Eugene Robinson

Jan Crawford spotlighted Karen Santorum's "frustrations with the media" on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, adding that it was "understandable. They've been mocked by some for how they grieved the loss of their infant son." Crawford also noted how Mrs. Santorum's "life...has been under a microscope. In nearly every story written about her, it's mentioned she lived with a doctor...[who] performed abortions" [audio available here; video below the jump].

The political correspondent landed the first Big Three network interview with the GOP candidate's wife. At the end of the segment, Crawford stated that "voters tell us...one thing they like about [Rick] Santorum- he mean what he says, and he's real. And in that sense, he and his wife are very much alike." Anchor Gayle King later sang the praises of Karen Santorum: "[She] needs to do more interviews...because you come across really liking her."

There he goes again, unleashing that finely honed empathy.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson set off alarm bells last month when he denigrated Rick Santorum as "very weird" for the manner in which Santorum and his wife mourned the loss of their newborn son Gabriel, who died within hours of his birth in 1996. The Santorums brought their deceased baby home and grieved with their other children in a private vigil before a funeral was held. (video after page break)

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews had some harsh criticism for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney Monday.

In a discussion about the viciousness in the GOP race, the Hardball host said, “I’ve never seen one, but it’s like a snuff movie we’ve been watching here” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Wednesday called Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson an ignoramus for criticizing his weight last year.

Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the Governor said, "As far as I’m concerned, guys like that shouldn’t have a platform to speak because they’re so ignorant” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Talk about irony. The front page of today's Washington Post featured a large photo of a Rick Santorum rally in New Hampshire, with two of MRC's "Don't Believe the Liberal Media!" signs front and center. That's nice, but perhaps the Washington Post should read its own front page more often.

Just days ago, a Post columnist personally and  viciously attacked Senator Rick Santorum's family over how they dealt with the death of their newborn son. Even though some at the Washington Post recognize their paper's dislike of  Santorum and his social-conservatism, this hasn't stopped the paper from printing outrageous and offensive content on its pages.

This is what passes for a liberal coming clean.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson doesn't regret disparaging how former senator Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of their infant son in 1996. Robinson just wishes he'd been more clever about it. (video clip after page break).

Warning: Frequent guest appearances on MSNBC can render a person predictable and disingenuous. Exhibit A: Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson.

There was Robinson schmoozing with guest host Melissa Harris-Perry on the Rachel Maddow show Friday about the looming Iowa caucuses. (video after page break)

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the media's obsession with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's weight has become totally absurd.

On Friday's "Morning Joe," during a discussion about obesity prompted by a pathetic column by the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson entitled "Christie's Hefty Burden," MSNBC's Al Sharpton joked, "So what I think we should do is put Governor Christie in jail for 90 days" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For the second time in as many days, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough took issue with a Washington Post Obama-apologist for blaming all that ails the nation on the Republican Party.

What made Friday's "Morning Joe" more delicious was the Post's Eugene Robinson was present this time, and after predictably defending the current White House resident while pointing fingers at the GOP was marvelously asked by the host, "Isn't there also though a larger context that the United States citizens may have just elected a president that was not ready to run the most complex economy in the world?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Following Wednesday’s NBC News/Politico Republican presidential debate which will last one hour and forty five minutes, MSNBC will devote more time, two hours and fifteen minutes, to a group of ten left-wing commentators – with a mere two non-liberals mixed in – to analyzing what the Republicans and conservatives said.

The far from fair and balanced line-up of those with a history of hostility toward conservatives will showcase MSNBC's prime time anchors: Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell and Al Sharpton. Plus, Eugene Robinson, Howard Fineman, Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris-Perry of the far-left The Nation and Huffington Post’s Alex Wagner.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is clearly afraid of Texas governor Rick Perry beating Barack Obama if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee.

On Monday's "Hardball," the host asked the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, "Do you think the nation's newspapers and the big news organizations are now going to spend every nickel they have sending young people out there to go investigate this guy?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Joe Scarborough on Tuesday told his "Morning Joe" co-host an inconvenient truth that she and most of her colleagues in the media just can't handle.

"A president that cannot control 45 backbenchers in the opposing Party in the House of Representatives is too weak to be President of the United States. It is that simple" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During the roundtable discussion on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson claimed the fight over the debt ceiling would be a political "winner" for President Obama, prompting host David Gregory to declare that the commander in chief would look like "the debt slayer."

Gregory then turned to chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd and wondered why debt ceiling negotiations broke down. Todd placed the blame squarely on Republicans: "Well, it broke down because Speaker Boehner couldn't get an agreement on taxes. Let's remember, he was not – he did not believe he was politically strong enough in his own caucus to remain leader of the House Republicans....Eric Cantor said no."

Eugene Robinson's column in Thursday's Washington Post should have been placed in that paper's funnies section rather than the opinion page.

His solution to our nation's deficit would be laughable if it wasn't so gosh darned scary:

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Sunday conceded “Paul Ryan has shown considerable guts” with his Medicare plan, but she declared liberal Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen is “correct that nobody on the Republican side is showing any courage on the tax front. And unless taxes are part of the mix,” NBC’s chief foreign correspondent insisted in repeating the standard media refrain, “every grown-up knows” a deficit solution cannot be achieved.

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson soon picked up the liberal agenda, regretting “Republicans will not talk about tax increases” while Democrats, supposedly, “talk about a lot of budget cuts.”

The Birther conspiracy obsessed Chris Matthews, on Friday's Hardball, suggested the disaster in Japan was a good opportunity for Barack Obama to remind people he was born in Hawaii. Well when a guest on Monday's show pointed out Obama did just that, the MSNBCer couldn't help but congratulate him as he told the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson: "Thank you for reminding us the President was raised in Hawaii...and not of the Maus Maus, which some of his more insane critics have brought up."

Matthews began his final segment by leading his guest into the answer he was looking for by asking, "What do you think of the way he's handled this thing?"

The battle in Madison, Wisconsin between new Gov. Scott Walker and the public-sector union hacks offers an amazing study in journalistic double standards. The same national media that have spent the last two years drawing devil’s horns and Klan hoods on the Tea Party protesters have switched sides with lightning speed. In the Wisconsin protesters, they find sweetness and light, “hope and change.”

From her Sunday soapbox, ABC host Christiane Amanpour snobbishly deplored the Tea Party as not conservative, but “extreme” last fall. In a special “town hall” episode of her show on the Ground Zero mosque debate, she accused an incredulous Gary Bauer of encouraging vandalism at a Tennessee mosque because somehow, Christian rhetoric is offensive. The accusation itself was offensive because it was entirely baseless.

Yet in Wisconsin, the exact opposite happened. Amanpour took the extreme, vicious, and wholly offensive signs comparing Gov. Walker to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak – and embraced them as geopolitically accurate: “People power, making history: A revolt in the Midwest, and a revolution sweeping across the Middle East.” She touted how “populist frustration is boiling over this week.”

"Let's be clear: The high-stakes standoff in Wisconsin has nothing to do with balancing the state's budget."

So began Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson's not surprisingly one-sided piece Tuesday:

Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson trashes conservative leaders in his latest column – for not taking a clear stand on the Egyptian crisis and for not supporting the populist protests. "Why don't conservatives love freedom?" he provocatively asked, concluding that if conservatives think 1.2 billion Muslims cannot be trusted to rule themselves, "that's not what I call loving freedom." His logic is deafening.

Robinson accused conservative leaders of opposing Obama's Egypt policy simply because they are thinking "heaven forbid the that the president get any credit."  He used their "ambivalence" at CPAC – which he characterized as either silence or a vague shot at the Obama administration – to condemn what he thinks is their opposition to freedom in the Middle East.

"Mitt Romney went to CPAC and didn't mention Egypt at all, which was, you'd think he'd be paying attention," Robinson noted. He questioned other conservative leaders for being "so kind of silent, and/or grumpy throughout the CPAC gala, and even beyond, in the case of some conservatives. What we're talking about is freedom, which everybody wants and loves."
 

The President that expanded the role, scope, and size of the federal government more than all that came before him or since is unquestionably Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Yet on Tuesday, moments after calling Congresswoman Michele Bachmann a "balloon head," MSNBC's Chris Matthews actually said FDR "bailed out capitalism in the '30s" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews honored Martin Luther King Jr. Day by accusing white Republicans of being afraid of black people. During a Monday night Hardball special called "Obama's America," Matthews insultingly asked former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele if, at GOP conventions, black-Americans at those events were told not to "bunch up" because "you'll scare these people" and added: "Did you fear that if you got together with some other African-Americans these white guys might get scared of you?"

Steele, who was the only Republican on the panel, seemed shocked by the question as he responded to Matthews: "No! What are you talking about?" and then proceeded to cite the successful candidacies of Tim Scott, Allen West and others in the GOP field that would suggest white Republicans weren't exactly afraid of, as Matthews put it, "black folk hanging together."

The following is the full exchange from the panel that featured Steele along with the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson and Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, as it was aired on the January 17 edition of Hardball:

(video and audio after the break)

Unfortunately for liberals, airbrushing history is so much tougher these days, what with Google and long memories and all.

Here's MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Wednesday disparaging Sarah Palin for her condemnation of liberals' kneejerk "blood libel" against conservatives in the wake of the Tucson shooting  (audio) --

MADDOW:  Also, for the record, blood libel is not a generic term. It is not a tough, vivid way of saying, don't say that mean thing about me! Blood libel is a specific historic thing. Maybe the best, less said about that the better, though.

More conveniently for Maddow and ilk, the less said the better about previous allegations of "blood libel" beyond its historical origin as a calumny against Jews.

[Video below page break]

 Appearing as a guest on Saturday’s special edition of Countdown on MSNBC, Washington Post associate editor Eugene Robinson joined host Keith Olbermann in linking the violent attack on Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords to political rhetoric, presumably by conservatives, and suggested that such public figures must be careful to avoid inciting mentally disturbed individuals.  Moments after noting comments by Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik complaining about violent rhetoric on radio and television, Olbermann brought aboard Robinson for further discussion.

While Olbermann at one pointed noted that "We don't know enough about the motives of the man they have in custody," he later posed, "I've never been convinced still that most of the people saying these things actually want to see people shot. What, though, does that matter at this point if people are being shot? How straight a line does it have to be from the one to the other?"

Robinson asserted that "intent doesn’t obviate the crime," and linked political rhetoric to violence by the mentally ill with guns:

Well, I think this is a case in which intent doesn't obviate the crime. No, I think most of these people who say these violent sounding things about how evil your government is and what it's doing to you and who quote Thomas Jefferson about democracy needing to be watered by the blood of patriots and that sort of thing, I don't think they actually intend people to take this seriously, but it can and there are people who are unbalanced who have access to guns who do take it seriously, and we should know that by now.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and Washington Post associate editor Eugene Robinson said on national television Thursday that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has a history of saying "crazy-ass things."

After doing so on MSNBC's "Countdown," Robinson was offered $100 by Keith Olbermann if he would title his next article using exactly those words (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If you were Haley Barbour's political consultant, and he had indicated his intention to make his reported remarks about the White Citizens Council, would you have counseled him to reconsider?  I sure would have.

That said, there was a hypocritical double-standard on display by the Morning Joe folks who turned Haley slowly over a spit today.  Hat tip NB reader Ray R.

Eugene Robinson took the lead in belting Barbour for sending his children to private schools in Mississippi rather than to local public schools attended by black children.  Joe Scarborough chimed in with his Mississippi-childhood recollections of such post-integration private academies springing up.  Mike Barnicle did his bit, contributing the tale of whites in South Boston pulling their kids out of integrated public schools in favor of parochial and private ones.

One thing was missing from the conversational mix, however: any reference to the tradition of Dems in DC--from Bill and Hillary, to the Gores, to of course the Obamas--sending their kids [or in the case of the Bidens, grandkids] to tony private schools like Sidwell Friends rather than to the heavily African-American public DC schools.

Chris Matthews and four liberal male guests had a nice laugh Friday over the announcement that Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has been named to serve on the House Intelligence committee.

Viewers are advised to prepare themselves for a truly disgraceful level of sexism displayed on MSNBC's "Hardball" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Barack Obama's tax compromise victory has got tingles running back up Chris Matthews' leg.

After showing a clip of the President at Friday's bill signing, the "Hardball" host raved to guests Eugene Robinson and Howard Fineman about the Commander-in-Chief's "cute smile we all love...That wonderful, boyish smile" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Columbia University announced Thursday that Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson will join the Pulitzer Board, which gives out the renowned journalism awards each year.

Robinson, who won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the 2008 presidential race, will strengthen the leftist complexion of the board, which already has a meager presence of conservative minds. In fact, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot seems to be the only "openly" conservative member of the board.

The Baltimore Sun's media critic is still fuming about MSNBC's pathetic coverage on election night.

In his piece published Saturday, David Zurawik called the cable news network a "liberal prep school" while claiming the behavior of folks like Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Keith Olbermann was "so egregious" that the "entire realm of TV journalism was diminished in the public mind":