Gayle King

The Big Three networks enthusiastically paid tribute to leftist author Gore Vidal on their Wednesday morning newscasts, but not one mentioned his political ideology. NBC's Today devoted two briefs to the "sardonically witty" Vidal, who died late Tuesday. The morning show also labeled him a "cultural icon." ABC's Good Morning America played up his "outsized personality and scathing wit."

However, CBS This Morning surpassed its competitors, with anchor Charlie Rose's retrospective on the "brilliant essayist and a commentator on America."

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, liberal comedian D.L. Hughley claimed that Republicans acted as bullies when they impeached former President Bill Clinton in 1998, as well as Rep. Joe Wilson when he shouted "you lie" at President Obama in 2009. Hughley also indicated that Clinton would have handled Wilson's outburst better, as "he had, to a greater or lesser degree, been bullied and seen what kind of capacity he had." [audio available here; video below the jump]

The former CNN host must not have caught the irony of his remarks, as he has a record of assailing Republicans. In 2009, Hughley claimed the Republican National Convention "literally look[s] like Nazi Germany." Later that year, he smeared former President Ronald Reagan as "the Moses of...greedy white men."

On Friday's CBS This Morning, Gayle King sided with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg over his controversial proposed ban of soft drinks over 16 ounces in size: "I'm all for anything that's going to make us healthy." Guest Jonathan Waxman, a chef in the Big Apple, also endorsed the Bloomberg plan: "I'm kind of happy that someone's making a stand here, because I think that it's empty calories." [audio available here; video below the jump]

Guest anchor Mo Rocca raised the Bloomberg controversy near the end of the segment with Waxman, who once appeared as contestant on Bravo's Top Chef Masters program in 2010: "We have to ask you about what you think of Mayor Bloomberg's decree, his edict that...the big sugary drinks are out."

CBS made little effort to hide that it was siding with liberal dissenters inside the Catholic Church on Wednesday's CBS Evening News and Thursday's CBS This Morning. Scott Pelley hyped that there was a Vatican "crackdown on America's 57,000 nuns." Gayle King touted how "some Catholics compare it to the dark days of the Inquisition, a crackdown on a prominent organization of nuns accused of being radical feminists."

King and co-anchor Charlie Rose sympathized with the group of dissenting sisters during an interview of left-wing public radio host Sister Maureen Fiedler, and hinted that the Catholic hierarchy was "out of touch." Correspondent Wyatt Andrews also overwhelmingly slanted towards the disobedient religious and their supporters during his reports on the two programs, and played only one brief soundbite from a spokeswoman for the bishops.

Gayle King forwarded the agenda of the cultural left on Wednesday's CBS This Morning as she interviewed country music artist Chely Wright, an open homosexual. The Obama-supporting anchor targeted the country music industry for supposedly giving Wright the cold shoulder: "I'm a little disappointed and surprised by the reaction of the country music industry....they do seem, Chely, to have rejected you, ever since you came out."

King also gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up the musician's new documentary about her "coming out process." The CBS personality gushed, "Chely Wright, I have to say, your documentary took my heart and ripped it out a couple times when I was watching you."

Charlie Rose and Gayle King gushed over network forebear Walter Cronkite on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, as they interviewed left-leaning presidential historian Douglas Brinkley about his new book on the journalist. King touted Cronkite as a "legend," while Rose played up the former CBS Evening News anchor's friendship with actor George Clooney and his father. Both anchors ignored how Brinkley documented the anchor's unabashed slant to the left and sometimes unethical conduct.

CNN's Howard Kurtz relied on Brinkley's book in a May 21, 2012 article for The Daily Beast as he pointed out that Cronkite was "far more liberal than the public believed, and he let it show in unacceptable ways." Kurtz also spotlighted some of the deceased journalist's "more serious infractions." But instead of mentioning these details, King zeroed-in on an anecdote of Cronkite attending stripteases as a supposed example of how the anchor was "a very human being, too."

