At Smith College, it was a few dozen student activists screaming, chanting and banging pots and pans.  With the American Psychiatric Association, it was angry letters from adult activists and bitter stories in the homosexual press.  The bottom line is the same: far-left homosexuals successfully intimidated a few cowardly officials and silenced voices they don't want the public to hear.

Not a bad way for neo-Marxist ideologues to celebrate May Day, but you'd think America's watchdogs of liberty, the free press, might raise an objection.  Sadly, the liberal media haven't written a word about either story. 

The Drudge Report is highlighting a Los Angeles Times story on protests by supporters of communist China demanding CNN's Jack Cafferty be fired. David Pierson reported:

The protesters lined Sunset Boulevard from Cahuenga Boulevard to Wilcox Avenue chanting "Fire Cafferty" and "CNN liar" and singing the Chinese national anthem and other patriotic songs.

"Patriotic songs" are apparently sympathetic when they are sung in support of Red China. Doesn't Pierson or the Times consider it noteworthy that this kind of protest wouldn't be permitted inside China? Or that the Chinese national anthem is loaded with irony? It's called "March of the Volunteers," and begins "Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!" What a joke.

Instead, Pierson spotlights a protester who says he was in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and now China is so vastly improved:

New York Times reporter Katie Thomas embraced radical chic near the end of her front-page story Tuesday on the prospect for political protests at the 2008 Olympics, hosted by China.

Perhaps the best-known examples are the American sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who at the 1968 Games in Mexico City raised their clenched fists on the medal podium during the playing of the national anthem in a salute to black power. The action enraged the Olympic organizers, and Mr. Carlos and Mr. Smith were soon ushered out of the country. Now, 40 years later, their action is celebrated as heroic.

Raising a "Black Power" fist in defiance of the national anthem qualifies as heroic in the mind of the Times?

Radical Pan-African activist Stokely Carmichael, who coined the phrase, said of his movement:

When you talk of black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created.

Besides sanitizing the party affiliations of scandal-ridden Democratic politicians, one of the more blatant examples of media bias we regularly see is how the usually disturbed people who turn out for left-wing protests are routinely portrayed as normal.

There's no better way of observing this disparity than seeing uncensored reports of what lefty protests are actually like. And  there's no better chronicler of these events than the anonymous blogger Zombie. You'll get a real flavor (and several laughs) of left-wing lunacy by checking out her latest report on the fifth year anniversary of the Iraq war in San Francisco.

After reading Zombie's photo essay, head over to the San Francisco Chronicle's "mainstreamed" version of the event which doesn't mention any of the communist groups, pro-terrorist factions, and violent jerks who constituted the majority of the protestors.

The "Big Three" networks’ evening newscasts, marking the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq on Wednesday evening, all chose to air news briefs on the anti-war protests across the United States. The news briefs all aired within the first ten minutes of each program. CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric, as part of the first report on her program, used the protests as "evidence" of one of their recent poll results, that "more than half of Americans [59%] believe going to war in Iraq was a bad idea." "There are 155,000 troops in Iraq right now, and today, protesters in Washington and other U.S. cities reflected our poll. Nearly half the respondents [46%] said most U.S. troops should be pulled out within a year."

Five minutes into NBC "Nightly News," anchor Brian Williams chose to focus on the protests in Washington, DC. "There were anti-war protests today in several U.S. cities, including the nation's capital, where police arrested more than 30 people when they tried to block the entrance to the IRS, and they also tied up Connecticut Avenue, a major thoroughfare. There were also protests in New York's Times Square, downtown San Francisco, and in smaller towns as well, in places like Ohio and Vermont."

ABC’s "World News" anchor Charles Gibson, as part of his retrospective on the past five years of the Iraq war, mentioned the anti-war protests as well. "For some Americans, this is the fifth anniversary of a war they do not support. There were marches in California, and in the nation's capital, a dozen people were arrested for blocking the entrances of the Internal Revenue Service. The protesters oppose being taxed to help fund the war."

Wednesday’s "The Situation Room" featured three anti-war grassroots websites during a short segment, without including any from the opposing viewpoint. Host Wolf Blitzer introduced the segment by talking about the anti-war protests marking the 5-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war. "Hundreds of anti-war protesters gathered in Washington for this, the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq. At least 31 people were arrested today, according to the organizers. Protests are also happening across the country, and many of them are being organized online."

Blitzer brought in CNN Internet reported Abbi Tatton, who described the websites and the groups behind them. "[I]t’s a coalition of groups organizing and publicizing the protests today on this website, ‘5 Years Too Many,’ and they’ve been updating with pictures of the protests -- these from Washington -- throughout the day. The goal: to disrupt business as usual..."

