TimesWatch

In his Monday column, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller hoped gay marriage would be vindicated by the Supreme Court: "A Brief for Justice Kennedy." Keller has previously argued for gay marriage while hinting that those who disagree are motivated sheerly by bigotry. On Monday he gushed that two lawyers fighting for gay marriage can "make history" at the Supreme Court and…

Mark Oppenheimer's latest bimonthly "Beliefs" column for the New York Times accused conservatives like Jonah Goldberg of misunderstanding Marxist "liberation theology" in using Rev. Jeremiah Wright to attack Barack Obama: "A Campaign Pitch Rekindles the Question: Just What Is Liberation Theology?" The year 2012 looks a lot like 2008: high unemployment, a candidate named Obama promising to do…

The usual pro-Obama tilt in postings to the New York Times' political blog "The Caucus" was even more pronounced this week. Times Watch evaluated all the headlines to presidential-election related Caucus posts for the week of May 21-25, excluding summaries composed solely of links to Times stories, and stories related to Congress alone. As of noon Friday, there were 23 matching posts. Of…

Maureen Dowd has devoted her last two Times columns to her problems with the male hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Wednesday's edition featured "Father Doesn't Know Best" (get it?). Dowd is confused about the idea of a church insisting its members adhere to its core beliefs, while ranting about "women's lower caste in the church." That subject is a hobbyhorse for Dowd, who has previously…

New York Times White House reporter Jackie Calmes gushed over Obama's hair as a symbol of hope for blacks in Thursday's "When a Boy Found a Familiar Feel in a Pat of the Head of State," which made the front page of the paper's National section and is the most emailed Times story as of Thursday morning. In a convenient bit of public relations, the would-be "indelible" image (the initial online…

Monica Davey and Steven Yaccino reported for Tuesday's New York Times from Chicago, the site of the NATO summit and left-wing protests and put the best spin on the violent clashes that led to 90 arrests over the course of a week: "Day of Subdued Protests Follows Night of Clashes in Chicago." The text box: "The prospect of widespread chaos does not materialize." Apparently left-wing protests…

New York Times White House reporter Jackie Calmes on Saturday once again nodded along to the wisdom of the liberal priorities of the Obama administration and its supporters, this time as they're pushing the necessity of raising taxes: "As a Debt Battle Looms, Budget Veterans See No Option but to Raise Taxes." It depends on which "budget veterans" you talk to, of course, and Calmes only talked…

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…

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…

The NATO summit meeting in Chicago this weekend was the target of a diverse collage of left-wing groups as people with the Occupy movement streamed into Chicago for protests that culminated in violent clashes with cops and 45 arrests on Sunday. Before the summit the Times reported the protest would be a sign of how strong Occupy remained. Yet once the violence and terrorism charges began flying…

Political reporter Michael Shear uses a half-baked Times "expose" to accuse the GOP of using racial attacks by bringing up the legitimate issue of the anti-white, anti-American, paranoid ravings of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for decades in Chicago, in Saturday's "Race and Religion Rear Their Heads." Perhaps the uglier side of politics is always close to the surface. President…

New York Times legal reporter Charlie Savage showed his usual labeling blindness in Friday's piece on strange political bedfellows that oppose indefinite detention: "House to Consider Proposal to Bar Indefinite Detention After Arrests on U.S. Soil." Savage again showed himself unwilling to label far-left figures like Noam Chomsky as far-left, but has no problem calling the Tea Party "…

Thursday's New York Times off-lead by Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg was intended to cause heartburn for the Mitt Romney camp: "G.O.P. ‘Super PAC’ Weighing A Hard-Line Attack on Obama." The ad strategy, which was aborted after the Times ran with it on Thursday's front page, would have emphasized Obama's controversial Chicago pastor, the racially inflammatory Jeremiah Wright. But the Times as…

The New York Times's Serge Kovaleski reported from Sanford, Fla. on the many "missteps" in the police investigation into the fatal shooting of black youth Treyvon Martin by George Zimmerman: "In Martin Case, Police Missteps Add to Challenges to Find Truth." Of course, the Times and the rest of the media have made plenty of their own mistakes in covering the volatile case. Kovaleski's front-…