Time

In an article that could have been written by Michael Moore, Katrina vanden Heuvel, or any number of “diarists” at the uber-left wing website Daily Kos, Time magazine’s Joe Klein on Thursday declared President George W. Bush “clearly unfit to lead.”

Happy Easter to you too, Joe.

In a hit piece entitled “An Administration’s Epic Collapse,” Klein attacked the most powerful man in the world early and often (emphasis added throughout):

Time is money. Those words took on special meaning when Time magazine gave its readers “51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference” and stop global warming.

Number 5: "Pay the carbon tax."

Liberalism at its finest ... taxes and more taxes. The magazine was neutral on which major government regulation should control our lives – caps or taxes. But when it came to taxes, Time writers were quick to point out even a “10% flat carbon tax” “may not be enough.” Even worse, according to the magazine, it might not be either cap-and-trade or big taxes – the “environmental equivalent of Elvis vs. the Beatles.” The publication claimed “in the end, the world may need both.”

Number 40: "Get a carbon budget."

Time magazine's eco-advice knows no bounds. This time they want to tell workers, and bosses, how to run their businesses, their computers and maybe even where to move their desks or take their staplers.

Number 29 on Time's "51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference" list? "Remove the Tie"

Time wants us to emulate the Japanese strategy of keeping office temperatures at 82.4 degrees. It’s a way of saving energy – just not workers.

What Time ignored was that the Japanese also go to extremes in winter - extreme cold, according to a February 16 Washington Post article. Impact: 6. (The impact on workers goes up as summer temperatures rise.) Feel good factor: 9. (Let’s ask the freezing Japanese workers about that one.)

One of the most ridiculous suggestions among Time magazine’s “51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference" to save the planet from global warming was the idea of making only right turns. No, that doesn’t presage some political shift for the publication. Right turns, in this case, referred to traffic.

ABC seized on this concept on April 3, detailing United Parcel Service's company policy of avoiding left turns.

But neither Time nor ABC "World News with Charles Gibson" explained that this practice might not be as good for ordinary drivers as it is for the UPS fleet with computer-programmed delivery, mapping software and GPS.

As part of its 44-page epic on how to survive global warming, Time magazine advocated vegetarianism and bashed burgers in the April 9 issue.

"If you switch to vegetarianism, you can shrink your carbon footprint," said the magazine.

Number 22 on the list of 51 things you can do to "make a difference" was "Skip the steak" asking this extreme question: "Which is responsible for more global warming, your BMW or your Big Mac?"

"It's your burger," Time answered.

Following the same train of thought, Time offered number 25 "Support your local farmer," because locally grown fruit and veggies rack up fewer "petroleum miles."

The redesigned Time magazine is lending itself to selling the letters and quotes that are pleasing to liberals. In the Inbox section, letters praising Al Gore and Caroline Kennedy are in bold letters, as is a letter demanding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should have been canned along with Donald Rumsfeld when CBS broke open Abu Ghraib in 2004. In the Verbatim section, only two quotes were in bold type: from Elizabeth Edwards and Bush-bashing Sean Penn.

Next to a picture of Al Gore came the bolded letter: "Whatever Al Gore's electric bill is, he has alerted the public to global warming. Gore doesn't have to live in a cardboard box to be right on this issue." -- Bruce Rider, Grapevine, Texas.

A caption underneath the picture and letter pitches Gore as a "leading light of environmentalism."

If you can survive reading Time magazine, then you should be able to handle all 44 pages of “The Global Warming Survival Guide.” It’s chock full of diatribes, calls for increased regulation and “51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference.” Unfortunately, recycling your Time magazine before reading it didn’t make the list.

Time has a bit of a bias – for Mother Earth and against all the rest of us. According to the lead story, “we can also be shortsighted and brutish, hungry for food, resources, land – and heedless of the mess we leave behind trying to get them.”

I could go into detail about all the craziness and discussion of our “250-year industrial bacchanal,” and I do, but let’s explore the fun stuff – the crazy 51 ideas. Readers were supposed to ride the bus, move to a high-rise, pay the carbon tax, skip the steak and only make right turns. (UPS found that its trucks idled more waiting for left turns.)

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Time's Joe Klein raves that the Supreme Court ruling that EPA can regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant is "fabulous":

This is fabulous news from the Supreme Court. Let's hope it lifts some of the remaining diffidence in DC regarding actual solutions--as in, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade programs, or a bit of both.

(h/t Snarking Dawg)

From Ana Marie Cox's post to the "Swampland" blog at Time magazine:

Let me say that I did some self-cringing last week, when I choose to describe Tony as the "most fun" press secretary of the administration. I was looking for something non-controversial, non-partisan and true to say about the guy. "Fun" seemed like something he'd appreciate -- he is fun. The biggest change in the press operations of the WH since he's gotten there is that the briefings are no longer thuddingly boring. So, really, "most fun" was kind of a low bar.

He's also a class act. He clearly respects the press, and his tangles with them are leavened with a humor and self-awareness that make him hard to dislike, even when you violently disagree.

I -- and I'm sure my fellow bloggers here -- wish him well.

I'm guessing Cox's successors at Wonkette didn't get the memo. Emphasis mine, expletive edited for content:

Writing in the "Swampland" blog for Time magazine today, Karen Tumulty insisted the U.S. attorney firings deserved "massive commitment of journalistic resources" before going on to cite a study showing that media attention in the past few weeks has skewed heavily towards the non-scandal scandal:

... And before all our commenters jump on me, let me stipulate: I think the unfolding U.S. Attorneys story is a huge one, it deserves a massive commitment of journalistic resources, it is not likely to go away any time soon and I'm skeptical that Alberto Gonzales is going to survive it. I also believe that history has shown us many times that the broadest measures of public interest are a lagging indicator of the significance of a story. Finally, the blogosphere deserves huge credit for leading the way on it.

Translation: "the public don't know it yet, but this is an important story, we're going to make it an important story, and, kudos to liberal bloggers for making a fuss over it."

In 1993, Time magazine didn't show the same interest in blowing up the Clinton/Reno firings into a story the public would care about. [continued...]

Time's Joe Klein is pleased that Al Gore isn't squishing out on global warming in order to make a 2008 campaign run more palatable for the American people.

As if that wasn't a liberal-enough talking point, Klein's March 22 "Swampland" blog post describes Gore's willingness to resort to the usual tax and spend policies as "putting his [Gore's] money where his mouth is." Portion in bold is my emphasis.:

Yesterday, I wrote--based on incomplete reporting of ongoing testimony (no criticism of live-blogger Brian Beutler; the hearing was in midstream when I posted)--that Al Gore seemed to be backing away from his carbon-payroll tax swap. I haven't seen the complete testimony, and the press reports are not sufficiently wonky to give all the relevant details, but it appears that Gore is still up for the tax swap (an idea I supported in this column last year). In fact--no surprise--he's for a very tough global warming regime, including a ban on new coal-fired power plants and an intense cap-and-trade regime.

I speculated yesterday that if he stepped away from the tax swap, it might mean that Gore has political plans--but that speculation obviously was idle and kind of dumb. In 2000, Gore proposed spending $150 billion on global warming over the next 10 years (essentially, he wanted to spend the entire budget surplus on global warming...you remember the budget surplus). So he isn't averse to putting his money where his mouth is on this issue, even when running for office. Is he running? Dunno. But, as Jake Barnes once said to Lady Brett Ashley (or vice versa), it would be nice to think so.

John McCain thinks condoms don't stop the transmission of AIDS, don't ya know? I read it in the liberal strata of the blogosphere. Only, that's not exactly what the Republican Arizona senator said.

Blogger Ana Marie Cox of Time magazine's "Swampland" blog should know better, but she's only the latest to exult in McCain's interview gaffe with, and this is a real shocker, the New York Times's Adam Nagourney. [/sarcasm]

Cox began her March 21 post by pointing to a post in The New Republic's blog "The Plank":

Michael Crowley makes a point over at TNR's blog about McCain's senior moment regarding condoms (Do they prevent AIDS? “You’ve stumped me.”) and how his "old fashioned" bus-tour-talkathon is a bad fit with this whole "blogging" phenomenon:

What do you do when you're a liberal columnist and there's a pet issue of yours the media aren't being biased about (stem cells) because they haven't covered it, because, well, they're too busy being biased about other stories (Alberto Gonzales, Iraq)?

If you're Slate founding editor and former "Crossfire" host Michael Kinsley, you hack out a blog post about it.

Mucking around Time's "Swampland" political blog, Kinsley expressed frustration at a new development in the stem cell funding issue he thinks has gone underreported in the mainstream media:

Elias Zerhouni, the head of the National Institutes of Health, testified to a Senate committee that he favors a lifting of Bush's limit on stem cell research. It leaves us fighting disease (and foreign competition) "with one hand tied behind our back," Zerhouni said. Clearly prepared to say what he said, Zerhouni offered a vivid metaphor: he called stem cells the "software of life."

This story did not seem to make the paper editions of either the New York Times or the Washington Post. (The Wall Street Journal had a very short blurb on page one and no longer story.) All the papers had it on-line, of course. But isn't this a pretty big deal?

Call Tom Cruise and pass out the vitamins because conservatives are officially sad. It seems Time magazine is trying to top last week’s “Verdict on Cheney” cover that photoshopped storm clouds over the lightning-rod vice president. The cover for the March 26 issue shows a close-up headshot of the late Ronald Reagan who appears to have a single tear on his cheek, ala Iron Eyes Cody. The “photo illustration” is accompanied by the caption, “How The Right Went Wrong,” referring to “these gloomy and uncertain days” for conservatives.

Both images are hoaxes. Iron Eyes Cody was featured in one of the most memorable environmentalist promotions that showed a lone “Indian” crying about littering and pollution with a single tear sliding down his cheek in the final shot. Iron Eyes Cody was known as the “crying Indian,” but his family knew him as Espera DeCorti, the son of Italian immigrants. This cover is as accurate as that fake glycerine tear that gently slid down Iron Eyes Cody’s cheek.

Radar Online states that Time table of contents gives the “somewhat cryptic” credits for the cover in small print as, “Photograph by David Hume Kennerly. Tear by Tim O’Brian” but does not specifically state that it the cover is photoshopped. Time responded to Radar, defending their cover:

Time magazine is not going to play to the stereotype of only praising Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They can find obscure Democratic presidential campaigns to praise. The infamous Joel "I Don't Support Our Troops" Stein has filed a piece praising fringy Dennis Kucinich, the candidate who would create a Department of Peace. Stein acknowledges he's on the outer edges of political feasibility, and yet there's something so right in his "progressive" idealism:

"And yet the universe has been going his way lately. Even his old kooky ideas are looking pretty good these days. His decision to allow Cleveland to default instead of selling its electric-utility company cost him re-election and landed him in a book about the worst mayors in American history, but he was later honored by the city council for refusing to sell, a move that saved customers nearly $200 million over 10 years. More inconceivable, less than two years ago, his office was visited by a stunning 6-ft.-tall Julianne Moore look-alike 31 years his junior, a Brit who was working for the American Monetary Institute. After some smooth wooing on his part ("I gave her a copy of my Department of Peace legislation and my e-mail address") and one date (at MacLaine's house), she agreed to marry him. If that happened to you, you'd think you could be President too."

First, take a look at the appalling illustration that accompanies the article in Time magazine this week (February 26, 2007, page 46). In the darkest of colors and tones, a sinister-looking, pasty-faced priest is pictured. As his empty, white eyes furtively peer back towards the viewer, his pale, wiry fingers grip what looks to be a Bible. Paper money is leafing out of the book pages. (I've posted the illustration here.) The artist is Sam Weber. I don't know if he's familiar with the 19th-century anti-Catholic drawings by Thomas Nast or the modern-day, anti-Vatican caricatures by Jack Chick; but I bet both guys would be proud. (By the way, do you think Time would allow the same caricature using a rabbi? I wouldn't think so.)

The article is, "Pilfering Priests," by Tim Padgett. (Online, the title is "When Priests Pilfer.") The heading below the main title warns, "the Catholic Church is facing another crisis: clergy who steal money from their parishes." Interesting. But what are the facts?

I'm just getting to the February 19 editions of the news magazines today. The objective? Did they report on the vulgar anti-Christian and anti-Catholic blogs of the now-retired feminist John Edwards bloggers? Not with any specifics. Each papered over the controversy.

Time's Massimo Calabresi devoted his story to the trouble with campaign bloggers and how their "bravado can backfire." In reporting on bloggers for McCain and Hillary as well for Edwards, Calabresi quoted Amanda Marcotte's snarky comments about how guilty the Duke lacrosse players were, but not her giggling over the idea of aborting Jesus after she was filled with the "hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit" so Christians would have to find another "ancient mythology" to excuse their hatred for women:

Are Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh to blame for left-wing vulgarity from the likes of blogger Amanda "%$@#" Marcotte, late of John Edwards presidential campaign blog? That's the argument from Time senior writer and columnist Joe Klein, now writing at Time's Swampland blog.

"As a newcomer to this blogging business, I've been interested in the Edwards dust-up. As readers know, I've been critical of the tone of the left-wing blogosphere in the past. But I think that Yglesias raises an important point here and anyone reading the comments section of any Swampland post knows that troglyditic right-wing cavedwellers fester there, in a vomitously vile manner, too.

Let's play one of our favorite parlor games: "WIARHSI?" You know: "What if a Republican Had Said It?" In today's game, let's imagine what would happen if a Republican presidential candidate had said that Barack Obama was the first "clean" and "articulate" African-American presidential candidate?

• Which paper would be first to call for the Republican's withdrawal from the race: the NY Times, Boston Globe, WaPo, other?
• How soon until Jesse Jackson, Carol Moseley-Braun and Al Sharpton turned up on TV to be asked how they felt about being insulted in this way?
• How many hours of MSM musing over the GOP's "history of racial insensitivity"; how many replays of Trent Lott making his statement about Strom Thurmond, of George Allen's 'macaca' moment, etc., would we be subjected to over the ensuing week?
• How long until the hapless Republican did indeed withdraw from the race?

But when it's a Democrat . . . count on Chris Matthews, for one, to circle the wagons.

Matthews had Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post and Jay Carney of Time magazine in as guests. The trio didn't even broach the Biden comments until a full ten minutes into their gab fest, after batting around a number of other issues. How long would Chris have waited to launch had it been a Republican on the hot seat?

View edited video clip here.

While media outlets carped and whined about a perceived conservative slant to the hit television series “24” as reported by NewsBusters here, here, here, here, here, and here, none seemed interested in asking the opinion of the star of the show who also happens to be the executive producer.

In fact, all of the hyperventilating left could have just watched the Charlie Rose Show on PBS on January 12 to find out the truth, assuming of course that this is important. If they had, they would know that Kiefer Sutherland believes he "[leans] towards socialist politics."

How's that for a kick in the head? Confused? Well, you won't be when you read Sutherland's response to Rose's question, “What are your politics?” (this is where all of the "neo-con" conspiracy theorists must pay particular attention if they dare):

Sometimes, you have to read all the way to the end of an article to find that Time is still asking, like their famous 1966 cover, "Is God Dead?" At the end of its January 29 cover story (or cover essay) by Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker, the academic drops the typical bomb: religion "devalues life on earth," and the "most famous practioners" of belief in God in our time "hijacked the airliners on 9/11."

In the closing section, titled "Toward A New Morality" (that would be "post-religious morality"), Pinker sought to rebut author Tom Wolfe. He asserted:

...few scientists doubt that they will locate consciousness in the activity of the brain. For many nonscientists, this is a terrifying prospect. Not only does it strangle the hope that we might survive the death of our bodies, but it also seems to undermine the notion that we are free agents responsible for our choices -- not just in this lifetime but also in a life to come. In his millennial essay "Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died," Tom Wolfe worried that when science has killed the soul, "the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase 'the total eclipse of all values' seem tame."

Conservative fans of the right-leaning TV show 24 shouldn’t be surprised that liberals such as Keith Olbermann are now savaging the program. However, the leftist host also mentioned NewsBusters in his diatribe. "Newsweek" magazine went further and speculated that the show is a "neocon sex fantasy."

The recent announcement by Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama that he’s running for President resulted in media swooning over his "big step." "Good Morning America" wondered if Obama’s "fluid poetry" could overcome Hillary’s "hot factor." (Another example of hard hitting journalism?)

It appears impossible for Time magazine to do anything without bringing its liberal bias into the equation, for in his January 14 review of the return of television hero Jack Bauer, writer James Poniewozik asked, “So, is 24 a conservative show?”

Checking that link about now to measure my veracity? Go ahead. I dare you.

Sadly, the answer seemed just as foolish as the question: “Yes, in the sense that the thriller is a conservative genre.”

He wrote that. I swear. Check if for yourself. But there’s more:

More than a decade after publisher Steve Forbes’s flat-tax platform temporarily vaulted him to the top of the pack of GOP presidential candidates, another prospective Republican presidential candidate is making tax simplification a centerpiece of his 2008 campaign. In announcing his exploratory committee, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback argued “We need a flat tax instead of the dreadful, incomprehensible tax code we now have,” today’s Wichita Eagle reported.

But unlike back in 1996, the media are now confronted with the evidence that the flat tax help boost wealth-producing economic growth. This week’s "Time" reports on the economic boom in the former Soviet republic of Estonia, which like many Eastern European countries has seen its fortunes rise since dumping socialism and instituting a flat tax. “The economy is now one of Europe’s most dynamic, racing along at an 11.3% growth clip,” Peter Gumbel writes this week in his “Letter from Estonia.”

Nearly eleven years ago, "Time" took dead aim at Forbes’s flat tax in a January 29, 1996 cover package, “Does the Flat Tax Make Any Sense,” an issue which hit mailboxes right before the New Hampshire primary.

For Chris Matthews, there is one constant to be considered in analyzing the prospects of the presidential contenders on both the GOP and Dem sides: the presumed bigotry of his fellow Americans.

Kibitzing about '08 on this afternoon's Hardball with a conservative-free panel composed of Chris Cizzilla of the Washington Post, Mike Allen of Time and Howard Fineman of time immemorial, Matthews first handicapped the Dem field in these terms:

"Is the low estimate of [Democrats'] belief in [Hillary's] electability low enough that they think that an African-American guy has a better shot than she does? I mean that's a statement, I think, of pessimism about her shot if you shift to him for electability reasons."

Time magazine devoted its "Ten Questions" interview this week to NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer. Time’s Jeanne McDowell had a light touch, asking about Meredith, and Katie, and squabbling with Tom Cruise. The interview quickly draws the reader to this comparison: Lauer was tougher on Tom Cruise than he was with Hillary Clinton in the famous "vast right-wing conspiracy" interview of 1998, despite the great difference in importance between a president lying in court and an actor/Scientologist fighting with Brooke Shields over anti-depressant pills. It unfolded like this:

What do you consider your best interview?

Hillary Clinton because of the convergence of events that were happening at the time. It was a few days after the Monica Lewinsky story broke. I fully expected Mrs. Clinton to cancel. She was a scorned woman whose husband had just been exposed for cheating. [The exchange] went extraordinarily well and resulted in the often quoted "vast right-wing conspiracy" interview. But it required as deft a touch as I ever have had to use. 

Anyone remembering the ascent of Newt Gingrich to House Speaker in 1995 surely noticed a difference between media coverage of that historic event and Nancy Pelosi taking the gavel back for the Democrats in 2007. One had all the joy of a child’s funeral. The other was New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

CNN even had a countdown clock to the Democrats regaining the majority. All that was missing was a lighted crystal donkey that would descend down a pole on the top of the Capitol dome. CNN’s Dana Bash called Pelosi’s gavel grab a "moment to savor," surely true for her supporters, but the bitterest of pills to swallow for those who worked their hearts out last year to keep Pelosi and her liberal army from retaking the House. CNN left no doubt where it stood on this divide.

The liberal media despised Newt, and adore Nancy. They’ve demonstrated this by the way they played up the Gingrich threat in the weeks after the ’94 GOP tsunami, while virtually ignoring Pelosi and her radical agenda for the last two months.

Have the brain-trust at Time magazine stepped out of a cold pool to recognize that their publication is not the brand it used to be, or are they finally wising up to political and technological shifts in the population they market to? Regardless of the answer, New York Times media critic David Carr had some harsh words Monday for the incredibly shrinking periodical that recently named “You” as the Person of the Year (emphasis mine throughout, hat tip to Drudge):

Time Inc. management, with the help of air cover from the consultants from McKinsey, is trying to cut costs to reflect brutal realities in the mass magazine business. At the end of the month, there will be significant layoffs at the magazine division, and it will not end with Time’s 280 editorial employees.

According to Carr, this is just the beginning of changes in store for Time:

The new year may have just begun, but members of the media are relying on time-tested bias to attack conservatives and Republicans. Chris Matthews recently slimed Fox News host Bill O’Reilly by linking him to such despotic leaders as Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

During the funeral of President Gerald Ford, Katie Couric attacked the Reverend Billy Graham for being "remarkably partisan." A "Time" magazine correspondent slammed the departed Ford for not criticizing the Iraq war publically, calling it "unpardonable."