commentator Lou Dobbs, instead choosing a path to legalization for the 11 million the role of the Catholic Church has played will go far to restore its own tattered image..."

The following is Rivera's full commentary:

Geraldo Rivera: "Of all the hot button domestic issues currently igniting impassioned debate in our country the hottest of all is immigration. When that draconian legislation was proposed in Congress that would’ve made felons of the 11 million men, women and children living here illegally several dramatic things happened. First then most visibly hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters took to the streets of cities all across the country to express outrage over the mean-spirited proposal. But of all the gathering forces on both sides of this incendiary issue none has been as potent or potentially influential as the U.S. Roman Catholic Church. The Church has boldly stepped forward to advocate for moderation, reason and compassion. This is Father Larry Dowling yesterday in suburban Chicago."

At 9:15am on CNN’s American Morning, senior political analyst Bill Schneider reported that President Bush declassified national security information in order to discredit a critic of the administration. In doing so, he promoted Democratic attacks against the President for being "hypocritical" in "leaking" information from the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE]. Schneider did acknowledge that it was legal for the President to declassify this information, but then took this shot at him:

Bill Schneider: "Well, the White House doesn't really want to get into a discussion of this issue. For one thing, it makes the President look a little, well, shall we say, hypocritical?...It was not a crime for the President to do that because, as the attorney in the White House said, anything he authorizes is instantly declassified. But it does make the President look a little foolish and deceptive, because this leak was authorized, again, according to Mr. Libby, to discredit a political critic of the administration. It was authorized for political reasons, and that’s a little bit embarrassing."

On Wednesday, NPR's "Fresh Air With Terry Gross," which airs on hundreds of NPR stations across America, interviewed long-time New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer on his new book, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii To Iraq." To Kinzer, every American intervention is a nightmare, one he compared to child abuse:

These interventions abroad, these overthrows of foreign governments, not only plunge whole regions of the world into instability and turn them into places from which undreamed threats emerge years later, but they undermine American security. They are not just bad for the countries where we intervene. You cannot violently overthrow a foreign regime and then expect that that won't have any long-term effect. It's like beating your child every day. You cannot expect that that child is going to grow up normal.

As the Meredith Vieira incident shows us, network anchors and talk show hosts can display their biases off the air by where they go and speak...or march. At the tail end of "Hardball" Thursday night, MRC's Geoff Dickens found MSNBC host Chris Matthews promoted Rosie O'Donnell and her new HBO documentary on her gay-family cruises. But the real eye-opening part for media watchdogs was Matthews admitting he spoke at an event for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay-left lobbying group, in Philadelphia. (Sure enough, here's a picture, with the Matthews mane in a frostier phase. And wow! See another media speaker, NPR "Fresh Air" hostess Terry Gross, whose show originates from Philly.) Matthews explained:

Today the New York Times finally corrects a left-wing myth perpetrated in its pages as fact.

“An article on Feb. 9 about the military's recruitment of Hispanics referred incompletely to the belief of some critics that Hispanics in the Iraq war and blacks in the Vietnam War accounted for a disproportionate number of casualties. Statistics do not support the belief. Hispanics, who are about 14 percent of the population, accounted for about 11 percent of the military deaths in Iraq through Dec. 3, 2005. About 12.5 percent of the military dead in Vietnam were African-Americans, who made up about 13.5 percent of the general population during the war years.”

But that milquetoast correction doesn’t hint at the charged nature of what reporter Lizette Alvarez wrote in the Feb. 9 edition, which simply restated left-wing paranoia as fact:

A Democratic member of Congress assaults a police officer, whips up racial animosity, and then is forced to retract the allegations. The newspaper article on that would surely be a painful read for the politician.

Unless the pol is Cynthia McKinney and the paper is The New York Times. The article – which the representative’s staff is surely framing right now – sets up the left-wing congresswoman as “a brilliant and gutsy crusader for the disenfranchised.”

This is how Sheryl Gay Stolberg opens the article, headlined “After Accusing Police of Racism, Congresswoman Apologizes”:

USA Today omitted any reference to incoming Today host Meredith Vieira's anti-war activism in Peter Johnson's April 7 Life section article, even as a brief, indirect allusion to NewsBusters.org coverage of the controversy was included in an online filing posted the evening of April 6:

Conservative bloggers pounced on NBC's choice, saying Vieira has a long record on The View as an anti-war liberal. But Vieira said that on The View, which she expects to leave in May, she was paid to express her opinions. "There is nothing I have ever said that I am ashamed of," she said, but on Today, her opinions "have no place. It's a different animal."

As the MRC's Brent Baker posted to NewsBusters.org shortly after noon on April 6:

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne had a hard time hiding his glee about current difficulties facing the right in an op-ed published today entitled “Run-Down Republicans; Where Is The GOP’s Agenda?” In it, Dionne blamed all of America’s problems on Republicans without referring to any of the good news or the responsibility the minority party has for the bad: “No, the most important development is the collapse of purpose in the Republican Party and the sense of exhaustion at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.”

After suggesting Republicans had no fresh ideas, Dionne used health savings accounts as an example: “Virtually no one other than the president -- oh, and perhaps a few ideologues and insurance companies -- sees HSAs as anything approaching a comprehensive solution to the nation's growing health-care problem.” Well, E.J., isn’t that really your view inasmuch as you won’t be happy with anything less than a universal healthcare plan fully funded by taxpayers?

That aside, Dionne concluded by stating unequivocally that conservatism is on its last legs:

NBC's Dateline featured a researcher who makes a controversial claim: Mohammad was not really a proph--

No, that's not the controversial claim the researcher made, although it is just as inflammatory. The one Michael Baigent told to NBC was that Jesus did not die on the cross, a belief that undermines one of the central tenets of Christianity. After NBC Dateline's failed attempt at finding "redneck" NASCAR fans who would persecute fans in Muslim outfits, those at Dateline demonstrate that they themselves have succeeded in persecuting a religion.

Correspondent Sara James reports that Michael Baigent alleges a coverup.

A cover up, he contends, because his clues point to a radical conclusion: that Jesus did not die on the cross.

The Washington Post "Style" section has several pieces on liberal blacks today. Fashion writer Robin Givhan devotes much ado to Cynthia McKinney's hairdo, panning both the new version and the old ("The braids made her look as though she should be hiking up the Alps wearing a gingham dress and carrying two milk pails.") She also gets in the usual liberal digs -- talking about "ugly" talk from conservative blogs: "A black woman's hair is an easy, timeworn source of racist mockery." And: "Indeed, plenty of black folks see all kinds of dire race-traitor undertones in Condoleezza Rice's smooth, controlled cap of hair."

B. Duane Cross writes at NASCAR.com that NBC was unable to find people in the racing stands who would persecute their "plants" wearing Middle Eastern clothing. Also, the NBC crew did not do a good job of concealing themselves.

NBC News baited the hook, but netted nothing in its "sting" attempt to find anti-Muslim sentiments during the Martinsville race weekend....

The inference is that NASCAR fans are bigots, and NBC News was hoping to bait fans into making insensitive remarks to the Muslim / Arab people it had planted at the track.

Ramsey Poston, NASCAR's managing director of corporate communications, said Wednesday that no instances of unrest were reported. "No one bothered them," Poston said.

That didn't take long! Back in the MSM's Watergate heyday, it took a while for a steady drumbeat of revelations, stories and allegations to gather sufficient momentum. The pace has apparently quickened in the modern liberal-media world. On this morning's Today show, speaking of the allegation that President Bush authorized the disclosure of information by Scooter Libby, Matt Lauer asked Chris Matthews: "scale of 1 to 10, [where] 10 is a deal-ender, where does this fall?"

Matthews didn't hesitate: "heading to 10."

Even Lauer seemed taken aback: "Really, that big?"

For good measure, Matthews later analogized VP Cheney to Henry II having put out a hit leading to the murder of a dissenter in his administration.

Like the cable networks during the day, the three broadcast networks on Thursday night were hyperbolic over the revelation that Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, testified that in July of 2003 President Bush had authorized the leaking of parts of a classified pre-war report on Iraq in order to correct misinformation being spread by Joe Wilson. All the newscasts led with the allegation and stressed Bush's hypocrisy in denouncing leaks while leaking material himself, but NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was the most dramatic in employing the most nefarious language. He intoned: “There is an allegation tonight that President Bush authorized the leak of government information -- sensitive, classified information about Iraq -- in order to get back at a critic of his administration and the build-up to war.” Referring to Libby's charge, Williams asserted: “If what he is saying is true, it would mean he was used, in effect, by the President and Vice President to leak secrets. It is a story of much intrigue, big names, and potentially very high stakes.”

Bob Schieffer teased the CBS Evening News: “President Bush has long made clear he despises leaks and leakers. But tonight, he is accused of authorizing a leak of classified intelligence." ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas asked: “Did the White House practice the opposite of what it preached?" White House correspondent Martha Raddatz equated Bush's supposed divulging of a pre-war assessment of a regime which no longer existed with those who disclosed ongoing operational information about the efforts to prevent terrorist attacks: “The Bush administration has vigorously pursued investigations of those who leaked documents pertaining to the secret domestic spying program, and to disclosures of secret prisons run overseas." (Partial transcripts follow.)

The graphic claims 'Kerry Plays Hardball', but it was all slow-pitch softball this evening for the junior senator from Massachusetts. After feeding Kerry a number of leading questions letting him tee off on the way Pres. Bush allegedly misled the country into war, talk turned to exit strategies.

Matthews: "Senator, you have a plan, pretty hard, about how we can deal with getting out of Iraq."

Kerry: "Well, it's time to get tough, Chris."

Now there's a courageous politician for you - one willing to admit he's tough.

Kerry repeated a stock formulation he's been using this week: "The policy is broken. When you go down to the Vietnam War Memorial, you take a look at it, you see that almost half the names that are on that wall were added after our leaders knew that the policy wasn't working. That's immoral, and I believe it's immoral today for us to pursue a policy where our kids are dying, losing their limbs, going to Walter Reed . . . because Iraqi politicians won't compromise."

CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer praised Katie Couric’s selection as his successor in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer aired during the 4pm EDT hour, and again in the 7pm EDT hour, of Thursday's The Situation Room. As MRC analyst Brian Boyd reported here, CBS correspondent Andy Rooney appeared on the April 5 Imus in the Morning radio program, where he told Don Imus that he was "not enthusiastic" about Couric’s hiring, and that "I don’t know anybody at CBS News who is pleased that she’s coming here." When Schieffer was asked about Rooney’s comments, he politely disagreed with his colleague.

Bob Schieffer: "Well, if he says he didn’t know anyone I, I hate to tell you, Andy, but you must have not talked to me, because I’m pleased she’s coming here, so I’d have to question you on that. You know, I, I learned a long time ago that I let everybody speak for themselves. That’s Andy’s view. That’s what, you know, that’s what Andy does. He, he speaks his mind. I, I just don’t agree with him. He’s a great friend of mine but I don’t agree with him on that."

If two women squabbling is a “cat fight,” would two men going after one another be a “dog fight?” Regardless, The Washington Post’s Bob “Watergate” Woodward is in the middle of quite a war of words with The Nation’s David “Tax the Rich” Corn that, of course, goes counter to their pacifistic proclivities. The melee began last Friday when Corn published a blog piece suggesting that Woodward’s book “Plan of Attack” did not accurately depict a January 2003 conversation at the White House between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. On April 4, Woodward struck back. In a letter published at Corn’s blog at The Nation, Woodward began:

“I was genuinely shocked to read your recent column "Woodward and Reality."  The column is thoroughly dishonest and represents another low for journalism.  Apparently facts don't matter to you if you think you can score a point.”

Of course, this could be said of most antique media reporting. Regardless, round one went to Woodward.  After going through a point-by-point analysis of where Corn was wrong in his assertions, Woodward questioned if Corn even read “Plan of Attack”:

On April 3, the New York Times reported (Man Hit by Car; Witnesses Say He Was Chased) on a young man who was seriously hurt (and later died) after darting into a busy Harlem intersection. Witnesses to the incident, according to the Times' account, said it appeared the victim was being chased by several young men. No reference to the race of the victim or the young men pursuing him was mentioned.

Today's New York Post Online Edition reports on the same incident: "The NYPD hate-crimes unit is probing a report that a white NYU student killed by a car in Harlem was fleeing a gang of black teenagers screaming 'Get whitey!' sources said yesterday."

Meredith Vieira, one of the hosts on ABC's daytime show The View, who announced on Thursday's program that she has agreed to replace Katie Couric as co-host of NBC's Today, marched in an anti-Iraq war protest back in August of 2004. On the Monday, August 30, 2004 edition of The View, the former CBS 60 Minutes reporter told viewers that she attended the anti-Bush protest held in New York City on the Sunday before the Republican convention opened, insisting: "I didn't go anti-Bush or pro-Kerry. I'm still so upset about this war and I'm so proud I live in a country where you can protest." She showed a photo of herself marching with her pre-teen daughter and her husband, Richard, who was the senior political producer at CBS News for most of the 1980s. Behind her in the photo: A protest sign featuring a “W,” for George W. Bush, with a slash through it.

Earlier in 2004, she declared of the Iraq war: "Everything's been built on lies. Everything! I mean the entire pretext for war." And, with war impending in March of 2003, Vieira argued that anti-war protests "should be consistent and repeated every day, I believe." On other episodes of The View Vieira has also made clear her opposition to the death penalty and when guest Ann Coulter charged that “liberals hate America,” Vieira called that “stupid" and became defensive: “But some people wrap themselves in the flag -- I mean, that's what some liberals are against.” Then she charged: "Just like McCarthy: 'I'm just being patriotic.'"

Video clip #1: Vieira talking about participating in the 2004 anti-Iraq war march (1:25). Real (2.5 MB) or Windows Media (2.9 MB), plus MP3 audio (425 KB).

Video clip #2: Vieira declaring war “built on lies” (28 secs). Real (900 KB) or Windows Media (1 MB), plus MP3 audio (168 KB).