Rick Perry

On the Friday, May 3, Politics Nation, MSNBC host Al Sharpton fretted over the video that was played at Friday's NRA convention in Houston to introduce Rick Perry which shows the Texas governor firing at targets with an AR-15. Sharpton began the segment:

Syndicated cartoonist Jack Ohman should be ashamed of himself.

On Thursday, he published a cartoon depicting Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) saying "Business is booming in Texas" next to a drawing of the fertilizer plant explosion near Waco:

This goes back about ten days, and I originally missed it. Fortunately, though, an Investor's Business Daily editorial got around to mentioning Rick Perry's visit to California last week in an effort to lure businesses to the more commerce-friendly environs of Texas.

Associated Press report Juliet Williams and her story's headline writer were not amused by Perry's aggressiveness. Williams seemed to be bucking to have her picture placed next to the words "petty" and "vindictive" in the dictionary. Several paragraph from her February 11 coverage of Perry's visit to the formerly Golden State follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

During the monologue of Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, host Maher joked about wanting to see Texas Governor Rick Perry trying to defend himself from a killer using prayer, as he excoriated the Republican governor for suggesting that more religion could help reduce violent tendencies in people.

As he brought up the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and opposition to the left's proposed new gun laws, Maher went after the Texas governor:

Jay Leno took a cheap shot at Texas governor Rick Perry Tuesday.

During his opening monologue on NBC's Tonight Show, the host said Perry is "taking steps to run for president in 2016. Yeah, in fact, this week he's meeting with donors. You better hope they're brain donors" (video follows with commentary):

Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton explored conservative dissatisfaction with the national news in polls and then wondered if the Post’s own columnist corps didn’t lean dramatically to the left: “The Post should first be about news without slant. If The Post wants to wrap its news in commentary, fine, but shouldn’t some of those voices then be conservative?”

He listed all the “progressives” the Post was planting throughout the paper:

When it comes to opposition research, there is often only one difference between a candidate’s vicious negative ad and an “investigative” news report: the undeserved patina of media “objectivity” and respectability.

Take the Washington Post’s Jason Horowitz 5,400-word “expose” on how Mitt Romney may have pinned a boy down and cut his hair, in 1965. 1965. That’s almost a half-century ago. Even if every detail were accurate – and they weren’t – a journalist could pull a muscle in the hyper-aggressive attempt to make it somehow relevant to the present moment, or even the recent past.

As NewsBusters reported last week, now that Mitt Romney appears set to win the Republican presidential nomination, Saturday Night Live is going to do its darnedest to trash him every week through Election Day.

This pattern continued Saturday as for the second week in a row the program began with a segment attacking the former Massachusetts governor while also taking shots at all the other candidates including a disgusting homosexual reference to Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus (transcribed lowlights and commentary follow, video for those that can stand it available at Mediaite):

Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker Clint Eastwood has come under some heat for appearing in a Chrysler commercial on Super Bowl Sunday that some feel was pro-Obama.

Eastwood spoke with Ron Mitchell, the producer of Fox's O'Reilly Factor, Monday to set the record straight:

It's only January and the vitriol being spewed at Republicans by the Obama-loving media is starting to crest.

On Tuesday, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen went after almost every high-profile right-leaning politician in the land in a piece that disgracefully ended "The GOP is brain-dead":

After Rick Perry ended his presidential bid on Thursday, the Associated Press's Chris Tomlinson opened his dispatch about the announcement thusly: "Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race on Thursday, endorsed his old friend Newt Gingrich and returned home to Texas, where the failed White House candidate has three years left to serve as the chief executive."

Based on much of his prior reportage, Tomlinson appears have a particular animus towards the Texas Governor. But tagging GOP presidential candidates or their candidacies as "failed" is not an aberration at the AP, while the wire service's omission of such tags on wildly unsuccessful Democratic candidates pointedly betrays the presence of obvious bias.

Comedienne Wanda Sykes speculated Thursday that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry had to drop out of the race because "he was one more debate away from saying the N-word." 

Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show to bash all the GOP candidates, she also told the host that Newt Gingrich might have wanted an open marriage with his ex-wife because she said he had a "tiny penis" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

A South Carolina State Senator on Tuesday put MSNBC’s Martin Bashir in his rightful place.

As the host attacked Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s lack of knowledge about world events, Sen. Larry Grooms (R-S.C.) marvelously replied, “I think he’s got a better understanding than maybe you” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday proved once and for all what a joke he is.

Not only did the This Week host give twice the airtime to faux political candidate Stephen Colbert as Texas governor Rick Perry, he did so after the Comedy Central star called him "a political operative" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Joe Scarborough said it about Rick Perry, but it could perhaps have applied to other Republican presidential contenders who are going after Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital.

On Morning Joe today, discussing Perry's depiction of venture capitalists like Romney as "vultures," Scarborough said that the Texas governor: "sounds like a stoned NYU grad student in Zuccotti Park."  Video after the jump.

After suggesting that Republicans had done a better job of "enunciating" an anti-capitalist attack on Mitt Romney than "the Democrats have to date," NBC correspondent told fellow panelists on the January 11 Daily Rundown, "I hope the Democrats are furiously taking notes if this is the line of attack they plan to pursue against Mitt Romney."

Perhaps trying to evince a sense of fairness or balance, Guthrie then added (MP3 audio available here; video posted below page break):

Sitting through the Republican debate on Saturday night with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was just painful, from beginning to end. Some of it was just political Ambien.  But when it was finally over, there was just one question. Who in the GOP in his/her right mind invites a historically shameless Democratic spin controller like Stephanopoulos to “moderate” a primary debate like this – ever?

The only thing that can be said in defense of that horrible decision was turning to NBC the next morning and seeing “moderator” David Gregory be even more slanted in his questioning. ABC slanted the ideological questions in their debate by a ratio of six questions from the left to each one from the right. The NBC ratio was eight to one.

Twenty-four years ago, Los Angeles Dodgers VP Al Campanis was forced to resign his position for saying on national TV that blacks lack "the necessities" to be baseball managers and executives.  

On today's Hardball, Chris Matthews was so enjoying himself mocking Rick Perry's intelligence, that he decided to use a slightly mangled version of the same line on the Texas governor. Video after the jump.

Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran on Tuesday huffed that Rick Perry's "controversial" ad, combined with a presidential campaign that could be seen as "denigrat[ing]" "non-Christians" and "gay veterans," might spell doom for the Republican candidate. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The program's other anchor, Cynthia McFadden, teased the segment by proclaiming, "Plus, God and country. Who would Jesus vote for? Rick Perry's on the campaign trail casting himself as the populist Christian candidate."

MSNBC's supposedly conservative host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday continued his months-long attack on the Republican presidential candidates.

After telling his Morning Joe viewers that he would consider voting for potential third party candidate Ron Paul if Newt Gingrich won the nomination, Scarborough said he could "in five minutes write a list of 200 Republican members of the House of Representatives" more qualified than "the presidential candidates that are running right now" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

All three morning shows on Monday hyped Mitt Romney's $10,000 wager from Saturday's Republican debate. "Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos wondered just how "damaging" Romney's "bad bet" would be.

Stephanopoulos, who previously gloated over whether his interview would "spell the end" of Herman Cain, offered a similar take, Monday. He teased, "How damaging was Mitt Romney's $10,000 bet at our ABC News debate. He's shrugging off all the critics calling him out of touch. But, will this memorable moment shake up the race one more time?"

After ABC's Republican presidential debate on Saturday night, several members of the ABC team spoke of Mitt Romney's attempt to make a bet with Rick Perry about whether Perry was correct in asserting that Romney had advocated Massachusetts-style Romneycare as a model for the nation, with predictions that the $10,000 bet comment would hurt Romney with voters.

After arguing that Perry appeared to be the one who was factually incorrect in the dispute with Romney, ABC's Jake Tapper went on to predict Romney would still be harmed by the exchange. Tapper:

ABC's Good Morning America and CBS's the The Early Show on Saturday, as well as Friday's World News on ABC, seized on GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry forgetting the name of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as the Texas governor criticized President Obama's tendency to appoint activist judges. As he teased Saturday's The Early Show, CBS anchor Russ Mitchell even asked, "How long can his presidential candidacy survive?"

As CBS correspondent Jan Crawford appeared on the show, Mitchell posed to her: