Jonathan Chait at New York magazine [corrected - see below], about “Why Bibi Hates Obama“:

Netanyahu thinks a lot like a Jewish-American Republican….What’s more, Republican Jews tend to have an overdeveloped sense of black anti-Semitism. Indeed, they generally regard traditional (i.e., white) anti-Semitism as having disappeared long ago, replaced by black anti-Semitism, which they consider largely pervasive. Their unstated assumption is that any left-of-center black politician is an anti-Semite unless proven otherwise…

Chait admits he has no basis for the claim above, “other than every conversation about anti-Semitism and Israel I’ve had with any Jewish Republican over my entire life.”

Jonathan Chait

Which could be many, or just a handful, for all we know. What we do know is that Chait probably wasn’t listening.

Here’s my counter-proof, which is just as valid as Chait’s — probably more so, since I speak to Republican Jews on a regular basis (and not just to the delightful one to whom I’m married).

No Jewish Republican–not one–considers “traditional (i.e., white) anti-Semitism” to have “disappeared long ago.” And no Jewish Republican–not one–considers “any left-of-center black politician” to be “an anti-Semite unless proven otherwise.”

(more…)

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.

(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…)

JournoList scandal is back and prepare for it to be a driving force in the news for quite some time. The Daily Caller published an article tonight indicating they’ve obtained emails from the JournoList and the initial details are as damning as we expected when the list-serv, founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in 2007, surfaced with the Dave Weigel kerfuffle last month.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias.  It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” (more…)

**UPDATE: The New Republic issued the following correction:

This was corrected from an earlier version, which incorrectly stated that O’Keefe had to return to “prison.”

We thank them for their diligence.

In Lydia DePillis’s article “Bodacious? Xtremely!,” published February 21st in the The New Republic, Ms. DePillis falsely states that James O’Keefe had to return to prison after he left the CPAC conference this past weekend:

[Hannah] Giles was there to accept the first annual XPAC Award for Impact on behalf of her undercover partner, James O’Keefe, who made it to the conference but had to return to prison earlier that day.

O’Keefe was released from prison jail in January on a pretrial services “signature bond.”  He may travel within the state of New Jersey and out of state with permission from his pretrial services officer.  He did not “return to prison” after leaving CPAC, nor was he obliged to do so.

We kindly request the issuance of a formal correction.