"60 Minutes" did a fabulous exposé Sunday on Medicare fraud that should be required viewing for all people who support a government run healthcare program in this country.

The facts and figures presented by CBS's Steve Kroft were disturbing as were the details concerning how shysters bilk the system for an estimated $60 billion a year. 

As Kroft warned viewers in the segment's teaser, "We caution you that this story may raise your blood pressure, along with some troubling questions about our government's ability to manage a medical bureaucracy" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Marc Sheppard):

On this Good Friday, many churches will be offering screenings of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, now five years old. It's easy to forget how feverishly the liberal media insulted the film and its maker. Three days before the film came out on Ash Wednesday 2004, CBS "humorist" Andy Rooney railed on 60 Minutes:

“I heard from God just the other night. God always seems to call at night. ‘Andrew,’ God said to me. He always calls me ‘Andrew.’ I like that. ‘Andrew, you have the eyes and ears of a lot of people. I wish you’d tell your viewers that both Pat Robertson and Mel Gibson strike me as wackos. I believe that’s one of your current words. They’re crazy as bedbugs....Mel is a real nut case. What in the world was I thinking when I created him?’”

In our 2004 Special Report on religion coverage, Ken Shepherd and I reported on how the number of stories on religion increased, due in part to controversy over The Passion. But then we explored the tone of that coverage, a tone hostile to Christian orthodoxy:

On Sunday’s CBS 60 Minutes, commentator Andy Rooney read from some viewer letters: "It's always fun to read the letters people send, I get a lot of them, although, to be honest, if I took all the letters seriously I wouldn't ever say anything again. I get quite a few bad letters and, of course, I pay least attention to those. I don't want you to see me cry."

Some of those "bad letters" came from viewers who criticized Rooney’s and the media’s pro-Obama bias: "Thomas Overley writes from Oceanside, California. He's mad because he thinks I like President Obama. 'Very sorry to see someone I respected contribute to this mass media love affair,' Tom says. Well, to tell you the truth Mr. Overley, I do like Obama but I didn't think you'd notice. Todd, from Las Cruces, New Mexico, says 'the reason I don't hear about the people who hate Barack Obama is because the press has put a muzzle on them.' I don't know about that Todd. I show the producer my piece before it goes on the air every week and he'll tell me it isn't any good but he never puts a muzzle on me."

At the end of the January 25 broadcast, Rooney declared: "Maybe I'm reading the wrong newspapers and listening to the wrong people, but I'm not hearing anyone who hates Barack Obama." Well, apparently Rooney has found some Obama critics, in his own audience.

At the end of Sunday’s 60 Minutes on CBS, commentator Andy Rooney did some of his usual thinking out loud, praising Barack Obama: "I've lived through the election of a lot of American presidents -- more than ten, I think -- and about half the people I knew at the time hated one or the other of the two candidates...Maybe I'm reading the wrong newspapers and listening to the wrong people, but I'm not hearing anyone who hates Barack Obama." Perhaps Rooney should stop listening to his own network’s fawning Obama coverage and consult the 46% of the country that did not vote for the Democratic president.

Rooney touted some of the president’s early decisions: "I think we've got ourselves a really good president with a funny name...Obama has frozen the salaries of people in the White House who are making more than $100,000...Obama has put limits on lobbyists who infest Washington. He reversed Bush's policy of making it hard to get information out of our government through the Freedom of Information Act." Rooney concluded his fawning by declaring: "Obama just looks good every time he does anything."

If you haven't gotten to check out the Business & Media Institute's new weekly video blog, The Biz Flog, this week's topic is the media's shift from reporting on "recession" to all-out "depression."

Complete with old-timey piano music and grainy film, this week BMI gives you our take on the many instances when reporters have compared the current economy to a time when soup lines and the Dust Bowl carried headlines.

So, Do You Like Bush or Not?

It's getting hard to exaggerate the left-wing rantings of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. This week, he railed against the "criminal conspiracy to cover the ass" of the "fascist" Bush administration. It probably won't be long before he's dropping the F-word on-air. Olbermann also attacked the "nightmare presidency" of the current commander in chief and mocked Bush's "cynical exploitation" of 9/11. It's really a shame this guy won't have Rosie O'Donnell to follow him on MSNBC, huh?

She Likes Me!

Speaking of liberal MSNBC hosts (sorry for being redundant), Chris Matthews on Tuesday took credit for a line that Hillary Clinton recently used about leadership. Last week Mathews offered her some free advice and seemed pleased that she took it. "Well done," he enthused.

At the end of Sunday’s 60 Minutes, commentator Andy Rooney did his usual rant, this time about politicians. Of course when Rooney speaks of politicians, one always seems to come first to his mind: "I'll bet there hasn't been a day this year that President Bush's name hasn't been in the newspaper." At one point Rooney almost seemed sympathetic to the president, "A lot of people complain about things President Bush does but they wouldn't know what to do themselves if they were in his shoes." However, that sympathy soon turned to contempt as Rooney compared his own public speaking to that of President Bush, "I usually can’t remember what it was I was going to say. The president seems to have the same problem sometimes."

Unfortunately, Rooney seemed to remember exactly what he wanted to say at the end of his little diatribe:

The one thing I have to say for myself that I wouldn't say for President Bush is: I know I'm no where near smart enough to be President of the United States. But I will say I might have been smart enough not to get us into a war in Iraq.

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 hostility towards Ronald Reagan and other conservatives, and sycophantic coverage of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Today’s installment: America the Awful. On Monday, I recounted how many journalists offered sympathetic coverage of totalitarian communist regimes. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, too many journalists opted to take a harsher approach with their own country. In a commencement address at the State University of New York at New Paltz back on May 21, 2006, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., exposed his extreme left-wing agenda as he railed against everything he saw as wrong with America:

Video (0:52): Windows (1.64 MB), plus MP3 audio (261 kB).

In his usual odd commentary segment on Sunday’s "60 Minutes," CBS commentator, Andy Rooney decided to take a look at presidential vacation habits, and observed that while "President Bush has made 66 trips to his Texas ranch since taking office...having spent 436 days away from the White House," Jimmy Carter "took off only 79 days."

While Rooney recited a long list of presidents in his wandering train of thought, including Clinton, Reagan, Johnson, and Kennedy, he made sure to emphasize the contrast between Bush and Carter. Despite Andy’s admiration for Carter’s workaholic presidency, I think there are many who wished Jimmy had taken a few more years off.

Rooney then ended with the typically sarcastic conclusion that: "President Bush is back in the Oval Office now, so everything ought to be all right again in Washington."

In a post-Don Imus world, one would think journalists would be on their guard to not say or write anything that could be in any way perceived as racist.

Yet, just days after CBS's Andy Rooney made a racial slur concerning Hispanic baseball players, NBC's Matt Lauer actually called outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a "piñata."

Certainly, given Gonzales's ethnic background, and the context of the discussion, mightn't "whipping boy" or "punching bag" have been more appropriate?

Unfortunately, as he was speaking to Democrat strategist James Carville, this is what Lauer said on Tuesday's "Today" show (h/t Steve Hill of Target Rich Environment):

Video (0:36): Real (997 kB) and Windows (1.09 MB), plus MP3 audio (256 kB)

So, did you hear that Andy Rooney made a racial slur last week about baseball players all being named "Rodriguez?"

You didn't?

Well, how could you, for it appears that virtually nobody reported it.

To bring you up to speed, the CBS "60 Minutes" commentator wrote a column about America's national pastime last Thursday, and stated the following (emphasis added):

On the March 14 edition of "Imus in the Morning" guest and "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney discussed the possibility of a draft with Don Imus. In that exchange Rooney, like Senator Kerry and Congressman Rangel, implied that those who volunteer to serve do so out of desperation rather than patriotism.

DON IMUS: Tell me about your thoughts on re-instituting the draft.

ANDY ROONEY: Well, I think a draft produces a better army than the one we would have with all volunteers. Because I think you get average Americans if you, if you have a draft. And if it’s an all volunteer army, you get people who join up because of some problem in their own lives. They don’t have anything else to do, they don’t have a job, or they can’t find what they want to do, so they join the Army. And it doesn’t produce the best army.

Prompted by the death of President Gerald Ford, Andy Rooney, in his commentary at the end of Sunday's 60 Minutes, ruminated about all the Presidents since FDR and made clear he sees more to admire in Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton than in Ronald Reagan. Rooney praised Ford: “We were lucky to have such a good, normal American to step in to do the job.” On Carter, Rooney characterized him as “smart” and contended “it was hard to dislike Jimmy Carter, even if you were a Republican.” Rooney obviously wasn't a Republican in the late 1970s. “Ronald Reagan was the only movie star ever elected President,” Rooney noted before snidely remarking: “A lot of people thought he was better in the movies than in the White House.” Bill Clinton, however, “might have gone down in history as one of the best Presidents we ever had if it hadn't been for that one unfortunate incident that I don't want to talk about in case there are children watching.”

The midterm elections are approaching and some members of the media are revving up their bias. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann recently suggested that President Bush might be as big a threat as the terrorists. This was only a day after referring to conservative talk show hosts who visited the White House as the "Legion of Doom." CNN’s Jack Cafferty wondered if Karl Rove is planning an "October surprise" to salvage the Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections.

The print media have also offered unrestrained attacks from the left. A "Washington Post" report described House Speaker Dennis Hastert appearance as "a cross between Wildford Brimley and Jabba the Hutt." Nothing quite like objectivity, huh? A former "New York Times" bureau chief recently characterized the Christian right as "fascist." Perhaps he’d been chatting with "Newsweek" columnist Jonathan Alter. Alter told Don Imus he hoped the country has seen the last of "values voters."

The "Today" show fawned over Barack Obama, describing him as "electrifying" and a "rock star." This was on the same day that they giddily predicted a "perfect storm" to wipe out the Republicans in the midterms. Another early AM program, CNN’s "American Morning"encouraged author David Kuo to call for Christians to boycott the upcoming election.

At the end of Sunday's 60 Minutes, Andy Rooney expressed bafflement over why anyone would worry about a nuclear weapon in the hands of a communist tyrant: “I don't understand why we think it's okay for us to have a nuclear weapon, but it isn't okay for some other countries to have any.” And he went on to assert a very naive and dangerous view: “I don't think any country should have nuclear weapons. And that includes ours.” Noting how many “are in a tizzy” over North Korea's nuclear weapon test, Rooney rued that “we're a little late getting exercised about this. North Korea has always been more of a threat to world peace than Iraq ever was and if we were going to attack someone three years ago to make the world safer, we should have attacked North Korea, not Iraq.”

He then rationalized how “it's not hard to understand why North Korea wants the bomb. If we Americans lived in North Korea instead of here, do you think we'd be in favor of our little country having it? You're darn right we would.” Rooney acknowledged that the UN has “been an ineffectual organization,” but contended that's why “we've got to give it more power and the way to give it more power is to give it more responsibility,” so though a minute earlier he suggested the U.S. should have attacked North Korea instead of Iraq, he argued “the UN should take the bomb away from North Korea; we should not.”

Rosie O’Donnell, the newly installed co-host at "The View," observed the 9/11 anniversary by stating that America "squandered" world support and the next day she asserted that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam."

O’Donnell wasn’t the only media member to use September 11 as a pretext to bash America. CBS veteran Andy Rooney suggested in his "60 Minutes" commentary that America start acting in a way that "wouldn’t make so many people in the world want to kill us." MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann went further, accusing President Bush of "impeachable" offenses and "lies."

Appearing on another network, but continuing in the same vein, Sean Penn talked to CNN’s Larry King and mused about the President bringing fascism to the United States...

In his commentary at the end on Sunday's 60 Minutes, the day before the five year mark since 9/11, Andy Rooney noted that “we're trying to protect ourselves with more weapons,” a policy with which he only grudgingly agreed as he lamented, “we have to do it I guess.” Then, however, he suggested the fault for terrorism lies with American behavior, not the murderous ideology of terrorists who want to destroy Western democratic culture: “But might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn't make so many people in the world want to kill us." By that reasoning, during the Cold War should the U.S. have adopted policies meant to appease the Soviets? Rooney delivered his remarks on the season premiere of the program (delayed in the EDT/CDT zones by tennis for nearly a half hour) which gave two of the show's three segments to Katie Couric's piece on World Trade Center first responders who are suffering from the air they inhaled. (Transcript follows)

Video clip (25 secs): Real (700 KB) or Windows Media (800 KB), plus MP3 audio (135 KB)

Yes this is a few days old, from this past Sunday’s "60 Minutes" on CBS, but Andy Rooney’s commentary on the show was so far out, it had to be shared with the Newsbusters community. Although he began by making valid points about Americans needing to remember the true meaning of Memorial Day, and not just viewing it as a day off, and solemnly remembered friends he lost in World War II, some of his statements called into question whether the sacrifices made by those killed in battle were worth it.

"There's only so much time any of us can spend remembering those we loved who have died, but the men, boys really, who died in our wars deserve at least a few moments of reflection during which we consider what they did for us. They died."

On Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” Andy Rooney didn’t come right out and say that Americans should vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008…but you didn’t have to be telepathic to figure it out (hat tip to Expose the Left with video link to follow).

In his regular closing arguments – in which he has had free reign for decades to say whatever he feels with total impunity – Rooney suggested that women are smarter, nicer, more disciplined voters, and more honest than men. This makes one wonder how many men were still watching the broadcast when Rooney got around to actually making his point. After all, it's not often that one runs across such an unashamedly proud and outspoken male misandrist during prime time, is it?

Newsweek puts Katie Couric on the cover this week, and the cover story by Marc Peyser and Johnnie Roberts is easy, breezy, and totally free of any troublesome analysis of whether Couric is fair and balanced enough to attract non-liberal viewers. The most eye-opening line comes from former CBS reporter Marvin Kalb, responding to Andy Rooney's nobody's-happy-about-Katie rant on the Imus show:

"I remember when CBS hired [former game-show host] Mike Wallace and gave him the morning news," says Marvin Kalb, a former CBS correspondent who is now a senior fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center. "You should have heard the men's room conversation. My God, what have they done? They destroyed the Murrow tradition—all that. I think the negative spin on Katie Couric is unfair, and I think she is going to prove those people wrong. So take that, Andy Rooney, and screw you."