New York Times columnist Gail Collins appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Thursday, to worry about "scary," fringe conservatives who will be appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington D.C. Picking out certain panels at the three day event, she fretted, "But, suddenly, we're back to nullification. All this sort of succession stuff. That part of it is very scary." [Audio available here.]

Collins portrayed those in the conservative establishment as simply trying to keep pace. The columnist dismissed, "The rest of it, you almost sort of a feeling [sic] that the movement has passed these people by, that these are sort of the '90s conservatives, who you know, are not quite- trying to race to catch up."

Scarborough derided the selection of conservative host Glenn Beck to be the keynote speaker for the 2010 CPAC. He allowed that there could be some "good people there," but added, "...They have Glenn Beck, a guy that called the President a racist who hated all white people, as their keynote speaker. And you sit there going, 'Really, is that who you want to project as the most important person of the conservative movement?'"

Five days after blaming the national guppy shortage for Democratic candidate Martha Coakley's struggles, the New York Times's editorial page editor-gone-columnist Gail Collins turned from denial to desperation in her first column since Republican Scott Brown's miraculous win in the special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat: "Democratic Silver Linings."

Poor Democrats, cheer up. There's always a bright side.

On the one hand, the Republicans have a new superstar, Scott Brown, the senator-elect from Massachusetts. On the other, he's already beginning to come off as a little strange.

During Tuesday night's victory speech, Brown veered off-script and offered up his college-student daughters to the crowd. ("Yes, they're both available!") As his girls laughed with embarrassment and his wife yelled at him to stop, Brown just dug deeper. ("Arianna's definitely not available, but Ayla is.")

It's like the butterfly effect, but with fish! A guppy shortage in Florida is having an effect on a special Senate race in Massachusetts, according to New York Times columnist Gail Collins, still determined to ignore the nationwide anti-Democratic surge.

Back in November, Collins reacted with dismissive sarcasm to the Democrats losing governors' seats in Virginia and New Jersey:

Although there is no way to deny that New Jersey and Virginia were terrible, horrible, disastrous, cataclysmic blows to Obama's prestige....The defeat of Gov. Jon Corzine made it clear that the young and minority voters who turned out for Obama will not necessarily show up at the polls in order to re-elect an uncharismatic former Wall Street big shot who failed to deliver on his most important campaign promises while serving as the public face of a state party that specializes in getting indicted.

What’s on the mind of media types this Christmas season? Obama’s “great” speeches and the “atrocity” of Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Lieberman, says New York Times columnist David Brooks, an Obama supporter and Palin-basher whose neo-liberal outlook nevertheless places him at the right end of the paper's cavalcade of liberal opinion writers.

In his weekly Wednesday “Opinionator” exchange with fellow columnist Gail Collins at nytimes.com, Brooks provided a peek into a typical media Christmas, that is, “holiday” party:

He began with self-mockery:

Brooks: Tis the season for holiday parties, which means I’m spending a lot of time with the Beltway establishment. Let me tell you, you people who live outside the beltway are completely out of touch. We in the D.C. establishment are a wonderful group of really smart and intelligent people and if you guys don’t let us micromanage your affairs, you don’t deserve the happiness and wealth we could provide.

Collins responded with some sarcasm of her own from a liberal viewpoint:

The New York Times’s November 5 “Political Points” podcast recited a full 30-second excerpt from Gail Collins’s Wednesday column blaming not Obama, but bad Democratic candidates, for the party’s huge losses in governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey.

The paper’s chief political reporter Adam Nagourney agreed that New Jersey and Virginia weren’t necessarily predictive. Four minutes in, Adam Nagourney emulated Collins by also throwing the two losing Democrats under the bus, while repeatedly warning people not to overstate the results:

Remember that we’re talking about here are two states, not a lot of voters, one congressional district in upstate New York. Micro-wise, one thing we do want to pay attention to here is, and again, don’t overstate this -- independent voters who backed President Obama in Virginia and New Jersey last time went to the Republican gubernatorial candidates this time. Now, does that mean that they didn’t, that they’ll vote for, you know, whoever votes against Obama in 2012, or for Democrats, or Republicans congressional, for Republicans next year? No. I don’t think so.

The New York Times offered a post-election column to match Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post in its aggressive insistence that the election results meant absolutely nothing, especially to Barack Obama. In a Wednesday article -- mockingly titled "Hark! The Voters Speak!" -- Gail Collins said Creigh Deeds was a rural buffoon, and Jon Corzine was an urban nightmare:

Although there is no way to deny that New Jersey and Virginia were terrible, horrible, disastrous, cataclysmic blows to Obama’s prestige. No wonder the White House said he was not watching the results come in. How could the man have gotten any sleep after he realized that his lukewarm support of an inept candidate whose most notable claim to fame was experience in hog castration was not enough to ensure a Democratic victory in Virginia?

Liberal New York Times columnist Gail Collins appeared on Monday’s Good Morning America to complain that one of the biggest unresolved issues for women is a lack of government-provided pre and after-school care for children. She complained, "And we still have not come near dealing with the question of who takes care of the kids if both parents are out working."

Highlighting the favorite bogeyman of the left, Richard Nixon, the New York Times columnist whined that in 1971, "Congress passed a bipartisan bill giving quality early childhood education and after-school programs for any family that wanted them in the entire country." She lamented that the legislation was vetoed by President Nixon.

Collins, who was promoting When Everything Changed, her new book about the role of women since 1960, blurted, "I can forgive him [Nixon] for Watergate before that [the veto]." Co-host Roberts prompted the columnist, whom she never identified as a liberal, to tout the benefits of the sexual revolution: "And you also said, which I never thought about until I read your book, the sexual revolution was really helped women and explain why that was."

Bush's fault!

Liberals love to blame former president George W. Bush for such a wide variety of perceived woes that it has often turned into a joke.  Don't like the current deficit? Bush's fault! Polar ice cap might melt in a century? Bush's fault! A baseball playoff game is called off because it was snowed out? Bush's fault!

The above are all jokes but to Gail Collins of the New York Times it is no joke. Bush's fault! And in her latest blame Bush rant, Collins blames Bush for the unlikelihood of the current Cap and Trade bill  being passed by the Senate. Bush's fault! But in this case is that a bad thing if a high tax bill doesn't pass?

What kicked off Collins' latest rant was saying farewell for awhile to David Brooks in their periodic The Conversation column in which they discuss matters back and forth. Collins will be gone for a few weeks to go on a book tour but before she leaves she takes one final blast at her obsession:

Speaking of jerks, I’m afraid I’ve got to depart on a negative note because I need to register a long wail of pain and rage. It’s about George W. Bush.

Though O.J. Simpson was sentenced for robbery and related crimes yesterday, thirteen years ago he walked on a double-murder charge. That might be an isolated case, but Gail Collins apparently believes there are tens of millions of murderers roaming free in America.  We call them by a different name: hunters.

Collins made her inane hunting = murder analogy in her column today in the course of taking one more gratuitous swipe at Sarah Palin.  The gist of The Senate, Snowe and Dinkytown is that in a Senate where Democrats will fall one or two seats short of the magic 60, the few moderate Senate Republicans will play a crucial role.  Collins focuses in particular on Olympia Snowe of Maine.  And while wondering why McCain didn't choose her as his running mate, the columnist gets off her smear on Palin, and hunters in general [emphasis added]:

Got to be good looking
'cause he's so hard to see
Come together right now
Over me—The Beatles, "Come Together" (1969) [YouTube]

Bob Herbert just doesn't get it.  As Noel Sheppard has noted, in his NYT column today Herbert accuses Barack Obama of "lurching right when it suits him, and . . . zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash." The NY Times columnist goes on to condemn the candidate for "pandering to evangelicals;"  agreeing with Justices Scalia and Thomas on a "barbaric" interpretation of the 8th Amendment; and playing a "dangerous game" with his "shifts and panders."

No, no, no, Bob!  That's not what's happening at all.  Obama isn't flip-flopping.  He's simply fulfilling his pledge to bring us together. What makes Herbert's obtuseness all the more infuriating is that enlightenment was just a stroll down the corridor away, to the office of Gail Collins.   Herbert's fellow Times columnist explained what is really going on during her appearance today on Morning Joe.

View video here.

It's one of the great MSM rituals of presidential politics: the labeling of leading Dems as "moderates" or "centrists." Gail Collins honors the tradition in her New York Times column of today. Now it's true that Collins ostensibly speaks more of Obama's tone than of his politics. But, ultimately, as you'll see, she melds the two to portray a thoroughly moderate man. We'll do a reality check, but first let's look at the excerpt from Collins's column [emphasis added]:

Barack Obama turns out to have a positive genius for making moderation sound exciting and is perhaps the only politician in American history who can get a crowd all worked up with a call to politeness. “We can disagree without being disagreeable,” he said in his New Hampshire farewell, drawing a roar of approval.

In a country where the spoils go to the loudest shrieker, this is absolutely revolutionary and very important. Most Americans want a moderate government, but nobody has ever before been able to make moderate seem interesting, let alone sexy. (Remember Joseph Lieberman.)

Gail Collins might not be as crude as Billy Shaheen. But in her own Grey Lady way, the NY Times columnist has recycled the insinuation that transformed Shaheen into an ex-Hillary co-chair.

Let's first have a look at Shaheen's statement, as reported by the Washington Post:

"The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight ... and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use." Shaheen said Obama's candor on the subject would "open the door" to further questions. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" Shaheen said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."

Compare and contrast with this paragraph from the end of Collins's column of today, "Barack’s Blast From the Past" [emphasis added]:

OK, this is getting downright weird. Not one, not two but now three Gail Collins columns within three weeks dealing in one way or another with Rudy Giuliani's sentimental attachments. On November 8th came the suggestively-headlined "Pat Loves Rudy," about the Robertson endorsement. As observed here, that column contained Collins lurid allusion to Rudy "busy committing adultery." Just two days later, as noted here, Collins captioned her column about the Kerik indictment "Rudy and Bernie: B.F.F.’s" ["Best Friends Forever," in the lingo of groovy gals like Gail].

Just two days ago, Gail Collins christened her column about the Pat Robertson endorsement "Pat Loves Rudy."

As I observed then, "a conservative columnist writing the equivalent might well be condemned for making an unsubtle appeal to homophobia. But Collins will surely get a pass in PC quarters, since it's a well-established fact that liberals are incapable of prejudice."

Then comes today's column -- and I'll be darned if Collins hasn't done it again.

Over the course of his political career, Bill Clinton was literally and figuratively embraced by countless pastors, most of whom presumably went to their pulpits on Sunday to preach traditional values, including marital fidelity. If memory serves, neither Gail Collins nor other liberal pundits noted any irony in people of the cloth endorsing the spectacularly straying Clinton.

But let a preacher praise a Republican with a personal history, and Gail Collins thunders like Billy Sunday with a bad migraine. Here's the opening paragraph of her "Pat Loves Rudy" in today's New York Times [emphasis added]:

Oh sure, Hugo Chavez might have his quirks. But at least he's not George Bush. That's Gail Collins's operative thesis in The Great Clock Plot [subscription required] in this morning's New York Times.

Collins riffs off an announcement Chavez made this week of his plan to move Venezuela's clocks ahead by half an hour. Writes Collins:

Reaction was swift, with many people recalling the scene in Woody Allen’s “Bananas” when a revolutionary hero becomes president of a Latin American country and announces that from now on, “underwear will be worn on the outside.”

That democracy-repressing strongman really cracks Gail up. But that's when Collins gets off the first of her barbs against President Bush:

Last week, I described Gail Collins' condescension to what she sees as the bumpkins of Middle America. The New York Times columnist is back at it again this morning, suggesting that illegal immigration is not so much a problem as an issue exploited by Republican candidates to stir the passions of gullible Republican rubes. And yes, to Collins' ear, "sanctuary city" has a nice ring.

The jumping-off point for Collins' [p.p.v.] Of Mitt, Monks, and Mowers is the criticism Mitt Romney has levelled at Rudy Giuliani for the latter's embrace of New York's status as a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants when he was Big Apple mayor. Note that Rudy has since toughened his stance, vowing to end illegal immigration.

In Collins' eyes, telling police and others to ignore the fact that people they encounter in the course of their duties are in the country illegally is "a perfectly rational position."

Actual op-ed column, or parody of MSM mockery of Middle America? You be the judge of today's p.p.v. opus by Gail Collins, New York Times columnist turned Editorial Page Editor now returned to her column-writing roots. We'll begin with the title, Republicans in the Straw, and proceed to these excerpts:

• Today 40,000 Republicans are expected to make a pilgrimage to a large tent in Ames, Iowa, where they will eat an enormous amount of free food and vote for a presidential candidate. Mitt Romney is going to serve barbecue, and one of his sons has just visited all 99 counties. I don’t think we need say more.
• Romney moves around with so many photogenic sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren that they look like one of those singing families that were so popular in the ’70s.
• The Iowa State Fair is not actually about politics so much as about finding new things to deep-fry.
  

It's unanimous! Times Watch guest judges Stephen Spruiell, who runs National Review Online's Media Blog, and Times critic William McGowan, author of the upcoming book Gray Lady Down, both picked as his worst quote of the year one from New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (The quote also earned Quote of the Year honors from Times Watch's parent organization, the Media Research Center.) Spruiell says it was the "sheer arrogance" of Sulzberger's speech that put the paper's publisher over the top.

For those who already suspect the New York Times has a liberal bias, the Halloween night Times Talk at the New York Historical Society on Manhattan's Upper West Side didn't provide too many scares.

"Writing About Politics in an Age of Contention" featured Editorial Page Editor Gail Collins, Managing Editor Jill Abramson, and Assistant Managing Editor Richard Berke, along with non-Times people Al Hunt, formerly the executive editor for the Wall Street Journal, and Dick Polman, reporter-blogger for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The usual liberal conventional wisdom prevailed, with little disagreement about anything (everyone seemed convinced Democrats would win the House, but warned that Democrats had been sure of victory before).

On Friday night, MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough featured opposite takes on a Friday Washington Post editorial proclaiming that the recent revelation that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the original leaker of Valerie Plame's identity discredits Joe Wilson's accusations about a White House conspiracy to punish him by ruining his wife's career. On his Countdown show, Olbermann slammed the Washington Post for its "startling conclusions" and attacked the logic of the Post's reasoning. On Scarborough Country, Scarborough hit the New York Times and other media, including "left-leaning TV hosts," for not following the Post's lead and correcting its "character assassination" of the Bush team. Scarborough also delved into the inaccuracy of some of Wilson's claims about his trip to Niger and whether it really contradicted Bush's State of the Union claims about Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium. And while Scarborough presented some balance on his show by allowing one of his two guests to defend Wilson (Rachel Sklar after Wilson critic Christopher Hitchens), Olbermann followed his normal routine of choosing guests who will bolster his anti-Bush views, this time in the form of Wilson/Plame attorney Melanie Sloan. (Transcripts follow)

"It is a liberal editorial page and a liberal editorial board that reflects core values the paper has had for a long time. But I would challenge anyone, if you look at our news reports on those big issues of the day -- tax policy, foreign affairs -- to say it is a liberal newspaper. It is objectivity they strive hard to do." -- New York Times Editorial Page Editor Gail Collins, in an interview with Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher, July 14.