Here is the latest episode of NewsBusters’ Notables Quotables show, featuring the liberal media’s most outrageous sound bites.

In this week’s episode we have Chris Matthews wondering what’s wrong with a quick phone call to terrorists, Matt Lauer worried about America getting a big head, and Actor Scott Wolf revealing the inspiration behind his role as a sell-out journalist in a new TV series.

Enjoy the show and to see current and past episodes in a larger format, visit the ‘Notable Quotables Show’ channel on the Media Research Center’s video sharing website, Eyeblast.

 

 

On Monday's The O'Reilly Factor, during the "Weekdays with Bernie" segment, host Bill O'Reilly and Fox News Analyst Bernard Goldberg discussed media coverage of the Fort Hood massacre and the political correctness of some who were hesitant about discussing the role Nidal Hasan's extreme Muslim beliefs played in his decision to attack fellow troops. Whilte ABC News was given credit for covering this angle early, a quote by Newsweek's Evan Thomas expressing fear that Hasan's religious beliefs "will get the right wing going" was also discussed.

O'Reilly began the segment by playing the offending clip of Newsweek's Thomas:

I cringe that he's a Muslim. I mean, because it just inflames all the fears. I think he's probably just a nut case but, with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going. And it just, these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse.

Goldberg reacted:

Horror spread quickly across America as the story unfolded: an Army psychiatrist went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, killing 13 and wounding 30. But as more information emerged, clearly pointing to an act of terrorism, many in the "news" media simply chose not to report news.

By late afternoon, it emerged that the shooter’s name was Major Nidal Malik Hasan. But that night, CBS and NBC completely avoided mentioning that the shooter was a Muslim. ABC’s Charles Gibson suggested he was a "Muslim convert," which wasn’t right, but at least he wasn’t playing hide-and-seek with the facts. ABC reporter Martha Raddatz spoke for the media in choosing this tidbit: "As for the suspect, Nidal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’"

The coverage grew more factual the next morning, with all the networks noting Hasan was Muslim, and that he shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) as he opened fire. ABC’s Diane Sawyer, though, repeated Raddatz: "We heard Martha Raddatz say last night that the wife of a soldier said ‘I wish his name had been Smith,’ so no one would have a reflexive question about that."

Newsweek's Evan Thomas regretted the Fort Hood mass murderer, Major Nidal Hasan, is a Muslim because of how that reality will be abused by conservatives. On this weekend's Inside Washington, Thomas, now Editor at Large with Newsweek after stints as Assistant Managing Editor and Washington bureau chief, rued:

I cringe that he's a Muslim. I mean, because it inflames all the fears. I think he's probably just a nut case. But with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going and it just -- I mean these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse.

NPR's Nina Totenberg soon chimed in with agreement: “It really is tragic that he was a Muslim.”

Audio: MP3 clip

Last week’s Newsweek starkly illustrated on its cover again just how much it’s rooting for the perpetual Obama-Biden campaign. Next to a picture of firm, smiling Vice President Biden were the words "WHY JOE IS NO JOKE: From Afghanistan to Health Care, a Vice President to be Reckoned With." It looked so much like a campaign sign, readers might have been unsure whether to read it or nail to a piece of wood and post it in the front yard.

Inside were several pictures of Joe Cool – Biden in sunglasses rocking the tarmac at the Atlantic City airport. The headline of the article was "An Inconvenient Truth Teller: From Health-Care Reform to Afghanistan, Joe Biden Has Bucked Obama – As Only a Good Veep Can."

This is not the way Newsweek saw Dick Cheney, obviously. In February of 2006, they made a cover story out of the Cheney hunting accident.

The Biden cover story by Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas insists that Biden is getting over his gaffe-prone ways, not that they were "damaging" – what with the media trying hard to ignore them, unlike the Dan Quayles of the world. Biden was never a buffoon:

Two days after her magazine published Evan Thomas's "Case for Killing Granny" -- see related NewsBusters post here -- Newsweek staffer Jesse Ellison lamented that her "grandmother lived a full life and sought a quiet death" but "America's health-care system had a different idea of what was best."

In a September 14 Newsweek Web exclusive, Ellison laid out a story of zealous coverage aimed at prolonging her late grandmother's life, complaining that her grandmother's wish to die peacefully was disregarded as she was "treated like a problem to be solved, not as an elderly woman who had had enough."

Although Ellis's grandmother "had great insurance" plus "enough savings to pay for anything that Medicare and her insurance company would not," the writer found cause for complaint in the health care system having a bias to save and extend life, as well as the high costs that that approach incurred:

A prudent gerontologist may opt to remove the September 21 edition of Newsweek from his waiting room.

Newsweek.com today has a cheeky frontpage headline in "The Case for Killing Granny," with a subheader promising an explanation as to "Why curbing excessive end-of-life care is good for America."

For good measure the magazine also promises readers to explain "Why We Should Insure Illegals" and how "Health Reform Could Combat Crime" in related articles linked on the front page. More illegal immigration, fewer criminals and old people. What a deal!

The "Killing Granny" link takes readers to a September 21 print edition article by Evan Thomas which is more measured in tone than the sensational headline suggests, but one that nonetheless laments how Medicare, presently structured, has a built-in bias towards heavy per-patient spending with too little government bureaucrat oversight (emphasis mine):

"Edward Kennedy, perhaps more than any United States senator in the past half century, cared about the poor and dispossessed. Though he was relentlessly mocked by the right as a tax-and-spend liberal, he kept the faith." 

Thus wrote Newsweek's Evan Thomas of the late Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy today in an obituary that acknowledged and in places excused the late senator's sins even as it remembered him as a saint of secular liberalism.:

Kennedy became known on Capitol Hill for his antics. In a Washington Monthly essay titled "Kennedy's Woman Problem, Women's Kennedy Problem," author Suzannah Lessard accused Kennedy of "a severe case of arrested development, a kind of narcissistic intemperance, a huge babyish ego that must be constantly fed." More like it, a huge sadness that needed to be blotted out by sex and alcohol.

Thomas did acknowledge Kennedy's actions in the Chappaquiddick incident and how his delay in alerting police may have cost Mary Jo Kopechne her life, but then ridiculously added:

In a new Newsweek feature called "The Ripple Effect," Evan Thomas confessed in the June 22 issue to being nailed by MRC and other media critics for comparing Obama to God on MSNBC – or so it seemed, he wrote:

I don't just put my foot in my mouth on television -- I do it at dinner parties, too -- but at least, in that case, it doesn't show up on YouTube. Appearing on Hardball With Chris Matthews on June 5, I compared President Obama with God.

Or at least that's how it seemed to some bloggers and talk-show hosts, who made me a poster child for the argument that the liberal press is hopelessly in love with Obama.

FNC's Bret Baier on Wednesday night highlighted how the former top editor at the hardly conservative San Francisco Chronicle wrote a blog entry (Tuesday morning NB post by Noel Sheppard), “Love or Lust, Obama and the Fawning Press Need to Get a Room,” in which Phil Bronstein suggested “the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we're the girl” and asked: “Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?”

Using that as a segue, Baier picked up on a quote first reported by NewsBusters as he related how Newsweek's Evan Thomas “provided yet another example of the mainstream media's presidential crush” when Thomas oozed: “In a way Obama's standing above the country, above, above the world. He's sort of God.”

Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas appeared on this weekend's edition of Inside Washington and lauded President Obama as a "brave," "great teacher" who "stands above everybody." These comments were only slightly less hyperbolic than a gushing assertion on Friday's Hardball. On that program, the journalist cooed, "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."

Moderator Gordon Peterson prompted Thomas to expound on Obama after asking him and other panelists for their critiques of Obama's speech last week in Cairo, Egypt. Thomas extolled, "We're understanding what Obama is. He is the great teacher. He is this guy that stands above everybody." He did allow that "there's some condescension" in this attitude. However, the Newsweek editor continued, "But, he stands above everybody and says, 'Now, listen. You people have to stop blaming each other unreasonably. You have to get along here and I am going to show you the way.'"

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas has created a precious contrast in the media's approach to presidents Bush and Obama.

"Well, our job is to bash the president, that's what we do." -- Evan Thomas responding to a question on whether the media's unfair to Bush on the TV talk show Inside Washington, February 2, 2007.

"I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God." – Evan Thomas on Hardball, June 5, 2009.

The good folks at National Review are absolutely skewering Newsweek's disgraceful Obama fixation with a delicious parody of the magazine including "New, improved, and longer articles extolling the First Family!" (h/t Hot Air, larger picture below the fold):

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas brought adulation over President Obama’s Cairo speech to a whole new level on Friday, declaring on MSNBC: "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."

Thomas, appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews, was reacting to a preceding monologue in which Matthews praised Obama’s speech: "I think the President's speech yesterday was the reason we Americans elected him. It was grand. It was positive. Hopeful...But what I liked about the President's speech in Cairo was that it showed a complete humility...The question now is whether the President we elected and spoke for us so grandly yesterday can carry out the great vision he gave us and to the world."

Matthews discussed Obama’s upcoming speech marking the 65^th anniversary of D-Day and compared it to that of Ronald Reagan. He then turned to Thomas and asked: "Reagan and World War II and the sense of us as the good guys in the world, how are we doing?" Thomas replied: "Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial."

Asked “why does it matter” what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “knew or did not know” about the “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects, Newsweek's Evan Thomas and NPR's Nina Totenberg failed to address Pelosi's hypocrisy in now condemning others for what she knew about years go, as both dismissed the relevance of her evolving memory.

On Friday's Inside Washington, Thomas insisted “it doesn't” matter, maintaining “this is all noise, this is all noise.” Totenberg declared “I don't think it matters, except that it is a diversion that is encouraged by former Bush people who don't want to have this conversation.” On the facts, Totenberg came down on Pelosi's side as she charged the CIA “did mislead” the Speaker: “I think it's entirely plausible -- and maybe even probable -- that the CIA told the technical truth in a way that did mislead Nancy Pelosi.”

Thomas, Editor at Large with Newsweek after stints as Assistant Managing Editor and Washington bureau chief, contended “Rush Limbaugh is good” for the Republican Party since he'll “take it down as low as it can go” so Republicans “make complete fools of themselves” and “then maybe,” Thomas yearned, “a moderate can come in and rescue them.”

Commenting on Senator Arlen Specter's switch from the Republican to Democratic Party, Newsweek's Evan Thomas declared Republicans are now “exactly like the Labor Party in England in the 1970s. They're letting their extremists take them straight down.” As if that would upset Thomas and the Washington press corps -- whose very characterization of conservatives as “extremists” is only helping uninformed Americans to see Republicans and conservatives as outside the mainstream.

The assessment from Thomas about how conservatives are “extremists” came on Inside Washington, a weekly show produced and aired over the weekend by Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, but first broadcast Friday night on the local PBS station, Thomas, Editor at Large with Newsweek after stints as Assistant Managing Editor and Washington bureau chief, proposed:

I don't think the Republicans would appreciate the comparison, but they're exactly like the Labor Party in England in the 1970s. They're letting their extremists take them straight down. The same thing as going to happen -- they had to disappear for a while and when they reinvented themselves they did it with moderates, they did it with  Tony Blair.

NPR's Nina Totenberg on Friday night was unsure as to whether the tea parties have “any legs are not” since “at almost any given time any cockamamie proposition in America will have at least 25 percent of those polled supporting it.” On Inside Washington she called the anti-tax and anti-spending rallies “a good stunt,” before declaring Americans “pay relatively small taxes” and then lecturing those unappreciative protesters about how taxes provide, as if they want taxes totally eliminated, “a civilized kind of social compact where you don't have massive civil eruptions. That is what taxes are for.”

To which, Newsweek's Evan Thomas chimed in: “I'm all for paying more taxes.”

NPR's Nina Totenberg revealed Friday, not surprisingly, that she was enchanted by President Barack Obama's address earlier in the week to a joint session of Congress. “It made me feel pretty good. I thought it was a great speech,” she enthused before relaying a contrast with former President George W. Bush: “A friend of mine said, 'oh my God, we have a President again!'” Totenberg added that “in some ways, that's not fair to Bush,” but she insisted: “That's the way you felt. You felt this was a guy who was totally in charge.”

Totenberg quoted her friend immediately after Newsweek's Evan Thomas trumpeted on Inside Washington: “He looked like he belonged there unlike President Bush who sometimes seemed like 'what is this guy doing there?' even if you like him, 'he really doesn't belong.' He showed natural leadership and that alone made a big difference.”

Three weeks ago, Time magazine published a gooey profile of "brash and brilliant" Larry Summers, the chief economic guru to President Obama. Newsweek followed suit in this week’s edition, calling Summer "lucid" and "dazzling," a man who stands out on "a team of Harvard and Yale types whose SAT scores have not been equaled since the Kennedy administration."

Michael Hirsh and Evan Thomas probably didn’t undertake an investigative survey of the SAT scores of the cabinet officers of Reagan or Bush or Nixon or even Bill Clinton. They’re guessing, but are trying hard to spin readers into thinking a wave of intellect has swept over Washington. But are Summers and Company "lucid" because they’re liberal, or are they liberal because they’re "lucid"? Here’s the passage where the praise flows like syrup:

As the news magazines decline and fall into snarky opinion journals, Newsweek this week has a cover titled "We Are All Socialists Now." They’re recalling Richard Nixon saying "We are all Keynesians now" in 1971. But conservatives uniformly would reply on a rebuttal cover, if there were one: "Speak for Yourself."

The "cover story," if you can call it that, is a brief editorial by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas, and it began by attacking Sean Hannity and Mike Pence for being in denial about Socialist America and threatening to foist on America an "fractious and unedifying debate" that refuses the terms of surrender: