John McCain

If there was a contest each week for the dumbest comment made by a member of the media, this would likely be last week's prohibitive favorite.

On the syndicated Chris Matthews Show this weekend, during a discussion about Barack Obama's America-hating Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page actually said with a straight face, "Right-wing wouldn't have that story if it wasn't for the mainstream media" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

When it comes to his memory of the 2008 presidential campaign, Ed Schultz is either dishonest or ignorant, though he might well be both.

On his radio show Thursday, Schultz made a claim that was demonstrably false -- and refuted by the source he cited to bolster it, the HBO docudrama "Game Change." (video, audio clips after page break)

"Russia's top military officer told a conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials that Russia would mount a preemptive strike on U.S.-led NATO missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe if Washington goes ahead with its plan to build a missile shield," the Associated Press has reported.

The Washington Post carried the 5-paragraph story, but buried it on page A6 of the May 4 paper under the headline, "Military ups the ante on missile defense."

It seems a metaphysical certitude a meaningful percentage of Americans in 2008 supported Barack Obama out of an historical sense to have elected the nation's first black president.

On MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews made a somewhat similar case for this upcoming election asking guests Chuck Todd of NBC News and Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post, "Is there going to be a reluctance on the part of the voters and the political community that talks politics as we get into November about dumping the first African-American president?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Charlie Rose boosted two of the left's talking points about Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday's CBS This Morning. Rose asked Republican Senator John McCain, "Does Mitt Romney have to redefine himself...against the charges that he's out of touch, and that by endorsing the Ryan budget, it is a prescription for American decline?"

Rose also highlighted how McCain and President Obama both slammed the Court's Citizens United decision. But the Arizona Republican clarified that "I agreed that it was a bad decision, but certainly...I never questioned that they didn't have the right to do that. Apparently, the President doesn't read the Constitution the way some of us do."

On Friday's The Ed Show on MSNBC, host Ed Schultz and MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe - formerly of Newsweek - drew attention to a woman at a shooting range who recently encouraged Rick Santorum to "pretend it's Obama" while the GOP presidential candidate was firing at a target.

After Schultz noted that Santorum criticized the comment when it was brought to his attention, Wolffe warned viewers:

Republican senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain's passing concession yesterday to Meet the Press host David Gregory that there is in fact a "war on women among Republicans" was the perfect springboard for MSNBC's Richard Lui to conduct a softball interview with former Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt.  Lui, substitute hosting the March 19 edition of Chris Jansing Reports, introduced the segment with the relevant clip of McCain, noting that the feminist author had gone "toe-to-toe" with McCain on social issues and that "this was a change."

Feldt enthused that she was happy to see the old John McCain back, recalling fondly that the first time she met the senator, his rhetoric was more socially liberal. "His instincts were to say women should have the right to make their own child-bearing decisions." That said, Feldt made sure to denounce McCain for having "a 100 percent anti-choice, anti-family planning voting record."

While interviewing Arizona Senator John McCain on Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory took a line from the Democratic script as he wondered: "Are you concerned at all to see a focus with certain elements of the Republican Party on social issues?...Do you think that there is something of a war on women among Republicans?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Hillary Clinton campaign circulated Obama photo in Muslim attire.

Polls released Monday showed a large percentage of Republicans in Alabama and Mississippi think President Obama is a Muslim.

In a shocking display of unhinged rhetoric hours later, MSNBC's Ed Schultz blamed it all on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, despite his failure as the McCain-Palin campaign’s senior adviser, and his subsequent backstabbing of the candidates he represented, HBO’s “Game Change” made him the hero of its Palin-bashing film that premiered Saturday.

The crew on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, with Schmidt as its guest, continued with this pathetic idol worship Monday (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Now that HBO's Sarah Palin-bashing film "Game Change" has premiered, it is fascinating to note that its two heroes are the very advisers who not only were responsible for the worst presidential campaign in decades, but also ended up backstabbing the candidates they represented.

As John Podhoretz wrote at the Weekly Standard:

Although Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) kept true to his word that he wasn't going to watch HBO's Sarah Palin-bashing film "Game Change" which premiered Saturday evening, he did have some harsh words about it on Fox News Sunday.

"It's based on a book that's completely biased and with unattributed quotes," McCain said before taking issue with the depiction of him as a vulgar man that asked his campaign manager to find him a female running mate (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting, Obama-loving media members have almost been orgasmic in their adoration for HBO's new Sarah Palin-bashing film "Game Change."

Firmly on the bandwagon is Chris Matthews who on the syndicated program bearing his name this weekend actually said that Woody Harrelson's performance as McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt is "the role of the century" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Days before HBO's anti-Republican propaganda film "Game Change" premieres, it has been revealed that the top stars and executives involved in the movie have given $200,000 to Democrats and liberal causes over the years.

By contrast, according to the Hollywood Reporter, they've given exactly nothing to Republicans:

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose hinted that Republicans needed to go further in decrying Rush Limbaugh's slam of radical feminist and law student Sandra Fluke. Rose asked Senator John McCain, "Are you satisfied that those Republican officials have gone far enough in condemning these statements?" McCain replied, "Oh, I'll leave that up to pundits like you, Charlie" [audio available here; video below the jump].

The morning newscast also highlighted how "seven companies have pulled commercials from Limbaugh's nationally syndicated show. Online data company Carbonite said the on-air attack crossed the line....Limbaugh had some defenders, but they were drowned out by those protests on the left, and critics on the right."

It's been three and a half years since John McCain asked Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign, but liberal media members still can't accept it.

On Wednesday's Tonight Show, host Jay Leno - for what must be approaching the millionth time - challenged the Arizona Senator for his decision (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fresh off her rousing keynote address to the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin sat down with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.

When her host brought up the soon to be released HBO film "Game Change" about amongst other things her travails during the 2008 presidential campaign and suggested they watch a video clip, Palin cutely asked, "Must we?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Rick Santorum to John Heilemann [and by extension to MSM at large] on today's Morning Joe: "it's your responsibility to defend the president, not mine." Ouch! If Newt's deft dicing of John King and Juan Williams paid huge electoral dividends, Santorum might anticipate a much-needed bump after running roughshod over the New York mag reporter.

Heilemann had called on Santorum to explain his failure to correct a woman at a town hall meeting in Florida yesterday who said President Obama was an "avowed Muslim" and legally unqualified to be president. After noting that he has repeatedly been on the record saying that he doesn't believe PBO is a Muslim and recognizes that he is legally qualified to be president, Santorum said that he chose not to chastise an elderly and infirm lady.  Then came Santorum's grand slam, as set forth above.  Heilemann only dug himself deeper when he responded by saying that prez candidate McCain had always defended Obama on the campaign trail. Video after the jump.

After Rick Perry ended his presidential bid on Thursday, the Associated Press's Chris Tomlinson opened his dispatch about the announcement thusly: "Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race on Thursday, endorsed his old friend Newt Gingrich and returned home to Texas, where the failed White House candidate has three years left to serve as the chief executive."

Based on much of his prior reportage, Tomlinson appears have a particular animus towards the Texas Governor. But tagging GOP presidential candidates or their candidacies as "failed" is not an aberration at the AP, while the wire service's omission of such tags on wildly unsuccessful Democratic candidates pointedly betrays the presence of obvious bias.

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.

After Mitt Romney’s comfortable win in the New Hampshire Republican primaries Tuesday, media attention shifts to the next primary, in socially conservative South Carolina, which New York Times campaign reporter Jim Rutenberg claims is “a place famous for surfacing the dark undercurrents of American politics” in his Wednesday front-page story, “In South Carolina, Challenges Await on Ideology and Faith.”

Rutenberg is mainly referring to an alleged incident during the 2000 campaign in which presidential candidate Sen. John McCain was victimized by anonymous phone calls (from either the George W. Bush campaign or Bush supporters) claiming McCain’s dark-skinned adopted daughter from Bangladesh was an illegitimate black love child. But is there hard evidence the smear even occurred? As the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell wrote in a column in January 2008: “No matter that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis couldn’t substantiate how many of these scurrilous phone calls were actually made, or by whom.”

When Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blamed not only President Obama but also members of his own party for the payroll tax standoff, CNN's Ali Velshi interjected that perhaps the senator was being too hard on the President. McCain had insisted earlier that previous presidents would have done more to get a deal through a divided Congress.

"Is it really fair to put as much heat as you're putting on the President on this one?" Velshi complained to McCain. "I mean, a lot of eyes are pointing to House Republican leadership right now as being intransigent." [Video below the break.]

CBS's Early Show on Wednesday boosted a claim by Democrats that a recent Mitt Romney ad takes a line from a 2008 speech by then-candidate Barack Obama out of context. However, CBS noted at that time that Obama was using that line to counter a McCain campaign ad which played up the Democrat's association with left-wing terrorist Bill Ayers.

Anchor Erica Hill raised the controversy over the Romney ad towards the end of a segment with political correspondent Jan Crawford about the most recent Republican presidential debate. After playing the relevant part of the commercial, which includes a clip of Obama stating that "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," Hill asked, "A lot of controversy over that ad, Jan. Why?"

There’s a clear double standard on sex allegations for presidential candidates in the New York Times.

The Times put 15-year-old anonymous accusations of sexual harassment against GOP candidate Herman Cain on the front page Tuesday morning, in an off-lead story by Jim Rutenberg and Michael Shear written with help from five other reporters: “Cain Confronts Claim From 90s Of Harassment – He Denies Wrongdoing – Account of Settlement Changes – Reports Rock Campaign.”

Andrew Rosenthal may think twice before engaging in political parlay with James Taranto again. Rosenthal, the New York Times’s editorial page editor, came out on the losing end of a Twitter argument with Taranto, who puts together Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web, a Wall Street Journal project. Taranto summarized the argument in Monday's edition.

It started with an article by Slate's David Weigel shows Obama crushing GOP candidate Herman Cain among North Carolina voters, 86%-6%, barely improving on the Republican’s 2008 candidate John McCain, who got 5 percent of the black vote.

Updated [11:34 ET]: More analysis and full transcript added. Guthrie takes swipe at GOP 2012 field. 

On Friday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host Savannah Guthrie grilled Arizona Senator John McCain on his criticism of Barack Obama's foreign policy positions in the 2008 campaign and urged: "Bin Laden is gone. Anwar al Awlaki, who was the rising star in al Qaeda, is gone. Qadhafi is gone. Drone strikes have intensified greatly....Given the track record now in office, would you change your opinion, sir?" [Audio available here]

Prior to that, Guthrie pressed McCain on his early criticism of Obama's handling of Libya: "You were an early supporter of U.S. intervention in Libya, and yet, you harshly criticized the President for how he went about it. At this moment, given that Qadhafi is gone, are you willing to give the President credit, unqualified credit, for how he handled this?" [View video after the jump]

The folks at MSNBC as well as parent NBC should sit up and take notice of something Joe Scarborough said on Monday's "Morning Joe."

"There are not enough people that are either Republican in the mainstream media or talk to people on the telephone at least one a month...who actually understand what the Republican Party is" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Maybe what America's press really need is a Canadian television commentator to explain how atrocious their coverage of Barack Obama has been since the moment he tossed his named into the presidential ring in February 2007.

Although they may not be familiar with CBC's Rex Murphy, they should certainly heed the marvelous piece he wrote for the National Post Saturday entitled "The Media’s Love Affair With a Disastrous President":