Joan Walsh

On Friday, NewsBusters reported Salon editor Joan Walsh saying on MSNBC's Hardball, "I didn’t think it was possible to get lower than Andrew Breitbart, but his spawn have."

In a piece marvelously titled "Is It Possible to Get Lower Than Joan Walsh?" Twitchy reported moments ago that this sparked a new hashtag on Twitter:

Salon editor Joan Walsh took a truly disgusting cheap shot at the late Andrew Breitbart Friday.

Appearing on MSNBC's Hardball, Walsh said, "I didn’t think it was possible to get lower than Andrew Breitbart, but his spawn have gotten lower than Andrew Breitbart" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the wake of the Ann Romney-Hilary Rosen stay-at-home mom dustup, Salon's Joan Walsh on Thursday predictably made the totally false claim "being able to stay home with your children [is] a choice for the wealthy only."

Fortunately, former RNC chairman Michael Steele was also on MSNBC's Hardball to set the record straight saying, "This isn’t about just rich women. There are a lot of middle class women out there who stay at home with their kids too" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Here's a joke for you this Tuesday morning. Did you know that hyperpartisan Democrat Chris Matthews sees himself as a "centrist?" In an aside during a conversation with MSNBC contributor Joan Walsh, the leg-thrilling pundit emphatically claimed the moderate label for himself, stating that he could understand President Obama being criticized by both liberals and conservatives on the Keystone Pipeline.

"Take it from a centrist. I know what it's like," Matthews proclaimed. Video, transcript and commentary below the break.

Not surprisingly, MSNBC has spent much of the day trashing conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh's apology to Georgetown University law student and women's rights activist Sandra Fluke.

Doing her part was Salon editor-at-large Joan Walsh who appearing on The Ed Show said, "Rush has been like crack for the Republican Party, and they need more and more of it to get them high. And he needs, he personally needs more and more outrage and more and more abuse and misogyny to get himself excited" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Less than 24 hours after Salon's Joan Walsh trashed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, she was invited on MSNBC to attack him and his colleagues further.

Appearing on Hardball, Walsh said of the GOP, "They’re writing off women, they're writing off Latinos, they’re writing off Asians, they’re writing off young people. It’s really the party of old white men basically" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN a few weeks ago suspended Roland Martin for making homophobic comments on Twitter.

Will MSNBC consider Salon editor-at-large Joan Walsh's attack on Mitt Romney's faith Tuesday equally offensive?

Salon editor Joan Walsh said Friday that conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh is "a secret Democrat."

Speaking with MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball about the debate over who should pay for contraceptives, Walsh said of Limbaugh, "He is leading [the Republican] party off a cliff on this issue" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Salon's Joan Walsh stooped to an even further low Monday when she said on MSNBC's pre-debate show, "Newt is the face of the politics of resentment and racism and angry white male rage."

Yes, she was talking about Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Well, she’s certainly making a case for the title.

In a piece titled, When white people lack “bourgeois values”, the Salon Editor at Large manages a race and class-baiting exacta, covering an alleged economic disdain shown by Republicans towards African-Americans, and charging the GOP with promoting policies which “shackle women to the home”.

In attacking a Rick Santorum speech on family values, in which he correctly stated, “When the family breaks down, the economy breaks down,” Walsh had this to say:

Remember the good old days when political commentators were governing their tongues and offering Americans a far more civil tone in the wake of the tragic shootings in Tucson?

Well, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday demonstrated just how bygone those days are when he gleefully reminisced about Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) sticking his neck out with a bold budget proposal months ago only to have President Obama "[punch] his head off" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, Chris Matthews on Wednesday lied about Ronald Reagan's position on taxes in a "Hardball" segment insinuating the late President would oppose the current Republican stance on the debt ceiling.

When Salon editor Joan Walsh said Obama "is actually the Reagan figure here," former RNC chairman Michael Steele bust out laughing (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh doesn't like to comment about MSNBC because he fears it will help their dismal ratings.

However, he made an exception on Thursday's program saying amongst other things, "That whole network is a loony bin filled with people who are overflowing with uncontrollable rage, anger, unhappiness, and misery, by design" (video courtesy Right Scoop follows with transcript and commentary):

Two times in less than 24 hours, MSNBC's Chris Matthews smeared Republicans who oppose raising the debt limit as "terrorists." On Tuesday, after liberal guest Joan Walsh compared the GOP position to "hostage taking," the Hardball anchor derided, "I agree. It's terrorism."

