Charles Blow

“Stop Compromising,” pleaded New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal on his “Loyal Opposition” blog Wednesday morning.

Rosenthal was aggrieved to hear Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod suggest the president was open to “compromise”on the administration’s plan requiring religious institutions to violate their beliefs and cover birth control in their employees’ health insurance plans. (Apparently compromise is no longer a good thing in Washington.)

Rosenthal (pictured) urged Obama to make a more full-throated defense of the rule, pointing out that “this isn’t a theocracy.”

Charles Blow’s Saturday column for the New York Times, “Newt’s Southern Strategy,” tastelessly conflated GOP candidate Newt Gingrich’s (imagined) racism with conservatives who believe the media have a liberal bias, while Blow called the former House Speaker a "vile, reptilian, hatemonger" on his Twitter feed.

In his Friday column ("Failing Forward"), published in Saturday's print edition, the New York Time's Charles Blow really blew it in attempting to relay an abortion-related statistic from the abortion-supportive Alan Guttmacher Institute. Blow wrote (shown here) that "the unintended pregnancy rate has jumped 50 percent since 1994."

The Times has since corrected the column to reflect what the Guttmacher Institute reported, which is that (italics are mine) "the unintended pregnancy rate among poor women has jumped 50 percent since 1994." LiveAction.org's Lisa Graas and Jennie Stone both noted Blow's blunder earlier today. Each also strongly and eloquently criticized Blow for his profoundly antilife attitudes. Additionally, the Times columnist used a "from 2000 to 2009" statistic about child poverty to mask the fact that most of the rise in that statistic occurred during the final year of that time period, i.e., the first year of the presidency of you-know-who.

President Obama's vacation in Martha's Vineyard also became an occasion for a panel of liberal journalists, politicians, and academics to mourn his alleged mistreatment in the media at a race-and-the-media panel discussion organized by Harvard professor Charles Ogletree. PBS Washington Week anchor Gwen Ifill  lamented the overwhelming media bias against Obama in the Henry Louis Gates controversy, when Obama said he didn't have all the facts, but the local police "acted stupidly" for their actions in arresting Gates on his own porch.

Ifill somehow ignored that the Obama-supporting news networks pouted over how this comment was a "distraction" from passing ObamaCare, and overpublicized the "beer summit" Obama held at the White House with Gates and his arresting police officer to fix any public-relations damage he might have incurred. (She even ignored the newscast she sometimes anchors, the PBS NewsHour.) On August 18, the Vineyard Gazette reported Ifill complained:

"I must confess that every time Representative Michele Bachmann uttered the phrase 'as president of the United States' during Thursday's Republican presidential debate I blacked out a little bit, so I'm sure that I missed some things."

So actually began a piece by New York Times columnist Charles Blow Saturday:

Joe Scarborough took Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski to task Thursday over the ongoing debt negotiations. "[Republicans] already have given specifics on the Paul Ryan Medicare plan which was political suicide for a lot of Republicans. They took that hard vote. What hard vote have Democrats made on the debt over the past year? Name one. Name one vote" said Scarborough.

[VIDEO BELOW THE FOLD]

Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Saturday took issue with New York Times columnist Charles Blow's recent piece "False Choice."

In it, the perilously liberal commentator criticized Republicans for wanting to solve the nation's economic woes with a mixture of tax and spending cuts:

New York Times columnist Charles Blow has gotten more ill-humored about politics since the summer of 2009, when he happily opined that the GOP was  doomed in the Northeast (this was less than six months before a Republican won the "Ted Kennedy" Senate seat in Massachusetts, after which Blow was considerably less happy with that geographical quadrant).

His Saturday column, "A Summer to Simmer," was full of ranting about the "callousness of conservatives" and their "unshakeable immunity to empathy."

  This summer has the potential to be another turning point for the electorate, and it’s not necessarily pegged to the performance of the president. It may hinge largely on the callousness of conservatives and their seemingly inexorable desire to overplay their hand.

