Atlantic

Jury selection in the trial of two-time Democratic Party presidential candidate and John Kerry's Democratic Party running mate in the 2004 election John Edwards began on Thursday. In the related five-paragraph Associated Press story, Michael Biesecker actually identified Edwards as a Democrat in his fourth of his five paragraphs.

That's not a stellar performance (a Republican or conservative in the kind of trouble Edwards is in would have his or her party identified in either the headline, the first paragraph, or both), but at least the party label is present. As blogger extraordinaire Doug Ross noted earlier this evening, in an 1,800-word item at the Atlantic on Wednesday ("Why the John Edwards Trial Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think"), author and undisclosed former Democratic candidate for statewide office Hampton Dellinger failed to name Edwards's party at all, while figuring out a way to tag something or someone "Republican" five times. Here are the opportunities studiously avoided in his treatise only relating to variations on the word "president" (bolded by me):

Wherever devout Christian quarterback Tim Tebow goes, he is dogged by the hatred of those who cannot stand him or his faith. Tebow was traded from the Denver Broncos to the New York Jets amid much media fanfare, and some sportswriters naturally used the occasion to engage in personal attacks on Tebow, his religion, and his fans.

MSNBC invited Nation sports editor Dave Zirin to give his opinion on Tebow’s move to New York. Zirin bizarrely argued that “there are a lot of LGBT people that live in New York City who are also football fans”and that “the new, possibly, starting quarterback for the New York Jets wants them to move backwards 30 or 40 years.”(The Denver Broncos refused to participate in anti-heterosexual Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better Project” when Tebow was still on the Broncos, drawing the ire of the gay community and the left-wing media.)

On Thursday, over 40 hours after the Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick (pictured here) revealed that he stole documents from the Heartland Institute by posing as one of that organization's board members, Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press finally broke the ice and filed a related three-paragraph "this is boring, you don't need to read it" dispatch. Two hours later, the AP science writer extended it to 500-plus words, but kept the headline as uninformative as possible -- "Scientist admits taking, leaking think-tank papers."

The "clever" failure to describe Gleick as a "climate scientist" (which he is) will dissuade many of those who see the headline from clicking through or reading further. By contrast, the headline at Borenstein's report on February 16 after Gleick (whom Borenstein did not name) disseminated the documents was: "INFLUENCE GAME: Leaks show group's climate efforts." In his longer item, Borenstein (or is it now "Boring-stein," Seth?) posits the howler that what Gleick did "mirrors" the Climategate email revelations which occurred in late 2009 and 2011. In your dreams, pal. The initial item plus excerpts from the longer one are after the jump.

The Associated Press's Seth Borenstein, his wire service, and most of the globaloney-advocating establishment press have a problem relating to development NB's Iris Somberg noted a short time ago.

Peter Gleick, described in a related UK Guardian story as "a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute," said last week that he "obtained" documents from the Heartland Institute about its strategy to, in part and in Borenstein's words (from his 1,000-word dispatch), "teach schoolchildren skepticism about global warming." Now, Gleick has admitted that he stole them (Gleick's description: "I solicited and received additional materials directly ... under someone else’s name"). Oops. It get worse for Borenstein and the wire service on at least two levels.

A frequent emailer saw a silver lining in Rand Paul's detention this morning in Nashville by the Transportation Safety Administration which prevented him from speaking at today's March For Life rally in Washington: "Best way to get the MSM to mention pro-life rally."

Well, that's largely true. The local Nashville TV station video posted at Real Clear Politics mentions Paul's prolife purpose up-front, as does a commentary by James Fallows at the Atlantic (who incidentally described the rally as "mammoth"). But my emailer underestimated the lengths to which reporters at the Associated Press would go to keep anything pro-life out of a story. In their 750-word report (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), Erik Schelzig and Eileen Sullivan completely misstated why Paul wanted to get on the flight he was not able to board -- which also means that their story's headline is incomplete:

Just when you consider cutting the Associated Press a break for doing something right, they pull this.

Most people know that in the interest of "not spiking the football," the Obama administration has decided that it will not release photos of Osama bin Laden's dead body.

Shortly after the decision was announced, AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for said photos. According to John Hudson at the Atlantic (HT to Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web), the AP's Michael Oreskes claims that "This information is important for the historical record" and "It's our job as journalists to seek this material." So far, so good.

But you just knew they'd figure out a way to potentially ruin it. Here's Oreskes as quoted by Hudson:

The far-left in America are having a collective conniption fit over President Obama's decision to attack Libya.

Included in the wolf pack is the Atlantic magazine's Andrew Sullivan who despite his preposterous claims of being a conservative appeared on "The Chris Matthews Show" this weekend and said, "I don’t know why anybody voted for Obama in the primaries...[now] we have this politicized Clintonian mess" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Only ten days after her idiocy-laden appearance on HBO's "Real Time," MSNBC's resident Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow once again made a fool of herself on national television.

In a segment bashing various conservatives for their views about the growing Egypt crisis, Maddow went after Sarah Palin loaded with quotes from a well-known satirical website urging the former Alaska governor to call for an invasion of the beleaguered Middle East nation (video follows with transcript and lots of commentary):

National Review's Reihan Salam this weekend demonstrated exactly why it should be required that there be at least one conservative present during televised political discussions.

Appearing on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," Salam had a spirited and at times contentious debate with the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan about conservatism, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party (video follows with transcript and commentary):

At the top of Wednesday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric lamented: "The President tries to comfort a nation in mourning, but even on a rare day of unity, politics and controversy intervene." A clip was then played of Sarah Palin's Facebook video reaction to the Tucson shooting and media finger-pointing: "Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel."

Later, correspondent Chip Reid reported that in his speech at the memorial service for the victims, "one thing we're told he [President Obama] will not do is get into the political battle that's developed over this tragedy." Reid then added: "a battle that became even more heated today when Sarah Palin joined the fray."

The New York Times ran a rather serious report on Tuesday, regarding former Vice-President Dick Cheney and the new mechanical heart pump he received in July.  The addition of the new pump means that Cheney’s heart will never again beat at full strength, and leaves him with a daunting decision whether or not to have a full heart transplant.

Naturally, juveniles in the liberal media have had a blast with the news.

Political Wire, a supposedly non-partisan political blog led off a post about the heart transplant with this gem:

The New York Times confirms what many of his political opponents always assumed: Dick Cheney has no pulse.

And there’s more...

Tuesday's "Morning Joe" panel on MSNBC played the class warfare card, highlighting tension between the American middle class and the richest Americans who profit from the global economy. Impassioned co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski gave credence to middle class frustration at the widening gap between them and the ultra-rich.

The Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief James Bennett referenced a poll touting that 60 percent of Americans advocate higher taxes for the wealthy as the best solution to the budget crisis. "I think part of that is a response to the sense that they're being left behind by these people," Bennet explained.

Bennet pointed out top hedge fund managers making over a billion dollars a year, and suggested Americans would like to see more of that money back. "You'd think," huffed Mika Brzezinski. "Good luck getting it from them," Joe Scarborough warned. Scarborough was a critic of the recent tax deal between Obama and the GOP, arguing that millionaires did not need the tax cuts as much as the country needed their tax revenue to pay down the deficit.
 

 Appearing as a panel member Sunday on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show, Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic charged that Republicans are "trying to keep this economy bad" to hurt President Obama as the group discussed extension of the Bush tax cuts. He then tagged the GOP as "the most irresponsible political party I’ve seen."

Sullivan began his rant against Republicans as he jumped into the conversation: "Can I just point out the fantastic irony that we’ve just gone through an election in which the Republicans campaigned day in and day out about the debt, and now we find after the election that they’re the least willing to tackle it?"

When host Chris Matthews asked him to "explain," Sullivan continued: "Pure, utter cynicism. All they’re doing is trying to keep this economy bad and keep nailing that in Obama - by the way, who’s not responsible for most of it - and so that they can get back in power. They have no interest in solving this country’s debt problems and fiscal problems. They’re the most irresponsible political party I’ve seen in (INAUDIBLE)."

Moments earlier, John Heilemann of New York magazine had also argued against the extension of the Bush tax cuts. Heilemann:

In an article on CBSNews.com's Political Hotsheet blog, Lauren Seifert described a Thursday interview with political consultant Fred Karger who claims to be considering a run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012: "Karger insists he has strong Republican credentials....What's interesting is that this longtime Republican is openly gay and may also run for president in 2012."

Karger announced his possible White House run while talking to CBS chief political consultant Marc Armbinder on for the CBSNews.com webcast 'Washington Unplugged.' Armbinder is also a writer for the liberal magazine 'The Atlantic.' Karger explained his political involvement over the years: "I've worked for President Reagan as a senior campaign consultant in 1980 and 1984. I've supported President George H. W. Bush. I've worked on nine presidential campaigns and this would be my tenth." Beyond that, it wasn't clear why he would be serious contender or why CBS would treat him as such.

"Sarah Palin represents an America this is absolutely, definitionally white, that's very much rural America."

That's how The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan summed up the former Alaska governor in his appearance on the November 7 BBC Radio 4 "Americana" program.

Echoing  Peter Jennings' infamous description of the 1994 midterms, the liberal British-born blogger added of 2010 voters that they had "had a panic, a tantrum."

For his part,  Washington-based "Americana" host Matt Frei  reinforced Sullivan's analysis, labeling Palin the "Evita of the North" and generally failed to question Sullivan's analysis.

Andrew Sullivan on Friday said that if you say something bigoted on Fox News, you get rewarded, promoted, and celebrated.

As the topic of NPR's firing of Juan Williams was raised on the syndicated program "The Chris Matthews Show," Sullivan was far more critical of the cable news station than the radio network (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's the tale of two attempts at "digital astroturf" or "online grassroots activism" or whatever you want to call it. Regardless of the label, there's an apparent media double standard at work: attempts to rig prominent online information sources for political gain is only worth reporting if the perpetrators are conservatives.

The blogosphere - though not the mainstream media - has been buzzing about a proposed campaign by a Daily Kos blogger to game Google's search algorithm to promote stories unfriendly to the Tea Party and the GOP.

Contrast the media's silence with the buzz over an alleged attempt by a conservative group on the aggregator Digg to "bury" stories on that site. That plot got coverage from ABC News, the Atlantic, the San Francisco Chronicle, even across the pond at the UK Guardian - not to mention from scores of liberal blogs.

341878&page=1">ABC News, the Atlantic, the San Francisco Chronicle, even across the pond at the UK Guardian - not to mention from scores of liberal blogs.

When the Republican Party launched a new website in October of last year, they had some serious problems with the new site. The media ate it up.

Within a few days, media outlets ranging from Politico to "The Daily Show" to the Huffington Post to the Christian Science Monitor - and, of course, a host of liberal blogs - had weighed in on the website's problems. Their commentaries mostly took the form of mockery.

Last week, the Democratic Party launched a new site of its own. It too had some major bugs in the hours after it went live. The media's response: crickets.

The following clip aired on the Daily Show on October 15, two days after the GOP's site launched:

I didn't know about what follows when I posted last night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) on Atlantic politics editor and CBS Campaign 2010 "Chief Political Consultant" Marc Ambinder's September 15 prediction that "The media is going to help the Democratic Party's national messaging." Though drop-dead obvious, I still found it interesting that someone in Ambinder's position would admit it.

It turns out that only two days after Ambinder put forth his prediction, he proactively made it come true.

Despite the inquisitive title of his September 17 post ("Will the White House Play the Palin Card?"), Ambinder clearly believes that going after Sarah Palin should be part of the White House's and Democrats' strategy during the next seven weeks.

It's enough to make you wonder if he has already written his CBS election post-mortems. Behold Ambinder's cluelessness:

In a September 15 post-primary item at the Atlantic ("An Epic End to the Primaries: What It Means"), politics editor Marc Ambinder presented seven "different ways to look at the primaries of September 14, 2010."

His final item reads as follows (bold is mine):

7. The media is going to help the Democratic Party's national messaging, which is that the GOP is a party full of Christine O'Donnells, a party that wants to take away your Social Security and your right to masturbate. Well, maybe not that last part, but then again, the implicit message of the party is that the GOP is about to elect a slate of hard social rightists to Congress.

The bolded text is an obvious point to anyone with even the most rudimentary powers of observation, but it's a pretty interesting admission nonetheless. That's especially true because Ambinder is a bona fide member of the media. Indeed, he's a self-admitted Journolist member who despite (or perhaps because) of that involvement has a specific assignment involving covering this fall's elections.

On August 27, CBS announced its 2010 campaign coverage team. Marc Ambinder is on that team (HT Media Bistro):

Want to make friends in "elite" political blogosphere? Don't dare be outspoken on behalf of Delaware Republican U.S. Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell.

In a Sept. 15 post on his The Atlantic blog, "The Daily Dish," Sullivan takes a break from gossiping about political figures' genitalia to take on conservative talker Mark Levin's response to those who were seemingly hell-bent on O'Donnell not being the Delaware GOP nominee within the conservative media intelligentsia.

After going through a litany of Levin's alleged indiscretions against O'Donnell detractors, Sullivan argues that his so-called "conservative" counterparts had it coming since Levin had been so critical of the pseudo-intellectuals that have masqueraded as conservatives over the years.

Appearing on MSNBC to present his magazine's feature piece critical of the "Baby Boomer" generation, James Bennet of The Atlantic named George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Bill Clinton as the three worst "baby boomers" who did the most harm to the country's political culture and its economy.

"It'd be hard not to point to George W. Bush as having done a lot of damage," Bennet asserted.  Bush, he added, "created a lot of programs that costed us a huge amount of money, without a lot of regard for what the effects are going to be on the folks that are going to have to pay for those for many years."

Bennet also blamed President Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich for failed policies. However, Bennet was quick to reference the "surpluses as far as the eye could see" at the end of the Clinton administration, as a counterweight to Clinton's damage while in office. He bafflingly lauded President George H.W. Bush's tax hike as "politically brave" and which helped create the prosperity of the Clinton years.

After wondering on Friday if President Obama should help push energy legislation through Congress, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell continued her cheerleading for a new energy agenda on Monday. On her afternoon show "Andrea Mitchell Reports," Mitchell downplayed the cost of last summer's Cap and Trade bill, and opined that solar energy should be a part of the American energy future.

"Ed Markey's bill–the Markey-Waxman bill–was a year ago, but it is a Cap and Trade bill, as you were pointing out," Mitchell said to guest Ron Brownstein of Atlantic Media. "It doesn't really require us to eat our spinach," she added.

Mitchell introduced the segment by referencing the Oval Office address that President Obama will be delivering Tuesday. "How hard will [President Obama]  press BP, and just how far will he go in proposing new energy legislation?" Mitchell asked.

After introducing Brownstein to the segment, Mitchell pitched the question she had asked of New York Magazine columnist John Heilemann on Friday: is now the time for sweeping energy legislation?

Completing a full spin through the revolving door, Linda Douglass, a long-time CBS and ABC correspondent before jumping aboard the Obama campaign in 2008 – followed by HHS and White House positions promoting ObamaCare -- has re-joined The Atlantic as a Vice President who “will concentrate on company strategy and communications,” the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reported online Thursday morning.

Before joining the Obama campaign as senior strategist and senior campaign spokesperson on the road, Douglass toiled for National Journal, part of Atlantic Media which also owns The Hotline. Her first stint in the new administration was as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, followed by Communications Director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, a slot she left in April.

Atlantic Chairman David Bradley recognizes the conflict between her political agenda and being a journalist, but he told Kurtz “she's too big an editorial talent for us to keep her out of the editorial product.”

The mainstream media seem to have boiled down the president's reaction to the Gulf spill to two caricatures: either he has failed to satiate public appetites by feigning outrage, or he is succeeding by acting angry. Whereas journalists rightly expected President Bush to do something about Katrina--and excoriated him when he supposedly didn't do enough--the media seem content listening to Obama speak.

