2008 Presidential

Newsweek's Howard Fineman has some stellar advice for President Obama in his recent column: stop governing for the press. Though Fineman makes the right diagnosis for Obama's ailment -- his "journalistic" style -- his assessment of its consequences is facile and ignores the intricacies of electoral politics.Fineman insists that it is not really important to cater to the journalistic establishment…

She'd never admit it, but if there's one person secretly hoping for a big Republican victory in 2010 and, yes, a President Palin in 2013, it could be . . . Katrina vanden Heuvel.  That's right, the editor of The Nation might well be looking at GOP success as her best shot at salvaging the sinking fortunes of her far-left magazine.A recent article in Vanity Fair—which no one would accuse shilling…

Buried in a recent New York Times profile of senior White House advisor David Axelrod was this nugget of information: he used to be a reporter with the Chicago Tribune.The fact is hardly a secret -- the White House notes Axelrod's brief stint at the Tribune on its website. But that bit of information was an interesting element of a predictably laudatory profile. One of President Obama's chief…

A Monday New York Times story by Stephanie Clifford gave one cheer to the National Enquirer tabloid for its work on breaking the news of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards's affair with Rielle Hunter, and their child. It was a story the Enquirer pursued almost alone and which could earn it an unprecedented Pulitzer: "From Rumor to a Hint of Respect." But the excuses Clifford…

Old Media's fatal conceit is the belief that it's not news unless it's reported by a major newspaper, magazine, or television station. Reports from new and alternative media, in Old Media's eyes, are tainted, and not to be believed...unlike, of course, the reliable, factual, and always objective mainstream media. NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd, at right in a file photo, has been a…

Liberals who simply cannot understand why Sarah Palin is so popular often attribute her success to her looks. The excuse conveniently allows them to sidestep any discussion of the issues she raises, and allows them to maintain a feeling of intellectual superiority to Palin and her supporters.Fox News contributor Juan Williams, also a reporter for NPR and the Washington Post, was at a complete…

Why can't President Obama get a health care bill through Congress? Nope, it has nothing to do with the fact that a clear majority of the country doesn't want the federal government overhauling seventeen percent of the economy. The problem is he is just too darn reasonable.So posits Newsweek's Andrew Romano, who notes that Obama could have gone wholesale-government-takeover on health care and a…

Sarah Palin sends liberals into irrational frenzies of contempt and, in the case of Bill Maher, fits of condescension which drive him to denigrate anyone stupid enough to see anything good in her. Maher began and ended his Friday night HBO program, Real Time with Bill Maher, with derogatory “jokes” based on the presumption Palin and her supporters are morons. He started with how at the health…

Conservative dominance of the talk radio airwaves continues, but liberals are making concerted efforts to get their voices heard through large top-down campaigns.Organizing for America--the campaign arm of the Obama administration--is rolling out the astroturf in an effort to get liberal voices heard on the nation's most popular (i.e. conservative) talk radio shows. The campaign is called "On the…

Let's be honest for a minute, America. I know a lot of you had stars in your eyes last January when Barack Obama was inaugurated amid promises of "change we can believe in", closing down evil Guantanamo Bay, bringing the troops home from Iraq and all the other idealistic promises he made so he could get elected.He also promised to fix the economy and let us know in no uncertain terms that he had…

Vice President Joseph Biden's very public wearing of ashes, a Lenten practice for Catholics, on Wednesday led to several befuddled reactions from the mainstream media. Sky News's Kay Burley had to apologize after confusing the ashen mark for an injury. More egregiously, ABC News's Karen Travers omitted the past controversy over his support for legalized abortion, and portrayed him as a devout…

How does one prepare for an upcoming appearance by Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy fame?  If you're Bill Maher, you follow up the Family Guy/Sarah Palin/Down Syndrome attack by doing an 'exclusive rant' for the Huffington Post which includes - you guessed it - a joke about Sarah Palin's son, Trig. Maher appeals to his lower-intellect audience by stating:"...while we were off, Sarah Palin agreed to…

On Feb. 6, former President Ronald Reagan would have celebrated his 99th birthday. Since he's thought of as a conservative icon, some have wondered what he would have thought of the modern conservative movement, specifically the tea parties and the rise of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.  If you listen to Reagan's son Ron, who has recently appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball" and HLN's "The Joy Behar…

Salon columnist Max Blumenthal continues to get flak for his slanderous, factually-challenged hit piece on conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe last week. The column, premised on a host of omissions and baseless assumptions, contended that O'Keefe's is a racist.Blumenthal's latest critic is Columbia Journalism Review, Old Media's paragon of journalistic elitism. CJR has requested that he correct…