Time

As NewsBusters has been reporting for months, the goal of the liberal media as it shamelessly campaigns for the reelection of President Obama is to paint everything opponent Mitt Romney says as racist, elitist, or both.

On this weekend's syndicated Chris Matthews Show, Time magazine's Joe Klein said that Romney referring to Obama's experience as a "community organizer is a code word for organizing poor people to rise up against, you know, march on the gated communities" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Not content with letting partisan liberal journalist Joe Klein review "radical Republican" Jonah Goldberg's new book The Tyranny of Clichés, the May 18 edition of the paper's Book Review podcast opened with book editor Sam Tanenahus talking with Klein about his hostile Times book review. Tanenhaus (pictured), author of a little screed called The Death of Conservatism that was discredited within months of its 2009 publication by the rise of the Tea Party, spent the first 14 minutes of the podcast slamming Goldberg's book along with Klein.

This exchange occurred about 40 minutes from the end of the podcast:

Surprising no one, the New York Times handed its review of Jonah Goldberg's new book, The Tyranny of Clichés, to a political enemy, Time Magazine political columnist Joe Klein (pictured), which he did under the loaded headline "Hating Liberals." The paper similarly handed its review of Goldberg's previous book, 2007's Liberal Fascism, to unsympathetic history professor David Oshinsky.

Klein was even harsher (calling the book "an insight into the...radical Republican state of mind") and more condescending in an accompanying New York Times books podcast, hosted by his equal in conservative mockery, the paper's book editor Sam Tanenhaus. (Check the next Times Watch post for that.)

"Some religious leaders are struggling with President Obama’s support for gay marriage but not the Rev. Jesse Jackson," gushed frequent MSNBC contributor Toure noted in the opening line of his May 17 Time.com "Ideas" blog post as he introduced how he "spoke to the Reverend [Jesse Jackson] about the impact of Obama’s announcement among blacks and the wider community of the faithful."

It goes without saying that the interview was a game of softball in which Toure helpfully lobbed easy questions over the plate to drive home for readers, but particularly those who may be African-American Christians who typically vote Democratic, that it would be great if they could evolve to where President Obama has on same-sex marriage, a "civil rights" and "discrimination" issue.

Time magazine shocked the nation this week with a cover photo of a three-year-old boy being nursed by his mother as promotion for its feature article "Are You Mom Enough?"

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh marvelously lampooned this cover Friday with the headline "Obama's Child Rearing Technique".

The Washington press corps always love it when establishment Republicans scold conservatives for trying to “purify” the party, and Time magazine’s Michael Scherer did not disappoint. “Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar did not go quietly, after losing his primary contest Tuesday in Indiana to a Tea Party-backed challenger, Richard Mourdock,” Scherer wrote the next day in a Time “Swampland” blog titled “The Importance of Dick Lugar’s Farewell Warning.”

“If there is one thing the American people need to read today,” the former writer for the far-left Mother Jones directed, “it is his farewell missive, which may prove to be as prescient and long lasting as Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 exit speech warning of the coming military industrial
complex.”

It's become a huge source of contention that in the Obama campaign ad featuring the current White House resident shamelessly congratulating himself for killing Osama bin Laden, former President Clinton says that if SEALs had been captured or killed during the raid, "The downside would have been horrible for him."

Time magazine published an article last week by former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham wherein the words "for him" were mysteriously edited out (video of ad in question also follows with transcript and commentary):

Yesterday, Time's Joe Klein may have produced the single dumbest analysis post ever. Absurd as it is, it's still important, because it probably betrays Barack Obama's election strategy, with which the press will gleefully cooperate. The strategy is: Make it about anything and everything besides what I and my administration have and haven't done, because it hasn't impressed anyone, and we know it.

Klein's entry (HT Hot Air Headlines) at Time's Swampland, which should be named Fever-Swampland, was so brain-dead that he failed to cite a single example of an incumbent facing reelection (vs. a successor seeking election for the first time) in attempting to make his case:

It's tough to believe this actually happened in the year 2012.

During an interview with South Carolina's Republican Governor Nikki Haley, Time magazine's editor-at-large Belinda Luscombe disgracefully said, "In New York City, which you're visiting for a couple of days, a lot of our taxi drivers are Sikhs. If you get one, are you going to give him a slightly bigger tip?"

Plugging his new book, The Crisis of Zionism, on Thursday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, the Daily Beast's Peter Beinart - formerly of Time magazine - advanced the irrational view that it is the Israeli government and those who support the existence of Jewish settlements in the West Bank who are the obstacles to peace with the Palestinians. (Video below)

On Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, after the panel roundly bashed Rush Limbaugh and Republicans for not denouncing him enough, correspondent Savannah Guthrie surprisingly criticized President Obama's response to the controversy: "The President also in danger, perhaps, of an overreach by calling this law student [Sandra Fluke]....that seemed a little nakedly political."

Jon Meacham has come down with a particularly virulent strain of Limbaugh Derangement Syndrome that is bringing him to the brink of insanity. How else could one explain the Time magazine writer hailing an anti-Limbaugh speech as "timeless"  just like Jesus's Sermon on the Mount or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

Yes, I kid you not, he really went there, and in a Time.com "Ideas" blog post nonetheless (emphasis mine):

Time's Joe Klein on Sunday took a position that is likely to shock people on both sides of the aisle.

In a discussion about birth control on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Klein surprisingly said, "Why, in a country where we don't require employers to provide health insurance should we require them to - those who do provide health insurance - to provide contraception? Now, I'm all in favor of contraception, but I think that this is a major overstepping of the state's role" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

National Review's Reihan Salam on Sunday proved once again that liberal media members no matter what their number are no match for one well-informed conservative.

On CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Salam took on the host, Time magazine's Joe Klein, and the Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel on a far-ranging discussion about how both sides of the aisle view taxes, the Tea Party, and social change with the conservative ending up looking like the only knowledgeable person in the room (video follows with transcript and commentary):

An AP report by Rachel Zoll brought to our attention by a NewsBusters tipster headlines a truly weird assertion about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum ("Santorum benefits from mistaken religious identity"), and submits as evidence an item in a Christian magazine which in turn has its own weird headline ("Catholic Politicians You Thought Were Evangelical").

It turns out that the Christianity Today item tells us that it's not evangelical Christians who misidentify Santorum, whose Roman Catholic faith is well-known. The entity which committed the misidentification by deliberately including the former Pennsylvania senator on a list of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" while acknowledging that he is a Catholic was ... Time Magazine, in February 2005. Thus, there is no support for Zoll's headline claiming that many people "mistake" Santorum's "religious identity," and that he somehow "benefits." Zheesh.

Time's Joe Klein said Thursday, "What the Republicans have is an awful lot of scared white people in their party."

Appearing on MSNBC's The Last Word, Klein disgustingly continued, "And one of the things they're most scared about is people of different colors and ethnicities and, you know, backgrounds polluting their white picket fence sense of America" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

George Washington just got a promotion. Yes, he's still one of the slave-owning oligarchs who, according to liberals, stuck us with a short-sighted Constitution, and whose colleagues were probably having sex with slaves.

But with the 2012 election on the line and conservatives citing the Founders' legacy as a touch-stone of limited government, Time Magazine has found it useful to turn the first president into a proto-liberal.

The Obama administration announced plans to force Catholic schools, hospitals, and other church-affiliated organizations to subsidize sterilization, abortifacients, and contraceptives in their health insurance plans. Bizarrely, this is causing the media to wonder if the exact opposite is happening. Time.com posted this odd headline on Monday:  "Birth Control: Could It Be Illegal Again?"

On Thursday, NPR talk show host Diane Rehm echoed that science-fiction question: "Are we creeping towards a wiping out of the availability of birth control?" NPR health correspondent Julie Rovner replied "I'm not sure I would say that." Because it's not exactly supported by any present facts?

Appearing on Saturday's NBC Today, Time magazine and MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin chatted with co-host Amy Robach about how thrilled the Obama White House has been with the Republican presidential race: "I think the White House is loving this. They've said all year the chaos in the Republican race is good."

That proclamation was prompted by Robach wondering if during the ongoing GOP primary season, "the Obama White House sitting back and enjoying the view?" Halperin asserted: "The President's State of the Union is coming up this week, I think that'll be a good moment for him...the contrast between a guy who is working...versus what's going on, on the Republican side..."

It apparently wasn’t edgy enough for “Sesame Street” to plan a segment where a scantily clad Katy Perry flirted with Elmo the Muppet. Now Time magazine’s "Healthland" blogger Bonnie Rochman reports that those “progressive” breast-feeding advocates want the whole breast. They are “lowering the boom” with a petition demanding Sesame Street return to PBS Seventies-style, insisting four-year-olds need to see videos of breast feeding (perhaps with celebrity moms like Natalie Portman, they suggest). The principle is fairness and balance between the pro-bottle and pro-breast sides – as if PBS has balance anywhere else on the schedule.

Why? Do tots need to start getting La Leche League propaganda before they attend kindergarten? What next, contraception lectures for the children? Talk of genital mutilation of girls in Africa?  Wouldn’t it be more effective to show breastfeeding to grownups, perhaps on the PBS NewsHour? Time reports:

In a 10-paragraph January 11 Battleland blog post marking the 10th anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Time magazine's Mark Thompson called the prison "the persistent headache that pretty much all Americans would like to go away."

Thompson failed to back up the claim with polling data, however, which actually runs squarely against his claim.

A newly posted Time-Life magazine photo montage showcased pictures of North Korea and touted photographer Christopher Morris comparing brutal dictator Kim Jong Il to the "very controlled environment" of George W. Bush's White House.

On Life magazine's website, Morris connected, "America at that time [2005] was, you'll recall, filled with a kind of blind nationalism. But Time appreciated the way I was able to work and get good photos even within that intensely restrictive environment -- and that's why they sent me to North Korea." The photographer bizarrely insisted that taking pictures in America could be "more restrictive than in North Korea."

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN ,as he discussed the Occupy Wall Street protests, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw warned that a "class war" could develop unless "income inequality" is addressed. Brokaw:

Following Time managing editor Rick Stengel revealing the magazine's "Person of the Year" to be "The Protester" on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry attempted to compared the Arab Spring democracy movement in the Middle East to Occupy Wall Street: "Are there links between what had happened in the Arab Spring...and also what's happening now on Wall Street and all across this country?" [Audio available here]

Also noting the suppressed 2009 Green Movement in Iran and the recent election protests in Russia, Curry added: "...there seems to be this kind of global protest." Stengel enthusiastically agreed with Curry's comparison: "Absolutely. There's this contagion of protests....what happened in the Arab world did influence Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland and the protests in Greece and Madrid." [View video after the jump]

Time is so liberal it was obvious they could not consider the Tea Party protests as a Person of the Year entry. But that’s not true with Occupy Wall Street, since Time’s 2011 Person of the Year is suddenly now "The Protester.” Kurt Andersen’s essay announced: "'Massive and effective street protest' was a global oxymoron until — suddenly, shockingly — starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history."

This is a bit bizarre since the regime being protested in the United States is the Obama administration elected by liberals like the Time editors and reporters. Suddenly now, America is a "sham democracy rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change." Once again, Time blurs in Occupy protesters with Arab Spring activists:

In the December 19 edition of Time magazine, humor columnist Joel Stein pleased the liberals in his "Year of the Meltdown" review of 2011 by comparing Fox News-owning mogul Rupert Murdoch to murderous despots: "Throughout the year, leaders who for decades had ruthlessly wielded absolute power melted down: Zine al Abedine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Rupert Murdoch."

Since it wasn't enough to allow one factual collapse per column, Stein also  suggested we're now "full-on feudal" with an "angry 99 percent" after  Occupy Wall Street protests, and "It's too late to cool the rods. Either we're going to abandon the old structure altogether -- nuclear power, the euro, Arab secular rule, unregulated capitalism -- or wait a really long time for things to get better."

If you had to name the top U.S. news story of 2011, what would you say?

For the folks at Time magazine, the answer is the Occupy Wall Street protests:

Time magazine on Monday published a lengthy cover-story hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney penned by the Obama-loving Joe Klein.

This caused Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to take to his Twitter account with a deliciously accurate smackdown of his own:

On Monday's Early Show, CBS's John Dickerson and Time's Joe Klein harped on Newt Gingrich's overwhelming "liabilities." Klein hinted that the former House Speaker's ego would get the better of him: "This is a guy who cannot stand prosperity....[He] cannot control his ego when he is riding high." Dickerson played up how Gingrich's "negatives were very, very high when he left Washington in the mid-'90s."

Fill-in anchor Jeff Glor asked the CBS political director, "What are the chances Newt Gingrich is the nominee?" Dickerson punted on making a prediction, but borrowed a line from colleague Jan Crawford, stating that "he has a great deal of baggage." When co-anchor Rebecca Jarvis followed up by asking about how the Obama reelection campaign saw the former Speaker, he raised the "likeability" issues with Newt:

In just a few days, Americans will give thanks for their blessings and celebrate them by stuffing themselves with a bountiful feast. Despite this beloved tradition, many in the news media disapprove of overeating and continue to call for taxes on certain foods, and increased regulation.

Time magazine's website, includes an "Ideas" section with what it calls "Essential Insights. Great Debates. Informed Opinions." It was there that Shannon Brownlee, director of the liberal New America Foundation's (which is funded by George Soros' Foundation to Promote Open Society) Health Policy Program, recently called for more regulation under the guise of "public health."