John F. Kennedy

MSNBC's Chris Matthews doesn't just hate Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's money.

During an interview with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Hardball Thursday, the host disparaged George Washington as an elite "with a couple of hundred slaves" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During live coverage of Super Tuesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews harkened back to a famous historical phone call from then-Senator John F. Kennedy to Coretta King, after her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested, as he suggested that President Barack Obama's recent phone call to Georgetown Law School student Sandra Fluke would be similarly remembered as important to this year's presidential campaign.

Matthews asserted:

John F. Kennedy may be a hallowed name within Democrat circles, but CNN's Soledad O'Brien seemed to argue Wednesday that he is revered among Catholics too, so much so that they won't vote for a candidate who attacks him.

After Tuesday night's Michigan GOP primary, O'Brien tried to get Rick Santorum's press secretary to admit that the candidate lost Catholic voters in the state because he attacked former President John F. Kennedy for saying the church had no role in the policy of the state.  [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In the wake of new sexual revelations concerning John F. Kennedy and a nineteen-year-old White House intern, you would think media members would shy away from putting the former president on a pedestal concerning his religious beliefs.

Yet there was ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer Monday telling George Stephanopoulos of his previous day's interview with Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, "Couldn’t believe that he was going on the offensive on church and state and the separation of them against John Kennedy" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Charlie Rose seemingly can't handle a Republican attacking President Obama, as he interrupted Haley Barbour on Monday's CBS This Morning. Rose took Rick Santorum's criticism of JFK out of context in a question to Barbour. When the former RNC head accused Obama of "forcing...abortion pills" on the Catholic Church, the anchor replied, "Wait...he [Santorum] was talking about...Kennedy, not...Obama" [audio available here; video below the jump].

Just over a month earlier, Rose took issue with Senator Marco Rubio accusing the chief executive of being "divisive." Rubio tried to use the President's State of the Union as an example, but the journalist also interrupted the Florida Republican, and touted that "I saw him honoring the military of America and a lot other things where we should be coming together. That doesn't seem to be divisive."

The double standard by which the media view presidential sex scandals is nothing less than stunning.

On this weekend's syndicated Chris Matthews Show, the entire panel - which included two women, one being the supposedly conservative syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker - said the new revelations regarding former President John F. Kennedy having sex with a 19-year-old White House intern will have absolutely no impact on his legacy (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Almost four years ago, ABC’s Barbara Walters came out with her memoir Audition, using as its selling point a tale of her tawdry 1970s affair with married black Sen. Edward Brooke (R-Mass.). Seldom has a TV personality been a more shameless public hypocrite than Walters was on Friday with former Kennedy mistress Mimi Alford during an interview on “The View.”

Walters battered Alford four times with the notion she was greedy, with four different outbursts like “She’ll make a lot of money!” (That one came in the introduction.) Walters asked Alford why she would hurt Caroline Kennedy and her family, and then assaulted her with the reverse idea, that she could have “saved” Monica Lewinsky from ridicule if she’d talked earlier. But mostly, she insisted the book "did not have to be written" and "You could have let it go!" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Yesterday, NewsBuster Kyle Drennen detailed how NBC Today co-host Ann Curry fretted about the latest Kennedy scandal's impact on Caroline Kennedy.  "What about Caroline, who is still alive? " she asked John F. Kennedy mistress Mimi Alford.

Last night on Fox Chicago News, anchor Bob Sirott picked up on the same theme in his "One More Thing" opinion segment:

I wonder if she (Alford) feels guilty now about how President Kennedy's only living child Caroline might feel about her story?

Just a guess, but I imagine the daughter, now older than her father was when he died, didn't go into a state of shock.  Yet the mainstream media worry about her as though she were a teenager, like Alford was when the 45-year-old Kennedy took her virginity. 

Following a revealing interview with former JFK mistress Mimi Alford on Wednesday's NBC Rock Center, left-wing MSNBC host Chris Matthews, along with liberal historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Richard Reeves, were invited on the broadcast to give a sycophantic defense of the womanizing president. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Touting his new book, "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero," Matthews proclaimed: "The greatest heroes are often the most flawed." The Hardball host went on to gush over how Kennedy "colorized American politics....made it a technicolor movie, he made it exciting." In his characteristic fashion, Matthews concluded: "And so with it all, the total picture still arouses the country."

The ridiculous media hypocrisy concerning all the fuss over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wealth and income tax rate was perfectly demonstrated on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday.

After claiming that Romney's "tax issue is not remotely" past him, John Heilemann, the National Affairs editor for New York magazine, admitted that he never reported John Kerry's income tax rate during the 2004 campaign (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There was a truly delicious moment on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday as the gang discussed the Republican presidential race from Florida.

When host Joe Scarborough recollected John F. Kennedy buying the West Virginia primary in 1960, Hardball host Chris Matthews, one of JFK's biggest fans, was seen visibly uncomfortable shifting position in his chair (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Thanks for sharing, Rachel, and confirming what we already knew.

The oh-so bright light in MSNBC's nightly firmament could barely contain her revulsion after Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels cited a familiar metaphor for America, that of the shining city on a hill, while delivering the official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address. (video after page break)

Chris Matthews loathes Mitt Romney and reveres John F. Kennedy. Oddly enough, when Matthews vilifies Romney, you'd swear he was talking about Kennedy.

Matthews, author of the JFK hagiography "Elusive Hero," had this to say about Romney last night during MSNBC's coverage of the New Hampshire primary while jousting with former Granite State governor John Sununu  (video after page break) --

Liberal columnist Frank Rich claimed on Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight that the "radical right" which began during the Kennedy administration is now the base of the Republican Party. Both he and CNN's Piers Morgan also drew parallels between the environment which led to Kennedy's assassination and the politically-charged atmosphere now.

Rich's most recent column – which NewsBusters has dissected – asserts that the same "hate" which fueled the assassination of President Kennedy is now alive and well in the Obama era. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Nearly a half century after John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, many liberals now grudgingly accept that it was a left winger who killed him. But it was the harsh right-wing rhetoric of early '60s Texas that compelled the assassin to pull the trigger,  liberals also insist.

The latest iteration of this transparent exercise in ideological face-saving comes from Frank Rich in a New York magazine piece dishonestly titled, "What Killed JFK -- The Hate That Ended His Presidency is Eerily Familiar."

On Monday, Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters noted how former New York Times op-ed writer (and before that, theater critic) Frank Rich, who now plies whatever his trade is at New York Magazine, criticized MSNBC's Chris Matthews for writing a "man-crush of a biography" about John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated 48 years ago today.

Monday evening, Allahpundit at Hot Air identified a particularly egregious contention in that same very poor Rich piece, namely that "the hate that ended his (JFK's) presidency" which inspired avowed communist and Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to commit his heinous crimes (Oswald also shot Texas Governor John Connally in JFK's motorcade and killed Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit later that day) came from the right. Really. What follows are selections from Rich's risible self-righteousness:

The day after MSNBC's Chris Matthews tore into Barack Obama for having "the worst kind of a notion of the presidency," New York magazine's Frank Rich blasted the Hardball host for publishing a "man-crush of a biography" about the late John F. Kennedy (emphasis added):

While hyping his new book on John F. Kennedy on Friday, Chris Matthews seemed to connect "vicious" "right-wing" "hate" to the assassination of the nation's 35th president. At no time in his Hardball editorial did Matthews admit that the President's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a pro-Communist leftist, who, at one point in his life, defected to the Soviet Union.

Speaking of Kennedy's trip to Dallas in November of 1963, Matthews connected, "[Kennedy] was living the life of an American politician, trying to figure things out politically, trying to figure out what was in the water down there in Dallas that made some people so viciously right-wing. An hour later, he was gone." [MP3 audio here. See video below.]

Maybe Princeton professor Cornel West should redirect his get off the crack pipe suggestion to MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

On Monday's Hardball, the host actually said with a straight face that John F. Kennedy is "the American president we Americans most want to see joining Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt up there on Mount Rushmore (video follows with transcript and commentary):

UPDATE, May 18: NewsBusters commenter "dreamsincolor" has pointed out that CNN "somehow" forgot Democratic New York Congressman Eric Massa, who resigned in 2009 to avoid "an ethics investigation into alleged misconduct toward a male staff member."

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Chris Ariens filed a report today at MediaBistro's TVNewser that opened with a reader's Tweet, which plaintively asked: "Did CNN really exclude Spitzer from Malveaux package on Sex Scandals & Politics? Hmm.."

Ariens responds:

The answer: yes it did.

President Obama and the Democrats have spent trillions of dollars in the past two years without successfully growing the economy enough to produce jobs.

Despite this immutable fact, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday's "Hardball" said government spending is a far better stimulus than cutting taxes (video follows with transcript and commentary):

How do we know that grade-school students in Dallas spontaneously cheered the news that President John F. Kennedy was murdered in their city?

Because it's been repeated ad infinitum for almost half a century. Therefore it must be true, right?

It's a belief that's taken on the aura of holy writ to liberals, thanks to propapandists like radio host and lawyer Mike Papantonio in preserving its mythology for each new generation of true believers.

You'd think someone who practices law would know better. Then again, you might not.

 On ABC’s World News Saturday, correspondent John Hendren filed a report marking this year as the first time since 1947 that no members of the Kennedy family will hold public office in Washington, D.C. The piece began:

JOHN HENDREN: The sun has set on the Kennedy era. When Congress reconvenes next week, it will be the first time in 64 years that there has not been a Kennedy in office.

KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND, DAUGHTER OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY: I think it's sad. I think that we need a Kennedy.

Hendren went on to recount the death of former Senator Ted Kennedy, "the Lion of the Senate," and the decision of Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy to retire, as well as the shuffling of office space with the arrival of newly-elected Republicans. The ABC correspondent also noted that Tea Party-backed Rep. Ron Paul and Senator-elect Rand Paul are the only family members serving who will be serving concurrently in Congress.

Hendren concluded by offering a ray of hope for those would like to see the Kennedy family in government again:

How about that, there's someone on the airwaves more unhinged than liberal radio talker and MSNBC heat miser Ed Schultz. And go figure, that someone happens to be a frequent Schultz guest.

But between his appearance on Schultz's radio show Nov. 22 and Schultz's MSNBC program several hours later, the caffeine apparently wore off for Mike Papantonio, a lawyer and co-host of the radio show "Ring of Fire," seeing how Papantonio dialed down his remarks from what he initially told Schultz.

Here's what Papantonio said during the first hour of Schultz's radio show Monday between noon and 1 p.m. while complaining about President Obama's upcoming appearance before the US Chamber of Commerce (audio and video below page break) --

For the Today show, Democratic Representative Patrick Kennedy's departure from Congress was something to mourn because it represented, as NBC's Matt Lauer lamented, "The end of an era. There's been a Kennedy in Congress since John F. Kennedy entered the House back in 1947." The nephew of the late President was invited on Monday's Today show to commemorate the occasion with he and co-host Meredith Vieira fondly looking over newly-released photos of JFK from Life.com and reminiscing about his father, the "great" Ted Kennedy.

For the record the Today show got their facts wrong, as the MRC's Rich Noyes pointed out, there was no Kennedy in Congress from January 1961 to November of 1962 as Representative Ben Smith held that seat long enough until Ted Kennedy was old enough to take over.

The following teaser and exchange were aired on the November 8 Today show: