Other FNC

That didn't take long! Just yesterday I suggested readers keep in mind the MSM's bashing of Pres. Bush on his birthday the next time a liberal accused conservatives of being 'mean-spirited.'  Groucho fans will know what I mean when I say: bring down the duck! On last evening's Journal Editorial Report , liberal newsie Marvin Kalb said the magic 'm-s' word in condemning the Wall Street Journal for its criticism of the New York Times.

The Journal had run an editorial, Fit and Unfit to Print  [subscription required] that both explained why it had run a story on the anti-terror financial tracking program, and criticized the New York Times for doing so.  For the record, the editorial explained that in contrast with the Times article, the Journal only published declassified information that had been provided them by the Treasury Department.

Do you support rigorous measures to strengthen border security and tighten immigration controls? If so, you're probably a 'nativist' - read racist - or a rube, or very possibly both.

Don't believe me? Just ask Neal Gabler. Here's what he had to say on this evening's Fox News Watch:

"The conservative nativists, and maybe that's a redundancy, thought they had a winner here. What a great issue they have," he said sarcastically. "You can beat up on aliens and get all of those white folks for the 2006 election."

Conservative columnist Jim Pinkerton weighed in with two points of note:

"Bloggers like Mickey Kaus and Michelle Malkin have made the point that the MSM, especially the LA Times, hid the most inflammatory element of those pictures from their readers and viewers by not showing the profusion of Mexican flags and highlighting the relatively few American flags."

As has been well-documented by Media Research Center [parent organization of NewsBusters], while MSMers are loath to label anyone or anything 'liberal,' they don't hesitate to brand various entities or individuals 'conservative' or 'right-wing.' Well, folks, I believe we have a new world record in the category.

On tonight's Fox News Watch, in the course of discussing the case of Colorado teacher Jay Bennish - who compared President Bush to Hitler - liberal [there, I said it] Neal Gabler managed to utter the term 'right-wing' four times . . . in 14 seconds. Yes, I checked it by my VCR timer.

And here we thought the MSM was biased against President Bush. Wrong! On this evening's Fox News Watch, reliable lefty Neal Gabler informed us that just the opposite is true. Turns out. . . the MSM has uncritically propagated an overly positive image of the president. Who knew?

Gabler's shocking revelation came in the course of a discussion of the recent Katrina revisionism. In particular, News Watch aired footage from an ABC interview from this past week in which the president made this frank acknowledgement:

"Here's the problem that happened in Katrina. There was no situational awareness, and that means that we weren't getting good, solid information from people who were on the ground, and we need to do a better job. One reason we weren't is because communications systems got wiped out, and in many cases we were relying upon the media, who happened to have better situational awareness than the government. And when you have the media [with] better situational awareness than the government, the American people are saying, 'Wait a minute. What is happening? How come the federal Government and state government and local governments couldn't do a better job of providing information necessarily so that people could react better?"

The Wikipedia entry for Fox News Watch commentator Jane Hall notes that she has "has worn a skirt and pantyhose in every edition of the show thus far."

Jane Hall is one of four pundits on the Fox News Channel program Fox News Watch. She has become the most popular member of the show, gaining legions of male admirers who write in to the show expressing their appreciation of her beauty and great legs. Hall has worn a skirt and pantyhose in every edition of the show thus far.

Hall teaches at American University.

"The writer of this entry hopes Professor Hall will give him a good grade on his midterm."

That last part is implied.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Neal Gabler's gotta take outlandish swipes at the Bush administration on Fox Media Watch. And, perhaps in a form of childish defiance, Gabler also has a penchant for biting the Fox hand that feeds him.

On tonight's episode, Gabler:

• Claimed that Vice-President Cheney "doesn't believe in a free press."
• Described the shooting accident as "idiocy" on the VP's part.
• Accused Brit Hume of not asking the 'major question' in his interview of Cheney [having to do with the timing of notification].
• Seconded the notion that the shooting might have been a 'conspiracy' and 'good PR' for purposes distracting attention from the latest Abu Ghraib photo release and other administration problems. Cal Thomas had floated the notion as a joke, but Gabler seemed to pick up on it seriously.
• Mocked Fox's objectivity, saying "when the Vice-President shoots somebody in the face, it's big news. I don't care where you live, even on Fox News, it's a big story."

Alright Neal, you've met your quota for the night. See you next week.

Q: How does a lefty media maven know he's gone off the deep end?

A. When even fellow liberal Jane Hall laughs at him.

Neal Gabler should take the lesson to heart, because that's exactly what befell him on tonight's Fox Media Watch. The subject matter was the media's handling of Hillary's 'Plantation Declaration'. Jane began with a surprisingly candid assessment of Clinton and her presidential ambitions:

"She's clearly running for President and I think the media should quit going around that fact. She's tiptoeing around that fact. The question I have was whether [her plantation remark] was spontaneous or planned. She's been so planned - that's what she's been known for. [She might have given an impromptu answer to a question] but if she reached for the race card, then that's a different context."

I can now confirm what I've long suspected: Neal Gabler and I inhabit different planets. 

I inhabit the one in which the MSM coverage of the Iraqi war is a virtually-uninterrupted drumbeat of the negative.  From headline coverage of every IED that goes off, to the beatification of Cindy Sheehan, the liberal media's treatment of the war has been decidedly downbeat.

Neal Gabler, on this evening's Fox Media Watch, looked at the same coverage and complained that the MSM . . . has not been negative enough.  He began his plaint with a bizarre and distasteful analogy, suggesting that if the media had covered JFK's assassination in the same manner they cover Iraq, they would have reported "President Kennedy dead; everyone else OK." 

Fox News Watch is a Sunday program about journalism. This weekend, it demonstrated how not to be a journalist. The star of this dreadful segment was Neil Gabler.

Much of the discussion was on the coverage of the Iraq War. Gabler has frequently demonstrated his bias to the left on this program. This time, he was over the top.

Twice in the course of this discussion he yelled, not merely said,

"Iraq is a DISASTER. Get it? EVERYBODY gets it now."

Therefore, anyone who disagreed with his conclusion, whether a spokesman for the Administration, or even anyone on the program including the token conservative on the program, Cal Thomas, is wrong.