Real estate mogul Donald Trump, acting like a presidential candidate, is garnering attention by latching on to the “birther” issue -- the discredited notion that President Obama was not born in Hawaii but in another country, thus making him ineligible for the presidency. The New York Times ran a poll April 22 that asked: “Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States, or was he born in another country?” The Times then broke down the results out for Republicans (but not for independents or Democrats): 45% of Republicans answered Obama was born elsewhere, 33% said he was born in the United States.

Meanwhile, the Times has yet to bring up a 2006 poll showing more than half of Democrats believed Bush was complicit in the 9-11 attacks.

Times liberal columnist Charles Blow pounced on Saturday: “It further exacerbates a corrosive culture on the right that now celebrates the Cult of Idiocy -- from Glenn Beck to Michele Bachmann -- where riling liberals is more valuable than reason and logic, and where intellectualism and even basic learnedness are viewed with suspicion and contempt.”

A recent nytimes.com Room for Debate online roundtable, “The Psychology of the 'Birther' Myth,” hosted seven experts about the psychology of the myth. The introduction:

Donald Trump might be off base with his birther views. But does that mean he shouldn't be allowed on TV to express them?  Yes--according to Charles Blow of the New York Times.

On Morning Joe today, Blow asserted that the MSM is wrong to give Trump air time on the birther issue because "we know that this is not true."

View video after the jump.

A week after the tragedy in Tucson, the Left is beginning to realize it made a dreadful mistake immediately trying to tie the event to conservatives.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow summed it up marvelously Saturday:

Charles Blow made some political observations in his New York Times column Saturday that are destined to anger many of his left-leaning readers.

Just imagine how the average New York Democrat is going to respond to being told the future of his Party is being jeopardized by the fact that "Too many liberals just want to whine":

Here's something you wouldn't expect to read in the New York Times: Republicans are better informed about political issues than blacks, Hispanics, and young people.

"Big-city liberals and their blogging buddies love to paint Tea Partiers as yokels with incoherent candidates and language-mauling signs," began Charles Blow's column Saturday.

"The unpleasant fact that these liberals rarely mention, and may not know, is that large swaths of the Democratic base, groups they need to vote in droves next month - blacks, Hispanics and young people - are far less civically literate than their conservative counterparts."

That was just the beginning of the surprises in Blow's "What's Dumb, Really?":

New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote a short piece on the ninth anniversary of 9/11 that should be must-reading for all Americans on both sides of the aisle.

In fact, I'm sure liberal Times devotees will be just as shocked by "A Lesson From 9/11" as conservatives that take the three minutes necessary to get through it.

After sharing his experience as a New Yorker who was in Manhattan that awful day, Blow marvelously tied it all together with what Americans have fought and died for since our forefathers were colonists:

Howard Dean pulled off the rare twin-trashing this morning, dumping on both Glenn Beck and the people who respond to his message.  He began by calling Beck crazy, saying he has "a few things the matter with him up here, up in the head there." Later, he compounded the calumny, calling Beck a "racist" and a "hate-monger."  So who were the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the rally and the millions more who watch and listen to Beck?  Why, according to Dean, they're "lost souls."

New York Times columnist Charles Blow had set the vitriolic tone during the show's first hour, accusing Beck of "hiding behind a cross" and participating in a "rhetorical assassination" of Pres. Obama.

"Is President Obama good for the Jews?" asked New York Times columnist Charles Blow Saturday.

His answer was quite surprising: "For more and more Jewish-Americans, the answer is no." 

In his piece marvelously titled "Oy Vey, Obama," Blow referred to Thursday's Pew Research Center report finding "33% of Jewish voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 20% in 2008."

From there, Blow went where a liberal columnist for the New York Times typically dares not:

New York Times columnist Charles Blow on Saturday actually defended former governor Sarah Palin from death wish attacks by two Democrat officials in New Hampshire.

In case you missed it, on Tuesday Keith Halloran, a Democrat candidate for the New Hampshire House, posted in a Facebook thread about the plane crash that killed former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, "Just wish Sarah and Levy [sic] were on board." 

New Hampshire State Representative Timothy Horrigan replied Wednesday, "Well a dead Palin wd [sic] be even more dangerous than a live one ... she is all about her myth & if she was dead she cldn' t [sic] commit any more gaffes."

Rather surprisingly, Blow took issue with this Saturday:

While MSNBC has spent a week or so playing the allegation of Tea Party racism in heavy rotation, on Monday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, anchor Mika Brzezinski devoted a segment to the controversy over the New Black Panther Party’s voter intimidation. New York Times editorial writer Charles Blow denounced the group and agreed that the Justice Department needs to answer questions, but he predictably tried to argue conservatives are outrageous in suggesting the "strange logic" that Team Obama’s actions say something about Team Obama and racial justice:

The political part of it is, I think, the most inflammatory part of this. It's strange logic. The idea that the Obama administration – which is what's happening here – people are trying to tie the Obama administration to black radicalism. And that has been happening since the campaign and it continues to happen. Not everybody, but it's an electoral goal if you can tie him somehow to black radicalism. It's strange logic to think that this tiny group, he somehow benefits politically from protecting them. They have a summit the year before this voter intimidation thing came up. There were a hundred people there. There's nobody there. There's nothing to gain. In fact, there's everything to gain in prosecuting.

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.

New York Times columnist Charles "Minstrel Show" Blow was at it again Saturday accusing Tea Partiers of being racists.

I guess for Blow, a day without calling some conservative a racist is like a day without sunshine.

Whatever the pathology, his "Trying to Outrun Race" made it crystal clear right from the get go what unfortunate readers were in store for:

Racist. Tea Party. 

Not surprisingly, it was all downhill from there (h/t Hot Air headlines):

The black Tea Party member who was curiously lambasted by New York Times columnist Charles "Minstrel Show" Blow last week struck back at his offender on Monday.

In his now infamous Friday column, Blow wrote of the Dallas Tea Party gathering he attended the previous day:

They saved the best for last, however: Alfonzo "Zo" Rachel. According to his Web site, Zo, who is black and performs skits as "Zo-bama," allowed drugs to cost him "his graduation." Before ripping into the president for unconstitutional behavior, he cautioned, "I don't have the education that our president has, so if I misinterpret some things in the founding documents I kind of have an excuse." That was the understatement of the evening. 

On Monday, Rachel posted a marvelous, truly must-see video countering Blow's attack:

Laura Ingraham on Monday took New York Times columnist Charles Blow to task for calling last Thursday's Dallas Tea Party a minstrel show.

In his column published Saturday, Blow said of the tax day gathering he witnessed in the Lone Star State:

Thursday night I saw a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance. I was not amused. 

With this in mind, Ingraham invited Blow on her radio program Monday to explain how he came to this conclusion.

The conservative talk radio host quickly got the Times columnist to admit that he hadn't seen any overt acts of racism at the Party, but he refused to explain what made it a minstrel show (audio available here, interview starts at 3:30, partial transcript and commentary follows, file photo):

Did Frank Rich read Charles Blow's column and sub-consciously subsume it? Rich's NY Times opus of March 27 is a virtual echo of Blow's item of March 26.  

Coincidence or not, the two Timesmen are very much on the same wavelength.  Their shared theory: conservative opposition to Obamacare is fueled not so much by the substance of PBO's plans as it is by the racism, homophobia and sexism of people who can't bear to witness America's changing demographics.

Compare the eerie similarities in the two columns [emphasis added].

New York Times columnist Charles Blow and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle traded liberal talking points like Topps baseball cards on today’s “Morning Joe.” Confident the American people care more about eliminating preexisting conditions and expanding health insurance entitlements than the $569.2 billion tax increase and the $1.2 trillion price tag, the journalists failed to substantiate their claims with anything more than their liberal impulses.

“Most people want what they have in this bill or more,” insisted Blow. “We cannot let Republicans take over that talking point, which is that most people don’t want this bill somehow because it is too liberal. That’s just a lie. That is just a lie.”

Really? The American people don’t think the largest tax increase in American history is too liberal? The American people don’t think an unprecedented expansion of government control in the health insurance industry is too liberal? Blow’s failure to back up his assertion renders it laughable.

Then Barnicle chimed in, echoing Blow:

 

How much of a pickle is Pelosi potentially in?  Enough that Dem loyalist Charles Blow had to resort to some truly twisted reasoning to explain away her delay in responding to allegations against Eric Massa.

Of all things, the New York Times columnist tried to excuse Pelosi's failure to act by blaming . . . "our crazy misogynistic culture."  Huh?

Blow offered his odd opinion on today's Morning Joe . . .

"In 1984, Ronald Reagan won every Northeastern state. Since then, the leadership of the G.O.P. has systematically shed its idealists in favor of ideologues, reducing itself to the current Cheney-Limbaugh illusionati whose strategy is to exploit faith and ignorance by fanning fear and hatred. But, Northeasterners are not so easily duped. Voters there tend to be wealthier, better educated, less religious and more progressive than those in other regions." -- New York Times columnist Charles Blow, writing on May 23, 2009.

vs.

"Welcome to the mob: an angry, wounded electorate, riled by recession, careening across the political spectrum, still craving change, nursing a bloodlust." -- Charles Blow in his January 23, 2010 column, after Republican Scott Brown's victory in a special Senate election in Massachusetts.

(Hat Tip: James Taranto at Opinion Journal's Best of the Web)

On MSNBC's "New York Times edition" Friday afternoon, host John Harwood, who also writes about politics for the Times, called talk show host Rush Limbaugh's comments about Obama using the Haiti earthquake to appeal to black voters "pretty disgusting," about twenty minutes into the show.

Harwood then put Times columnist Ross Douthat on the spot as its "man of the right" to explain Limbaugh if he wished (Douthat didn't). Liberal Times columnist Charles Blow followed up by calling Rush "a particularly vile human being."

The source of the Times's ire? Limbaugh's comments on his radio show that "This'll play right into Obama's hands, humanitarian, compassionate. They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community in, both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country."

Charles Blow's op-ed in Saturday New York Times, "G.O.P. Grief and Grieving," offensively mocked the Tea Party protesters as rednecks and rather desperately and unconvincingly insisted, against current evidence (the Massachusetts Senate race, anyone?) that the conservative movement is in its death throes.

At least Blow recognizes that the tea party protesters are not partisan in nature but have major problems with the Republican establishment as well as President Obama:

The attack on the Republican establishment by the tea party folks grabs the gaze like a really bad horror flick -- some version of "Hee Haw" meets "28 Days Later." It's fascinating. But it also raises a serious question: Are these the desperate thrashings of a dying movement or the labor pains of a new one?

(I suspect Blow really wanted to compare the tea partiers to the banjo players in "Deliverance," but rejected the idea as too on-the-nose.)

The New York Times's "Visual op-ed" columnist Charles Blow issued his latest conservative-baiting column on Saturday, "The Enemies Within." Blow actually defended the infamous report from the Department of Homeland Security that vaguely tarred anyone active in conservative causes like abortion or immigration as potential extremists.

Blow focused on what the report said about U.S. veterans, who are apparently not smart enough to avoid getting involved in hate groups after returning home. The text box read: "Hate groups want our veterans." Blow's piece came with a helpful visual aid showing the number of "Veterans in White Supremacist Groups." The total confirmed or claimed over the last seven years? A less than overwhelming 203 out of a group numbering millions.

Blow wrote: