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Directly following the tragic death of Katherine Sykes, the mother of the Wisconsin conservative radio talk show host and blogger Charlie Sykes, liberal talk show host Micheal McGee, Sr. has come out with this statement, live on his radio show (via Channel 12):

“Mother Sykes, she dead. To me it’s the vengeance of God. I ain’t got no tears. Matter of fact a woman that would have a fool like that deserve whatever is coming her. She raised a sure enough idiot,” McGee said on his radio show. “My instincts say Charlie Sykes killed his momma, cuz she live out in this big palace in Mequon all isolated. He got tired of waiting for her money.”

Where is the outrage? Only one small local media outlet, Channel 12, and a number of blogs (Badger Blogger, Marquette Warrior, Michelle Malkin and Gop3.com) have covered it. If this story was reversed, and a conservative said this about McGee's mother, the entire national media along with Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be on the scene. The article on Channel 12 has indicated that McGee's next show will not air but subsequent shows are not in jeopardy yet. Without public outcry, this type of double standard will continue.

Weighing in on Time's "Swampland" blog, journalist Joe Klein opined that the best question of last night's GOP primary debate was the infamous "What do you dislike most about America" question. Klein slammed the candidates' performances, but particularly picked on Romney, whom he mocked as overly optimistic:

I could imagine him doing the Reagan nice-guy, slightly-boggled head twitch, especially when he was asked the question of the night: What do you dislike most about America?

Romney's answer: I love America. Great. Good. Great Great. Creative. People. The American People. Love. Great....

[...]

This is a basic DNA difference between the parties. Republicans see the American people as perfect; the American government as an alien import from France. You put America and Flawed in the same sentence, and any Republican will go all (faux) De Toqueville--great good great good etc.

Al Gore's prophecy tour of doom hit a snag the other day. Apparently, he caused a stir among some atheist environmentalists for stating that he believes in creation science. Amazingly, no one in the media has picked it up. The irony is especially delicious since many on the left are making fun of some of the GOP presidential candidates for having the same belief.

One liberal Canadian blogger who was at a Gore presentation reports Gore's act of blasphemy:

The slide I found particularly interesting/shocking/sad, was his new(?) slide containing a graph of human population growth over the past couple hundred-thousand years. It started off good. He pointed at the beginning of the graph, showing the population of humans on Earth from 200,000 years ago, and referred to the “rise of humans." Cool beans. So he believes that Homo sapiens evolved from other hominid ancestors, right? Nope.

Today's joke is below the fold...

Are the media intentionally downplaying or ignoring reports that indicate a growing al Qaeda involvement in Iraq?

Late Thursday evening, CNN.com reported (h/t LGF, emphasis added):

American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday.”

This was a compilation of a report that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer did earlier in the day on “The Situation Room.”

However, Stars and Stripes actually reported Tuesday that military officials shared this information on Monday (emphasis added):

When a lie makes it into print once, it's happenstance. A mere accident, no doubt, due to a lapse of judgment in editing the news feed. What, then, is it called when a lie is repeated countless times without apology? Apparently, it's called "business as usual" for the media. Whenever a funeral is presented by photographers embedded in the Palestinian territories, we're faced with dozens of photographs of crowds of weeping, screaming, shouting people parading around in the streets. We're also inevitably presented with a caption describing how the Israeli occupiers are responsible for the deaths, and how Israel is pouring out suffering all over the innocent, helpless Palestinian people. While these photos always make for a powerful statement, and are picked up by news organizations worldwide for their raw emotional appeal, the information presented along with them isn't always what it appears at first glance to be.

Romney won, Rudy lost. That's Chris Matthews' take on the GOP presidential debate he moderated on MSNBC last night. Matthews made his views clear during his appearance on this morning's "Today." Meredith Vieira, who interviewed Matthews at 7:09 EDT, seemed to share her colleague's assessment.

TODAY CO-HOST MEREDITH VIEIRA: Winners and losers in your assessment?

MSNBC HOST CHRIS MATTHEWS: Oh, come on. Well, let me just say I thought that just factually, Giuliani stood out on the issue of abortion rights, clearly. At one point I asked if they would be happy, if it would be a good day for America, if the courts struck down Roe v. Wade, the court decision back in '73 that gave a woman the right to an abortion, and he said 'that would be OK,' Very tentative. And then later on he reasserted his position that he is for abortion rights. So I think that separated him on a big issue.

VIEIRA: Yeah, but Chris, he also said it would be OK if a strict constructionist judge upheld Roe v. Wade. It sounded like he was talking out of both sides of his mouth there.

View video here

Diane Sawyer granted an interview for the May issue of Reader’s Digest. In it, Sawyer said she is eager to interview North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, and would jump at the chance to interview Osama bin Laden. The interviewer, Sara Davidson, did not press Sawyer on the question of whether she was too soft or light in her interviews with anti-American heads of state (as with asking Syrian dictator Bashar Assad whether he has Shania Twain on his iPod). But Sawyer did use the words "fanatic extremists" and "horrific terrorists," which doesn’t always emerge first in journalistic conversations.

RD: Who else are you most eager to interview?
Sawyer: Kim Jong-il. I think he is unlike anyone else in a leadership position in the world right now, and North Korea is such an intriguing country.

If a high-ranking member of the Taliban told Al-Jazeera that the recent attempted assassination of Vice President Dick Cheney was devised by Osama bin Laden, would you expect the media to report it?

In reality, after this interview, the claim was largely discredited. However, one has to wonder why Mullah Dadullah’s (the believed leader of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan) statement made last Wednesday went largely ignored.

Was this an attempt by a media seemingly always interested in downplaying the war on terror to keep the public from even considering that bin Laden could have been involved?

Regardless of the answer, Dadullah’s words certainly seemed newsworthy (video available here courtesy Memri TV):

Update (15:33): MRC/NB's Rich Noyes will be on Fox News at 4:15 p.m. to discuss this. Look for a new post shortly thereafter with video.

In a debate packed with silly questions and ones matching left-wing attack points on GOP candidates, in the first “Interactive Round” of questions submitted by the public on Politico.com, a co-sponsor of the debate, Mitt Romney got the most bizarre. The Politico Executive Editor Jim VandeHei, a Washington Post political reporter before jumping to The Politico earlier this year, found this one worth posing: “Daniel Dekovnick [sp phonetic] from Walnut Creek, California wants to know, 'What do you dislike most about America?'" Romney responded: “Gosh, I love America. I'm afraid I'm going to be at a loss for words...”(More questions below)

Video clip of VandeHei posing the “what do you dislike most about America?” question and Romney's response (45 secs): Real (1.3 MB) or Windows Media (1.5 MB), plus MP3 audio (260 KB)

Read past the jump for more oddball questions and a huge blog roundup.

Anti-Americanism at its finest in the first GOPer presidential debate. Video at this NewsBusters node.

20:58. Chris Matthews seems to be ignorant of the term "altered nuclear transfer" in stem-cell debate. Appears confused when Mitt Romney brings it up.

21:20. Matthews continues his obsession with Scooter Libby. Asks the insignificant question of whether he should be pardoned. C'mon.

21:24. More Matthews genius: "Do you think it would be a good thing to have Bill Clinton in the White House again?"

21:29. Unrelated but I wanted everyone to see that Andrew Sullivan recently fell for a hoax about a "kids version of '24.'"

CBS Radio might be about to get a very expensive lesson in contract law, for terminated former “shock-jock” Don Imus has just hired topnotch legal counsel in what could be the most-watched trial since O.J. Simpson’s.

As reported by Hollywood Today (h/t Glenn Reynolds, emphasis added throughout):

Don Imus is suing CBS Radio for more than $40 million. He is suing for vindication, according to a media expert, who said “(Imus) wants his name cleared.”

The former talk show host hired one of the country’s top First Amendment trial lawyers to sue CBS for firing him over racial and sexual on-air comments. But Imus points out his contract calls for “irreverent” and “controversial,” and his “nappy-headed ho” remark was certainly that.

Hmmm. That was in the contract? It appears CBS somehow forgot:

The bad news just keeps coming for CBS anchor Katie Couric. First she was trashed in a very public way in the Philadelphia Inquirer, next it was let out that the man she replaced, Bob Schieffer, was probably behind the attacks. Now comes news that she lags quite a bit behind her ABC and NBC rivals in public opinion polls:

One-third of Americans say they have a negative view of Katie Couric, her personal popularity lagging behind rivals Charles Gibson and Brian Williams just as her evening news program trails in the ratings.

Barack Obama's campaign has gotten itself into a bit of trouble over a Myspace profile. Not just any Myspace profile, however:

For the past two and a half years, the page has been run by an Obama supporter from Los Angeles named Joe Anthony. At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves.

But as the site exploded in popularity in recent months, the campaign became concerned about an outsider having control of the content and responses going out under Obama's name and told Anthony they wanted him to turn it over.

If you missed it last night, Glenn Beck’s skeptical program about anthropogenic global warming, “Exposed: The Climate of Fear,” aired on CNN Headline News.

In it, Beck skewered many of the misnomers advanced by global warming alarmists, especially soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore (full transcript available here).

 

Video (3:05): Real (2.28 MB) or Windows (1.90 MB), plus MP3 (2.83 MB).

One particularly delicious segment occurred early in the program as Beck presented the facts about the Kyoto Protocol that few on the left care to recall, especially former Vice President Gore:

 Over the past few days, Gates of Vienna discussed a very troubling story about Finnish blogger Mikko Ellila, “who has been summoned by the police for a hearing next week, all because of the content of his blog posts.” Mikko posts in Finnish but contacted several people in English about this, such as the Australian blogger Prodos, who owns the site that hosts the potentially criminal blog.  Mikko explained to Prodos why he is going to be questioned by Finnish police:

According to the letter, I am suspected of “hate speech” merely
 because I have pointed out that Islam is a fascist ideology that
 advocates killing Jews, atheists, homosexuals etc.

 Fellow Finnish blogger Vasarahammer explained more about Mikko's problem:

New York Times reporters can't stand it when President Bush actually has the nerve to speak in front of supportive crowds, and neither did the headline writer to reporter Jim Rutenberg's Thursday story, "Outing Finds Bush in the Thick of Softball Season." The text box reads: "In a challenging time, the president turns to a friendly audience."

That "friendly audience" would be the Associated General Contractors of America. Rutenberg, as if in disbelief, quoted chapter and verse the often-religious, positive bent of some of the audience questions to Bush.

A “promising” new drug could save lives of people fighting osteoporosis, but neither ABC “World News with Charles Gibson,” nor CBS “Evening News” even mentioned the drug’s manufacturer - Novartis Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: NVS) - in May 2 broadcasts.

Zoledronic acid “may be just what the doctor ordered,” according to Katie Couric. The broadcasts cited a new study that found a 70-percent decline in spine fractures and a 41-percent decline in hip fractures among the patients studied.

Yesterday, NewsBusters executive editor Matthew Sheffield passed along how bloggers had picked up on Virgin Airlines screening the 9/11 conspiracy documentary "Loose Change" as an in-flight movie selection.

Ace notes the development here. Ericka Andersen of Human Events and Bryan of Hot Air also covered the story.

Thanks to radio host Andrew Wilkow's Sirius radio program, Virgin has decided to pull the selection from its cinematic library.

Andersen reminds her readers that "one simple phone call" can make all the difference, as was the case with Wilkow's producer complaining to Virgin. I suspect, however, that a large, irate blog readership also had a role to play. Over 15,000 hits came up for my "loose change" search on Technorati, while over 600 hits came up when I looked for "Virgin Airlines" on the blog search site.

Hundreds of thousands of potential airline passengers are not worth messing with, after all.

For two straight days, "Good Morning America" featured interviews with Dina Matos-McGreevey, the ex-wife of former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey. For both segments, co-host Diane Sawyer peppered Mrs. McGreevey with questions about homophobia and whether people should feel sorry for her former, now publically gay, spouse.

During Wednesday’s interview, Sawyer mentioned a subject that arose in custody hearings for the couple’s children. Apparently Jim McGreevey, who resigned after his homosexual affairs and hiring of grossly unqualified individuals became public, kept a rather large photograph of a naked man in his apartment where the children could see, much to the horror of his ex-wife. Sawyer prefaced this by calling the issue one where people "will come down, maybe, on two sides of it." She also wondered if homophobia could be a reason the governor’s wife reacted so negatively:

It's commencement speech time again at colleges and universities across America. Goshen College is one of the few to have already graduated its class of 2007, and CBS producer Greg Kandra took notice. Kandra plugged a speech by the Rev. Joy Carroll Wallis* at Goshen College:

In the days to come, we'll be reading a lot of snippets from commencement speeches. 'Tis the season. Some will be hilarious. Some dreadful. A few will actually say something that make you put down your morning coffee and think. This speech is one of those.

[...]

Print it. Save it. Share it. It's worth it.

So I'm following Kandra's advice. I printed it (should I buy a tree-offset too?) and I'm sharing it with you. Unfortunately it contains the usual liberal platitudes you hear in a college commencement speech. Here's a sample:

Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin at the Washington Examiner's gossip page report that ABC is dialing back its D.C. prostitution scoop, and reporter Brian Ross is an unhappy camper:

Yeas & Nays hears that, as of this writing, the segment will reveal only two new names and is currently slotted for a mere seven minutes at the end of the hour-long broadcast (you'll recall that Palfrey turned over nearly 15,000 phone numbers to ABC News back in March).

Interviews with both Palfrey and former deputy secretary of state Randall Tobias (who left the State Department last week after being interviewed by ABC News for the "20/20" piece) are currently scheduled, leaving precious little time remaining for much else (and for all of those salacious details you¹ve been waiting for). Sources tell Yeas & Nays that Ross, who had anticipated a far juicier piece, is none too happy with the final results, especially after he and the network promoted this story for weeks.

Oftentimes, a journalist will defend his/her industry with the claim that people are not influenced by the media. This is true for some things--things that a person has direct knowledge about--but not for other things such as the national economy, events in other countries, and many others. On these issues, a person trusts the media they follow. You think what your media diet is in other words.

The unfortunate thing about this is that there is a subset of media out there which is devoted to promoting ridiculous conspiracy theories. It's scary whenever you encounter a story about actual people who believe them, the biggest being the idea that al Qaeda wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks. Unfortunately, since a Republican was in office when it happened, this means many on the kook left (such as Rosie O'Donnell and apparently at least a few people at Virgin Airlines) are more likely to believe it.

Still, it's always disturbing when you read about or talk to someone who is "that way." That was my reaction when reading about many of the potential jurors in the Jose Padilla trial. Many of them have "no opinion" when it comes to who caused 9/11. Others marked that they thought it was Osama bin Laden "because that's what the news said."

Are you a liberal supporter of withdrawing American troops from Iraq ASAP? Wondering why your side couldn't get it done? Read this Los Angeles Times piece (and the excellent comments of Ed Morrissey about it):

For almost three years, training the Iraqi army has been among the top priorities for the U.S. military. And for nearly that long, U.S. officials have considered it among their chief frustrations.

Now, with President Bush under steady pressure to begin pulling U.S. troops from Iraq, the administration once again is emphasizing the need to train Iraqi forces to take over the country's security.

But despite some signs of progress, both Iraqis and their American advisors at this training range are blunt about how much work remains: If a U.S. pullout comes anytime soon, most say, the Iraqi army will collase.

For several years as oil and gas prices have exploded, a frequent media commentary has been to blame the problem on President Bush.

Either he didn’t do enough to stop a hurricane from hitting New Orleans, or it’s due to the war in Iraq, or he should talk to Iran, or it’s due to Cheney’s having run Halliburton – whatever the specious connection, the White House has been routinely at fault.

Yet, along comes Reuters on Wednesday cautioning drivers about upcoming record-high gas prices with a cause that, mysteriously and quite remarkably, had nothing to do with President Bush.

Better brace yourself (emphasis added throughout):

The Washington Post made a big splash today with a story linked by almost everyone that said congressional Democrats had backed down on Iraq withdrawal timetable after their failure to override President Bush's veto which struck it down.

In a possible continuance of the congressional Dems' jostling with the Washington Post after their complaints against Post columnist David Broder, Democratic leaders are denying that they have caved to liberal blogger Joshua Marshall:

[T]he offices of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are denying a Washington Post story today saying that Congressional Democrats have backed down to the White House by offering to remove Iraq withdrawal language from the now-vetoed Iraq bill.

Michelle Malkin noticed that comedian Roseanne Barr wrote recently on her blog that she's too biased against Israel to be hired for the Barbara Walters daytime gab-fest. Here's what Barr wrote:

In reality, I could never host that show, or any network show, because I have opinions that are not sanctioned by the powers that be who refuse to allow even one dissenting voice over the airwaves of television(in this a "free" country).


I truly believe that millions of jews are not zionists, and that even if they are, they do not support Israeli occupation. I believe that Jews all over this planet choose peace in the middle east over the never ending death machine of hatred and division and terror that exists there now.

Given her confessed bias, maybe BBC would be a better fit. After all, the British news service has spent British tax dollars in an attempt to block publication of an internal audit regarding its biases in Middle East reporting, particularly its bias against Israel.

Barr would make a great queen of controversy in the realm of daytime talk. At least she's still royalty where it counts the most:

Or call it the liberal wince of the day. From Laurie David, wife of someone and producer of the Academy Award-winning mockumentary An Inconvenient Spoof Truth.

2 What was it like to work with Al Gore?

By the time I was done working with him, I was begging him to adopt me. He's like a father figure to me, one of my heroes. He's so charming and lovely and smart and funny. He makes fun of himself; he's got a great sense of humor. He's dry and he laughs at other people's jokes.

And you wonder why liberals want a nanny state.

For general discussion and comment...