Double Standards

In the first full weeknight since The National Enquirer tabloid published its unsubstantiated piece alleging that GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz has been engaging in extramarital affairs, late-night comedy hosts Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel spent portions of their Monday monologues promoting the smear as legitimate and wondering how any woman could be interested in Cruz.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had a jolly old time mocking Ted Cruz on today's Morning Joe. After playing a clip of Cruz refusing to say whether he'd support Trump given The Donald's attack on his wife, Joe imagined Cruz rehearsing his words before a mirror. Scarborough went on to approvingly cite David Axelrod, who had said that Cruz seems "staged" even when defending the honor of his…

For the past month, the conventional wisdom about the U.S. economy has been that consumer spending and "(not really) robust" job growth will continue to prop up the economy, even as weaknesses in manufacturing, trade and other areas continue to present problems. President Obama bragged in early March that the economy is "pretty darned good now." Today, the first of those two pillars got pulled.…

The New York Times’ Ian Lovett reported Sunday on the University of California condemning anti-Semitism in its university system, especially in relation to the anti-Israeli BDS movement infesting college campuses. The problem has been festering for years -- and so has the Times’ oddly ambivalent response to the outbreaks of anti-Semitism on left-wing college campuses. While the paper is eager to…

When was the last time a badly trailing presidential candidate in either major party won relatively late-in-the-game contests by lopsided victory margins of greater than 70-30, as Bernie Sanders did in Washington today, and greater than 80-20, as Sanders did in Alaska? I'm virtually certain that the answer to that question, regardless of what happens in Hawaii's Democratic primary much later…

As part of his weekly segment entitled “Ya Burnt” where he rifts on various topics, NBC’s Late Night host Seth Meyers found it pertinent in the early hours of Good Friday to mock Jesus Christ and Leonardo da Vinci’s depiction of the Last Supper that was so dull in the eyes of Meyers that “[n]o wonder Judas dropped a dime” on Jesus.

In almost identical fashion to their hysteria concerning the defeat of transgender bathroom bill in Houston from November, Thursday’s CBS Evening News painted quite the doomsday scenario for Georgia and North Carolina over their respective religious freedom bills as the newscast argued they could lead to massive boycotts and the loss of billions of dollars in business.

In the wee hours of MSNBC’s live coverage of caucus and primary results in Arizona, Idaho, and Utah, co-host Rachel Maddow attempted to mount a forceful defense of the media’s obsessive attention to Donald Trump (to the detriment of the other Republican candidates) but was met with firm opposition by former Carly Fiorina deputy campaign manager Sarah Isgur Flores.

Matt Lauer, aka Mr. Softee (when interviewing people with whom he sympathizes), tried to act like a tough guy in his Friday interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. You're not fooling us, Matt. After observing that he had "an enormous outpouring of questions about censorship" after he asked his Twitter followers what they would like to see discussed, Lauer "cleverly" asked Dorsey: "Does Twitter…

NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd clearly brought the Tim Russert tactics to his interview with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who bizarrely claimed his career has been dedicated to preventing obstruction. Todd played a 2005 Reid clip: “The duties of the United States Senate are set forth in the Constitution of the United States. Nowhere in that document does it say the Senate has a duty to…

Does anyone remember how The Onion "humorously" satirized then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's refusal to consider the federal court nomination of Miguel Estrada in 2003? Oh come on, it was the one where there was an accompanying cartoon showing Daschle holding Estrada's "Severed Head Aloft in Front of the Capitol Building"? That was just a laugh riot, wasn't it? Of course, no…

The government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that consumer prices fell 0.2 percent in February. Lower prices should be good news, right? Wrong, at least according to Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press. Crutsinger's Wednesday dispatch also managed to ignore the fact that even the supposedly low inflation seen during the past 12 months has eaten up most of workers' very…

The business press's determination to convince the public that weak economic news is really strong seemingly knows no bounds. Today, shortly after the Federal Reserve's Industrial Production report for February showed a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent decline — worse than expectations of -0.3 percent — the Associated Press pretended in its headline and in reporter Christopher Rugaber's first…

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was still hard at work making befuddling statements early Wednesday morning following the third installment of Super Tuesday with comments that mocked “neocons” as wanting everyone to go into battle “for Israel” as “blah, blah, blah” while fellow panelist Joy Reid attacked Rubio’s concession speech as unoriginal and mash-ups of Reagan and President Barack Obama.