- This is now beyond stupid and ridiculous. Progressives are now angry at Roland Martin because he was making jokes during the Super Bowl. There is a scary, fascist trend developing here in the United States where people too sensitive to apparently participate in society are holding everyone else responsible for meaningless remarks. It’s victimhood chic.

- Wrong: it’s the third time hyperventilating progressives were willing to freak out for nothing only to go back to their man caves with no scalp.

Dylan Byers notes that criticism of Roland Martin for a comment he made about a Super Bowl commercial — “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!” — marks the third time this year that CNN contributors have caused some kind of controversy. The fact that CNN keeps finding itself in this position, he writes, says something about its editorial strategy

It’s a symptom alright, a symptom of progressives so antsy to drum out speech or thought with which they don’t agree that they’re willing to embarrass themselves in an all-out witch hunt.

- A FYI: Making fun of David Beckham’s underwear and soccer is now apparently “gay bashing.” Hands to heaven I’m not making this up. Who in America doesn’t make fun of soccer? Who doesn’t laugh at the giant David Beckham bollocks billboards? What does that have to do with being gay?

- WSJ: Disney, Univision In Talks to Launch 24-Hour English Language News Channel.

- Did the Freepers have enough of the Romney surrogates calling everyone who didn’t vote Romney “bigots?” Seems so. Much in the same way that Obama supporters called conservatives “bigots” for not supporting Obamacare (or just disagreeing with Obama on anything), some Romney supporters borrow language of the left and call those who don’t get in line behind Romney ‘anti-Mormon bigots.’

(I’m sure it’s completely coincidental that I followed a piece about progressives freaking out over Roland Martin with conservatives freaking out at other conservatives over Mitt Romney.)

Evangelicals went for Romney hand over fist in the Florida primary, as well as in Nevada where Mormons did, too. Did you hear non-Romney supporters calling Romney’s Mormon supporters “bigots” for not voting for a Catholic or Evangelical? No. Because that language is best left to progressives. Knock it off, people.

- Now Gingrich wants more debates.

- That WHRRR WHRRR WHRRR sound you hear is the BS meter going off: “Listening to Rachel Maddow is like listening to Walter Cronkite.”

- AOL is trying desperately to get people other than your grandparents and that aunt who sends you videos of cats to care about its services.

- The National Journal fact checks and compares Obamacare and Romneycare.

- Hysterical. Jeopardy contestants can’t identify Rachel Maddow:

Obviously they, along with most of the country, don’t watch MSNBC.

- Newt Gingrich isn’t the only thing Marianne Gingrich helped to propel to #1 last week.

- Twitter can now censor Tweets in certain countries:

The social network Twitter is facing a storm of criticism from users, after revealing that it has implemented a system that would let it withhold particular tweets from specific countries.

The company has insisted that it will not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as already happens when governments or organisations complain about individual tweets.

The new system, which can filter tweets on a country-by-country basis and has already been incorporated into the site’s output, will not change Twitter’s approach to freedom of expression, sources there indicated.

- Washington City Paper notes the obvious and asks: Where are the women and non-white media critics? The problem? They rattle off a list of known progressive white male critics. When you look at only super far left progressives wherein diversity is a rhetorical device rather than observed practice, of course you’d wonder.

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Tuesday wasn’t a great night for accuracy at the (openly) liberal network, as Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner points out:

Obama & Co. waited until the Thanksgiving weekend to unload their White House visitor logs. Bloggers are still crowd sourcing their contents, but Michelle Malkin uncovered this gem in the meantime:

Rachel Maddow visits the White House with seven friends. The “visitee?” POTUS.

She made no mention of the visit on her Aug. 5 show. What did she and POTUS discuss? Just wondering…

Fun fact: According to the White House logs, this was Maddow’s fifth trip to the White House — and fourth to see the president personally.

So palling around with the President for whom you obviously voted is OK but donating to a campaign is wrong, according to MSNBC.

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I usually email and post an article after I’ve done all the research on a show about Operation Fast and Furious, but Rachel Maddow will be a two-parter because of her May 6th 2011 episode. In this episode Ms. Maddow attends the NRA convention with Meghan McCain, Senator John McCain’s daughter and she speaks with Rev Ricky Burgess, Pittsburgh City Councilman, in two segments. Ms. Maddow and Rev Burgess were making the case for more gun control. Ms. Maddow used Tuscon and the shooting of Representative Giffords as her prime example while Rev Burgess used his part of Pittsburgh as the reason for more gun control. One thing that came up in both conversations were assault rifles. I bet you can guess what was NOT mentioned:Operation Fast and Furious or Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Before I say more here is the email I sent to Ms. Maddow. Of course I attached a picture of Brian Terry.

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- It appears that new tone deal everyone has been talking about involves encouraging  violence, as long as it’s directed at select targets. Remember this next time the  Left starts talking about a Fairness Doctrine. They aren’t interested  in honest debate. They want to destroy any opposition.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday, Maher said of the protesters demonstrating near the homes of some New York millionaires earlier in the day, “If a brick came through Rupert Murdoch’s apartment, yes, I have a feeling Fox News would be a lot more gentle on the Wall Street people.” Maddow thought that was funny …

- Meanwhile, Leftist media is on the march, attempting to drive political debate. Keep an eye on Media Matters; they’ll likely be running interference on this at some point. It’s who they  are. It’s what they do.

Jumping on the anti-Wall Street media bandwagon, Josh Boak of Politico says Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio’s measure to tax Wall Street has “newfound momentum.” The Soros-funded Think Progress blog quickly jumped on the report, saying the plan is being seriously considered on the Hill. There is only one problem: DeFazio hasn’t introduced any such bill in the current Congress.

- Whatever your thoughts on Gingrich as a potential  2012 nominee, he knows politics and he knows media. He’s saying what he’s saying for a reason, not simply to draw attention to himself.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich during Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate once again went after one of his favorite targets – the media.

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(Read Project Mayhem, Part I here)

When he’s not busy encouraging Massachusetts voters to commit voter fraud to “keep these bastards out,” or condemning “tea party rhetoric” for not “rising to the president’s challenge on tone” while calling Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut,” MSNBC’s Ed Schultz indulges his hobby of swooping into states like Wisconsin and Ohio, becoming an overnight expert on legislation he is only familiar with from having skimmed through SEIU-furnished Cliffs Notes, calling the legislation “racist” while cheerleading union rallies with applause-cuing platitudes, waving his arms in solidarity and then peacing out.

Schultz made a recent visit to Columbus, Ohio in which he had Congressman Tim Ryan (whom I had interviewed hours prior about Senate Bill 5’s alleged confiscation of safety equipment) and Senator Sherrod Brown on the show against a backdrop of union firefighters to whom, during commercial breaks, Schultz yelled that SB 5 “makes me believe Jimmy Hoffa even more that they are sons of bitches!” Throughout the broadcast Schultz and his guests parroted the manufactured mantra that the bill takes away safety equipment, perhaps almost enough times to make it true.

Admittedly breaking the SEIU’s first rule of Project Mayhem, I subsequently interviewed Schultz on camera and asked him to respond to the fact that the bill gives bargaining rights on safety equipment — which the Democrats’ earlier bill didn’t, citing the exact section number — to which he offered a Pulitzer Prize-warranting response: “That’s not what the firefighters are telling me.”

Well Ed, that may not be what the firefighters are telling you the bill says, but it is what the bill is telling me the bill says. When I later asked the author of SB 5, State Senator Shannon Jones, to respond to Schultz’s talking points, she clarified the provision in depth, noting to Schultz that “reading is fundamental.”

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Rachel Maddow called President Obama “boy king” in tonight’s broadcast.

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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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Newsweek magazine has brought the subject of media bias to the forefront with this week’s cover photo and headline.  It features a photo of Republican congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann with a crazed look behind the intentionally nasty headline, “Queen of Rage.” Even the most naïve reader could not believe the article would be anything close to an evenhanded look at who Ms. Bachmann is and what she stands for.

This might surprise some journalists, but readers/viewers are much smarter than most of them think they are. They can spot media bias a mile off even when members of the media think they are getting away with it. Here are seven transparent ways media bias is detected by readers/viewers and what journalists can do about it.

Context: A journalist might edit down a 25-word comment into five-words to make someone they don’t like look foolish.  What to do about it: Be honest and keep quotes and themes in context.

Facts: Recently MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow played a quote by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh which she said was “made earlier this week.”  It wasn’t. It was made over a year earlier, and it is highly likely the host knew it when she played it. What to do about it: Report the facts even if they are not as you want them to be.

Freaks and fringers: Media bias is spotted immediately when a journalist seeks out the most ridiculous representation of a subject or group they are covering. It happened many times with the media coverage of the tea party rallies as well as the Wisconsin state legislature’s battle over union issues earlier this year. What to do about it: Get your information from serious representatives and not freaks and fringers. (more…)

This entire story will come as no surprise, but must be mentioned as the media blasts Andrew Breitbart for breaking the #Weinergate story.

According to one of the women, MSNBC had first shot at it.

Lisa Weiss, a Las Vegas blackjack dealer, says she first approached MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to see if she would do the story about Anthony Weiner.

“Anthony was a regular guest on Rachel’s show and I love her, so much, and her views, so I reached out to her,” the blackjack dealer told RadarOnline.com.

“But I never heard back.”

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It’s mildly entertaining to see the same brilliant media folk who blew their analysis so badly during the last election, struggle to try to figure out the next election.

First, you can ask the legitimate question of why those who so totally missed the mark in 2010 are allowed back in the room to pretend they can figure out 2012, but “progressive” media are not real keen on change. If you used Dan Rather in 2010 you still have his cell number, so you call him again to fill the seat in 2012. Forget whether the analysis is accurate or insightful, you just need another leftist there to confirm the views of the host and the other leftists on the panel.

The “company line” before the last election was that the tea party would have little or no effect, or a negative effect on Republicans chances. These are the same people who are telling us that the movement is now dead and will have no effect on the next election.

After a while you get the distinct impression that these supposed expert analysts are telling us what they hope becomes true, instead of what will actually happen. Imagine that.