That the president may not be doing everything in his power, like, say, meeting with the CEO of British Petroleum, seems not even to cross their minds. So the only critique of the president that remains is one of style. By focusing on what the president has said--rather than what he has done--and how he has said it, the media have diverted (albeit unintentionally) attention from the administration's actual response to the spill to its emotional and verbal response.

Obama and his predecessor both accepted responsibility for the spill and Hurricane Katrina, respectively. But the mainstream press took the former at his word; they rightfully held him accountable for his administration's actions. No such accountability is present in the media's reporting on Obama's response to the Gulf spill.

We all know former Vice President Al Gore has a sycophantic media supporting him on his pet cause of global warming. But this might be a little over the top, or it could very well explain a lot.

In December 2007, when Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, The Washington Post's Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan argued the former vice president had won the Nobel Prize for "sexy." Well, apparently this is an inside-the-beltway notion that has existed for years.

On HBO's June 4 broadcast of "Real Time with Bill Maher," film producer, director, and screenwriter Judd Apatow harkened back to a 2000 cover of Rolling Stone magazine that revealed something about the former vice president during the Bush/Gore election cycle.

Did Ronald Reagan inspire one of the most famous lines in movie history? The widely quoted Dirty Harry "Do you feel lucky?" line.

That is what The Atlantic senior editor, Christopher Orr was wondering. Most of us would enjoy that premise. In the case of Orr, he found it "creepy." The Atlantic had posted a fascinating video clip from a 1954 General Electric Theater episode in which Ronald Reagan as a doctor confronts juvenile deliquent James Dean. Here is the analysis of that video from Orr:

...It's commonplace (and, I think, entirely accurate) to describe the "Dirty" Harry Callahan persona that Clint Eastwood wore to such effect beginning in 1971 as a harbinger of the Reagan Revolution. But who could possibly have imagined that, nearly two decades before Harry uttered his iconic, "Do you feel lucky, punk?" monologue--yes, I know the quote's not exact, but it's the accepted shorthand--Reagan himself would have uttered lines so uncannily alike? As Dean points his pistol at Reagan, the latter replies (shortly before the four-minute mark in the clip):

It's only a .32. It's not a very big bullet....You gotta be lucky, and if you're lucky--very lucky--then you've killed another man.... If you're not lucky, that bullet isn't gonna stop me.

Two reports linked by Instapundit earlier today demonstrate at a macro and micro level how weak the claim that Toyota has deliberately jeopardized consumer safety in connection with "sudden acceleration" complaints may ultimately turn out to be.

The macro piece comes from Megan McArdle (pictured at left; "How Real are the Defects in Toyota's Cars?") at her blog at the Atlantic. The magazine's business and economics editor dissected case-by-case detail originally compiled by the Los Angeles Times, which was also analyzed to an extent by Washington Examiner op-ed writer and Overlawyered blogger Ted Frank, to make important points about the likelihood of driver error in many of them.

The micro item comes from Michael Fumento, whose Forbes column takes apart the recent James Sikes "sudden acceleration" incident in California as it rips the establishment media for its total lack of skepticism about the driver's claims and his credibility.

First, to McArdle, who also has nicely done graphs at her post:

On Tuesday's Newsroom, CNN's Tony Harris applied liberal thinking on race to the unemployment rate, speculating if the debate over jobs would change if whites were out of work like minorities were: "I wonder what the discussion about jobs in this country would be like if the rate of white unemployment in this country was, say 15, 16 percent, as it is for African-Americans."

Harris brought up the race issue during a segment with Don Peck of The Atlantic 42 minutes into the 11 am Eastern hour. Peck recently wrote an article for the publication on "how a new jobless era will transform America." Besides bringing up the unemployment rate of blacks, the CNN anchor also cited the 12-13 percent unemployment rate of Hispanics, and then quoted from Peck's article: "Make the point here- expand on the comment, 'It will leave an indelible comment on many blue-collar white men and on white culture.' What do you mean by that?"