Magazines

The press's reluctance to let go of a popular but debunked meme — in this case, the nonexistent "epidemic" of college campus sexual assaults — is sometimes inadvertently humorous, though still intensely annoying. Take how John Bacon and Marisol Bello at USA Today characterized the news that "Police in Charlottesville were unable to verify that an alleged sexual assault detailed in a…

Things got chippy on Morning Joe today after Amy Holmes of The Blaze pointed out that President Obama has personalized and publicized his conflict with Benjamin Netanyahu in a way he hasn't done even with despots like Kim Jong Un or the Castro brothers. When Holmes added that "only Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be the focal point of this president's ire," former Obama spokesman Gibbs called Holmes…

The New York Times isn’t the only iconic media outlet to ignore George and Laura Bush’s visit to Selma as they obsess over the Obamas. On page 12 of the March 23 edition of People magazine, in the “Star Tracks” section, there’s a whole page devoted to “THE FIRST FAMILY IN SELMA.” In chronicling the events of March 7, there was no picture and no mention of President and Mrs. Bush (or any other…

No one looks to GQ for political analysis. It would be like looking to Rolling Stone for religion coverage. But they can still ape the rest of the liberal media and mock Fox News. As the Fox haters campaign to get Bill O’Reilly canned, GQ (not an abbreviation for Genius Quotient) has come up with a mocking list of “18 Things That Actually Would Get Bill O'Reilly Fired.” It includes things like "…

Earlier today, Thaddeus Murphy was charged in U.S. District Court in Colorado in connection with an attempted January bombing in Colorado Springs. The targeted building houses that city's chapter of the NAACP, a barber shop — and, apparently at one time, a tax accountant's office. Quite a few people leaped to the conclusion that the bomb had to be meant for the NAACP, even though, as syndicated…

People magazine featured HBO star Lena Dunham in its half-page feature “Why I Care: Personal Stories About Giving Back.” The headline in the March 2 issue was “The Girls creator, 28, supports access to birth control and reproductive rights.” Dunham, naturally is “giving back” to the abortion industry. A photo caption read “Dunham, who hosted a Planned Parenthood event in January, says she feels…

Time magazine editor-at-large and global-warming alarmist Jeffrey Kluger called on Facebook today to censor users who promote criticisms of vaccines, commonly known as anti-vaxxers. While Kluger is absolutely right to note that Facebook would be well within its rights to do so and that private-party censorship is not a First Amendment free-speech issue, Kluger's paternalistic lecturing and the…

In a rundown of the deteriorating situation in Libya in its February 23 issue, New Yorker Magazine's Jon Lee Anderson quoted "a senior (Obama) Administration official" (the capital "A" is Anderson's) who, incredibly, claimed that the country's descent into virtual chaos resulted from "the politicization" of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and…

Joe Scarborough says he doesn't want to be "torn to shreds online" for analogizing the threat of radical Christianity to that of radical Islam.  Simple solution: stop analogizing the threat of radical Christianity to that of radical Islam. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough twice suggested such parallels, analogizing radical Islamists to "ultrafundamentalist Christians who believe every single…

In London, England earlier this week, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker delivered a speech about global trade at the Chatham House think tank. Given that the group's mission is "to help build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world," and that it encourages "open debate and confidential discussion on the most significant developments in international affairs," it seemed a reasonable…

Tara Parker-Pope attempted a defense of disgraced NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams in an item ("Was Brian Williams a Victim of False Memory?") posted at the New York Times "Well" blog — late Monday afternoon. It even made Tuesday's New York version of the Old Gray Lady's print edition. Parker-Pope's premise, similar to that used by Marison Bello at USA Today three days earlier — even using…

In his story on Brian Williams at 10:55 p.m. ET Tuesday, Gabriel Sherman at New York Magazine reported that the now-suspended anchor and his agent "were presented with a dossier of Williams' apparent lies," and that "Williams himself was only slowly grasping the depths of the mess he'd created." That begs the obvious question of whether the public will ever get to know what's in that "dossier,"…

In a new book, Obama 2008 campaign manager and longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod reveals that, in the words of Zeke J. Miller at Time.com, "Barack Obama misled Americans for his own political benefit when he claimed in the 2008 election to oppose same sex marriage for religious reasons." The subheadline at Miller's coverage calls it "A striking admission of political dishonesty from the…

At USA Today Friday afternoon, two of its reporters came down on the side of Brian Williams in the controversy over what even the often media-enabling Associated Press has called his "fake Iraq story." Roger Yu tried to portray Williams as a victim of a "synergistic stretch" who is now having to defend himself against the "firestorm on the Internet and social media," while Marisol Bello, who…