MSNBC Talking Points: Touting Obama as a Pro-gun President, Lecturing

MSNBC on Monday repeatedly promoted Barack Obama as a pro-Second Amendment President and chastised gun-rights activists for "worrying" so much over this issue. News Live host Monica Novotny talked to Skip Coryell, the founder of the Second Amendment march on Washington and complained, "What are you guys worried about?She then touted, "Our political unit today was reminding us in the First Read…
Scott Whitlock

Flashback: Media Blamed and Condemned Conservatives After Oklahoma Cit

“In a nation that has entertained and appalled itself for years with hot talk on the radio and the campaign trail, the inflamed rhetoric of the '90s is suddenly an unindicted co-conspirator in the blast,” charged Time magazine Senior Writer Richard Lacayo in the May 8, 1995 edition of the news weekly, the first quote cited in a “Special Purveyors of Hate & Division Issue” published at the…
Brent Baker

On Fox News, Jim Pinkerton, Judy Miller Cite MRC, Eyeblast

James Pinkerton of the New America Foundation and Fox News contributor Judy Miller both gave kudos to the Media Research Center and Eyeblast.tv on Saturday's Fox News Watch. Pinkerton applauded Eyeblast for hosting a clip of NBC's Kelly O'Donnell questioning of black tea partyer and his "best answer." (See the Friday NB post, “White NBC Reporter Confronts Black Man at Tea Party Rally: 'Have You…
NB Staff

NYT's Zernike Slams an 'Angry' White, Male, Reactionary Tea Party Move

New York Times reporter Kate Zernike, the paper's main reporter on the Tea Party beat, dropped all pretense of fairness in her story for the front of the Sunday Week in Review,"Tea Party Supporters Doing Fine, but Angry Nonetheless." Her summary of the movement: "They tend to be white and male, with a disproportionate number above 45, and above 65. Their memories are of a different time, when the…
Clay Waters

Open Thread

NB Staff

WaPo Promotes Maddow Special on How McVeigh Echoes in 'Rising Tide of

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the horrific Oklahoma City bombing, and The Washington Post's Hank Stuever promoted MSNBC on the front page of the Style section -- because Rachel Maddow "has been having 1990s flashbacks with the anti-government vitriol that most recently accompanied the health-care reform debate."Stuever offered a preview of the left-wing propaganda to be unveiled tonight in…
Tim Graham

Todd: Crist for President?; Remnick Reveals ObamaCare Passed to Gain N

Friday follies. Before the weekend ends, two quotes from journalists worth noting made on Friday night shows: ♦ On MSNBC’s Hardball, NBC’s Chuck Todd forwarded the notion that if Florida Governor Charlie Crist drops out of the Republican primary -- where polls put him way behind conservative Marco Rubio -- and wins the Senate seat as an independent, “he becomes the most powerful Senator in the…
Brent Baker

On CNN, Howard Kurtz Disses Bret Baier's Fox Interview with Obama as

When interviewing White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Sunday's edition of Reliable Sources on CNN, host Howard Kurtz suggested Bret Baier's interview with President Obama was an "interrupt-a-thon," as if the proper role of a journalist is to allow 90 seconds for each answer. It sounded like a CNN host attacking the other team, or simply like a softball question: KURTZ: Let me ask you…
Tim Graham

Liberal WaPo Columnist Attends Tea Party Rally; Discovers Refreshing R

Robert McCartney, the liberal Washington Post columnist, has done something that Chris Matthews and his fellow leftist MSNBC hosts have yet to do: attend a tea party rally without being confrontational and/or snarky. McCartney went to a tea party with an open mind last week and this is what he discovered: I went to the "tea party" rally at the Washington Monument on Thursday to check out just…
P.J. Gladnick

Terse AP Report Avoids Cynical Politics Behind Prop 8 Repeal Failure

In one of those "I guess we have to mention it, but we'll get it out of the way quickly" reports, the Associated Press on Monday, April 12 tersely told its readers the following about the failure of an attempt in California to repeal California's Proposition 8 (reproduced in full for fair use and discussion purposes): What AP chose to avoid telling the rest of the nation is why "more…
Tom Blumer

Time’s Klein: Beck, Palin Potentially Committing Sedition against U

Liberals are all too often eager to charge conservative personalities of using hyperbole to gain a political advantage, especially when it contradicts their world view - whether it's suggesting the Obama administration is taking the country down the path of socialism, fascism or any other -ism. However, it could be argued there's a different set of standards for those same people when they want…
Jeff Poor

On HBO, Jesse Ventura Said Catholic Church Should Be Prosecuted Like M

(Updated with anti-Catholic "New Rules" jokes below.) Liberals complained this week when Rep. Michele Bachmann complained about "gangster government." But do they mind if the Catholic Church is compared to (and prosecuted like) the Mafia? So said former Gov. Jesse Ventura on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday.MAHER: You did a movie called Predator. Let's talk about the Vatican. VENTURA:…
Tim Graham

Conservative Blogger Takes Flak for Noting SCOTUS Nominee's Presumed H

Here's the thing about the vast right-wing conspiracy: it doesn't really exist. The left's latest attempt to invoke the notion has ended in rebuttals from commentators on both sides of the political spectrum.Conservative blogger Ben Domenech noted the White House's apparent desire to appoint a homosexual to the Supreme Court. He noted in a post at the New Ledger that at least three nominees --…
Lachlan Markay

Bill Maher Claims Tea Parties Wrong About Tax Hikes, But Won't 'Let th

HBO should name its show "Real Lies with Bill Maher," because on Friday night he was wildly claiming that 98 percent of taxpayers paid lower taxes this year, and so Tea Parties are just a Klan rally: What a day for the Tea Party people. Did you see that? America's parks and fairgrounds were lost in a sea of man-boobs. (Laughter) As they were venting their anger and rage against taxes, which in…
Tim Graham