Daily Beast

A tremendously unlikely source came out Wednesday with a scathing review of Jay Leno's interview with President Obama on NBC's Tonight Show.

Lloyd Grove, editor at large for the perilously liberal Daily Beast, wrote, "Obama couldn’t have found a more willing accomplice. Leno—who wears his American flag pin on the right lapel, in contrast to the president’s flag-on-left—might just as well been scripted by David Axelrod" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Daily Beast/Newsweek editor-in-chief Tina Brown today announced the launch of the new Women in the World Foundation, which holds itself out as "a powerful, new initiative dedicated to highlighting and driving solutions for advancing women and girls" that "will serve as a resource to all who seek to learn about and engage on the issues facing women and girls."

Sounds like a worthwhile venture until you remember that Tina Brown has a very narrow vision of what it means to be an empowered woman, one that discounts political conservatives like Michele Bachmann.

If you want to know the best universities and colleges in the country, you might turn to US News. But suppose you want to know the horniest. Well, for that you'd have to consult Newsweek.

Say what you will about the pre-Daily Beast-merger Newsweek -- it was doubtless liberal and strongly slanted to the left -- but it never, to my knowledge, tried to muscle in on Playboy's turf and find the best schools for hands-on anatomical studies.

Here's their, um, methodology:

Tina Brown seems to be very conflicted about her opinion of Dick Cheney.

After telling the "Morning Joe" panel the former Vice President is a "wrecking ball" who "seems to be totally in denial still about Iraq," the Daily Beast-Newsweek editor said moments later, "He's been validated by Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's actually kind of funny to watch a liberal journalist, hit in the face with all the relevent data,  drawing anything but the painfully obvious conclusion.

Take Michael Tomasky of Newsweek/The Daily Beast, who chalks up President Obama's trouble in recent opinion polls to his spin doctor team in the White House (emphasis mine):

Joe Biden's recent remark in which he said he "fully understand[s]" China's reasons for their 32-year-old one-child policy is an absolutely "appalling statement coming from an American leader."

"What’s next? Will he say he isn’t 'second-guessing' and 'fully understands' that women are stoned for adultery in Iran?"

Who said that? Michele Bachmann? Sarah Palin? Rick Santorum? Nope. Former Democratic strategist and political columnist Kirsten Powers in a post at the Daily Beast yesterday.

Here's more from Powers (emphasis mine):

Newsweek's Michael Tomasky counts himself as one of many "impressed liberal[s]" who are heartened by Jon Huntsman's attacks on Rick Perry.

Writing yesterday on the Daily Beast website, Tomasky suggested the former Utah governor was "a narrow thread of hope about the future" of the GOP dominated by both leaders and rank-and-file primary voters who are far from "reasonable."

As such, Huntsman's tactic of violating Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment was harmful in the short term but a perfect plan for a long-term resurgence, Tomasky insisted (emphasis mine):

It’s hard to keep up with what the media and the left deem acceptable. Seems like just last year Anderson Cooper publicly took offense at a line from a movie. Come to think of it, it was just last year that the CNN anchor found “That’s so gay,” upsetting to his perfectly honed PC sensibilities.

Fast forward a year. Many people are accusing two currently prominent figures of being gay. But don’t hold your breath waiting for indignant coverage from Cooper and the rest of the media, because it’s liberals leveling the charge against conservatives.   

Take, for example, Marcus Bachmann, husband of GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.). The Bachmanns have been married more than 30 years, and have five children. Mr. Bachmann runs a clinic that offers Christian counseling to people struggling with “unwanted” homosexual feelings – derisively termed “praying away the gay” by liberals.

She never mentioned colleague Michelle Goldberg by name, but it's hard to think that former Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers didn't have her in mind when she penned her August 15 Daily Beast column, "Stop Attacking Evangelicals!"

You may recall that on August 14, Goldberg laid out her Michele Bachmann-is-a-theocrat conspiracy theory.

ESPN's LZ Granderson labeled Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) as "crazy" Monday, and CNN anchor Kyra Phillips seemed to credit his judgment.

Granderson, a CNN contributor, said of a Bachmann candidacy that "the people aren't going to vote for crazy. And she [Bachmann] still registers as crazy with a lot of independents." Phillips immediately responded that "If you could go back decades, there's a lot of people who vote for crazy, guys."

[Video below the break.]

It's apparently not enough for Newsweek to slam 2012 presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann  as the "Queen of Rage." Daily Beast/Newsweek's Michelle Goldberg went a few more steps off the deep end yesterday by exploring how the Minnesota Republican, and, for good measure Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) are Christian theocrats-in-waiting:

As Michele Bachmann climbs in the polls, Obama-loving media members are working overtime to dig up and/or manufacture dirt on the conservative Congresswoman from Minnesota.

One of the new flavors of the day is that her religious beliefs might make her too submissive to be president, a silly concept the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus felt was necessary to share with her readers Wednesday:

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh doesn't like to comment about MSNBC because he fears it will help their dismal ratings.

However, he made an exception on Thursday's program saying amongst other things, "That whole network is a loony bin filled with people who are overflowing with uncontrollable rage, anger, unhappiness, and misery, by design" (video courtesy Right Scoop follows with transcript and commentary):

How tone-deaf do you have to be to a) compare Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) to Martin Luther King, Jr. b) say the women who got Weiner's lewd photos were "hardly traumatized" and c) call on Weiner's wife Huma Abedin to call a press conference to belittle the media for attacking her hubby?

You might want to ask Daily Beast contributor Lee Siegel, who did just that (emphases mine) in a June 10 post entitled "C'Mon, America, Nobody's Perfect":

For approaching three years, so-called journalists have been calling former Alaska governor Sarah Palin an idiot.

In an interview with the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz, Palin's employer at Fox News, Roger Ailes, marvelously said, "She's so smart she’s got the press corps running up the whole East Coast behind her bus”:

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift said on PBS's "McLaughlin Group" Friday that the press really aren't interested in Mitt Romney being a Mormon.

This amazingly transpired roughly 24 hours before her magazine revealed a June 13-20 cover story about Romney entitled "The Mormon Moment: How the Outsider Faith Creates Winners" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Is it appropriate to be focusing on a presidential candidate's religion in 2011?

Newsweek certainly thinks it is, and created a cover for its June 13-20 issue prominently highlighting Mitt Romney being a Mormon in a fashion that is guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows:

CNN's Howard Kurtz took a cheap shot at former Alaska governor Sarah Palin Friday via his Twitter account.

Unfortunately, the joke's on him for his mocking of the former vice presidential candidate conveyed to his 73,000 followers his own total ignorance of insurance mandates:

The Justice Department is expected to indict former Senator John Edwards as early as Wednesday for violating federal campaign finance laws.

On this weekend's "Chris Matthews Show," the host along with Time magazine's Joe Klein and the Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan said the DOJ should leave Edwards alone (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Andrew Sullivan this weekend seemed to shock Chris Matthews when he said that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin could actually beat President Obama in next year's elections running as the "principled candidate" representing "this grassroots movement of cutting government down to size."

Maybe even more surprising, Time's Joe Klein seemed to agree telling the host of "The Chris Matthews Show," "You were around in ’79 and ’80 as I was. Did you see many people in the Carter administration think that Ronald Reagan could beat Jimmy Carter?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

You've heard the paranoid, anti-Semitic claim that Jews control the press in this country?

Well, the Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan believes the Israelis got United States media representatives to spin President Obama's Middle East speech as an attack on the Jewish state:

There was a marvelous moment on this weekend's "Chris Matthews Show" when the host literally stuck his foot in his mouth claiming in front of four British journalists that former Prime Minister Tony Blair "was much closer emotionally and politically to Bill Clinton" than George W. Bush.

Guest's Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast and Gillian Tett of the Financial Times both immediately shook their heads as the BBC's Katty Kay and Matt Frei said "No" and "Wrong" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Liberal media members better learn that if they step onto a set with CNBC's Becky Quick, they better bring their "A" game when talking about business and finance or they'll end up looking foolish.

Such was the case on this weekend's "The Chris Matthews Show" when Andrew Sullivan called Wall Street a "parasite class...producing nothing" only to be forcibly corrected by Quick (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On December 18, 2010, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric posted a video on her blog, Couric & Co., calling on Congress to pass tougher legislation to combat underage sex trafficking. However, what she failed to reveal to online viewers was that only two weeks earlier she attended a party at the Manhattan townhouse of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender accused of trafficking underage girls. (h/t BigJournalism.com)

Couric and other media figures, including ABC Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos, were apparently at the event to speak with Britain's Prince Andrew about the upcoming royal wedding. As the New York Post reported on December 6: "Andrew regaled a bevy of media heavyweights at billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's Upper East Side townhouse the other night when he told of the royal family's joy over Prince William's upcoming wedding to Kate Middleton – and the glamorous guests asked for invitations."

 As MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe - formerly of  Newsweek - appeared as a guest on Wednesday’s Late Late Show on CBS, after Wolffe conveyed his left-leaning take on the deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, host Craig Ferguson asked, "You’re a Democrat, aren’t you?" as he stared at the MSNBC contributor for comedic effect, inspiring audience laughter.

After Wolffe responded, "I am a journalist," Ferguson smiled and quipped, "Much the same thing, isn’t it?"

Ferguson had turned the discussion to President Obama’s role in the recent tax agreement, and Wolffe asserted that it was "embarrassing" for Obama that he had to break a campaign promise, although the MSNBC political analyst also suggested that doing so was necessary in the current economic climate. He then claimed that the deal limits the ability of the GOP to effectively criticize the President in the future because Republicans "are in bed with him." Wolffe:

For two years, the Republicans have said this guy is a socialist, he’s unacceptable, he's a freak. And now it’s very hard for them to go back and do that because they are in bed with him - not literally - but they’re in bed with him and they’ve made the deal, and he’s now acceptable. He’s acceptable to polite company and Republicans.

After Ferguson argued that Obama can be attacked for breaking a "big" campaign promise, Wolffe continued:

Chris Matthews said Wednesday that he can't tell what Howard Fineman's political leaning is.

Such humorously occurred at the end of a "Hardball" segment shortly after the host had no problem identifying his other guest as "center-right" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Those Tea Partiers – is there anything in this nation they can’t spoil? They’ve already gummed up the president’s agenda with their rallies and signs and voting. Now, they’re trying to ruin “Dancing with the Stars!”

So says the left and many in the media agree. Now that newly resurgent conservatives have handed them a crushing mid-term defeat, liberals are seeing nefarious Tea Party plots everywhere – including in silly entertainment shows. And they’re taking plenty of shots at Bristol and, predictably, her mother.

Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol, 20, has done remarkably well in this season’s “Dancing with the Stars” competition on ABC. As she’s advanced from week to week, buoyed by viewer voting, entertainment reporters and liberals have become increasingly frustrated.

Video below the fold.

On her website, The Daily Beast, on Thursday, editor-in-chief Tina Brown joyously announced the "wedding" of the left-leaning blog with the equally liberal Newsweek magazine: "Some weddings take longer to plan than others. The union of The Daily Beast and Newsweek magazine finally took place with a coffee-mug toast between all parties."

Brown touted how she would now serve as editor-in-chief for both publications. She expressed her desire to oversee the "great magazine's revival" and praised it for being "lively" and "well-informed." Brown should fit in well as head of the liberal magazine given her own history of left-wing advocacy.

One day before Election Day, the MRC has a fresh new edition of Notable Quotables posted over at MRC.org. Topics this week include: the liberal media’s pre-election meltdown, with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann frothing that the election of “unqualified, unstable” Tea Party Republicans “would destroy America from within,” and Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter engaging in open electioneering: “The GOP’s agenda has to be stopped.”

To read it online, posted with five videos with matching MP3 audio, plus a sixth quote with a matching audio clip, go to www.MRC.org.

For NewsBuster’s readers, here are some of the choicer quotes from the last couple of weeks, reflecting liberals’ increasing desperation as the election clock ticks down: