New York Post

For more than 24 hours, the internet has been abuzz with the New York Post's revelation that actor Samuel L. Jackson told Ebony magazine he only voted for Barack Obama in 2008 "because he was black."

For some reason, the folks at the Huffington Post thought this was a "surprising confession" (photo courtesy Getty):

According to one of Iran's most acclaimed directors, anti-American schlockumentarian Michael Moore is the most famous filmmaker in that Middle Eastern nation that so happens to be a sworn enemy of the United States.

As the New York Post reported Thursday:

District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, of Kings County, New York, recently announced that in the last three years 85 accused child predators have been arrested in Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community. The cases involve at least 117 alleged victims.

One man, Andrew Goodman, has been charged on 144 stomach-turning counts of sexually abusing two Orthodox boys – one from 11 to 15 years old, the other 13 to 16.

The New York Times is belatedly starting to commit actual journalism on what’s actually happening at the Occupy Wall Street camp-out in Zuccotti Park. Cara Buckley and Matt Flegenheimer reported for Wednesday's Metro section: “At Scene of Wall St. Protest, Rising Concerns About Crime,” mostly abandons the chirpy promotionalism that has infected the paper’s coverage of OWS, catching up to what local rival the New York Post has been doing every day.

As NewsBusters previously reported, a number of Obama-loving media members were enthralled with Vice President Joe Biden's claim that failure to enact the President's jobs bill would cause a rise in murder and rape throughout the nation.

Of potentially more immediate consequence, the New York Post reported Saturday that as a direct result of police forces being diverted to monitor Occupy Wall Street protests, shootings in the city have dramatically risen in the past month:

As NewsBusters reported Monday, American media almost completely ignored a report that Warren "Raise My Taxes" Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway has been fighting with the IRS for almost a decade over taxes it owes.

On Tuesday, the organization digging into Berkshire Hathaway's numbers, Americans for Limited Government, estimated the total could be as much as $1 billion:

Two weeks ago, when billionaire Warren Buffett called for higher taxes on rich people like him, the liberal media predictably gushed and fawned.

Yet when Americans for Limited Government revealed last week that Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway has been in an almost decade-long dispute with the IRS over how much taxes it owes, these same press members couldn't care less:

President Obama: Saving or creating manufacturing jobs... in Canada?

The New York Post reported this morning about the custom-made campaign bus, er official government vehicle, that:

There were two candidates on the GOP ticket in 2008, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Both had young daughters involved in the campaign. Both have written books about the experience. Guess which book was celebrated and which was savaged?

The media's character assassination of Sarah Palin knows no bounds, as she's been smeared as everything from "evil" to "unintelligent." But "Palin Derangement Syndrome" is a hereditary disease, and the media have continued their multigenerational malice toward Bristol Palin in reviews of her new memoir, "Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far."

(Video after the jump)

After comedian Bill Maher referred to Sarah Palin as a derogatory term for a vagina a little over week a ago, NewsBusters asked, "Can the dreaded C-word be far behind?"

According to the Dallas Voice, this happened on Sunday while Maher was "performing" at the Winspear Opera House (photo courtesy Reuters):

Just how far left is MSNBC? According to the New York Post, Keith Olbermann's new employer, Current TV, suggested he "veer a little to the middle politically."

That's right: MSNBC's former prime time star was too far left for the writers and producers at Al Gore's television network. Says a lot about the true blue cable channel, doesn't it?

From the New York Times on Thursday, in an item put together with the help of a half-dozen Times reporters ("Inaction and Delays by New York as Storm Bore Down"; bold is mine):

... Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, said the problems late Sunday (during the initial stages of the Northeast's post-Christmas snowstorm -- Ed.) underscored how the city could not rely on outside contractors to help with snow removal and other jobs in such storms, particularly during a holiday weekend.

 

“You can never count on the privates, because they don’t have to show up,” he said. “What obligation do they have? The mayor can’t order them out. The commissioner can’t order them out.”

That's quite an interesting assertion, given the following item carried in the New York Post today:

The dictionary says that a rumor is:
- a story or statement in general circulation without confirmation or certainty as to facts.
- gossip; hearsay

The dictionaries in use at the offices of the New York Times must include the following backup definition: "Any set of facts and/or allegations reported by the New York Post."

After yesterday's blockbuster report ("Sanitation Department's slow snow cleanup was a budget protest") Reporters at the Post piled on today, so to speak, with additional news relating to the snow removal slowdown in which New York City's unionized sanitation workers allegedly engaged:

Sanitation workers targeted specific neighborhoods

This past weekend, intrepid journalists at the New York Post and NorthJersey.com released information they unearthed about proposed Ground Zero Mosque "organizer" Sharif El-Gamal and frontman Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, respectively, that the wire services, the New York Times and the national TV networks would likely have run with by now had the items related to a major church or synagogue.

But since the news has to do with what has turned into the PC crowd's cause celebre and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's personal pet project, you may not see the stories covered anywhere else.

The arguably more important story of the two concerns the tax problems of Mr. El-Gamal (pictured above via the Post) and his company, because they directly related to the GZM's property. The story by Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein went up early Sunday morning:

Mosque big owes 224G tax

The mosque developers are tax deadbeats.

Defenders of controversial imam Feisal Abdul Rauf have been touting his past efforts in offering counterterrorism advice to the FBI as a way to illustrate his bridge-building intentions.  Much like other reports, they tend to gloss over the more controversial aspects of Rauf's statements.  But, as is typical with the Ground Zero mosque imam, it can be demonstrated that he is frequently speaking with a forked tongue.

There is no doubt that Rauf has made some questionable and incendiary comments regarding America and her role in the Muslim world.  Perhaps these statements fit the imam's overall rhetoric involving U.S. complicity in the attacks of 9/11.  As does the following statement to the FBI, which is conveniently omitted from media reports defending Rauf.

Bridge-building imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was giving a crash course in Islam for FBI agents in March of 2003.  When asked to clarify such terminology as ‘jihad' and ‘fatwa', Rauf stated (emphasis mine throughout):

"Jihad can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim. Fatwah has been interpreted to mean a religious mandate approving violence, but is merely a recommendation by a religious leader.  Rauf noted that the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks could be considered a jihad, and pointed out that a renowned Islamic scholar had issued a fatwah advising Muslims in the U.S. military it was okay to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan."

Well, wait a minute. 

New York Times columnist Frank Rich on Sunday blamed America's opinion of the Ground Zero mosque on the "Islamophobia command center" of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

As readers are likely aware, its properties include Fox News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal, all witting accomplices to a devious plot to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment according to Rich.

Never mind that public opinion polls around the country and in New York state show vast majorities in opposition to the building of this Islamic center at the site of the 9/11 attacks.

In Rich's paranoid view, it's all Murdoch's fault:

The New York Times continues its delicate, sympathetic coverage of NYC-centric Muslim issues with its treatment of the controversy over the Cordoba House, a proposed Muslim community center, to be topped by a mosque, that would be raised at the sight of the World Trade Center.

Wednesday's Metro section story by Javier Hernandez, "Planned Sign of Tolerance Bringing Division Instead" certainly made a lot of positive-sounding assumptions (starting with the headline) about the ideas behind the mosque, but failed to probe the secret details of the financiers behind it or to question the propriety of building an Islamic worship site at the same spot where thousands were murdered by radical Muslims in the name of Islam.

The Cordoba House was supposed to be a monument to religious tolerance, an homage to the city in Spain where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together centuries ago in the midst of religious foment.

President Obama's former spiritual advisor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, gave a seminar at the University of Chicago last week in which he made numerous anti-Semitic remarks while once again attacking white people.

According to the New York Post, during the five-day course that cost up to $1,000, Wright claimed "whites and Jews are controlling the flow of worldwide information and oppressing blacks in Israel and America."

"White folk done took this country," Wright said. "You're in their home, and they're gonna let you know it." 

Despite the astonishingly racist comments during this week-long event, as well as his former connection to the current President of the United States, not one media outlet besides the Post reported what transpired at the Chicago Theological Seminary on the university campus. Not one!

For those that can stand it, here are some more disgraceful things uttered by the man our President worshiped with for twenty years (h/t Weasel Zippers):

With all the conservative columnists out there, if you were looking for an author to represent the right-wing view in a new Crossfire-like program, would you choose Kathleen Parker who lately has largely presented herself as a Republican In Name Only? 

According to the New York Post, that's exactly what CNN is considering.

Not only that, but her liberal opponent is rumored to be -- wait for it! -- disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

Here's what the Post published Friday concerning this matter:

It's always interesting to see exactly what history is used (or avoided) in historical movies. Michael Shain of The New York Post reports that HBO clipped an embarrassing fraction out of their new Bill Clinton-Tony Blair movie:  

The new HBO movie "The Special Relationship" -- about the friendship between Bill Clinton and Britain's Tony Blair -- is missing something: a scene about Monica Lewinsky.

The scene that showed Bill telling Hillary for the first time about his affair with Monica Lewinsky was shot but cut from the film at the last moment, according to actress Hope Davis, who plays the former First Lady in the movie.

"It felt very strange trying to shoot it," Davis told the celebrity-news Web site becksmithhollywood.com. "It was a very uncomfortable feeling."

Update: The well-publicized announcement that Editor & Publisher was going to "cease operations" last December and that was stated as a given in the original version of this post was apparently premature, as it's still there on the web. E&P is also covering the circulation news (daily; Sunday; HT to a BizzyBlog commenter).

Advertising Age (AA) had the unenviable task (given that it's supposed to stay on its vendors' and customers' good sides) of figuring out a way to cast yet another dreadful newspaper circulation report in a non-negative light. The educated guess here is that most newspaper execs are not going to be wearing the button pictured at the top right very frequently during the foreseeable future.

Here are the figures cited by AA as overall newspaper circulation declines during the past five six-month ABC reporting periods (percentages represent declines from the same six-month period of the previous year) --

March 31, 2010: - 8.7% daily, -6.5% Sunday
September 30, 2009: -10.6% daily, -7.5% Sunday
March 31, 2009: - 7.1% daily, -5.4% Sunday
September 30, 2008: -4.6% daily, -4.9% Sunday
March 31, 2008: - 3.6% daily, -4.6% Sunday

Given the results, here is AA's headline, sub-headline, and "hey, it's not really that bad" first sentence:

New York Post film critic Kyle Smith disliked Matt Damon's new movie Green Zone so much he was tempted to call for a boycott of NBC Universal:

I can't believe what I just saw, so I'll think about it some more before I go into detail. But if I were the kind of excitable guy who believes in boycotts, I'd say "Boycott NBC Universal" for its appalling new anti-American flick "Green Zone," an absurdly awful would-be actioner that stars Matt Damon as a US warrant officer in 2003 Baghdad.

I would never have accused director Paul Greengrass, who made the astonishingly powerful "United 93," of being simplistic. But he has made a $100 million war film in which American troops are the bad guys. There are moments that we're supposed to cheer because our soldiers are getting shot down -- but it's okay because they're evildoers at worst or stooges at best who are trying to kill the one guy in the country who can prevent an insurgency from taking root.

Billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump wants Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize stripped from the Global Warmingist-in-Chief.

"With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back, " Trump recently told members of his Westchester, New York, country club according to the New York Post.

The Post continued (h/t Polijam):

Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's high-priced call girl Ashley Dupre has landed herself an advice column at the New York Post:

Sure, she's made some mistakes. But now Ashley Dupre, the former escort who brought down Gov. Eliot Spitzer, is sharing what she's learned in her new sex, love and relationship column -- exclusively in the New York Post. Is your husband cheating? Is your daughter on a dangerous path? Our readers asked -- and Ashley fired back with her no-nonsense advice.

I guess all of Tiger Woods' mistresses should take heart, for it appears in America today being the other woman can really pay off.

The Post even created a video to advertise its new columnist (video embedded below the fold, h/t Mediaite):

It's a night and day difference between the media's scrutiny of former President George W. Bush and the current command-in-chief, President Barack Obama. And the coverage of three Navy SEALs now facing a court martial that captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, who allegedly was the mastermind of the murder of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah in 2004, is proof.

John Scott, host of "Fox News Watch" noted this story on the show's Nov. 28 episode and asked why there hasn't been more coverage about it.

"Pretty outrageous story came out, in my view, this week," Scott said. "These three Navy SEALs who were involved in capturing one of the most wanted bad guys in Iraq - the guy supposedly responsible for planning the execution of those four Blackwater contractors. The SEALs are now facing charges because the guy somehow wound up with a bloody lip. Is the media paying attention?"

Lou Dobbs left CNN after years of tensions between him and the network's brass, who consistently objected to his outspoken, often controversial reports. But the issues that seem to have annoyed CNN execs most were ones on which Dobbs took a conservative stance.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that CNN President Jonathan Klein offered Dobbs an ultimatum a few months ago: "Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN." Klein reportedly complained about Dobbs's reporting on the Birther movement over the summer, and his outspoken opposition to illegal immigration.

According to the New York Post, one "TV insider" said Dobbs was "polluting the CNN brand" of purported political objectivity. Klein issued a statement saying Dobbs had decided to "carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere."

When Glenn Beck reports that a top-level White House advisor has endorsed communism, accused 'white polluters' of poisoning minority communities, called his political opponents a**holes, and believes an American president was complicit in the slaughter of innocent civilians, Beck must have a hidden agenda. When the mainstream media fails to report these facts, it's all an honest mistake.

Or so one might gather from listening to CNN contributor and Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz. Kurtz continues to waffle between a cynical take on Glenn Beck's outing of Van Jones as a truther conspiracy theorist, and an apologetic approach to the mainstream media's virtual silence on the story until after Jones's resignation.

The Times's Managing Editor Jill Abramson offered a number of excuses for the lack of Van Jones coverage last weekend, chiefly that the paper's Washington Bureau was short-staffed. This did not stop the Times from sending two reporters to Boston for the weekend to cover the non-story of Joseph Kennedy II's Senate run (which he later said would not happen).