When Washington Post writer Sally Quinn came on the Charlie Rose show Wednesday night to discuss the Reverend Wright controversy, the accusations against whites flew wildly. Obama’s distancing from Wright was "so incredibly sad," and happened because "we are still a racist country," where "so many white Americans...have absolutely no idea what goes on inside black churches on a Sunday morning...and I think it brought out a lot of latent racism." She concluded the interview by insisting that whites "go to their white churches, and you wonder how they can call themselves Christians and still look at other people as though they are inferior."

Sally Quinn came on with Rev. Floyd Flake, a former Congressman from New York, who also discussed this with Rose the first time Wright became controversial. Quinn tried to say that Obama’s greater condemnation of Wright would help Obama, but it was tragic.

In an interesting way, I think it may have helped Obama, because I think that by [Wright] coming out the way he did, he allowed Obama to come out much more forcefully the way he did today. And he had to. He had absolutely no choice.

PBS talk show host Charlie Rose turned to the Reverend Wright issue on Wednesday night. Former New York Times music critic Kelefa Sanneh insisted the fuss over Wright comments like the government inventing AIDS for black genocide were a "red herring," that when you look at Wright’s old speeches and books, "there’s not much in there that’s hugely controversial," and even when he gets political, "he’s not making wildly controversial statements by and large." Sanneh also seemed to insist blacks couldn’t be racists.

Sanneh began by insisting that the Wright issue is being overblown, because there were radical things that Martin Luther King said that "would generate enormous controversy today." (Brent Bozell touched on that, the 1967 King speech at Riverside Church alleging both white and black American soldiers were brutalizing Vietnamese civilians.) But Rose was tough enough to respond: "But I want to know what that [King speech] was that’s equivalent to saying AIDS is a government conspiracy to kill black children?"

 

Ted Turner was not only interviewed, but celebrated on PBS – on April Fool’s Day. The prank was apparently on PBS. It was as if Turner had a subversive mission, to prove that PBS isn’t just for smart people. True to form, Turner walked off a cliff of rhetorical excess on the "Charlie Rose" show, charging that global warming was going to grow so severe, that in a few decades, most of humanity would be extinct. "We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten -- not ten, but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals."

 

When it comes to media bias, if liberals are not only able to recognize your press organization's lack of impartiality, but also assert such when cameras are rolling, you know you're not fooling anybody.

Such appears to certainly be the case with cable network MSNBC, and, in particular, its "Countdown" host, which both were the targets of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) a few weeks ago when he actually stated three times on PBS's "Charlie Rose," "Keith Olbermann should be on the Obama payroll."

With Olbermann's sycophantic behavior during this campaign, what makes Rendell think he's not?

With that in mind, the following extraordinarily candid discussion on March 26 that somehow slipped under the radar until now is sure to delight all those disgusted with the behavior of MSNBC employees (h/t Olbermann Watch via Hot Air, video embedded upper right):

A longer look at the transcript of Ted Turner's April 1 interview with Charlie Rose on PBS shows that not only did he warn of horrendous climate change, he also pushed relentlessly for dramatic curbs on population growth.  People must be limited to one or two children apiece for the planet to survive:

CHARLIE ROSE: What is possible? Tell me what`s possible to do?

TED TURNER: It`s possible that in 15 or 20 years we can completely redo it. If we -- we have to mobilize. This is how important it is, and how important that we do it quickly. We have to mobilize the same way we did when we entered World War II in 1941. We have to fully mobilize everything we have and put it into changing the energy system over, and not just here in the United States, but all over the world.

It`s going to be the biggest business project in the history of world. Fortunes, billions of dollars are going to be made. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to be employed.

We`re going to have clean air. We`re going to have so many benefits from it. It`s not going to cost us anything once we get going with it. It`s not going to cost us anything.

You’ve seen the Ted Turner quote from the April 1 Charlie Rose show about global warming turning what’s left of us into cannibals, but the point should still be made that PBS and Rose treated him as a statesman and a scholar. The host oozed all over him at the show's end: "You're a remarkable man..I enjoy your company. I think the life you've lived with passion, independence, a sense of great, great, and deep concern about the world we live in is remarkable."

What Turner said in reply was highlighted by Rose at the beginning of the hour: "I love this planet. It's worth saving. I mean, it's worth saving.You know, I know we're the same people that did the Holocaust, but we also did the Mona Lisa and Beethoven`s Fifth Symphony. I mean, there is so much -- this world -- we can't turn it into a cinder. We've got to protect it for ourselves and for our children. And it's worth fighting for. And that's all I'm doing, is trying to fight to help save humanity."

Rose was so indulgent of Turner that he goaded him into singing "Over the Rainbow" and "My Old Kentucky Home" and told him "it was good."

After the cannibalism talk, it was more amusing to see this exchange about his feud with Rupert Murdoch, and how he hasn't been caught saying anything stupid:

Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose's PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals.” He also applied moral equivalence in describing Iraqi insurgents as “patriots” who simply “don't like us because we've invaded their country” and so “if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we'd be doing the same thing.” On not taking drastic action to correct global warming:

Not doing it will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.

