Humor

I was going to use Taft instead of Carter, but that could have led to rioting.

Long-time Los Angeles Times political cartoonist Paul Conrad has died, but the most interesting paragraph of his obituary in The Washington Post is the little hint by Post writer Matt Schudel that great newspapers only gain that reputation once they become liberal:

He won his first Pulitzer in 1964, then left Denver for Los Angeles. Mr. Conrad's incisive cartoons, which he drew six days a week, helped raise the reputation of the once-moribund Times, which had parroted the Republican Party line for decades.

A similar version of this trope appeared in the Los Angeles Times itself in a story by James Rainey, but at least it suggested that there might be a difference between mediocre reporting and a Republican viewpoint. Conrad viciously attacked Nixon and Reagan with his pen, which was and is apparently the secret of media prestige:

Our friends at BulletPeople.com have come out with another awesome Jack Webb parody video. This time the famed "Dragnet" detective Sgt. Joe Friday is taking on President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder over his treatment of Arizona in their attempt to deal with illegal immigration:

Make sure you check out more videos from Bullet People on Eyeblast.

Ve haf certain powers, Miz Maddow . . .

In the midst of bashing Pres. Bush over Iraq this evening, Rachel Maddow's mic went suddenly dead, forcing her MSNBC show to go to commercial.

When she returned [and after paraphrasing a line from Macbeth], Maddow let it be known she was "such a conspiracy theorist" but didn't dare tell the audience what she was thinking because "it would discredit me forever."

Was Mark Halperin just mugging, or was he truly turned off by Donny Deutsch's antics on the set of Morning Joe today? Check the video and be the judge.

Here's the background: on the show's August 6th edition [a clip of which was played today and is seen in the video here], Deutsch turned up in a tight black T-shirt and proceeded to spend much of his appearance flexing for the cameras.  He ended his self-promoting shtick by doing a set of push-ups as the closing comments rolled.

Deutsch, apparently doing sartorial penance, appeared in a three-piece suit this morning.  But when Mika Brzezinski chided him for his macho act, going so far as to facetiously accuse him of "sexting" on the set, Deutsch couldn't resist recreating his previous performance, doing a set of dips on the desk.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart has again come to the defense of the Ground Zero mosque-builders, complete with a graphic suggesting the opponents are conducting a “Mosque-erade.” Stewart brought in “senior religion correspondent” John Oliver, and predictably, they launched back into Catholic pedophile humor, as if it were fresh and original and so, well, 2002:

STEWART: Why should religious groups have to bend to people’s worst suspicions about them?

JOHN OLIVER: Because, Jon,  there’s a difference between what you can do and what you should do. For instance, you can build a Catholic church next to a playground. Should you? Should you do that, Jon? Should you do that? [Whoops, laughter and applause.]

Was MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski just joking or was she channeling some actual frustrations with her employers at MSNBC? As Brzezinski sat in as a guest co-host of Saturday’s Today show on NBC, she repeatedly joked about admiring Steven Slater, the flight attendant who quit his job at JetBlue by erratically bailing out of his plane down the emergency chute holding two beers. While co-host Amy Robach admitted that she was "getting sick of this story," Brzezinski had only just heard the story because she had been vacationing the past week. Reveling in her fascination with Slater, she made such declarations as, "I feel his pain," "I think I love him," and, "I have dreams about doing that actually."

Although at one point she referred to sometimes being annoyed at unruly airline passengers as a reason for sympathizing with him, she also twice joked about jumping out of the window of the NBC studio at 30 Rock. At the top of the show, she jokingly predicted, "I might jump out the window with a beer. You never know." During a plug later, she mused: "Two beers, I love him. It's my dream just to, like, right outside the window of 30 Rock. What do you think? On an escape hatch."

Arizona, California, and now, New York City. What the people/voters/citizens want just doesn't matter any more.

Who's next?

With Hillary so busy working her day job, SOMEBODY had to be "hands on."

So much for the illusion of state's rights.

What is it with liberals and their violent fantasies? The Journolist has given us a public radio producer imagining herself laughing with glee as Rush dies a painful death, while other members want their political enemies thrown through plate-glass windows.
This evening brings us "comedian" and liberal radio talk show host Stephanie Miller fantasizing about Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Geraldo Rivera being beaten with baseball bats by drunken Yankee fans.  Miller was a guest on Ed Schultz's week-ending "Club Ed" segment.

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

As we approach our 5th anniversary at NewsBusters, our celebration would not be complete without a recap of our best posts. It was a tough call, but we came up with the top 25, broken down evenly into five categories of five each.

We call it our Five-for-Five.

Each Friday through August 13 we'll publish a Five-for-Five list.We've saved the very best for last: On Monday, August 16, we'll publish the Top Five Outrageous Outbursts.

But we start today with a much lighter note. The first category for Five-for-Five is The Top Five Media Flubs Caught by NewsBusters. (Also check out a short video-cast with NewsBusters bloggers talking about how they caught the flubs.)

In no particular order we remember...:

• ...how CNN's Kyra Phillips was the original Gossip Girl ["Oops! CNN Airs Anchor's Girl Talk Over Bush Speech" August 29, 2006]

But relax. The White House has no interest in expanding the federal government.

Or so they say.

Tucker Carlson is now the proud owner of a slightly used Keith Olbermann.

With a large-print headline announcing "We own you" and a picture of ol' Keith looking bemused whilst he adjusts he glasses, The Daily Caller promoted their newest acquisition: http://keitholbermann.com/.

It's just the latest shot across the bow in the escalating feud between Olbermann and Carlson, which will one day be featured on a Cracked.com list of the top eight inconsequential personal feuds the media chose to cover instead of events that were actually newsworthy.

The only "race card" that matters, will be played in November. And it's called a ballot.

Imagine not knowing what year the United States declared its independence, what country we fought to win our freedom from, or who was the General that led our troops to victory.

As hard as it is to believe, there are actually Americans that are that stupid, and Jay Leno caught up with some of them last week:

Because of some things we have to live with, long after they are out of office.

Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger at the USA-Ghana World Cup match, June 26, 2010.

...and the shaft.

CNN correspondent Jeanne Moos has a penchant for quirky, off-beat reporting, but what happens when the eccentric newswoman gives a more accurate picture of important events than the serious journalists?

While media outlets relentlessly denounced BP CEO Tony Hayward for taking Saturday off to participate in a yacht race, they mostly glossed over or completely ignored President Barack Obama's Saturday golf outing with Vice President Joe Biden.

It was left to CNN's resident humorist to connect the dots.

"It's the yachting versus golf smack down, round one," declared Moos. "BP's CEO gets pummeled for taking a day off to watch his yacht race...CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller says already President Obama has played 39 rounds of golf, compared to the 24 George Bush played his entire presidency."

That's certainly one way to look at it...

After confessing that "President Obama's relationship with America, like many a young marriage, is growing sour" in his Saturday column "The Thrill Is Gone," New York Times columnist Charles Blow defended the president by citing a promises-kept tally at PolitiFact.com:

Of the 168 promises where action has been completed, they judge Obama to have broken only 19. That's not bad, and it must be acknowledged. We have to stop waiting for him to be great and allow him to be good.

Managing Editor's Note: I saw this earlier today on RedState and asked the artist for permission to republish here. You can check out more of Toby Dials's work at TobyToons.com and follow him on Twitter here.

With author Christopher Hitchens out promoting his new book, ‘Hitch 22: A Memoir,’ I was reminded of four summers ago when the British-born foreign policy hawk gave the finger to Bill Maher’s audience for derisively applauding put-downs of then-President George W. Bush’s approach to Iran. From an August 26, 2006 NewsBusters posting:

Writer/author Christopher Hitchens on Friday night gave the finger to the Los Angeles studio audience of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. As he laid out the case for how it's Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who wants World War Three, not George W. Bush, Hitchens cited how Ahmadinejad “says the Messiah is about to come back.” Maher quipped: “So does George Bush, by the way.” That caused a loud eruption of audience applause and cheering, which led Maher to clarify: “That's not facetious.”

The crowd continued to applaud as Hitchens remarked, about those in attendance who had earlier cheered and laughed as Maher called Bush an “idiot” repeatedly: “That's not facetious. Your audience, which will clap at apparently anything, is frivolous.” Loud oohs and groans emanated from the audience, prompting Hitchens to give them the finger as he castigated them, “Fuck you, fuck you,” while the groans continued.

President Obama provided some conservative belly laughs telling an audience of high school graduates in Kalamazoo, Michigan: "Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes."

This from a president who has blamed the last administration (and the Republican Party in general) for various economic and regulatory failures under his watch.

This should have been an easy target for New York Times White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, but she whiffed, even signing on to Obama's "buck-stops-here philosophy" in Tuesday's "Obama Gives Students a Principle to Guide Them."

President Obama has been telling the nation that he takes responsibility for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On Monday, he imparted his buck-stops-here philosophy to an audience of high school graduates, telling them: "Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes. Take responsibility where you fall short as well."

What do you do when you're a radical Hamas sympathizer who wants to wage a public relations campaign against Israel? You arm yourself with knives and attack Israel Defense Force officers who stop your boat at an Israeli maritime blockade - but don't worry, as long as you call yourself a "peace activist," the network news stations will take your word for it!

Watch the "Flotilla Choir" sing about how they conned the mainstream media into "abandoning reason" in a hilarious video put together by Caroline Glick's media satire website Latma:

Full lyrics: