Although almost eight months have passed since last year's elections, Palin Derangement Syndrome continues to manifest itself throughout America's press.

As NewsBusters' Mike Sargent reported Tuesday, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum is gravely afflicted with the illness, and needs to see a team of doctors quickly if he ever wants to be taken seriously by anyone other than the extreme Left.

With that in mind, Palin documentarian John Ziegler had a fascinating radio interview with Politico's Mike Allen Wednesday that shed some light on how PDS works and why it's so pernicious.

To set this up, Allen was on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" earlier in the day, and defended Purdum's piece (15 minute audio available here):

"Obama's intelligent speech in Cairo has had a big impact in the Muslim world, and it is obvious that it is his presence in the White House – far more than any BBC broadcast – that is giving hope to the demonstrators in Tehran...I do not believe it could possibly have happened had John McCain been elected...Who knows whether [the Iranian protestors] will succeed, but we can safely say that the BBC and Barack Obama have done more to change Iran than Fox News and George W Bush."

So wrote London's mayor in an astonishing display of Obama Derangement Syndrome Monday.

In his British Telegraph article entitled "What has Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran got against little old Britain?", Boris Johnson sung the new American president's praises in a fashion likely to upset many a stomach (h/t NBer Right2thePoint): 

MSNBC's Chris Matthews appeared on Montel Williams' Air America radio show on Wednesday to slam John McCain: "I think McCain put his finger on the idiot button." The Hardball host fumed about McCain's criticism of how Barack Obama has handled the response to Iran's disputed election. He also unflatteringly compared the Senator to Sarah Palin.

After getting a laugh from the Montel Across America host, Matthews reiterated, "I'm telling you, the idiot button." He complained, "That's my new term for when you start putting your finger on the button that's got Sarah Palin's fingerprints on it." Matthews broke off his attack and then explained that McCain is a "very smart, patriotic American."

Earlier today, Julia A. Seymour of the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute (BMI) pointed to a fact-check done by her group showing that "from January 20 to June 16 those quoted in health care stories on ABC's morning and evening news shows favored ObamaCare by a 3-to-1 margin (55 supporters to 18 critics)."

You think that margin is bad; wait until you see the ratio at ABC of Obama vs. McCain campaign contributions.

At its blog, Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR) did the dirty work. The results are below the fold.

In the midst of his June 16 Swampland blog screed leveled against the "unhinged" Sen. John McCain for his criticism of President Obama's low-key response to the Iranian election, Time magazine's Joe Klein [shown in file photo at right] also worked in a comparison of hardliner Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's support base with former U.S. President George W. Bush's core supporters:

It is not even clear that Ahmadinejad--who has significant backing from the sort of people who support Republicans here (the elderly, the religious extremists) plus a real following among working-class Iranians--would have lost this election, if the votes had been counted fairly. (I tend to believe that they weren't counted at all, but that's just my opinion.)

Twelve days earlier, Klein more subtly made the Ahmadinejad/Bush connection in a comparison that favorably compared Iranian presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi to Bush's 2004 rival Sen. John Kerry (emphasis mine):

An outraged Chris Matthews scolded John McCain, on Tuesday's "Hardball," for criticizing Obama's stance on Iran's elections as the MSNBC host exclaimed: "The difference between the President, who is being very calm and not jumping up and down, and those on the right who are hitting the idiot button right now. And the idiot button is the one often pushed by Sarah Palin, but this week by John McCain and others." Matthews -- who also mocked Sarah Palin for praising the troops in her acceptance of David Letterman's apology -- attacked conservatives in general for engaging in "idiot talk."

MATTHEWS: Okay yeah, let me try to get to your left, let me try to get to your left Lawrence because I feel like getting over there tonight. Snuggling over to your left Lawrence O'Donnell because I disagree with you. I think there's become, there's become this new idiot button on the right where you have to punch this button in order to be considered a real conservative now. "Obama is a socialist on health care. He's a socialist. All his fiscal programs are insanely socialistic." You have to punch that button. Then you gotta say this [Iran] election was "bogus." You gotta punch that button. If you don't talk in that, that right wing, idiot talk you're not considered a conservative any more. The idea of being a thoughtful person is wrong now, politically, on that side of the aisle. That's where I think it's going. [audio available here]

The following exchanges were aired during the June 16 edition of "Hardball":

On Friday's Special Report with Bret Baier, FNC host Baier informed viewers that the Justice Department had dropped charges against New Black Panther members who engaged in blatant voter intimidation in Philadelphia last November. As previously documented by Newsbuster Noel Sheppard, last November Fox News ran a report by Rick Leventhal detailing the activity which was ignored by the mainstream media. On Friday's Special Report, Baier quoted a former 1960s civil rights lawyer: "The most blatant form of voter intimidation. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters."

How's this for a celebrity endorsement?

Model and actress Angie Harmon, who was part of a group of Hollywood celebrities that supported John McCain last year, loves NewsBusters.

In fact, she told In Style magazine that NB's her favorite website (from June 2009 edition via LexisNexis, no link available, h/t NBer Stacy Bergfeld):

With much fanfare, President Barack Obama rolled out his intentions to cut $17 billion from the federal budget on May 7. But despite the spinmeisters, not everyone was buying it.

"The White House today played up its proposed cuts to the federal budget," ABC "World News" anchor Charles Gibson said on his May 7 broadcast. "That budget plays up to $3.6 trillion. The White House wants to trim a tiny fraction - $17 billion. The president, arguing that seemingly small amount is a step in the right direction."

And that's exactly what ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper emphasized during his report on the budget cuts.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has once again bashed conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh as well as Alaska Governor Sarah Palin while going a step further this time by piling on the GOP.

Following up on last December's acrimonious interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Powell told corporate security executives Monday, "The Republican Party is in deep trouble" adding "I think what Rush [Limbaugh] does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without." 

As CongressDaily reported Tuesday, that's not all that's bothering Powell:

Very frightening, I think, what the media was able to get away with this go round.

So said Alaska Governor Sarah Palin at the beginning of John Ziegler's must-see documentary "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted."

After a nicely spliced introduction that included many of the disgraceful moments NewsBusters reported throughout the campaign, just before the opening credits rolled, Palin ominously stated, "This is for the sake of our democracy that there is fairness in this other branch of government if you will called media."

So true, and yet what Ziegler masterfully demonstrated to his viewers was that democracy and fairness were not on the minds of most press members when the campaign began in 2007.

While discussing the possible prosecution of Bush administration officials over interrogation methods used against terror suspects, on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith asked Senator John McCain: "You fought a long battle with the [Bush] White House over this issue, said they ought to follow the Army manual, which the -- the White House refused to...Why do you feel so strongly that those who helped create this policy should not face some sort of recrimination?"

McCain explained his opposition to what he called a "witch hunt": "Because I think, Harry, if you legal -- if you criminalize legal advice, which is basically what they're going to do, then it has a terribly chilling effect on any kind of advice and counsel that the president might receive...this is going to turn into a witch hunt."

As NewsBusters previously reported, "Media Malpractice" documentarian John Ziegler was thrown off the USC campus in southern California last Wednesday while attempting to interview people attending The Annenberg Norman Lear Center's excellence in journalism awards ceremony.

CBS's Katie Couric was to be honored at the event for her "Evening News" segments which many believe submarined the campaign efforts of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

On Monday, Ziegler published at Big Hollywood a lengthy explanation of what transpired at USC:

ABC’s World News programs on Friday and Sunday highlighted "frank comments by Republicans" who indicated either an admission to having reservations over, or who called on a reversal of, the Republican party’s conservative stance on social issues. On Friday, Charles Gibson informed viewers that Sarah Palin confessed before a pro-life group to having briefly wondered about having an abortion after she discovered her son Trig would be born with Down’s Syndrome. Gibson also highlighted comments by Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager for John McCain, as he addressed a gathering of the Log Cabin Republicans and "urged the Republican party to support same-sex marriage."

On World News Sunday, correspondent Rachel Martin filed a full story on pro-gay comments by both Schmidt and John McCain’s daughter Meghan. Anchor Dan Harris introduced the report: "There are some new and rather surprising voices wading into the debate over same-sex marriage. Last night, John McCain's daughter, Meghan, jumped into the fray, and she is not the only Republican suggesting that the party might want to reconsider its stance on this very divisive issue."

Martin began her report with a a clip of Meghan McCain boasting that she has many gay friends, and the ABC correspondent then continued: "The daughter of the GOP's most famous maverick headlined a Republican gay rights event, and, while she didn't go so far as to come out for gay marriage, her dad's former campaign manager did. ... even taking on the powerful religious right."

Going on right now: the first-ever "Twitterview" between Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and a mainstream journalist. McCain is being interviewed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. You can follow the debate by checking out the @SenJohnMcCain and @GStephanopoulos feeds on Twitter.

Update (12:53 EDT): Below is a transcript of the interview, courtesy of MRC intern Mike Sargent. Sargent also noticed that at least one conservative observing the interview shot a message to Stephanopoulos objecting that Sen. McCain was misrepresenting his votes on the AIG bailout.

MCCAIN: Twitter interview with George S at noon.

STEPHANOPOLOUS: @SenJohnMcCain Happy St Patrick's Day! First things first: How do u tweet -- dictate or type? Blackberry or pc?

Former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's daughter Meghan has four words of advice for conservative radio host Laura Ingraham: "Kiss my fat ass!" [h/t Jeff Poor]

Appearing on the March 16 edition of "The View," The Daily Beast columnist told the gals of "The View" that she was annoyed with Ingraham for recently making a joke about her weight.

McCain: Why are we so obsessed with weight? Why? And I know specifically for me, this is so, you know I'm a pop culture junkie, but when Tyra Banks went on her show in her bathing suit and said, "Kiss my fat ass," that's what I feel like right now. I'm like, "kiss my fat ass!"

Throughout last year's presidential campaign, NewsBusters routinely reported that without the unprofessional and unconditional support of an adoring media, Barack Obama would never have gotten past the Iowa caucuses let alone John McCain.

One of his staunchest fans was Newsweek's Howard Fineman who right after Election Day said: “Obama's changing everything as he moves. His victory speech last night in Grant Park...was so memorable on so many levels.”

Well, like many so-called journalists who sycophantically gushed and fawned so much last year that they sent an inexperienced, unqualified junior senator who had never written one signficant piece of legislation straight to the most powerful office in the land, Fineman is now having second thoughts (file photo):

On this morning's CNN Newsroom, anchor Heidi Collins gave Barack Obama some cover by characterizing the omnibus spending bill, larded with thousands of earmarks, as left over from the Bush administration:

A controversial $410 billion spending bill hits a snag in the Senate. This is the bill we've been talking about with about $8 billion in earmarks. Republicans and a few Democrats are mad about all that pork barrel spending. That led members from both parties to push President Obama to veto the bill.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid says the measure will be opened up for changes next week in an effort to gain more support. The bill is a hold-over from the last administration.

Collin's reporting comes straight from the Obama playbook.  Last Sunday on "This Week," Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag defended his boss's support for the measure:

"This is last year's business.  We want to just move on.  Let's get this bill done, get it into law and move forward."

On Monday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez spoke with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who a year ago was named in a New York Times article implying she had an affair with then presidential candidate John McCain, an accusation Iseman flatly denied: "No, I did not. And four New York Times reporters, two editors, their entire institution, 200 people that they went out and sought to try and figure out if this was true or not, came back and said there's no there, there...They were calling friends and family and colleagues and former staffers, it was just -- people I'd hired and fired at my firm, it was nuts. It was just unbelievable...They became so invested in this that they couldn't walk away...this was just out of control, they just could not, for some reason, walk away."

While Iseman detailed how absurd the Times’ accusations were, Rodriguez still worked to give the paper the benefit of the doubt: "So everybody believed that you had an affair with him, even though the article, according to the Times, didn't mean to imply that and certainly didn't prove that, all of a sudden you were that girl?...You sued the New York Times, they printed a note to the readers that said ‘we never intended to imply she was having an affair with him.’ Where do you think they went so wrong? Because they have sources and they did try to contact you. Where do you think the New York Times failed here?

Remember how during the run up to the election, all the left pundits and talking heads and their compatriots in the Old Media said that no white person would vote for Barack Obama? Well, despite the singular fact that Barack Obama convincingly won the popular vote in a country that sees a majority of its voters are white, the Old Media is still insisting that all southerners are slavery-loving, neo-confederates that are no different than they were in 1860.

For the Sunday Outlook section of The Washington Post, liberal Millsaps College professor Robert S. McElvaine announced in "The Red, the Blue and the Gray" that Barack Obama is "just like Lincoln" in the same way that Lincoln didn't get the south's vote in 1860. Professor McElvaine also intimates that this is because the south is little different than it was in 1860.

Bet you southerners didn't know that you are all still slavers and racists, eh?

Last month NewsBusters introduced readers to John Ziegler, a conservative filmmaker creating a documentary about the astoundingly poor job the press did covering 2008's presidential campaign.

Marvelously entitled "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted," the movie is set for release on February 23.

I chatted with Ziegler earlier in the week about last year's campaign shenanigans and the film. Some of the highlights include (60-minute audio available here):    

Today on The Washington Post's front page appears the article "Back Home in Alaska, Palin Finds Cold Comfort: Scrutiny Has Been Intense Since Election."  Staff writer Michael Leahy reports that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has had a rocky return following her run on last year's Republican national ticket.  Writes Leahy:

A number of factors seem to have contributed to the bumpy homecoming: a residual anger among Democrats for the attack-dog role Palin assumed in the McCain campaign, lingering resentment from Republicans for the part she may have played in McCain's defeat, and a suspicion crossing party lines that the concerns of Alaska, at a time of economic crisis, will now be secondary to her future in national politics.

The claim that Sarah Palin hurt McCain's candidacy has been refuted by various sources including, coincidentally enough, The Washington Post.  Chris Cillizza covers the White House for the newspaper.  Shortly after the election he cited five election myths.  One of them was that McCain made a mistake by selecting Palin as his running mate:

So much for any pretense of balance. Looks like David Shuster has taken a page from Keith Olbermann's playbook: play exclusively to your crowd; exclude any alternative voices.

Announcing this evening a new regular feature focusing on the blogosphere on his 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue show, Shuster made it clear that conservatives need not apply.

DAVID SHUSTER: Every day at this time, we're going to bring you a key issue in the progressive blogosphere.

As the financial crisis hit last September, NewsBusters regularly informed readers of the truth behind the matter, and that media assertions the Bush administration was to blame were politically motivated falsehoods intentionally designed to get Barack Obama elected president.

On Saturday, the financial publication Barron's offered readers an editorial by Hoover Institution visiting fellow Scott S. Powell which presented facts that were routinely withheld from the public during the campaign assuring the Democrat candidate victory in November.

More importantly, Powell offered some compelling insights into the dangers of partisanship which sadly is negatively impacting today's stimulus package discussion.

But before we get there, this was Powell's case as to who was really to blame for this crisis (h/t Hot Air):

The Gross Domestic Product declined by 3.8 percent in the final quarter of 2008.

It was bad, but nowhere near as bad as expected.

Is it possible that all the hysterical gloom and doom emanating from the media is way overdone, and that things are not close to as apocalyptic as we've been told the past five months?

Consider the actual numbers reported Friday morning by MarketWatch:

ALSO, America apparently the land of permanent racism

I am wondering if CNN was out of the country last November 4? Maybe it missed that McCain lost the election because, once again, CNN trotted out an Old Media campaign lie aimed at making John McCain "as bad as" the Reverend Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright by using the talking point that in Reverend John Hagee McCain had a "controversial" pastor, too? Not only did CNN fall back on the lie that Hagee is somehow just as bad as Wright -- and thereby smearing John McCain with Wright's racist hatespeak -- but CNN got a twofer with this piece by again portraying America as the land of permanent, unrelenting racism by hinting that Obama will never get a chance because he's black.

News flash to CNN: Barack HAS gotten a chance. He was elected with a comfortable majority of votes.

If anyone wonders what any criticism of Barack Obama will be termed by the Old Media, CNN's headlined "Will Obama have to be better because he's black?" seems to answer to that question. You see, Obama won't be given a chance, CNN tells us, because he's black. Any failure will be made larger because he's black. And any criticism of him is just racism forcing Obama to "work harder than whites" at his job.

Conservative author Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity's former liberal co-host Alan Colmes were Dr. Phil's guests Thursday, and an astounding thing happened: the crowd seemed to like Coulter more than Colmes.

I kid you not.

The topics up for discussion were Barack Obama, the presidential campaign, and the media, and whenever Coulter said anything, the crowd applauded loudly.

Maybe even more delicious when Dr. Phil introduced former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan the audience booed (video embedded below the fold courtesy our dear friend MsUnderestimated, file photo):

We've seen the mainstream media afflicted with Palin Derangement Syndrome.  We've experienced the media in the throes of Bush Derangement Syndrome.  Over at CNN, which modestly styles itself as the most trusted name in news, there's now an outbreak of Joe the Plumber Derangement Syndrome.

Last week CNN Newsroom anchor Kyra Phillips went after Joe.  Today, it was CNN Newsroom anchor Rick Sanchez's turn at bat.  Mustering as much blow-dried earnestness as possible, he relieved himself of an editorial on what's nominally a news program:

Meanwhile, something else to take note of today. I want to share with you the thoughts of Samuel Wurzelbacher -- you know, "Joe the Plumber" -- now Joe the war correspondent. Yes, he's been in Israel filing reports.

And here's his analysis, as reported by the Associated Press. You're going to love this: "I don't think journalists should be anywhere around war. I mean you guys report where our troops are at. You report what's happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it's asinine. I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting, war is hell."

There you have it.

Samuel, let me talk to you directly.

First, I was born in a communist country, so I'm familiar with people like you -- and Fidel Castro, by the way -- not to name drop -- who also think "that media should be abolished."

Conservative author Ann Coulter was Mike Huckabee's guest on Fox News Saturday, and the pair had a very interesting and entertaining discussion about the media's coverage of Sarah Palin as well as differences of opinion between the two of them during last year's Republican primaries.

As Coulter fans are aware, she was not a Huckabee supporter during the 2008 campaign. Far from it, she was one of his strongest critics as Hot Air's Allahpundit pointed out Sunday.

Despite this, Huckabee was quite the professional, and an exceedingly gracious host (video embedded below the fold, file photo):

The Associated Press is reporting that the lobbyist the New York Times insinuated had an affair with John McCain (here is some background information on the NYT piece) has filed suit against the paper to the tune of $27 million:

A Washington lobbyist sued The New York Times for $27 million Tuesday over an article that she says gave the false impression she had an affair with Sen. John McCain in 1999. 

Vicki L. Iseman filed the defamation suit in U.S. District Court in Richmond. It also names as defendants the Times' executive editor, its Washington bureau chief and four reporters.