Cindy Sheehan

Tonight MSNBC's cast and crew will gather in Washington D.C. to celebrate their network being on the air for 15 long years. In that time its hosts, reporters and guests have attacked conservatives and Republicans on everything from impeaching Bill Clinton and conducting a war on terrorism, up to the fight over public unions. All the while some of its reporters and hosts have been thrilled by the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Barack Obama.

For that entire 15 years MRC analysts have been dutifully watching and noting these often outrageous outbursts of leftism from NBC News' cable outlet.

The following collection of the worst MSNBC quotes, year-by-year, is just a sampling of the Lean Forward network's decade-and-a-half long devotion to advancing the cause of liberalism under the guise of journalism.

(video compilation after the jump)

Remember back in 2005, when the major media turned Cindy Sheehan into their anti-Bush heroine of the moment? They never seemed to notice her statements made her sound like a very anti-American radical fruitcake. On August 15, 2005 (video here), Sheehan went on Hardball and told Chris Matthews the U.S. was using Iraq "as a base for spreading imperialism." An impressed Matthews suggested: "You sound more informed than most U.S. Congresspeople, so maybe you should run."

So perhaps Matthews will retract his statement and debate her on air, because Cindy Sheehan is now a "deather," insisting that the "Empire" faked their Sunday victory over Osama bin Laden. This is not a leg-thrill moment for Matthews. The Washington Post noticed at the very bottom of a Tuesday story by Emily Wax on page C7 this note from Sheehan’s Facebook page:

Where have all the war protesters gone, long time passing?

They’re mostly backing Obama’s attack on Libya or at least keeping quiet so they don’t aid those evil conservatives intent on criticizing the president. More moderate lefties had once promised a third way. Now we find out that was a typo. It’s not a third way, it’s a third war.

President Obama, who was swept in on a tide of anti-war sentiment and anger over GOP spending, is now running yet another unpopular war and spending more than any president in history. If the GOP tried this, the news media would beat them with their microphones. But because it’s the president with journalists in his back pocket, there is little controversy.

It wasn’t so long ago that Code Pinkers were the darlings of journalism. You could find them across the media landscape. The Washington Post had lovingly huge features on them titled “Protesting for Peace With a Vivid Hue and Cry; Code Pink's Tactics: Often Theatrical, Always Colorful.” “Bring the troops home,” that 2007 story ended. Four years later, we know no one on the left really wanted to send the troops home. They just wanted to send Bush home.

Or there was the Code Pink protester confronting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Capitol Hill hearing. As The Post described it, “an antiwar protester shouted ‘War criminal!’ and waved blood-colored hands in her face.” Who hasn’t seen that picture? The news ran that so often it was like they got royalties. (News outlets are desperate for cash these days.)

A promo for a new Chris Matthews special on the "Rise of the New Right" is pretty much what you'd expect: Rand Paul, 9/11 Truther Alex Jones, and lots of militiamen shooting guns. That is the doctrinaire leftist snapshot of the Tea Party movement, so it stands to reason that Matthews will extrapolate it into some dire warning about our political future.

"There is a rising tide on the right," Matthews's ominously declares. "The tea party is determined to take power, what does that mean for America?" A claim by a militiaman that "the government's too big" is immediately followed by gunshots - a not too subtle way to paint Americans who favor less government (a majority, by the way) as extremists ala the infamous Hutaree Militia.

The promo opens with Rand Paul's "message from the Tea Party: we've come to take our government back." Paul's recent gaffe - he said he would not have voted for Title II of the Civil Rights Act - will probably give Matthews an easy segue into discussion of the horrible racists that make up the movement. The presence of Alex Jones suggests that Matthews will try to paint Tea Partiers as conspiracy theorists as well (video below the fold).

As NewsBusters has been reporting, you can't turn on the television or open up a newspaper these days without coming across a piece about extreme right-wing hate speech and/or the supposed violence being stoked by Tea Parties.

During such reports, the so-called journalist involved acts like demonstrations of this sort are somehow new and have taken on inflammatory rhetoric never before seen in this country.

To disprove such blatantly bad reporting, conservative writer Evan Coyne Maloney has put together a marvelous video and essay chronicling some of the protests of the previous decade, and what some attendees were saying and carrying in their hands (video embedded below the fold, vulgarity alert, h/t Power Line):

You know Cindy Sheehan's star has really fallen with the liberal media when the likes of Mike Barnicle, compare her to GOP Congressman Joe "You lie!" Wilson. On Thursday's "Hardball," Barnicle, substitute hosting for Chris Matthews, declared, "Democrats hope to turn Wilson into the Cindy Sheehan of the anti-health care reform movement. A clownish figure of ridicule who hurts his own side, more than he helps." As the MRC's Brent Baker noted, now that she is opposing a Democratic president, the media have turned on Sheehan.

The following is from Barnicle's opening to the September 10 edition of "Hardball":

On a Sunday evening in August four summers ago the NBC Nightly News devoted its “In Depth” segment to how Cindy Sheehan was “single-handedly bringing the Iraq debate to Mr. Bush’s doorstep” with her protest in Crawford, Texas. But Sunday night this year, after Sheehan departed Martha's Vineyard without earning any network media coverage as President Barack Obama's wrapped up his vacation there, NBC's Ron Allen began a story: “Hours before President Obama's vacation ended, he treated his girls to ice cream and candy -- the kind of family time the President said he had in mind for the week on Martha's Vineyard. A chance, friends say, to renew himself.”
    
A week ago, a MRC Media Reality Check asked: “Will Nets Note Sheehan's Anti-Obama Protest? Media Embraced Cindy Sheehan's Anti-Bush Push in 2005; ABC Anchor Now Says: 'Enough Already.'” (NB posting) The answer: No. Though she spent four days on the island and held an event on Thursday right next to the media set up in the Oak Bluffs School, her anti-Obama efforts were ignored by all the networks (cable too) as well as major newspapers.

Media Embraced Cindy Sheehan's Anti-Bush Push in 2005; ABC Anchor Now Says: "Enough Already"

When Cindy Sheehan arrives on Martha’s Vineyard tomorrow (Tuesday), to protest against President Barack Obama, will the news media be as drawn to her as they were in the summer of 2005 when she was condemning George W. Bush?

Last week, ABC anchor Charles Gibson declared “enough already” when asked on Chicago’s WLS Radio about Sheehan’s plan to travel to Obama’s island vacation spot to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When she camped near Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch four years ago, that was hardly the view of Gibson and his colleagues. At the time, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell aptly dubbed her “a media magnet.”

Back then, the networks were eager to publicize her cause from the moment she arrived. Katie Couric, for instance, showcased Sheehan at the top of NBC’s Today show: “A mother’s vigil. Her son died in Iraq. Now this woman is camping outside the Bushes’ Texas ranch and demanding a meeting with the President today, Monday, August 8th, 2005.”

As Noel Sheppard noted earlier today in picking up from the Washington Examiner's Byron York how ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson declared “enough already” when asked on Chicago's WLS Radio (audio) about Cindy Sheehan's plan to travel to President Barack Obama's Martha's Vineyard vacation spot next week to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. York observed how “that's a remarkably different stance from the one Gibson took four years ago” when he was co-host of Good Morning America. Specifically, York recalled:

On August 9, 2005, the ABC anchor conducted an extensive on-air interview with Sheehan. “Cindy Sheehan is her name,” Gibson began. “She says she's not moving until the President meets with her, and I had a chance to speak with her a few minutes ago. Cindy Sheehan, bottom line, what do you hope to accomplish with all this?”

During the next week, Gibson and ABC continued to cover Sheehan. On August 17, 2005, when Sheehan left Crawford, Gibson reported, “We're going to turn next to the standoff that is playing out near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Cindy Sheehan, you know, the mother who lost a son in Iraq, is now on the move, but she's still standing her ground. ABC's Geoff Morrell is in Crawford with the details…” The next day, Gibson reported, “All across the country last night, people held candlelight vigils in support of Cindy Sheehan…”

When George W. Bush was President, ABC and Charles Gibson, like most media members, couldn't get enough of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan.

Now that Barack Obama is in the White House, the host of "World News Tonight" is no longer interested in Sheehan, even telling WLS radio in Chicago, "Enough already."

I guess she served her purpose as reported by the Washington Examiner's Byron York Thursday:

On Monday’s Newsroom program, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez tried to justify that Cindy Sheehan is still worth covering, as the unrelenting left-wing activist recently protested near the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush. When Republican strategist Rich Galen advised that she should stop protesting and that the press ignore her, Sanchez went out of his way to find an angle for covering her.

Sanchez brought on Galen and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona to discuss the Sheehan protest during the bottom half of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program. He first asked Cardona, “Should she [Sheehan] let it go?” The strategist answered by putting her cause in the wider context of all the parents of servicemen who were killed during the Iraq war. When she concluded her answer by asking rhetorically, “who are we to say yes or no” to Sheehan, Galen jumped in and replied, “I can say yes or no. The answer’s no, I’m afraid.”

The Democratic National Convention hasn't even begun, and the protestors are out trying to Recreate 68.

For those unfamiliar, the group "was created for all the grassroots people who are tired of being sold out by the Democratic Party," and are gathering in Denver to "resist a two-party system that allows imperialism and racism to continue unrestrained."

High profile activists such as Cindy Sheehan and Cynthia McKinney have already joined the festivities.

On Sunday, Fox News's Griff Jenkins tried to speak to these folks as they marched in Denver, but was instead verbally assaulted (video embedded below the fold courtesy of our friend Johnny Dollar, vulgarity warning, photo courtesy Rocky Mountain News):

The AP gives us a story about some so-called documentary about what evil befell the poor folks of Crawford, Texas, after Governor George W. Bush bought his ranch property there.I'll start right out with the key section that pretty much describes what we're dealing with, a quote by the director of this film. "I wanted to do a film indicting Bush for this political stagecraft, using this town as a prop." A guy that wanted to exploit the kind folks of Crawford, Texas is being presented as a wonderful fellow by the press? Say it isn’t so!

Naturally, the AP is in sympathy for the poor folks of Crawford who had the misfortune of becoming Bush's hometown. So, now a man can't even buy a house without it being the most evil thing any one has ever done, eh?

The mainstream media (ABC, NBC, CBS, New York Times, CNN, etc) have made their opposition to the US campaign against Islamic terror, particularly the current Iraq campaign a centerpiece of their coverage almost since the beginning. Current headline stories include complaints that not enough bodies are available to graveyards and complaints that not enough US soldiers are killing their commanders, a practice known as 'fragging'. Further examples of the media's partisanship include their constant hero-worship of people like Cindy Sheehan and their ignoring of other soldiers' parents who still support the campaign and the President. Today, a group of Code Pink protestors assembled in front of Berkeley's Marine recruiting office to protest, but unfortuantely for them, they were far outnumbered by pro-military supporters, who gathered across Shattuck Avenue. As the Contra Costa Times reported:

The mainstream media’s coverage of the antiwar march in Washington, DC did its best to ignore the extreme Left views that were on display at the protest. A split-second image at the very beginning of Saturday evening’s NBC Nightly News showed some of the extreme views that were on display on signs, which included a call for the impeachment of President Bush for "war crimes," and a sign that cried "9/11 Truth Now!" The full NBC Nightly News report on the march devoted almost a minute to footage of the antiwar marchers, and only 15 seconds to comments from one of the pro-Iraq war counter-protesters who lined the march route. Anyone who tuned in would have to look carefully for any sign of radical views.

Video: Real (1.6 MB) or Windows (1.3 MB), plus MP3 (618 KB)

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post covered the march in their Sunday editions. However, they ignored some of the radical statements that were made from the stage at the antiwar rally before the march. The photos that accompanied both the print edition and online versions of the articles also glossed over the extreme views that were expressed on signs and banners at the march.

Michael A. Fletcher of the Washington Post has a little snippet of a story so full of hyperbole about how wonderful and "crystallizing" so-called "Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan has been for the country that unintentional comedy is the result -- that or it raises a collective groan for its slobbering sycophancy. He so outlandishly exaggerates the impact of the "antiwar hero" and her protégé in "Camp Casey" that it just boggles the mind. Seems like Fletcher is far from a disinterested "journalist" but has succumbed to outright hero worship here.

I say "little snippet" of a story because it is one of those entries containing several short snippets of political news, the Sheehan story being one of them. But, befitting Fletcher's obviously smitten condition with "grieving mother" Sheehan, it is the largest entry in the article.