Katrina Vanden Heuvel

It seems as though The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel should take her own advice in saying that tragic events like the terrorist attack in Boston on April 15 should not be politicized.  Appearing on MSNBC’s Now w/ Alex Wagner on April 16, Ms. vanden Heuvel managed to contradict herself within mere seconds.

Speaking with liberal host Alex Wagner and TheGrio.com’s Joy-Ann Reid, the left-wing commentator appeared to at first make a reasoned call for patience in the aftermath of the terrorist attack, insisting that:

Greta Van Susteren on ABC's This Week Sunday took exception with a cheap shot at Fox News from Nation magazine's Katrina vanden Heuvel.

This came after vanden Heuvel said of former CIA director David Petraeus, "Don't forget that over at your network at Fox, he was your candidate for a while" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There was a truly delicious moment on ABC's This Week Sunday that should be mandatory viewing for all liberal media members.

After the perilously liberal editor of The Nation magazine, along with Obama's former domestic policy adviser, blamed all the nation's problems on Republican obstruction in Congress, the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot struck back saying, "The first two years [Obama] had open field, Democratic, vast Democratic majorities. You got what you wanted. You got a huge expansion of federal government. How is that working out?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

National Review's Reihan Salam on Sunday proved once again that liberal media members no matter what their number are no match for one well-informed conservative.

On CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Salam took on the host, Time magazine's Joe Klein, and the Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel on a far-ranging discussion about how both sides of the aisle view taxes, the Tea Party, and social change with the conservative ending up looking like the only knowledgeable person in the room (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Sure, there is really "no way, theoretically or otherwise" that yesterday's school shooting in Chardon, Ohio, could have been prevented, self-confessed Second Amendment opponent MSNBC's Alex Wagner noted in a closing commentary on her eponymous program this afternoon. She then immediately delving into a gripe that America's fruited plain is riddled with incredibly lax gun laws thanks to that most evil of evil bogeymen, the "gun lobby" [video follows page break; MP3 audio here]:

George Will on ABC's This Week Sunday had a truly epic smack down on the perilously liberal editor of the perilously liberal magazine The Nation.

After Katrina vanden Heuvel waxed rhapsodic about President Obama at next week's State of the Union address laying out "a vision for a different economy, one that is not about crony capitalism, but is about a democratic capitalism that lifts all boats," Will struck back, "His slogan will be, what, 'No More Solyndras?'" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NPR’s Talk of the Nation devoted a segment on Tuesday afternoon to the question “What Happened to the Political Left?” For answers, host Neal Conan brought on the leftist professor Michael Kazin and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine. It didn’t get hilarious until Kazin made the claim that nowhere in Flyover Country -- in Iowa or Nebraska, for example -- can you hear a left-winger on the radio.

Somehow they all forgot that NPR stations are taking our tax dollars and insuring these left-wing voices are on the radio, including Iowa Public Radio and Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) Radio.

As you've watched and read media reports concerning the debt ceiling, have you gotten the feeling the press have given Republicans a pass for standing strong in their pledge to not raise taxes?

CNN's Howard Kurtz thinks they have, and said so quite often on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Morning Joe, Major Garrett, formerly of Fox News, now with the National Journal, claimed to be "militantly non-partisan" . . . then proceeded to offer a passionate defense of President Obama's Libya policy.

As an hors d'oeuvre during the discussion of the need for the media to acknowledge their leanings, Katrina vanden Heuvel risibly refused to admit that her Nation magazine is left-wing.

View video after the jump.

MSNBC's Ed Schultz on Wednesday claimed recent polls finding three newly-elected Republican governors wouldn't win if elections were held today represents a turning point in American history.

Not surprisingly, his far-left guests from the Nation magazine quite agreed with him (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As one of the liberal media members that have expressed feeling betrayed by the President's recent tax compromise proposal, Ed Schultz on Wednesday said Barack Obama did a better job of selling the Bush tax cuts than George W. Bush ever did.

So dismayed by today's 81 to 19 Senate vote in favor of the measure was the host of MSNBC's "The Ed Show" that he asked Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, "Do you trust President Obama?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

We won't try to weave too much political-cultural significance into the spat that erupted on Morning Joe today.  Just sit back and enjoy the spectacle as Joe Scarborough struggled to get in a word edgewise with Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation.

Scarborough was seeking to cite statistics showing that by a ratio of about 40:20, more Americans identify as conservatives than as liberals.  That, he argued, makes it hard for Dems like Obama to govern from the left, and suggests that lefties like vanden Heuvel should cut the prez some slack.

Somehow, a certain Frank Sinatra song comes to mind.  Or not.  View video here.

CNN's new host Eliot Spitzer slammed the Tea Party movement on Tuesday's Parker-Spitzer: "I think that that piece of the Republican Party is vapid. It has no ideas....They're going to destroy our country." Spitzer also accused Tea Party members of forwarding a "Herbert Hoover vision of government...saying, we want to take away the very pieces of government that created the middle class."

The former New York governor of "Client Number Nine" infamy launched his attack on the nascent political movement minutes into the 8 pm Eastern, as he and his co-host, Kathleen Parker, discussed Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's new ad. After listing what he thought was positive about O'Donnell and her ad, Spitzer gave his "vapid" remark about the Tea Party and made his first mention of former President Hoover:

Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel made some truly disgusting remarks on MSNBC Monday.

Chatting with Ed Schultz about Saturday's "One Nation" rally, vanden Heuvel first offered a despicable racial comparison between the makeup of that crowd and the one at the "Restoring Honor" rally in August.

Next, the unapologetic liberal said Glenn Beck and Fox News "shamed Martin Luther King's great speech by appropriating that terrain" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

There’s something oddly funny about the cluelessness of liberal media companies when their ratings fall or their subscriptions collapse. They just refuse to admit, even consider that the business problem could be (at least in part) their own incessant liberal agitating. Instead, they seem to double down and make things even worse.

ABC’s Sunday show “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” could never beat NBC, so what did the ABC braintrust do? They promoted the Bill Clinton spin artist to an everyday anchor job on “Good Morning America.” Then they doubled down and replaced him with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who is married to another Bill Clinton spin artist, Jamie Rubin. Can it get more insular?

Here’s another case in point: Newsweek’s subscriptions collapsed a couple of years back. How could it not be (at least in part) the umpteen Obama-worshipping cover stories that caused some subscribers to cancel. Then they really abandoned the “News” half of their title and wrote cover stories like “We’re All Socialists Now” and “Is Your Baby Racist?”

Newsweek was put on the market, and the market has spoken: a $1 sale.

NBC's Matt Lauer brought on two liberals, former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford Jr. and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, publisher and editor of the leftist The Nation magazine, on Friday's Today show, to dissect the Shirley Sherrod "saga" as viewers were treated to an attack on the "right wing media which peddles fears and slanders." In a segment titled "Race In America, Lessons Learned From The Shirley Sherrod Saga" Vanden Heuvel dominated the conversation as she didn't attack just Andrew Breitbart but conservative media as a whole as she railed "Are we gonna be a media system which is vetting and holding standards or are we gonna be bullied as a country by a right wing media which peddles fears and slanders to really destroy President Obama's presidency?"

However, Vanden Heuvel is probably the last one to be preaching about standards as Lauer failed to mention that several of The Nation staffers, at JournoList, criticized journalists for doing any journalism at all about Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

We all know former Vice President Al Gore has a sycophantic media supporting him on his pet cause of global warming. But this might be a little over the top, or it could very well explain a lot.

In December 2007, when Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, The Washington Post's Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan argued the former vice president had won the Nobel Prize for "sexy." Well, apparently this is an inside-the-beltway notion that has existed for years.

On HBO's June 4 broadcast of "Real Time with Bill Maher," film producer, director, and screenwriter Judd Apatow harkened back to a 2000 cover of Rolling Stone magazine that revealed something about the former vice president during the Bush/Gore election cycle.

She'd never admit it, but if there's one person secretly hoping for a big Republican victory in 2010 and, yes, a President Palin in 2013, it could be . . . Katrina vanden Heuvel.  That's right, the editor of The Nation might well be looking at GOP success as her best shot at salvaging the sinking fortunes of her far-left magazine.

A recent article in Vanity Fair—which no one would accuse shilling for the right—is entitled: Hate Sells: Why Liberal Magazines Are Suffering Under Obama.  It details how circulation at The Nation has been dropping significantly since Pres. Obama took office.   I was prompted to research the magazine's numbers when, watching Larry O'Donnell guest-hosting Countdown this evening, a Nation commercial appeared that consisted largely of a trip down liberal nostalgia lane: Bush bashing . . .

George Will on Sunday spoke an inconvenient truth about healthcare reform the Obama-loving media have dishonestly withheld from the public since this battle began: in order to get something passed, Democrats have resorted to "serial corruption."

Visibly amused by the socialist blatherings of "This Week" guests Donna Brazile and Katrina vanden Heuvel, Will during the Roundtable segment said, "They're trying to pass a bill that is, A, huge, B, radical, C, unpopular, and, therefore, D, they have no choice but to resort to serial corruption."

ABC's lone regular conservative contributor then elaborated as Brazile and vanden Heuvel grunted and moaned in the background (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 3:20):

An absolutely beautiful thing happened on Sunday: Tucker Carlson asked Katrina vanden Heuvel to stop saying "Teabaggers."

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," the perilously liberal editor of the perilously liberal "The Nation" magazine seemed on a mission to say "Teabaggers" more in a twenty minute television segment than anybody not affiliated with the perilously liberal MSNBC.

Apparently getting offended by the term, the Daily Caller's Carlson finally said, "Katrina, will you stop with the Teabaggers thing?" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 5:40):

Naomi Wolf on Monday accused former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin of being part of a "cabal" involving George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove.

The feminist author and political consultant made this accusation on CNN's "Larry King Live."

Fortunately, former Bush adviser Mary Matalin was there to contest Wolf's absurdities:

[T]his is why people think liberals are such fringies. I mean you -- you run around saying that she's such a dope, but you were all duped by the dope. That's what you've said about George Bush, too.

In the end, the paranoia on display, as well as the unchecked hatred for Palin, was nothing less than remarkable -- but Matalin was there to bring some sanity to the discussion (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

Former CBS anchor Dan Rather will speak at a $200-a-person fundraising event for the hard-left Nation magazine in New York on September 23. The Nation’s website advertises: "Meet Dan Rather, Jane Mayer, Marcy Wheeler, and Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Help Save The Nation." The panel’s discussion topic? "What Will Become of the News?...A conversation on the future of news."

Let's guess the verdict will be it's too corporate and conservative.

Vanden Heuvel is a big fan of Dan Rather’s discredited story/fiasco on George W. Bush’s military service of 2004. When he got the job speaking weekly into a the broadcast equivalent of a Dixie cup on HDNet, she encouraged him to dig deeper into his disastrous Bush scoop. (Gawker had some wicked fun with that.) Here’s The Nation’s promotional copy from the web site for Symphony Space, the event’s location:

It worked for President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, when he took tax cuts - a conservative issue - and made it his own. Now, liberals are employing a similar tactic in promoting their health care agenda.

But Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., isn't having it. He called out Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the left wing The Nation magazine and MSNBC guest co-host, for attempting it in questioning him in a MSNBC segment on July 29. vanden Heuvel asked Ryan why he was against a so-called public health insurance option. His opposition, she reasoned, would deny consumers the choice of a public option in the marketplace.

"Rep. Ryan, that sounds like an anti-competitive vote," vanden Heuvel said. "Competition is at the heart of America and to deny Americans competition by denying them an option of a public plan seems to me un-American."

When NBC's "Today" show, on Wednesday, devoted an entire segment asking the question "How Should the GOP Battle Back?" who did they turn to, to offer strategic advice? Leftist Nation editor/publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel and self-described "moderate" radio talk show host Michael Smerconish. What? Was Meghan McCain not available? Not surprisingly neither guest suggested the Republican Party should be consistent in expressing and acting on conservative principles as Vanden Heuvel railed:

The hard-left hootenanny known as the "National Conference on Media Reform," -- usually ahem, distinguished by a long Bill Moyers rant about the media being saps for the neoconservative war machine -- has a new star this year: Dan Rather. The former CBS anchor will join Moyers, Arianna Huffington, Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Pacifica's Amy Goodman in calling for courageous, independent (read: radical left) journalism, free of corporate cowardice, from June 6 to 8 in Minneapolis.

Former UPI reporter Helen Thomas is also hitting the left-wing hustings, this very weekend, in fact. She is a keynote speaker at the Women, Action & Media (WAM!) Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sponsored by a group called the Center for New Words and the Women's Studies program at MIT. Leftist sponsors also include the sites Alternet, Feminist.com, the Feministing blog, and the magazines Bitch, Dollars and Sense, and In These Times.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper and "The Nation" editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel joined the attack on Bill Cunningham’s anti-Barack Obama comments at a rally for John McCain in Cincinnati, Ohio, comments that McCain himself repudiated. Cooper began his "Anderson Cooper 360" program on Tuesday by referring to Cunningham as a "talk show pit bull" and criticizing his use of Obama’s middle name. "Tonight: ugly words from a talk show pit bull about Barack Obama at a John McCain event, calling him a hack, using his middle name as a slander." Later, Cooper described Cunningham as a "a two-bit radio host." On Wednesday’s "Election Center" program on CNN, vanden Heuvel went even further than Cooper. "This talk radio guy is very unstable. He went from supporting McCain to Hillary and then Ralph Nader in one minute."

During a news brief at the top of the 7am hour on Friday’s CBS "Early Show," CBS Correspondent Mark Strassmann reported on a suicide bombing in Baghdad:

So these twin attacks are devastating here, and not just to the families of the killed and wounded. To many people here, this morning's a frightening reminder that Baghdad may feel safer but is still a long way from safe. Mayhem and misery are back in Baghdad after a pair of similar mid-morning attacks.

Strassmann later concluded his report by proclaiming:

The attacks are the deadliest here since last spring when thousands of U.S. troops began a security surge in Baghdad. The city grew much quieter and safer. But today, at least, the new Baghdad feels a lot like the old Baghdad. For today's attackers, this morning was perfect, a sunny Friday, the holy day here, lots of people out and about feeling confident. Apparently the attacks are back.

On Friday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith analyzed Thursday’s Democratic debate with Democratic strategist Joe Trippi and the left wing editor of "The Nation," Katrina Vanden Heuvel, who called the debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "a historic first," while referring to Republicans as the "Grim Old Party" and "a restricted white men's club." Vanden Heuvel went to say that, "You also had a sheer -- the difference in policy knowledge and competence between Obama and Clinton and the Republican field to me was staggering."

This analysis of the Democratic debate followed Thursday’s analysis of Wednesday’s Republican debate, which featured Smith and CBS Political Correspondent and former Robert Kennedy speech writer, Jeff Greenfield, with no Republican guests.

Later in the Friday segment, Vanden Heuvel used a prior "Early Show" news brief about a suicide bomb attack in Iraq to claim "Yeah, I mean, you have a surge that isn't working. Look at the piece you just did." Smith made a feeble attempt at balance by replying, "Well that's arguable." Vanden Heuvel went on to shill for Obama "You have McCain of endless war -- of endless war without accountability and you have two candidates, Obama arguably wants to end this war and end the mind set that brought us into this war."