Obama Inauguration

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift got a much-needed education about the Founding Fathers and gay rights this weekend.

After she predictably gushed and fawned over President Obama's inaugural address on PBS's McLaughlin Group, syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan scolded, "If you think the Stonewall riot in a gay bar in Greenwich Village can be traced all the way back to Bunker Hill and the Founding Fathers, you don't read what the Founding Fathers believed or say" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Never ceases to amaze me how little it takes for liberals to amuse themselves.

It wasn't enough for left-wing radio host Stephanie Miller to criticize Mitt Romney as petty for not attending President Obama's second inaugural, as one could reasonably do. No, Miller and her sidekicks denigrated Romney as someone now reduced to weeping in a fetal position (hence, less than fully human), pumping his own gas (the horror!) and, even worse, a "smelly hobo."  (audio clip after page break)

Well, this will teach President Obama’s speech writers to double check their pander list. It seems his special shout-out to gays in his inaugural speech – though widely praised by the Left as a “historic” moment – just wasn’t enough. Not for the Huffington Post and the parents of 11-year-old ‘Sadie,’ who is “transgender” (a boy pretending to be a girl). Obama needed to call out for transgender rights as well. 

HuffPo’s “Gay Voices” page reported that Sadie corrected the oversight, writing a second speech. Sadie’s mother put it on Face Book, it hit Twitter and, according the “Gay Voices” Editor Noah Michelson “It’s totally gone viral.” 

After CNN televised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Congressional testimony on the Benghazi attack, on the 5 pm segment of The Situation Room Wolf Blitzer provided some analysis, including an interview with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).  Then Blitzer announced there was breaking news.  He turned to CNN national correspondent Jim Acosta, who reported that Beyonce had - hold onto your remote here - lip-synced "The Star Spangled Banner" at President Obama's inauguration Monday:

Ah, that obsessive devotion to facts remains rigorous and unshakable.

Anchoring her network's coverage of President Obama's second inauguration, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow describes an aspect of the event that few people notice, aside from keen observers like her. (video clip after page break)

New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal again accused Republicans of opposing Barack Obama because of his race, in a Monday post after Obama's second inauguration. That came after he confessed to feeling "the same thrill" as he had the first time around.

The consensus on TV this morning was that Barack Obama’s second inauguration wasn’t as amazing as his first. The crowd was much smaller. People were just not as excited as they were four years ago.

But, call me sappy, when the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” I felt pretty much the same thrill as on Jan. 20, 2009.

On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, White House correspondent Kristen Welker touted President Obama gearing up for his second term: "An invigorated President Obama joined in a prayer service this morning....On Monday, resolve, defending entitlements and calling for action on climate change and gay rights, a broad liberal agenda."

Welker then heralded Obama appeasing the Democratic base in his inaugural address: "The President, once criticized by his own party's left for caving into Republicans, seemed emboldened by his reelection and ready for a fight." A sound bite followed of Time's Michael Duffy happily declaring: "Yesterday's speech at the Capitol was not about bipartisanship. It was about the agenda that Barack Obama, a Democrat, the direction he wants to take the country. Republicans can come along if they'd like."

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, John Dickerson stood by his Friday column for Slate where he concluded that President Obama "can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP." Dickerson answered conservative critics of his piece by claiming that he "wasn't trying to give advice. I was trying to highlight, in a very stark way, what seems like an impossible-to-avoid conclusion about this second term."

The liberal CBS News political director also repeated many of the points he made in a follow-up column for Slate on Tuesday [audio clips available here; video below the jump]:

"Chris Matthews has it exactly wrong!" NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Sean Hannity on the January 22 "Media Mash" segment, reacting to the Hardball host's effusive praise on Monday for what he insisted was a Lincolnesque inaugural address by the president. "The Gettysburg Address was an attempt at healing the nation's wounds" from the Civil War while "Obama's speech... was a left-wing declaration of war against the conservative movement, so it was the opposite of the Gettysburg Address."

Another telling exchange from MSNBC on Monday was when presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett thanked the crew of MSNBC's Morning Joe for "a good four years with you all," Fox News host Sean Hannity noted. [watch the full segment below the page break]

While the rest of the media were gushing and fawning over the idea that Barack Obama was going to be sworn in on Martin Luther King Jr's bible during his second inauguration Monday, a surprising voice spoke about the hypocrisy involved.

On Tuesday, PBS's Tavis Smiley aired a discussion on poverty originally broadcast on C-SPAN Thursday wherein black philosopher and activist Cornel West spoke at length about why he "got upset" when he heard Obama was going to do this (video follows with transcript and commentary, photo courtesy UPI):

When GOP President George W. Bush celebrated his second inauguration in January of 2005, reporters in the political press hammered away at the cost of the event -- about $140 million -- by stating that the money could have been put to better use in the Iraq war and as aid for those caught in the earthquake and tsunami that struck southern Asia a month earlier.

Eight years later, the people in the media could barely contain their glee while covering “Party Time,” Democratic president Barack Obama's second inauguration, with little interest in the cost of the events (about $180 million) even though the nation's unemployment rate is hovering near eight percent and another battle over federal government spending looms on the horizon.

Barack Obama’s second inaugural address had a distinct liberal flavor, particularly on social issues, and many media outlets have admitted as much. However, according to quasi-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, the ideological slant of the speech actually made it one of the best inaugural addresses of the past fifty years.

Appearing on the Monday January 21 edition of the taxpayer-subsidized PBS NewsHour, Brooks acknowledged that Obama did not pose as a post-partisan figure, as he did four years ago. "Now he’s in the fray. He’s picked a team. His team is his party, his belief system." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Jay Leno went counter to the rest of the media's gushing over the Obama Inauguration Tuesday by actually taking some shots at the current White House resident.

Early in his opening monologue, the NBC Tonight Show host said, "There were twice as many people at his first inauguration...because four years ago, twice as many people could afford to stay in hotels” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

The producer of CNN's Belief Blog lauded President Obama as "exceptional" and a "religious pioneer" for supporting same-sex marriage and hosting his inaugural prayer service at National Cathedral.

"Well, I think it's part of what makes Obama exceptional. We think of him as a racial pioneer, the first African-American president, but I think he's also a religious pioneer," John Blake said of the choice of National Cathedral, which made headlines for announcing it will conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Newsweek stopped its print edition at the end of 2012, but they still tried to scandalize the country by producing a fake cover honoring Obama’s second inauguration as “The Second Coming.” This absurd attempt at myth-making is a natural progression. The “cover” story was written by Evan Thomas, who proclaimed on MSNBC a few years ago that Obama was “sort of like God” in being above the gritty political fray.

It was just as absurd when Newsweek writer David Frum, the formerly conservative Bush speechwriter, tweeted this piece of media-elite nonsense: “First term Obama: punchee, 2nd term Obama, puncher.”

Native and long-time Washingtonians see presidential inaugurations every four years, and, for them, they're pretty run-of-the-mill, regardless of one's party affiliation. This is especially true when they're the second go-around for a given president. Washington proper is heavily liberal Democrat, and the outlying suburbs are so too, to a lesser degree, but still, enthusiasm for a presidential inauguration in the nation's capital region is bound to be less intense for natives and long-time residents than visiting out-of-towners.

So in 2005, the Washington Post devoted 1,345 words to this phenomenon in a January 21 page A29 story headlined, "Away From Capitol, It's Just Another Day; Many Locals Choose Routine Over Ritual." Staff writers Paul Schwartzman and Karin Brulliard dutifully worked their way around the capital region talking to area residents who were not too thrilled about all the fuss and bother, some of whom hinting Bush was to blame for their unemployment. No similar article appeared in the paper's pages eight years later with Obama's second inaugural (emphases in article mine):

During PBS’ coverage of the 2013 Inauguration, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Gwen Ifill, and Yale University’s Beverly Gage seemed to have forgotten what the definition of liberal is within the context of Obama’s second inaugural address.  In fact, Gage said that this wasn’t an “endorsement of collective liberalism,” and Shields called it more “humanitarian.” 

The non-taxpayer subsidized liberal media has been more honest. Today’s New York Times said Obama offered a “liberal vision.”  Slate’s John Dickerson, who infamously called for Obama to destroy the GOP, called the 44th president’s address “a liberal love letter.”  ABC finally figured out that Obama is a progressive liberal.

Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran on Tuesday could barely contain his excitement on Inauguration Day, extolling the "President with a purpose" and his "history-making call to action." Moran, who has a long history of fawning over Barack Obama, gushed, "He was weaving the new tapestry of America as he sees it."

Moran hyped the "new American progressivism unleashed." The journalist continued, "He is a president renewed in office by the votes of 65 million Americans. He is a president with a purpose." Regarding the aggressively liberal speech, Moran enthused, "More than half a million Americans stream into Washington to watch President Barack Obama take the oath of office once more and deliver a history-making call to action."

New York Times fashion reporter Eric Wilson rapturously reviewed the First Lady's inaugural clothes in Tuesday's news section (not the fashion pages) of the paper. His article was warmly introduced with a front-page tease, "A First Lady Unafraid to Look Like a Million Bucks."

Fashion is no longer the forbidden subject it once was in American politics.

Embracing expensive designer clothes -- and a lot of them -- has not been a problem for Michelle Obama in the way that similar pursuits haunted Nancy Reagan, or even Jacqueline Kennedy.

After shouting like an excited groupie at President Obama and Vice President Biden during NBC live coverage of Monday's inaugural parade, weatherman Al Roker reflected on the incident during Tuesday's Today: "To be acknowledged by the President, a handshake from the Vice President on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I think, was pretty special....I was thinking about my folks and they were looking down, and I think pretty pleased." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

OK, that settles it. This is what it's like to watch the news in North Korea.

Capping a day of unctuous fawning unmatched on television since MSNBC's coverage of the last inauguration, Rachel Maddow swooned upon her sudden realization last night that ... could it be? ... tell me it's so! ... the first couple might actually ... dance yet again!  (video clip after page break)

Liberal Obama-backing musician James Taylor has no clue about what the president's latest executive orders on gun control entail, but insists that we need to “sacrifice” some our freedoms to keep America's children safe.  Taylor made these remarks in an impromptu interview with The Daily Caller’s Nicholas Ballasy shortly after the inaugural ceremonies yesterday:

CNN hosts were wowed by President Obama's second inaugural address on Monday afternoon, and the love kept coming on Monday evening when a CNN panel gushed over the "marvelous" and "iconic" address in the vein of Martin Luther King and Lincoln.

"And now he's come along with a statement that firmly addresses a progressive, liberal agenda that's very much in the tradition of King and of Lincoln, and he has rallied his base," said CNN senior political analyst David Gergen. [Video coming soon. Audio here.]

The cat's out of the bag: Obama's a liberal. A banner headline across Tuesday's New York Times front page confirmed what conservatives have been saying about the president for years: "Obama Offers Liberal Vision: 'We Must Act.'" Peter Baker's lead story "Inaugural Stresses Theme of Civil and Gay Rights -- Safety Net Praised," also stressed Obama's liberal message. So why has the paper spent the last four years defending Obama from conservative criticism by insisting Obama was actually a centrist?

After years of downplaying ideological labels for Barack Obama, ABC has seemingly accepted the idea that the President is a "progressive" and a "liberal." While recapping the inauguration, Good Morning America's journalists used the terms four times in just two minutes and 45 seconds. Yet, when Obama was a Democratic primary candidate in 2007, the networks deployed the L-word just twice– in the entire year.

On Tuesday, George Stephanopoulos hyped the ideological content of Obama's second inaugural: "The speech, a call to action, an uncompromising enunciation of liberal principles." Seconds later, the former Democratic operative turned journalist reiterated, insisting that "liberals were cheering yesterday." Jon Karl trumpeted, "He went big. He went lofty. He went ambitious. And he went unmistakably liberal." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Ah, the masses. How they loved President Obama's inaugural speech.  And how Andrea Mitchell, being "up there," loved looking out over them.  She was "very moved."

Yes, on Morning Joe today, NBC correspondent Mitchell not only said that she was "very moved, being up there . . . looking out over the masses," but that she found the speech "uplifting," and that it was "a bigger moment that a lot of people originally gave it credit for."  View the video after the jump.

Yesterday was a historic day. Sure we had presidential inauguration but it was also perhaps the first and only day when loudmouth MSNBC host Chris Matthews actually shut his yap for a few seconds.

The cat that got Matthews’s tongue was being reminded by fellow MSNBC host Martin Bashir of his inane 2008 remark that he gets a “thrill going up my leg” when hearing Barack Obama speak. Watch below for the video.

Detecting media bias is often an exercise in contrasting two analogous events to see how the media worked to write the narrative in the public's imagination. We at NewsBusters have already looked at how the media love the party atmosphere of the Obama inaugurals but groused at the expense of Bush's second inaugural, for example. 

So it's instructive to see how Washington Post veteran journalist Dan Balz greeted President Obama's entry into his second term with how he looked at the dawn of President George W. Bush's second term.  "[T]his Inauguration Day comes at a time when there is far greater realism about whether the president, or perhaps any leader, can transcend political divisions and unite the country," Balz noted in his front-page January 21 analysis piece, "This time, the idea of a new beginning seems optimistic."

Brit Hume had some harsh words for America's Obama-loving media Monday.

Appearing on Fox News's Special Report, Hume said, "[The President's] inaugural speech should put to rest for all time the notion much favored by his admirers in the press that he is a centrist. He is not" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who now spends much of his Morning Joe program trashing the Republican Party and various conservatives, used the inauguration of Barack Obama as another chance to slime the National Rifle Association. The former Republican Congressman sneered at the National Rifle Association, suggesting that the gun group is promoting the "big lie" that government will come after most guns.

Scarborough insisted the "the big lie has worked for years." He added, "...If they take away your military-style assault weapons, take away the AR-15, they're going to take your hunting rifle, they’re gonna take your handgun, which of course is a big lie."