Turner ridiculed the need for a big U.S. military, insisting “China just wants to sell us shoes. They're not building landing craft to attack the United States,” and “even with our $500 billion military budget, we can't win in Iraq. We're being beaten by insurgents who don't even have any tanks.” After Rose pointed out the Iraqi insurgents “have a lot of roadside bombs that kill a lot of Americans” and wondered “where do you think they come from?”, Turner answered:

I think that they're patriots and that they don't like us because we've invaded their country and occupied it. I think if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we'd be doing the same thing: we'd be bombing them too. Nobody wants to be invaded.

Audio: MP3 audio clip (1:00)

PBS can be satirized easily as the network where people display their satisfaction with their own intellectual sophistication, as opposed to those rubes who rely on other networks for their information. On Tuesday night’s Charlie Rose show, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham warned Rose to prepare for an anti-Obama onslaught in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright video clips, a gathering ‘partisan narrative’ from Republicans that is crude, xenophobic, and increasingly racialized. The new code word for Obama will be "exotic," code for black and foreign and perhaps Muslim.

Meacham, like many others, was wowed by the sophistication of the Obama speech. "I hope that translates," he said, because the Democrats are apparently the Party of Sophistication. "We should feel good about the country in the past few months because we've had a pretty serious political conversation about what we -- at least on the Democratic side -- about the nature of things. But it is sophisticated and it is nuanced," which means "most people" with simpler minds will just conclude "there's some crazy minister that Obama had to distance himself from who said these outrageous things."

God bless the troops – those wife abusers? That was the conflicted message emanating from Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Charlie Rose on PBS stations last Thursday night. Rose ran Pelosi through the usual list of anti-war talking points, and the Speaker suggested our troops are riddled with "mental challenges" and domestic violence, just seconds after blessing the troops:

CHARLIE ROSE: Some argue that the sacrifice had been primarily by the men and women in the armed services and their families. And part of the reason that we ought not go to war, in which the American people are not asked to sacrifice behind the military.

NANCY PELOSI : Well, the one percent of our population is feeling this in a very personal way. And that`s just not fair. The shared sacrifice -- what did we do? We went to war, and the president gave a tax cut to the wealthiest people in America instead of saying we’re going to have a shared sacrifice here so everyone knows what the cost of this war is.

Newsweek columnist and pundit Jonathan Alter managed to double-embarrass himself on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. He should win the award for Most Embarrassed Pundit. Appearing on Monday night's Charlie Rose show on PBS (video at CharlieRose.com), Alter repeatedly threw dirt on Hillary's political grave, suggesting she would never become president and would have to settle for becoming "one of the great all-time senators." But he also suggested she had no "subtextual sexual energy" that brings "electricity on the rope line." He said all the presidential sex appeal was on the male side:

I think, and this is a controversial thing to say, but I think one of problems we`re learning with being a woman candidate in this country is that it`s hard to create that electricity on the rope line. It`s really only in France, maybe, where you can use sex appeal if you are a woman. In the United States, it`s men. It`s Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bobby Kennedy who went -- you see them on the rope line. There`s something sexual going on there with the voters.

On the PBS talk show "Charlie Rose" Thursday night, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham declared that Hillary Clinton was right that it was a "great night for Democrats" and a bad night for Republicans. He scoured Mike Huckabee as an embarrassment: "Do you really want to see if a Southern Baptist minister who took two days to find out about the National Intelligence Estimate about Iran is going to be your standard bearer in a world at war?" He also declared it was "a rather odd thing for the Republicans of Iowa" to "say to the world that the strongest possible president is a Governor of Arkansas who does not have a great deal or any real foreign policy experience." Meacham seemed to have no sense of irony that the same words were easily spoken of Bill Clinton in 1992, and Rose didn’t call him on it, even though they joked "how many presidents does Hope, Arkansas get in one lifetime?"

Meacham also never thought it was odd that the Democrats of Iowa said to the world that the strongest possible president is a man with three years experience in the U.S. Senate who said (a) that he would meet with America-hating dictators and strongmen like Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez without preconditions and (b) then wildly swung back to suggesting he would bomb inside Pakistan to strike al-Qaeda. Meacham, who honored McCain’s courage for supporting the surge in Iraq, never mentioned Obama thought it was a mistake. When it came to the Democrats, Meacham sounded like he was offering a toast:

On Wednesday evening, former White House adviser and current Newsweek columnist Karl Rove sat down with PBS's Charlie Rose for one of the most astounding interviews I've seen in a while.

From the Iraq war, to the Valerie Plame scandal and media bias, there was something for everyone in this 51-minute segment.

In particular, near the end, Rove stated that the White House wished the October 2002 war resolution vote in Congress would have been delayed until after the elections.

That's not part of the conventional wisdom from today's press, is it?

Some of the highlights were (video available here):

As Congress debates an expeditious and possibly capricious withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, with sickeningly predictable cheerleading for such an eventuality from the media, the Baghdad bureau chief for the New York Times claimed Tuesday that this would lead to "all-out civil war" with "levels of violence [that] would eclipse by quite a long way the bloodshed we`ve seen to date."

Appearing on PBS' "Charlie Rose," John F. Burns also said "the United States armed forces are a very important inhibitor against violence."

Rather contrary from the views expressed by the left and their media minions that the American presence in Iraq is what is responsible for the violence, wouldn't you agree?

With that in mind, here are some extraordinary highlights of this interview with a full transcript to follow (video available here, interview begins at minute 3:50). Please prepare yourself for an alternate reality:

MRC intern Michael Lanza reports that late-night PBS talk show host Charlie Rose is nothing if not complimentary toward the glitterati of the left. On the June 12 show, he had to insist that leftist hedge-fund philanthropist George Soros was a "promoter of democracy" when a guest who worked for him started noting he was a socialist. On June 4, during his interview with Carl Bernstein on his Hillary biography, Rose oozed that the impeached former president was "the most curious human being on the planet." Rose also asked Bernstein if there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against the Clintons:

ROSE: Is this something like a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?

BERNSTEIN: The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy I think existed.

"Allow Me to be a Little More Obvious"

This is something that must truly be seen to be believed. "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith concluded an interview with former Vice President Al Gore by attempting to pin a Gore ‘08 button on the politician. Why stop there, Harry? Why not slap a bumper sticker across your suit? (Be sure and check out the NB video clip.)

"But is He Smart?"

Sometimes the media make it very clear what they would like you to believe. On Tuesday’s "Today" show, various NBC reporters described senatorial candidate and former liberal radio host Al Franken, as "smart," "Harvard smart" and a "smart guy." Now, try and imagine if Ann Coulter ran for elected office. Think Meredith Vieira would laud her intellect?

"Hmmm. Have We Left Anything Out?"

On Tuesday’s "Good Morning America," the ABC program featured an extensive segment on the root causes of why Rosie O’Donnell left "The View." They covered every angle of the story. Well, except for the fact that the comedienne insinuated that American troops are terrorists.

Demonstrating the insular liberal world of New York public television, PBS late-night talk show host Charlie Rose hosted an interview for Al Gore in front of a very supportive draft-Gore-for-president audience at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan and then made it his Friday night national television broadcast. He asked Gore if the election was stolen in Florida, if Gore would consider running in 2008 now that he's speaking his mind freely without consultants, and how the network news elite has played a part in "The Assault on Reason."

The whole thing had the air of Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio, with Charlie Rose playing James Lipton and a supportive audience bathing the guest in adulation. Rose began with an effusive tribute, reading purple prose about how right he is on the issues and how graciously accepted defeat in 2000 (apparently leaving out the six weeks of desperate pleading and lawyering?) from two liberal columnists from The Washington Post and a liberal venture capitalist:

On May 4, Bill Maher appeared on the PBS talk show Charlie Rose to denounce Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Speaking of being greeted as liberators, Maher said America will get back its global reputation almost instantly once Bush is gone and the Carter-Clinton people are back in charge of foreign policy:

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, we`re at a low ebb in terms of our respect around the world. In your judgment, and people you talk to -- Madeleine Albright and the whole range of people -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, who come there [to Maher's show in L.A.], how long does it take, if there`s a change in administration -- which there clearly will be -- and if it is somebody that has the same belief that you do, will it take to get America back?

BILL MAHER: Quickly.

CHARLIE ROSE: That`s what I think.

You know you must be watching PBS when Good Friday is a time to interview promoters of gnostic gospels and leftist preachers who equate the persecutors of Christ with "rugged individualism." On this Good Friday, April 6, Charlie Rose interviewed Princeton professor Elaine Pagels and Harvard professor Karen King, who explored with Rose how the "Gospel of Judas" shows parallels between early Christian martyrs and modern-day Islamic suicide bombers. Leftist Rev. James Forbes of New York’s Riverside Church carried the anti-individualist message.

Rose began with the professors by promising "some fascinating new information about Judas and Jesus. The New Testament presents Judas’ actions towards Jesus as the most infamous of betrayals. The long-lost Gospel of Judas tells a very different story. It shows Judas as Jesus` favorite disciple and willing collaborator."  

In 1992, Republican chairman Rich Bond oafishly suggested in public that he was arguing the media had a liberal bias because he was "working the refs," cynically complaining about harsh coverage to get better coverage. But many candidates try to work reporters this way, and on the slightly dated April 4 edition of the PBS talk show Charlie Rose, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter said Bill Clinton's trying that tactic against Barack Obama, who he feels hasn't been challenged or critiqued by reporters:

JONATHAN ALTER: He`s working the refs, as we say.

CHARLIE ROSE: He`s doing what?

ALTER: He`s working the refs....Basketball players understand that.

One last tidbit from State of the Union Night: On Tuesday night’s Charlie Rose talk show on PBS, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and ABC political director Mark Halperin and White House correspondent Martha Raddatz took turns sticking forks into President Bush and saying he was done. Meacham said Bush attempted to show he’s "actually involved with reality, that he’s a reality-based figure." Halperin agreed that the president "wanted to show that he had a reality-based presidency, but I don’t think he did. I think the war is over politically." Halperin even suggested that if Congress could vote by secret ballot, both Republicans and Democrats would vote to end the war – and vote for Bush’s presidency "to end today."