Late Show

On the CBS Late Show Thursday, host David Letterman aired a mock video of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich having sex with a vending machine.

This came at the end of his Top Ten segment called, "Top Ten Revelations In The Interview With Newt Gingrich's Ex-Wife" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

CBS comedian David Letterman teed off on the Republican presidential field on Monday night while barely batting an eye toward President Obama or the Democrats. The Late Show host joked at the expense of Newt Gingrich's first marriage and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's weight, while comparing former First Lady Pat Nixon to a reptile from Star Trek.

In addition, the CBS comedian dismissed the entire GOP presidential field as he insinuated that none in the group of rich boring white guys would beat President Obama in the general election. [Video below the break.]

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, Arizona Senator John McCain complained about ABC's George Stephanopoulos because the ABC host asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney if states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives.

On Tuesday, Diane Sawyer absurdly claimed the Occupy Wall Street protests have spread to more than a thousand countries.

Following in this arithmetically-challenged tradition, David Letterman told former President Bill Clinton Wednesday Obama's been in office "a year and a half, close to two years" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Updated [12:45 ET]: Full transcript added.

Appearing on Monday's "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS, NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams responded to Letterman's assertion that Texas Governor Rick Perry was a "right-wing conservative psych job" by declaring: "In a Republican primary race in this early stage, you run far to the right....You can't say something shocking enough in some of these crowds." [Audio available here]

Williams observed: "You're trying to keep tacking to the right of your opponent." He then warned: "This will all settle down, though comments last forever. They will all be held accountable for what they're saying now. It's tough to run in the general after this."

View video after the jump

Back in May, actor/comedian Martin Short celebrated the killing of Osama bin Laden by singing, on the Late Show with David Letterman, “Bastard in the Sand,” a parody set to the tune of Elton John's “Candle in the Wind.”

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday, I thought I'd re-post video of the entertaining song (original May 30 NB post).

Is there anything David Letterman hates more than conservative women?

On Wednesday's "Late Show," the host went after Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann saying, "She is now publishing her memoirs, and I thought, well, wait a minute, why can't we pray that away?" (video follows with transcript and commentary)

The hypocrisy of Rachel Maddow knows no bounds.

On Tuesday's "Late Show," the MSNBCer scolded Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for meeting with Libya's Moammar Gaddafi in August 2009 while completely ignoring the fact that President Obama met him at the G8 summit the month before (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 A truly amazing coincidence happened on Monday night as former President George W. Bush was praised for helping millions in Africa by two separate public figures in two unrelated matters - the fight against AIDS in Africa, and South Sudan’s successful fight for independence - on two different television shows.

As rocker Bono of U-2 appeared as a guest on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman, he praised President Bush for helping to save so far five million lives in Africa over the past eight years because of his push to supply treatment to AIDS patients.

And on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, guest and human rights activist John Prendergast of the Enough Project, when prodded by host Stephen Colbert, noted that it was under Bush that America used its influence to help the South Sudanese secure a peace deal with the north.

Regurgitating the same kind of derogatory comments he regularly spews on his Friday night HBO show, Bill Maher showed up Monday night on the Late Show with David Letterman where CBS, unlike HBO, excised his vile terminology for Tea Party activists.

Maher denounced Tea Party followers as “sad, unfortunate people” because they are “corporate America's useful idiots” who don’t allow “facts” to “get in that tin foil helmet.”

Then he employed his usual “tea-baggers” phrase, but CBS silenced the “baggers” so viewers heard dead air when Maher spoke that foul term:

I don't have any respect, no, I don't have any respect for the tea-(baggers) [word silenced] and I do call them the tea-(baggers) [word silenced again] -- even though they hate it. I will stop calling them Tea-(baggers) [word silenced for a third time] when they stop calling it Obamacare, that's my deal.

Are you old enough to remember the polio-era line: "funny as an iron lung"?  After all, what kind of person would find funny the notion of someone fighting to breathe?

Answer: Mika Brzezinski.

Today's Morning Joe played a Letterman clip of a faux-promo for an imaginary TV show called "The Dick Cheney Story."  As the title song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show plays merrily in the background, we're treated to images of Cheney wielding a gun, in a wheelchair and undergoing open-heart surgery.  The clip closes with video of Cheney fighting to get a breath of air.

Cut to Mika, doubled-over, laughing hysterically, literally to the point of tears.

View video after the jump.

Catching up with a Thursday night appearance by Senator Rand Paul to plug his new book, Paul’s segment on the Late Show exposed David Letterman as an arrogantly ill-informed ally of Wisconsin’s public employee unions: “Why don't we just raise the taxes and let these folks have their collective bargaining, have their union representation and go back to their jobs? Raise the taxes on the wealthy.”

When Paul tried to educate Letterman about how a small percent of the wealthy pay far more than their fair share, Letterman was an oblivious student as he baselessly countered: “I think there's something wrong with those numbers. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with them.”

Paul had outlined his wish to reduce government spending, prompting Letterman to retort: “What would be so wrong then in terms of leaving the public sector alone and reducing tax benefits for the wealthy and large corporations? Why couldn't you make up your money that way?” (Audio: MP3 clip)

Searching for an upside to the WikiLeaks release of secret documents, Late Show host David Letterman on Wednesday night pointed to how such disclosures could have possibly prevented the 9/11 attacks since former President George Bush had disregarded “for months and months and months” the warning “that bin Laden and al-Qaeda were interested in hijacking planes and flying them into buildings,” but not even Rachel Maddow, his far-left guest from MSNBC, bought his spin. Letterman contended:

There is the viewpoint if WikiLeaks had been in business prior to the attack of 9/11 and we knew that George Bush had looked at a document suggesting that bin Laden and al-Qaeda were interested in hijacking planes and flying them into buildings – which largely went disregarded for months and months and months until long after the attack. If we had known that, via something like WikiLeaks, we perhaps could have acted a little more alertly.

In fact, the Presidential Daily Brief to which Letterman referred, the one titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US,” was presented to Bush on August 6, barely five weeks before 9/11, not “months and months and months” in advance.

As the long holiday weekend comes to an end, catching up with a humorous, seemingly spontaneous, moment on the last fresh Late Show before Thanksgiving. David Letterman is a big believer in cataclysmic predictions about global warming, but on Wednesday’s program his mom, Dorothy, rejected his proposition that global warming was to blame for some unseasonably warm days in Indianapolis -- prompting her disappointed son to shake his head in disapproval.

Dorothy, better known as “Dave’s mom,” appears annually from her kitchen in suburban Indianapolis to let her son guess the types of pies she’s baked for Thanksgiving. This year, the 89-year-old remarked “it's been unseasonably warm,” leading her son to assert “that's that climate change. It's the global warming. You know that, mom? Do you believe in the climate change, in the global warming?”

To which, Dorothy Letterman innocently responded: “Not really.”  (MP3 audio clip)

CBS "Late Show" host David Letterman bashed the Fox News Channel in his Top Ten list Tuesday (partial transcript after the break):

Top Ten Signs There's Trouble at FOX News

Earning applause from the audience inside Manhattan's Ed Sullivan Theater for Wednesday's Late Show, Donald Trump gave David Letterman his take on placing a new mosque near Ground Zero: “I think it's very insensitive to build it there. I think it's not appropriate, a I think it's insensitive and it shouldn't be built there.” Letterman frowned, prompting Trump to point out to the audience: “I don't know if he agrees.”

Letterman eventually asked “what about the notion” of when the “pilgrims came over...looking for religious expression? And as far as I've always known, that's a fundamental building block of what makes this country great.” Trump agreed, but “it's caused such a storm that the people doing it would make so much good will” if they moved it to a different location.

When Trump repeated his point, to more applause, about how “it's very insensitive to build it there and I think they should go someplace else,” a befuddled Letterman wondered: “Describe for me what insensitivity is manifested if it's built there?” And Letterman fretted: “Does this suggest that we are in fact officially at war with Muslims?”

To which, Trump observed: “Well, somebody knocked down the World Trade Center.”

David Letterman for at least the second time in eight days mocked Barack Obama for spending so much time on R&R

During his "Late Show" opening monologue, the host quipped, "The President's been busy, he redecorated the Oval Office and then he took another two week vacation." 

Moments later, Letterman talked about Obama's address to the nation the previous day before presenting a video of the speech. 

As you'll see from this doctored clip, the President wasn't wearing attire at all suitable for the occasion (video follows with commentary):

David Letterman on Tuesday took quite a swipe at Barack Obama.

During the opening monologue of CBS's "Late Show," the host asked the audience, "You know who else is on vacation?"

Letterman answered, "President Barack Obama. And this is his, since he's been in office, this is his sixth vacation."

Then came the marvelous and surprising punch line (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo): 

Appearing on the Late Show on Monday night to plug his Friday night Dateline on the 5th anniversary of Katrina, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams bizarrely asserted “we're still enjoying the fruits really of the Clinton economy,” claimed Tea Party activists who say “we want our country back” want it back “from the Trilateral Commission” and ridiculed their presumed hypocrisy as he insisted “you see a lot of signs, ‘Federal Government Out of My Social Security,’ ‘Federal Government Out of My Medicare and Medicaid.’ But for the federal government, of course, those programs would not exist.”

Plus, he passed along how “I'm hearing a few people say” that President Barack Obama won’t run for re-election because he “wants to somehow transcend the presidency,” citing a British columnist who contends he was “never supposed to be an ordinary President.” Williams considered the possibility Obama could be as consequential as Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton: “Jimmy Carter converted the post-presidency, redesigned the idea of an ex-President. Solving diseases and bad elections around the world. Bill Clinton with the Clinton Global Initiative trying to do the same thing.”

Bret Baier on Thursday rebutted Rachel Maddow's claim to David Letterman that Fox News intentionally tries to show images of "scary black people" in order to frighten white folks into voting for conservatives.

As NewsBusters previously reported, the MSNBC host was a guest of the CBS "Late Show" Tuesday, and made some pretty disgusting comments about a competing cable news network. 

Speaking with WOR radio's Steve Malzberg, the host of FNC's "Special Report" countered that because Fox addresses stories that other outlets don't, that "doesn't mean that there's political motivation behind covering actual news."

This, of course, is a huge factor in liberal media bias, and is what folks that analyze news reports refer to as bias by omission (transcript follows with commentary, audio available here with relevant section at 10:00): 

Confirming her membership in Manhattan’s liberal elite, Katie Couric boasted on Tuesday’s Late Show that she plans to follow Tom Friedman’s admonition, that in refusing to move away from oil “we have met the enemy and he is us,” and so she’s realized she “should” buy a Toyota Prius, the favorite of conspicuously superior liberals, or at least a hybrid. Couric recounted how her daughter told her “‘we should turn in the car we have’ and ‘get a Prius or a hybrid.’ And I said, ‘you know, Ellie, we should do that.’ And we're going to look into it.”

(“Prius owners act as if for every mile they drive, they prevent a coral reef from turning into a tidal wave that will hit Manhattan,” Joel Stein quipped in Time back in February.)

“I think Tom Friedman had a great column,” Couric touted, on how “we are responsible for creating this problem” in the Gulf of Mexico “and we have to start contemplating our choices in terms of energy,” so “hopefully something like this will really force people to reconsider their choices.”

Appearing as a guest on Friday’s Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, left-wing comedian Robert Klein suggested that it was bad that Rush Limbaugh turned out to be in good health after his hospital visit in Hawaii, inspiring laughter from Letterman. Klein: "You lose some, you win some." After Letterman brought up the birther conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in America, Klein, who is known for attacking conservatives in his comedy act over sex scandals while being softer on liberals, changed the subject to Limbaugh’s fourth marriage to suggest that Limbaugh is hypocritical for opposing same-sex marriage, and then joked about the possibility of the conservative talker having health problems. Klein:

What's his name, Rush Limbaugh, who believes so much in the sanctity of marriage he's done it four times now, you know, but, you know, not if he, doesn't approve of marriage if both the husband and wife are circumcised, you know, that's out of the questions. I think a lot of that came from him, and, you know, he was in the hospital couple of months ago in Hawaii. Turned out to be nothing. See? You lose some, you win some. But anyway.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Friday, June 11, Late Show with David Letterman:

Commenting on the new health care law, on Wednesday’s Late Show with David Letterman, comedian/actor Chris Rock cracked: “I feel sorry for the people that were against it” since “that's going to be a tough one to explain to your grand kids.”

Rock, on to promote his new movie, Death at a Funeral, barbed that ObamaCare opponents remind him of those against civil rights in the 1960s who years later had to answer, “grand daddy, is this your ‘I Hate Martin Luther King’ hat?”

Audio: MP3 clip.

A couple of the lines from Rock on the April 7 show, delivered as jokes but clearly conveying his true feelings:

Here's a headline I'm sure you never dreamed of seeing: "David Letterman Gives the Tea Party the Best Showcase it's Ever Had."

So wrote Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker Wednesday about the previous evening's interview of Sandpoint, Idaho, Tea Party President Pam Stout on CBS's "Late Show."

Tucker went on to call the segment "quietly remarkable" which seems an understatement not only given Letterman's nonconfrontational approach with Stout, but also because at one point, he even said there were "many things about this [Tea Party] movement that I admire" (videos in three parts embedded below the fold with commentary, h/t Hot Air):

With the help of the MRC's talented Bob Parks, the Culture and Media Institute produced a video based on its report, "Sex, Violence and Hate: the Top 10 Most Disgusting Attacks on Conservative Women."

From Playboy magazine's "hate f---" list to comparing Sarah Palin to a case of "herpes," the media took every opportunity to tear down conservative women, not based on what they had to say or the values they promoted, but by commenting on their looks and perceived sexual behavior in incredibly misogynic ways.

Be sure to visit the MRC's video sharing Web site, Eyeblast, for more examples of liberal bias.  

In a clear sign liberal media elites are growing weary of the White House, comedian David Letterman went after President Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel Tuesday evening.

During the "Top Ten" segment of the "Late Show," Letterman counted down the signs that Emanuel is nuts.

Before beginning the list, Letterman explained with shocking detail that this was precipitated by Rep. Eric Massa's (D-N.Y.) assertion that Emanuel once cornered him in the Congressional shower room wearing nothing but an evil grimace.

Maybe most surprising, Letterman managed to lampoon the COS without once referencing to Sarah Palin (video embedded below the fold with transcribed list, h/t Story Balloon):

March is Women's History Month, in which we acknowledge the accomplishments and contributions of women in history and in society today.

But for a select group of women - conservative women - their accomplishments and contributions are rarely celebrated but often demeaned and mocked in sexist - and crassly sexual - ways.

The Culture & Media Insitute looked back at what the media had to say over the past year about some of today's most prominent conservative women, including Michelle Malkin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney, and compiled a list of the 10 worst attacks on these women who dare to speak out in favor of conservative values.

Much of the criticism was the worst sort of misogyny with a dose of violence and disgusting adolescent sex references thrown in for good measure. The media outlets in question ranged from Playboy magazine to MSNBC to Sirius XM radio and included comments from both men and women.

The message that rang through loud and clear was that perspectives from conservative women were not appreciated or welcomed, and if a woman stepped out of line, she deserved whatever treatment she received.

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Letterman also took a swipe at Palin during his opening monologue.

David Letterman just can't keep his mind off Sarah Palin.

On Monday, the "Late Show" host used his Top Ten list to disparage the former governor of Alaska claiming that George Washington would roll over in his grave if Palin were elected president.

Never mind that she hasn't announced her candidacy or that the presidential election is more than two and a half years away.

Such inconvenient truths don't phase Letterman for in a list of the "Top Ten Things George Washington Would Say If He Were Alive Today," a woman the "Late Show" host probably never heard of two years ago actually came in second (video embedded below the fold with complete list, h/t Story Balloon):

Is it now acceptable for a woman to grab her breasts on broadcast television?

The question is raised by the appearance of "Desperate Housewives" star Teri Hatcher on CBS's "Late Show" Friday evening.

Chatting with host David Letterman, the woman who rose to stardom after her appearance in a "Seinfeld" episode largely about her breasts seemed to do everything within her power to touch them on the air.

At one point she commented while holding one, "I injured my rib under my breast here. Just a reason to touch myself on TV."

Oddly, this wasn't the last time she would be so immodest (video embedded below the fold):