Feminism

New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman portrayed conservative Republicans as reeling from the renewed focus on so-called women's issues, but only vaguely mentioned that Obama's approval ratings have actually slipped since the public focus on abortion and contraception, in his front-page story Thursday, "Women Figure Anew in Senate's Latest Battle."

Dear Mr. Roberts,

As the chairman of Comcast, you have a responsibility to your shareholders and the public to produce programs which follow a basic standard of civility.

Unfortunately, MSNBC anchor Ed Schultz regularly doles out hate-filled, venomous rhetoric which has reached a boiling point. MSNBC should not give Mr. Schultz a platform to spew such hate.

CNN's Zoraida Sambolin questioned Rick Santorum's appeal with women voters nationwide as she targeted his "ultra-conservative" positions that "some women don't relate to," on Wednesday's Early Start.

Sambolin challenged Santorum's success among women voters in the deep south by noting that nationwide he lags behind President Obama in a recent poll of women voters. [Video below the break.]

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter wrote a column for Wednesday's Business section on the "offensive figure" Rush Limbaugh ("After Apology, National Advertisers Are Still Shunning Limbaugh") on the radio host losing advertisers after his "slut" comment on birth-control activist Sandra Fluke was inflamed by the left.

But the Times has thus far ignored the counterexample raised by conservatives of comedian and HBO "Real Time" host Bill Maher, who used a far more vile word to describe Republican Sarah Palin in March 2011. (The word's very offensiveness makes it unprintable, unlike Limbaugh's comment, a standard of obscenity that actually shields Maher.)

Andrea Mitchell is no newbie to journalism. In fact, in 2010, she was given the Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism by the National Press Foundation. She's in good company with Brit Hume and the late Tim Russert among previous recipients of the award. But alas, the MSNBC anchor displayed no "excellence in journalism" with her brief, softball interview today with Robin Morgan of the liberal Women's Media Center.

Mitchell brought Morgan on to discuss her group's petition drive to request the FCC to ban Rush Limbaugh from the airwaves. The WMC's argument is that Limbaugh engages in "hate speech" which is not in the "public interest" and hence cause to push him off the air. Below the page break I've listed in bullet points the questions Mitchell posed to Morgan, which, as you can see, are all softballs meant to advance Morgan's talking points:

The New York Times focused on the "treacherous political ground" occupied by President Obama as the election draws closer, while proving wrong pro-Obama assumptions made in recent stories by Times reporters Susan Saulny and Jackie Calmes, in Tuesday's front-page poll analysis "Obama's Rating Falls as Poll Reflects Volatility," by Jim Rutenberg and Marjorie Connelly. But it also buried some interesting findings that defied the liberal conventional wisdom about social conservatism and women voters.

CNN's Soledad O'Brien told her critics on Monday to "stop tweeting" her and that the particular debate over Obama's past was over. Then on Tuesday she hosted birth control activist Sandra Fluke and simply rolled out the red carpet for her guest to knock her own conservative critics.

Fluke slammed her critics for spewing "misinformation" and silencing women "regarding their own health care." CNN host Soledad O'Brien pointed viewers to Fluke's CNN.com op-ed and teed her guest up with easy questions like "How have the last couple of weeks been?" [Video below the break.]

[Update, 4:10 pm Tuesday: Father Grandon wrote NewsBusters to clarify his statement during the segment: "I was very clear during the interview that we convert priests have no interest in agitating for married clergy generally and that, in fact, the Catholic Church has always had married priests in her Eastern Churches, but alas, those comments were edited out.  My comment...in no way proposed that change....Yes, much was left unsaid and unexplained, but do please note that I am not on the side of the liberals!  In the end, we were happy that the editing was not as malicious as it could have been."]

On Monday's CBS This Morning, correspondent Michelle Miller highlighted one of the 77 married Catholic priests in the U.S. who converted from the Episcopal Church in recent years and boosted a favorite pet cause of left-leaning dissenting Catholics: ordaining married men. Miller trumpeted that Father Doug Grandon's example "begs the question: should all Catholic priests have the option to marry?"

Father Grandon stated that "the most we could say is that having a married priest...allows them to look and see how it would work if they wanted to change it." The morning show's religious and faith contributor, Father Edward Beck, also acknowledged that the several dozen former Episcopalian clerics are "bringing a whole liberal notion with them," but also noted one of the main reasons for Catholic clerical celibacy - that parish priests can devote all 24 hours of each day to their ministry.

The New York Times went all-out Sunday to prove that "centrist women" were fleeing the GOP in droves. Reporter Susan Saulny and six other reporters from across the country filed "Centrist Women Tell of Disenchantment With G.O.P.," for Sunday's paper.

Quick question: Is the Times counting the woman featured in the story's top photograph at a "Rally for Women's Rights," holding a Planned Parenthood sign that says "Stop the War On Women!", as a "centrist"?

The Left's hunt for conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh's head stepped up a notch Saturday when Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem called for the FCC to ban him.

Radical feminist activist Robin Morgan also participated in penning the anti-free speech piece published by CNN.com:

In the second half of his second hour today, Rush Limbaugh followed up on a phone call from a "Victor in Atlanta." Vince is concerned that many Americans like him, even though they want a different president, are "zapped out of enthusiasm."

Rush took Vince's call as an opportunity to look at the Sandra Fluke controversy of the past week and use its results as an indicator that enthusiasm for defending conservatives and conservative principles against the hate-filled left is as great as ever -- great enough to not only defeat the attempt to marginalize him but to force the left and the leftist establishment press to at least for the moment go into strategic retreat and to temporarily clean up its act (bolds are mine):

Linda Greenhouse the New York Times's former Supreme Court reporter (and left-wing ranter at commencement speeches), now writes a twice-a-month column for nytimes.com. Wednesday she hailed birth-control activist and new liberal martyr Sandra Fluke as a civil rights pioneer on the level of (naturally) Anita Hill, while tarring Rush Limbaugh as a thug, in "Accidental Heroines."

I like to think of Miss Sandra Fluke's contretemps with the madly admired Mr. Rush Limbaugh as, well, a fluke. She objected to his joke about her being "a slut" and "a prostitute," and hesto presto the part-time Georgetown University law student struck pay dirt. You object to my characterization of her as "part-time"? How could she be a full-time law student and still be appearing before Congress explicating the plight of coeds with $3,000 contraceptive bills or others suffering the heartbreak of being rejected publicly at the pharmacy for insurance coverage of a birth control bill? Then there was all the other media attention that came from Rush's little joke. Yes, I see it as a fluke, defined by the Dictionary of American Slang as "a fortuitous accident." Was not Miss Fluke felicitously named years ago before anyone ever thought of talk radio?

What better day for MSNBC to push its phony "War on Women" meme than International Women's Day? Morning anchor Chris Jansing neatly tied today the network's war on Rush Limbaugh with its epic battle to distort the political fight over the contraceptive mandate into an imagined titanic clash over "women's health."

For the segment, Jansing tag-teamed with colleague Alex Wagner as well as regular contributor Michelle Bernard. Jansing also brought on liberal journalist and "American Way of Eating" author Tracie McMillan , who was mourned as a victim of Limbaugh because the talk show host called her an "authorette," facetiously adding, "What is it with all these young, single white women, overeducated -- doesn't mean intelligent."

Liberal comedian Pete Dominick, a CNN contributor, listed the "differences" he saw between Rush Limbaugh's crack at Sandra Fluke and Bill Maher ripping Sarah Palin in vile fashion, on CNN Wednesday. "[T]here still is a difference in terms of what comedians say," he said of Maher versus "arguably" the "most influential commentator in all of politics" Rush Limbaugh.

Perhaps his most ridiculous point was that Limbaugh was "quite literal" calling Fluke a "slut," whereas Maher just made "gender-based insults" calling Sarah Palin obscenities that were just as vile. [Warning: this article contains obscenities that are uncensored to accurately portray what Bill Maher has said about women.]

Liberal media outlets have proven pathologically incapable of telling the truth about the Obama administration’s birth control mandate, portraying the issue as a war on women. Now, the Washington Post is even using a woman’s military conference to defend the Obama administration’s blatant violation of religious liberty, and to attack its critics.

Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak launched into a vicious tirade against the opponents of Obama’s birth control (and morning-after pill and sterilization, which is conveniently ignored by the media) mandate.

As NewsBusters reported, liberal Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers published a rather surprising column at the Daily Beast Sunday called "Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist."

On Monday she appeared on Fox's America Live taking this issue even further saying, "This isn't really about misogyny...It's a proxy war for the Democratic Party: they can use it in the election for part of the war on women, and they can attack Rush Limbaugh because they hate Rush Limbaugh because he's conservative" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the wake of Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown law student a "slut," CNN hosted the president of the liberal National Organization for Women who called for Limbaugh to be fired, on Monday morning's 10 a.m. hour of Newsroom. They did not give such a voice to supporters of conservative women last year when those women were under attack from liberals.

When liberal radio host Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a slut last May, CNN did not host the president of NOW to call for his termination at MSNBC. In fact, the network covered the outrage over Limbaugh's smear of Sandra Fluke far more than Ed Schultz's rant last May. A Nexis search revealed 35 hits for CNN's coverage of Limbaugh's "slut" remark since March 1, versus just four reports on Schultz in the week following his comment. [Video below the break.]

Jon Meacham has come down with a particularly virulent strain of Limbaugh Derangement Syndrome that is bringing him to the brink of insanity. How else could one explain the Time magazine writer hailing an anti-Limbaugh speech as "timeless"  just like Jesus's Sermon on the Mount or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

Yes, I kid you not, he really went there, and in a Time.com "Ideas" blog post nonetheless (emphasis mine):

NewsBusters readers likely know Kirsten Powers as one of the many intelligent, reasonable, liberal contributors to Fox News.

On Sunday, Powers published a piece at the Daily Beast entitled "Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist" that is guaranteed to be applauded by the Right and heavily ridiculed by her colleagues on the left:

Bill Maher unsurprisingly took some vicious cheap shots at Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on HBO's Real Time Friday.

In his final New Rule segment, Maher said, "If Rick Santorum is your youth minister, you’d ask your parents to switch you to the one who just molests" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Much of the media's liberal bias is furthered by presenting political controversies such that they pit a non-ideological group versus an ideological one, most often of course the ideological group being conservative in nature.

Take the Washington Post's Virginia legislature correspondent Anita Kumar, who informed readers in an 11-paragraph item on page B2 of today's paper that a "Women's PAC [will] take on antiabortion lawmakers" (emphasis mine):

Leading into a commercial break, CNN's Piers Morgan wished to leave his viewers on "a knife-edge" by assuming the possibility that Rick Santorum is a sexist. Morgan popped the question during his Wednesday night interview with the candidate.

"If Rick Santorum becomes president, does he actually like women?" posed the CNN host, just before a commercial break. On the other side of the break, he asked it again before telling Santorum "I know you do." [Video below the break.]

There was a surprisingly positive consensus on Rick Santorum on today's Morning Joe.  Most remarkable was the observation by Obama fan Mika Brzezinski, who said "I don't agree with anything he says, but I like the guy." H/t  to NewsBusters reader D.B. for audio assistance.

Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist were also upbeat on Santorum, Scarborough astutely observing that "90% of Americans don't obsess on social issues," so that what some would cast as controversial past statements by Santorum won't hurt him nearly as much as might be imagined.  Video after the jump.

In case you hadn't noticed, Hell froze over Monday.

ABC's Barbara Walters, appearing on The View, actually said on national television that she agreed with Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's point about radical feminism making it more "socially affirming" for women "to work than to give up their careers to take care of their children" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Julie Rovner, NPR's on-staff shill for ObamaCare, filed an unashamedly one-sided report on Friday's Morning Edition about the controversial Obama administration mandate that forces religious institutions to include coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and birth control.

Rovner turned to only two individuals for her pro-mandate report: Peggy Mastroianni, general counsel at the federal government's own EEOC, an organization which recently got slapped down in a unanimous Supreme Court decision concerning the rights of houses of worship in hiring and personnel matters; and Sarah Lipton-Lubet, a lawyer for the notoriously far-left American Civil Liberties Union, who until May 2011, worked for the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Brian Williams MSNBC debate in Florida was not only dreadfully boring – I never thought I could ever long for commercials – it was pathetic. Freed of the fear of triggering an avalanche of applause against loaded questions, Williams and his co-moderators couldn’t bring themselves to utter one single question asking the Republican candidates to respond to Obama mistakes. For almost two hours, not one Obama failure was cited. Apparently, his record is spotless.

Instead, the candidates (especially Rick Santorum) were thrown four questions surrounding the 2005 legal battle in Florida over pulling the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, which pushed all the liberal media hot buttons about “far right” religious conservatives throwing their religion around where it didn’t belong. This isn’t breaking news. But like the ABC debate fixated on contraception, it’s evidence that liberal networks are focused on their agenda, not on the voters’ concerns.

One way the left-leaning media like to downplay the annual March for Life is to play up how both sides of the abortion debate showed up in Washington, DC to mark the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, when the reality of the matter is that hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers outnumber their opponents by a very large margin every year.

On Monday, CBS's local site for the DC area took that form of bias to another level. Their photo essay, titled "Activists Hold Annual March For Life On Roe v. Wade Anniversary," completely left out the March for Life participants. Instead, the outlet put up seven photos of the handful of "pro-choice" demonstrators that showed up in front of the Supreme Court.