Debates

Just how frantic are the Obama-loving media getting in the wake of their hero's horrible performance in last week's presidential debate? Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi on Tuesday actually wrote, "[I]t should be illegal to publish poll numbers" (serious vulgarity warning).

This seems almost impossible, but according to an unnamed source supposedly close to the Obama campaign, the President actually thought he won last Wednesday's debate.

Every election cycle, the American people are inundated with polls.  Polls with blacks, white, Hispanics, women, Jews, Catholics, young people, and the Asians are disseminated ad nauseam ­– despite most of them being flawed or so skewed concerning the sample spread that it’s not worth commenting on in any analysis.  When Romney hit a slump towards the end of September, which led to his dip in…

Howard Fineman, the former Newsweek reporter turned editorial director for The Huffington Post, is excited for the upcoming Vice Presidential debate this Thursday.  You could tell from his column published today, which glorifies Joe as the archetypal debater. It's titled "Obama Needs the Merciless Joe."  To start things off, Fineman threw in a thinly veiled racial remark concerning Biden’s…

During the Week in Buzz segment on Sunday's NBC Today, Ericka Souter, editor of the celebrity gossip blog The Stir, trashed Mitt Romney for announcing plans to cut federal funding of PBS, including Sesame Street, ranting: "Everything else Romney said was completely overshadowed by the fact that Big Bird felt attacked or people felt Big Bird was attacked, and he's like an icon to millions of…

It is one thing to trash Jim Lehrer’s moderating behind his back.  It’s even worse when you then bring him on your show to praise his performance after you trash him.  No one does this better than Morning Joe’s Scarborough who did a complete 180 on his analysis of Lehrer’s moderating skills.  On the morning after the first presidential debate, Scarborough claimed that “Jim Lehrer got rolled…

On Monday's front page, New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Trip Gabriel used the upcoming vice presidential debate to criticize Obama's performance in his debate with Mitt Romney last week: "Biden Up Next, Obama's Aides Plot Comeback." The Times didn't flinch from calling out Obama's "disaster" of a debate performance, but did find some excuses for the president, including distractions…

Given the shellacking Barack Obama took at last week's presidential debate with Mitt Romney, one would have thought NBC's Saturday Night Live would have had no difficulty finding material to spoof the event. Not so according to New York magazine which published a piece Monday entitled "Unlike the Rest of the World, SNL Had a Hard Time Joking About the Debate":

"Actually, one of the best presidential debate moderators would be David Letterman." So astonishingly wrote movie critic Roger Ebert on Twitter Thursday (vulgarity warning):

Sam Donaldson had some harsh words this weekend for President Obama's performance at Wednesday's debate. Appearing on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show, the former ABC White House correspondent said, "If he comes to the next two debates with the same demeanor, with the same passive resistance, he’s losing" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Just how awful was President Obama during Wednesday's debate with Mitt Romney? One of his financial supporters, HBO's Bill Maher, said Friday, "It looks like he took my million and spent it all on weed" (video follows with transcript and commentary, vulgarity warning):

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews had an on-air meltdown Wednesday after the presidential debate. NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno mocked this incident Thursday showing a video clip of Matthews giving his rant in a straight jacket as he's being taken away by men in white coats (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

Jay Leno went after the President again Thursday night. Early in his opening monologue, the NBC Tonight Show host said of the stellar television ratings for Wednesday night's debate, "The only person who didn't tune in, I think, was President Obama" (video follows with transcript).

On Friday's CBS This Morning, Nancy Cordes trumpeted that the Obama campaign is "turning lemons into lemonade" as she reported that the Democratic operation is "arguing that Romney had a great performance at the debate, but only because he was untethered from the truth." Not once did the correspondent or colleagues Norah O'Donnell and Bill Plante critically examine the claims from the incumbent…