Herman Cain

On Wednesday's Joy Behar Show, HLN host Behar was joined by liberal guests Bill Press and Hilary Rosen to trash the GOP presidential field as the group discussed the latest sexual accusations against Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich's rise in the polls. Press took a shot at Gingrich early on as he cracked that Cain would be the frontrunner now if he had had an affair while his wife was "dying of cancer":

Former top Clinton aide turned journalist George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday derided Herman Cain for his lapses in "honesty" and "judgment." Asked by World News anchor Diane Sawyer if Cain can rebound from accusations of infidelity, Stephanopoulos declared, "No. I think this is it." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Stephanopoulos, who, back in the '90s, worked to discredit female accusers of Bill Clinton, sniffed, "There are just too many questions about [Cain's] honesty, his judgment, his experience, his organization. Even if he stays in [the presidential race], he's not going to be a factor."

George Stephanopoulos, who as a Democratic operative in the '90s coordinated with ABC to save Bill Clinton from scandal, on Wednesday teased an exclusive with Herman Cain's accuser, openly gloating, "Will our interview spell the end of the one-time front-runner's presidential bid?" [See video below. MP3 audio here. ]

The Good Morning America co-host could barely contain himself as he opened the show: "Cain's final turn. She claims to be Herman Cain's 13-year-mistress. Now, Ginger White is speaking out live, here, exclusively, on GMA as his campaign reels from her allegations." An ABC graphic hyped, "End of Days for Cain Campaign?"

One might think from the breaking news that a woman has claimed she had a 13-year affair with presidential candidate Herman Cain that someone is being seriously exposed as a hypocrite. That would be the press. The media can’t deny they continue to display a lousy double standard. For Republican candidates, scandal news is instant. For Democrats, it’s eventual, if at all!

Ginger White’s charges sound a lot like Gennifer Flowers in 1992 saying she has a 12-year affair with Bill Clinton. So many in the press pounce on Flowers as unequivocal evidence of the media’s sense of balance. After all, they will remind us, just look how we covered that scandal!

All three morning shows on Tuesday trumpeted the latest woman to make accusations against Herman Cain, hyping this as a possible "death blow" and sign of coming "doom" for the "Sixth Sense" campaign. [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Ginger White insisted that she and Cain had engaged in a 13-year affair.  CBS, unlike NBC and ABC, made no mention of the woman's past legal problems, which include claims of stalking.

On Tuesday's "Good Morning America," co-host Robin Roberts pounced, "Campaign bombshell...Do [White's] shocking revelations spell doom for his troubled campaign?" On CBS's "Early Show," correspondent John Dickerson proclaimed, "At the worst, it's a death blow to the campaign."

The Washington Post selected Jennifer Rubin as their “Right Turn” blogger, which to many has seemed like the wrong title. It should be “Romney’s Turn.” But when the Post publishes her blogs in excerpted form in the newspaper, they’re making her even sharper in attacking the “hard right” of the Republican Party.

In Monday’s paper, Rubin lashed out at the New Hampshire Union Leader’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich by slamming the entire conservative media as “embarrassingly bad.” The Post's gleeful headline is "Conservative media blow another story." But any nuance she placed in this attack on her blog was edited out by the Posties. Check out how harsh Rubin sounds on the page:

As is to be expected whenever he's in front of a camera, Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday, accused Republicans of exploiting "racist elements" in the society.

Fortunately for viewers, the lone conservative on the panel, National Review editor Rich Lowry, pushed back against this nonsense (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Are there no limits to where leftwing media members will go to bash Republicans?

On Monday, the Huffington Post actually published a front page article with the headline, "Michele Bachmann Pours Water For Men At GOP Primary Forum In Iowa":

Oops, he supposedly did it again. Herman Cain, the GOP presidential candidate who has experience as a rocket scientist on his resume, made another allegedly "stupid" remark. Why, if you buy the press's accounts of his statements, it's hard to believe the guy can dress himself in the morning without hanging his pants over his head and putting his socks on his hands.

Here's what Cain said that has the ninnies at ThinkProgress aka ThinkRegress (whom I won't link) and the Politico all lathered up -- When Cain recounted how he wouldn't answer a reporter's non-specific question about Libya, he responded that he needed to know which aspect of President Obama's current "policy" (there is one?) he should address: "Do I agree with siding with the opposition? Do I agree with saying that Qadhafi should go? Do I agree that they now have a country where you’ve got Taliban and Al Qaeda that’s going to be part of the government? … Do I agree with not knowing the government was going to — which part was he asking me about? I was trying to get him to be specific and he wouldn’t be specific." Well, it turns out, in an update at Politico which ThinkRegress isn't posting, lest it disturb its meme of constant condescension, that a Cain spokesman identified an important Libyan official with Taliban connections lickety-split:

Washington Post staff writer Melinda Henneberger -- who has admitted to having a "longtime political crush" on the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- authored a puffy Style section front-pager today entitled "'Princess' Pelosi standing her ground."

"House leader responds to Cain, vows to do 'for child care what we did for health care,'" notes the print edition's subheader to the 19-paragraph story.

"You can disagree with the House minority leader... or spend at least $65 million running 161,203 ads against her, as Republicans did in the past election cycle. But she hasn't been slowed or trivialized," Henneberger cheered.

According to Politico, Barack Obama's "lazy" gaffe is "catching fire," but you wouldn't know that if you got your news from the major networks. The President's remark, made at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Hawaii on November 12, that "We've been a little bit lazy" in attracting "new business into America" received a grand total of just 36 seconds on the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) morning and evening news shows. In contrast, Herman Cain's long pause -- when answering a question about Libya on November 15 -- generated 11 segments on the Big Three networks in just two days. This, of course, was on top of the Big Three's frenzy over women accusing Cain of sexual harassment.

The tiny bit of coverage of Obama's "lazy" remark came during Kelly O'Donnell's report on Monday's Today show. O'Donnell initially played a soundbite of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticizing the President and then offered the official Obama campaign response.

Say, Al Sharpton: if Herman Cain lacks "intelligence" for colloquially referring to "Cuban" as a language, how about Barack Obama . . . who did precisely the same thing when it came to "Austrian"?

On his MSNBC show tonight, Sharpton mocked Cain for asking in an aside while munching on a Cuban delicacy during a campaign stop: "how do you say 'delicious' in Cuban?" Does Sharpton not know that Barack Obama, in a much more formal setting, addressing a NATO audience, said something virtually identical, wondering how a certain phrase was said "in Austrian"? Video after the jump.

Seeking to breathe new life into the political damage of unproven sexual harassment charges against him, CNN's Lisa Sylvester presented viewers with a "developing story" in the 4 p.m. hour of The Situation Room entitled "Is Cain the Anti-Women Candidate?"

Sylvester glommed onto "recent controversial comments" Cain has made, such as referring to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as "Princess Nancy," and saying that "tutti-frutti" is the ice cream flavor that would best describe Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

"Some critics see him as the anti-women candidate," Sylvester insisted of Cain, turning to "CNN contributor Donna Brazile" who "says he has a credibility problem with women." Sylvester failed to note that Brazile is a liberal Democratic strategist who contributed to President Obama's campaign this September.

On Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry asked chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd about Herman Cain's long pause when answering a question about Libya: "How much do you think this new video is expected to add to Herman Cain's current slip already in the polls?" Todd proclaimed: "I think it's close to being the disqualifying moment for his campaign."

In a prior report, correspondent Kelly O'Donnell touted how "Herman Cain is finding out that in politics, silence may not be so golden." However, after playing a clip of Mitt Romney going after Obama for calling America "lazy," O'Donnell dismissed the gaffe: "Now, the President had used the word lazy when he was talking to CEOs, saying that the U.S. should have done more to try to attract business here....But the President's re-election campaign only responded to Romney saying that when he was CEO he was more concerned about out-sourcing than helping the middle class."

National Public Radio proved a long time ago it disdains black conservatives. Remember when NPR’s Nina Totenberg launched the unproven sex-harassment charges against Clarence Thomas? NPR doesn’t even like black liberals who appear on Fox News: they canned Juan Williams. The sex-harassment charges against Herman Cain aren’t ruining him quickly as the media hoped, so on November 11, NPR viciously attacked Cain for being an enemy of blacks, and a “minstrel” to white conservatives.

Reporter Karen Grigsby Bates began with Harvard professor Randall Kennedy. “Black people know that if Herman Cain had his way, their lives would be diminished,” he announced. “And they intuit that Herman Cain's policies are against their interests.”

As you've probably heard by now, Bill Maher got quite an unfriendly welcome from Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Tuesday's The View.

The best part that largely went overlooked was when the host of HBO's Real Time predictably disparaged the intelligence of Republicans only to be quickly mocked by the female foe to his left who countered, "You’re so brilliant. Wow, I actually feel smarter sitting next to you" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

All three morning shows on Tuesday and the evening newscasts on Monday pounced on an "awkward" Herman Cain interview that questioned the Republican's "readiness to be commander in chief." Combined, the programs offered 11 segments on the subject. The same networks have yet to investigate Barack Obama's arrogant assertion that America has gotten "lazy" in regard to foreign investments.

Good Morning America's John Berman on Tuesday played a clip of Cain struggling to answer a question about Libya and how he would have handled the uprising there. Berman gloated, "You know, just when you thought you've seen the last epic video moment of this campaign. Herman Cain is taking his turn on the highlight or lowlight reels."

On Monday's The Situation Room, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked a female guest if she had a "problem" with Herman Cain's comment about a "manly" man not eating pizza loaded with vegetables.   

Cain made the remark in an interview with GQ magazine -- a men's magazine -- where he was asked specifically "What can you tell about a man by the type of pizza that he likes?" Cain then answered what pizza he thought a "manly man" would like – not what a woman should or shouldn't like. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Worrying that there are "[t]oo many lingering questions about his conduct with women," the Washington Post editorial board complained in the November 14 edition that GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain failed to satisfactorily answer reporter Maria Bartiromo's "legitimate question" at last week's CNBC debate: "Why should the American people hire a president if they feel there are character issues?"

"If the accusations are true, they depict a man who attempted to use his position of power to coerce sexual favors from subordinates or vulnerable women," the Post lectured, concluding that "[T]he public has a right to as much information as possible to weigh the competing accounts and to make a determination about Mr. Cain's fitness for office," even if, in fact, "The truth may be impossible to discern."

But in 1994, the Post's editorial board had a decidedly different take about Paula Jones's allegations of sexual misconduct by President Bill Clinton.

Will Herman Cain ever catch on that certain subjects -- such as the alleged sanctity of Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas -- are no joking matter? (video and audio clips after page break)

On Monday's Early Show, CBS's Rebecca Jarvis wondered if Newt Gingrich would "have to play a little more dirty...to take on the other GOP contenders to win the bid." Bob Schieffer replied cynically that Gingrich would "save his criticism for attacking the media, which is always the safe thing to do." Chris Wragge prompted the former Speaker to criticize Herman Cain and Rick Perry on Friday, but he didn't bite.

Jarvis brought on the Face The Nation host for his take on Republican presidential debate hosted by CBS and National Journal on Saturday. Near the end of the interview, the fill-in anchor raised how Gingrich was "gaining momentum" and that he "held true to this no real confrontation with the other candidates" during the debate. She then directed her "dirty" question to Schieffer.

A hostile New York Times Sunday Magazine profile of GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain by T.A. Frank compared his policy knowledge unfavorably to that of Britney Spears: “...to say that Herman Cain has an imperfect grasp of policy would be unfair not only to George W. Bush in 1999 but also to Britney Spears in 1999. Herman Cain seems like someone who, quite frankly, has never opened a newspaper.”

Frank has written for liberal magazines like Washington Monthly and The New Republic, and his long profile of Cain (who Frank never actually spoke with), “‘I Still Don’t Plan On Going to Any Political-Correctness School,'” was hostile from the start.

Some 24 hours before taking to the air for the debut of "Now with Alex Wagner," the MSNBC host tweeted a snarky comment about sexual harassment being a "lucrative side gig" for GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain, who "raised $9M in Oct."

Wagner's November 13 tweet -- a screen capture of which is shown below the page break -- links to a "The Page" blog post at Time.com regarding a $9 million fundraising boost for Cain since October 1.

But besides presuming Cain's guilt, Wagner's claim is factually inaccurate, ignoring the fact that Politico broke the sexual harassment allegations at the end of October, publishing the story to its website after 9 p.m. Eastern on Halloween night. Indeed, Time magazine notes that only 25 percent of the contributions "came since Politico published its story alleging the Georgian sexually harassed two women."

Remember during 2008's Democratic primaries when Saturday Night Live did a hilarious sketch mocking a CNN debate as being a disgraceful suck-up to then presidential candidate Barack Obama?

A repeat of this happened in real life Sunday evening when during a press conference from the APEC summit in Hawaii, CNN White House correspondent Dan Lothian actually asked the President if the GOP candidates were "uninformed, out of touch, or irresponsible" (video follows courtesy Right Scoop with transcript and commentary, photo courtesy AP):

[UPDATED: See video and transcript below.] Appearing on ABC's Good Morning America, Monday, to shill for his latest book, Bill Maher told George Stephanopoulos he's rooting for Mitt Romney to win the Republican nomination. "At least he eats with a knife and fork. I mean, he is all that stands between us and the rise of the apes."

Couldn't that be seen as a bit racist toward Herman Cain? We're used to Maher slamming religious folks in that way, but "apes"? Stephanopoulos didn't blink. He only said "He's [Romney's] probably odds-on, although Newt Gingrich..." [MP3 audio here.]

Treasured friend of the Media Research Center's and NewsBusters favorite Ann Coulter did an absolutely scintillating telephone interview with us on Thursday.

The primary topics of discussion were the media's coverage of the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations as well as how they've been reporting Occupy Wall Street protests around the country (video follows with transcript):