It's not often you see Jon Stewart's left-leaning "Daily Show" make segments satirizing sacred cows of the left so enjoy this rare one starring fake correspondent Rob Riggle, a former active duty Marine, who went to Berkeley, California to cover the protests launched by left-wingers against a Marine recruiting center:

Hat tip to Allah

Now, remember, the left is more tolerant. They are more caring, more civilized and more intelligent than you conservatives. OK? Now that we got that all straight, we can continue to inform you that uncivil leftist whiners in Connecticut have quashed someone's free speech, forcing them to pull out of a commencement speech at a high school. Remember... leftists are more interested in freedom than you Nazis on the right. I hope you remember that?

The AP gives us the story of the hatemongers and protesters at Choate Rosemary Hall, a "prestigious" prep school in Wallingford, CT, who have forced former presidential adviser Karl Rove to cancel plans to deliver the school's commencement speech this coming June.

You see, the left really cares about freedom of speech... unless its speech they don't much like, of course.

Apparently bridge has officially become edgy and provocative. I must not have gotten the memo.

On Tuesday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Hannah Storm interviewed a championship bridge team that held up a sign that read "We didn’t vote for Bush," at the World Bridge Championship in China last month. As a result of this dissent, many in the mainstream media have dubbed the women the "Dixie Chicks of Bridge."

Co-host Julie Chen teased the segment at the top of the show by portraying the bridge players as victims: "Four previously mild-mannered bridge champions facing backlash and a ban for criticizing President Bush." Later, co-host Harry Smith made the Dixie Chicks comparison, lamenting:

Remember when the Dixie Chicks caused a firestorm of controversy back in 2003? Natalie Maines said she was ashamed of our foreign -- of U.S. foreign policy, criticizing President Bush. It was just ten days before the beginning of the war in Iraq. Radio stations burned their CDs. No one would play their songs. Now a much quieter group, some call the "Dixie Chicks of Bridge" is caught up in a somewhat similar storm of controversy. They had just won an international bridge tournament in China when one of them held up a sign. See what the sign says? "We didn't vote for Bush." We're going to talk to them in this half hour.

On CBS’s "Sunday Morning" this past weekend, reporter Martha Teichner did a profile of recently deceased ultra left-wing author, Norman Mailer, who she described as "... a hell of a big man for a short guy, scrappy, brilliant, controversial. Slugging away at life and letters until the very end." Of course, this was the same Norman Mailer that said of the World Trade Center in October 2001: "Everything wrong with America led to the point where the country built that tower of Babel, which consequently had to be destroyed."

Later Teichner remarked that "Mailer was unapologetically liberal, anti-war, anti-Nixon, anti-establishment." Well, he certainly was "anti-establishment" when he said to a "London Telegraph" reporter in February 2002, "America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself...The right wing benefitted so much from September 11 that, if I were still a conspiratorialist, I would believe they'd done it."

At another point, Teichner observed that "Norman Mailer loved playing the political provocateur." That proved true when in 2003, Mailer asserted to the "London Times" that, "Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in...."

The front of Thursday’s Washington Post Style section carried a report from Monica Hesse on how the toy makers at Lego were a little embarrassed that one of their "Creativity Awards" was handed to an eight-year-old who would like President Bush impeached:

That last one's winners were announced last week, and Bethesda's Kelsie Kimberlin, 8, got the nod. The judges of Lego's first annual Creativity Awards got more than they bargained for. When the third-grader is asked to describe her winning entry to Lego's Creativity Awards, her explanation -- with just a little prompting from her dad, Brett -- is on message: "I don't want kids to lose any parents in the war."

Later in the article, the youngster added: "I don't like Bush because he sends people to be killed." Hesse explained the YouTube video that Kimberlin and her father made (which the Post also placed on its website for viewing):

"Stop, hey, what's that sound?" Nuclear power getting put down. Again.

In 1979, musicians such as Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, and Jackson Browne were hailed "the energy source everyone had been looking for" to fight against nuclear power. The result of their support was termed a "chain reaction." The group has returned, picking up where it left off nearly 30 years ago.

And what better to bridge the gap into the new millennium than YouTube. (Video after the break)

If the "peace" movement holds a protest and no one in the press covers it, does it still exist? If Americans are sick of the war, they’re also sick of the "anti-war." Even the media have grown anti-war-weary. Rallies on October 27 drew only perfunctory news mentions.

