In last week's installment of "Sting's Eco-hypocrisy," we learned that the frontman for the rock band the Police, though supposedly an environmentalist, has a bigger carbon footprint than most third world nations.

In Sunday's episode, we found out that Sting's charity, the Rainforest Foundation, gives only 41 percent of the money raised to the programs it supports, and, as a result, "is rated one of New York City's worst charities, according to Charity Navigator."

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up!

As reported by the New York Post Sunday (emphasis added throughout):

Old Media business reporters have a definitionally-incorrect habit of labeling single industries or economic sectors as being "in recession," when the term, as defined here, can only describe national economies or the world economy. Two examples of this are New York Times reporter David Leonhardt's description of manufacturing as being in recession in February 2007 (laughably incorrect, in any event), and the Times's employment of the term "housing recession" 25 times since October 2006, as seen in this Times search (with the phrase in quotes).

But if I wanted to be consistent with this routine form of journalistic malpractice, I would characterize the newspaper business -- at least in terms of the top 25 in the industry's food chain -- not as being in recession, but instead as going through a deep, dark, painful, protracted depression.

Granted, there's lots of time to go, but it's not going to be easy to catch Mika Brzezinski, the early clubhouse leader for the Year's Most Inapt Metaphor.

Barackophile Brzezinski made her bid for the prize during the opening segment of today's Morning Joe, accusing the Clinton campaign of having pounced on Obama like . . . lemmings.

Let's set the stage: the topic was a TV commercial Hillary's running in PA that, in touting her readiness to confront any crisis, briefly flashed an image of Osama Bin Laden. A headline [see screencap after break] in Today's NY Post claims the commercial employs "scare tactics" and the "fear factor." Joe Scarborough suggested that as tough tactics go, the ad was in fact small potatoes compared to truly brass-knuckled methods employed in the past. After playing a clip of Obama responding by touting his own leadership credentials, Scarborough complimented the candidate for not complaining.

Imagine for a moment that a Fox News reporter was arrested in Central Park early in the morning with a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals. Do you think this little nuance would be included in press coverage of this bizarre event?

Probably in the headline and the opening paragraph, right?

Well, for some reason, though news outlets did report the odd happenings in NYC Friday morning when CNN's Richard Quest was officially arrested for loitering and drug possession, from what I can tell, only the New York Post included the "kinky" elements in its article Saturday (emphasis added, h/t NBer Gat New York, picture courtesy CNN):

If recent polls and rumors are correct, two of America's most prominent women are about to go down in flames, conceivably at virtually the same moment in history.

Predictably, the left and their media minions seem destined to blame it all on men.

Think that's sexist of me?

Well, before I'm relegated to the sexist pigsty, consider Sunday's New York Post article written by Vanity Fair contributing editor Leslie Bennetts entitled "Hillary and Katie: Two Women Pioneers...Driven Off A Cliff" (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer ThisnThat):

Another Empire State Democrat appears ensnared in a juicy political scandal involving misappropriated money and political patronage.

An article in the April 3 New York Post reports that New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s office has been hoarding millions of dollars in taxpayer money. The money was allocated to fake organizations so that it could be saved and used later for political favors.

The Post noted that the money constituted what essentially turned out to be a “slush fund” for the Speaker as it was later used at Quinn's discretion whether it be to reward loyal groups or to provide funding for projects of favored council members.

The Post's Frankie Edozien should be congratulated for the exclusive, but one thing is missing from the story: Quinn’s political party affiliation. Although the newspaper reported that this “bogus bookkeeping” is subject to federal as well as city investigations, not once did the New York Post note that Quinn is a Democrat. NewsBusters appreciates good investigative reporting, but it is important to be consistent in labeling political party affiliation.

On March 19th, I found a story on The Jerusalem Post detailing an attack by Muslim youths on a rabbinical assistant that occurred at a Brooklyn, New York subway station. The youths grabbed Uria Ohana's yarmulke off his head then ran off yelling "Allahu Akbar," which is Arabic for "God is great." I have waited four days to report this story myself to see what other news outlets decide to cover the incident and how they would cover it. So far, the only U.S. news outlet that covered it was the New York Post. It has been nearly ignored by the rest of the media.

The dearth of coverage is curious because it seems a natural story for the left to get their "hate crimes" dander worked up over. After all, we have a Muslim gang attacking a lone Jew right in the middle of Brooklyn! Yet, the news gives us zip for coverage.

Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters posted Tuesday on Editor and Publisher's March 11 article listing the four-year circulation changes at the nation's top 20 newspapers, concentrating on the 20% loss at the Los Angeles Times during that period.

What's also compelling is that the Top 20 really has three winners and 17 losers during that four-year time frame, as the chart that follows demonstrates:

To riff off the Alice Roosevelt Longworth line: if you don't have anything nice to say about Rupert Murdoch, go sit next to David Shuster. The MSNBCer and former Fox Newser has no love lost for his old employer.

Shuster's latest is that Hillary, she of long memory, will be holding a grudge against Murdoch, whose NewsCorp owns the New York Post and Fox News, for the unflattering coverage the Post gave Clinton in the closing days of the New Hampshire primary campaign.

View video here.

It must be wonderful to be a Democrat and know that your indiscretions are very unlikely to get much attention by media minions only willing to cover the crimes and shortcomings of folks on the opposite side of the aisle.

Take for example James Michael McHaney, an aide to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) who NewsBusters reported had been arrested last Friday for trying to lure a thirteen-year-old boy into a sexual encounter.

Not only did this get buried on Friday so as likely not to take focus away from Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) looking regal and presidential during that day's hostage crisis in New Hampshire, but also once the Associated Press deigned to actually inform subscribers on Monday that something potentially nefarious had occurred, press outlets either continued to ignore the subject, or buried it nicely so that precious few would be made aware of it.

On the television side, according to LexisNexis, the only outlet which felt this newsworthy was CNN which aired its only report on this matter during the 6:00 AM EST "American Morning" Tuesday:

Captain Renault would be shocked: Hillary Clinton's campaign put pressure on Eliot Spitzer to drop his disastrous licenses-for-illegals plan.

The word came from crack NY Post Albany reporter Fred Dicker [pictured here], appearing on this afternoon's Hardball.

View video here.

It is understandable, but not forgivable, that business reporters at Old Media newspapers might think that the economy is in bad shape. They first have to get past how poorly most of their employers are doing. The industry as a whole has not been doing well, and it's been that way for quite some time.

This table illustrates that point (September 30, 2007 figures are at this post, which originally came from this Editor & Publisher article, which will soon disappear behind its firewall; March 31, 2005 figures were estimated in reverse using annual percentage changes reported as of March 31, 2006, because older data I thought would remain available no longer is):

Tom Brady is the glitzy quarterback of the NFL's flashiest undefeated juggernaut, the New England Patriots. But columnists seem to be plopping Brady into several different political slots. On the ESPN website, former Newsweek writer Gregg Easterbrook wrote of how he saw the matchup between the Indianapolis Colts (good guys) and the Patriots (dishonesty, arrogance, hubris), and somehow, surprise, the liberal writer finds that dishonest hubris translates well to Cheney:

The team's star, Tom Brady, is a smirking sybarite who dates actresses and supermodels but whose public charity appearances are infrequent. That constant smirk on Brady's face reminds one of Dick Cheney; people who smirk are fairly broadcasting the message, "I'm hiding something."

Apparently the media is only interested in secret surveillance programs when they are conducted by the United States government against enemies of this country. When similar measures are used by the City of New York to track employees, the press collectively yawns. Based on cell-phone GPS tracking records, administrative Judge Tynia Richard in New York has recommended that a city employee be fired for leaving work early. Fair enough. However, there are a few questions I would like to raise in regards to this decicion. Firstly, the employee in question, one Mark Halpin, was issued a city phone without being told that it contained a GPS system that would be used to track his movements. This sounds suspiciously like covert surveillance to me. Secondly, it turns out that Halpin often showed up for for work as many as two hours earlier than his shift began. However, the judge did not take that into account. According to the New York Post,

Halpin questioned the reliability of the data and argued that his privacy was invaded, since officials tracked him when he wasn't at work.

In a new low of political promoting, Senator Hillary Clinton says that a new terror attack would help Republicans. The New York senator is reported by the New York Post online edition as saying,

"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world,"

This brings up two points. Firstly, how low has political campaigning sunk that any candidate for the Presidency would even consider saying something like this as part of a campaign?

As usual, Mark Steyn's Sunday column in the Orange County Register is a read-the-whole-thinger.

Steyn takes on the lunacy of sanctuary cities, media-report tiptoeing, and the apparently hopelessly-in-denial political elites:

..... there's been a succession of prominent stories with one common feature that the very same pundits, politicians and lobby groups have a curious reluctance to go anywhere near. In a New York Times report headlined "Sorrow And Anger As Newark Buries Slain Youth," the limpidly tasteful Times prose prioritized "sorrow" over "anger," and offered only the following reference to the perpetrators: "The authorities have said robbery appeared to be the motive. Three suspects – two 15-year-olds and a 28-year-old construction worker from Peru – have been arrested."

When New-York based "Today" went looking for a local sports reporter to defend Barry Bonds the morning after he set the career home run record, it didn't turn to the New York Post, whose headline this morning reads JUNK BONDS: ‘SULTAN OF SYRINGE'. Nor was it likely that the designated hitter would be someone from the Daily News, whose back page screams "King of Shame." Instead, "Today" looked to the New York Times, and in particular to sports writer William Rhoden [pictured here with Matt Lauer], to embrace Bonds.

'TODAY' CO-ANCHOR MATT LAUER: You've been very critical of baseball actually leading up to this milestone for the way they've been wringing their hands trying to figure out what to do with this record. Barry Bonds you wrote, quote, "he will be baseball's king, it's emperor, it's czar." How are you feeling this morning?

NYT SPORTS REPORTER WILLIAM RHODEN: I think it's a great moment, Matt. It really is. It's an historic moment. The number's there, no matter. There's going to continue to be hand-wringing, but there's no hand-wringing in the Bonds household [proving what?] . . . It's just a tremendous accomplishment . . . I don't think anyone doubts that.

View video here.

In the past four days, the New York Times published two reviews of "Arctic Tale," a new film about polar bears threatened by - wait for it! - global warming.

Makes one wonder whether the need for two reviews versus the normal one was due to the Times's desire to advance alarmism concerning the great, liberal bogeyman of climate change, or that the screenplay was co-written by soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore's daughter Kristin.

Whatever the reason, both articles were certainly chock-full of scary global warming references like the following from Andrew C. Revkin's piece from Sunday (emphasis added throughout):