During a segment on the “Reliable Sources” hour of CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, PBS’s Gwen Ifill and Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson agreed that it was fine for President Obama to call on Sam Stein of the Huffington Post at his first press conference, and that the correspondent’s left-wing question on a proposed “truth committee” investigation into the Bush administration was “perfectly reasonable.” Carlson also agreed with host Howard Kurtz’s assessment that the “White House press corps not exactly rolling over for the new president.” Her response: “Never do, do they?”

Ifill and Carlson participated in a panel discussion with The Washington Times’ White House correspondent Christina Bellantoni at the beginning of the 10 am Eastern hour of the CNN program. Kurtz brought up the topic of the first presidential news conference, and specifically, how Stein was one of the reporters who asked a question: “So is this a new era for bloggers, in terms of the White House recognition?”

Looks like Chris Matthews is actually disappointed in Barack Obama, but only in the sense that he's worried Obama isn't moving to the left fast enough. Throughout Monday night's "Hardball," after reciting recent appointments like Robert Gates, Jim Jones and yes even Hillary Clinton, Matthews repeatedly asked his guests questions like: "What happened to the victory of change, and I hate to use the phrase, the Left? Who won this election?" and "Why do we have no lefties in this Cabinet?"

Matthews even invited on two "lefties," Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America and David Corn of The Nation, to blast Obama for not going left enough and offered them regular spots on his show to "Keep the guy [Obama] where he ought to be."

A little later in the program, Matthews had on Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg news and Roger Simon of the Politico and fretted about his perception that there weren't enough leftists in the cabinet: "Why no lefties? Why nobody that talks like Barack Obama talked when he got elected?"

The following exchanges occurred on the December 8, edition of "Harball":

On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann compared Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss’s 2002 campaign against then-Democratic Senator Max Cleland of Georgia to a "turkey-killing machine," as part of a segment with Bloomberg News’s Margaret Carlson, formerly of Time magazine, in which the duo mocked Sarah Palin’s part in a campaign rally for Chambliss. Olbermann: "What is the more grotesque event to be standing in front of and not paying attention to? What we`re seeing now, she`s standing in front of Saxby Chambliss who ran that campaign against Max Cleland six years ago, or standing in front of a turkey-killing machine?" As she laughed, Carlson responded: "Both are killers." Referring to the presence of the rapper Ludacris in Georgia as he campaigned for Democratic candidate Jim Martin, the pair also made cracks about Palin being "ludicrous" as Olbermann tagged her as "Governor Ludicrous of Alaska," and Carlson called her "Miss Slight Ludicrous."

One can picture Queen Victoria huffily declaring, "We are not amused," when reading this Margaret Carlson column about Joe the Barber in Bloomberg. Carlson appears to be upset that a "mere" plumber is steering the campaign away from the direction she wants it to follow (emphasis mine):

The most dispiriting thing to come out of the debate was the morning after. I woke to see Joe Wurzelbacher's street in Holland, Ohio, lit up like Times Square with network and cable satellite trucks clogging the place.

I thought the press was beyond 23 mentions of Joe the Plumber by one candidate and three by the other, while Asian markets were dropping 10 percent and the Dow has been diving.

Unless he starts making courtesy calls to fix the running toilets of the journalists making him famous, let's relegate Joe the Plumber back to the playroom with Bob the Builder or the 15- minute hall of fame with Harry and Louise and Ross Perot's crazy aunt in the attic.

“The most important reason [Al] Gore should be Vice President is that he's suffered and learned. He has the temperament some of us reach on our death beds,” former Time magazine Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Margaret Carlson trumpeted in a column posted Thursday on Bloomberg.com. In “Gore Has Right Stuff for Second Turn as No. 2,” Carlson effused:

If there's anything we need to rescue us from the last eight years, it's brains, good judgment and experience. Obama has the first two. Gore has all three.

Though on this weekend's Political Capital program on Bloomberg Television she hailed Gore's “presidential timber,” she was more restrained than in her column:

If what Obama needs, and I think it's what he needs, somebody of presidential timber, why not get somebody who won the popular presidential vote and who's done everything? And  who was right about the Middle East, right about this Iraq war, knows where the lights are in the White House, has gravitas?

As media gush over Scott McClellan's latest tell-all book about the Bush adminstration, a 1999 article by Margaret Carlson depicted a much less-pleased press corps when George Stephanopoulos's "All Too Human: A Political Education" cast an unfavorable light on then President Bill Clinton.

In fact, according to the former Time magazine columnist, people in the media referred to Stephanopoulos as a "turncoat," a "backstabber," and an "ingrate."

'Tis a far cry from the standing ovation McClellan is publicly receiving in press rooms around the country, wouldn't you agree?

Without further ado, here were some of the highlights from Carlson's rather stunning by comparison March 14, 1999 column (emphasis added throughout, grateful h/t to NBer Gary Hall):

Hardball had some fun this evening at Hillary's expense over the mystery of The Sniper Who Didn't Fire. Credit Politico's Roger Simon with the most devastating remark.

Hillary's heroic claim has been that "we used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady." Simon said what in retrospect might be obvious but something I hadn't previously heard anyone else observe.

ROGER SIMON: She says I was there because it was too dangerous for the President. It was too dangerous--so he sent his wife and only child? It makes no sense.

View video here.

On Tuesday night's "Hardball", Chris Matthews took offense to radio talk show host Bill Cunningham's criticism of Barack Obama, during a John McCain rally, as he called the comments "rotten business" and wondered "Is this now gonna creep into the debate, the discussion? This ethnic stuff and whatever?"

The following exchange occurred on the February 26 edition of "Hardball:"

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well let's take a look at, we had some really rotten business today. Here's radio talk show host Bill Cunningham at a John McCain rally today.

After reading an excerpt from our new book "Whitewash" at National Review Online, the Hillary lovers are fighting back. In his "Horse's Mouth" blog at Talking Points Memo, liberal blogger Greg Sargent accuses us of "amusing mendacity" for taking former Time reporter (and gushing Hillary fan) Margaret Carlson out of context. We wrote in the book (and the NRO excerpt):

They have shamelessly served as cheerleaders for Mrs. Clinton from the moment she emerged on the national scene in 1992, with Time’s Margaret Carlson describing her as "an amalgam of Betty Crocker, Mother Teresa, and Oliver Wendell Holmes."

Sargent asserted: "Wow -- did Margaret Carlson really describe Hillary in such gushing and cringe-worthy terms? Well, no, as it turns out. No, she didn't. The original article Carlson wrote is still online," and he used a larger quote:

To commemorate the Media Research Center’s 20th anniversary this month, we’ve just published a special expanded edition of our ‘Notable Quotables’ newsletter with more than 100 of the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes we’ve uncovered over the past 20 years. Earlier this week, I presented quotes showing the media’s sympathy towards totalitarian communism and hostility towards Ronald Reagan and other conservatives.

Today’s installment: The media’s love affair with Bill and Hillary Clinton. For 15 years, liberal reporters have made themselves looked like the sycophants they are, as they made excuse after excuse for the Clintons’ moral failings even as they applauded the couple’s supposed greatness. But perhaps no one looked sillier than Dan Rather on May 15, 2001, when the then-CBS News anchor was asked on Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor if he thought Bill Clinton was honest.

Video (0:41): Windows (1.26 MB), plus MP3 audio (163 kB).

Al Gore: He Speaks for Us All

It would be quite the understatement to say that members of the media approved of Al Gore's Nobel Prize win. Sam Donaldson lauded Gore for doing something "very important." Cokie Roberts justified the former vice president's inaccuracies by claiming that even if it was propaganda, Gore made an important issue popular. Over on CNN, reporter Miles O'Brien, once again, declared that the debate over the subject is over.

The Great 'Prophet' Spoke From on High

Speaking of CNN, Margaret Carlson, a former panelist for the cable network, declared Gore's victory to be a "wonderful thing." The former Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for Time magazine also complimented the former VP for doing "a great thing" and referred to him as a "prophet." Just how do these journalists maintain such professional objectivity?

Winning the Nobel Peace Prize was a “wonderful thing” Al Gore deserved for doing “a great thing,” veteran Washington journalist Margaret Carlson declared on Bloomberg Television's Political Capital show, as she contended “he rose above a great injustice” in what occurred in Florida's 2000 election count. Appearing with Bob Novak on the show, hosted by Al Hunt, which airs several times each weekend, Carlson told Novak: “You'd still be holding your breath and kicking your feet if what had happened to Al Gore in Florida had happened to you. He rose above, he rose above a great injustice. And by the way, you know, late in life you can find your gifts, which is Al Gore found what he should be doing and it is a great thing that he's done.” When Novak asserted Gore merely “became a demagogue on the global warming issue,” Carlson, the former Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for Time magazine who now posts columns on the Bloomberg News Web site, championed Gore's cause as she hailed how “he became a prophet on an issue that is crucially important to the world.”

The left-wing AFL-CIO union labor and Human Rights Campaign gay rights forums with Democratic presidential candidates held last week “suggest to me that the Democratic base is really the middle American base now,” former Time magazine Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Margaret Carlson declared on Sunday's Meet the Press. During the roundtable, Carlson, now a columnist for Bloomberg News and Washington Editor of The Week magazine, asserted that an “amendment to discriminate against gays” is not politically viable and “as the middle class feels in trouble, the labor position becomes a majority position.” She contended that “the person who won” the AFL-CIO “debate was the steel worker who stood up and said, 'I worked for 36 years and every morning I sit across from my wife, and I say' -- to the steel company -- 'why don't have I health care and why don't I have a pension?' They're bewildered by what happened.”

Time magazine veteran Margaret Carlson, now with Bloomberg News and The Week magazine, used the Minnesota bridge collapse tragedy as a fresh excuse to tout how the public really wants a tax hike while she regretted the lack of political “will” to raise taxes and that the government can't find more money for infrastructure but can afford “$4,000 a minute on the Iraq war.” Citing a poll conducted a decade ago when Democrat Ed Rendell was Mayor of Philadelphia, on Friday's Inside Washington aired on the DC PBS station, WETA-TV channel 26, Carlson claimed that “nearly 70 percent of people polled would pay more in taxes to actually know that they could cross the 14th Street bridge safely,” a reference to a bridge between Washington, DC and Virginia. “But,” she fretted, “you can't get the will to do it. I mean, we certainly had the wake-up call in Katrina, everyone knows the situation, but can you really get it done when there's, by the way, very little money left?”

Mark's post on new Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart caused me to stumble across this news from a few days ago: The gay cable channel Logo and the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay-left lobby, have announced that Margaret Carlson, a former White House correspondent and deputy Washington bureau chief of Time magazine, will moderate the August 9 Democratic candidates debate on Logo, and Capehart will join the questioning panel.

Carlson was a major booster of Hillary Clinton when she reported from the White House for Time. Capehart is a longtime member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Here's the official press release language: