Time

A newly posted Time-Life magazine photo montage showcased pictures of North Korea and touted photographer Christopher Morris comparing brutal dictator Kim Jong Il to the "very controlled environment" of George W. Bush's White House.

On Life magazine's website, Morris connected, "America at that time [2005] was, you'll recall, filled with a kind of blind nationalism. But Time appreciated the way I was able to work and get good photos even within that intensely restrictive environment -- and that's why they sent me to North Korea." The photographer bizarrely insisted that taking pictures in America could be "more restrictive than in North Korea."

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN ,as he discussed the Occupy Wall Street protests, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw warned that a "class war" could develop unless "income inequality" is addressed. Brokaw:

Following Time managing editor Rick Stengel revealing the magazine's "Person of the Year" to be "The Protester" on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry attempted to compared the Arab Spring democracy movement in the Middle East to Occupy Wall Street: "Are there links between what had happened in the Arab Spring...and also what's happening now on Wall Street and all across this country?" [Audio available here]

Also noting the suppressed 2009 Green Movement in Iran and the recent election protests in Russia, Curry added: "...there seems to be this kind of global protest." Stengel enthusiastically agreed with Curry's comparison: "Absolutely. There's this contagion of protests....what happened in the Arab world did influence Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland and the protests in Greece and Madrid." [View video after the jump]

Time is so liberal it was obvious they could not consider the Tea Party protests as a Person of the Year entry. But that’s not true with Occupy Wall Street, since Time’s 2011 Person of the Year is suddenly now "The Protester.” Kurt Andersen’s essay announced: "'Massive and effective street protest' was a global oxymoron until — suddenly, shockingly — starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history."

This is a bit bizarre since the regime being protested in the United States is the Obama administration elected by liberals like the Time editors and reporters. Suddenly now, America is a "sham democracy rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change." Once again, Time blurs in Occupy protesters with Arab Spring activists:

In the December 19 edition of Time magazine, humor columnist Joel Stein pleased the liberals in his "Year of the Meltdown" review of 2011 by comparing Fox News-owning mogul Rupert Murdoch to murderous despots: "Throughout the year, leaders who for decades had ruthlessly wielded absolute power melted down: Zine al Abedine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Rupert Murdoch."

Since it wasn't enough to allow one factual collapse per column, Stein also  suggested we're now "full-on feudal" with an "angry 99 percent" after  Occupy Wall Street protests, and "It's too late to cool the rods. Either we're going to abandon the old structure altogether -- nuclear power, the euro, Arab secular rule, unregulated capitalism -- or wait a really long time for things to get better."

If you had to name the top U.S. news story of 2011, what would you say?

For the folks at Time magazine, the answer is the Occupy Wall Street protests:

Time magazine on Monday published a lengthy cover-story hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney penned by the Obama-loving Joe Klein.

This caused Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to take to his Twitter account with a deliciously accurate smackdown of his own:

On Monday's Early Show, CBS's John Dickerson and Time's Joe Klein harped on Newt Gingrich's overwhelming "liabilities." Klein hinted that the former House Speaker's ego would get the better of him: "This is a guy who cannot stand prosperity....[He] cannot control his ego when he is riding high." Dickerson played up how Gingrich's "negatives were very, very high when he left Washington in the mid-'90s."

Fill-in anchor Jeff Glor asked the CBS political director, "What are the chances Newt Gingrich is the nominee?" Dickerson punted on making a prediction, but borrowed a line from colleague Jan Crawford, stating that "he has a great deal of baggage." When co-anchor Rebecca Jarvis followed up by asking about how the Obama reelection campaign saw the former Speaker, he raised the "likeability" issues with Newt:

In just a few days, Americans will give thanks for their blessings and celebrate them by stuffing themselves with a bountiful feast. Despite this beloved tradition, many in the news media disapprove of overeating and continue to call for taxes on certain foods, and increased regulation.

Time magazine's website, includes an "Ideas" section with what it calls "Essential Insights. Great Debates. Informed Opinions." It was there that Shannon Brownlee, director of the liberal New America Foundation's (which is funded by George Soros' Foundation to Promote Open Society) Health Policy Program, recently called for more regulation under the guise of "public health."

Time's Tim Padgett regurgitated just about every liberal talking point on abortion in an online column on Thursday which tried to claim that the Catholic Church's pro-life efforts in the U.S. were pointless and out of step with the laity: "Aren't they just wasting our time as well as their own?" Padgett cherry-picked from Church documents and quoted from the infamous pro-abortion front group Catholics for Choice.