The peaceniks have now become a bipartisan political problem, now that the Democrats who control Congress haven’t dared to placate the radicals by cutting off money for the troops. Cindy Sheehan is threatening to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But suddenly – surprise, surprise – the media aren’t interested in Sheehan’s new crusade. Crusades only have a point when it’s an anti-Republican point. Camping out against Bush during his Texas vacation was news, fun news, important news. But running against Speaker Pelosi is not news. It’s a sign your fifteen minutes of fame are all used up.

On October 21, the New Jersey Family Policy Council held a protest against "same-sex marriage" in state capital of Trenton, but no one in the media seemed to notice the hundreds of citizens who showed up. On October 27, 150 protesters in Camden, New Jersey protested the Iraq War. Yawn? Not if you’re the Camden Courier-Post, which covered the liberal protest, and ignored the conservative one.

Reporter Lavinia deCastro wrote:

About 150 people stood in the rain in front of the Walt Whitman Arts Center in Camden on Saturday morning to participate in an anti-war rally that started in South Jersey and ended in Philadelphia. It was part of a nationwide "Day of Mobilization to End the War in Iraq."

The Camden paper also had a promotional story on Saturday, before the rally.

Matt Lauer's Friday morning interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ended badly. It wasn't that Rice brought bad answers to the interview. It wasn't that Lauer mocked or insulted Rice. It was that Lauer elevated a tired publicity stunt from the radical leftists at Code Pink to something approaching "Newsworthy" status (video available here):

LAUER: Let me end on just a different subject. On Wednesday you were set to appear before the House Foreign Relations Committee, and a protestor walked right up to your face, Madam Secretary, and said, with red paint on her hands and said, quote, "the blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands." She was taken out of the room. Not on a policy level, on a personal level, what was your response to that moment? Were you angered? Were you upset? Were you frazzled? How did you respond to it?

News item: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, right, is confronted by CodePink member Desiree Sairooz, her hands painted red, as she arrives to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2007, before the House Foreign Relations Committee

The mainstream media (ABC, NBC, CBS, New York Times, CNN, etc) have made their opposition to the US campaign against Islamic terror, particularly the current Iraq campaign a centerpiece of their coverage almost since the beginning. Current headline stories include complaints that not enough bodies are available to graveyards and complaints that not enough US soldiers are killing their commanders, a practice known as 'fragging'. Further examples of the media's partisanship include their constant hero-worship of people like Cindy Sheehan and their ignoring of other soldiers' parents who still support the campaign and the President. Today, a group of Code Pink protestors assembled in front of Berkeley's Marine recruiting office to protest, but unfortuantely for them, they were far outnumbered by pro-military supporters, who gathered across Shattuck Avenue. As the Contra Costa Times reported:

Tuesday’s Metro section of The Washington Post covered a controversy at D.C.’s George Washington University, where fliers appeared on campus blaring "HATE MUSLIMS? SO DO WE!!" Post reporter Susan Kinzie mentioned that the GWU chapter of the conservative Young America’s Foundation denied the posters were theirs, and Kinzie noted that it was probably a prank, since the fine print at the bottom had the words "'Brought to you by Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness' -- and a postscript recommending a BBC video on the politics of fear." But while Wednesday’s article in Metro confirmed that it was a prank "produced by students who were attempting to mock those they thought were trying to stir fear of Muslims," YAF wasn’t named anywhere in the article as the vindicated victim.

Jason Mattera of YAF is rightfully upset: "The Post mentions Young America’s Foundation three times, even though the fliers were obvious hoaxes. Yet the paper’s article today explaining that the fliers were fabricated doesn’t mention Young America’s Foundation even once! The Post will report possible incidents of hate speech, but when those incidents turn out to be contrived, the paper doesn’t vindicate those who were targeted!!!"

Associated Press has a funny way of reporting on advocacy ads -- a very imbalanced way. A few weeks ago, AP reported that a liberal group called Americans Against Escalation in Iraq bought TV time to attack Senators in their home states. (Except, of course, they weren’t called "liberal," just "anti-war.") The AP reporter mentioned MoveOn.org was one of the members of this coalition, but there was no explanation of who was providing the commercial cash.

But when AP writer Jim Kuehnenn covered a new blitz from the Bush-supporting group Freedom’s Watch, notice how they got out their investigator’s hats to find the "billionaires" and "conservative philanthopists" and former Bush men providing the dough:

The group is financed by former White House aides and Republican fundraisers and was organized as a nonprofit organization under IRS rules. It is not required to identify its donors or the amounts they give.