Doris Kearns Goodwin

Following a revealing interview with former JFK mistress Mimi Alford on Wednesday's NBC Rock Center, left-wing MSNBC host Chris Matthews, along with liberal historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Richard Reeves, were invited on the broadcast to give a sycophantic defense of the womanizing president. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Touting his new book, "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero," Matthews proclaimed: "The greatest heroes are often the most flawed." The Hardball host went on to gush over how Kennedy "colorized American politics....made it a technicolor movie, he made it exciting." In his characteristic fashion, Matthews concluded: "And so with it all, the total picture still arouses the country."

Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Random House executive editor Jon Meacham described the political comeback of Republicans: "...we were all sitting around in 2009, and this was a new era. It was an entirely different time. And I think it was a implacable opposition, which is not to say it's wrong, but it was an implacable opposition."

Host David Gregory quoted Meacham's introduction to a new Politico ebook, "The Right Fights Back": "The dawn of 2009 was supposed to inaugurate a new political age. After a decade of war and a year of epic economic collapse, a young Democratic president unscarred by the cultural conflicts of the Clinton years promised a 'post-partisan' ethos...Conservatism was said to be dead. Except it wasn't....How did American politics get from the 'there' of a new Age of Obama to the 'here' of a resurgent right?"

On NBC's Sunday Meet the Press, host David Gregory took on an alarmist tone as he worried that any significant attempts to address the nation's enormous debt could lead to violence: "Look at the images that came out of Greece this week as you've got...big cuts in public spending. And this is the result, rioting in the streets....Could we have that kind of reaction here?"

Gregory posed that question to Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham early in the program, further fretting: "Are we headed in this direction with the kind of actions we're talking about in terms of cutting public spending?...Is there a risk...that these draconian cuts in spending that so many Americans think are necessary may actually halt what we're still...seeing as a very fragile, very weak economic recovery?"

Before the Democratic primary vote on Tuesday in Massachusetts to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy, a chance to catch up with how just before Thanksgiving, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin -- a Bay State resident and a favorite of NBC News where she regularly pops up to deliver conventional liberal wisdom in the guise of historic insights -- crossed into partisan politics to campaign for one of the four liberal candidates.

On Sunday, November 22, Kearns was the star at a “Women at Work” event for Steve Pagliuca, the co-owner of the Boston Celtics who is third in the polls. “Steve Pagliuca woos female support,” declared the headline in the next day's Boston Herald, “Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin backs ‘pro-choice' candidate.”

Goodwin's Web page touts NBC's affinity for her observations: “Presidential historian and political news analyst, appearing frequently on NBC, MSNBC, The Charlie Rose Show and Meet the Press.”

In a piece that could've been crafted by Hillary Clinton's PR shop, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Monday's "Today" show, gushed on and on about the Secretary of State's new "role of a lifetime," as a "a foreign policy superstar," and cheered Clinton has the "highest approval ratings of any time in her career."

Mitchell's theme throughout her story was that the "anger of the primaries," between Clinton and Barack Obama was long gone and that in her role of Secretary of State she has proven to be a "key asset to Team Obama," as "Today" co-anchor Matt Lauer observed in the intro. There wasn't a hint of skepticism or negative note in the story as Mitchell threw in soundbites from John Podesta, Joe Klein and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who chimed: "She seems to be really enjoying herself, as does he."

The following is a complete transcript of the segment as it was aired on the May 4, "Today" show:

Wednesday’s post-inaugural edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show, taped at a Washington restaurant, overflowed with strange and messianic notions about Obama and how the thrill over him is unanimous. Actor Forest Whitaker summed it up for Oprah: "The light of the New Age is here." Oprah pal Gayle King passed along her agreement with a message that "Not only does he hear us. He feels us. That when I hear Barack Obama, they said, he talks to my soul." Whitaker also strangely claimed "we’re not used to seeing" a president and a First Lady who love each other, but the Obamas have signaled "it’s okay to love."

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin strangely claimed it was "extraordinary" to have a president care about history, and told the audience Obama said to her in 2007 he’s not getting the presidency to be Millard Fillmore, but to be great like Lincoln. Ali Wentworth, the wife of George Stephanopoulos, painted an incredible picture of a massive gospel choir on the subway system en route to the festivities: "I took the Metro, and everyone was singing ‘Amazing Grace’ on the Metro."

Short of going full Ninja hero and snatching the shoes in mid-air, it's hard to see how Pres. Bush could have been any cooler in his handling of the Hush Puppy Hurler. I figure W's feeling pretty good about things this morning.  But that didn't stop ABC and NBC from declaring the incident "embarrassing" for President Bush.  

For good measure, on Today, Doris Kearns Goodwin discounted Bush's blithe reaction, saying he wouldn't have been that cool a couple years ago, strangely intepreting his nonchalance as evidence of how anxious he is to leave office.  And not to leave CBS out of the mix, on the Early Show Richard Roth described the president as being "nonplussed" in reaction to the incident, when he was in fact just the opposite.

Is there anything a Republican can do that would please the folks at the New York Times short of losing an election, resigning from office, or getting caught in a career-ending scandal?

You would think the gracious, post-election comments expressed towards president-elect Obama by folks such as John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Minn.) would have been greeted with joy by liberal media members basking in the glow of their glorious victory.

Quite the contrary, as the losers in this election showed extraordinary class while demonstrating perfectly how those that come in second should behave in a civilized society, the Times' Jim Rutenberg found ways to spoil the moment in a piece slated for Sunday's front page (emphasis added):

Be with you in a sec. Gotta finish this bag of Cheetos.  Man, what a mess down here in Mom's basement. Let's see, where were we? Barnicle.  Right. Bloggers. Doesn't think much of us. On this evening's Hardball, decrying the decline of bi-partisanship, Barnicle put much of the blame on the blogosphere.

Subbing for Chris Matthews, Barnicle had as his guest historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. The jumping off point was a clip of Obama saying he could imagine naming McCain as his head of Homeland Security.  Barnicle wondered whether that was feasible in what he sees as a hyper-partisan age, and pointed the finger largely at bloggers.  Kearns Goodwin suggested that despite the difficulties, she could imagine either of the candidates reaching out to his opponent.  That prompted Barnicle to let loose on bloggers, casting them as largely a bunch of loons with too much time on their hands.

View video here.

Doesn't Mika Brzezinski have any Republicans in her Rolodex? With Joe Scarborough home in Florida awaiting the birth of a baby, Mika has been filling in as anchor, and I sense doing much of the show's booking [mention is often made of her work in that regard]. Today's guest lineup consisted of six Dems/liberals versus a sole Republican, brought in almost at show's end.

Here's the list, in order of appearance, of today's political guests coming from outside the NBC/MSNBC family [Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell also appeared as guests, and Harold Ford, Jr. and Pat Buchanan served as panelists]:

• Jonathan Capehart--WaPo editorial writer
• Ted Sorensen--former JFK speechwriter
• Doris Kearns Goodwin--historian and former LBJ aide
• Tom Daschle--former Dem senator [check out the spiffy red spectacles]
• Terry McAuliffe--Clinton campaign chairman
• Jon Meacham--Newsweek editor and contributing editor of the center-left Washington Monthly
• Mitt Romney--former GOP presidential candidate

Standard-free journalism on parade all day on NBC's Sunday

Forgotten But
Not GoneIt was another do-as-we-say, not-as-we-do day for the National Broadcast Company this past Sabbath.

Over the weekend NBC offered up their latest versions of Tim Russert's Meet the Press and the Chris Matthews Show -- the latter being political television's answer to Jerry Springer. In them we were treated to two more glittering examples of all that is wrong with the Jurassic Press.

That being the woeful lack of journalistic ethics demonstrated by those at the heights of the media mountain, and the utter shamelessness they and their colleagues exhibit upon their being outed as amoral hacks.

Whenever NBC News needs someone to put the current presidential campaign into historic context they usually go to liberal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and in recent days, on two different NBC News outlets, Goodwin has delivered with her unique historic and liberal perspective on Hillary Clinton.

On this morning's "Today" show, NBC's Andrea Mitchell went to Goodwin for a critical take on Hillary, but even when asked to find a negative about the Senator from New York, Goodwin couldn't help but fill her critique with superlatives as she determined Hillary may need to soften her "articulate" and overly "prepared," image by intentionally making a mistake. The following analysis was aired on the August 7, "Today" show: