Time

Time magazine’s senior editor Amy Sullivan, who, like most of her peers in the mainstream media, is an amateur when it comes to religion, twice implied in May that the pro-life Catholics in the U.S. who are upset about President Obama’s recent commencement address at Notre Dame are more Catholic than Pope Benedict XVI. In a May 16, 2009 article on Time.com, Sullivan, the former aide to Democrat Tom Daschle, and the author of an entire book on how Democrats could appeal to Christians, snarked that the Pope “may find his next trip to the U.S. dogged by airplanes overhead trailing banners with images of aborted fetuses,” due to his purported silence on the matter.

Less than a week later on May 21, after outlining on Time’s “Swampland” blog that the semi-official Vatican news has been “calm” and “fairly positive” towards the Democratic president, “in stark contrast to the furious reaction of many conservative Catholics here,” the editor quipped, “Uh, oh. It sounds like the Vatican newspaper ‘doesn’t understand what it means to be Catholic.’” Sullivan, like the rest of the media, was also selective in the articles she chose to emphasize from the newspaper.

On May 20, Politico had an interesting little treatment of columnist Charles Krauthammer crowning him as the most important conservative columnist of the day. A brief overview of his life and his emergence as the most reliable voice against Obamaism served as the main subject for the piece, but a few quotes on Mr. Krauthammer made by other columnists added a sense of how respected Krauthammer is to scribe Ben Smith's piece. All the quotes were complimentary but shockingly, in one of those quotes, lefty Time columnist Joe Klein seemed to hint that a person in a wheelchair was incapable of really understanding enough of the world to make for a worthy columnist.

Can you imagine? In this day and age, saying that a person in a wheelchair is incapable of really understanding the world because they can't easily get out there themselves because of their disability? And, how does a lefty columnist get away with saying this? Will no one scold Klein for his conceit that because he has two working legs that this fact somehow automatically makes him better qualified to opine as a columnist than a wheelchair-bound Krauthammer? Here is how Politico quoted Joe Klein on Charles Krauthammer (my bold):

Time magazine is not wild about capitalism. In a "business roundtable" on the "future of capitalism," Time assembled several liberals to decry the idea: PBS host Tavis Smiley, blog founder Arianna Huffington, and soul singer John Legend all found the need for capitalism to have a large dose of government intervention.

Smiley was frankest: "I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody’s got to look over the shoulder of that child."

Time described its roundtable as a symposium on economic evolution: "With our economic world changing so rapidly, many writers and thinkers are looking at the roots of capitalism and how it must evolve. In the first of our series of Time 100 roundtables, we gathered a stellar cast of honorees to ponder the road ahead." None of them came to assert that economic liberty was a great value.

Arianna Huffington offered the familiar Greed Isn't Good attack:

Usually when CNBC's Jim Cramer is making headlines, it's for his outrageous antics or over-the-top statements. Not this time.

Time magazine's Justin Fox interviewed Cramer asking him questions submitted by readers which was posted on Time.com May 14. Two of those questions dealt with his March 12 appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." In his answers, Cramer accused Jon Stewart of personal attacks, being "vicious," and said that ultimately he had been had."

Fox asked Cramer if this was just a case of him taking "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart's criticism of the entire CNBC network too personally.

Recently I have been messing around with Twitter, the social media site of the day (shameless plug: see me as warnerthuston on Twitter). So, checking out some of the Old Media to see what they were saying about Twitter, I ran across Time Magazine's attempt to seem cool with the Twitterers, er Twitterists, er Twits, er whatever they are called. Time was following some "Tweets From a Washington Dinner" and I found something amusing there. Time, you see, added the Tweet from a guy claiming to be a John McCain adviser that was outed as a fraud months ago; Martin Eisenstadt.

You will recall that this fake Martin Eisenstadt was the same nonexistent fellow that fooled the media for weeks into thinking he was part of the McCain campaign for president. This Martin Eisenstadt even pretended to be a "Senior Fellow of the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy." But it was finally revealed that this Martin Eisenstadt was really a liberal named Eitan Gorlin. But it didn't come to light before he was quoted by several Old Media news outlets as a legitimate McCain adviser.

How many times can you use the discrediting term “extremely,” suggesting extremist positions, in a single sentence describing the state of the Republican Party? Three, if you're writing Time magazine's cover story. Michael Grunwald contended “the party's ideas -- about economic issues, social issues and just about everything else -- are not popular ideas.”

He then asserted in the article for the May 18 edition of the magazine: 

They are extremely conservative ideas tarred by association with the extremely unpopular George W. Bush, who helped downsize the party to its extremely conservative base.

Grunwald proceeded to characterize the GOP's agenda as a “hard right” one which pleases Rush Limbaugh but not a majority of people, arguing: “A hard-right agenda of slashing taxes for the investor class, protecting marriage from gays, blocking universal health insurance and extolling the glories of waterboarding produces terrific ratings for Rush Limbaugh, but it's not a majority agenda.”

Contributing to Time Magazine's 2009 "Time 100" list, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. sucked up to Mexican media mogul Carlos Slim (who has coincidentally purchased 6% of NYT Co. shares and lent the company $250 million recently). After acknowledging Slim's investment in NYT Co., Sulzberger gushed:

Carlos, a very shrewd businessman with an appreciation for great brands, showed a deep understanding of the role that news, information and education play in our interconnected global society....As he spoke at our meeting, he conveyed the quiet but fierce confidence that has enabled him to have a profound and lasting effect on millions of individuals in Mexico and neighboring countries. Carlos knows very well how much one person with courage, determination and vision can achieve.

Geez. That slobbering is quite a change from the paper's attitude toward Slim less than two years ago, when Eduardo Porter labeled the Mexican mogul a thief and robber baron in an August 2007 editorial:

Newsflash: ABC's "The View" leans left.

Barbara Walters, host of the daytime chat-fest revealed to CNN's Anderson Cooper on May 1 that "in general, [the] panel, with the exception of Elisabeth [Hasselbeck], tends to be, shall we say, more liberal."

Even casual viewers of Walters and company can tell the show is a liberal bastion. It features Joy Behar's repeated calls for the impeachment of Dick Cheney, Whoopi Goldberg asking John McCain, "Do I have to be worried about becoming a slave again?" and Sherri Shepherd's suggestion that "every woman" rooted for Hillary Clinton.

Thanks to Time magazine, we're having a "View" moment. Time recently honored Walters, Behar, Goldberg, Hasselbeck and Shepherd with a place on its list of "The World's Most Influential" under the category of "Artists and Entertainers." 

The media's pro-Obama love affair is so obvious, even overdramatic New York Times liberal columnist Frank Rich thinks his colleages are overdoing it. In his latest Sunday column, "Enough With the 100 Days Already," Rich briefly empathized with conservatives who think the press is pro-Obama:

Believe it or not, there are Americans who have a "very negative" opinion of Barack Obama (13 percent, in the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll). Some are even angry at him (10 percent, New York Times/CBS News). As the First 100 Days hoopla started to jump the shark last week, I tried, as an experiment in empathy, to see the world through their eyes.

It was difficult at first, but an interview with the official White House photographer, Pete Souza, on CNN, pushed me over the edge. Souza was showing all those beguiling behind-the-scenes pictures that, though government issued, were more or less passed off as journalism by virtually every news outlet in the land.

Inevitably we got to The Dog. "I want to show this picture because I find this to be a fascinating picture," said the CNN anchor John King, who found almost every picture fascinating. "The president running down the hall with his new jogging partner there, Bo." What, he asked Souza, is it like "to add this to the diversity of your work at the White House?"

I'll leave the photographer's answer to your imagination. But for a second, anyway, I could imagine what it's like to be among the Limbaugh-Cheney deadenders who loathe Obama. Those who feel the whole world is against them. Those who think the press corps is in the tank. Those so sickened by the fawning that they'd throw a brick through the television screen if the Bush-Cheney economy had left them with enough money to buy a new set.

People who use Yahoo! or Google for Jack Kemp obituaries found Time's first headline on its Kemp obit: "Jack Kemp, GOP's Supply-Side Radical, Dies." (UPDATE: It remained "radical"on Time Mobile, but then they updated that as well. See Blogrunner.) Time's Web site now calls him a "Supply-Side Beacon" instead.

Michael Duffy's Kemp obituary was kind, never tearing into supply-side economics as the magazine did so ferociously in Reagan's time. He did refer several times to Kemp's willingness to work on the GOP's "weakness" with black voters, as in this passage:

Hee! Hee! Hee!

Isn't it just a laugh riot! We keep asking the White House for information about the Air Force One flyover incident by Lower Manhattan and they keep responding with evasions.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

And then they keep referring us to the Air Force which keeps bouncing the questions back to the White House which, in turn, refers us back to the Air Force again!

Isn't this just too funny!

That pretty much sums up the attitude of Time Magazine towards the Air Force One flyover affair as you can see in this  article by Mark Thompson and Michael Scherer:

Dear religious pro-life Catholics, get over yourselves. Signed, Amy Sullivan.

Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but the Time magazine staffer practically expressed those sentiments in two April 30 Swampland blog posts wherein she suggests that even the pope wouldn't mind hanging out with Obama on stage at Notre Dame when he accepts his honorary doctorate later this month.

"The Vatican apparently needs to get on-message--its newpaper gives Obama's first 100 days a tentative thumbs-up," Sullivan snarkily noted in a an April 30 post entitled "The Phantom Menace," referring to the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which Sullivan considers a virtually non-existent pro-life movement bogeyman:

[Ed Henry's press conference] question is a misstatement of Obama's campaign pledge to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that "the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." Of course, before Obama could sign the bill, Congress would have to first pass it. And he's never expressed the hope that Congress drop what it's doing and prioritize FOCA.

Less than an hour later, Sullivan sought to marginalize conservative Catholics who are disturbed by Notre Dame honoring the very pro-choice President Obama:

They're rude, annoying, smug and biased. And to Time magazine's managing editor, they're "angels?" Richard Stengel called the four-fifths liberal hosts of ABC's "The View" on April 30 "Angels of Democracy" in an appearance on the show. As he discussed the release of "The Time 100: The World's Most Influential People, " which includes all five women, and lavished praise on them:

"Part of the reason you guys are on there, you're like America's water cooler. People come around, they listen to you. You start, you're like the angels of democracy. You start people talking about the things that are most important in society."

Things like sex, porn and sex toys, sex ed for five-year-olds, and more sex? Or maybe its bashing the Catholic Church, hypocritically defending Barack Obama or sniffing at religious Christmas cards?

The magazine hit news stands on April 30. People including Barack and Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, and Zac Effron made the list. Each "winner," as Stengel referred to them, has their impact written by "somebody famous." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote the article on the ladies of the show.

Now that they made the list, the leftist hosts of The View, along with Elizabeth Hasselbeck's sole dissenting voice of the five, will be able to nominate influential people for next year's top 100 edition.

As if school kids didn't get enough liberal propaganda. Whether parents know it or not, millions of students across the country have been receiving biased news magazines in the classroom. Without adult guidance, children are at risk to take as fact the consistently liberal views of Time magazine.

Through Great American Opportunities, people can order magazine subscriptions and earn Time for Kids subscriptions for the school of their choice. Kindergarten through sixth-graders will then receive this publication free of charge.

According to its website, "The Time For Kids Program helps schools receive the best in current weekly classroom news magazines for students in grades K-6 at no cost. TFK delivers three weekly news magazines to over 3.9 million students."

This program comes from a magazine that has published articles on how kids are bad for the environment. As CMI noted previously, Time's article on May 8 described this environmental problem:

Brent Bozell mentions in his new column that Time offered a cover story package complete with four pages of Joe Klein hosannas and ten pages of fanzine photos for Barack Obama’s first 100 days, while George W. Bush drew next to nothing. There was only a story on Bush guru Karl Rove and how he won with "the least experienced presidential nominee of modern times." (That’s no longer true, but you wouldn’t see that phrase laid on Obama.)

The April 30, 2001 article focused on Rove’s desperate attempt to clean up "W.’s anti-environment image." John Dickerson and James Carney (now Vice President Biden’s press secretary) began with accusations:

Bush abandoned a campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, rejected the Kyoto global-warming treaty, suspended new arsenic standards for drinking water – and began to look suspiciously like the eco-villain Al Gore warned us about.

Ira who?

The establishment media is saying almost nothing about the man who co-founded Earth Day, and who also happens to be in jail for life for murder. Arlen Specter's involvement with the Ira Einhorn case is an important event in the party-switching Senator's career that curious readers would want to know about -- if the establishment media cared to note it.

You know they would be bringing out similar stories quite prominently if they existed about a Democratic senator switching parties. Look at what the Associated Press and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) laid on Joe Lieberman in 2006 ("AP Labels Joe Lieberman 'Democrats' Public Enemy No. 1'") -- and he's still considered a reliable Democratic vote.

Time Magazine recounted the sordid case history in 1997; it's a read the whole awful thing piece if there ever was one.

But before excerpting Time, let's look at two of the earlier paragraphs at John J. Miller's related National Review piece in April 2004, written days before Specter barely withstood an aggressive GOP primary challenge from then-Congressman Pat Toomey:

There’s something very curious – even laughable – about watching the media assemble to offer President Obama a grade after the first 100 days. They weren’t exactly a team of dispassionate scientists in a lab. They continue to be what they’ve been all along -- a rolling gaggle of Obama cheerleaders -- only before it was a campaign and now it’s an administration. So now they’re assessing whether their awe-inspiring historic candidate still glows with the luster of victory. Hmm...let’s see. They applied the luster, they boasted of the luster, and you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll continue doing both.

Remember Chris Matthews, and apply his pre-inauguration pledge across the media: "I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work."

Last week we profiled a large swath of the media's coverage of the TEA Parties.  Well, for those who wondered: how did Time and Newsweek cover the tea parties? The answer is: Barely. Time's April 27 issue carried less than 100 words up front in the Briefing section. There was a photo of a protester -- in Thailand.

Newsweek's April 27 issue carried this very strange entry in the "Conventional Wisdom Watch" box. Tea parties drew a down arrow, with this text: "Protest high taxes after largest tax cut ever [??] -- and miss 'tea bag' double entendre."

Howard Fineman's column on page 31 was largely devoted to the tea parties, although he was not impressed. Under a small photo of a rally, the caption was "STRANGE BREW: Tea parties won't revive the national party."

Fineman said that as well: "Tea parties, of course, will not revive the national party.  So what will? There is no one-stop Republican inner circle with all the answers."

(Note: The Wednesday unveiling of this painting has been cancelled. Check the update at the bottom of this blog for more information.)

"The Truth" is stranger than fiction.

This is not a spoof picture from The Onion or any other satirical website. The image you see to the right (larger version below the fold) is a painting by artist Michael D'Antuono called "The Truth" that will be officially unveiled at Union Square in New York City on April 29 to mark President Barack Obama's hundreth day in office. Here are the details from the official press release:

Can You Handle 'The Truth'?

NEW YORK, April 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael D'Antuono may raise more questions than answers when he unveils his highly controversial new painting, "The Truth" on the South Plaza of NYC's Union Square on the 100th day of Barack Obama's presidency. The artist's politically-, religiously- and socially-charged statement on our nation's current political climate and deep partisan divide has been privately raising eyebrows (and voices) since its creation.

Introducing a segment, on Thursday's "Today" show, featuring Time magazine's photos of the President from his first 100 days, NBC's Matt Lauer, over a shot of Obama in Oval Office, marveled that the stills were "captivating." In an ensuing segment Lauer's colleague, Meredith Vieira asked the easily impressed Time photographer Callie Shell how Obama was "handling" the job, to which Shell cooed: "I think he does very well," and "He reads each night, at least 10 letters from 10 different people...and he answers them, usually the next day."

The following is Matt Lauer's tease and then the full segment as it was aired on the April 23, "Today" show:

So who died and made Time's Joe Klein the head of Mossad? Because clearly he is a better military intelligence expert than anyone in Israel, judging by his April 22 blog post on "Israel's Iran Game" at the magazine's Swampland blog (emphasis mine):

I have no doubt that Israel is--legitimately--freaked out by Iran, although not so much by the prospect of an Iranian bomb as by Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas. (The only plausible use of an Iranian bomb would be as a deterrent against Israel's own nuclear weapons.) But it seems clear that the Netanyahu government's wild overstatement of the Iranian threat, and its linkage to progress on the Palestinian issue, is a subterfuge to allow the continued illegal Israeli settlement of Palestinian areas on the West Bank, which will ultimately subvert a two-state solution.

Whatever should Obama do? Klein would be glad you asked, and even if you hadn't, he'd probably tell you anyway (emphasis mine):

"Sadly, many home remedies could damage a fetus instead of kill it."
-- Newsweek Senior Editor Melinda Beck on self-performed abortions, July 17, 1989 issue.

This old crazy quote came to mind when Time’s William Lee Adams touted this latest "advancement" for the culture of death:

When someone with a terminal illness decides to end his or her life by overdosing on barbiturates, they may hope the drugs will lull them into a peaceful and permanent sleep. But if the drugs have passed their expiration date or lack a sufficiently lethal concentration, the would-be suicide victim may actually survive — risking an array of complications including coma, reduced physical functioning and the opprobrium of disapproving friends and family. Now, in an effort to provide certainty to those contemplating suicide, one of the world's leading euthanasia advocates plans to sell barbiturate-testing kits to confirm that deadly drug cocktails are, in fact, deadly.

The article's decidedly non-ironic headline was "Foolproofing Suicide with Euthanasia Testing Kits." Time seemed to avoid pondering some people find suicide intrinsically foolish, if not spiritually disastrous. The star of the story quickly emerged:

Michael Lindenberger of Time.com, in a April 20 article titled “Ten Years After Columbine, It’s Easier to Bear Arms,” found it “odd” that “whatever momentum the Columbine killings gave to gun control has long since petered out,” despite the “massacres perpetrated by deranged gunmen” in the following decade. He also quoted extensively from a young gun control advocate in the online article, without including any arguments from the opposing viewpoint.

Lindenberger first gave his reflection on the anniversary: “Monday April 20 marks 10 years since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold permanently etched the words Columbine High School into this nation’s collective memory. What happened that day in 1999 also seemed to wake America up to the reality that it had become a nation of gun owners — and too often a nation of shooters. The carnage in Littleton, Colorado...seemed to usher in a new era of, well if not gun control, then at least gun awareness.”

The Time.com writer continued with a seeming lamentation: “In the decade since, massacres perpetrated by deranged gunmen have continued — including the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre in which Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people and wounded many others. But something odd has occurred. Whatever momentum the Columbine killings gave to gun control has long since petered out.”

Two months ago, Time magazine trashed Bernard Goldberg’s book on liberal pro-Obama bias (A Slobbering Love Affair) as a book to "toss" instead of read in their mini-book review featured called The Skimmer. In the latest Time, Andrea Sachs praised the newest James Carville book, titled 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation. It drew a "Skim" command instead of a "Read," but the copy was very promotional:

No one does partisanship better than the Ragin' Cajun. In his latest book, the Louisiana-bred campaign strategist, who recently returned to teach political science at Tulane, takes a victory lap celebrating the Democrats' 2008 electoral trifecta. "The myth of Republican competence and fiscal responsibility is shattered," a victim of the strategic and economic missteps of the Bush years, Carville gleefully notes. If Democrats play their cards right, he argues, they can dominate politics for the next four decades. The key? "To rebuild Americans' trust in government as a force of good." His excitability is infectious, if only to those on the same side of the aisle. ("Let's go out and spank the Republicans again and again," he exhorts readers.)

President Barack Obama was "crisp and decisive" but also lucky in his handling of the Maersk Alabama hostage crisis, exults Time magazine's Joe Klein [depicted in NewsBusters screen cap/file photo at right] in an April 13 Swampland blog post.

Klein added that had the Navy SEAL snipers failed in hitting their targets, Republicans and second-guessing journalists would probably push the Obama administration to escalate matters to tackle a non-existent pirate "threat":

But it could easily have gone wrong, through no fault of the President and the SEALs--a gust of wind, whatever...and then the Administration would have had to waste all sorts of energy on damage control, fending off the second-guessers--Republicans and, all too often, people like me--and perhaps overreacting to the pirate "threat" as a result. Presidencies are, sadly, built or crippled on such quirks of fate.

George W. Bush has said nothing negative about his media-worshiped successor in the Oval Office. Yet that doesn't stop the liberal mainstream media for mocking the former president out of the blue -- while ignoring Obama gaffes -- for events that happened on his watch years ago.

The latest example, Time's Amy Sullivan, on the magazine's Swampland blog today entitled, "Quote of the Day":

Silvio Berlusconi on the 17,000 Italians left homeless by the Abruzzo earthquake:

They should see it like a weekend of camping.

George W. Bush is just kicking himself for not using that little gem in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The Obama White House is serving as a convenient new employer for members of the media as news outlets downsize, but would they have felt so comfortable coming aboard a GOP President's staff? The latest hires: Three news photographers -- from Time magazine, Cox Newspapers and U.S. News & World Report magazine -- are joining the team of photographers snapping pictures at events and meetings in and around the White House complex.

The chief White House photographer, Pete Souza, “announced the hires to PDN,” DCRTV.com reported Thursday in picking up the item from the week before on the Photo District News site. Souza had already tapped photographers from the McClatchy-Tribune News Service and the Associated Press.

The March 24 PDNonline post, “Time Magazine's Top Photo Editor Exits for White House,” relayed the names of those leaving DC press corps slots for the Obama administration:

Have you celebrated Earth Hour tonight by turning off your lights during the hour of 8:30 to 9:30 PM? Time magazine thinks this is so important that they have melodratically asked, Can Earth Hour Galvanize the Global Warming Fight? Writer Bryan Walsh seems to be desperately hoping that the Global Warming movement can find its "defining image":

Every successful social movement has its defining images. Think of the civil rights movement, and the photos of protesters being attacked by police dogs and pummeled by high-pressure fire hoses. Or the Vietnam anti-war movement, and the video of body bags being beamed back to America's living rooms. Even environmentalism has its iconic images, like Cleveland's heavily polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in the 1960s, smog wreathing Los Angeles's skyline during the next decade and even the stark hole in the ozone over Antarctica. To help galvanize public support — especially around a complex issue — the right picture really can be worth a thousand words.

Media outlets including CNN, Time magazine, and the Los Angeles Times are reporting that "over 1 million" women in Brazil illegally terminate their pregnancies every year. (Abortion is illegal there, except under rare circumstances.) However, this figure appears to originate from a group called Ipas, an organization dedicated to "advancing women's reproductive rights." It openly endorses legalized abortion.

And besides the dubious nature of the source, history tells us that this "1 million" number should be looked upon very suspiciously.

Time magazine's Jeff "The pope's a Scrooge" Israely is at it again, lecturing Benedict XVI on his "inflammatory rhetoric."

Israely joins CNN's Jack Cafferty, Washington Post/Newsweek's "On Faith", and PBS's Bonnie Erbe in the bash-Benedict choir's latest oratorio. His March 19 article evaluated the pontiff's recent comments on condoms and HIV/AIDS as "candor over P.R.", lamenting Benedict's word choice and seeming lack of concern about how liberal secular media outlets parse his statements (emphases mine):

Amidst the outrage and consternation lies the question: Why? If we already know the basic tenets of church teaching — not to mention the extent of the AIDS epidemic and disproportionate ignorance about condom use in Africa — why did the Pope say what he said, when and where he said it? What do this and other recent episodes tell us about how the modern papacy operates at that unique nexus where philosophy meets public relations? And why, nearly four years into his reign, does this hyper articulate and well-versed Pope continue to see his attempts at mass communication blow up in his face?