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When I read a television column, I want to see reviews of shows.  I'll even read reviews of one-time shows like the Academy Awards, if the column is entertaining enough.  But Tom Shales's long slide down to irrelevance started, I think, when he began turning his reviews into political columns. Nobody's going to confuse Joanne Ostrow with Tom Shales, but she's following his lead in turning her…

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" panel hit the Republican congressional leadership Wednesday for not admitting its faults in dealing with the President the past two years. After playing a video clip of leading House Republicans Eric Cantor and John Boehner praising President Obama for his admission of not having reached out enough to the GOP, "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough challenged the GOP to…

Viewing Obama from the left, center and right.

"Senate GOP: Extend tax cuts or else," reads the teaser headline for an Associated Press story at SFGate.com, the website for the San Francisco Chronicle. [Screen capture posted after page break] "Republicans send letter to Harry Red threatening to block virtually all legislation until expiring tax cuts for wealthy are extended," an accompanying caption  insisted. In the corresponding…

During Wednesday's 12PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Contessa Brewer attacked those who want to maintain the military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy: "...the Marine Corps and Catholic chaplains, who say they support the policy on moral grounds. It doesn't make a lot of sense...if it's homosexuality that they have a problem with – they're basically saying, 'Yeah, just keep lying about it.'"…

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Fox News has given a reporting gig to Doug McKelway, a former ABC anchor for the network's D.C. affiliate. McKelway took heat from higher-ups after accurately reporting on President Obama's ties to oil giant BP and on the inevitable effects of the president's proposed energy policies (higher electricity rates). McKelway was fired after a…

On Tuesday's Parker-Spitzer on CNN, ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer ironically worried that too many of his fellow former politicians, who are also contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, are on Fox News: "Never before in our history...has one media outlet with one coherent ideology had almost a monopoly on...half of the presidential nominees and controlled one political party…

Asking a wife if she loves her husband isn't exactly the most insightful question, but that's one of the softballs that Barbara Walters tossed to Michelle and Barack Obama during an hour long edition of 20/20 on Friday. She also asked the President if he curses and what Lincoln means to him. At one point, the journalist lauded Michelle Obama as "comfortable" and "outspoken." Walters then…

On Wednesday's Today show NBC's Ann Curry managed to thread the theme of global warming through three different news stories, during her 9am news update. The co-anchor began by notifying viewers about the "wild weather" of record rainfall and tornadoes in the South to snow in the Midwest and then told her audience that "unusual weather seems to be a growing trend" as she delivered the latest…

I'll admit it, like millions of other Americans, I'm a sucker for cheesy occupation-based reality shows. I love History Channel's Pawn Stars and American Pickers, as well as A&E's Billy the Exterminator and Dog the Bounty Hunter. I watch them because they're entertaining and full of colorful characters, not in the  expectation of some insightful commentary on  America's real or imagined…

Dave Itzkoff reported Tuesday for The New York Times that corporate executives at Fox Television in Hollywood have never told the producers of "The Simpsons" to knock off the mockery of Fox News, even as it suggests FNC viewers are racists: Lately “The Simpsons” has been taking potshots at its corporate siblings at Fox News. An episode shown last week, called “The Fool Monty,” opened on a…

At the top of Wednesday's CBS Early Show, fill-in co-host Erica Hill fretted over Republicans pledging to focus solely on economic issues in the lame duck session of Congress: "Gridlock alert. Just one day after promising to work together while meeting with President Obama, GOP leaders may now put a halt on cooperating with Democrats on Capitol Hill. So will Washington find itself at a…

Three weeks ago, the Washington Post reported on the front page of its November 10 Metro section that a "Nebraska doctor who is one of the few in the country to perform abortions late in a pregnancy said Wednesday that he would open new clinics in Iowa and the Washington area." At the time, Carhart refused to disclose where he would open his D.C.-area clinic, but said that it would be in a…

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared on all three major morning shows, on Wednesday, and was pressed by ABC, CBS and NBC's anchors about whether or not the President would fold and compromise with the Republicans on keeping the Bush era tax cuts in place - but it was the Today show's Meredith Vieira that hit him the strongest question from the left as she asked Gibbs what kind of "…