Los Angeles Times

Those warm-hearted, feeling, sensitive souls of the liberal media are at it again. In a cartoon that this morning's Los Angeles Times found fit for publication, Jeff Danziger indulges his fantasy of a group of police and military unleashing a fusillade at Ann Coulter, who is shown screaming, presumably in fear. Danziger even manages to work in a bit of catty sexism, suggesting that the object of his apparent hatred is a bottle blonde.

Let's play one of our favorite games: 'Imagine.' Imagine that a conservative columnist had drawn a cartoon depicting a liberal woman icon as the target of a hail of police and military bullets.

A man labelled with a Jewish star laments that he can't blow up food and medicine being handed out to Arabs. Hezbollah is lauded for "building bridges" with people.

Where does this editorial cartoon come from? A Hezbollah house organ, perhaps? Al-Jazeera? Maybe a fringe anti-Semitic group in the US?

After reading something like a recent story in the L.A. Times, one is struck with how little "news" or analysis is often included in the "news" paper, and how much evocative, emotive, fluff has replaced any attempt at informing the reader of what is really going on.

In the story titled, "His Heart Was Full for Lebanon and U.S.", writer ... or maybe I should say "story teller" as that seems more descriptive... Sam Quinones, gave us what amounts to a one sided, propagandistic account of the life of a man killed in Lebanon who so "loved" both the USA and Lebanon.

The subtitle pretty much tells the reader the direction of the story.

From the comedy grapevine of Air America this morning, host Rachel Maddow (perhaps best known to talk-TV fans as a regular panelist on MSNBC's defunct Tucker Carlson "The Situation" show) followed up on President Bush’s line about defeating the terrorists in Iraq so they don’t “follow us home.” She cracked, “then we’d have to feed them and love them and get them their shots.” (Isn’t that seriously about the way the Left wants us to treat them, as in Gitmo?) Minutes later, Maddow chuckled over this Los Angeles Times story this morning about accidental shootings by Los Angeles police. Scott Glover and Matt Lait claimed "a Times analysis of two decades of police records highlights another danger to officers, one little appreciated even by officials who oversee the department: Officers over those years shot themselves or one another nearly as often as they were shot by suspects."

Pennsylvania Democrat Jack Murtha has become a liberal media darling for his non-stop pounding of the surrender drum, and his jumping on the bandwagon to accuse the Marines of misconduct and covering up an alleged massacre in Haditha, Iraq.

The Haditha talk got started after Marine general Michael Hagee briefed certain members of congress about the start of an investigation into the deaths of at least 20 Iraqi civilians. After some of the briefings, Murtha almost immediately began accusing the Marine Corps of engaging in war crimes.

Trouble is, though, Murtha had not been briefed on the investigation before he began his media campaign. That is not what the L.A. Times reported, however. The paper said, over the protests of Patterico who argued the opposite, that Murtha had been briefed before making his remarks.

Failing to convince the Times to double-check its sources better (whodathunkit?) and with Murtha's office unwilling to correct the record since it might have made the congressman look bad, Patterico took matters into his own hands:

For the second time in four days, the Los Angeles Times has reported about the illicit and invalid "ordination" of women who call themselves Catholic. The latest effort is by Times staffer Robin Fields, "Female Priest Defies the Catholic Church" (Monday, August 14, 2006). Fields profiled Jane Via, of San Diego, one of several bogus "priests" who have been falsely "ordained" and recently presided over a "Mass." Far from being a balanced piece, the article directly quoted four vocal supporters of Via (including Via herself) and not one dissenting voice of her actions. Balanced reporting at the Times? Not even close.

Last week, in this NewsBusters post, we took issue with the anti-Catholicism in an August 5, 2006, column from Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten. In an especially ugly and vitriolic piece, Rutten capitalized on the arrest of Mel Gibson to imply that orthodox Christians and supporters of Gibson's The Passion of the Christ film were anti-Semitic. Rutten's column builds the case that anti-Christian and anti-Catholic prejudice is alive and well at the Los Angeles Times.

Today's Los Angeles Times includes an extended obituary on Dorothy Healey, described as "a onetime labor organizer, civil rights activist and Marxist radio commentator." The newspaper found nothing but praise for the old comrade. According to an acquaintance: "She was always so fiercely partisan for working people. Yes, of course, she cared about war and peace and women's issues, but she was always concerned about working people."

A college historian credits her union activism with leading "her to become an advocate of black and Chicano rights at a time when few other people were speaking out on such issues."

In the weeks leading up to the release of The Passion of the Christ film over two years ago, Tim Rutten, media columnist for the Los Angeles Times, wrote no less than six hyperventilating columns that dealt almost exclusively with breathless concerns over anti-Semitism in Mel Gibson's film. At one point, Rutten attacked Mel Gibson as "a little brat" and "an unwholesomely willful child playing with matches."  Yet when the blatantly anti-Christian and anti-Catholic The Da Vinci Code was released a few months ago, Rutten's reaction was a ho-hum and a yawn; far from a concern, Da Vinci is "only a movie," asserted Rutten! Bigotry, anyone? Of course. As we've catalogued before (here and here, for example), anti-Christian and anti-Catholic prejudice is alive and well at the Los Angeles Times.

With this as a backdrop, it was no surprise to see the shameless Rutten juice Gibson's arrest to plaster Mel anew in his latest column (Saturday, August 5, 2006). Especially brazen is Rutten's implication that cheerleaders of Gibson's The Passion of the Christ have been exposed as supporters of anti-Semitism. This is a shameless and ugly column, folks.

With its editorial of this morning, Justice After Guantanamo, the Los Angeles Times has raised the bar when it comes to expressing exquisite sensitivity for the rights of accused terrorists. The Times waxes indignant that in trials of Gitmo denizens the Bush administration favors - brace yourself - the admission of hearsay evidence. Send in the smelling salts.

Says the Times:

"New draft legislation to bring the military commissions established by the administration into compliance with a Supreme Court decision borrows heavily from the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That's the good news. The bad news is that on some issues — particularly the use of hearsay and evidence obtained by coercive or inhumane interrogation — the administration still clings to the notion that the end justifies the means."

A wave of New Testament fever seems to be gripping liberal media types. As reported here, during a recent Good Morning America, Chris Cuomo stated that the Gospel of John identifies Qana as the place where Jesus turned water into wine. Who would have imagined that Adam Shatz - of the far-left Nation magazine - would be a New Testament maven? But, saints alive, he leads his op-ed in today's LA Times with the very same story.

What could account for this new-found interest in the New Testament? You don't suppose it could have anything to do with a desire to add fuel to the anti-Israel fire in the wake of its bombing of Qana, do you?

According to a newspaper story this past weekend, the Los Angeles Times, which the Tribune Company has owned since 2000, is not for sale. One must assume the report is accurate, given that it appeared in the Times itself, under the byline of two of the paper's staff writers.

The story also indicates, however, that Tribune's position on unloading the Times may have changed from "no" to "not yet." Moreover, it states that three longtime Democratic moneybags -- David Geffen, Ron Burkle, and Eli Broad, each of whom lives in the L.A. area -- have asked Tribune if it might sell the Times. (Forbes magazine estimates the combined wealth of the three at $12.6 billion.)

Under the corrupt cloak of a "book review," this Sunday's Los Angeles Times (July 30, 2006) continues its underhanded and one-sided assault on the theory of intelligent design (ID). "The language of life," by Robert Lee Hotz*, is a review of three new works that attack intelligent design. The review was promoted on the top of the front page of the "Sunday preview" edition under the heading, "Less than 'intelligent design': Darwin's believers debunk the theory." And rather than providing its readers an honest critique, the Times' "review" is nothing less than a full-on Darwin propaganda piece. Hotz begins his article as follows (emphasis/link mine),

I couldn't help but think of the "squeaky voiced teen" recurring character on The Simpsons when I read this story on global warming in today's Los Angeles Times:

Whatever the ultimate scientific truth, this month's weather has been for many Southern Californians a perceptual tipping point that brought home the possibility of global warming, just as the fury of Hurricane Katrina did for the people of New Orleans.

Inside the air-conditioned darkness of the Majestic Crest Theatre in Westwood, Max Furstenau, 18, was cleaning up after Tuesday's 3 p.m. showing of "An Inconvenient Truth," in which former Vice President Al Gore made the case for global warming.

Bill O'Reilly's down to his last strike. As noted here, on his radio and TV shows yesterday, Bill propounded the theory that the big-city newspapers have tread lightly in the current Middle East conflict for fear of alienating their liberal Jewish readers. As Bill put it, liberal Jews "are all the papers have left" when it comes to significant market niches.

While Bill singled out the NY Times as the paper most loath to offend its liberal Jewish readers, he also mentioned the Boston Globe by name on his radio show. As discussed here, the NY Times came out this morning guns ablazin', so to speak, for an immediate cease-fire.

Turns out the Boston Globe has done the same thing. Excerpts from its editorial of today, While Lebanon Burns:

Bill O'Reilly got his show off to a surprising start this afternoon, with a novel theory as to why the big-city newspapers have tread lightly in criticizing Israel for its role in the current conflict. During his opening monologue O'Reilly theorized that the papers are fearful of turning off liberal Jewish readers.

As per Bill's hypothesis, papers such as the NY and LA Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post have been taking big hits in readership and profitability. With Fox News Channel's ED Hill in the studio, O'Reilly continued: "liberal Jewish readers are all [those newspapers] have left" as a significant market segment. If the papers were to be too critical of Israel, it could alienate their last remaining readership niche.

In a misleading expose on the various "end times" religious concepts that are increasingly in the news today, the L.A. Times' Louis Sahagun; conflates Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's violent 12th Imam ravings with several different Christian and Jewish end times concepts as if the ideas are one and the same when, in reality, they aren't even comparable.

Ignoring clear Biblical claims that no man shall know when the end times are near, (Matthew 24:35-36) Sahagun focuses on the minority of Christian leaders who claim that despite that Biblical injunction it must be near. But if it isn't they want to attempt to bring it about. Sahagun warns us...

"Their end game is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah."

After briefly mentioning Christian, Jewish and Ahmadinejad's concepts, Sahagun attempts to loosely link them all together.

In what has to be the biggest stretch of all time to personally attack the President, the LA Times tries to blame the bad behavior of a French frog on George W. Bush.

NOW WE KNOW why France's team captain lost his cool in the World Cup finals and France lost the trophy to Italy. Terrorism.

Zinedine Zidane, who is of French and Algerian ancestry, head-butted an Italian player who insulted him. Although Zidane in an interview Wednesday would not say what words provoked him, a lip reader hired by the Times of London claims Marco Materazzi called Zidane "the son of a terrorist whore.'' That's pure trickle-down politics. From the White House to the soccer pitch, "terrorist" has "cooties" and "your mother wears combat boots" flat beat as the top playground potty-mouth slur for the 21st century.

Who's surprised? The Bush administration has been scattering the word like ticker tape on a Manhattan parade. Old McDonald left the farm for the NSA, and now it's here a terrorist, there a terrorist, everywhere a terrorist.

That has to be the most sophomoric reasoning I've ever encountered in a newspaper. George Bush didn't make Marerazzi say what he did. George Bush didn't force Zidane to act like a French frog.

But this fits hand in glove with the party-line liberal view of personal responsibility -- that there is none.

President Bush is an even greater threat to our civil liberties than that bête noire of the left, Richard Nixon. That's Morton Halperin's conclusion in a Los Angeles Times op-ed of today, Bush: Worse Than Nixon.

Halperin was once a name in the news. In 1969, then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger named Halperin to the NSA. But soon thereafter Kissinger suspected it was the dovish Halperin who leaked to the NY Times the fact that the US was secretly bombing Cambodia. The FBI began tapping his phone, and Halperin was soon gone from NSA. Perhaps Halperin's biggest claim to fame is the fact that Pres. Nixon put him on his 'Enemies List.' A red badge of courage, no pun intended, off which a person can no doubt eat for a lifetime in liberal circles.

Halperin remains active politically, serving as a senior fellow at the 'Center for American Progress.' As detailed by the invaluable Discoverthenetworks, CAP is a George Soros-funded organization founded on the risible notion that American colleges and universities are dominated by . . . conservatives."

Writes Halperin:

"It's hard not to notice the clear similarities between then and now. Both the Nixon and Bush presidencies rely heavily on the use of national security as a pretext for the usurpation of unprecedented executive power.

The L.A. Times has gone into despair over a 10 second pause in a recent press conference held by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff.

In an article titled "Is U.S. Winning? Army Chief Is at a Loss", by Peter Spiegel, published on July 15th, the L.A. Times moaned that we surely must be losing the war because General Schoomaker paused for "10 seconds" after being asked if we are winning.

It seemed like a routine question, one that military leaders involved in prosecuting the war in Iraq must ask themselves with some regularity: Is the U.S. winning?

But for Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff known for his straight-shooting bluntness, it proved a hard one to answer.

Just when you thought the arguments of the pro-illegal immigrant crowd couldn't get any more preposterous . . . Now, the United States is being condemned for deporting illegal aliens who are violent, hardened criminals - members of homicidal street gangs.

The Los Angeles Times saw fit to allot some of its precious op-ed space today to this column by Ricardo Pollack [pictured here] who, we are told, is a "documentary director and producer. His film, '18 with a Bullet,' airs tonight on KCET as part of PBS' 'Wide Angle' series." PBS, eh? Your tax dollars at work!

In the world of the liberal media, there is no distinction between the judicial and legislative branches. If the MSM deems a particular outcome desirable, courts should so rule - the law and constitution in question be damned.

A good illustration of the mindset is on display in today's editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Setback for Marriage Justice , condemning recent state court decisions in New York and Georgia that declined to find a right to gay marriage.

Naturally the LAT expresses the fond hope that California's high court will adopt "a more enlightened view" when it takes up the issue in an upcoming case. The Times expresses its "revulsion" for what it deems "anti-gay marriage hysteria."

Next time you hear liberals talk about mean-spirited Republicans, you might want to remind them of the cold-water dousing the MSM gave the 60 candles on the president's birthday cake.

First there was WaPo's Dana Milbank - that paragon of objective journalism - who on Countdown twisted W's good-natured gesture of inviting onto the podium press people who shared the same birthday into a metaphor of presidential lonelieness and isolation. Milbank also used the occasion to allude to Bush's allegedly dissolute youth. And for good measure, the 'reporter' even managed to revive allegations regarding Bush's National Guard service. How old are you now, Dana?

Today (Wed. July 5, 2006), the Los Angeles Times continues its practice of taking cheap shots and providing erroneous information about the Catholic Church (other recent examples are here, here, and here). In an oddly timed editorial, "The Vatican's Archives,"* the Times calls for more "openness" from Pope Benedict XVI and the Church regarding the Church's actions during the rise of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Ignoring the fact that the Times' position could be based on misinformation it published last month (read this), the paper has also published a flat-out error about the Church's belief of papal infallibility.

The American Spectator published an article Wednesday thoroughly refuting claims by the New York Times that counterterrorism information revealed in its June 23 exposé was common knowledge. Moreover, to discourage it and the Los Angeles Times from publishing these reports, both were informed of three ongoing investigations using information from SWIFT:

According to Treasury and Justice Department officials familiar with the briefings their senior leadership undertook with editors and reporters from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the media outlets were told that their reports on the SWIFT financial tracking system presented risks for three ongoing terrorism financing investigations. Despite this information, both papers chose to move forward with their stories.

"We didn't give them specifics, just general information about regions where the investigations were ongoing, terrorist organizations that we believed were being assisted. These were off the record meetings set up to dissuade them from reporting on SWIFT, and we thought the pressing nature of the investigations might sway them, but they didn't," says a Treasury official.

Without giving away vital secrets, these briefings were detailed enough to convince both news organizations of the effectiveness of this program:

If you thought the folks at the Los Angeles Times would use the Fourth of July to take a day off from spewing their usual bias and vitriol, think again. Readers of today's op-ed page (Tuesday, July 4, 2006) in the Times are greeted to this piece of bitterness by Mark Kurlansky, "Fathers don't always know best" (The title comes from the print edition; online, the title is, "WWFFD? Who cares?" We have already written about the discrepancy between the print and online titles at the Times here.).

Apparently, Kurlansky is not too impressed by the very people who founded our nation. He begins his column by listing reasons why the United States is such a horrible "backward democracy." And the blame, implies Kurlansky, lies at the feet of the Founding Fathers (emphasis mine):

At this point, how many people are interested in hearing more preachy justifications from newspaper editors about their decision to spill the beans on anti-terror programs? Yada yada yada, the sensitive balance between legitimate secrecy needs in time of war and the public's right to know. Yeah, we get it.

But there were Dean Baquet and Bill Keller, editors of the LA and NY Times respectively, with an op-ed this morning humming that tired 'on the one hand, on the other' sing song . Things reached their apotheosis of annoyingness [poetic license in the name of alliteration] when the duo approvingly cited WaPo editor Robert Kaiser editor thusly:

As fellow NewsBuster Mithridate Ombud noted today, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll has flatly accused the Bush administration of anti-Semitism in its criticism of The New York Times for its latest leak of an anti-terror program. Claimed Carroll:

"The Times is a good target... Also, the name of the New York Times contains the word 'New York.' Many members of the president's base consider 'New York' to be a nifty code word for 'Jewish.' It is very nice for the president to be able to campaign against the Jews without (a) actually saying the word "Jew" and (b) without irritating the Israelis."

Is this an emerging MSM theme? Perhaps, judging by Chris Matthews' line of questioning on this evening's Hardball.