Via The Huffington Post:

On Saturday Al Sharpton actually asked: “Are we dealing with someone who’s just racially insensitive or someone who’s cynical, who would use race to play and blacks as backboards to score a shot?”

Is the mainstream media trying to help Newt Gingrich win? Do they really think a fight on air between Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton would do anything but make Gingrich more powerful? Or are they that cynical that they want to drive ratings on the back of Gingrich’s surge?

But Gingrich can’t easily be tarred with the racist brush because he has a long history of supporting blacks as individuals against government largesse.

Here’s what he told ABC in 2008:

There are a lot of good cases to be made that the African- American community has been hurt more by the failures of government than any other community. Look at New Orleans, where the African- American community was devastated by the failure of the federal, state and local governments in Katrina.

Gingrich repeatedly supported outreach efforts toward blacks as Speaker of the House, especially J.C. Watts, who helped oust a younger John Boehner from a leadership position in the party. Gingrich even selected Watts to deliver the rebuttal to Bill Clinton’s State of the Union speech in 1997. Watts is now returning the favor, having endorsed Newt Gingrich in his presidential bid. (more…)

- CNN debuts new morning show:

- Megyn Kelly vs Kent Sorensen. Point Kelly. I adore how at 1:45 in a Bachmann for President truck drives by in the background.

- Rick Santorum vs Al Sharpton. Point Santorum.

If Sharpton is trying to stay positive so that he can attract more guests, which is part of the double-edged sword of political shows, it would show that he’s actually grown a bit as a media figure (he’s not a broadcaster). However, I think it may stem from his reluctance to allow Santorum to defend himself against Sharpton’s wild accusations. Sharpton doesn’t stay positive: he continues alluding to some sort of smack talk for the duration of Santorum’s appearance. Lame.

- Andrew Malcolm’s sharp piece on the NYT’s subscription gaffe:

A worker for the New York Times was preparing a pleading missive to several hundred disgruntled subscribers noting that they had recently canceled their paper deliveries …

… The Times worker, who will shortly be informed that he/she has accepted the next buyout offer, pushed the button. And off the email went — to nearly 9 million people on the wrong list …

… So, according to Associated Press, in true Anthony Weineresque fashion, someone rushed out an urgent company Tweet suggesting spam: “If you received an email today about canceling your NYT subscription, ignore it. It’s not from us.”

Read what happened next here.

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Democrats, in full class warfare mode, have taken to calling Gov. Mitt Romney “Willard,” apparently in the belief that his given first name is elitist.

Al Sharpton, for example, referred to Romney as “Willard” on MSNBC on Dec. 14, in a segment attacking him for his Wall Street connections.

Sharpton also called Romney “Mr. Monopoly Man,” to emphasize the point.

Democrat strategist and convicted felon Robert Creamer–no stranger to the elite lifestyle–has tried to pull the same stunt, mocking Romney at the Huffington Post:

Creamer wrote:

Earlier this week, Republican Presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney delivered a speech framing the 2012 presidential election as a choice between an “entitlement society” and an “opportunity society.” It really takes chutzpa for a guy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth to rail against an “entitlement society.” Here is a guy who got his start in life the old-fashioned way–he inherited it.

Last month, Democrat Brent Budowsky even claimed in The Hill that “Willard M. Romney, better known as Mitt” had changed his first name because “Mitt” had “presumably [been] tested by polling and focus groups in which Mitt performed better than Willard.”

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- SNL parodies “resist we much.”

Is it really a parody though if it’s indistinguishable from the original content?

- “Face the Nation” expands to one hour.

- Television anchors and their mini me stand-ins. A cute art project.

- “Layoffs and cutbacks lead to a new world of news deserts” … or do they?

I had a discussion the other day about how new media, live media (i.e. Twitter) had taken the place of so much of our news diet. We were trying to recount the number of stories we first learned through traditional media. Neither of us could. Whether it was first learning about earthquakes, riots, scandals, we each learned of the biggest stories of the past couple of years via new media. Yet to hear the dying print newsies tell it, all of news is dying simple because of their lot in life. Look beyond your navel. Even in areas where governments cracked down on social media like Twitter, citizens still found a way around it with proxy servers and the like. News still leaked through the cracks, more urgently, grittier, and more immediate than the foreign correspondents, most of whom had been expelled from the country, to relay it.

- NYT shocked to discover that in 2011, some women anchors are working full time and juggling motherhood out in the open. How many male anchors are juggling fatherhood and work?

- If you tolerate Newt Gingrich but dislike Barack Obama, are you a racist? Or do you jut think that Gingrich’s brand of beltway is less heinous than Obama’s brand of socialism?

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Liberal columnist Byron Williams of the Oakland Tribune said that MSNBC’s hiring of Al Sharpton for its 6PM slot was “more about ratings than journalism.” Now that the first month of ratings are in, the hire might end up damaging MSNBC in BOTH categories.

The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer at 6 pm topped MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Al Sharpton in the key demo 25-54 (163k vs. 141k) in September. In addition, the Blitzer-led program grew +19% in the demo (163k vs. 137k) and +22% among total viewers (590k vs. 483k) vs. last year. Sharpton was down -24% in the demo (141k vs. 185k) and -15% in total viewers (599k vs. 708k) compared to MSNBC’s programming a year ago.

The story is even more damaging when you look inside the numbers and realize that the 5:00 PM edition of “Hardball”, which airs right before Sharpton’s show, had more viewers than the civil rights activist-turned television journalist.  “Hardball” also beat Blitzer and CNN in that 5:00 PM time slot.

In other words, viewers who aren’t watching Fox News prefer MSNBC to CNN during the 5PM “Hardball” hour and then switch channels and watch CNN or Fox News when Sharpton appears on their screen. (more…)

Don’t you think that if your shtick is turning civil rights into a pocket-fattening commodity for yourself, you should at least live up to the pretense somewhat by remembering when the Civil Rights Act passed? This is Al Sharpton we’re talking about, though. Watch Herman Cain school him:

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- Media sure does love them some fake Republicans. CBS hosts Jon Huntsman. Wishful thinking?

"To the moon, Alice!"

It’s hard to overstate how poorly Huntsman is doing. Among Republican voters nationwide, the latest Fox News poll shows him running last with 1% support. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows him running last with 1% support. The latest CNN poll shows him running last with 1% support. The latest Gallup poll shows him running last with 1% support.

There seems to be a pattern here.

And yet, Huntsman has been booked for three Sunday shows in three weeks, and is all over the media.

- Wikileaks staffer: “Why I felt I had to leave Wikileaks.”

- Lancet should apologize for fraudulent reports used by MSM.

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You guys, I listened to this nine times, speakers up, headphones even to cut down on outside noise pollutants, and I’m still not sure what Sharpton is saying. I’ve tried to transcribe it below.

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Alessandra Stanley, writing for the New York Times, says this on MSNBC’s newest broadcaster, bold my emphasis:

The Rev. Al Sharpton began his new career as an official MSNBC talk show host on Monday by telling viewers not to expect James Brown.

“I’m not going to be a robotic host reading the teleprompter like a robot,” he said. “Nor am I going to come in here and do the James Brown and do the ‘electric slide’ to prove to you that I’m not stiff,” he added, waving his arms in a rough approximation of a dance move. “I’m going to say what I mean and mean what I say.”

And that may be the problem with Mr. Sharpton’s cable news pulpit: what he means to say is in lockstep with every other MSNBC evening program, making the stretch between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. a nonstop lecture on liberal values and what is wrong with the Republican Party.

[...]

And in the evening at least, MSNBC is less a news provider than a carousel of liberal opinion — potential conflicts of interest are swept aside in the swirl of excitable guests.

This is in the NYT. Kudos to Stanley for not pulling punches. She mentions the Tawana Brawley and Crown Heights, but seems to think that Eliot Spitzer somehow makes Sharpton’s past OK — and doesn’t mention the most recent of Sharpton’s stunts: Dunbar Village. A family was violated in unimaginable ways, especially a mother and her young son, and Sharpton and the NAACP defended the rapists and called them the “victims.” Outrage rang throughout the blogosphere across both sides of the political aisles.

And this man calls himself a “preacher?”

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From Breitbart.tv:

Using his now familiar bumbling, bewildering and bombastic delivery, Al Sharpton premiered his brand new show on MSNBC, “Politics Nation” with an attack on the GOP presidential candidates saying they want to bring the country back to pre-1960’s segregationist times. He also promised that this was what his show was going to be about.

Considering Mr. Sharpton’s entire career up to this point has been defined by making loud accusations of racism through a bullhorn, we should not be surprised that this will be the content of his NBC News program. Lean Forward, indeed.

” … those that want to bring this country back to the pre-1960s where people did not have the protection of a national government that would make sure they could not be ruined or ruled by those that had regional biases.”

Yes, because apparently the 10th Amendment, which says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,”  is racist.

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Last night saw the debut of Al Sharpton’s new show on NBC News’ cable outlet MSNBC.  “Politics Nation” started with a monologue by the host delivered in his now familiar bumbling, bewildering and bombastic style.  Though a couple sentences were not easy to understand, the over-all message was clear: The GOP candidates for president are like pre-1960’s racist segregationists.

Considering Sharpton’s entire career leading up to this point pretty much consists of him making loud accusations of “racist” through a bull horn, we shouldn’t be too surprised that the man MSNBC President Phil Griffin described as an “elder statesman” is going back to what he does best in this premiere show.  Sharpton himself made it clear to the audience that this is what his show was going to be about.  So we have a good year ahead of us leading up to election day with a nightly assault on conservatives by none other than the most successful race-baiting defamer available, Al Sharpton.

The beauty of the Al Sharpton hire is that it puts pressure on lefty TV critics to set their obvious affinity for his politics aside and actually give an honest critique of his television performance.  I’ve been wondering for weeks if TV critics would run the risk of the inevitible accusation of “racism” in order to give their readers an honest assesment of Sharpton’s obviously inferior talent and abilities as a TV host.

It appears they are, in fact, willing to take that risk.  Here’s the take from Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly:

The Rev. Al Sharpton premiered PoliticsNation on MSNBC Monday evening with an hour of booming bombast and near-obliviousness, as he steam-rolled over his guests, interrupting them to ask long, halting questions. At one point he acted as though he was having an argument with his teleprompter and said with exasperation to a guest, “Well, let me just ask you my way: Is the Tea Party going to destroy the Republican Party?”

But, of course, Tucker had to let his poitics get in the way of a full and honest criticism of Sharpton himself and instead blamed his producers for not letting Al be “Al”:

It was an awkward 60 minutes, with a lurching pace that failed to play to Sharpton’s strengths. He raised interesting issues — about new efforts at voter suppression, for example — only to lead aimless discussions of them.

[...]

If he can ever become comfortable on-camera and expand his horizons, Sharpton may eventually bring to MSNBC the combination of intellect and passion that has made so many of his press conferences over the years little wonders of argument, controversy, hype, entertainment, and enlightenment. Whether he’ll ever reach that point on PoliticsNation remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, at New York Magazine, the headline reads, “How Did Al Sharpton End Up With a Show on MSNBC?”:

Earlier, in a blustery opening segment, he was similarly rattled and unsteady as he tore through a case against Republican promises of restoring states’ rights. It was hard to follow as he shouted and pointed his pen at the camera, speaking passionately, but often in circles.

There has been quite a bit of controversy over the Sharpton hire and the work his community agitation group, National Action Network, has done for Comcast, the new owner of NBC.  And MSNBC President Phil Griffin received the “Keepers of the Dream” award from the group earlier this year for doing so much to fulfil Martin Luther King’s vision for America.  This was awarded while Griffin had a completely Caucasian line-up on his network.

Given teh raised eyebrows over the entanglement between Comcast/NBC and Sharpton’s controversial group, it’s surprising to see the blatant promotion of National Action Network on the well-trafficked pages of MSNBC.  Take a look at the home page for the new Sharpton show.  it has a highly prominent link right in the center that directs readers to the non-profit’s web site:

Sharpton finished his show with a message to the viewer explaining that he would not “be a robot reading from the teleprompter robotic-ally.”  Then, for those who had still stuck around for the final minute of “Politics Nation”, Al Sharpton, NBC News’ newest star, danced.

Resist we much.

It only took a few days for NBC News’ newest star Al Sharpton to insult his colleagues and further undermine the already diminished journalistic credibility of MSNBC.

In an interview with The Daily Beast the controversial activist turned TV news anchor defended himself against criticism from the National Association of Black Journalists.  (emphasis mine)

“To be fair about it, the NABJ understood that if I didn’t get it, it wouldn’t have gone to a journalist,” Sharpton tells me. “It’s a moot point. There are no journalists [as hosts] after 5 p.m. on MSNBC. Everyone after 5 deals with opinions. So the argument is kind of apples and oranges.”

In an effort to defend himself from the obvious observation that there are many more qualified journalists (of any color) to fill a nightly anchor spot at MSNBC, Sharpton has inadvertently “outed” Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Ed Schultz as mere commentators voicing opinions rather than legitimate journalists presenting news as well as ideas and opinions to their audience.  For the sake of this column, let’s forget O’Donnell and Schultz for a moment because their shows do border on the brink of pot and pan banging temper tantrums, let’s just focus on Matthews and Maddow.

One has to wonder how Chris Matthews feels about his new workmate telling the world that he isn’t a journalist.  Matthews spent fifteen years writing for the San Francisco Examiner.  He’s covered politics for decades on behalf of newspapers and television news bureaus.  I bet if you asked him, he’d say he was a journalist.

And Rhodes Scholar Maddow (a title Sharpton could never dream of acquiring) also has her share of opinions on her show, but she also prides herself on her excellent team of researchers who painstakingly dig for stories and facts to present news to their viewers.  Look how she presented herself in her first “Lean Forward” ad.  Surely you can see that she considers herself a journalist obsessed with details and facts, not opinion:

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Here’s an interesting back story to MSNBC’s hiring of racial riot instigator Al Sharpton as their latest evening host.  Back in March of 2000, MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough was Congressman Joe Scarborough  and he introduced House Resolution 270  condemning Al Sharpton as a racist and a bigot. Read the text of the bill which was dug up by Legal Insurrection:

106th CONGRESS 2d Session H. CON. RES. 270

Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 8, 2000

Mr. SCARBOROUGH submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

---

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton

Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of the Reverend Al Sharpton;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as `bloodsucking [J]ews’, and `Jew bastards’;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as `white interlopers’ and `diamond merchants’;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton was found guilty of defamation by a jury in a New York court arising from the false accusation that former Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, who is white, raped and assaulted a fifteen year-old black girl;

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-Score one for the Paulers! If Paul’s comments on a nuclear Iran didn’t earn enough headlines, criticizing his amount of media coverage for an extended period of time definitely will. That being said, I continue to see Paul mentioned all over the news, but was/is it just not the right sort of coverage for his fans?

- Cheney comes out with a book just in time for Democrats to retire their “Weekend at Bush’s” doll and point fingers at a new bogeyman. Cheney is booked for an appearance on “The View.” Imagine Mr. Burns sitting amongst a throng of angry hens and you won’t even have to set your DVR.

- The Twitter Effect: We’re all members of the media now.

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” … lot to talk about tonight, lot on my mind. The … President … seems right that he was able to … back Nato in … getting Qaddafi’s empire to fall.”

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