On Wednesday, while talking with left-wing blogger Ezra Klein, Matthews engaged in extreme hyperbole again, excoriating, "I was talking about the old days. I've never seen either political party play terrorist with disregard."

To a liberal media member, politics means never having to say you were wrong.

On Tuesday's "The Ed Show," Salon's Joan Walsh said she looked "kind of stupid" for defending Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) last week, then went right on defending him (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Both CNN's Anderson Cooper on Wednesday's AC360 and CBS's Nancy Cordes on Thursday's Early Show highlighted conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart's early part in spreading news of the lewd photo Tweeted from Rep. Andrew Weiner's Twitter account. Cooper played up Breitbart's supposedly "questionable credibility," while Cordes reported how "supporters of Weiner note that it was [the] right-wing blogger...who broke the story."

The CNN anchor raised Breitbart's involvement 15 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour as he introduced the second part of an interview of the New York Democrat conducted by his colleague Wolf Blitzer:

Ed Schultz re-introduced his "Psycho Talk" segment on Monday after deciding in January to shelve the feature following the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in Tucson.

This ended up being quite fitting, for earlier in the program, Schultz engaged in some psycho talk of his own accusing Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich of wanting to end the food stamp program "to give tax breaks to old white millionaires" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NBC's David Gregory started a Newt Gingrich is racist trend Sunday that liberal media members across the fruited plain quickly embraced.

After the "Meet the Press" host accused the former House Speaker of racism for having the nerve to call Barack Obama "The most successful food stamp president in American history," Salon's Joan Walsh out in San Francisco jumped on the bandwagon as did Chicago film critic Roger Ebert:

CNN's Howard Kurtz is either astonishingly naive or so strongly in the tank for Barack Obama that he's willing to ignore the totally obvious to assist the President's reelection efforts.

On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," Kurtz actually discussed with far-left guests Joan Walsh of Salon and John Aravosis of Americablog.com - without ever disclosing the painfully inconvenient truth! - why the "so-called liberal media" don't report divisions within the Democrat Party especially left-wing disappointment with the current White House resident (video follows with transcript and lots of commentary):

I've said for years it takes an amazing amount of rationalizations to be a liberal these days.

On Tuesday's "Hardball," Salon editor Joan Walsh demonstrated perfectly what I mean (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Wednesday's AC360 on CNN, ABC's Ashleigh Banfield punted on Nir Rosen's offensive Tweets against CBS's Lara Logan and tried to explain them away: "We're using a lot of electronics to get information out as fast as we can nowadays before we can really digest the ramifications of what we say...And so, I'm certainly not going to cast aspersions on Mr. Rosen. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Anchor Anderson Cooper turned to Banfield and Salon.com's Joan Walsh immediately after playing his taped interview with Rosen during the 10 pm Eastern hour. Cooper first asked Walsh for her take on the controversy, and she promptly criticized the disgraced journalist: "I thought it was horrible, Anderson, and I assumed that he was making light of a sexual assault...So, I'm not going to call him a liar. Only he knows what he knew. But it was incredibly insensitive, and even...aside from the sexual assault aspect, to be mocking someone that you don't like who has been injured and mistreated, I would rather think that we don't have those responses...Maybe that's naive of me."

Having mercilessly attacked Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) for six days in a row, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday set his sights on conservative talk show host Glenn Beck.

After an opening teaser in which the "Hardball" host referred to "the right-wing freak-out over Egypt," Matthews ended up doing two segments about the Fox News star in which he and his perilously liberal guests called the object of their disaffection a "fear mongering," "completely crazy," "full mooner," "Captain Queeg" (videos follow with partial transcripts and lengthy commentary):

A former advisor to George W. Bush smacked down Salon's Joan Walsh Monday for questioning the 43rd President's psychological compass.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball," GOP strategist Ron Christie also gave Chris Matthews a much-needed education on why going into Iraq was a successful part of Bush's strategy to prevent America from a follow-up attack after 9/11 (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Worked into a tizzy over conservative radio talk show hosts and a Republican congresswoman complaining about the reported cost of President Obama's state visit to India, MSNBC's Chris Matthews today suggested racial animus -- against President Obama and the country of India -- played a role in the criticism. Yet at the same time Matthews put down Indian journalists by suggesting their reporting is inherently unreliable.

The Hardball host blasted Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michele Bachmann for citing an Indian news agency's reporting on the cost of his state visit to India. A White House official says those reported cost figures are "wildly inflated."

"First of all, I consider this whole thing disgustingly ad hominem. It's an attack on our president, and sometimes I do think there's an ethnic aspect," Matthews groused, bringing the specter of racism into his complaint.

  Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, not so cryptically compared the actions of Republican volunteers to that of Nazi-style tactics from the 1930s as he claimed the restraining of a MoveOn.org activist by a Rand Paul supporter reminded him of what "we saw from hoodlums in the thirties in another country I will not mention" and added: "I mean it isn't far from what we saw in the thirties, where all of a sudden, political parties started showing up in uniform." Matthews, who was joined by Salon's Joan Walsh and the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, even went on to claim physical attacks against political opponents was something that existed exclusively on one ideological side as he asserted that it was "right wing by its very nature."

This was the second night in a row Matthews advanced this theory and he didn't bother to mention the other side of the story, that a Jack Conway volunteer perhaps had acted violently at the Paul rally as well. The Post's Cillizza, to his credit, actually tried to talk Matthews down as he told the MSNBC host: "I don't think it is right wing by its nature. I would say at the end of campaigns, passions get very inflamed...I do not think it is a right wing thing, I do not think it is a left wing thing." However Cillizza failed in his effort to bring reason to the Hardball host as Matthews challenged Cillizza to "Name the last liberal progressive candidate who hired a private army, the last one that was stomping his political, her political opponents in the street?" before getting on his liberal high horse: "Well we see different kinds of passion here, don't we? We see one passion being reporters trying to get stories in Alaska so they could undercover skull-duggery. We have the passion of a woman who shows up to demonstrate with a wig on and a placard and then we see the passion of the other side, which is to hire armies of paramilitaries and stomp people."

                                                                                                                        (video after the jump)

A frustrated Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, chided the left for being disappointed in Barack Obama as he essentially told them, he's the best they've got and are going to get. During a segment in which the Salon's Joan Walsh and Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall wondered why Obama and Joe Biden were admonishing their base to stop whining, Matthews took up for Team Obama as he tried to calm down the lefties: "This president has done what we were all taught in graduate school to do, what progressives have believed in from years and years, decades ago...You compensate for the loss of consumer spending and business investment with government spending...No one has had a better idea since the 1930s. Number two, The Wall Street crowd needed governing. They didn't have any, now they've got some. Number three, he's pushed for progressive taxation, he's going after the rich. He's not giving them their tax cut." [audio available here]

At the end of his program, a desperate sounding Matthews listed a bunch of races Democrats still had a chance in,  and then pleaded to the left to unify behind those candidates because "the bad guys are gaining." (video & audio of "Let Me Finish" segment below the fold)

The following exchange was aired on the September 28 edition of Hardball:

On Tuesday, NewsBusters identified the media's emerging strategy of discrediting Glenn Beck by pitting his religious beliefs against other Christians.

Mere hours later, as if on cue, MSNBC was all over it.

"Hardball" host Chris Matthews invited on liberal Salon editor Joan Walsh and Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, two people who are something less than experts on the religious right, to help him psychoanalyze conservatives.

Their conclusion was all too predictable: Beck's rhetoric is harmful to Catholics and smacks of anti-Papal Klan rallies.

It has now been established by the media that Mormons like Beck are anti-evangelical, anti-Catholic, and possibly just plain anti-Christian.

Prepare yourself for liberals who bash conservative Christians at every turn to suddenly care about Christians getting bashed (video below with partial transcript):

Chris Matthews almost got another tingle up his leg on national television Tuesday talking about how wonderful Barack Obama is.

So did Salon's Joan Walsh,

In the opening segment of "Hardball," the host and his perilously liberal guests concluded by trying to figure out why conservatives don't like the current White House resident.

In the end, and sadly predictable, the conclusion was the color of Obama's skin.

But before that, the sycophantic praise and exultation for the object of their affection was literally breathless (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews in the course of less than two hours Thursday appeared to radically change his opinion about Shirley Sherrod's pending lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart.

As NewsBusters previously reported, Matthews during the 5 p.m. installment of "Hardball" got into a heated argument with former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean about the contents of the controversial video Breitbart posted at BigGovernment.com on July 19.

For some reason, rather than air that segment as part of the normal 7 p.m. rerun, MSNBC did a live broadcast bringing Politico's Ken Vogel in to discuss the matter with Matthews and original guest Salon's Joan Walsh.

What resulted was a completely different presentation than what aired just two hours prior with Matthews far more critical of Breitbart than he previously was and far more supportive of the merits of Sherrod's case.

Let's look at the videos to see the glaring difference in these segments (partial transcripts also follow with commentary):