Rick Perry

It’s hard to keep up with what the media and the left deem acceptable. Seems like just last year Anderson Cooper publicly took offense at a line from a movie. Come to think of it, it was just last year that the CNN anchor found “That’s so gay,” upsetting to his perfectly honed PC sensibilities.

Fast forward a year. Many people are accusing two currently prominent figures of being gay. But don’t hold your breath waiting for indignant coverage from Cooper and the rest of the media, because it’s liberals leveling the charge against conservatives.   

Take, for example, Marcus Bachmann, husband of GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.). The Bachmanns have been married more than 30 years, and have five children. Mr. Bachmann runs a clinic that offers Christian counseling to people struggling with “unwanted” homosexual feelings – derisively termed “praying away the gay” by liberals.

“Republican presidential contender Rick Perry rustles up a controversy when he appears to threaten the head of the Federal Reserve,” CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley teased Tuesday night in taking literally Perry’s remarks about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. CBS then played a clip of Perry: “We would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”

Brian Williams teased the NBC Nightly News by promoting President Obama’s scolding, in a CNN interview, of Perry: “On the broadcast tonight, fighting words. Rick Perry comes out swinging and talking and the White House tells him to watch what he says.”

As NewsBusters reported hours ago, MSNBC's Ed Schultz on Monday deceptively edited comments made by Rick Perry to falsely accuse the Texas governor of making a racist remark about President Obama.

"The Ed Show" host admitted his mistake on Tuesday's program, but failed to apologize to Perry or even acknowledge his despicable accusation let alone retract it (video follows courtesy Breitbart TV with partial transcript and commentary, file photo):

For months, NewsBusters has been warning readers that America's media are going to do everything in their power to label all contenders to Barack Obama racist.

On Monday's "The Ed Show," the host edited Rick Perry - in mid-sentence, mind you! - to falsely accuse the Texas governor of making a racist remark about America's first black president (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

Hardball host Chris Matthews on Tuesday smeared Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry as "Bull Connor with a smile," referring to the segregationist Commissioner of Public Safety who famously used attack dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protesters in the '60s.

Left-wing journalist Wayne Slater, who has previously lumped Tea Party protesters with the Holocaust museum shooter, attacked Perry as someone who talks about "states rights, states right, states rights" and "could make some voters, again, very nervous." In response, Matthews excoriated, "Yeah. This could be Bull Connor with a smile. "

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Former Newsweek editor Howard Fineman, Sunday, offered a snarky, condescending take on both Rick Perry and George W. Bush. Appearing on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show, he delivered a less than enthusiastic take on the new presidential candidate.

Talking to Matthews, he informed, "Some people, especially the Bush people, think that Rick Perry is shallow. They say he's- they say he's only in for the sound bites."

For MSNBC, Gov. Rick Perry's (R-Texas) record of enforcing existing law, protecting the border, and implementing "only a limited version" of the DREAM Act constitutes an "aggressive stance" on immigration that "may cost him some votes" in the Hispanic community, even though Perry's position on the DREAM Act is considered moderate within the Republican Party.

MSNBC fill-in anchor Craig Melvin on Tuesday quoted a Democratic mayor in Texas who called Perry's record "easily the most anti-Latino agenda in more than a generation" and brought on an adviser for the National Council for La Raza (NCLR) to criticize the presidential contender.

[Video follows page break]

On Monday's CBS Evening News and Tuesday's Early Show, CBS failed to cover an Iowa Tea Party activist's confrontation with President Obama. Both ABC's GMA and NBC's Today mentioned the encounter. Just days earlier, CBS and ABC spotlighted how left-wing protesters heckled Mitt Romney at an Iowa appearance and how the Republican apparently made a "gaffe" in reply.

NBC correspondent Chuck Todd noted the "heated exchange" between Tea Partier Ryan Rhodes and the President midway through his report just after the top of the 7 am Eastern hour of Today:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is clearly afraid of Texas governor Rick Perry beating Barack Obama if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee.

On Monday's "Hardball," the host asked the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, "Do you think the nation's newspapers and the big news organizations are now going to spend every nickel they have sending young people out there to go investigate this guy?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Hayes, editor at large with the leftist-in-perpetuity Nation magazine and host of an MSNBC weekend show that starts in September, made an illuminating comment on the Rachel Maddow show the other night.

Hayes and Maddow were talking on Thursday about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's imminent jump into the presidential race and Perry's record as governor of Texas over the last decade. All that talk about prosperity in the Lone Star State during Perry's stint at the helm is so much hooey, Maddow and Hayes agreed (video after page break) --

It's apparently not enough for Newsweek to slam 2012 presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann  as the "Queen of Rage." Daily Beast/Newsweek's Michelle Goldberg went a few more steps off the deep end yesterday by exploring how the Minnesota Republican, and, for good measure Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) are Christian theocrats-in-waiting:

I can hardly believe that the President of the United States, whose team is apparently deeply concerned about their guy's declining popularity and news stories which kept Republicans in the headlines this weekend, is going on a "Me Too" bus tour of Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois this week. The only plausible reason for this is to attempt to blunt the generally positive GOP vibe coming out of Iowa and to go after Michele Bachmann, Saturday's Iowa straw poll winner.

In his coverage at the Associated Press today, Steven R. Hurst admits as much, while otherwise acting as the administration's de facto propaganda spokesman (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Last month Tucker Carlson said, "Very few people have done more to divide the country than Chris Matthews."

Once again proving the point, Matthews on the syndicated program bearing his name this weekend expressed great joy that his regulars almost unanimously agreed that Texas governor Rick Perry will be easier for the Obama campaign to attack than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney - "This is one of the great moments in this program's history" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On MSNBC Friday afternoon, openly gay Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart (while substituting for host Martin Bashir) cited his newspaper competition to mock Gov. Rick Perry’s religious-right stances.

“Timothy Egan has an interesting column in the New York Times,” he insisted, “that pointed out that when Rick Perry prays to God, they tend to not get answered. For example, he prays for rain, they have an extreme drought. He holds prayer services and the markets tank. Is God listening to Rick Perry?”

First, to be fair to Associated Press reporter Christopher Sherman, because there is no equivalent reference in the 3:34 p.m. version of his report on Rick Perry's immigration positions, the headline which will follow the jump does not appear to be of his doing.

But whoever at the wire service decided on the headline to use at Sherman's piece definitely has a problem with anyone who questions the need for illegal-immgrant amnesty, is against the granting of in-state tuition for college students who are illegal immigrants, or supports robust border enforcement:

On both Good Morning America and World News, two different ABC correspondents filed separate reports recounting that some Christians oppose Texas Governor Rick Perry’s prayer rally from the weekend, but, in both reports, clips of left-wing figures like the Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and Drew Courtney of People for the American Way were shown, instead of showing any more mainstream Christians as examples of dissent.

The ABC and NBC morning and evening newscasts on Sunday gave attention to President Obama's attack on the Republican presidential candidates for not scolding a couple of audience members who booed a gay solder who asked a question about gays in the military at a recent debate. Monday's Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC noted that Obama has his own history of standing by without condemning inappropriate comments at public events.ABC correspondent David Kerley filed full reports devoted to the story on both Good Morning America and World News Sunday, while NBC's Mike Viqueira mentioned Obama's line of attack within reports that dealt with other political issues on Today and the NBC Nightly News.

In his Friday report covering the June state and local employment report released by Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Associated Press's Derek Kravitz told readers about the three biggest seasonally adjusted job-losing states (Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia), but had nothing to say about states which gained jobs. This was a curious omission indeed, given that BLS told us that "nonfarm payroll employment increased in 26 states and the District of Columbia and decreased in 24 states."

Only Kravitz knows why he neglected to tell us about the job gainers, but the list of the top eight states in that department should make readers wonder if the wire service reporter's omission was motivated by inconvenient (for liberals and leftists) likely explanations for the improvements in most of them (keep in mind that though it's not an apples to apples comparison, the economy as a whole added only 18,000 seasonally adjusted jobs in June):

Never trust a source as cited by Rachel Maddow.

It's not the sources themselves that are deceitful, at least much of the time. It's what she does with the information they provide that is.

On her MSNBC show Friday night, for example, Maddow was riding one of her favorite hobby horses, alleging that new voter ID laws enacted or proposed in 40 states are little more than GOP-led efforts to suppress voter turnout among core Democrat constituencies.

To bolster her argument, Maddow said this about a new voter ID law in Texas (video after page break) --

The mainstream media reluctantly started covering President Obama's Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy roughly one year after Fox News's Sean Hannity alerted his viewers to the controversial preacher's "God damn America" rants in 2007.

But when it comes to the 2012 Republican presidential aspirants, it appears the media are determined not to be late to the game in vetting their (real or imagined) "pastor problems."

For example, Washington Post's online "On Faith" feature yesterday wondered if Texas Gov. Rick Perry -- who is thought to be mulling a run but hasn't made a decision yet -- should be "judged by the religious company" he keeps.

 On Thursday’s Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, host Maddow devoted a considerable chunk of her show to the story of convicted murderer Humbarto Leal Garcia's execution in Texas, and Republican Governor Rick Perry’s refusal to delay the execution to give Congress more time to pass legislation to address how the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations should be applied to such cases.

Garcia, who in 1994 raped a 16-year-old girl and then strangled her and crushed her skull with a 35-pound piece of asphalt, was sent to prison in 1998 but did not discover until two years later that he was supposed to be legally entitled to ask for help from the Mexican consulate in his defense.

(Note: This article earlier erroneously claimed that the Vienna Convention does not seem to demand that authorities inform a foreign national of the rights contained in the treaty when, in reality, the treaty does contain text making this demand of authorities.)  

John Lennon in the '70s sang about instant karma getting you.

On Wednesday's "Hardball," two weeks after mocking Texas governor Rick Perry for calling Twitter "Tweeter," the pathetically pompous Chris Matthews made the same mistake not once, but twice (video follows with transcript and commentary):

... But that's OK because Miller is a liberal radio talker and Perry is a conservative governor. Hence, whatever it takes to demean Perry is justified, even if Miller loses her honor in the process.

Miller, you may recall, told her listeners in August 2010 that she's a lesbian. Having made this particular leap, Miller apparently wants Republican politicians she suspects of being gay to come out of the closet as well, regardless of whether they are so inclined.

Here's a clip of Miller and two of her coat catchers taking part in a sotte voce whispering campaign designed to knock Perry down a peg just in case he jumps into the presidential race and poses a threat to Dear Leader (audio clip below page break, courtesy of The Radio Equalizer) --

On Tuesday night, NBC decided to highlight a series of stumbles by Republican presidential candidates, none of them all that significant (Romney having $100 bills in his wallet and Perry referring to Twitter as “tweeter”), before later in the newscast showing White House-produced video of a baby which stopped crying when handed to President Obama. “The White House would probably love for us to believe this next piece of videotape is evidence of special healing powers,” Williams announced, feeling obligated to make clear he realized “it isn't, but it is amusing.”

Looking at the announcement by Jon Huntsman, Andrea Mitchell cited his “faulty sound system,” how the press pass misspelled Huntsman’s first name and how “the press corps was first directed to a plane bound for Saudi Arabia instead of New Hampshire,” but “even there geography was a problem.” After a clip of Huntsman saying “we’ve just come this morning from New York where we announced in front of the Statue of Liberty,” Mitchell pounced, complete with a big map on screen: “Except he wasn’t in New York, it was New Jersey.”

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has for months been bashing potential GOP presidential candidates for not getting into the race to challenge Barack Obama for the White House.

Now that people are throwing their hats into the ring, the "Hardball" host has ripped virtually all of them including the not-yet-announced Texas governor Rick Perry who Matthews vociferously attacked as a phony and a puppet Monday because of hand gestures he made during his speech to the Republican Leadership Conference (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Trying to submerge its own network’s “under God” censorship into a greater narrative, Monday’s NBC Nightly News managed to combine into one disjointed story, pegged to “a tough slog” over the weekend “when it comes to the campaign to get along in our public discourse,” the NBC Sports decision to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance in its opening montage for the U.S. Open golf tournament, “distress” by “Republicans at a leadership conference over an Obama impersonator’s racially tinged jokes,” how “on conservative network Fox News, anchor Chris Wallace and liberal comedian Jon Stewart went at it” and that “Texas Governor Rick Perry won the loudest applause with this line.”

The awful remark, which NBC aired as its last example in a story which carried “BAD DECISIONS” as the on-screen tag: “Let's speak with pride about our morals and our values. Let's stop this American downward spiral!”

In a June 16 story for the Politico, Molly Ball surveyed the existing GOP presidential field and essentially buried them all as pathetic losers who couldn't even carry their home states. The article headlined: "The GOP's Unfavorite Son Primary" detailed how current candidates Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and even undeclared ones like Rick Perry and Sarah Palin would have trouble winning statewide races.

Yes, you read that right. According to Ball, Perry could struggle to beat Obama in Texas and Palin could fall to the President in Alaska.

Ball began her story this way: