HEADLINES

Monday, April 19, 2010

Fwd: MRC Alert: 'Watch Your Words,' ABC Advances Clinton's Charge Anti-Obama Rhetoric 'Could Lead to Violent Acts'


 


 

Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
Monday April 19, 2010 @ 09:56 AM EDT

1. 'Watch Your Words,' ABC Advances Clinton's Charge Anti-Obama Rhetoric 'Could Lead to Violent Acts'
"Watch your words," fill-in ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas scolded in teasing Friday's World News, as she trumpeted: "Former President Clinton warns harsh anti-government talk could lead to violent acts, like the Oklahoma City bombing." Introducing the subsequent story, Vargas identified talk radio and Tea Party participants as the culprits: "There is a lot of attention tonight on comments made by former President Bill Clinton, who has weighed in on the angry anti-government rhetoric, ringing out from talk radio to Tea Party rallies. He warns that sometimes firing people up with caustic comments can have unintended and dire consequences."

2. Todd: Crist for President?; Remnick Reveals ObamaCare Passed to Gain New Democratic Voters
Friday follies. Two quotes from journalists worth noting made on Friday night shows. On MSNBC's Hardball, NBC's Chuck Todd forwarded the notion that if Florida Governor Charlie Crist drops out of the Republican primary - where polls put him way behind conservative Marco Rubio - and wins the Senate seat as an independent, "he becomes the most powerful Senator in the United States Senate" and "he becomes, probably, the viable third party candidate in the middle in the country" for President in 2012. A few hours later on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, David Remnick, author of the new book, 'The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,' outed the real liberal agenda behind ObamaCare as he predicted that instead of being an "albatross" that will hurt Democrats at the ballot box in November, all those new beneficiaries will be grateful and vote Democratic.

3. MSNBC Anchor Touts Journalist Who Compared Palin to Larry the Cable Guy: 'It Is a Good Line'
MSNBC's Peter Alexander on Friday eagerly agreed with a journalist who attacked Sarah Palin as "Larry the Cable Guy, minus the class and intelligence." Talking to Cathy Areu, contributing editor of the Washington Post magazine, Alexander gushed, "It's a good line."

4. Newsweek Slams 'Hate' from 'Antigovernment Extremists,' Links to Beck and Palin
Newsweek's cover touted a story on "Hate on the Right." In fact the word "HATE" takes up half a page, white letters on a black background, with the subhead "Antigovernment extremists are on the rise – and on the march." The magazine connects the hate to Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, and includes a timeline of past assassinations.

5. MSNBC Touts Bizarre Vanity Fair Piece on Republicans Costing Taxpayers Money by Opposing Spending
MSNBC's Monica Novotny on Friday highlighted a dubious Vanity Fair piece lamenting the "cost" of the Republican Party opposing Barack Obama's agenda. The News Live host talked to writers Duff McDonald and Peter Keating about their contention that the "party of no" has cost taxpayers $1.34 billion.

6. HBO Sports Documentary Blames Reagan for Racial Tension that Scarred Larry Bird
Catching up with an HBO sports documentary which ran several times in March: 'Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals,' painted Boston Celtics basketball star Larry Bird as the victim of a racist national milieu exacerbated by President Ronald Reagan - a formulation which relied on the expert assessment of a journalist who a few years ago contended that if only Senator Ted Kennedy hadn't killed her, he "would have brought comfort...in her old age" to Mary Jo Kopechne. Over video zooming in on Reagan at his Oval Office desk, HBO's narrator intoned: "But as Magic enjoyed his image as a crossover star, it was Bird, the one-time great white hope, who had further emerged as the polarizing racial figure due in part to that era's increasingly conservative political climate."





 

'Watch Your Words,' ABC Advances Clinton's Charge Anti-Obama Rhetoric 'Could Lead to Violent Acts'

 

"Watch your words," fill-in ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas scolded in teasing Friday's World News, as she trumpeted: "Former President Clinton warns harsh anti-government talk could lead to violent acts, like the Oklahoma City bombing."

Introducing the subsequent story, Vargas identified talk radio and Tea Party participants as the culprits:

There is a lot of attention tonight on comments made by former President Bill Clinton, who has weighed in on the angry anti-government rhetoric, ringing out from talk radio to Tea Party rallies. He warns that sometimes firing people up with caustic comments can have unintended and dire consequences.

Jake Tapper, who will interview Clinton for Sunday's This Week, delivered a less inflammatory report. He began: "Commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing today, former President Bill Clinton cautioned Americans to be mindful of their rhetoric," but also noted how "Rush Limbaugh said if there's a future Oklahoma City bombing, it's Clinton's fault." Limbaugh argued in a soundbite: "With this comment, you have just set the stage for violence in this country. Any future acts of violence are on your shoulders, Mr. Clinton."

Flashback: "SPECIAL PURVEYORS OF HATE & DIVISION ISSUE" of the MRC's May 8, 1995 edition of Notable Quotables, which started with: "Oklahoma City: Conservative Talk Radio's Fault?"

From the MRC's TimesWatch site on Friday: "Hulse Lets Clinton Smear Tea Party Protests as Lighting Fuse for Next Oklahoma City Bombing."

This wasn't the first time a network newscast jumped to promote the effort by a former Democratic President to discredit critics of President Obama. Last September, "NBC Trumpets Carter's Racism Charges," recounted:

NBC anchor Brian Williams touted how "former President Carter spoke up and spoke out about" the supposed racism. Williams alleged "a certain number of signs and images at last weekend's big tea party march in Washington and at other recent events have featured racial and other violent themes  and President Carter today said he is extremely worried by it."

Next night: "NBC: 'Blunt' Carter 'Prompted Us to Reexamine Our Assumptions About Race'"

— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.





Todd: Crist for President?; Remnick Reveals ObamaCare Passed to Gain New Democratic Voters

 

Friday follies. Before the weekend ends, two quotes from journalists worth noting made on Friday night shows:

♦ On MSNBC's Hardball, NBC's Chuck Todd forwarded the notion that if Florida Governor Charlie Crist drops out of the Republican primary -- where polls put him way behind conservative Marco Rubio -- and wins the Senate seat as an independent, "he becomes the most powerful Senator in the United States Senate" and "he becomes, probably, the viable third party candidate in the middle in the country" for President in 2012.

♦ A few hours later on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, David Remnick, author of the new book, 'The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,' outed the real liberal agenda behind ObamaCare as he predicted that instead of being an "albatross" that will hurt Democrats at the ballot box in November, all those new beneficiaries will be grateful and vote Democratic:

When you add 30 million people to the rolls of getting health care, access to health care, seems to me a huge gain and the potential widening of the base for the Democratic Party among a lot of people who might not necessarily vote before. So, I don't think you're going to see a repeat of 1994 come this fall.

Of course, few of those 30 million will have any better access to health care by this November than they had before the bill passed.

Todd, Political Director for NBC News, on the April 16 Hardball:

If Crist got elected as the independent Senator from the state of Florida, he becomes the most powerful Senator in the United States Senate and then, suddenly, you know, all this baggage of political opportunism is gone and instead he becomes, probably, the viable third party candidate in the middle in the country.

Remnick, Editor of The New Yorker magazine and former Washington Post reporter, on HBO:

We heard during the health care debate that the Republican Party was going to take the health care bill and tie it around the Democratic Party's neck like an albatross, it was going to lead to catastrophic losses come November in the mid-term elections. I'm not so sure that's true. When you add 30 million people to the rolls of getting health care, access to health care, seems to me a huge gain and the potential widening of the base for the Democratic Party among a lot of people who might not necessarily vote before. So, I don't think you're going to see a repeat of 1994 come this fall.

From April 5, "NBC Nightly News: Mohammad Ali, Walt Whitman, Annie Oakley and Now...Barack Obama," recounted:

NBC News is certainly enthralled with David Remnick's new book, 'The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.' After giving him a guest slot on Meet the Press and an interview on Monday's Today show, NBC Nightly News on Monday showcased Remnick in an "In His Own Words" segment to expound on his admiration for Obama's racial identity journey, starting with how Obama follows in the tradition of Annie Oakley:

There are a lot of American characters no matter what the field who make themselves, who create themselves out of what's in the cultural air. It's an American thing, whether it's Mohammad Ali or Walt Whitman or Annie Oakley. And Barack Obama is somebody who grew up in Honolulu and had to learn how to be African-American in the absence of African-Americans. Racial identity is a drama that Obama had to undergo long after he had become comfortable with his own identity.

— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.





MSNBC Anchor Touts Journalist Who Compared Palin to Larry the Cable Guy: 'It Is a Good Line'

 

MSNBC's Peter Alexander on Friday eagerly agreed with a journalist who attacked Sarah Palin as "Larry the Cable Guy, minus the class and intelligence." Talking to Cathy Areu, contributing editor of the Washington Post magazine, Alexander gushed, "It's a good line." [Audio available here.]

As first reported on NewsBusters, Areu slammed the former Alaskan governor on CNN, Wednesday. Playing to MSNBC's left-wing audience, an onscreen graphic playfully asked, "Palin the Cable Gal?"

After explaining that Bill O'Reilly asked Areu to come on his show and defend her remarks, Alexander sympathized, "Areu said thanks but no thanks to Fox. Saying she wanted to appear right here on MSNBC. We don't blame her."





Newsweek Slams 'Hate' from 'Antigovernment Extremists,' Links to Beck and Palin

 

The April 19 Newsweek cover that's shamelessly selling the "remarkable" tale of our economic recovery also promises a story on "Hate on the Right." In fact the word "HATE" takes up half a page, white letters on a black background, with the subhead "Antigovernment extremists are on the rise – and on the march."

Pictures illustrating the article strangely connect Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin with 1930's socialists. The caption read: "Huey Long castigated the rich and Father Coughlin denounced Jews in the 1930s. Today, the microphones belong to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin." (Beck's previous impassioned rebuttal of the comparison to Coughlin is ignored.) This would not be the first time Newsweek's imagined "right wing" Coughlin as an Obama foil.

Evan Thomas and Eve Conant utilize the usual liberal experts – Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who unloads his usual line about militias "roaring back," and historian Alan Brinkley, who opines that "the current surge of fear and loathing toward Obama is 'scary,' he says. 'There's a big dose of race behind the real crazies, the ones who take their guns to public meetings. I can't see this happening if McCain were president.'"

Most of this Brinkley quote is also highlighted in large red letters.

For graphic emphasis, Newsweek also listed a historical timeline of assassinations and bombings, including Oklahoma City and in 1970, "The Weathermen."

This raises the question: if it's fair to somehow associate Beck and Palin with 1930s left-wing ranters, how did Newsweek treat the much more factual connection between Barack Obama and Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers, or Obama's membership for two decades in the church of Jeremiah Wright? Unsurprisingly, those connections were downplayed, and Obama was "disappointed" by being failed by these associates.

On April 18, 2008, an early item on Ayers in Newsweek was helpfully headlined: "Obama: Can't 'Swift Boat' Me."

On May 12, the same Eve Conant who exposed "Hate on the Right" thought Rev. Wright had sadly failed Newsweek's hero:

Wright had been a friend and mentor. Obama had said before that he couldn't cut him off; but after this bitter performance, how could he not sever his ties? "It was a circus," says the senior Obama aide. "Not only was Wright repeating things that were objectionable, but he was also impugning Barack's sincerity."

On May 19, Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller was even stronger, insisting that Wright had attempted to kill Obama rhetorically in "a public murder-suicide attempt," never casting a wary thought about Obama or the "scary" hatred in the hearts of Wright's followers:

All was well, or at least stable, until Wright's public murder-suicide attempt, in which he used rhetoric to assassinate the character of his most famous congregant and reveal the ugliest side of his own….In the meantime, the only image most people have of Trinity is its incomprehensible senior pastor. Those who imagine that the Democratic nominee was converted to Christ by a left-wing hatemonger need to paint in their minds a fuller picture: a young man, intellectual and searching, in prayer at Trinity and awash in the music.

For the September 1 issue, in the warmup for the Obama-nominating convention in Denver, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham even found Lincoln in Obama's masterful separation from his longtime spiritual guide:

When Wright's "God Damn America" clips emerged earlier this year, Obama's friend Jim Wallis sent him a note of condolence. Late one night, Wallis received an e-mail in reply, something like: "God has his purposes." "I was quite astounded," says Wallis, the left-leaning evangelical writer, activist and founder of Sojourners. "Here's a 46-year-old, which for me at 59 seems young, and he says something like that. This is not what politicians think and do. Politicians want always to be predictive and controlling."

Obama's reply to Wallis reflected a kind of Lincoln-esque fatalism. It is a sad but inescapable fact of life that people--in Obama's case, people close to you--often fail you. Wright, obviously, was far from the first man to disappoint Obama.

It all reminds me of Newsweek's Howard Fineman, slyly associating Republicans with Timothy McVeigh on May 8, 1995: "the Oklahoma bombing has illuminated a dark landscape much farther afield: a radical fringe of militant gun owners, 'hate radio' talk-show hosts, and religious cultists. Their numbers are small -- and their GOP ties tenuous at best. But their fervor is influential at the grass roots Republicans call their own."

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.





MSNBC Touts Bizarre Vanity Fair Piece on Republicans Costing Taxpayers Money by Opposing Spending

 

MSNBC's Monica Novotny on Friday highlighted a dubious Vanity Fair piece lamenting the "cost" of the Republican Party opposing Barack Obama's agenda. The News Live host talked to writers Duff McDonald and Peter Keating about their contention that the "party of no" has cost taxpayers $1.34 billion.

Apparently, the GOP and various conservative organizations total this much by not supporting health care or the stimulus. Never mentioned in the article or during the segment is the fact that Obama's spending on those two items alone will end up costing taxpayers $3.3 trillion, 2500 times the amount of the expensive Republicans.

During the segment, Keating snidely remarked, "And, you know, Republican offices need heat and light and water and sewage. People are showing up just to say no and we're paying for it!" Earlier in the piece, Novotny played along and complained, "So, for that [the price of the GOP], we've got nothing?"





HBO Sports Documentary Blames Reagan for Racial Tension that Scarred Larry Bird

 

Catching up with an HBO sports documentary which ran several times in March: 'Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals,' painted Boston Celtics basketball star Larry Bird as the victim of a racist national milieu exacerbated by President Ronald Reagan -- a formulation which relied on the expert assessment of a journalist who a few years ago contended that if only Senator Ted Kennedy hadn't killed her, he "would have brought comfort...in her old age" to Mary Jo Kopechne. Over video zooming in on Reagan at his Oval Office desk, HBO's narrator intoned:

But as Magic enjoyed his image as a crossover star, it was Bird, the one-time great white hope, who had further emerged as the polarizing racial figure due in part to that era's increasingly conservative political climate.

Then, the Boston Globe's Charles Pierce argued "the triumph of the movement" that supposedly "rolled back" civil rights "took place in the 1980s" and that caused "sublimated frustration" amongst black Americans "and I think one of the ways it got sublimated was into basketball" with Bird catching those "lingering resentments." On screen as Pierce spoke, this New York Times headline:

STUDY SAYS BLACKS HAVE LOST GROUND
Finds Reagan's Policies Have Hurt the Poor and Imperil Emerging Middle Class

Followed by a Washington Post headline: "56% Say President Is a Racist."

AUDIO: MP3 clip.

Hat tip to the persistent Tony Cocco, a Bay Stater who alerted us to the slam on Reagan and followed up with a reminder after he saw the documentary air again.

Pierce is infamous for his 2003 Globe Magazine tribute to Ted Kennedy in which he ludicrously postulated: "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne  would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age."

Also, from a few months ago: "Nine Days Before Election, Boston Globe's Pierce Ridiculed Notion Brown Could Win."

From the HBO documentary:

ARSENIO HALL: Has the "N" word ever been used by a white person to describe Ervin? I doubt it.

NARRATOR: But as Magic enjoyed his image as a crossover star, it was Bird, the one-time great white hope, who had further emerged as the polarizing racial figure due in part to that era's increasingly conservative political climate. [on screen: zoom in on Reagan]

CHARLES PIERCE, BOSTON GLOBE: The rolling back, institutionally, of the achievements of the civil rights movement were going on apace from about 1975 on, but the triumph of the movement that rolled them back took place in the 1980s. And I think there was people who were very aware in the black community of what was going on, and I think there was a lot of sublimated frustration. And I think one of the ways it got sublimated was into basketball. And I think Larry, through no fault of his own, was the receptacle within which the lingering resentments somehow floated.

— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.


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