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Ellisa Martinez, who made false threats against Broward county schools last year after watching an episode of Rachel Maddow’s television show, has pled guilty in federal court and faces up to five years in prison.

I wrote about this story last November but it’s worth recapping again. A day after Rachel Maddow played (and replayed) a clip of Florida talk radio host Joyce Kaufman on her show, Ellisa Martinez sent a letter feigning support for Kaufman and 2nd amendment rights. The letter went on to suggest there would be a school shooting in coming days. Martinez then upped the ante by calling Kaufman’s radio show and telling listeners that her husband was on the rampage with several loaded weapons and would turn up at a local school that day unless she could talk him out of it.

In fact, none of this was true. It was one woman’s crazy attempt at making a political point after being offended by a carefully edited clip she’d seen on Maddow’s show. However the result of this prank was no joke. There was a massive lockdown of 300 schools in Broward county Florida and several government buildings which lasted most of a day. Parents throughout the county were frightened, not knowing which school the armed madman might visit.

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God knows I’ve criticized Rachel Maddow before.  She’s trite, pretentious, and smug, a female version of Jon Stewart without any of the charm.  Like Obama, the left loves her largely because of her constant aura of pedantry – do you ever get the feeling that leftists still long for the guidance of the college professors who called them brave for toking up and sexually experimenting? – her supposed brilliance, and her sonorous baritone.

Only one problem: last week she proved that not only was she a raging blacklister, she proved that she was an ignoramus.

It all went down on last Thursday night’s show.  Maddow decided to “debunk” Mike Huckabee’s “Learn Our History” program, a rethinking of the American journey from the conservative point of view.  Specifically, Maddow had a problem with Huckabee’s “new and improved past, a revised American history carefully constructed to make you feel more comfortable than you might otherwise feel about our national history.”  She then picked out one specific example – the left’s favorite example:

“You may remember the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Part of that was Senator Joe McCarthy red-baiting the living heck out of the entertainment industry … In 1947, Ronald Reagan testified before that committee as a friendly witness, as the president of the Screen Actors Guild.  And in 2011, Mike Huckabee reimagines all of this as six words in his animated hagiography of Ronald Reagan for kids: … ‘He worked against Communism in Hollywood.’”

She then proceeded to attempt to blacklist the company that did the animation for the Learn Our History series, explaining, “If you know who brought this amazing animated sauce to life, please get in touch with us.  We would like to know.”

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—–

Rachel Maddow’s closing remarks in this segment are nothing short of obscene:

“We asked [Huckabee's production company] today who had done the animation on these DVDs. They would not tell us. If you know who brought this amazing animated sauce to life, please get in touch with us. We would like to know.”

Maddow might couch her unholy request in that chirpy, kindergarten teacher voice, but the venom is 100% pure. The hypocrisy, however, is 150%.

Read the quote again closely. Maddow already knows the name of the production company, but right after decrying the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s, she demands the production company — wait for it, wait for it — name names. And because they refuse to name names, Maddow then weaponizes her own audience to witchunt up those names on her behalf.

Why?

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Here’s the interesting quandary: the left, including our President, has railed against “enhanced interrogation techniques” for years. Obama even moved to prosecute those who engaged in using such techniques to extract pertinent information from terrorist detainees:

President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terrorism-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost “our moral bearings” with use of the tactics.

The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods “is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don’t want to prejudge that,” Obama said.

Said the President previously on interrogation:

“We must send a message to the world that America is a nation of laws, and a nation that stands against torture. As President I will abide by statutory prohibitions, and have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors.”

So now the President must find himself in a difficult position, after railing so hard against interrogation techniques for so long, he can’t claim victory for bin Laden’s death without ceding a major part of that victory to the techniques he opposed which were curated under his predecessor.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Logan Churchwell:

With Republican presidential announcements approaching this summer, MSNBC has seen fit to promote their underwhelming primetime lineup with a new round of Lean Forward TV ads. Each of these spots take our beloved hosts out of the studio and into the “real” part of America that they seek to speak for. Some are ironic, others are downright hokey. All videos, however, offer not-so-subtle endorsements of progressive policies that play like in-kind donations to the Democratic National Committee. They serve as excellent examples for logical fallacies, too.

Straw Man- First up, Chris Matthews stands before the White House in an act of symbolic protection and labels all potential Republican presidential candidates as birthers. Interesting, considering that Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty have scoffed at the issue publicly. Sarah Palin seems a little confused, but Jon Huntsman has a man crush on Obama. We know where The Donald stands, but attention must be given to this gross generalization. I’ll posit that once Mr. Matthews stops talking about President Obama’s citizenship status, the oxygen will be sucked out of the whole debate. This straw man attack does nothing for the MSNBC brand, but give its critics more ammunition.

Etymological Fallacy- Next, Lawrence O’Donnell brings us into his bourgeois living room for a lecture on [illegal] immigration. You might find yourself agreeing on the surface, but pay attention to context. No one with two brain cells to rub together has argued that all borders must undergo an absolute shutdown. In that case, is MSNBC openly pressing for a disregarding of long-standing federal law? (more…)