All three morning shows on Friday skipped Senator Al Franken’s disrespectful snub of Joe Lieberman during a health care debate. Good Morning America, bizarrely, played video of the incident over a news brief, but never once mentioned what happened. While presiding over debate in the Senate on Thursday, Franken cut off Lieberman and then denied him an opportunity to finish his remarks.

A surprised Lieberman responded, "Really?" And yet, GMA, CBS’s Early Show and NBC’s Today all ignored the exchange. As ABC news anchor Juju Chang read a generalized report on health care, video from the dust-up can clearly be seen. (See above video.) Chang noted, "Nebraska hold out, Democrat Ben Nelson says changes to abortion funding limits were not strict enough. And he's doubting a deal can be reached."

What’s on the mind of media types this Christmas season? Obama’s “great” speeches and the “atrocity” of Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Lieberman, says New York Times columnist David Brooks, an Obama supporter and Palin-basher whose neo-liberal outlook nevertheless places him at the right end of the paper's cavalcade of liberal opinion writers.

In his weekly Wednesday “Opinionator” exchange with fellow columnist Gail Collins at nytimes.com, Brooks provided a peek into a typical media Christmas, that is, “holiday” party:

He began with self-mockery:

Brooks: Tis the season for holiday parties, which means I’m spending a lot of time with the Beltway establishment. Let me tell you, you people who live outside the beltway are completely out of touch. We in the D.C. establishment are a wonderful group of really smart and intelligent people and if you guys don’t let us micromanage your affairs, you don’t deserve the happiness and wealth we could provide.

Collins responded with some sarcasm of her own from a liberal viewpoint:

Liberal schlockumentarian Michael Moore Wednesday called for the boycott of Connecticut if its residents don't immediately start a recall effort to remove Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

Moore, like many liberals, is angered by Lieberman's off and on opposition to parts of the Senate's healthcare reform bill.

As is so often the case, there's a problem with Moore's thinking: Connecticut doesn't allow recalls of public officials.

But that doesn't concern Moore who tweeted the following Wednesday (h/t Roll Call):

One of the pet peeves of your humble correspondent is reporters who slam people or policies via the device of "some say" or "critics say" when in fact it is really their own position. However, they can't say what they really think in order to put up the false front of "neutrality." Such was the case of Katie Couric on the CBC Evening News last night in which she used her Notebook commentary to slam Senator Joe Lieberman for having unethical motives in opposing health care public option and an expansion of Medicare:

There's a new movie coming out next week called "It's Complicated," about a divorced couple with that age old relationship issue can't live with you, can't live without you.

I think that's how Democrats are feeling about their ex, Senator Joe Lieberman. 

On Wednesday’s Situation Room, CNN correspondent Jeanne Moos exposed some of the left-wing rage being directed at Senator Joe Lieberman, especially on the Internet. Moos’s examples of “liberal hate” at the Connecticut politician ranged from fantasy Hanukkah gifts, such as a muzzle, to a YouTube video of a woman having her cats attack a string which stood in for the senator [Moos's full report is available here].

The correspondent’s latest light report for CNN highlighted Liberman’s “new low among liberals.” Along with the multiple examples of leftists mocking the senator on YouTube.com, Moos noted the strong reactions from “progressive radio hosts,” such as Mike Malloy, and attacks on liberal blogs like The Huffington Post and Daily Kos:

Your humble correspondent has been chronicling the leftwing lunacy in the blogosphere for just over five years in the DUmmie FUnnies. It's a simple matter of copy and paste. Their own crazy words entertains those in the world of the sane. However, John Gibson has taken it a step further. He has used his Gibson Players to actually read what what the left has posted in a special feature of his radio show called "Blue Blogs."

In this latest intallment of Gibson's Blue Blogs, the leftwing blogosphere has gone absolutely berserk on the subject of Joe Lieberman who they blame for destroying the public option in the Senate healthcare bill. You can laugh yourself sick by listening to the leftwing rants here. And for you skeptics out there who doubt that there are people who can be so crazy, I will not only post the transcripts of some of the rants but also provide the links.

The first hate-filled rant about Joe Lieberman heard on Blue Blogs comes to us via the Daily Kos:

A night after MSNBC's Keith Olbermann demanded Senator Joe Lieberman “just resign already” as he shrieked “you are embarrassing humanity!”, CBS joined in targeting Connecticut's “independent Democrat” for daring to oppose liberals on health care. “He holds the 60th vote needed to get the health care reform bill passed in the Senate,” anchor Katie Couric intoned, “and Nancy Cordes tells us supporters of reform are angry and confused about Lieberman's position.”

Cordes soon expanded the exasperation to include “Democratic Senators Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson” who “successfully blocked the public option even though the other 55 Democrats support it. Nelson is still holding out for stricter anti-abortion language, leading some liberals to complain their agenda is being hijacked by a few.” She demanded of Lieberman: “Does it trouble you that you're going against an overwhelming majority of your caucus?” (Hard to imagine a CBS reporter ever scolding a more liberal Republican for defying the party's conservative majority.)

A frustrated Cordes concluded: “So this small group of four or so Senators has managed successfully to impose their will on the other 530 members of Congress because the changes that they're demanding to the Senate bill will likely have to be made to the House bill, too.”

Liberal newspaper people are so predictable when it comes to internal party fights. If it’s inside the Republican Party, it’s the conservative Republicans who are wrong. If inside the Democratic Party, it’s the conservative Democrats who are wrong.

The Washington Post recently gave us a case study in this slanted worldview. On December 14, they splashed across the front page an article by reporter Michael Leahy on an obscure California Republican assemblyman named Anthony Adams. The charge: he betrayed his no-new-taxes vow and supported a $12 billion tax increase. The Post analysis: Adams was savaged by the "toxic infighting" of nasty conservatives, who moved (unsuccessfully) to recall him from office.

The New York Times cherishes moderate Republicans who make trouble for their party, like John McCain pre-campaign 2008. But the paper takes quite a different tone with Democrats (or ex-Democrats who caucus with the Democrats) who thwart liberal wishes. 

The Times was clearly peeved with Sen. Joe Lieberman in Tuesday's front-page story about the tense health-care debate in the Senate, “Lieberman Gets Ex-Party to Shift On Health Plan.” It's written by David Herszenhorn and David Kirkpatrick from a Democratic perspective. In the Times's worldview, Lieberman is no brave dissenter from the party line:

CNN’s David Gergen played up the difficulties that President Obama has faced on Monday’s Anderson Cooper 360, underscored the importance of the coming week for the executive, and compared him to an iconic movie damsel in distress: “For a president who’s had more trials than anybody I can remember in a long time, sort of ‘The Perils of Pauline’ all year, this has become a climactic week for his presidency.”

Host Anderson Cooper brought on the senior political analyst to comment on the latest development on the health care debate, the Obama presidency in his first months, and the President’s upcoming trip to the UN’s climate change conference in Copenhagen. Cooper first asked Gergen about the potential for congressional liberals to turn against the proposed health care “reform” bill if the Obama administration cuts a deal with Senator Joe Lieberman over his objections to a Medicare “buy-in” for people 55 and older: “So, David, dropping the Medicare buy-in, could we be seeing- I mean, a liberal revolt in the wake of this? Because, I mean, a lot of people haven’t been following the minutia of this, but, basically, that idea of expanding Medicare to 55 and above, that was all for liberals, who were angered over the public option being dropped out.”

Some of the clearest examples of MSNBC’s liberal bias can be found in the onscreen graphics selected for the network’s programming. In the span of 20 minutes on Tuesday, three such Morning Meeting images stated a pretty clear opinion about Joe Lieberman’s opposition to parts of the health care bill. At 9:20am, one whined, "Joe Blowing Health Reform?"

At 9:01, another graphic actually used an exclamation point, not often seen in supposedly objective reporting: "Say It Ain’t So, Joe! Lieberman: No on Buy-In." At 9:14, a picture of the senator appeared onscreen with the words "THE SPOILER."

Liberals are so incensed at Connecticut Senator Joe Liberman's refusal to vote for ObamaCare, that they have taken to attacking his wife, who works for a prominent breast cancer organization. Their ad hominem assaults and wild speculation about the Senator's supposedly evil motives reveal their hypocrisy when it comes to political centrists, and their desperation concerning health care legislation.

At Huffington Post, FireDogLake founder and breast cancer survivor Jane Hamsher revealed that her request to the Susan G. Komen foundation that money raised to find a cure not be used to pay Mrs. Lieberman's salary went unheeded. Hamsher went on to accuse the Lieberman couple of conspiring to sink health care reform in order to line their own pockets.

Hamsher accuses Mrs. Lieberman using "her association with her husband the Senator ... in order to secure these lucrative positions and advance the interests of her clients" at a lobbying firm for which she is a consultant. This contention, Hamsher claims, is "unquestionable," though she offers no evidence to support the accusation, other than speculation about the couple's income.

NBC's Matt Lauer, on Monday's Today show, in his first question to RNC Chair Michael Steele, asked if opponents to Barack Obama's health care reform bill, were going to deprive the President of politically joyous holiday season, as the Today co-anchor pressed: "So is the President's stocking going to be empty on Christmas Day?" Lauer then went on to question if the Republican's entire strategy was that of simply "delaying and stalling," as seen in the following exchange:

MATT LAUER: Let's talk about health care reform. The President says he thinks the Senate will pass his version of the bill by Christmas. Joe Lieberman says he's not voting for it in it's current form. So is the President's stocking going to be empty on Christmas Day?

Whatever happened to just opposing policy for the sake of it being bad policy, as is the case of many people's view of the current health care reform proposals making their way through Congress?

That reason is just not good enough for some, particularly Washington Post blogger and food critic Ezra Klein. In a post on The Washington Post's Web site dated Dec. 14, Klein viciously attacked Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Ct., after reports surfaced that Lieberman would filibuster the current health care bill if it meant expanding Medicare (h/t Amanda Carpenter at The Washington Times) (emphasis added).

"And if there's a policy rationale here, it's not apparent to me, or to others who've interviewed him," Klein wrote. "At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score."

"The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate."

That's not a quote from National Review, the Weekly Standard, NewsMax, or World Net Daily.

Such was the opening paragraph of a truly surprising Associated Press article published moments ago:

In deciding which Sunday talk shows to focus on, I typically tap into Politico's Sunday talk show tip sheet, which provides a helpful round-up of the Sunday line-up.

Scrolling there today, I came upon the photo you see here.  Of all the innumerable images of the three men, these are the pictures Politico chose to announce the appearance of Joe Lieberman, Rush Limbaugh and David Plouffe on Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday and Meet the Press, respectively.

You don't suppose Politico's pic picks might reflect its biases, do you? Let's break it down . . .

How angry are ultraliberal talk show hosts over Joe Lieberman’s opposition to a government "competitor" in the health insurance system, the so-called "public option"? Ed Schultz was mad enough Wednesday to get very personal with Hadassah Lieberman, the senator’s wife, who has worked for several DC lobbying firms. Schultz suggested she was a "whore." He said:

Now, the pillow talk in the Lieberman household in the sack had to be rather interesting, OK? You have got the wife working on behalf of the industry that's lining the pockets of the senator who has now come out against the public option. OK, look, how dumb are we? Is this a coincidence?

He asked: Does the word 'whore' apply? Are we there yet?

Mrs. Lieberman’s interests in the health debate are nebulous, according to left-wing journalist Joe Conason at Salon.com:  

After a pattern of attacking Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, on a nightly basis, one of the strategies is becoming apparent - MSNBC is in need of a boogeyman to give a face to the opposition of these radical steps being undertaken to fundamentally change health care in the United States.

So rather than attack where the opposition is wrong on a policy level, MSNBC "Countdown" fill-in host Lawrence O'Donnell is going to apply one of the tactics from Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" to promote a dramatic shift in the U.S. health care system - "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

"In our number five story on the countdown tonight, the Congressional Budget Office finds that it would leave 18 million people uninsured and the government-run health insurance plan will probably charge consumers premiums that are quote, ‘Somewhat higher, higher than average premiums for the private plans,' end quote," O'Donnell said on the Oct. 30 broadcast of "Countdown." "This is a devastating conclusion for a plan being sold not just as a low-cost option for consumers, especially poor consumers, but as somehow driving private insurance premiums lower."

Yet another example of the folly of assigning liberals to guard duty.

Joining Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show Thursday to vent about that pesky wabbit Joe Lieberman was Fire Dog Lake firedoglake blogger Jane Hamsher.

Democrats wield considerable leverage over Lieberman, Hamsher opined, to keep him from joining a GOP filibuster of ObamaCare or punish him if he does --

MADDOW: ... I think you're right to point out that other senators sort of gently expressing their disapproval of his proverbial toplessness at this point is a bigger deal than it would be in the real world, that their words do actually sort of calibrate differently. But what leverage can they really bring to bear on him in order to get him to get in line?

How enraged is Keith Olbermann with Joe Lieberman for announcing that he would filibuster a health care bill that contains a government-control provision?  Enough that, without presenting any evidence whatsoever, the Countdown host has slyly implied that Lieberman might be on the take from insurance companies in his home state of Connecticut.

You had to listen carefully, but Olbermann slipped the scurrilous suggestion into his diatribe against Liebermann on tonight's Countdown.

Here was Olbermann . . .

Six key moderate senators on Friday called for a slowdown in the White House's push for a healthcare reform bill.

Their decision was apparently precipitated by the Congressional Budget Office announcement Thursday that the legislation currently being discussed not only won't reduce healthcare costs, but also will have negative longterm ramifications to the economy given the increase in federal debt.

With this in mind, Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) sent Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) the following:

MSNBC host David Shuster on Monday assailed independent Senator Joe Lieberman as a hypocrite for daring to compliment Barack Obama after opposing some of the President's policies. Shuster sneered, "Showering praise on the Obama administration and then opposing most of what the administration is doing, its critical policies, it's politically slick, but it's also hypocrisy and it's wrong."

He prefaced this critique by playing a clip of Lieberman asserting that Obama is off to a "very, very good start" on issues such as foreign policy. Shuster then whined that the senator "publicly opposed most of the President's most crucial policies." (These issues include Israeli settlements and not supporting a public option in the health care debate.) But, even Shuster had to concede that Lieberman "supported the budget bill, the credit card bill, S-chip."

As the networks continue to pound away at their pet theory that social conservatism will make the Republican Party extinct, suggesting that the last Republican in New England should turn out the lights when he or she leaves, it's worth remembering that the drive-by media's horror-movie narrative -- call it Attack of the Fringe -- never plays in theaters with a Democrat in the lead.

The networks are very consistent in denying there’s a "fringe" on the Democrat side, and they find internal Democratic fights are a perfectly good story – best saved for drinks after the newscast is over.

Let’s go to Connecticut in August 2006, when fringy leftist Ned Lamont defeated Sen. Joe Lieberman in a primary. (At least Lieberman had the guts to fight and lose within his own party -- and he never became a Republican.) Did that display the "fringe" attacking the reasonable career moderate? Wrong. To the media, it only proved that President Bush was politically toxic.

Tom Brokaw: talk show host or DNC enforcer?  Barack Obama and Harry Reid were willing to let bygones be bygones, letting Joe Lieberman keep his Homeland Security Committee chairmanship. 

But Lieberman's professed "regret" for statements he made in the course of supporting John McCain for president wasn't good enough for Brokaw.  Interviewing the senator on Meet The Press today, Brokaw pointedly observed that he hadn't heard the word "apology" for Lieberman's lèse majesté.  Brokaw broached the subject by asserting Lieberman needed to be held "accountable."

With “Any Regrets?” as the on-screen heading, Katie Couric pressed “independent Democratic” Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to atone for campaigning with unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate John McCain and criticizing eventual winner Barack Obama. Couric's first question in the interview excerpt aired on Wednesday's CBS Evening News: “Do you feel as if you owe President-elect Obama one?” Couric next pushed Lieberman to take back an attack: “You said, on whether Senator Obama is a Marxist, you said quote: 'It's a good question to ask.' Are you sorry you said that?” Couric proceeded to relay another Democratic complaint/aspersion against Lieberman: 

What really irritated -- even enraged -- some Democrats was your speech at the Republican National Convention. Did you understand at the time how nervy that might seem to some Democrats? How inappropriate?