New Yorker

The New Yorker’s Borowitz and Esquire’s Pierce trash the Texas senator (Pierce claims that Cruz “represents politics and a vision of government that was out of date in 1860” and that he’s “connected, rhetorically for the most part, to the darkest manifestations of the American political Id”).

Jelani Cobb, who’s also a professor at the University of Connecticut, writes that even though it’s “tempting” to think of Carson as the new Herman Cain, ultimately it’s superficial. He suggests that if you look past skin color, you’ll see that Carson’s “radically paranoid” worldview makes him more analogous to another 2012 GOP candidate, Michele Bachmann. Cobb blasts Carson’s “sweaty-palmed…

In a piece headlined “The Supreme Court vs. Reality,” Jeff Shesol claims that when the SCOTUS agreed to hear King v. Burwell, it showed that “most or maybe all of the Court’s Republican appointees will entertain any argument, no matter how silly, that can derail or dismember the supposed abomination that is Obamacare.”

John Cassidy calls the Wisconsin governor “an odious politician whose ascension to the Presidency would be a disaster” but admits, “For all his awfulness, Walker is a serious contender. We’d better get used to it.”

Toobin, of the New Yorker and CNN, argues that while Giuliani’s “I do not believe that the President loves America” comments were “simply incorrect,” it was more important to understand that they were “not principally meant as assertions of fact.” Rather, they were “meant to tap into a deep wellspring of American political thought, one defined by the Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter five…

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…

Ken Auletta reports that Williams had agreed to a suspension but “wanted a declaration by NBC that he would return as an evening-news anchor.” NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke, “torn between wanting to take a hard line and feeling compassion for Williams,” sought Brokaw’s counsel regarding the matter. After Brokaw said he was “concerned about the effects of Williams’s actions on the reputation of the…

On Thursday, the Media Research Center announced our “Best Notable Quotables of 2014,” as selected by a distinguished panel of 40 expert judges. Over the next several days, we’ll present these Notable Quotables as a way to review the worst media bias of 2014. Today, the winner and top runners-up for this year’s “Obamagasm Award.”  

Yahoo shared the latest unfunny “Borowitz Report” by “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” creator Andy Borowitz. The headline was “Fox: Obama Seeks Advice On Establishing Monarchy” over a picture of the president meeting with Prince William. Get it? Fox News is crazy and thinks the president wants to go around Congress and make all the laws unilaterally. Wait, where’s the funny part?

The secular left really hates the Duggar family of TLC’s “19 Kids & Counting,” and finds their very strict dating and courtship rules incredibly bizarre. The December 8 issue of The New Yorker features gay playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick’s satire titled “The Duggar Family Kama Sutra.” The ongoing gag is the Duggars are almost asexual, and their marriages are barren. Under a list of…

John Judis of the New Republic and Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker believe that young black men often get a raw deal from police, but aren’t convinced that Wilson’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown fits into that paradigm.

In his rave review of Katha Pollitt’s book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Adam Gopnik argues that “the choice—the only actual choice, in the world as it really is—is between safe, legal abortion and dangerous, illegal abortion. Everything else is just misogyny, cruelty, and superstition.”

Michael Specter comments that Francis “believes that science, rational thought, and data all play powerful and positive roles in human life,” but that the two GOP senators “seem as if they do not.”

The New Yorker editor and former Washington Post reporter contends that “the most overstated notion” about the late Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee “was the idea that he was an ideological man. This was a cartoon.” He and Post publisher Katharine Graham, though “often seen as ferociously committed liberals…were, in fact, committed to the First Amendment.”