Greta Van Susteren

As NewsBusters reported earlier, David Chaney, a now fired secret service agent involved in HookerGate, boasted on his Facebook page in 2008 as having ogled former Alaska governor Sarah Palin while guarding her.

On MSNBC's Martin Bashir Show Friday, the host scolded Chaney for "making Sarah Palin relevant" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Feeling pressure in the wake of the Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy, Bill Maher recently said he could say disgusting things about Sarah Palin and other women because he's on HBO and doesn't have sponsors.

Apparently the White House doesn't completely agree, for according to Politico, David Axelrod, one of Obama's right-hand men, has cancelled an upcoming appearance on Maher's Real Time:

Earlier today, Van Susteren announced on her blog that she will not be attending the Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner hosted in DC every year. This dinner is being headlined by liberal comedian Louis C.K. who has said a number of offensive statements about Sarah Palin and other women that are far in excess of anything ever said by Rush Limbaugh on the air. Update below: C.K. has pulled out of the dinner

"Another pig….and a media association has hired the pig, Louis C.K., to be their headliner for the big media dinner?  Really?" Van Susteren wrote. Full blog post is quoted below the break:

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich scolded Meet the Press host David Gregory for beginning their interview with a question about the Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy.

On Fox News's On the Record Monday, Karl Rove said of this exchange, "God bless Speaker Gingrich for taking David Gregory out behind the barn and giving him a whooping" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Donald Trump on Wednesday upped the ante to his April call for America to stay in Iraq and take the oil as compensation for our efforts.

Speaking with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News's "On the Record," the real estate tycoon said, "We’ve lost tremendous numbers of great, young, beautiful soldiers. Those families should be given a couple of million dollars apiece from the Iraqi oil" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) got quite a grilling from David Gregory on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

This caught the eye of real estate tycoon Donald Trump who told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren Monday, "Michele was so unfairly treated...I don't think I've seen anything like it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Greta Van Susteren on Sunday took issue with CNN's Howard Kurtz for a report he did on "Reliable Sources."

In it, Kurtz falsely accused Fox News of going "out of its way to avoid a lot of reporting on its parent company's troubles" involving the British tabloid "News of the World" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing on Fox News's On the Record Wednesday night, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich slammed NBC News for its reporting earlier that day that Callista Gingrich was a main cause of the exodus of Gingrich staffers last week: "I believe NBC owes Callista an apology....I think the program this morning was totally irresponsible and personally reprehensible..."     

Host Greta Van Susteren asked Gingrich: "What was her role in the campaign prior to the departure? What is her role now? And had there been any internal conflicts with Callista and any of the people who left?" Gingrich responded: "Look, Callista and I have a very similar relationship to Nancy and Ronnie Reagan. And people blame Nancy Reagan for things that Ronald Reagan did."

Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Saturday took issue with New York Times columnist Charles Blow's recent piece "False Choice."

In it, the perilously liberal commentator criticized Republicans for wanting to solve the nation's economic woes with a mixture of tax and spending cuts:

After comedian Bill Maher referred to Sarah Palin as a derogatory term for a vagina a little over week a ago, NewsBusters asked, "Can the dreaded C-word be far behind?"

According to the Dallas Voice, this happened on Sunday while Maher was "performing" at the Winspear Opera House (photo courtesy Reuters):

It's certainly not surprising that the New York Times would publish a hit piece on Glenn Beck, but coming hours after CNN's Howard Kurtz spent almost ten minutes bashing the Fox News commentator makes me smell a rat.

Add to this the increased pressure Beck has come up against from MSNBC personalities since Keith Olbermann surprisingly left America's most liberal television news network in January, and one has to wonder what Times author David Carr had in mind with his Monday piece "The Fading Power of Beck’s Alarms":

  Twice this week on the Ed Show, MSNBC host Ed Schultz has paid attention to FNC’s Shepard Smith for not approaching the Wisconsin labor union controversy from the right, and also added in FNC’s Greta Van Susteren on Thursday. On Wednesday, the MSNBC host began his regular "Takedown" segment:

Tonight, in the "Takedown" segment, how about Shepard Smith? I’ll tell you what, he's bucking the Fox News Republican agenda by actually telling the truth about what's happening in Wisconsin. But first, Bill O'Reilly made a big admission on his show last night while reading viewer mail about George Soros and fairness and Fox News.

After responding to a clip of Bill O’Reilly enumerating some of FNC’s hosts and calling them "fair," Schultz went after Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade for misreporting a poll on the public’s attitude toward the Wisconsin situation. After gloating over Kilmeade getting the poll results wrong, Schultz eventually admitted to MSNBC viewers that Kilmeade had, in fact, already corrected the mistake.

Despite heavy promotion for MSNBC's Monday presentation of "President of the World: The Bill Clinton Phenomenon," Chris Matthews' love letter to the 42nd president didn't get the ratings the network was likely hoping for.

In fact, the special was bested by Fox News's "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren:

Ed Schultz is not completely happy with his new 10 pm Eastern time slot. On his radio show Friday, he said to his Ed-heads: "Where is Ed Friday night? Well they’ve always run the prison junk on Friday night. You, you wouldn’t -- I’m telling you straight, that beats Fox News. Okay, that Lockup and that Jerry Behind Bars, or I don’t know, all that stuff. There is amazing amazing intrigue with prisons."

As usual, when Ed talks about ratings and Fox, he's not exactly right. The Friday night numbers from TV Newser shows that MSNBC's Lockup beat FNC's On the Record among viewers 25 to 54, by 329,000 to 239,000. But among overall viewers, Fox crushed MSNBC: Greta van Susteren drew 1.34 million, while Lockup only had 586,000 viewers.

Whether it's the departure of Keith Olbermann or the weakness of the new prime time lineup, the ratings at MSNBC are collapsing.

Take a look at how this so-called news network fared Thursday:

Chris Matthews on Thursday attacked Sarah Palin for making what appeared to be a hip double entendre concerning President Obama's oft-used State of the Union slogan "Winning the Future."

Even less surprising, the "Hardball" host also went after Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) slavery remarks - for the third night in a row (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's been less than 24 hours since Keith Olbermann's abrupt departure from MSNBC, and folks are all atwitter with predictions about where he'll end up.

TV critic Tim Goodman's suggestion that the former "Countdown" host should go to Fox News is destined to anger people on both sides of the aisle:

Politico published another Sarah Palin hit piece on Sunday evening, and much like the last one, authors Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei couldn't find one disparaging source to actually go on the record with his or her negative opinions.

Grabbing the article hot off the presses, Fox News's Greta Van Susteren and her guest Palin trashed "all these brave" faceless people as well as the so-called journalists willing to write hit pieces without any named sources (video follows with transcript and commentary, h/t Mediaite):

Greta Van Susteren on Friday absolutely skewered Gloria Allred, the attorney representing California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's former housekeeper.

In a fiery nine minute discussion on Fox's "On the Record," the host accused her guest of being "unthinkable" and "rotten" by bringing this issue to light, especially right before an election.  

"You're getting your client deported by putting a big neon sign, 'Hey, I'm here illegally, I signed documents falsely, and I've done that under penalty of perjury,'" scolded Van Susteren.  

"On the eve of an election, to raise something like this, which has the possibility of smearing unfairly, calling someone a liar and subverting the electoral process...I think all three things are rotten" (video follows with comments and highlights along with full transcript at end of post, h/t Ed Morrissey): 

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells Greta Van Sustern Americans are afraid of the radicalism of Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

Thoughts?

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Newt Gingrich says President Obama doesn't understand America (h/t Ed Morrissey).

Thoughts?

Fox News host Greta Van Susteren says the just-announced new CNN show pitting former New York governor Eliot Spitzer against faux conservative Kathleen Parker is bad news for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

Writing at her Greta Wire blog Wednesday, Van Susteren said, "[I]f CNN is to be successful, it will have to draw viewers from Keith Olbermann's viewers."  

She continued, "The total number of cable news viewers seems to be a limited number so they have to grab from Olberman [sic]."

Van Susteren elaborated as to why she doesn't think Spitzer-Parker will take viewers from "The O'Reilly Factor":

My first instinct when one of my tipsters sent me a link containing a discussion between the astonishingly vile Janeane Garofalo and Rosie O'Donnell on the latter's radio program was to delete the e-mail message and pretend I had never received it.

I had just eaten lunch, and really didn't want to upset my stomach so early in the day, especially given how gorgeous the weather is here in Northern California following so many straight weeks of rain.

But curiosity finally got the best of me, and what I discovered was worse than I could possibly imagine.

From O'Donnell calling Rush Limbaugh a junkie to Garofalo claiming that everyone on Fox News is a liar, I really wish I had gone with my first instinct and ignored this travesty (video embedded below the fold with extremely rough partial transcript as a result of the shooting pains caused by the content, h/t Story Balloon):

Ordinarily, one wouldn't take much notice of a gallon jug losing only a drop or two of water a day. But if you came back a year later and saw it half-empty, that would get your attention.

Such is the case with the steep ratings declines at CNN and MSNBC. A year ago, they already trailed Fox News badly -- so badly that Fox's audience in a given hour of prime time was sometimes greater than CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News (HLN) combined.

Revise "sometimes" to "virtually always." A comparison of Media Bistro's scoreboard for Thursday, February 4, 2010 to the same report for Thursday, February 5, 2009 shows stunning leakage from CNN and MSNBC. The jug is less than half full:

Is Glenn Beck the most watched cable news host on television today?

According to Steve Krakauer he is.

Although Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity typically have higher ratings than their Fox News colleague, Beck often garners a higher percentage of the people watching television during their respective time slots.

Krakauer explained the math Friday:

When Maine Republican Olympia Snowe backed aspects of health care reform early last fall, CBS’s Nancy Cordes cheered the "rebel Republican." Now that Snowe is sounding a tougher, more skeptical tone on the legislation, how will journalists treat the moderate Senator?

Appearing on Thursday’s edition of On the Record, host Greta Van Susteren asked Snowe if health care was dead. She bluntly replied, "I think that this particular legislation. I think its going to be very difficult to reach an agreement even within, I think, the Democratic caucus in both the House and Senate to accept this legislation one way or the other."

For those that missed it Wednesday evening, Karl Rove had a lengthy discussion with Fox News's Greta Van Susteren about a variety of issues including Sarah Palin's future.

Early on in this "On the Record" segment, Rove made a statement about the former Alaska governor that's guaranteed to anger liberals across the fruited plain:

I think she's an interesting personality who relates well to a lot of Americans. And a lot of people who have been heretofore on the fringes of politics and sitting on the sidelines were motivated during the campaign to get involved and since that time have become even more enamored of her. 

Rove also referred to a recent column by our friend Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times "where he pointed out Barack Obama's approval rating is 49 and Sarah Palin's approval rating has now risen to 43" (video embedded below the fold with transcript):