Time

This Halloween, millions of Americans will dress up in costumes and pretend to be celebrities or other important figures. Most journalists won't take serious note of this. Yet recently a few women have slipped into some vestments and claimed that they're "women Catholic priests," and writers at Time magazine think there is some sober journalism to pursue.

For the second time in two weeks, Time has published an article trumpeting women who are pretending to be genuine Catholic priests. As we noted last week, Dawn Reiss was the culprit in a flimsy piece. Now the bleary-eyed Tim Padgett is in on the act.

What – was Janeane Garofalo busy this week? If not, she has some real competition in the "lefty comic making outrageous statements" category.

On HBO’s Oct. 1 “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during the “Overtime” segment available on HBO.com, left-wing comedian David Cross of “Arrested Development” fame appeared to offer his view on issues of the day. This segment of the program is produced generally to answer viewer emailed questions. One of those questions was if people in the media “should be held more legally accountable for presenting false or misleading information.”

The host, Bill Maher likened that scenario to the system in place in the United Kingdom. However in the United States, Americans are protected by the First Amendment and he explained the legal implications of speech in the U.K. compared to the U.S. But in Cross’ estimation, that protected right is somehow wrong. He named two Fox News Channel hosts, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and declared he would like to see them taken off of the airwaves although he wasn’t clear about what “false or misleading information” they may have presented that would warrant this action.

“I think so, absolutely, and I say that as somebody who would like to see Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity off the air, you know,” Cross declared with an approving response from the audience. “So, I think to -- it’s just part of the job. It should be part of the job, you know, if you knowingly do that, then absolutely you should lose your job. We don’t get to, you know, lie and make up things in our jobs, you know. And nobody really does.”

It's not that hard to understand. The ordination of women in the Catholic Church is not going to happen. It. Will. Not. Happen.

Yet according to a truly warped article by Dawn Reiss in Time magazine (9/25/10), it's already happened. In fact, "three women have entered the priesthood" in the Chicago area alone, says Reiss.

Is this true? Is Alta Jacko (rhymes with "wacko"), "the mother of eight children" whom Reiss profiles, really "an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church"? No. Jacko is as much a Catholic priest as she is the Vice President of the United States.

But Weiss' falsehoods don't end there.

What do Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist who was developing a nuclear weapon, and Tea Party activists concerned about lavish government spending have in common? Nothing, unless you're a newly-minted cable news anchor with a liberal agenda.

Interviewing a Time magazine writer who conducted an in-depth investigation into right-wing militias, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on the September 30 "Last Word" tried to draw a parallel between the reported resurgence of extreme militia groups and the rise of the Tea Party.

"The surge in recruits to what could be the training ground of our next Timothy McVeigh parallels the rise of the Tea Party and includes at least one man who had serious plans to kill the president by going nuclear," warned O'Donnell, before enlisting the help of Barton Gellman, author of "Locked and Loaded: The Secret World of Extreme Militias," to connect the dots.

Should Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, GOP candidates for Governor and Senate in California, respectively, be worried by recent CNN/Time poll numbers showing both trailing by sizable margins? In short: no, not really.

That's because Time/CNN seem to have stacked the deck by significantly overestimating the number of Democrats likely to vote in this year's strong anti-Obama electorate.

According to the Weekly Standard's Jay Cost, the Time/CNN poll seems to think that Democrats will have more of their voters this year than in their banner 2008 year. Cost examined the Time/CNN numbers, compared them to exit polls from previous elections, and concluded - accurately, I believe - that the poll significantly oversampled Democrats.

On this the 24th and final day of his Election Road Trip, Time's Joe Klein availed himself of the opportunity to attack center-left blogger Mickey Kaus and conservative writer Jonah Goldberg for "distort[ing] a striking point" made by a liberal Democrat vineyard owner from California that Klein quoted in a September 27 Swampland blog post.

Klein vented most of his spleen at Kaus, a blogger for rival magazine Newsweek.

Wealthy attorney and Iron Horse Vineyards founding partner Barry Sterling had simply argued that "the current, post-Reagan tax fetishism of the Republican party is foolish," Klein insisted.  "He made the point with a creative overstatement of the case--that he'd survived 70% marginal tax rates; indeed, the high rates caused him to work harder to make more money. I am absolutely certain that Sterling was not advocating a return to 70% rates, as Mickey well knows," Klein protested.  The Time reporter went on a few sentences later to label Kaus as a "feckless, puerile jerk at times."

With its dwindling readership, Time magazine is fast becoming a museum piece. 

What better way is there to celebrate than for the publication to bring to its few readers' attention other strange curiosities?

Three weeks into his cross-country Election Road Trip, Joe Klein filed a Swampland blog post  shortly after noon Eastern time today from Sebastopol, California, where he found a true rarity, a businessman practically pining for the days of heavier federal taxation (emphasis mine):

In his 7-question September 22 Q&A with Markos Moulitsas, Time magazine's Ishaan Tharoor timidly challenged the left-wing blogger on his extremist rhetoric about how conservative Americans, particularly religious ones, are the "American Taliban."

Moulitsas was interviewed as part of his publicity tour for his new book, "American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right" which "takes aim at what Moulitsas thinks is animating this right-wing revival," Tharoor noted. "You refer to a whole swath of U.S. conservatives as American Taliban. Is that really helpful?" Tharoor began meekly.  Moulitsas, of course, cranked it up to eleven and let loose with a boilerplate screed about how evil and subversive American conservatives are:

Following this month's introduction of its first openly gay character, Archie Comics will feature President Obama and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin in December.

"No doubt a part of the long-running comic's new push toward more real-world relevance, Obama and Palin's appearance will mirror Riverdale High's student council elections in two upcoming Archie issues," reported Time magazine's NewsFeed blog Tuesday.

According to ArchieComics.com, the plot lines are riveting:

Are you one of the many Americans who can't stand Newsweek Magazine's unending tripe of liberal condescension? Good news: you may not have to put up with it much longer - at least not in its print form.

Outgoing Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman, who recently announced he would exit the sinking ship for the Huffington Post, gave the magazine's print edition five years. "My guess is that there will be several years of a fond embrace of the traditional magazine," he said. "But that stuff is going because the economics are too difficult." Pressed for a specific time frame, Fineman gave his five-year prediction.

Since it was sold for a dollar to media mogul Sidney Harman, Newsweek has shed some of its most prominent names. The Business Insider reported that "of the roughly two dozen Newsweek journalists who have run for the door in recent months, some of the most high-profile names have joined news outlets without dead-tree versions."

Appearing as a guest on Saturday’s Huckabee show on FNC, actor Jon Voight condemned Time magazine for the cover on its September 13 issue which provocatively displays the words "Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace" in the middle of a Star of David made from daisies. Voight charged that there must be anti-Semitism at Time magazine if such a cover could be devised. Voight:

Listen, if Israel falls we all fall. Did you see the Time magazine, did you guys see the Time magazine cover? Cover? It was amazing. Here's a cover with a Star of David on it, and it says Israel doesn't care about peace. ... But this is anti-Semitism. This is, who are the anti-Semites who are running Time magazine? And their prior cover, you know, they alluded to the Islamophobia, they're calling America Islamophobic.

As previously documented by NewsBusters, Time managing editor Richard Stengel bizarrely seemed to see a down side to fewer terrorist attacks against Israelis when he appeared on the Thursday, September 2, Morning Joe on MSNBC, as he suggested that it was a "sad truth" that the low level of recent violence from terrorists -- including the "Hamas folks" -- had made Israelis feel less urgency about negotiating with Palestinians. Stengel:

Howard Kurtz on Sunday asked the editor of Time magazine why he doesn't have any conservative columnists. 

"Rick [Stengel], you've just hired Fareed Zakaria, whose "GPS" program on CNN precedes mine," said Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources.

"And you have, of course, Joe Klein, well-known liberal writer and columnist," continued Kurtz.

"Now, with all the hiring that you've done, how have you not managed to find a conservative columnist?"

Most humorously, after giving what he must have thought was a cute answer, Stengel quickly contradicted himself (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

The following headline appeared at Time.com shortly after the release of Friday's jobs report:

What's Good About Rising Unemployment

What should jump out at the eagle-eyed reader is that headline didn't end with a question mark.

Time senior writer Stephen Gandel was actually making the case that the rising unemployment rate was good news.

Watch just how far a liberal media member is willing to go today to make economic data look favorable for the Party currently in power, and imagine the unlikelihood of such a thing happening if a Republican was in the White House (h/t Rusty Weiss):

In Time Magazine Managing Editor Rick Stengel's mind, it's really "sad" that the wall between Israel and the West Bank - intended to keep murderous terrorists in the Palestinian territory - has been a success. Stengel apparently considers Isreali deaths worthwhile if they lead to more productive peace talks.

In a "Morning Joe" segment yesterday titled "Why Israel doesn't care about peace" - after the upcoming Time cover story - Stengel posited that the lack of violence in Isreal is responsible for that country's supposed reluctance to reach a peace deal. Stengel stated (video below the fold - h/t Jim Hoft):

They haven't had a car bombing in two and a half years. And the sad truth really is that the wall with the West Bank has actually worked. I mean, most Israelis in the course of their lives don't come into contact with any Palestinians at all. The wall is functioning. And the Gaza strip is so small and so isolated they feel that those folks, the Hamas folks are not that big of a threat...

I mean, the Israelis feel like, you know what? The status quo isn't so bad and we don't mind is there is no peace at all.

Despite unemployment at 9.5 percent and millions of people having lost their jobs since Barack Obama was elected, Chris Matthews just doesn't understand why anyone would miss George W. Bush.

Without naming this week's PPP poll finding Ohioans would vote for Bush over Obama by the tally of 50 to 42 percent if a presidential election was held today, Matthews in the first segment of "Hardball" asked his guests, "Why would you want that back?"

When Time's Michael Scherer tried to explain logically why voters are disappointed with what Obama has done since Inauguration Day, Matthews wasn't having any of it (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Secular leftists in the media don't often have use for religion, particularly Christianity, except, it seems, when biblical passages can be isolated out of context to bash religious conservatives over the head as wicked for opposing big government or for standing up for traditional moral values.

Enter Joe Klein, Christian theologian extraordinaire, who suggested in Time.com Swampland blog post yesterday that Jesus would make Fox News host Glenn Beck sweat it out a bit at the pearly gates:

If Jesus were around today, he might say that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a telecharlatan to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

In a follow-up blog post from today, Klein thanked a commenter for passing along a passage from the gospel according to St. Matthew wherein Jesus taught that "when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men."

"The noisy proclamation of religiosity is usually a sign of the exact opposite," Klein preached regarding the August 28 Beck rally.

Chris Matthews this weekend actually invited a real conservative on to the syndicated program bearing his name, and what transpired was a thing of beauty.

National Review's Reihan Salam did such a fabulous job of educating Matthews and his guests - especially Time's Joe Klein - that I imagine him quickly becoming a NewsBusters favorite.

The initial topic of discussion was Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally scheduled to occur after this was taped.

Between Matthews' disrespectful introduction, and Klein calling the conservative talk show host "a paranoid lunatic," one had the feeling this would have devolved into a full on hate-fest if not for Salam's presence.

Fortunately, the National Reviewer was there to set the record straight (videos follow with transcripts and commentary): 

The folks at The Onion took on Time magazine Tuesday and did so in a fashion that will put a smile on many conservative faces.

"Readers who grew up loving the magazine's bright, glossy photos, news by the numbers, and simple to understand stories will now be able to graduate to 'Time Advanced,'" reported mock newscaster Damon Werner.

"While kids love Time for its fun articles about litter and new kinds of dinosaurs, managing editor Kerry Larson explains that 'Time Advanced' will look to distinguish itself with carefully researched, long-form journalism in a smaller, adult-sized font," he continued. 

NewsBusters readers will especially like the marvelous Joe Klein bashing at the end (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It was inevitable that someone with enough time on their hands would compile a list of the best viral campaign video ads of 2010. There sure have been some doozies this year, so I can't fault Time magazine for including hits like "Demon Sheep" and the Dale Peterson ad in their top 20 list.

That said, of the 15 Republican ads in the list, most were panned by Time staffers. By contrast, two Democrats' ads -- Rep. Tom Perreillo (Va.) and  Sen. Pat Leahy (Vt.) primary opponent Dan Freilich -- were panned,  yet neither candidate's Democratic affiliation was mentioned in the blurbs about the ads.

By contrast, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S.D.), who's presenting herself to voters as a fiscal conservative, was praised for an ad featuring her toddler son, and Time's FeiFei Sun cheered Colorado Democratic gubernatorial nominee John Hickenlooper for his "Clean Campaign" in which he humorously promised to eschew negative campaign ads.

Time magazine's Joe Klein yesterday did what he does best: take one paragraph from a neoconservative's column and blow it out of proportion and out of context in order to go on an extended screed bashing conservatives in general and neocons in particular.

Writing for his magazine's Swampland blog yesterday, Klein addressed Bill Kristol's editorial for the August 30 Weekly Standard print edition entitled, "He's No Muslim, He's a Progressive."

Klein started off with a backhanded compliment:

Well, it's good to learn that there are limits to Bill Kristol's tactical skeevery. He clearly states here that Barack Obama is not a Muslim. No winks, no nods, no gratuitous McConnellesque "If he says he's not, that's okay with me."

With that out of the way, Klein dove into his screed:

CNN's T. J. Holmes brought back Time's Bobby Ghosh on Friday's Newsroom for more promotion of his "Islamophobia" cover story, and added two Muslim guests who largely agreed with his thesis that anti-Islamic sentiment was "coming into the mainstream," and how this was apparently a "reason for alarm." Holmes asked softball questions, and no one with an opposing viewpoint appeared during the segment.

The anchor had the three on for a panel discussion at the bottom of the 10 am Eastern hour about Ghosh's "Is America Islamophobic?" article, as well the controversy over the planned mosque near Ground Zero in New York City. Before introducing his guests, Holmes held up two examples of apparent "Islamophobia" in the country and seemed to sympathize with the apparent plight of Muslims in the U.S.:

HOLMES: Two-and-a-half million Muslims live, work and pray in America- not always easy. Case in point: protests in California- check that out- marching against a proposed mosque in their area, holding signs with slogans such as, 'Muslims danced for joy on 9/11'- or how about the planned Islamic center and mosque near New York's Ground Zero? More than 60 percent of Americans are opposed to that center being built. But the scope is bigger than that, according to a Time magazine poll. More than 3 in 10 Americans would say no to a mosque in their neighborhood. Then there are statements like this one from evangelical leader Franklin Graham.

CNN's American Morning and Newsroom programs on Thursday brought on Time magazine's Bobby Ghosh to highlight his "Is America Islamophobic?" article and help promote his accusation that "hate speech" and "bigotry" have "come out into the mainstream" during the course of the debate over the proposed New York City mosque near Ground Zero.

During his American Morning appearance, anchor Kiran Chetry hailed Ghosh's article, which is the cover story of the upcoming August 30th issue of Time, as "a very thoughtful piece." Anchor Ali Velshi, who conducted the second interview of the Time deputy international editor, went further than his colleague: "Okay, you're American- Time magazine is required reading....Bobby Ghosh...wrote the Islamophobia piece that I think everybody is going to have to read because if you are in this country, it's part of the dialogue that we are involved in at this point."

But only days earlier, in an August 3 Time.com article about the imam behind the mosque, Ghosh stated that the "last legal hurdle to the proposed Islamic center near the site of the World Trade Center has been removed, but ignorance, bigotry and politics are more formidable obstacles....Criticism [of the mosque] spans the gamut, from the ill-informed anguish of those who mistakenly view Islam as the malevolent force that brought down the towers to the ill-considered opportunism of right-wing politicians who see Islam as an easy target." So the "thoughtful" Time editor whose latest is "required reading" even had the gall to criticize the families and the friends of those who died on 9/11, or who are generally emotionally-touched by the carnage of the attack.

Radical Islam, schmadical Islam.

"[N]ine years after 9/11, the fight over the mosque near Ground Zero shows how obsessed we remain with an enemy that may no longer exist."

That's the argument from Time magazine deputy managing editor Romesh Ratnesar in his August 17 online Viewpoint essay entitled, "The 'Ground Zero Mosque' Debate: Exaggerating the Jihadist Threat."

"The mosque's critics and champions both say their goal is to counter radical Islam," Ratnesar noted, arguing that both sides are all wet:

In a Swampland blog post this morning entitled, "Something I Didn't Know," Time magazine's Joe Klein pointed to a New York Times article that noted the existence of two mosques "already within several blocks of the proposed [Islamic] center."

But while other folks might draw the conclusion that building an additional mosque just blocks from Ground Zero is a needless exercise in dividing New Yorkers over a highly sensitive matter, Klein ran in the exact opposite direction, suggesting that logical consistency would compel mosque opponent Newt Gingrich to want to "close those suckers down"?

"[T]his is further evidence of the true nature of this squabble: a particularly sleazy form of Nativist electoral politics," Klein insisted. [click here for a related post by Brent Baker]

Opposition to building a mosque near Ground Zero really sent Time's Joe Klein into a tirade. In a Monday night post on the magazine's “Swampland” blog, Klein began: “Shame on all those Republicans salivating over President Obama's support for the Cordoba Islamic Center...”

Then he got personal, condemning “slimeball politics” has he slimed Newt Gingrich: “This is slimeball politics, pure and simple, except for when it descends into outright religious bigotry – which seems to be what happens every time Newt Gingrich opens his mouth.” Klein disparaged Gingrich as a “demented, anger-infused doofus” – all before proving, as if that weren't already established, he didn't care about offering any reason as he simply trashed Gingrich as “a jerk.”

And liberals say talk radio and the Fox News Channel are lowering the level of political discourse.

Michael Scherer of Time tried to explain the concept of "Why Barack Obama Doesn't Like to Chit-Chat with the Press Corps" -- despite their obvious affection for him. The president's first Ground Zero Mosque comments were "perfectly scripted," he wrote, and perfectly timed, on a Friday night at a Muslim dinner celebrating Ramadan. Scherer doesn't get that the venue could be controversial, considering Obama's allergies to traditional Christian prayer breakfasts. But this "perfect" scenario was ruined by the White House press pool (specifically, CNN's Ed Henry):

A reporter asked a stray question, and Obama blew all the careful planning of his staff. He varied from his initial remarks, creating a new narrative for a story the White House does not want to linger. Was he adding an asterisk to his remarks, as the Washington Post put it? Was it a recalibration, as the New York Times put it? In short, this is a communications disaster. The White House had to release a statement clarifying the new statement, or restatement, or whatever.

The president's opponents, who had been pushing the mosque issue for weeks as a way to get Democrats on the wrong side of the polls in an election year, came out celebrating. Liz Cheney, who can diminish just about any nuanced thought into a barbed cable news talking point, emailed Politico's Mike Allen from her iPhone. "I guess President Obama was for the mosque before he was against it. You can quote me," went the message.

The August 16 Weekly Standard highlighted a striking change in views from Time’s Joe Klein, whose take seems to have changed to fit what’s fashionable. On August 2, in a “Swampland” blog post looking at President Obama’s speech touting the end of combat operations in Iraq, Klein fretted it “will not be remembered as vividly as George Bush's juvenile march across the deck of an aircraft carrier, costumed as a combat aviator in a golden sunset, to announce—six years and tens of thousands of lives prematurely—the ‘end of combat operations.’”

But back when Bush’s USS Lincoln landing occurred, Klein was more enthralled with it, asserting on the May 4, 2003 Face the Nation: “Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day.” (Video, from the MRC’s archive, is of the matching exchange between Bob Schieffer and Klein. Audio: MP3 clip.) The Weekly Standard’s “Scrapbook” page observed:

As Peter Wehner noted at the Commentary magazine blog Contentions, “Such bipolar shifts of opinion in a high-ranking public official would be alarming and dangerous; in a columnist and blogger, they are comical and discrediting.”

Even in that 2003 CBS appearance, however, Klein wasn’t happy about Bush’s successful PR maneuver, regretting how it illustrated the “major struggle the Democrats are going to have to try and beat a popular incumbent President.”

Editor's Note: For the list of NewsBusters T-shirt contest winners, skip to the end of this post. Click here to enter the contest.

It's time once again for "Five for Five," this time around we unveil the top five Journalistic Obamagasms Exposed by NewsBusters.

We know what you're thinking: "Only five?!"

Since they're all so equally good, or bad, as the case may be, I'll leave it to you folks to rank them in the comments section.

They are:

But everybody's doing it!

That excuse may not have gotten you out of hot water with your parents, but it seems to hold some sway with Time magazine, at least when it comes to ethically-challenged former House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.).

Staffer Michael Scherer apparently drew the short straw for the August 13 assignment, in which he focused on just one of the numerous allegations of impropriety against Rangel: that he misused his congressional office to solicit contributions to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service.

Of course, there are other serious charges against Rangel -- who used to chair the House committee responsible for federal tax policy -- namely that he avoided paying taxes on property that he owns. From the July 29 Washington Times:

With his August 12 post, "Can a Child be Tried for Jihadist Crimes?", Time magazine's Tim McGirk hit the Obama administration from the left on the military tribunal prosecution of jihadist Omar Khadr.

Khadr was captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was just 15 years old. He's charged with the murder of a U.S. soldier, a crime he's already confessed to, although he now claims his confession was coerced.

Although 15-year-olds in the United States are frequently tried as adults for murder and although Khadr is in 23 years old now, McGirk presented the case as the potential first conviction of a "child" for war crimes since World War II. What's more, McGirk presented the case as a potential travesty of justice in an ill-conceived war on terror, a term he dismissively used in quote marks: