Tommy Christopher

While various liberal media outlets have been busy trying to smear former senator Rick Santorum as a racist for supposedly saying, "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money," at a campaign event, other intellectually honest liberals have rendered a different verdict.

One of them, Mediaite writer Tommy Christopher, noted today how "Young Turks" co-host Jayar Jackson thinks the Santorum is unfairly being criticized for what, in context, seems to have been a candidate tripping over a verbal tic (emphases mine):

If we gave out a prize for the media personality who was the biggest drama queen over the non-scandal regarding the disagreement about when President Obama should address a joint session of Congress, I'd nominate Mediaite's Tommy Christopher, who yesterday insisted that "Speaker John Boehner Should Resign For His Unprecedented Insult to the President":

Probably in response to a firestorm of criticism over their cover photo of Rep. Michele Bachmann, Newsweek today released a slideshow of "outtakes" that they say show that, in essence, the Minnesota Republican is unphotogenic and didn't give them much to work with in terms of a flattering photo.

For his part, left-leaning Mediaite.com reporter Tommy Christopher isn't buying it, calling "bulls**t" on the Tina Brown-edited publication (emphasis mine):

 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker said Friday New Jersey Governor Chris Christie won't run for president next year because "he realizes there’s still a crazy tax that a Republican nominee has to pay at this point."

This in Tucker's view stated on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" includes cozying up to the birthers, coddling Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, and denying manmade global warming (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Over the past couple of years, former Hearst columnist Helen Thomas had adopted a recurring habit of employing moral equivalency between al-Qaeda terrorists and the actions of the American military as, on at least three occasions, she referred to "so-called terrorists" or "so-called terrorism."

In February 2009, after she used the term "so-called terrorists" in a White House briefing, she was asked by Tommy Christopher – currently of Mediaite – to explain why she employed this choice of words, and she elaborated: "Because some people think they’re freedom fighters since they are in their own country. And we can dub them as ‘terrorists’ and their tactics are horrible, but so are ours. We drop bombs on people in Iraq, people who did nothing to us."

On the January 14, 2010, The O’Reilly Factor, FNC host Bill O’Reilly used his show’s regular "Reality Check" segment to highlight comments she made after being questioned again by Christopher in which she referred to America fighting "so-called terrorism" and expressed a view of moral equivalency between the United States and the terrorists with which America is at war. When asked in an interview with Mediaite what her point was in repeatedly asking Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan at a January 7, 2010, press conference why al-Qaeda terrorists are trying to kill Americans, as if to suggest that such behavior was provoked by wrongdoing by the U.S., Thomas responded:

Is it possible to be so wrapped up in a media culture that one could minimize a sacred religious holiday in a shoddy attempt to write a clever headline? Mediaite's Tommy Christopher and his editors seemed to have pulled this feat off.

Christopher, who has had a much-publicized run-in with Andrew Breitbart, has a new hero, former American Enterprise Institute scholar David Frum. Christopher elevated Frum to messianic status in a Good Friday April 2 post headlined "Did David Frum ‘Die' For GOP's Sins?" specifically praising the former AEI scholar for his appearance on Comedy Central's April 1 "The Colbert Report."

According to Christopher, Frum still wants to be a conservative and hasn't converted to the liberal ideology, like others have before him. He argued that lends credence to Frum, who is more known for levying criticisms about conservatives and Republicans, and not his conservative world view. (As if being popular with the liberal blogosphere was a badge of honor.)

With an increasing attempt by the left to paint Tea Party protestors as racist loons, it becomes of great importance to identify those who purport to represent conservative values, but in reality are nothing more than radical individuals. 

As NewsBusters has previously reported, liberal Web sites - particularly Talking Points Memo (TPM) and the Huffington Post - have continually cited the Tea Party links of one Dale Robertson.  Why?  Because he further promotes the concept of the tea partier as racist.  Robertson once demonstrated a level of racial ignorance that boggles the mind by being photographed with a sign reading "Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = N***ar".

But the reality is that Robertson has predominantly self-described links to the Tea Party movement, while legitimate factions of the movement have been trying to distance themselves from the man.  His claims of influence within the Tea Party have turned out to be mildly embellished.  Now, it turns out his web of tales is growing ever more tangled.

Tommy Christopher of Mediaite recently interviewed Robertson, in which he claims that the sign that made him famous for the wrong reasons was simply a fake.  As Mediaite reports:

Early Saturday morning new developments arose in the controversy surrounding AOL News' decision to fire liberal writer Tommy Christopher. As first reported by NewsBusters many believed that the evidence pointed to Tommy Christopher's critique of Playboy writer Guy Cimbalo's attack on conservative women as the catalyst for his firing. However, though NewsBusters has still received no response to our repeated attempts to contact both Time Warner and AOL Politics Daily Chief Editor Melinda Henneberger, Henneberger has released this statement to Jason Linkins of The Huffington Post:

Does it make a lick of sense to you that I would fire anyone for standing up for women, or for taking on that disgusting story in Playboy? The bloggers for the old AOL site, Political Machine, weren't retained for the new site, Politics Daily, which has only been in existence for the last five weeks, and which we're just staffing up. Sorry so dull, but there's nothing more to it than that.

Tommy Christopher has posted a response at DailyDose.us strongly disputing Henneberger's claim that she supported his coverage of the Playboy story:

Editor's Note/Update below: AOL editor's email and further business connections revealed.

AOL News has been bending over backwards lately to make sure that they do not cover the controversy surrounding Playboy.com writer Guy Cimbalo's vile attack on conservative women. AOL News has taken some drastic steps to censor any mention, let alone criticism, of Playboy's screed. They have deleted posts about the article, banned contributors from mentioning it, and even fired one of their liberal writers over it.

The fact that banning reporters from, well, reporting is so contrary to the purpose of a news organization it really is puzzling. It seems to be in direct contrast to their commitment to "traditional journalistic values".

The evidence is stacking up quite high that AOL News fired liberal writer Tommy Christopher today due to his repeated attempts to get coverage of the Playboy attack list on AOL's Politics Daily. Christopher had first attempted to post this criticism of Playboy's sick list the day it was published on their website. However, he was surprised to find that shortly after putting his article on Politics Daily it was deleted by an editor.

His surprise stemmed from the fact that in his two years of writing for the site not one other post had ever been deleted by an editor.