MSNBC

When thinking of Hillary Clinton, do the adjectives "moderate" and "spontaneous" spring to mind? They do for Joe Klein, assigned by Time magazine to write its cover-story profile of her last week.

Joe Scarborough let Klein's characterization slide this morning. But when Klein played the "spontaneous" card on last night's "Hardball," Chris Matthews devastated him with a clip of Hillary at her wooden worst [second video link, at foot].

Klein offered his assessment during the 8:30 AM ET half-hour of today's "Morning Joe.

View video here.

In the most florid criticism I can recall a network "correspondent" leveling at a major party presidential candidate, MSNBC's David Shuster has branded Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) a border-control "fanatic."

The editorializing came in the course of Shuster's report during today's 5 PM ET "Hardball," which included an update on the GOP primary.

DAVID SHUSTER: No television commercial in Iowa is generating as much heat as the one just unveiled by Republican Tom Tancredo, a border-control fanatic.

View video here.

America will have no one to blame but itself if it doesn't seize the opportunity to elect Barack Obama. That was the essence of a comment Michelle Obama made to Mika Brzezinski in the course of an interview the MSNBCer conducted with the candidate's wife in Iowa over the weekend.

The comments aired on today's "Morning Joe" during the 6:30 AM ET half-hour.

View video here.

UPDATE: 11-13 9:35 AM: Did Hillary answer a second planted question at the event? See foot.

What did Hillary Clinton know about the planted question in Iowa and when did she know it?

The Clinton campaign and apparently Clinton herself are denying she had any idea she was calling on a plant. But according to information in the New York Times, Clinton campaign aides had in fact prompted her to call on the plant.

At 10:51 AM ET this morning, MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall interviewed Hillary campaign co-chair Tom Vilsack, the former Dem governor of Iowa.

TAMRON HALL: Senator Clinton herself said she knew nothing about this and promised it would not happen again . . .

TOM VILSACK: Obviously Hillary Clinton does not condone the planting of questions; she did not know that this young person had been given that question.

View video here.

Vilsack elaborated on his answer later in the interview.

UPDATE, see below: Shuster says "watch the wink."

Sometimes, the smallest gestures are the most significant . . .

Have a look at the freeze-frame. It shows the moment at which the young woman in Iowa this weekend is retaking her seat after posing that planted question to Hillary about climate change. As you'll see, she's flashing someone a conspiratorial wink and smile. "Morning Joe" rolled the video of the moment at 6:43 and 7:01 AM ET today and MSNBC has been replaying throughout the day.

But for a driver's license and a wink, was a nomination was lost?

Video: Real (648 KB) or Windows (716 KB), plus MP3 (112 KB)

Guess I won't be calling Mika Brzezinski a "newsreader" again anytime soon. The "Morning Joe" panelist went to Iowa over the weekend and scored an in-depth interview with Michelle Obama that elicited a highly-controversial suggestion from the candidate's wife. According to Mrs. Obama, her husband isn't polling better among African-Americans because in the back of their minds, many blacks think "others" are better.

View video here.

An interesting discussion occurred on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday when host Howard Kurtz raised the issue of MSNBC intentionally moving to the left politically, as well as its failed attempt to hire Rosie O'Donnell.

Maybe most shocking was conservative radio talk show host Michael Medved saying of the recent events at MSNBC, "I think it shows that they're getting smart."

Coming in a close second was Jennifer Pozner of Women in Media and News stating with a straight face "the majority of the people who host shows on MSNBC are either centrists or conservative," and that Keith Olbermann "is a liberal host, but he doesn't necessarily promote liberal candidates or promote liberal projects."

Deliciously, that might not have been the most absurd statement from Pozner this day (partial transcript follows with emphasis added for your entertainment pleasure):

Those that have wondered how someone like Rosie O'Donnell can be so disturbingly wrong about virtually every important issue of the day got an answer Thursday afternoon: she gets her news from Keith Olbermann.

In fact, not only does Rosie think "Countdown" is actually a news program, she believes it's "the best news show on TV."

Explains a lot, doesn't it?

After all, it's one thing to watch this show for the entertainment value, but quite another to be so intellectually challenged as to be incapable of divining the difference between news and opinion.

Yet, if you fast-forward to minute 2:00 of the following video, you will actually see and hear Rosie make possibly her most addle-minded statement to date:

So, Do You Like Bush or Not?

It's getting hard to exaggerate the left-wing rantings of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. This week, he railed against the "criminal conspiracy to cover the ass" of the "fascist" Bush administration. It probably won't be long before he's dropping the F-word on-air. Olbermann also attacked the "nightmare presidency" of the current commander in chief and mocked Bush's "cynical exploitation" of 9/11. It's really a shame this guy won't have Rosie O'Donnell to follow him on MSNBC, huh?

She Likes Me!

Speaking of liberal MSNBC hosts (sorry for being redundant), Chris Matthews on Tuesday took credit for a line that Hillary Clinton recently used about leadership. Last week Mathews offered her some free advice and seemed pleased that she took it. "Well done," he enthused.

Now that Rosie O'Donnell is out of the running as host of a prime time MSNBC show, speculation has started anew about who will be named to host the program. Among the more amusing of these speculations come from Cenk Uygur, host of an Air America morning show. Writing in the Huffington Post on November 7, Uygur scans the field of candidates for the MSNBC slot:

I would love to say that the right person for the job is one of the progressives I know either at Air America or in the liberal blogosphere. And all of these people are incredibly capable and would do a terrific job if given the opportunity (Rachel Maddow, Sam Seder, Thom Hartmann, among many others, come to mind (maybe even a non-hosts like Josh Marshall or Jane Hamsher)).

I'm also tempted to nominate Jack Cafferty as a possibility, even though he is not a progressive, because he has so clearly taken on the Bush administration in a sane and rational way for the last couple of years.

I can't believe we all missed this one from November 6th, but The New York Times read the cable TV ratings tea leaves and decided that the left is "riding a ratings wave" to dominate the medium. Using the supposed "ratings wave" that the NYTimes imagines has propelled Keith Olbermann to some sort of success story, they have decided that it's all good on cable for the left. Yet, any look at the real ratings makes it hard to understand the Times' claims unless they have based all their hopes on mere wishful thinking instead of factual proof. Not only did the Times wildly exaggerate Keith Olbermann's success but they went as far as to say that Olbermann was "tantalizingly close" to rival Bill O'Reilly's ratings -- a claim that the Times is off the mark with by nearly 2 million viewers! As it turns out the "ratings wave" the Times is so excited about seems more like a trickle and could hardly be taken as evidence of some sort of major shift in viewer preferences. Obviously the "paper of record" is trying hard to create their own reality here! In "Cable Channel Nods to Ratings and Leans Left" the Times reported the obvious drift left that MSNBC has been taking, a direction the cable station was poised to drive further off the cliff with the addition of a new Rosie O'Donnell slime fest -- the one that didn't pan out due to Rosie's queering the deal. But, the analysis thoroughly missed the mark and amounted far more to an Olbermann wet dream than reality.

In the past six years, any time someone wrote a tell-all book about George W. Bush or a member of his administration, they were given the royal treatment by the press with lavish interviews offering them the perfect platform to market their work as well as their politically charged opinions.

Consider for example all the attention given to Valerie Plame Wilson just recently when her book "Fair Game" was released, or the focus on George Tenet and his "At the Center of the Storm" exposé back in April.

With this in mind, if a former female White House aide published a new book implicating a former president -- whose wife just so happens to be the frontrunner for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2008 -- in rape and other possible crimes, shouldn't she be welcomed with open arms by evening television magazines like "60 Minutes" and morning shows like "Today?"

After all, given Kathleen Willey's shocking statements about her new book "Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton" to WOR radio's Steve Malzberg Thursday, one would think such programs would be all over this like white on rice, assuming of course their goal was journalism and not political activism (audio in two parts available here and here, highlights of the interview follow):

"Green Week" at "Today" came in with an Al Gore roar but went out with a travelogue whimper. What happened?

View video [from MSNBC site] here.

On Monday, "Today" kicked off Green Week with an Al Gore interview in which he proclaimed there was no room for dissenting voices on global warming. Over at MSNBC the same day, an NBC environmental "correspondent" urged viewers to vote for candidates with an environmentalist agenda.

But this morning, "Green Week" at "Today" went out on a mysteriously innocuous note. Gone, at least during the crucial first-half hour, was the environmentalist crusading, replaced by little more than a travelogue. Instead of global warming, the focus was Ann Curry's personal accomplishment in Antarctica [note the screen graphic].

Hillary Clinton is a "moral conservative." Don't believe it? Ask Amy Sullivan. The Time editor said so on this evening's "Tucker." Let's permit the dialogue between Tucker Carlson and Sullivan to speak for itself. But come back after the transcript to learn some interesting factoids about Ms. Sullivan's background.

View video here.

"Do as I say not as I do," says Rosie O’Donnell. One week she raises the global warming alarm, the next she reportedly demands a carbon burning clause in her contract. First, on appearing on Martha Stewart’s Halloween show on October 31 of course, Rosie the climatologist explained why she "knows" global warming is such a big problem.

ROSIE O’DONNELL: What do you think of global warming?

MARTHA STEWART: I think global warming is a real problem.

O’DONNELL: Yeah, you know how I know it is?

STEWART: Why?

O’DONNELL: Last week my kids were in the pool.

STEWART: Ugh!

O’DONNELL: Yeah, in October in New York.

As NewsBusters reported, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann went on a ridiculously disgraceful rant during Monday's "Countdown" claiming, amongst other things, that "[T]he presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush."

On Wednesday, Fox News's John Gibson, during his radio program, took issue with Olbermann's tirade, and actually called the former sportscaster a liar for misrepresenting what former acting Attorney General Daniel Levin wrote about the interrogation procedure known as waterboarding.

Gibson accurately pointed out (audio available here courtesy our friend Johnny Dollar):

Rosie O'Donnell won't be following Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

Everybody say awwwwww.

Maybe most delicious, by letting the cat out of the bag too soon, it appears Rosie killed the deal.

Imagine that: her big mouth hurt her this time instead of somebody else.

Talk about your instant karma.

As posted semi-coherently at Rosie's blog in the pseudo-English she seems so proud of:

My October 20th item, "Obama: No Hand on Heart for National Anthem," focused on a "Time" photo of Barack Obama in Iowa in September at Sen. Tom Harkin's steak fry. In contrast with the other candidates, Obama was shown not placing his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem. A reproduction of the photo is seen here, as displayed on today's "Morning Joe."

Video from November 5 "Morning Joe" (2:02): Real (1.50 MB) and Windows (1.26 MB), plus MP3 audio (952 kB).

I believe I may have been the first person in the blogosphere to discuss the story. Fox News subsequently made reference to the matter on a couple shows, but to my knowledge no other major news shows picked it up. Yet the story took on a life of its own. The item here continued to attract thousands of new readers every day [over 107,000 hits at last count], dozens of other sites picked it up, and emails began circulating that included the photo. I've received far more email about it than for any other item I've posted. Although some people have written to criticize the item, the great majority of the messages are critical of Sen. Obama. This story has clearly touched a nerve with many Americans.

With news of a possible Rosie O’Donnell show on MSNBC, Bill O’Reilly, a frequent critic of both, predictably led the November 6 "O’Reilly Factor" with his take.

O’Reilly rehashed Rosie O’Donnell’s most inflammatory comments. Among them were her famous "fire can’t melt steel" September 11 conspiracy theory, calling terrorists "mothers and fathers," implying the British-Iranian hostage crisis was a "Gulf of Tonkin" hoax, comparing "radical Christianity" to radical Islam, smearing volunteer soldiers, and suggesting that the Americans are the real terrorists.

O’Reilly also dispelled the false "New York Times" story that "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" (O’Reilly only said "MSNBC" without mentioning Olbermann by name) is competitive with "The O’Reilly Factor." In fact, "The Factor" dominates the 8:00 PM slot dwarfing "Countdown."

Bill O’Reilly also poked fun at NBC’s hard left turn noting "it is not true that Sean Penn will be co-anchoring the NBC ‘Nightly News’...that Hugo Chavez will become their chief foreign correspondent."

The entire transcript is below.:

On Tuesday night's "Hardball" MSNBC's Chris Matthews bragged that Hillary Clinton took his strategic advice for taking on her critics. After Matthews replayed his recitation of a speech he wrote for Clinton last week, he then showed a clip of Hillary, apparently, aping his line of defense and then praised the Senator from New York as he declared: "Well done."

The following occurred on the November 6th edition of "Hardball":

Chris Matthews: "Last week I gave some free advice in the form of suggested speech notes. First to Obama, then to Joe Biden, then to Hillary. I guess she heard me. Here's what I said she should say on Thursday and what she ended up saying on Friday."

[Begin clip of Matthews from November 1st, "Hardball"]

Is it conceivable that Bill Clinton doesn't want Hillary to win? Chris Matthews floated the possibility on this afternoon's "Hardball."

View video here.

At the top of the show, Matthews played a clip from Bill Clinton's remarks last night to the American Postal Worker's Union. Clinton analogized the criticism of Hillary's evasive debate performance last week in Philly to the Swiftboat ads on John Kerry and attacks on Al Gore and former Dem senator Max Cleland.

Even liberal Bush administration critics are, as Hillary Clinton would say, "piling on" the Senator from New York and Democratic presidential candidate. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, a regular guest on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," who suggested that President Bush "could well have committed a federal crime...30 times" with the NSA wiretapping program, offered harsh words for Senator Clinton on the November 6 "Fox and Friends."

Turley opined that the Clintons "seem to want" documents being released "at a glacial pace." Turley noted that "it’s not just health care stuff" but also "things like pardons, controversies involving Hillary Clinton’s brothers."

As NewsBusters previously reported, Rosie O’Donnell is reportedly negotiating a talk show with MSNBC, the same Rosie O’Donnell who did not last a full season on "The View" with her left wing ravings. The co-hosts on the November 6 edition of "Fox and Friends" discussed it. Gretchen Carlson predicted that "it probably won’t last because Rosie doesn’t stick too long with any particular show."

The co-hosts proceeded to play two inflammatory clips of Rosie O’Donnell, previously documented by NewsBusters. First, was Rosie O’Donnell comparing radical Islam with "radical Christianity" and then her September 11 conspiracy rant that for "the first time in history, that steel was melted by fire."

Is nothing sacred, not even the samba?

Yesterday we were griping about the way NBC's "Green Week" crusade had infiltrated a perfectly good NFL football game. Today brings news that not even the presumably politics-free "Dancing With the Stars" is immune from BDS.

"Morning Joe" today twice rolled tape from last night's "Dancing with the Stars" in which Len Goodman, a Brit who is the head judge, managed to sneak in a shot at President Bush. He was speaking to a dancing pair, apparently after their performance.

View video here.

Will Joe Scarborough be sent to NBC's environmentalist re-education camp and subjected to an endless loop of "An Inconvenient Truth"? The "Morning Joe" host gave a number of hints today that he is less-than-thrilled by the doctrinaire environmentalism the network is imposing on viewers and employees alike during its "Green Week."

Scarborough's show-opening line was a not-overly-subtle dig at the seemingly endless greenery.

View video here.

On Monday's "Countdown," MSNBC's Keith Olbermann delivered his latest "Special Comment," inspired by revelations that former Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin had advised the Bush administration that waterboarding of Al-Qaeda terrorists should be considered torture, as the "Countdown" host charged that "the presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush." He further accused Bush of intentionally inducing Al-Qaeda prisoners to make false confessions which Bush could speak of publicly for political gain, which Olbermann contended would "mean George W. Bush is going to prison." He also warned that Bush would like to use his "nightmare presidency" to move America on a course similar to that of 1930s Japanese fascism.

Rosie O'Donnell on MSNBC.

When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

After all, what could be better than three consecutive hours of leftwing invective starting with Chris Matthews, followed by Keith Olbermann, and ending with Rosie's ridiculous rants replete with repugnantly rude ruminations such as only she can regurgitate?

It's a liberal cable network's dream.

As reported by the New York Times Monday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer motherbelt):

Chris Matthews can't get enough of John Edwards' brutal-but-funny anti-Hillary ad, playing it twice during this evening's "Hardball." Set to the Blue Danube Waltz and based on clips from last week's debate, the theme is Hillary's double-talk on Iraq, Social Security and immigration [her triple-toe loop on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants].

But in the three-cushion game that is presidential billiards, two of Chris's guests surmised that the ad, in taking down Hillary, would likely redound to Barack Obama's benefit.

View video here [includes the Edwards' ad].

Not that there was any doubt about the ulterior motives behind NBC's "Green Week," but we didn't expect the Peacock Network to be quite this brazen. This morning on MSNBC, an NBC environmental "correspondent," who as you'll see has an impressive resume as a left-wing activist, openly urged viewers [on the eve of Election Day] to vote for politicians with an environmentalist agenda.

Video (2:18): Real (1.70 MB) and Windows Media (1.42), plus MP3 audio (1.04).

Meterologist Jackie Meretsky was in NYC, reporting live 67 stories up at the "Top of the [NBC] Rock," overlooking Central Park. At 10:12 AM ET, she interviewed Simran Sethi [shown on the right], whom she described as the "brand new environmental correspondent for NBC" and "the greenest person in the organization."

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, Keith Olbermann and Arianna Huffington made some irresponsible misrepresentations on Tuesday's "Countdown" of a seemingly innocent statement by Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

At the end of the article, the following question was posed: Does anybody believe Olbermann and/or Huffington will apologize for their erroneous defamation of Giuliani?

Well, sports fans, we now have our answer, for in their own way, Keith and Arianna perfectly demonstrated how liberals apologize when they make a mistake insulting conservatives: continue insulting them.

For instance, on Friday's "Countdown," Olbermann actually did apologize for the error, but then immediately began his "Worst Person in the World" segment giving all three dishonors to Giuliani. I kid you not (portions of LexisNexis transcript follow, video available here):