NPR talk show host Diane Rehm was lionized in the Washington-area newspaper The Beacon ("In Focus for People Over 50") as "the queen of talk radio." It became quite clear in Barbara Ruben's profile that this queen’s most amazing career moments on the radio were spent in the presence of the Clintons:

"To have an opportunity to interview a sitting president in the Oval Office [Bill Clinton], to have Hillary Clinton come in here two or three times...those were all amazing experiences," she said with her distinctive leisurely cadence and careful enunciation.

"Leisurely cadence" is a very kind definition of Rehm’s broadcast voice, which we could also kindly suggest is not universally pleasing (like an older female version of Bob Woodward). The Clintons made a point of schmoozing the local NPR folks at WAMU and telling them they were regular listeners.

As you might expect, Rehm's list of politician guests leans to the left, as well.

Robert Reich must have nightmares about Fox News. Shoot, he must have triple locks on his doors and sleep under his bed out of fear that Roger Ailes will come and take him away.

In a Monday column at Salon.com ("Is the President Panicking?"), Reich excoriated President Obama's proposed discretionary spending "freeze" -- a "freeze" that NewsBuster Julia Seymour noted fails to offset the spending proposals Obama brought up in his State of the Union speech -- for "invok(ing) memories of (Bill) Clinton's shift to the right in 1994," especially because "it could doom the recovery."

That was absurd enough, but in the process of recounting his fevered view of 1990s history, Bill Clinton's former Secretary of Labor threw in this whopper, revealing that for Reich, as Buffalo Springfield told us so many years ago in their 1960s hit song "For What It's Worth," paranoia really does strike deep:

In December 1994, Bill Clinton proposed a so-called middle-class bill of rights including more tax credits for families with children, expanded retirement accounts, and tax-deductible college tuition. Clinton had lost his battle for healthcare reform. Even worse, by that time the Dems had lost the House and Senate. Washington was riding a huge anti-incumbent wave. Right-wing populists were the ascendancy, with Newt Gingrich and Fox News leading the charge. Bill Clinton thought it desperately important to assure Americans he was on their side.

There's one "little" problem:

Two Democrats on Sunday blamed the soaring budget deficit on George W. Bush, and ABC's Terry Moran didn't challenge either one of them.

First up on "This Week" was senior White House adviser David Axelrod who told substitute host Moran, "President Clinton left a $237 billion surplus, President Obama received a $1.3 trillion deficit."

Moran didn't challenge this, nor did he press Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) when he uttered virtually the exact same Democrat talking point moments later, "When George Bush came to office, he had a $236 billion surplus; Barack Obama was handed a $1.3 trillion deficit."

Here's how a REAL journalist might have responded the second time somebody made the same stupid comment in the course of about 15 minutes:

On Friday's The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly interviewed singer Ray Stevens about a musical parody titled "We the People," posted on his Web site at RayStevens.com, in which he goes after ObamaCare. Stevens, famous for doing musical parodies since the 1960s -- though previously never political in nature -- on Friday's show joked that he is "right of Attila the Hun" politically.

Below is a transcript of portions of the interview from the Friday, January 15, The O'Reilly Factor on FNC:

Mark Halperin and John Heilemann are laughing all the way to the bank at the mess Harry Reid is facing. The hottest backstage tidbit of their new campaign chronicle "Game Change" is that Reid praised Barack Obama’s political appeal as a "light-skinned" black man with "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

The prestige these authors have among their media colleagues was more weighty than the Democrats pleading to be spared the headache. (Halperin is now at Time after many years at ABC; Heilemann is at New York magazine.) For his part, President Obama quickly proclaimed "the book is closed," even if the uproar was just beginning. Obama did not comment on the book’s report that Ted Kennedy was furious at Bill Clinton after Clinton sneered that Obama was so inexperienced that "a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee."

The authors said "trust us" on the book’s anonymous sources, because we know these campaign sources so thoroughly that we know all their motivations. Which leads to Question #2: If you know these sources so well, why did it take a year or two to unload these scoops?

On Monday’s Anderson Cooper 360, CNN’s Anderson Cooper extensively questioned authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann about their new book “Game Change” on subjects other than Sarah Palin, unlike his earlier interview of the writers on 60 Minutes. Most of the two segments from the interview dealt with Bill and Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2008 presidential election and in the Obama transition.

During the first segment, which began 20 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour, Cooper only briefly touched on Senator Harry Reid’s “Negro dialect” comment about President Obama, asking one question on the topic. For the remaining five minutes of the segment, and for the additional five minutes of the second segment, the CNN anchor questioned Halperin and Heilemann about several episodes involving the Clintons during the Democratic presidential primary race, and about Obama choosing Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state. These ten minutes on his CNN program is practically the same amount of time Cooper devoted to the subject of Sarah Palin during his 60 Minutes interview of the authors.

Cooper revisited the race issue when he raised the subject of Bill Clinton’s “coffee remark” to Ted Kennedy about then Senator Obama during the second segment minutes later:

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham’s shoeshine of an interview with Bill Clinton in the year-end issue (complete with Meacham making sure his use of the word "Sir" is included in the magazine’s transcript) ran three pages and had only three questions or statements from Meacham. Clinton was allowed to talk at extreme length, befitting his status at Newsweek as a global statesman. But this question from Meacham was the most likely to spur giggles:

What you're describing is the end of "future preference" [the idea that each person has an obligation to sacrifice today for the benefit of tomorrow, a longtime Clinton principle].

Earth to Jon: Did Clinton actually demonstrate his "obligation" to sacrifice today for the benefit of tomorrow? Or was he too busy getting intern sex today and foregoing the sacrifice? Did he live by his own "longtime Clinton principle" over his long time in office?

Here are some examples of Executive Orders issued by President Obama that have received New York Times or Associated Press coverage:

• NYT, October 29 -- "Obama Order Strengthens Spy Oversight" (the browser window title is "Obama Moves to Roll Back Bush Changes to Intelligence Oversight Board").
• NYT, October 2 -- "Obama Prohibits Federal Employees From Texting While Driving for Work."
• NYT, March 10 -- "Obama Lifts Bush's Strict Limits on Stem Cell Research."
• AP, October 5 -- "Obama Puts Gov't on Greenhouse Gas Diet."
• AP, November 10 -- "US starts effort to boost hiring of veterans" (the window title at the Boston Globe is "Obama encourages federal hiring of veterans").

Here is an Executive Order (Number 13524) issued last week that, based on searches at the Times (on "Interpol" and "executive order" in quotes) and the AP ("interpol"; "executive order" in quotes), respectively, has not been covered:

An upcoming book, “The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr," deals with Ken Starr's investigation of the Clinton scandals of Whitewater and lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Politico got an early copy of the February 16 release by law professor Ken Gormley, and broke out some of the juiciest bits Thursday evening. The headline: “Monica’s Back -- Says Clinton Lied.” Among the findings: Bill Clinton had an affair with Whitewater figure Susan McDougal and lied under oath about his relationship with Lewinsky, as confirmed by Lewinsky herself.

But the New York Times’s Peter Baker on Saturday uniquely found a pro-Clinton angle, burying the sex scandal and perjury details and boring in on another facet, as indicated by the headline: “F.B.I. Accused of Abuse of Power in Clinton Case.”

In a long Saturday report on the Food Stamp program that went into print on Sunday, the New York Times's Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff:

• Almost seemed to celebrate the program's explosive growth.
• Bemoaned the fact that many who could participate do not.
• Both in their title ("Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma Fades") and text, cheered the loss of stigma that has long been associated with the program.
• Failed to note not only gross and net benefit increases during the past two years that have far outpaced real inflation in food prices, but also the loosening of eligibility rules in many states, including Ohio.
• Speaking of Ohio, omitted key facts and injected blatant bias into a situation from earlier this year in the Buckeye State's Warren County that outraged those who believe the program was meant only for those who would truly suffer if its benefits weren't available.

DeParle's and Gebeloff's work is part of a Times series that "examines how the safety net is holding up under the worst economic crisis in decades." My series of posts on the pair's report with have three parts. This first one will deal with the first three items listed above.

The mistakes President Obama has made in recent months that have led to his plummeting poll numbers aren't his fault.

According to Time's Joe Klein, it's all being caused by -- and I quote! -- "the media's tendency to get overwrought about almost anything."

Yep. After withholding from the public material information about Obama last year that almost certainly would have doomed his candidacy, the press today are focusing too much attention on silly things like his: response to the Fort Hood massacre; not spending enough time on unemployment; accomplishing nothing in Asia, and; allowing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be tried in New York City.

As one reads Klein's Wednesday column, you get the feeling he dearly misses the good old days when anything Obama did or said was met with thunderous applause, and anything that could take the bloom off the rose was squelched:

A major charitable event is happening in Little Rock, Arkansas, Saturday, and former Bill Clinton apparently will not be in attendance because MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has politicized it on his "Countdown" program.

As Arkansas News reported hours ago, "Nine hundred people or more will get free medical attention from noon to 7 p.m. at the Statehouse Convention Center."

Unfortunately, according to the liberal website FireDogLake, Clinton has decided not to attend as a result of some of the things Olbermann has done on his program related to this event (h/t Hot Air):

The New York Times dismissed the controversy over Obama’s long, deep bow before the Emperor of Japan over the weekend -- a story all over the Drudge Report and conservative blogs -- in its Monday story praising Obama’s “progress” in getting Russia on board for sanctions against Iran: “In China, Obama to Press For Tough Stance on Iran -- Seeking to Replicate Progress With Russia.”

And if that “progress” with Russia fades, will the Times follow up? Watch this space.

Diplomatic correspondent Helene Cooper and David Barboza emphasized the positive:

President Obama, fresh from making progress in his efforts to get Russia on board for possible tough new sanctions against Iran, arrived in China on Sunday, where he will attempt the even more difficult task of prodding China’s leaders to get tough on Iran.

ABC’s Good Morning America finally picked up on the deep bow President Obama performed for the Emperor of Japan over the weekend. Co-host Diane Sawyer ran through how other U.S. Presidents have greeted either Emperor Akhito or his father, the late Emperor Hirohito over the years — some bowing, some not. Sawyer claimed that Americans are “not trained to greet royalty” and “it’s just too confusing.”

Actually, the government employs lots of experts on culture and protocol to make sure that our presidents are fully “trained” on what to do when they represent our government overseas — which is not to say that all of our presidents perform these duties flawlessly.

Missing from Sawyer’s run-down is a tidbit that ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper posted on his “Political Punch” blog Sunday afternoon. Tapper said he received a note from an old friend whom he described as “an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire, and in general a supporter of President Obama.” According to this expert, it wasn’t necessarily incorrect for Obama to bow, but the President’s “forward lurch” was “jarring and inappropriate.”

Former President Bill Clinton was in Chicago yesterday, speaking at a fundraiser on the subject of the current health insurance overhaul.

Somehow, some way, Clinton wound up talking about ethnic diversity, the Fort Hood murders, and – most bizarrely – the AMC network’s “Mad Men.”

Clinton began his descent with the following, quoted from Lynn Sweet’s Chicago Sun-Times blog:

As noted earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), yesterday's resignation from CNN by Lou Dobbs was his second during a storied career there. The first was at least partially driven by clear tensions between Dobbs and CNN head Rick Kaplan, a longtime friend of former president Bill Clinton who arrived at the network in 1997.

That Kaplan was driven to protect Clinton, and to risk journalistic integrity while doing so, is virtually beyond dispute. In 1997, as the Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz noted in a 1999 op-ed whose primary purpose was to comment the significance of "the demolition of CNN and Time's story charging that U.S. forces used the lethal gas sarin to attack American defectors in Laos," U.S. News reported that Kaplan "issued a warning to CNN journalists to limit the use of words like 'scandal' in relation to stories on the president's fund-raising ventures."

So you can imagine how beside himself Kaplan must have been when Dobbs, then the host of a business and finance show, went after the Chinese nuclear espionage story in 1999 while his other CNN colleagues and the Big 3 networks were attempting to downplay and ignore it. Brent Baker's CyberAlert from March 12 of that year has the details:

We've come to expect intellectual dishonesty from the media elite, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, a columnist for the New York Times, never disappoints.

Krugman, in a Nov. 11 post on his NYTimes.com blog titled "The agony of Fox Business," made it clear he was a subscriber to the left-wing fairy tale that Fox News, and by extension the Fox Business Channel, are not pro-business. Instead - they're "pro-Republican."

"Clearly, the Fox Business crew is having a very hard time," Krugman wrote. "They bill themselves as being truly pro-business - not like those leftists at CNBC. But they aren't really pro-business; they're pro-Republican. They'd like you to believe that it's the same thing; but there's this awkward fact that markets have, you know, gone up under Obama."

Former Clinton Labor Secretary and current Obama economic adviser Robert Reich believes healthcare legislation currently being debated on Capitol Hill "won't offer most Americans any appreciable decline in the cost of their health insurance nor clear improvement in the efficiency or quality of the health care they receive."

Contrary to what President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and their media minions are shamefully telling the public, the current bill results in "extra costs [that] will be borne by those Americans who will be required to buy insurance but won't qualify for federal assistance, along with Medicare beneficiaries who will be paying more and receiving less."

Maybe more importantly given Friday's announcement that the nation's unemployment rate jumped to 10.2 percent in October, Reich believe's President Obama is doing America a disservice by focusing all his attention on healthcare reform instead of trying to create jobs.

Although Reich posted this at his blog on Sunday, I could find no major media references to his rather startling commentary (h/t Glenn Reynolds):

Poor David Letterman. Not only did blackmail force him to publicly admit unseemly workplace sexual trysts, as a simple talk show host, he's not in a position to buy off feminist condemnation with legislative goodies.

National Organization of Women released a statement on Oct. 6 about the recent Letterman sex scandal, condemning Letterman for creating an "awkward, confusing and demoralizing" work environment.

But back in 1998, when Bill Clinton was perjuring himself about Monica Lewinsky, NOW (along with other feminists) was strangely silent. Even Maureen Dowd noticed. She called them out in her Pulitzer Prize winning article "The Slander Strategy," saying, "Ms. Lewinsky must die so that the women of America can have better child care, longer maternity stays, toll-free domestic violence hot lines and bustling mutual funds."

On Tuesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith painted a glowing portrait of the Clinton administration while previewing a new book on the former president: "During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the nation prospered, he worked to broker peace in the Middle East and in the Balkans, championed welfare reform, and signed the NAFTA free trade agreement."

The book, entitled The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With The President was written by Clinton friend and historian Taylor Branch, who recorded a series of 79 conversations with the president while in office.

After listing Clinton’s supposed accomplishments, Smith lamented: "But his presidency was marred by numerous investigations, a lawsuit brought by Paula Jones charging sexual harassment, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal." Smith later asked Branch about the scandals: "What was he [Clinton] like during that time?" Branch responded sympathetically: "He talked about it seldom and painfully....He said ‘I cracked’....A little later he said he felt sorry for himself, that he thought he had beaten down all the scandals and then they would keep reviving and coming back....he just said this ‘it’s never going to stop.’" Smith repeated: "Never going to stop."

Barack Obama is President, Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House, Harry Reid is Senate Majority Leader, Bill Clinton is doing the television circuit to revive his reputation, most journalists are still hopelessly in the tank for the current White House resident, and the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza is concerned that the Democrats don't have a voice to counter Republican talking points.

This is almost as silly as a New Yorker losing sleep over the Yankees not having enough money to field an allstar team next year.

Regardless of the apparent absurdity, such was Cillizza's point in a blog posting at WaPo's The Fix (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

Which statement here is weirder? Newsmax boss Christopher Ruddy now declaring that Bill Clinton was a "great president"? Or Clinton telling him he did a "good job" hounding him in the 1990s? Howard Kurtz unraveled this bizarre meeting of former adversaries in Monday’s Washington Post:

For those who remember Ruddy's name from the scandal wars of the 1990s, that is nothing short of remarkable. Ruddy wrote a book titled "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster," questioning whether the Clinton aide, who committed suicide, had been murdered. He also questioned whether Commerce secretary Ron Brown, who died in a plane crash, had been shot in the head. And yet here was Ruddy, now chief executive of Newsmax.com, telling Clinton that "I was one of your critics" during his administration, and Clinton responding with a laugh: "You did a good job."

Imagining in 1998 a “vast right wing conspiracy” to impugn and discredit conveyors of accurate information about her husband's activities with an intern was ludicrous enough when Hillary Clinton made up the foil, but eleven-plus years later NBC's David Gregory treated it as a reality, cuing up Bill Clinton in a Meet the Press interview pre-recorded in New York City: “Your wife famously talked about the vast right wing conspiracy targeting you. As you look at this opposition on the right to President Obama, is it still there?” Former President Clinton, naturally, agreed: “Oh, you bet. Sure it is.”  

Gregory also pressed Clinton to assess President Obama from a set of liberal presumptions: “Do you think the President has leveled with the American people on this fact, that Americans are going to have to pay higher taxes if they want health care reform?” And, recalling how “in 1996 you declared the era of big government over,” but now “the era of big government being over appears to be over in and of itself, whether it's the stimulus, whether it's bailouts, financial regulation or this issue of health care,” Gregory wondered: “Do you think the President's done a good enough job selling government as the solution?”

Bill Clinton is engaged in a major rehabilitation project with historian and personal friend Taylor Branch. Time magazine is eager to help: eager enough to boast that Bill Clinton was a terrific father, and cared more about his daughter Chelsea than his job in the White House. Time’s Nancy Gibbs touted "The Other Bill Clinton," manuevering around the massive paternal embarrassment of his adultery and sexual harassment scandals:

When Rush Limbaugh called her "the White House dog," T-shirts appeared saying LEAVE CHELSEA ALONE. Which, remarkably, most people did.

One person who did not leave Chelsea alone was her father. In acclaimed historian Taylor Branch's new book The Clinton Tapes — woven from Branch's recorded conversations with the President from 1993 to 2001 — the portrait of the relationship between Bill Clinton, a man who never knew his own father, and his daughter reveals a side we rarely saw on the public stage. Bill Clinton, it turns out, raised a daughter and ran the free world, sometimes in that order.

Media sycophancy for the Clintons is so 1990s, but every now and then the MSM muster up a bit of nostalgia and pour lavish praise on the former first couple. Take CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Jill Dougherty at the close of the 5 p.m. EDT hour of today's "The Situation Room."

"Often times, a kiss is just a kiss, but when you're a former president planting one on your wife, the secretary of state, it can garner a lot of attention," CNN's Wolf Blitzer gushed as he introduced a story by colleague Jill Dougherty in which the latter enthused that after a "brief public display of affection" before an audience at the Clinton Global Initiative, the Democratic power couple were "off, separately, to change the world."

You can see the video embedded below the page break, or listen to the audio here: