This isn’t a criticism of Steve Kroft, but has the CBS news veteran ever before left the confines of “60 Minutes” to go out on the cable news circuit with his interview subject (in this case our own Peter Schweizer) in order to push a story?

For those of us obsessed with news and the narrative and what’s happening in Washington D.C., the video below is dogs and cats sleeping together:

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Consider the dynamic. You have an openly conservative Breitbart editor, Peter Schweizer, joining forces with the mainstream media (Kroft) to expose the immoral insider trading taking place within the ranks of both Republican and Democrat Congressional members, and doing so on MSNBC.

Meanwhile, as The Huffington Post pretends none of this can possibly be happening and Politico gives it only cursory coverage, Schweizer’s story is shaking up D.C. as hearings are called, a GOP presidential candidate catches the wave, and Rep. Barney Frank(!) suddenly discovers his inner reformer.

These are strange times and strange bedfellows, to be sure. But this isn’t about partisan politics. If it were, Andrew Breitbart, the publisher of this site, wouldn’t have openly called for a sitting Republican Congressman to resign.

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I must still be recovering from Grandma’s super strong amaretto slushes at the first of our family Christmas parties this past weekend because I could have SWORN that Joe Scarborough almost sounded like a Big Journalism writer here:

Oh my word he did.

“This is curious and it was our staff that did it this time. I’m always curious when there is a controversial issue … that mainstream media doesn’t like, they’ll always will say a George W. Bush appointee or a Reagan appointee … when a Democrat does something unpopular they never say Clinton appointee. Never. Never.”

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There isn’t anything I love more than a little superfluous drama queen indignation with my morning coffee and bacon. New Republic writer Eliza Gray concludes that the reason you see so many women in second banana positions on television is because programming heads are sexist:

One Monday morning in November, according to the admittedly rough transcript provided by the Federal News Service, “Morning Joe,” anchor Joe Scarborough spoke 3,213 words; his co-anchor Mika Brzezinski spoke just 644. Most of her words seemed merely to remind the audience that she was still awake: Yeah. Okay. Yes. No. Maybe. Right. Terrific. Scarborough dominated the meaty segments; Brzezinski piped up mainly during the transitions.

[...]

But if Brzezinski is the true second pillar of the show, why is she so quiet? Maybe the better question is, why is Scarborough so loud? And why does MSNBC, supposedly leading the liberal charge against conservative cable news, stand for such a dispiriting and old-fashioned gender dynamic? Anyone for a little sexism with their morning joe?

Granted, Gray illustrates the history of news and the role that women journalists, anchors, have played in morning coverage. What she misses entirely, however, is the dynamic of broadcast news and the types of individuals attracted to the medium.

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A day after Joe Scarborough dialed up the phony outrage in a Politico opinion piece, claiming that Palin was insulting and tearing down “Republican giants” like Reagan and both Bushes to “build her weak résumé,” Morning Joe brought on Nicole Wallace for a similar discussion.  The point of Scarborough’s Politico article and his MSNBC show over the last two days (arguably the last two years) was to call on Republican and conservative leaders to “man up,” as his title says, and criticize Palin, as if that hasn’t been going on since the 2008 election.

Joe Scarborough, like Peggy Noonan, needed to gin up such a ridiculous pretext like defending the honor of Ronald Reagan from the contempt of Sarah Palin – who idolizes Reagan – in order to attack her with language akin to Noonan’s “nincompoop.”  Why can’t Scarborough just “man up” and let it fly without manufacturing an excuse if he’s calling on others to do so?

Nicole Wallace had some interesting things to say, notably blowing a hole through Scarborough’s claim from the day before that “all of your talk radio hosts that will defend Sarah Palin” on the air, “off-set quietly say” the same nasty things that Scarborough does about Palin.  The next day Wallace explained why conservative leaders won’t take her on: because of…all the radio hosts who love her, “the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.”  That wasn’t the first time Scarborough was shot down after claiming everyone else secretly agrees with him.

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This morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Lawrence O’Donnell proudly declared the obvious:  he’s a socialist.

After hearing the news today about the suspension of Keith Olbermann from the same network, I can’t say anyone’s all that surprised.

O’Donnell’s proclamation was made when “The Last Word” anchor got into a lively exchange with Salon.com contributor Glenn Greenwald.

“Unlike you, I am not a progressive.  I am not a liberal who’s so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to progressive.  Liberals amuse me.  I am a Socialist.  I live to the extreme left -  the extreme left – of you mere liberals.”

You have to give the guy credit for standing behind his views, and doing so openly.  You have to respect him for that, at least.

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Amazingly, Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe seemed to figure out the hypocrisy of the DNC and the White House complaining about undisclosed donors and “special interest” money being supposedly funneled into Republican campaigns. The White House has been going after the Chamber of Commerce and more than once has been unable to come up with any defense or any support to their totally unsubstantiated claims. Alexrod can’t answer, Gibbs can’t answer, and Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe certainly can’t answer. Joe brought up something that the rest of the media has blatantly ignored in this debate, President Obama’s ability to raise more money than any other candidate. President Obama has received more anonymous donations, more big oil donations, more big business donations, and more special interest donations than any other politician ever!

The obvious lunacy of the White House pointing fingers at the RNC is something that only one MSNBC host can apparently seem to grasp. Perhaps Joe can talk to the other MSNBC hosts that have shown “rank hypocrisy” when it comes to asking about finances between Republican and Democratic candidates.

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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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… you know you’re really in trouble:

The sad part is that many on the left still don’t understand why this is happening to them.

Do they, Mr. President? (more…)

Joe Scarborough is a scarcely visible light in the intellectually vacuous cavern of MSNBC liberal apparatchiks.

I made the mistake of turning on this network in prime time last night and my head almost blew off.

What stunning honesty about ones employer and the jackassery within one’s own network.  The choicest part of these two minutes is the smug, putrefied reaction of the co-host after Joe’s comment.   Looking mortified, Mika Brzezinski glares the rest of the dialogue before squeaking out a nervous laugh in the end.  Eugene Robinson laughs and retorts Joe’s rational argument with quite possibly the most obtuse, child-like avoidance in the history of punditry.

“Why do you want to take Social Security away from senior citizens?” (more…)

What, him worry? (more…)

Eugene Robinson, the name-calling scourge of all critics of Obama who writes one of the anti-conservative columns at the Washington Post and serves the same function on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” has just provided another example of what post- — or in this case, Post- — partisanship looks like in Obama’s Washington.

According to the Post-partisan Robinson, Arizona’s embattled S.B. 1070 “amounts to a prescription for racial profiling on a scale not seen in this country since the days of Jim Crow laws in the South.”  It is “anti-Latino” and “patently unconstitutional.” Those who support it are “xenophobes” and “demagogues … who delight in turning truth, justice and the American way into political liabilities.”

It appears as though the vituperative Mr. Robinson hasn’t gotten the message — stated by pre-presidential Obama on the Rick Warren show in 2008, repeated (with increasing shrillness, as it has turned out) ad nauseum during the campaign, and just recycled on “The View” this week — that “we can disagree without being disagreeable.”

As one can clearly see, there is never any shortage of political invective in Eugene Robinson columns, but there frequently is a severe fact shortage. In the column under review (“Immigration Helps Dems Long Term,” July 30), for example, he asserted that: (more…)

All you need to know:

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I didn’t realize that it would become such a huge deal.

Friday morning I received an email from a friend, Rabbi David Nessenoff which provided me my first look at the video of the now famous explosive interview with Helen Thomas. David had sent the video to a friend at a newspaper who didn’t think it was a big story. My response to David was, give me a few hours and the video would become viral, and given some luck the video would have a half of million views before the end of the weekend (there were a million).

I quickly posted it on my site The Lid, wrote it up for Big Journalism, gave it to Scott Baker who posted it on Breitbart TV , and sent out tweets and emails to most of the large sites.  Before I left on a five hour car ride to my brother’s house for the weekend the video was posted on the Big sites on the net. By the end of the day it was on radio and TV and the calls Thomas’ head were all over the place.

Strangely, though I think that Ms. Thomas’ comments were horrible and very anti-Semitic, I do not necessarily agree that Ms. Thomas should be fired for her anti-Semitic rantings.  Helen Thomas is merely a symptom of the problem, not the disease. Firing her would be like treating HIV with a band aid.

The mainstream media, which is politically correct about every other ethnic group, feature anti-Semites all of the time without barely a peep about their hatred. I wonder if there would be the same calls for Thomas’ head if she hadn’t already been considered something of a joke by the press corps, someone who has stayed on long past her time. (more…)

The question has been asked here before but it bears repeating. Where were the Connecticut media for 20-some years while the state’s attorney general asserted repeatedly (and falsely) that he had served in Vietnam? Why did it take an out-of-state newspaper to expose the reality that Dick Blumenthal had only served stateside in the Marine Corps Reserves after several draft deferments?

Blumenthal has enjoyed some of the most adulatory press of any public official in the state. And he is assiduous in seeking coverage. It has been said before that, unless Chuck Schumer is visiting, the most dangerous piece of real estate in Connecticut is that little space between Blumenthal and a TV camera.

Inasmuch as he’s always been acutely aware of his public image, how could such a man stand idly by while media outlets printed flattering information about him that he knew was inaccurate? How could he, in his own words at yesterday’s press conference, “misspeak” about his service “on a few occasions” and the news media let him get away with it? Most of those “occasions,” by the way, were gatherings of veterans’ groups. (more…)

Jonathan Capehart, the pride of Carleton College,  rarely  has anything to say that’s worth reading, listening to (he’s a regular on Morning Joe) or thinking about, but occasionally he blunders into something, willy-nilly, as in this piece for the Washington Post blog, “Post Partisan,” about Palin’s recent speech at the Susan B. Anthony dinner:

The last time I saw Sarah Palin speak live was in 2008 when she accepted the Republican Party nomination for vice president. And she gave the performance of her life. The ensuing 20 months for me have been like watching the political equivalent of an actor on ER playing a surgeon. Get that “surgeon” off her lines, and she can’t possibly speak intelligently, if at all, about the intricacies of an operating room. Palin speaks in such broad generalities (“time-tested truths” or “common-sense solutions”) that you’d be crazy to even think about putting the body politic into her care.

This is what passes for thinking among the left these days: why, with this sort of analysis, Capehart has a real chance to become the next Frank Rich. Never mind that Palin’s positions on the issues are far more in tune with what the American public is thinking at the moment. As Matthew Continetti noted in the Weekly Standard:

As I listened to the speech, I was struck by how Palin’s positions are widely shared. She opposes the health care law — so does the public. She’s concerned about the federal deficit — so is the public (see question 10b). She supports the Arizona illegal immigration law — so does the public. She supports the right to life — and the public is moving toward her. She supports the Afghanistan surge and the current course in Iraq — both Obama administration policies.

The problem, as Continetti notes, is that Palin’s negatives are so high (wonder why): (more…)

As a proud former staffer of Time Magazine, where I spent 16 mostly terrific years working with some of the finest writers and journalists who ever graced the business — you’re not going to get any snark from me about Time at the end of its glory years in the 1980s under the supervision of Time Inc. editor-in-chief Henry Grunwald and the magazine’s great managing editor, Ray Cave — I read the following story with a touch of sadness:

The Washington Post Co. is putting Newsweek up for sale in hopes that another owner can figure out how to stem losses at the 77-year-old weekly magazine.

The publishing industry has been struggling as businesses cut back on ad budgets during the recession. But Newsweek, along with Time magazine and U.S. News & World Report, faces a particular challenge finding a relevant niche in the age of up-to-the-second online news. Once handy digests of the week’s events, they have been assailed by competitors on the Web that pump out a constant stream of news and commentary.

Despite staff cuts, Newsweek has remained a drag on its parent company, which is also struggling with ad declines at its namesake newspaper.

Translation: Newsweek is pretty much dead, and now the only question is who’s going to rouge the corpse for a few more years, if anybody, to keep its collection of Morning Joe talking heads with at least the fig leaf of meaningful employment before the final axe falls.

In the New York Times, David Carr has some thoughts: (more…)

It’s certainly arguable whether Joe Scarborough, the host of the now nearly unwatchable haute-gabfest, Morning Joe, on MSNBC, is a conservative, but whatever he is, he’s too much for Canadian-born actor Donald Sutherland.  Consider this, from the Huffington Post:

Are the programmers at MSNBC nuts? They give us refreshing afternoons with Chris and Ed, put us to bed with the clarifying sensibilities of Rachel and Keith and then, idiotically, wake us up with Mr. Small Mouth.

Who is this idiot? Why is he there? He can’t even listen. He doesn’t conduct a decent conversation. He runs over everyone else’s words with a landslide of diarrhea. I saw him on Friday, stomping around the stage like a posturing rooster, calling Paul Krugman a political hack. Paul Krugman’s a political hack? Surely they put make-up on Mr. Small Mouth. Doesn’t he look in the mirror? That’s where he’d see what a political hack looks like.

“Mr. Small Mouth? — Sutherland really knows how to hurt a guy. But he’s not finished putting the boot in.  Oh, no… (more…)

Internecine strife, hurt feelings, jealousy, tears: no, it’s not a daytime soap opera but rather all in day’s work over at the cable channel nobody watches, MSNBC.  It seems that someone named Donnie Deutsch — whose claim to fame is what, exactly? — who’s been anchoring a week-long afternoon series called “America the Angry,” drew the wrath of the station’s resident angry person, Keith Olbermann, by displaying an image of the Howard Beale of our time as part of a general examination of the media’s role in fostering a climate of, well, anger.

Just so you can sort them out, here’s Beale (Peter Finch) from the classic movie, Network:

And here’s Olbermann.  Even their own mothers couldn’t tell them apart:

So let the fun begin!  From the New York Times: (more…)

Is there something in the water at MSNBC that makes everybody there crazy? Morning Joe, which ought to be the premier political talk show on morning television — but won’t be until it expands its guest list beyond Mrs. Alan Greenspan, writers and editors at the New York Times and the newsweeklies, and sneering lefties like Donny Deutsch, whose claim to fame is… what, exactly? — recently witnessed this Chernobyl-style meltdown by Lawrence O’Donnell, which has to be seen to be believed:

Sure, it’s tough being on the side of the incipient losers, staring into the electoral abyss of 2010 and knowing it’s going to take a miracle to save you.  But even Joe Scarborough — who normally is quick to assure his liberal guests that he’s not really that kind of conservative – couldn’t take the vicious animosity, not to mention the spectacular rudeness to one of his guests.  To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, if this is how MSNBC treats its conservative guests, it doesn’t deserve to have any.

Memo to MSNBC management: in the immortal words of Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearings:

You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

You can see the more civilized second half of the segment after the jump:

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The crew of braying jackasses on Morning Joe today had much merriment with Sarah’s crib notes, as they continue to whistle past the graveyard of the coming annihilation of the Democrat Party this fall.  And CNN explicitly compared Sarah’s palm to the TelePrompter of the United States. (No, this clip is not from The Onion.)

So… Hand vs. TOTUS – you be the judge!

First the hand:

And now ladies and gentlemen, the TelePrompter of the United States: (more…)