Drew Westen

This week's New York Times Sunday Review wasn't as loaded with bias as last week's edition, but did feature a political cri de couer by Times favorite Drew Westen, Emory University professor and left-winger, "America's Leftward Tilt?"

Westen really went out on a limb:

The presidential election is now a close contest, but barring an Electoral College tie, someone is going to win, someone is going to lose, and both sides will have to make sense of it all.

CNN’s Carol Costello reminisced enthusiastically about President Obama’s inauguration a year ago on Tuesday’s American Morning, highlighting how, at the time, “the hearts of millions of Americans were ready to burst- with a Woodstock kind of love.” Costello also took a shot at Republicans, stating that they “used the President’s strategy [on health care] to create fear and confusion among voters.” [audio available here]

Anchor Kiran Chetry set the gushing tone for the correspondent’s report, which aired at the bottom of the 6 am Eastern hour: “It was a year ago that love was in the air. America seemed to come together behind the nation’s first African-American president.” Costello lead the segment with footage of the enthusiastic crowd at the inauguration and her reporting inside the crowd, accented with a graphic of President Obama’s head inside a beating Valentine’s heart and Cupid’s arrow: “Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2009....The hearts of millions of Americans were ready to burst- (unidentified women singing) with a Woodstock kind of love.”

The day after the Inauguration, during a January 21, 2009 report on CNN, Costello dubbed the festivity “a gigantic love fest,” and gave an enthusiastic account about her time with the masses on the National Mall: “Suddenly, someone would just come up and hug you. It was just amazing. It was -- it was like you were standing in the middle of these strangers, and all of a sudden, you had a million friends around you. That’s what it felt like yesterday.”

Like an overmatched offensive lineman haplessly striving to stave off the onslaughts of a Pro Bowl defensive end, Ed Schultz's heroic but unsuccessful struggles with the English language continue.

A couple weeks ago, fellow NewsBuster Jack Coleman hilariously documented Schultz's penchant for calling others "stupid"—while regularly making a mash of our mother tongue.

On his MSNBC show this evening, Schultz once again fought the good linguistic fight but was in way over his head.  This time, his indomitable opponent was the word "emanate."  The rascally verb turned up in a HuffPo blog Ed was quoting. Speaking with Drew Westen, the blog's author, Schultz essayed three different pronunciations, including "e-man-uate," without ever hitting on the correct one.  Here's Ed, with my phonetic spelling of his various failed assaults on Mt. Emanate.