***UPDATE: Some are arguing “cracker” is acceptable within the context of Florida. Newsbusters, who also caught the slur, sums it up perfectly:
Some have asserted that Martin meant the word “cracker” as a reference to native Floridians and not in a racial way. However, the Politico reporter wasn’t on local Florida TV and the rest of the country sees the term as an insult.
The context of the comment came while talking about conservative Southerners. Remember, Martin claimed that Florida is “going to give us a sense of what’s ahead in March, when this primary does move to the Deep South states.”
Also, is the MSM ready to change the rules they wrote making facts about ‘food stamps’ racist? Do they want to change the rules they wrote whereas if a certain group referes to themselves with a term considered offensive elsewhere, that it’s now okay for outsiders like Martin to use that term?
Of course not. The liberal media’s writing these rules, not us, and they’re going to beat us senseless with them. The least we can do is expect them to follow the rules they’ve created.
Politico’s Jonathan Martin isn’t a big fan of everyday people, especially those who don’t vote for Obama. If you want to understand who this man really is, you need only click here. To protect then-candidate Barack Obama and get the heat off of him after making his infamous and revealing ”spread the wealth” comment, Martin needed to change the narrative quick, so he investigated and published dirt on a PRIVATE CITIZEN. What followed was a narrative-changing (to benefit Obama) MSM attack against a guy who was minding his own business when Obama approached him.
Jonathan Martin is also the left-wing operative who led the campaign to bring down Herman Cain over 15 year-old allegations. This partisan campaign was so frenzied and over-the-top and outrageous that even left-wing media watchdogs said so.
And now we get another glimpse into what motivates Mr. Martin, as he launches a racial slur against Southerners on a national cable channel:
Cracker, sometimes white cracker, is a pejorative term for white people.
You’ll also note that MSNBC host Chuck Todd says nothing in response to Martin’s racial slur. In fact, Todd doesn’t blink an eye.
Moreover, keep in mind that these are the same MSM leftists who have and will continue to attempt to define every effective attack against Barack Obama as “racist” or as some sort of “racial dog-whistle.” This includes FACTS, such as the record increase in the number of food stamp recipients under Obama’s failed recovery.
No one will aver accuse me of being a Chuck Todd fan, but let’s give the man credit where it’s due. Though he’s careful with his language, Todd not only sees through what Colbert’s doing, he’s also troubled that much of the MSM is complicit in furthering the Stewart/Colbert left-wing agenda:
“He is making a mockery of the system,” Todd said. “…Is it fair to the process? Yes, the process is a mess, but he’s doing it in a way that feels like he’s trying to influence it with his own agenda and that may be anti-Republican.”
He cautioned the media to be “careful” about amplifying Colbert’s message, and said it should not be treated as “shtick” or satire.
“What is his real agenda here?” he said. “Is it to educate the public about the dangers of money and politics, and what’s going on? Or is it simply to marginalize the Republican Party? I think if I were a Republican candidate I would be concerned about that.”
Todd concluded by saying that he “idolized” American politics and didn’t want to see people become more cynical about them.
Less than a few minutes ago, Colbert was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” being fawned over by Scarborough, his guests, and his audience. All rather nauseating.
I also disagree with Todd’s claim that Colbert is doing something noble in going after these Super PACs, but we’ll leave that debate for another day. (More on that here.)
Mr. Gingrich would be our first president with a Ph.D. since Woodrow Wilson. Does his work as a historian tell us anything about him? Or, for that matter, anything about why, despite certain events in 1776, he considers “anticolonial” an epithet? To address these questions, a good place to start is his 1971 Tulane doctoral dissertation: “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960.”
For Pete’s sake. This is the stupidest thing the NYT has written today. Can you imagine if the NYT pored over Obama’s college thesis, or hey, even his college records, which have never been release despite repeated requests? Can you imagine the NYT going over Fast and Furious emails they way they’re rifling through Gingrich’s thesis — or devoured Sarah Palin’s emails?
Mitt Romney’s vulnerabilities as a candidate are well known, yet a seemingly new one surfaced last week: his unusual brittleness in the face of media questions.
With one prickly interview with Fox’s Bret Baier on Tuesday — in which the candidate appeared uncomfortable and even angry fielding basic questions about his record — the former Massachusetts governor set off a round of speculation about his ability to operate outside hermetically sealed campaign events, reminding his rivals and the media of the extreme lengths to which he has gone to evade the national press.
On a Fox panel that night, Juan Williams called the interview “disastrous,” Jonah Goldberg said Romney appeared “uncomfortable” and Baier said people thought Romney seemed “irritated and tense” — sentiments that were echoed across the other networks that night and in print the next morning.
For a candidate who has been in the national spotlight as long as Romney, his discomfort with Baier was telling. And it reflected a deliberate and long-standing strategy of dodging tough questions and questioners.
Conversations with Fox sources and media executives suggest a new strategy: Fox is trying to credibly capture the center without alienating its loyal core of rabid viewers. To this end, the network is flexing its news-gathering muscles in high-profile ways that will capture media attention.
Why bother? Partly as a preemptive measure against CNN. While CNN has slipped again to third place in the cable ratings race, Fox recognizes that the network still poses the biggest threat if it gets its act together.
For her first assignment since joining CBS News, foreign correspondent Clarissa Ward secretly visited Syria, where foreign journalists have been banned in an ongoing attempt by President Bashar al-Assad to quell opposition.
“I had all sorts of things I wanted to see that I felt American audiences had not been able to see,” Ward tells TVNewser.
Ward entered the country alone on a tourist visa, spending two days in Damascus before she felt comfortable reaching out to an underground network of government defectors she interviewed for the series, which begins this evening.
The mainstream media’s most insidious and deceptive trick is to present something outrageously false using a matter-of-fact tone and approach. The dark art of glossing over the truth as though the falsehood being spread is simply established fact is a ploy propagandists have used since time began.
NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Brooke Brower slipped a matter-of-fact WHOPPER into the top story of today’s ”First Read.” The whopper is so subtle and devious I almost missed it.
COLUMBUS, OH — The best — and most meaningful — statewide race of 2011 wasn’t in West Virginia (where Democrats narrowly won the gubernatorial contest). Or in Louisiana (where Gov. Bobby Jindal cruised to re-election). And it won’t be in Kentucky (where Democrats are poised for a blowout gubernatorial win). Or in Mississippi (where Republicans are expected to hold the governor’s mansion). Rather, the 2011 race with the biggest political implications is taking place here in the Buckeye State, where voters two weeks from today will decide the fate of Gov. John Kasich’s (R) law curbing collective-bargaining rights for public-sector workers. It will test, once again, organized labor’s strength in the Midwest (after its mixed results in Wisconsin). It will gauge Kasich’s popularity (or unpopularity). It will serve as a trial run of sorts for next year’s presidential contest in this traditional battleground state. And it’s the same fight we’ve seen across the country — about how governments balance their budgets and about the role of the government worker.
To be clear, I’m not talking about the usual-usual bias at work here, where you have leftists disguised as objective journalists gaming the system by telling us which upcoming election is “the most important” and will be a “trial run for next year’s presidential race.” Obviously, what they’re doing here is what the MSM always does — laying the groundwork to craft a narrative in advance. Their hope is that the left will prevail (in this case, that the immoral practice of collective bargaining will be saved) so they can then run around MSNBC and NBC spinning this into a victory for Obama. But like I said, that’s the usual-usual coming from the MSM these days, especially NBC and Chuck Todd.
No, what I’m talking about is ”First Read”’s attempt to memory-hole the absolute beating Big Labor took in Wisconsin with this stinking load of matter-of-fact crap:
During last night’s GOP debate as soon as Rick Perry called Herman Cain “brother,” I knew the MSM would jump on the race-baiting bandwagon and attempt to twist an obvious term of affection into something sinister. Some of it is just cultural ignorance on the MSM’s part. The use of “brother” is used primarily in that part of the country the MSM finds icky … the South.
So, just what did Perry mean when he called Cain “brother,” a term he didn’t use with anyone else on stage (in fact, Perry called Romney “sir” three times, even as Perry was being attacked and on the attack. His disdain was apparent with each “sir.”).
Was Perry channeling scholar Cornel West or even the late wrestler Randy Savage, both known for referring to everyone as brother? Or was Perry attempting a do-over of sorts on matters of race? (Remember that it was Cain and Cain alone who spoke out against the hunting camp incident, though the later backpedaled.) …
Gwen Ifill tweeted this: “Why is @GovernorPerry calling @THEHermanCain brother? Are they related? #scandal”
And speaking on MSNBC today, political analyst and strategist Karen Finney remarked that she was slightly bothered by Perry’s use of the term “brother” to refer to Cain. She later e-mailed me the phrase simply “hit my ear the wrong way.”
From the unlikeliest of sources, however, this bubbling, ridiculous, and predictable narrative might’ve just been stopped in its tracks:
When first asked about the issue, there were no doubt 50 better ways Herman Cain could’ve responded when presented with the non-story of an offensive word on a rock Rick Perry’s family painted over decades ago. But to his credit, Cain quickly recovered by accepting Governor Perry at his word and urged the media to move on. But if you watch the clip above, what you’ll see is that Chuck Todd, “NBC Nightly News,” and the MSM as a whole aren’t anywhere near ready to move on. Cain obviously wants to talk about jobs and all Obama’s Media Palace Guards want to talk about is how racist Rick Perry is. Bottom line: they want to get as many days as they can out of this narrative for one reason and one reason only…
To protect Obama.
Whether the MSM is burying Perry in this nonsense or badgering Herman Cain about it, what’s not happening — what’s not being talked about on the news or by the GOP candidates — is the one thing Obama’s media pals don’t want talked about, Obama’s failure as a job creator and the brewing scandals surrounding Mexican gun-running and Solyndra. So…
Distract. Distract. Distract.
The MSM intends to keep these types of silly narratives coming for the next 15 months and they intend to keep them aimed at any potential threat to Obama’s re-election. And if you’ll notice, this distraction game-plan isn’t just trained on Perry but also Cain. As you’ll see in this news report, NBC “selectively edited” Cain’s comments to focus on the racial distraction. We have no idea what Cain might have said about unemployment or creating jobs or anything else. In other words, Cain isn’t able to get his message out.
In the age of instant analysis and response of news via twitter, accuracy and attention to detail are a must. At least, that’s what “real” journalists have always told us. Today, “journalist” Chuck Todd sent out a tweet that read “POTUS to CBS: ‘Imagine how the American people would react if Al Queda killed one of our troops … and put photos of the body on the internet.’” Of course the appropriate phrase there isn’t “Imagine if” it’s “Remember when.” What’s also egregious about this quote is that the author, presumably the President, has forgotten the atrocities of the bodies of our fallen heroes being used as recruitment tools for Al Qaeda in internet videos.
My first reaction:
I then proceeded along with half of the center-right on twitter to rail against the President on “his” statement.
In another example of a sort-of cultural suicide where western media types assume that all Muslims are blameless – while all Americans are at fault in this clash of civilizations between Islamism and the West – we have a recent episode of MSNBC’s Hardball with one-time Democratic operative Chuck Todd standing-in for host Chris Matthews.
Todd was discussing the riots in Afghanistan sparked by Islamist ire over the burning of a Koran by a Florida pastor. During the interview Todd and a guest stated that the Christian Bible was just a book written by men while the Koran was the “direct word of God.” The two implied that this excuses Muslims from murdering people over the book burning.
In the segment Time Magazine’s World Editor Bobby Ghosh told Chuck Todd that the riots and murders perpetrated by Muslims in Afghanistan were obviously understandable because the Koran is apparently more holy than the Christian Bible. Ghosh averred that it’s important to “keep in mind” that the Koran is “not the same as the Bible to Christians.” Why, you might ask? Why it’s because the Koran is “directly the word of God.” On the other hand, the Bible is just a book “written by men.”
When Alvin Green legally became the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina, his legitimacy was immediately challenged by his party’s elite and members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Although Green withstood their attacks, he was lampooned by the national media and his campaign has since been abandoned by his party. Many dismiss this situation based on his unorthodox presentation. Others knowledgeable of the Democratic Party, its platform, and its history know that this is just a typical example of how they treat black members of their party. The mainstream media serves as a tool to reinforce black people’s position at the bottom of the Democratic Party.
Rep. Kendrick Meek on the other hand is no Alvin Green. Meek is a well educated man, a sitting congressman and son of the congresswoman. He no doubt has the political pedigree to serve in the United States Senate. I am proud to say that he is a fellow graduate of my alma mater, Florida A&M University. Like Green, Meek earned his place as his party’s nominee. While Meek & Green may have different backgrounds they share a trait that condemns them to the bottom of their party. They are both black men who aspire to represent a constituency larger than their neighborhood. The truth is, Meek could be a congressman for the rest of his life if he decided to stay in his district. However, his senatorial aspiration could lead to his political demise.
Two stories have recently appeared reporting NBC Political Director Chuck Todd’s reaction to the revelations of the JournoList, that website were avowed left-wing journalists congregated to talk about their profession and plot to foster a left-wing agenda in their work in the media.
Todd was reported to have found the JournoList revelations to be “very depressing” and said that the story had “kept him up nights” because of the overt leftist bias evinced by the list member’s emails released by Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller website.
Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism.
Chuck Todd, non-JournoList member
But later that day another story claiming that Todd was taken out of context emerged that told a slightly different tale. In the afternoon JouronLista Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post that Todd was more upset that conservatives that were using the JournoList controversy to push their agenda and was much less upset that the story revealed a left-wing media conspiracy.
So, once again, it appears that the Old Media’s leftist guard is spinning to try and make these revelations all the fault of the conservatives that merely made the list public knowledge. Like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar and blaming his brother for telling him to get some cookies, JournoListas are doing everything they can to shift blame. (more…)
Greg Sargent is a Washington Post blogger. He’s also a former member of JournoList and a friend of Ezra Klein. Any or all of that may explain why he’s twice used his platform at the Post to claim that there is a media conspiracy surrounding the Daily Caller’s publication of JournoList archives:
The real media conspiracy here is on the right. It’s a conspiracy to pretend that there’s a story here when there isn’t one.
Yes, you read that right. He’s accusing the right of a media conspiracy. It’s the sort of fabulist, black-is-white inversion of reality we’ve come to expect from Media Matters, not from the Washington Post. So let’s take a look at Sargent’s case for a right-wing media conspiracy and see if it passes the belly laugh test.
In his first stab at this claim, he took issue with the headline for one of the Daily Caller’s pieces:
It has this huge headline:JournoList debates making its coordination with Obama explicit. But way down in the 13th paragraph, the story quotes a post from the very same thread in which J-List founder and Post blogger Ezra Klein explicitly rules out any such coordination…In other words, the headline on this story could have been: “J-List founder ruled out conspiracy.”
If the Daily Caller was part of a right-wing conspiracy, why bother to include the line Sargent just quoted, or the one that came immediately afterwards which also depicts a list member rejecting the idea? Wouldn’t the conspiracy be more successful without any contradictory evidence? What Sargent wants us to blithely ignore is statements like this from Todd Gitlin of Columbia University: (more…)
You have to give mainstream journalists credit. No matter how high the evidence of liberal bias stacks up, they stick to the notion they don’t play favorites.
Rathergate? An aberration. A Washington Postombudsman admitting journalists favored Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election? Nothing but reporters chasing down history in the making.
Press blackouts on the Van Jones controversy? Oops, we missed it.
The New Black Panther case? Not enough reporters to cover it.
Ezra Klein, JournoList founder
Poll after poll after poll revealing journalists vote for Democrats over Republicans by a wide margin? Doesn’t matter, since they don’t bring their political impulses to bear on their work.
Meanwhile, the public’s faith in the media continues to plummet. And the one cable news outlet with enough reporters – and curiosity – to cover subjects like Jones and the New Black Panther Party, Fox News, continues to see its ratings soar. (more…)
You say MSM, I say Politico. You say corrupt, I say Politico.
Today, Politico’s Roger Simon was kind enough to almost scold JournoList for its lasting effect on his precious little profession of journalism. At one point, he and the scrupulously non-partisan Chuck “Fire Glenn Beck” Todd hold hands and commiserate over how this unfortunate JounoList thing is tarring “those of us who don’t practice activist journalism.” If Roger Simon wants to rebuild his precious little profession’s reputation, a good start might be asking his very own publisher some tough questions.
Politico might be an online publication, a part of the New Media, but when it comes to corrupted, left-wing arrogance they make the Washington Post look somewhat honest … somewhat. Part of the reason I reserve a special place in my heart to store up a unique resentment for all things Politico is due to the very fact that they practice their dark arts online. Like a toxic virus they spread over to the Internet where the right (by design) and the left (by accident) are trying to forever kill off the very thing Politico is — wolfish left-wing propagandists hidden in the sheeps’ clothing of “journalism.”
We have finally reached the number one, most left-biased journalist in America today on our top ten count down and our most biased journo pick probably won’t surprise any of you. Even though she just “retired” due to her outrageous bias and hatred for Israel, we just have to give the number one most biased slot to the ever-vitriolic Ms. Helen Thomas, long time employee of United Press International (UPI) and the Hearst New Service.
Thomas was an over 50-year employee of UPI but in the year 2000 she quit the wire service because it was bought by News World Communications which is affiliated with the Unification Church. She was proud of herself, though, because according to her she was “never, never accused of bias” in her reporting.
I worked for United Press International for more than fifty years, and I wrote straight copy. I was never, never accused of bias. I did not bow out of the human race. I permitted myself to care, to believe, to think. But I assure you, I assure you that it did not get in my copy.
But that isn’t what her record says. Bias was epidemic throughout. In May of 2000 the MRC went back and found at least half a dozen instances where Thomas readily revealed her bias. Instances range from Ronald Reagan’s days in office up to the year 2000 when she quit UPI.
All week we’ve been exploring America’s ten most left-biased working journalists and now we come to spot number four on the list. And so, for his close attention to pushing the spin and as one of the most active members of the Old Media’s Obama Butt Covering squad, we are pleased to award the number four spot to NBC Political Director Chuck Todd.
Todd is one of those journos that came from Democrat political circles — having worked for Iowa Democrat Senator Tom Harkin’s 1992 presidential run — and then crossed over into the world of “journalism.” With that you just know that he can be as unbiased as the best of them in his reporting. Well, if he can we’ll never know it because so far he has not been. Just the opposite, really.
Todd has done a bang-up job for the left in his journalism career. Likely Todd’s loyalty to the Democrat Party is probably why he felt the need to slam Senator Joe Lieberman last year, for instance. Proving his blindness to real political analysis, Todd claimed that Joe Lieberman was the “polar opposite” of the Senate’s lone socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (officially an “independent”).
In a discussion on the Today Show about the then yet to pass Obamacare bill, Todd said of Lieberman and Sanders, “Meanwhile, the Senate’s two Democratic independents, polar opposites ideologically, are split over the bill’s government-run public option and both are threatening to scuttle the process if they don’t get their way.” (more…)
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is warning that some of his Democratic colleagues are being threatened with violence when they go back to their districts — and he wants Republicans to stand up and condemn the threats.
The Maryland Democrat said more than 10 House Democrats have reported incidents of threats or other forms of harassment about their support of the highly divisive health insurance overhaul vote. Hoyer emphasized that he didn’t have a specific number of threats and that was just an estimate.
***UPDATE: As expected, Politico's Dylan Byers uses Martin suspension to once again admonish CNN for not taking action against Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch. Fascistic GLAAD wins another scalp. Over the years, CNN's Roland Martin has said some awfully outrageous stuff about Republicans and the Tea Party --...
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