The Miami and Latin America bureau chief for the struggling magazine began his article, "Why Radical Pro-Lifers Are Wasting Their Time: Most American Catholics support abortion rights," by all but gloating over the rejection in Mississippi of a proposed personhood amendment: "Now that voters in Mississippi have rejected the so-called personhood agenda — the radical anti-abortion effort to make the moment of conception the legal beginning of human life — the movement says it plans to take its referendum to a number of other states in 2012."

"[A]s Occupy Wall Street embarks on a day of action across New York City that's being echoed by protests around the U.S. and the world, Bloomberg may yet question whether he should have let Zuccotti be," Time magazine's Ishaan Tharoor noted in a November 17 "Global Spin" blog post at the magazine's website.

Tharoor has previously romanticized the OWS movement, and today's post, "The Whole World Watches Again: Occupy Wall Street Fights Back," was no deviation from that pattern, with Tharoor acting more as a press agent -- or at least an apologist -- for the Zuccotti Park squatters than as an objective journalist (emphases mine):

In a recent interview, Time magazine's Richard Stengel asked former President Bill Clinton why he was not a Tea Party "hero." Stengel's "criteria" were that Clinton oversaw a balanced budget and cuts to the rate of growth of the federal government.

However, as CNN's Wolf Blitzer pointed out to Stengel on Thursday, Clinton did so at the behest of a Republican Congress. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

“[S]ocial conservatives believe that efforts to protect gays from assault, discrimination or bullying impinge on their religious freedom to express and act on their belief that homosexuality is an abomination. That’s stating it harshly, but it is the underlying belief,” Time religion reporter Amy Sullivan huffed in a November 4 Swampland blog post on the magazine’s website.

“[T]he Michigan legislature is doing its best to make me hang my head in shame,” Sullivan, a “transplanted Michigander” groused, explaining that:

Islamists firebombed a satirical newspaper in France named Charlie Hebdo. Time magazine, on its “Global Spin” blog, uncorked outrage – against the newspaper. Time’s Paris bureau chief Bruce Crumley blamed the “insolent” newspaper for the bombing. The headline was “Firebombed French Paper Is No Free Speech Martyr.” Ace of Spades says the URL suggests the original title may have been even worse: "Firebombed French Paper: A Victim of Islam, Or Its Own Obnoxious Islamaphobia?"

Don’t try telling Crumley that an omnidirectional print equivalent of South Park defines free speech: “As such, Charlie Hebdo has cultivated its insolence proudly as a kind of public duty—pushing the limits of freedom of speech, come what may. But that seems more self-indulgent and willfully injurious when it amounts to defending the right to scream ‘fire’ in an increasingly over-heated theater.”

For the second day in a row, the lone so-called conservative anchor on MSNBC supported Politico's hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

After saying Cain "made a fool of himself" with his inconsistent response to the allegations Monday, Scarborough said that if there were another viable conservative candidate in the race, "Rush Limbaugh would be making fun of Herman Cain today" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Someone please tell Joe Klein that it's Halloween, not April Fools' Day.

The Time columnist held forth on the magazine's Swampland blog on Friday that it's "hilarious" of Republican critics to slam President Obama for deploying class warfare. After all, on economic policy, the president is "as centrist if you can get."

In fact, Klein huffed, President Obama may be as conservative as Ronald Reagan:

"I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs."

That was Time contributor Nina Burleigh back in July 1998 during the Clinton impeachment saga. Not much has changed in 13 years when it comes to Burleigh's militant and outspoken defense of abortion.

Take her October 20 Time.com piece, "Mississippi's Choice: Personhood and the Rights of Zygotes," in which Burleigh attacked both pro-life activists who are pushing for a personhood amendment in Mississippi as well as "mainstream" pro-lifers who question the political and legal wisdom of the personhood amendment strategy (emphases mine):

The author who calls himself simply Toure -- a regular guest on MSNBC, and before that on CNN -- is throwing rhetorical bricks at Herman Cain for Time magazine. His article is headlined "Is Herman Cain the Most Unctuous Black Man Alive? Why the Hermanator experience is making me sick."

Toure compared Cain to a circus clown, called him a "buffoon," compared him to "rancid, spoiled, stinky, curdled milk" and dissed him (in the liberal mind) by calling him "the Black Sarah Palin." In the midst of that, he somehow scolds Cain for "sinking to teenage-level disses." He began:

In this week's edition of Time (dated October 24), TV writer James Poniewozik championed class warfare in several new TV shows, like the CBS sitcom Two Broke Girls. "[A]fter the 2008 meltdown and the TARP bailouts, after Wall Street bonuses rebounded while mortgages stayed underwater, do Americans still hear class warfare as if it's a bad thing?" He suggested viewers are up for "at least some spirited class fisticuffs."

From there, Poniewozik, like other liberals, launched into an attack on CNN's Erin Burnett for touring the Occupy Wall Street protests with a sneer instead of the usual worshipful media template. (See ABC's Dan Harris championing the yoga area and the grandmother's cookies from Idaho.) TV was of course too slow to start promoting these leftists:

Four days after romanticizing how the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement "star[ed] down the NYPD," Time magazine's Ishaan Tharoor set out on the magazine's Global Spin blog to explain "Why You Shouldn't Compare Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party."

Tharoor essentially argued that the "occupiers" were a global youth movement, that it was populated by the "have nots," and that, unlike the Tea Party, "Occupy Wall Street still believes in politics and government."

While media gush and fawn over the Occupy Wall Street protests wondering how President Obama can take advantage of the sentiments being expressed, they're conveniently ignoring a crucial detail.

As MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said on Tuesday's Morning Joe, "He got more money from Wall Street than any candidate in the history of U.S. politics" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

An effort by pro-life activists to require women seeking abortions to first listen to their unborn baby's heartbeat is a "brazen campaign" by "anti-abortion" groups according to Time magazine.

In an October 17 article at the magazine's website, Adam Cohen described the "heartbeat bills" as pro-life groups' new "weapon of choice," a "frontal assault" on Roe v. Wade.

Throughout his story, the Yale Law School lecturer used loaded, combative language to describe the tactics of  "anti-abortion" groups and "abortion opponents." By contrast, pro-choicers are not "abortion advocates" but "abortion rights advocates" (emphasis mine):

This weekend's syndicated Chris Matthews Show spent the entire first segment talking about how America wants more centrist politicians looking to compromise with their political rivals.

The host and his guests believe the Republican presidential candidate that best exemplifies this moderate stance is Mitt Romney, with Time's Joe Klein actually saying he gave on Tuesday "one of the most impressive, impeccable debate performances I’ve ever seen" - but the panel still thinks Romney's got a very serious Mormon problem (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Time magazine’s Ishaan Tharoor and Nate Rawlings romanticized the Occupy Wall Street crowd in an October 14 news story wrought with melodrama about the left-wing crowd’s tensions with New York City police.

Tharoor and Rawlings opened their article by painting the OWS folks as anxious and the NYPD as practically itching for a confrontation. The trespassing squatters in the privately-owned park were painted as conscientious “activists” and “protesters” whose efforts at cleaning the park were unappreciated by corporate goons who were attempting an "eviction" (emphasis mine):

Time magazine offered its "Ten Questions" interview to Chicago Mayor (and former Obama chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel, but Time's Belinda Luscombe largely stuck to light, airy questions like when the mayor talked of getting ideas on his swim, she asked, "Are you a Speedo or board-shorts kind of guy?" She also asked if he gets more sleep now, which kid was the favorite in his house growing up, and "Do you miss Oprah?"

Somehow, there wasn't space in Time for questions about Obama scandals like Solyndra or Fast and Furious, and when it briefly turned serious about national policy, Time pestered from the left about how Emanuel wasted that economic crisis he talked about:

Barack Obama took a lot of heat last week for saying America has "gotten a little soft."

Not from Fareed Zakaria who when not advising the president on foreign policy acts as one of his propaganda czars every Sunday on CNN (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If Time magazine were really interested in what a conservative Reagan family member thinks of the GOP 2012 presidential field as it stands now in terms of living up to his father's political legacy, it could have easily asked conservative commentator Michael Reagan for his thoughts on last night's primary debate at the Reagan Presidential Library.

Instead, the magazine tapped liberal Reagan daughter Patti Davis who, predictably, concluded that none of the candidates, with the possible exception of left-leaning Jon Huntsman, fit the bill:

From "Looking for Ronald Reagan -- and Not Finding Him" (emphasis mine):

To Time magazine, apparently, it's "weird science" to believe that abstinence is a sure-fire way to avoid pregnancy.

Writing about "Gov. Rick Perry's Weird Science," reporter Meredith Melnick promised readers a look at the Texas governor's penchant for "weird science" including his enthusiasm for experimental adult stem cell treatments -- never mind the mainstream media have for about a decade hyped the similarly uncertain promise of embryonic stem cell therapies.

Under the heading, "Teen Pregnancy Aside, 'Abstinence Works,'" Melnick groused how "Texas has the highest teen birth rate and the fourth highest teen pregnancy rate in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute," going on to note that: