Eli Saslow

The Washington Post rendered itself indistinguishable from the White House publicity effort on Wednesday. At top center of its front page was an article by reporter Eli Saslow -- the man who hailed Obama's "glistening pectorals" in 2008 -- on the letters President Obama reads from, and writes to, average Americans.

Under a photo of unemployed Michigan woman (and Obama voter) Jennifer Cline, the gooey headline was "Dear Mr. President...A Michigan woman wrote to Obama about her life. And he responded."

Saslow underlined the usual Obama trope about how he reads 10 letters from Americans every day, and they are considered "among his most important daily reading material, aides said." Cline found out just how wonderfully responsive the president was:

As President Obama went to Iowa City March 25 to campaign for his already signed health care “reform” bill, he was greeted by non-violent, but angry protesters.

Eli Saslow of The Washington Post profiled one of those protesters on March 26. That man, Randy Millam, did nothing violent at the rally, yet Saslow referenced “death threats” and brick throwing in his article.

Saslow, who was named an Obama “slobberer” by media critic Bernard Goldberg, followed Millam, a rural Iowan, who made the trek to Iowa City to join people protesting at the president’s speech. He brought an American flag, a homemade sign that read “Chains We Can Believe In” and a megaphone. He also wore a cap with the Second Amendment written on it.

File under: you read it here first. “The Washington Post ignored a few historical facts when it proclaimed in a front page article Wednesday that President Obama is quote, ‘a rare President who comes from the middle class,’” FNC’s Bret Baier pointed out during his Thursday “Grapevine” segment. Baier explained what escaped Post reporter Eli Saslow:

There have actually been many Presidents who hailed from the middle class. Lyndon Johnson was born in a small farmhouse and worked his way through college. Harry Truman worked for the railroad and lived in hobo camps. Richard Nixon's parents ran a grocery store. Ronald Reagan was born in a small apartment above a bank in Northern Illinois. His father was a salesman. And Bill Clinton was born to a widow in Hope, Arkansas.

Baier quipped: “So, maybe not so rare.”

Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow (of "The sun glistened off his chiseled pectorals" fame) is back on the Obama beat and on the front page Wednesday, with a story headlined "A middle-class president's paradox." Some think Obama's an elitist. Imagine that.

But do they have fact-checkers? Saslow wrote:  

His first year in office was defined in part by a paradox. He is a rare president who comes from the middle class, yet people still perceive him as disconnected from it.

Does Saslow think Clinton came from money? Reagan? Carter? Ford? Nixon? LBJ?

Hard-left "anti-war" protesters – so far to the left that they’re protesting Barack Obama – were awarded the top left of The Washington Post on Wednesday. This "event" protesting the eighth anniversary of war in Afghanistan not only topped page one, it covered about 75 percent of page A6, including four color photographs.

The headline was "For Antiwar Protesters, the Cause Isn't Lost: But Will D.C. Rally Spark Groundswell?" Post reporter Eli Saslow softly implied it wasn’t going well, that "this time the organizers believed they could revive the beleaguered anti-war movement, once such a force in U.S. policy. The next 48 hours would put their optimism on trial."

If there was a journalistic award for beating around the bush, Saslow and the Post could win it. After 25 paragraphs, Saslow finally revealed that the Post’s idea of news judgment isn’t based on numbers: the reporter counted...176 protesters.

Eli Saslow, the young Washington Post reporter best known for his giddy promotion of Obama’s "glistening pectorals," touted Obama as a "powerful new ally" against "Islamophobia" on the front of Wednesday’s Style section. The protagonist of Saslow’s story, Aida Mansoor of Hartford, Connecticut, tries to educate an apparently (and painfully) bigoted America about Islam. This is where Obama comes to the rescue:

Her attempts at cross-cultural connection can sometimes feel futile, Mansoor says, but her energy this year has been fortified by a powerful new ally: President Obama, a Christian who has promised unprecedented outreach to the Muslim world. More than 85 percent of Muslims in the United States approve of Obama's performance as president, according to a recent Gallup poll, which is his strongest endorsement from any religious group.

"What he says could go a long way toward dispelling the myths," Mansoor says. "For a long time, Muslims have been the bad guys in this country. There is so much hate and misunderstanding, and he might be able to help the world overcome some of it."

Before Obama hosts his global diversity seminar, Mansoor begins her local equivalent.

George W. Bush has taken up a quiet post-presidential life. Like his father, he has sworn off any public denunciation of his Democratic successor. The Washington Post has an odd way of showing appreciation for Bush’s humble exit: mocking him on Saturday’s front page about his return to Texas: "In Insular World, the Negative Is Left Behind."

Sound like corporate synergy with Newsweek from a few years ago? The reporter is none other than serial Obama-flatterer Eli Saslow. No one at the Post seemed to debate this story idea: did Bill Clinton start having Bob Barr and the other impeachment managers over for hot dogs and Ruffles after he left office, or was he surrounded by friends and supporters? As Saslow recounts Bush talking to neighbors about his presidential memories, there are hints of delusion:

The presidency that is remembered on Daria Place bears little resemblance to the one that most of the country continues to blame for its problems. Bush left Washington on Jan. 20 with two-thirds of Americans disapproving of his job performance -- one of the worst ratings ever for an outgoing U.S. president. In his return to private life, he has maintained tranquility by adhering to a basic philosophy:

He lives squarely in the remaining 33 percent.

Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has the first interview with author and former CBS News reporter Bernard Goldberg about his brand new book. You'll love the title:  "A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media."

The book goes on sale Monday, and Goldberg named two journalists as the most embarrassing pro-Obama partisans in the media: MSNBC's eternally thrilled Chris Matthews, and The Washington Post's "chiseled pectorals" correspondent, Eli Saslow.

Here's how Goldberg summed the book up: "This is not a book about the same old media bias. This time journalists cross a very bright line. This time they stopped being witnesses to history and they were intent on helping to shape history. They moved from media bias to media activism. In my whole life I have never seen the media get on board for one candidate the way they did this time around and -- this is very important -- they did it without even a hint of embarrassment."

He talked more about Matthews and Saslow:

Here’s a textbook definition of bias by story placement in a newspaper. On Christmas Eve, the Washington Post placed the release of the Obama’s transition team’s report on contacts with Gov. Rod Blagojevich on page A3 – headlined "Obama Report Clears Dealings with Blagojevich." Centered right underneath the headline in this four-column story was a gray two-column box with a sidebar headlined in capitals "OBAMA ATTENDS SERVICE FOR GRANDMOTHER." But on Christmas Day, this Obama story was on Page One of the Post: "As Duties Weigh Obama Down, His Faith in Fitness Only Increases."

The December 25 front-pager, written by Obama-friendly Post reporter Eli Saslow, began by showing how devoted the new president will be to the people’s business:

Being elected president forces a man to take inventory of his life, so Barack Obama has trimmed his schedule to the bare essentials. He’s not in the White House yet, but gone are the hours he once spent reading novels, watching television, and obsessing over the daily transactions of Chicago’s sports teams. He eat out only once every few weeks. He visits friends rarely, if at all.

On the front page of Thursday's Washington Post, reporter Eli Saslow took on the new anti-Obama books in a story headlined "New Books Aim to Unweave the Obama Narrative." For his part, Saslow writes as if it's his job to simply present the Obama narrative on the front page of the Post as news, like his gooey piece lamenting how Obama's radical black church was feeling "marginalized and vilified" over the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Saslow quickly reached the verdict that the book was widely disproved, and so was the Swift-boat veteran book from 2004:

Corsi's "The Obama Nation" lacks major revelations and has been dismissed by Obama's campaign as a series of lies from a serial liar. Parts of the book have also been disproved by the mainstream media. In 2004, Corsi co-wrote "Unfit for Command," in which Swift boat veterans criticized Sen. John F. Kerry's Vietnam War record. That book was also widely disproved.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has started a Web site to help discredit these tactics on Obama's behalf.

Washington Post staffer Eli Saslow introduced readers of his April 28 front-page article to a handful of newly registered North Carolina Democrats. But the hype about gas prices from the plight of one of the Democrats from Raleigh struck me to be a probable case of fuzzy math.

Meet 18-year-old Kyla White, a senior at Raleigh's Enloe High School and a part-time receptionist at a local Sports Clips hair salon who drives a 1997 Honda (emphasis mine):

She wanted to vote for a multiracial America, one in which peers wouldn't call her "too white" for being one of a handful of black students in the Enloe honors program. She wanted to vote for no more Code Reds. She wanted to vote for lower gas prices.

She wanted to vote for Obama.