Obama booster Gayle King attacked conservative Dennis Prager on Thursday's CBS This Morning for his opposition to same-sex "marriage." King channeled the left by equating such opposition to opposing desegregation: "You recently wrote...that you can be against same-sex marriage and not be anti-gay...it's sort of like saying to a black person...I want you to sit at the back of the bus, but I'm not anti-black." [audio available here; video clip below the jump]

The morning show slanted in general towards the cultural left by bringing on three supporters of same-sex "marriage" or civil unions: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Chris Hughes, the publisher of The New Republic; and Max Mutchnick, co-creator of the TV show "Will and Grace," which was recently cited by Vice President Joe Biden as he announced his support of the redefinition of marriage on Sunday's Meet The Press. Hughes and Mutchnick are both open homosexuals.

CBS anchor Gayle King, an admitted friend of Michelle Obama and a donor to Mr. Obama's reelection campaign, trumpeted the President's record during an interview with Nicholas Ballasy of The Daily Caller on Saturday: "President Obama has done everything that he said he was going to do, and I think people keep forgetting that....if you ask me, I think President Obama is doing a very good job."

Ballasy, an alumnus of the MRC's CNSNews.com, caught up with King after the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. The CBS This Morning anchor listed several areas where the chief executive apparently kept his promises: "He talked about health care. He talked about Osama bin Laden. He talked about 'don't ask, don't tell.' He's done everything that he said he was doing to do." Of course, the President also promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center for terror suspects during the 2008 campaign, but broke that pledge in 2011.

It seems a metaphysical certitude that when Charlie Rose asked the perilously liberal publisher Arianna Huffington about Barack Obama's new campaign ad featuring former President Bill Clinton praising the current White House resident's decision to take out Osama bin Laden the CBS This Morning co-host didn't expect this answer.

"To turn it into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Monday, CBS This Morning gave leftist New York Times columnist Paul Krugman a platform to promote his new book and to spout his usual prescription of massive government spending. Krugman also bashed Mitt Romney: "He's going to make Herbert Hoover look good by comparison." Anchor Gayle King boosted her guest by twice citing President Obama's praise for the author as "one of the smartest economic reporters."

Krugman briefly acknowledged the "long-term budget problem," but quickly added that "now is not the time to be slashing....Now is the time to be doing public works, to be rehiring those school teachers, to get this economy moving again." He also ripped the austerity measures taken by several European countries: "You look at what's happening in Europe and...we just learned that austerity is not the answer...the big problem now is not to have a new stimulus, but simply to reverse those cuts at the state level."

On Saturday, ABC's Devin Dwyer reported how President Obama gave "a rousing speech to 600 donors in Chicago and closed it with an intimate appeal before 40 'friends' that included...Oprah Winfrey....Oprah was flanked at her table by...longtime friend and companion Gayle King [and] Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett." However, Dwyer failed to mention that King is co-anchor of CBS This Morning.

Though it isn't currently known whether the CBS on-air personality donated to the Obama reelection campaign at this event, she donated $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund during the third quarter of 2011 - before she started working at CBS - and $30,800 to the Democratic National Committee during the same time period.

[Update, 4:10 pm Tuesday: Father Grandon wrote NewsBusters to clarify his statement during the segment: "I was very clear during the interview that we convert priests have no interest in agitating for married clergy generally and that, in fact, the Catholic Church has always had married priests in her Eastern Churches, but alas, those comments were edited out.  My comment...in no way proposed that change....Yes, much was left unsaid and unexplained, but do please note that I am not on the side of the liberals!  In the end, we were happy that the editing was not as malicious as it could have been."]

On Monday's CBS This Morning, correspondent Michelle Miller highlighted one of the 77 married Catholic priests in the U.S. who converted from the Episcopal Church in recent years and boosted a favorite pet cause of left-leaning dissenting Catholics: ordaining married men. Miller trumpeted that Father Doug Grandon's example "begs the question: should all Catholic priests have the option to marry?"

Father Grandon stated that "the most we could say is that having a married priest...allows them to look and see how it would work if they wanted to change it." The morning show's religious and faith contributor, Father Edward Beck, also acknowledged that the several dozen former Episcopalian clerics are "bringing a whole liberal notion with them," but also noted one of the main reasons for Catholic clerical celibacy - that parish priests can devote all 24 hours of each day to their ministry.

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."

After 19 days of controversy, CBS Evening News on Tuesday finally got around to covering the growing dispute between the Obama administration, who wants to impose a mandate for sterilizations and birth control on religious institutions, and the Catholic Church and its allies, who see it as a violation of religious liberty. All of the Big Three networks' evening newscasts on Tuesday covered the issue.

On Wednesday morning, CBS This Morning was actually the only network morning show that devoted a segment to the "hot-button issue," as anchor Gayle King labeled it. NBC's Today show gave a mere news brief on the "uproar" over the new federal policy, while ABC's Good Morning America ignored it.

Charlie Rose boosted a jaw-dropping line from Politico's Roger Simon on Friday's CBS This Morning, which concluded that the Republican presidential debates were hurting the party's chances at defeating President Obama: "It is said that in Chicago, where they are running the Obama campaign, that they're so giddy that they want to run naked in Millennium Park" [audio available here; video below the jump].

Simon's actual sentence in his Thursday piece was more graphic:

Gayle King made it clear that she is in the tank for the Obama campaign on Thursday's CBS This Morning, specifically vouching that Michelle Obama apparently is "passionate," and that the First Lady is "looking forward to returning for another four years. They're going to work very hard to make that happen."

King continued tossing softballs at her admitted friend, at one point gushing, "Do you ever just sort of marvel at your life?" She completely omitted asking her guest about controversial aspects of her time in the White House, such as Mrs. Obama's travel expenses, or how the First Lady wore $540 designer sneakers as she fed the poor in Washington, DC in 2009.

New anchor Gayle King tossed softballs at admitted friend Michelle Obama on Wednesday's CBS This Morning. King sympathized with the First Lady over how many supposedly see her. When her guest dropped a racially-tinged charge, that "that's been an image that people have tried to paint of me since...the day Barack announced, that I'm some angry black woman," she replied, "How do you deal with that image?"

During the twelve-plus minute interview, which aired in two segments, the close associate of Oprah Winfrey also especially sympathized with Mrs. Obama over charges against her in a recent book: "I think it's frustrating for her to see so many untruths. You know, I read the book, too....and I'm thinking- well, I was there. That didn't happen, that didn't happen, that didn't happen. And she never told Carla Bruni Sarkozy that living in the White House was hell- quite the opposite is how she feels."

Was Gayle King kvetching about polls when candidate, then President, Obama and the Dems were riding high?  Doubt it.  But now that tide has turned, King pooh-poohs polls, and even asked Mika Brzezinski not to read one on the air.  But never fear, "every time he speaks I get inspired all over again" proclaimed the editor of Oprah Winfrey's O magazine.

King's hear-no-evil moment went down on today's Morning Joe, as Mika was about to read a poll showing a preference for Republicans in the generic congressional ballot.

On Thursday's "Good Morning America," for the third time in less than a week, the morning show featured a sympathetic story on Elizabeth Edwards and how she is coping with the affair of husband John Edwards, this time touting a appearance on the May 7 "Oprah Winfrey Show." In total, GMA has devoted 12 minutes and 25 seconds to the subject, but still managed to skip a key development in the case. On Sunday, word leaked out that a federal probe is investigating whether or not then-presidential candidate Edwards improperly used campaign funds to pay off a staffer, Rielle Hunter, who he was having an affair with.

Yet, there was no mention of that in the May 6 story on GMA or on Thursday's program. (Another piece aired on May 1, prior to the allegations going public.) Instead, the May 7 interview with O magazine editor Gayle King mostly focused on gossipy details. Ms. King teased, "Can I tell you, the interview this afternoon, is not going to disappoint. It is not. I can't wait for people to see it and draw their own conclusions. It will not disappoint."

O Magazine editor Gayle King appeared on Monday's "Good Morning America" to rave about the "un-jaded," "not-complicated" and "so-darned normal" Obama family. The close associate of Oprah Winfrey talked with Diane Sawyer and repeatedly enthused about a Winfrey interview (see picture at right) with Mrs. Obama, at one point cooing that the first lady "only wants to be Michelle Obama, really. And nobody can do it better than she."

It seemed as though there was no question that Ms. King could not turn into effusive, unadulterated praise of politician's wife. After being asked by Sawyer about whether the first lady is bothered by questions about fashion, King said no and remarked, "It's like, there's a song by Maino, a rapper," she began. To demonstrate, the O editor started singing, "Hi, hater. You see me." She broke off and then rhapsodized, "People are just jealous, but Michelle- there is no point she is trying to prove. She's comfortable in her own skin and she looks good."