Commentary

If "Hardball" host Chris Matthews is indeed going to challenge Arlen Specter for his senate seat in 2010, he must resign his position with MSNBC.

So say a growing chorus of observers from both sides of the aisle.

As reported by Politico's Michael Calderone Thursday:

If you want to get an idea of the kind of rose-colored microscope Obama will be scrutinized with by journalists now that he's headed to the White House, you need look no further than David Broder's column in the Washington Post Thursday which actually began:

The first week of Barack Obama's transition to the presidency has gone about as well as anyone could imagine. 

Hmmm. I guess no one could have imagined president-elect Obama being greeted by a bullish show of confidence from Wall Street in the week following his coronation rather than an historic stock market collapse.

For some reason Broder chose to ignore the 14 percent decline in equity values since Election Day, but the Wall Street Journal didn't: 

As NewsBusters previously reported, the Washington Post's ombudsman admitted Sunday that her paper's coverage of this year's presidential campaign was clearly biased towards Barack Obama.

Although that shouldn't surprise any sane person in this country, such a mea culpa is just good marketing unless the entity confessing the inappropriate behavior plans on doing something to correct it.

Jennifer Rubin of Commentary magazine agreed Sunday, and suggested that the road to recovery is first admitting the problem (picture courtesy Grinning Planet):

From a non-Jew, it would smack of anti-Semitism.  From Eric Alterman? You be the judge.

The author of the Altercations column at Media Matters has a running complaint:  Rick Klein, editor of The Note at ABC News, pays too much respect to the work of other Jewish pundits. Jennifer Rubin, one of the chief bloggers at Commentary's "Contentions" blog, was Alterman's first target, in his August 1 column [emphasis added throughout]:

I realize I may be the only person in the world to care about this, and I only care a tiny bit, but what does Commentary's Jennifer Rubin have on The Note's Rick Klein?

I realize that Mr. Klein is, in many respects, a fully-worked ref, citing right-wing publications that have proven consistently wrong about everything throughout the past eight years -- following the requisite ABC advertising which justifies the expense of the effort to his corporate overlords -- while ignoring those on the center-left who have proven right. But even so, Commentary? Come now. The guy cites her every day. Are they dating? Did his mother lose a bet to her mother playing canasta in Boca?

Sometimes chronicling media bias and hypocrisy is just too easy. You couldn't have asked for better material than what was provided Wednesday by the New York Times which ran a thousand-word-plus article discussing the alleged nepotism of Commentary’s hiring of John Podhoretz to run the magazine. (Hat tip: Ace.)

I’ll grant that this type of character assassination article is typical when it comes to the liberal press’s normal gorillas-in-the-mist view of conservatism. Still, you’d think that the Times might be a little more inclined to avoid such journalism when its prestige and profits have been on a downward spiral ever since publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. was handed the reins to the New York Times in 1992 by his father.