Earlier this week, the Huffington Post published an article suggesting Andrew Breitbart may have doctored a video published here and Breitbart.TV that made CBS’s Norah O’Donnell look like the biased liberal she really is.  Of course, Breitbart did no such thing.  After HuffPo brass was alerted to what their bloggers and editors were up to, they jettisoned the article and posted a correction and apology in its stead.

Attempting to marginalize conservatives is beneficial to the left for at least two reasons: 1) the left doesn’t have a lot of effective arguments, and 2) even if they did, discrediting a person once burns far fewer calories than debating each point they make one by one. It’s easier to call someone a racist/sexist/bigot or a liar than it is to prove your own arguments are intellectually sound time after time; after all, who would take what a bigot or a liar has to say seriously?  By painting a person with that brush, the left has preemptively won any future debate they ever have with the “discredited” person.

In the case of Andrew Breitbart, this is exactly what the left has tried to do.  If people hear that “he’s the guy who doctors videos” over and over, they’ll eventually believe it, even if it’s not true, and will no longer think of one of the right’s most effective communicators as a credible source.  NBC, Media Matters, HuffPo, and countless others have tried for years to employ this guilty-until-proven-innocent method of character assassination.

We’ve heard this story before, and we will hear it again… right now.  From Tuesday’s Adweek:

So there you have it, HuffPo caved to Breitbart.  Not “HuffPo Righted a Wrong Done to Breitbart,” or “HuffPo Retracts a Baseless Attack on Breitbart,” Adweek’s editors want readers to focus on HuffPo’s capitulation to the devious Breitbart and his ability to make the liberal media bend to his will.  The word “caves” implies that HuffPo may have been making an important point, but Breitbart somehow applied such unbelievable amounts of pressure that they had no choice but to let the man have his way. As it happens, the rest of the piece was mostly accurate, but the tone of any article is set by the headline, and that’s exactly why the Adweek editors gave this post the title they did.

This whole saga is a lesson in how a meme is created; for those of you unfamiliar with the term, here is the dictionary.com definition*: (more…)

To understand if a person or group is on the left or the right, look no further than what outrages them. If you’re offended by how much tax revenue is squandered year after year, you’re probably on the right; if you are ticked off at the “rich” for not paying their “fair share,” you lean left. If you have a strong urge to kill or capture evildoers around the world, you’re likely conservative; but if you’re irate that detainees might be water-boarded, safe money is you’re lefty. If you drive home in your Toyota Prius to pop a Big Pharma-produced Lexapro that gives you just enough vitality to take your ungrateful kids to the Starbucks for a Java Chip Frappuccino®… only to lecture them on the evils of the corporations once you get there, there’s a good chance you’re left-wing. But if you love capitalism… you get my point.

What inspires your ire tips your hand–politically speaking–and a sanctimonious editorial on Tracy Morgan in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times tells you all you need to know about the staff of SoCal’s leading paper.

For those of you who dropped out of society for the past week, the synopsis is that during a stand-up comedy routine in Nashville, Morgan, of “SNL” and “30 Rock” fame, joked that he would stab his son if he used a “gay voice.” Word got out and all hell broke loose. The twitterverse was outraged, celebrities clamored to condemn the comment, and Morgan eventually delivered the obligatory pandering over-apology replete with a commitment to partner with America’s most ironically named advocacy organization: GLAAD.

The story is a social justice cliché.

The courageous editors at the Los Angeles Times joined the fray yesterday, unloading a bold editorial stating Morgan had crossed the line: (more…)

Weinergate and Sarah Palin have dominated this space the last couple of days, but another story with major media implications is that Jill Abramson will replace Bill Keller as the New York Times executive editor beginning September 6th.  The headlines have been boasting that Abramson is the Times‘ first female boss since the paper’s inception, but this shake-up is hardly progressive: Abramson was raised in New York, is Harvard educated, has little new media expertise (if any), and has a long history of liberal bias in her reports.  She’s a daughter of the old, biased, liberal MSM.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto was quick to point out this incredible excerpt from the NYT article announcing the change:

Ms. Abramson said that as a born-and-raised New Yorker, she considered being named editor of The Times to be like “ascending to Valhalla.”

“In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.“

Scary.

Taranto then goes on to demonstrate that Abramson has a history of “trying to tear down” the Times‘ competitors, most notably Fox News.

Newsbusters, which has documented dozens of examples of liberal bias in Abramson’s past, focused a post on Abramson’s support of Anita Hill, the one-time Clarence Thomas colleague who bears major responsibility for the fiasco that was Thomas’s SCOTUS confirmation hearings.  (more…)

Jerry Springer on “Piers Morgan” last night and Lawrence O’Donnell on his own show offer up what may well be the next Weinergate talking point: It’s all about the sex!  These gentlemen both raise the question: what if he is guilty? And then they offer the same answer: who cares?

First O’Donnell:

We can only hope that the majority of American voters are not far from understanding that human sexually is just that – human… Voters need to realize that sex doesn’t matter when it comes to casting their votes.

And Springer:

Given the fact that details surrounding the initial tweet are still murky and given all that has transpired since, this talking point is going to be a very hard sell to the American people, but Springer and O’Donnell are still giving it a try.  We will continue to refrain from speculating what the final outcome of the Weinergate scandal will be, but it’s worth noting that traditionally liberal media figures are already test-driving a talking point that’s much more serviceable when used to temper fallout than it is to prove innocence.

**UPDATE: I missed this earlier, but in another tweet, Kurtz offered the Clinton sex scandal–the one Kurtz’s Newsweek attempted to kill–as an example of unbiased media coverage of a Democrat sex scandal!  The hubris is breathtaking.  Kurtz also suggests that the old media handled the Spitzer and Edwards scandals admirably.  More here.

***

From the NewsBeast/CNN news guy:

According to another tweet, he meant tweeps, not twerps.

A quick response to the guy who defended the HuffPo Breitbart front-page ban and got the Sherrod story wrong:  Even if the infamous Weinergate image was “faked,” that means someone hacked into a sitting congressman’s verified twitter account and posted porn. THAT’S STILL NEWS!  Why not report it as a developing story, just like we have here at the Bigs? If Kurtz truly believes Rep. Weiner is the victim of a hack-attack, why wouldn’t he cover the story for that reason?

Kurtz later walked back this statement by tweeting, “of course reporters should have looked into Weiner hacking controversy.”  To paraphrase Kurtz, sometimes it pays to think a second time.

I know Tina Brown took over Newsweek last year, but if this is the way their top-tier journalists are treating potential Democrat sex scandals (real or “faked”), this invites the question: has anything really changed?  You may recall it was Newsweek which killed Michael Isikoff’s Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton affair scoop over a decade ago.  The Drudge Report picked it up, and conservative new media was born.  So, we who make our livings in the new media all owe a debt of gratitude to Newsweek employees and their rich history of protecting Democrats, but America deserves better.

UPDATE: To his credit, Mr. Roeper printed a gracious correction today. — 4/19/11

Famous film critic Richard Roeper tee’d off on Andrew Breitbart in his Sun-Times column today. Here’s the passage:

Here’s ultraconservative activist Andrew Breitbart at a Tea Party rally in Wisconsin last Saturday, with a message for pro-union forces that had shown up:

“The Tea Party has been the most peaceful, law-abiding . . . group in the history of American protest. . . . You have no right to lecture us on civility. You have no right to lecture us on language. . . . Go to hell! No, serious. Go to hell! Go to hell! You’ve been so rude, you’re trying to divide America. . . .”

Right. And telling people to go to hell because you disagree with their politics isn’t divisive at all. That’s an instant classic of hypocrisy and a breathtaking lack of self-awareness right there.

Then again, this is the same Andrew Breitbart who went on Twitter in the hours after Ted Kennedy’s death to call Kennedy a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick,” so he’s well-qualified to tell others they can’t lecture him about civility.

Roeper walked into two Breitbart traps in less than 200 words. Can you identify what they are?

The first one is that Breitbart didn’t tell the union protesters to “go to hell” because he disagreed with their politics, but because he considered their tactics reprehensible. Breitbart explained this in the column he posted following the rally. Simply take a look at the full context of the speech.

Here are some examples of the incivility Breitbart may have had in mind:

Note the attempt to drown out the rally with vuvuzelas and the WalkerHitler sign. (more…)

As we’ve noted here at Big Journalism, faux-conservative blogger Conor Friedersdorf, now with the Atlantic, has made it his personal mission to police Andrew Breitbart and his websites.  In Internet parlance, he’s known as a troll.  Today he reviews the first chapter of Andrew Breitbart’s new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! (out today!), and claims to have refuted Breitbart’s calling-card claim “America is in a media war.”  There’s no need to read the article, however (but feel free), since The Atlantic demolishes Friedersdorf’s point while proving Breitbart’s just by publishing the article.  The left-leaning establishment news outlet that’s been around over 150 years published a hit piece by a writer creepily obsessed with Breitbart before he has even finished the book.  This effort to strangle the conservative media mogul’s book in the crib sure seems like “media war” to me.

The fact that Friedersdorf’s post is possible–ney, expected–just as the book is hitting stores, is exactly why Righteous Indignation and continuing to shed light on the fact that the establishment press is conservative America’s primary adversary is so important. (more…)

About three miles south of Beverly Hills in the upper-middle class neighborhood of Beverlywood is Hamilton High School. An otherwise ordinary Los Angeles Unified School District-sponsored juvenile detention center, Hamilton is home to a couple of well regarded magnet programs, particularly the Academy of Music Magnet. The Music Magnet is the old stomping grounds of pop stars, Broadway talent, and even Hollywood A-listers who were drawn to a public school program that has a focus on the arts. Yet, even this rare LAUSD high school that students actually want to attend has become a casualty of the horrendous budget crises in the state of California.

Reporter Steve Lopez was dispatched to the scene to write up the various cutbacks for the Los Angeles Times. Lopez is known for being the journalist whose articles on a schizophrenic musician inspired the Robert Downey Jr./Jaime Foxx film The Soloist. Then all of a sudden, what had the makings of a compelling human interest piece on one of the handful of quintessentially Hollywood high schools quickly devolved into a sob story about how these poor teachers and students have been victimized by the dastardly Republicans and their resistance to tax hikes.

How did he do this?

First, Lopez paints a rosy picture of the school by glowingly describing a performance by the jazz band and cherry-picking quotes raving about teachers; his portrayal of Hamilton is a lot like Sean Penn’s depiction of Iraq in Team America:

As it happens, Hamilton is my local high school and I have family and friends who have graduated from the Music Magnet in recent years. To put it bluntly, many of their experiences didn’t resemble the mythical land of incredible teachers and students anxious to learn that Lopez describes. An anonymous Hamilton graduate told me she recalls students doing cocaine in the state-of the art auditorium (which was overhauled with a lavish grant to the Music Magnet)—in fact, the source recalled students showing up to class on an assortment of drugs. Faculty members were seen “celebrating” with students at cast parties after plays.

And I thought programs like these were meant to keep kids off drugs. (more…)

Alternate Headline: “HuffPo Brass Admits Breitbart Not a Racist, Publishes Articles Portraying Him as One Anyway”

Andrew Breitbart was banned from the the front page of AOL/Huffington Post because he called the cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak Van Jones a “cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak.”  In my background post from last week, I promised to provide examples of other Huffington Post bloggers unleashing ad hominem attacks.  Here are some examples of these emotive, anti-intellectual smears against Breitbart himself published at… the Huffington Post itself

I did a good-faith search through the (AOL/)HuffPo archives to isolate ad hominem they have published against Breitbart.  I went through a mere 150 or so of the hundreds of HuffPo articles that mention the Big Journalism publisher by name.  All of these examples are published within the last two years up until the end of last year (there could be some fresher stuff I’ve missed).   Here are some of the highlights of what I saw that are easily packaged into bite sized pieces; within the (AOL/)HuffPo archives there are even more examples than what you see below.

For brevity’s sake, the attacks are light on context, so all the links are provided so you can jump over to (AOL/)HuffPo to see the hate foment in it’s natural habitat.  After the list, I explain the alternate headline.  And remember: these are (AOL/)HuffPo bloggers, not commenters.

***

Chez Pazienza, Editor of Deus Ex Malcontent, Author, in his piece “ABC News to Redeem Guy With No Redeeming Qualities“:

[Breitbart] is, as Bob Cesca put it perfectly, a serial liar and a scam artist.

[...]

… he’s a raging maniac…

[...]

… he’s ignored facts, knowingly created phony scandals, willfully aided, abetted and perpetuated hoaxes engineered by irresponsible con-men like himself…

[...]

He’s a pompous schoolyard bully…

[...]

…jackass…

***

Bob Cesca in his piece, “The Summer of Republican Race-Baiting“:

The far-right machine and a serial con-man named Andrew Breitbart…

[...]

… Breitbart discredited as an overzealous attention-whore, white rage and white resentment was successfully fueled by conservatives across the media spectrum.

*** (more…)

Howard Kurtz, the longtime WaPo staffer who jumped ship for the Daily Beast (and a cool $600k/year), hosts a show on CNN called Reliable Sources, which airs Sundays.  Reliable Sources, according to CNN, “is one of television’s only regular programs to examine how journalists do their jobs and how the media affect the stories they cover.”  This is, without a doubt, a great idea for a show.  Only there’s one major problem: Kurtz.

You see, there’s nothing on CNN’s show page for Reliable Sources that explains that Kurtz comes from a left-of-center point of view and is more than willing to suspend basic journalistic principles to win a victory for his side.  The question I’ve posed CNN in the past is, who watches their watchdog?  After viewing this must-watch segment, you’ll wonder the same thing:

The Reliable Sources host gets his hypocrisy on in this segment, pure and simple.  Kurtz, who has previously criticized Breitbart for not providing full context in his multimedia presentation on the NAACP that led to last year’s Shirley Sherrod kerfuffle (i.e the redemptive moment, which Breitbart did), left out major details of today’s report on the Huffington Post’s front page Breitbart ban. The self-appointed constable of context selectively edited the details of this story to do the bidding of far-left Color of Change and Van Jones by omitting the facts that HuffPosters are among the Internet’s most predictable flamethrowers and that Breitbart’s statement was perfectly defensible.

Kurtz, who is also the Daily Beast Washington bureau chief, laughably mocks Breitbart by saying, “I’m all for people speaking their mind, but if you want to hang out in nicer neighborhoods, you can’t shout quite as loud.”  First off, Breitbart happens to be the city planner for that “nicer” neighborhood, and that neighborhood happens to be frat row.  Huffington Post is a unique space online where public figures like Aaron Sorkin can call other public figures like Sarah Palin (and other hunters) “faux-macho shitheads” with impunity, and people like Van Jones, who has called Republicans “assholes,” and Bill Maher, who called Sarah Palin a “twat,” are front page regulars.

And let’s not forget when HuffPoster Sorkin called Sarah Palin an “idiot” on Kurtz’s very own CNN. (more…)

Early yesterday morning, the Daily Caller published an interview with Andrew Breitbart where the Big Journalism publisher had some choice words on Color of Change founder, former Green Jobs Czar, and HuffPo blogger Van Jones.

“Van Jones is a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak. And a commie. And an eco-fraudster,” Breitbart said. A few kind words were volunteered for Jones: praise for being “spectacularly well-dressed.”

Mario Ruiz, The Huffington Post’s senior vice president for media relations, told TheDC that Breitbart will not be censored in response to the campaign.

Later in the day, HuffPo caved to Color of Change pressure to blacklist Breitbart.  Color of Change is famous for leading an advertising boycott against Glenn Beck’s show and took credit for Breitbart’s ouster from ABC News’s election night coverage.  HuffPo SVP Mario Ruiz issued the following statement; pay attention to their specific reasoning, emphasis mine:

The Huffington Post is committed to fostering a lively and often provocative debate about the issues of the day and encourages a wide range of voices from all perspectives to participate. Andrew Brietbart’s ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller — right down to calling him a “commie punk” and “a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak” — violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.

He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.

So Breitbart is no longer allowed to publish on the front page of HuffPo because he made an ad hominem attack?  By this logic, the same standard will be applied to all AOL/HuffPo writers going forward.  If Breitbart is being thrown under the bus for making ad hominem remarks off the site, then that means… no other AOL/HuffPo bloggers can make them either.

We’ve never seen the Huffington Post make an effort like this to suppress the speech of any of their other (mostly left-wing) personalities.  The hypocrisy is laughably obvious, and it was left-of-center bloggers Mickey Kaus of the Daily Caller, Alex Pareene of Salon, and Dave Weigel of Slate who were quickest to point it out.  Pareene sums it up this way: (more…)

Before Americans took control of Abu Ghraib after invading Iraq, Saddam Hussein had used the prison to torture and murder political detainees. Reports say as many as 4,000 murders were committed there. There are numerous accounts of prisoners being found with missing limbs, limbs that were perhaps fed to one of the Ba’athist regime’s industrial-strength wood-chippers. But no one knew the name Abu Ghraib until 2004 when images surfaced of American troops sexually humiliating detainees at the prison.

Then, a media frenzy.

Round the clock coverage; thirty straight days of front page ink in the New York Times; The Economist, the Boston Globe, the Times, and others called for then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. As Peter Schweizer pointed out Monday, Harry Smith claimed on CBS that what happened at Abu Ghraib was a logical consequence of Bush’s policies. The images became the calling card of the national and international anti-war movement. The abuse was referenced in hit T.V. shows Family Guy and Arrested Development, among others. World-renowned artist Fernando Botero even toured the world with an exhibit of dozens upon dozens of his signature “volumetric” paintings (that means depicting morbidly obese people and animals) embellishing the cruelty that took place at the hands of American servicemen and women.

This week, Der Spiegel released photos of a similar incident. The Week sums it up well:

German news magazine Der Spiegel has published photographs of grinning American soldiers posing next to the corpse of an Afghan civilian. (See the graphic photos here.) The soldiers, Spec. Jeremy N. Morlock of Alaska and Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes of Idaho, are among five members of a rogue 5th Stryker Brigade “kill team” facing murder charges in the deaths of three Afghan civilians last year. Military commanders say they are bracing for an explosion of anti-U.S. anger akin to that which followed the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. Is this as bad?

This is worse than Abu Ghraib: NATO leaders know these images “could be more damning than the photos from Abu Ghraib,” says Nitasha Tiku at New York. The photos from Iraq showed U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners, and that was bad enough. But these soldiers have been accused of “deliberately” murdering Afghan civilians. And these images might just be the tip of the iceberg — apparently, the Stryker “kill team” recorded their actions in 4,000 photos and videos.

So the Times itself, the paper who lead with the Abu Ghraib story without interruption for a full month, publishes a report that says these images are worse than Abu Ghraib. Yet, two days later, “Obama Ghraib” has already been bumped to page A20. But hey, who’s to say that article is more important than “Film Shows Babe Ruth, at Leisure and Up Close.” (more…)

Alternate headline: “Paul Krugman Will Not Read This Article”

Second alternate headline: “Paul Krugman: Lolcats > Conservatives”

Over the weekend a prominent figure in the art world, a liberal, came up to a group of us from Team Breitbart following a conversation that took place both on air and off, and told us we, particularly Big Journalism EIC Dana Loesch, are very respectable spokespeople for our side.  Needless to say, we were flattered, but while I certainly didn’t attempt to sway him off of his position that we’re super cool, I would contend we are merely representative of the quality people in our movement, as opposed to exceptions to the rule that conservatives are racist, bigoted, intolerant, etc.  Clearly the sweet accolade from the sweet man had a very powerful and illustrative subtext to it: he just doesn’t know many conservatives… if any.

One of the reasons for the existence of this very blog is because many of us contend that a substantial portion of the movers and shakers on the left, like the aforementioned gentleman, tend to live in bubbles.  This is a common theme across several of the Bigs.  Hollywood, the mainstream media, and academia, to name a few high profile arenas, are so overwhelming left-of center that it’s rare to find Republicans inhabiting them at all, much less outspoken Tea Partiers like the ones who make up the Bigs team.  On the other hand, those of us on the right are constantly forced to contend with the best thought the left has to offer, or else we’d be forgoing academics in one of the world’s most educated societies, we’d be abstaining from entertainment in the country that redefined it, and as good as the fantasy of doing away with what we call “the mainstream media” sounds, that’s a process that would take decades to complete, if it’s even possible (or beneficial).

So we’re forced to listen, whether we want to or not.  The schools, entertainers, and media outlets have us as a captive audience while these movers and shakers can comfortably build a career in the world of ideas without as much as consulting with those held by (at least) half of us.

Case in point, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton Economics Professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.  Last week, Krugman was asked which websites he reads frequently, and after providing a list of liberals and leftists like Greg Sargent, Josh Marshall, Digby, and Atrios, he copped to not reading any conservatives online on a regular basis: (more…)

From a CNN segment called “Labor’s Last Stand?”:

Money quote at the end:

And Democrats say there is another reason Republicans want to gut unions. Organized labor donates hundreds of millions of dollars to candidates like Barack Obama. So if you weaken the unions, you weaken a traditional moneyed supporter of the Democratic Party.

And what do Republicans say, Ms. Costello?  You just gave the Democrats’ explanation for why Republicans across the country are rallying to the side of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s union busting plan, so what would the Republicans say is inspiring their massive grassroots effort?  Hello?  Hello?  Is this thing on?

Oh, the segment’s already over.

If you get around to airing another one, allow me to provide a brief synopsis of what a responsible journalist might include to balance the union talking points cited above: We conservatives believe unions have completely destroyed the education system.  They have collectively bargained (which is Union-speak for “community organized”) their way into a position where they are not required to produce results, they are virtually impossible to fire, and they have obscene amounts of benefits.  Thanks to the unions, we have a system where bad teachers are the beneficiaries while good teachers and students suffer.  Raises are doled out based on seniority, not merit, and nothing short of being caught molesting a student in the halls while holding up a photo I.D. will cost you your job.  Yet, when a state and the taxpayers who comprise it stand on the brink of a fiscal crisis, and the unions are asked to chip in just a teensy bit more, they respond by canceling school… in the name of education. (more…)

From time to time, an event of national significance serves as a Rorschach test for whether you are on the left or the right.  This is the case with the rampage in Tuscon this past Saturday.  Enter Tom Brokaw:

To a leftist like Brokaw, a 22-year-old male shot 19 innocent people attending a rally in front of a Safeway, killing six, and nearly assassinating a sitting U.S. Congresswoman, and it’s the fault of… the gun.  This is clarifying.

For those of us on the right, we have a different reaction.  First we see a tragedy perpetrated by an individual capable of pure evil that should have been locked away from society years ago.  We see a town Sheriff, who knew the evil individual had previously made death threats, suspiciously anxious to pass off blame to the political right (the famous quote from Hamlet comes to mind: he “doth protest too much, methinks”).  And lastly, we wonder if more people in the crowd had concealed weapons on their persons, would Jared Lee Loughner have gotten off a whopping twenty gun shots, killed six people, and wounded a dozen more? (more…)

Greg Hengler at Townhall caught this troubling Today show segment where Meredith Vieira celebrates Cheryl Kilodavis, author of My Princess Boy, and her son, Dyson, a five-year-old who dresses up in pink tutus and sparkles:

What’s upsetting about this video is not that there is a boy in America that dresses like a girl and his parents are cool with it, it’s that he’s being encouraged by an American society (i.e the media) gradually losing sight of the Judeo-Christian values on which it was founded; these values are being replaced by the politically correct axiom of acceptance.  Not until the latter half of the 20th century were we foolish enough to consider “acceptance” a value.  There are infinite human tendencies we choose not to accept as a society — we don’t accept people who eat too many carbs or who don’t want to pay for health insurance, much less people inclined to extreme violence or pedophilia.  The idea that we are to practice “acceptance” without considering what it is we are being asked to accept is so poorly thought through, it could only emanate from the left.

As opposed to blindly accepting/cashing in on her son’s behavior, Kilodavis has two perfectly acceptable options to deal with it:

The first, and this one is probably most appealing to more traditional parents, is simply setting boundaries for the child and enforcing them.  The fact that five-year-olds are now calling the shots and essentially raising themselves while the parents simply observe and write children’s books about them is stranger than fiction. (more…)

For some reason, many people still contend that Politico “has no politics” or is “politically neutral.” If that’s the case, someone please point out its right-of-center equivalent to Ben Smith. The JournoListo über-blogger is back at it today trying to “Joe the Plumber” William Kelly.

For those of you unaware, earlier this week Big Journalism posted video of the Chicago-based conservative talk-show host pursuing an aggressive line of questioning at a Rahm Emanuel media junket, when this happened:

But when you run this story through the JournoList Spin-o-Matic, what comes out is a Ben Smith blog post smearing Kelly Alinsky-style. Politico’s super-sleuth went to the trouble of finding Kelly’s 1995 book on Amazon, and you’ll never believe what he found: Kelly is a fan of noted white supremacist Norman Mailer (the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who contributed to Democrats until his death in 2007) and thinks “criminals should be made to pay for their crimes through hard work.” Busto! How is Kelly going to live this down?

No one sums up the back-asswardness of Smith’s post, and the left’s penchant for the politics of personal destruction, better than a commenter on Smith’s own blog:

Left wing “Reporters” threaten conservative. Ben Smith investigates–the conservative!

Watch out William Kelly, you’ve just been JournoListed. (more…)

Two weeks ago the U.K. Guardian gleefully reported that the self-proclaimed “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg, the best-selling writer on the environment, professor, and director of the Copenhagen Consensus think tank, had made a serious acquiescence to the global warming climate change global climate disruption movement that could quite possibly change the face of the entire conversation. From the article:

The world’s most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is “undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and “a challenge humanity must confront”, in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN’s climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.

But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. “Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century,” the book concludes.

Lomborg has a unique voice in the climate change debate because while he has always believed in man-made climate change, he doesn’t believe it’s catastrophic nor does he subscribe to the Leonardo DiCaprio/Laurie David school of thought that massive cut backs in carbon emissions is the one and only way to fix the problem. So a “U-turn” from this stance would mean that after years of studying and writing on the matter, he’s all of a sudden become an Inconvenient Truther. Having met Mr. Lomborg just last year and being a fan of his work, this report made me highly… skeptical. (more…)

Newsbusters reports that Morning Joe brought on Terry Jones, the Gainseville, Florida pastor now famous for the Koran burning hubbub, so that he could be lectured on Christianity by departing Newsweek editor Jon Meacham.  So far this is all SOP at MSNBC.  Then, in what will strike most of you as a surreal (and perhaps unprecedented) occurrence that ought to go down in MSNBC lore, Jones’s feed is cut off before he gets in a single word.

From the Newsbusters write up:

In what had to be the ultimate in condescension and elitism, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” brought Pastor Terry Jones on the show merely to lecture him on Christianity, cutting him off before he could even respond. Co-host Mika Brzezinski explained to him “we don’t really need to hear anything else, so thanks.” Newsbusters’ Mark Finkelstein first briefly reported on this segment this morning.

Panel member Jon Meacham, the departing editor of Newsweek, briefly preached to Pastor Jones on Jesus’ New Testament message of love and forgiveness and then appealed to him “as a fellow Christian” to not follow through with his threats to burn the Koran. Then, before Pastor Jones responded, his live feed was cut and co-host Mika Brzezinski continued with the show, saying that they did not need to listen to Pastor Jones.

Now all radio and television shows have to cut off a guest from time to time due to time constraints, etc., but it’s not every day you see a guest invited on, talked at, then cut off, all before he has a chance to utter even a greeting, much less a defense.  What’s more, Brzezinski emphatically explained MSNBC’s treatment of their guest by stating, “we don’t really need to hear anything else.”

You know MSNBC has sunk pretty low if they can make the nutty Pastor Jones seem like a sympathetic figure, even if for just a brief moment.

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While more discouraging (if not downright frightening) economic news continues to roll in, making the Obama administration look increasingly incompetent, and while a federal judge unilaterally declares we’ve been misinterpreting the Constitution for nearly 225 years, and while a sitting Congressman is being investigated for ethics violations boogies down at his star-studded birthday bash, Politico decrees that this is the most important story of the day:

Will its offbeat candidates hurt GOP?

The advocates masquerading as objective journalists at Politico are aggressively trying to change the narrative and make the 2010 election cycle about the character of individuals in the GOP and not the track record of the Obama administration.  Although the Democratic Party itself nominated Alvin Greene, undoubtedly the offest-beat candidate in this election cycle, elected screwballs such as Alan Grayson and Al Franken to their first terms just two years ago, and is still home to ethically-challenged Congresspeople like Rangel and Maxine Waters, Politico plays the politics of personal destruction with the current Republican nominees. All in a day’s work for the Democrat-Media Complex!

Does Harry – How Can Hispanics Vote For Republicans? — Reid count as offbeat?  Or what about the creep in New Hampshire who wished Sarah Palin would get incinerated in a plane crash inferno? (This just in — he resigned.) (more…)