Ronald Reagan

One way the MSNBC cable channel can tell it's in trouble is when liberal comedian Bill Maher -- host of the Friday night HBO program Real Time who almost got his own show on the "Lean Forward" network -- posts a tweet accusing you of “turning into Fox News” and stating that the channel has “stopped leaning forward” since “Bridgegate has become your Benghazi.” “I'm no good at being noble,”…

It’s hard to imagine, but for many years, conservatives and Republicans were rather common in Hollywood. Exploring that history is worth doing not just because it is informative but also because it illustrates that there is no good reason that people on the Right could not have a bigger presence in that industry today. Arizona State University professor Donald Critchlow has done an important…

It appears that no matter what disgusting things Bill Maher says about conservatives - especially conservative women! - HBO is going to continue to reward him. On Wednesday, the cable network announced that it was renewing Real Time with Bill Maher for a 13th season (press release via TV By The Numbers):

Since the left-wing nonsense coming out of Hollywood can be just as obnoxious as anything you’d find on MSNBC, the MRC’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2013” once again includes our annual Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity. Past winners of this prestigious prize include: actress Jessica Lange in 2002 (“I despise him [George W. Bush]. I despise his administration and…

On the Friday, December 13, PoliticsNation, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank joined host Al Sharpton in complaining that conservatives "demonize" people who receive welfare benefits as the two discussed efforts to restrain welfare spending. Sharpton posed:

This month, the Boston Globe and the New York Times have published items on the growth of homelessness in the state of Massachusetts and New York City, respectively. Based on the content of each, it's clear that the topic was ripe for coverage in 2012, but received little if any. I wonder why? (/sarcasm) The Globe's regular-length news story by Megan Woolhouse and David Abel cited the state's…

On Friday's edition of The Diane Rehm Show that's broadcast on many NPR stations from Washington, the host mangled her presidential history, but her guests and producers all humored her, like you might humor a nice lady who's 77. No one suggested a gold watch and an open space for a younger NPR liberal behind the mic. As Rehm and a crew of reporters aerobically compared Barack Obama to Nelson…

Amid the tributes looking back at the life of former South African President Nelson Mandela following his death on Thursday, Friday's NBC Today and ABC's Good Morning America both managed to take shots at Ronald Reagan for not being supportive of Mandela during Apartheid. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] On Today, chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell…

On Tuesday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reacted to GOP complaints about President Obama's Iran deal by cracking that Republicans "would have reflexively disapproved" even if Obama made a "deal to promote motherhood, baseball and apple pie." But later, Milbank still predicted that the Iranian government "probably are not for real," as he recommended making…

“JFK was far from perfect, but he was a true wit and a sex machine and he knew how to wear a pair of shades. Reagan was an amiable square in a cowboy hat who had sex with a woman he called ‘Mommy.’” So said HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher Friday in a lengthy segment praising John F. Kennedy while trashing Ronald Reagan (video follows with commentary):

You would think given all the heat MSNBC’s Martin Bashir is taking for his vile comments about Sarah Palin earlier this month, comedians might want to lay low for a while in attacking the former Alaska governor. Not HBO’s Bill Maher who on Real Time Friday said, “When Reagan was elected, Sarah Palin was barely 16, probably pregnant, but still in third grade” (video follows with transcript and…

On the plus side, here you have an example of a liberal not blaming George W. Bush for, well, whatever. Instead, this specific left winger, radio talker Thom Hartmann, is going with the liberal fallback position - It's All Reagan's Fault.  To earlier generations of leftists, Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy also proved useful as all-purpose boogeymen who could be cited repeatedly in vain…

Craig Shirley, author of several large tomes on Ronald Reagan's political history, is merciless on Real Clear Politics toward MSNBC star Chris Matthews and his new book on "Tip and the Gipper." This isn't a book about Reagan or Tip O'Neill, he writes. "It is the history of Chris Matthews before he became the Chris Matthews we see on cable television today. It falls into the category of micro…

The old Norm McDonald joke was “Germans love David Hasselhoff.” The liberal talk radio equivalent is “Thom Hartmann really hates Ronald Reagan.” On Thursday afternoon’s show, Hartmann blamed Reagan for this whole Tea Party trend of “anti-American crazies who hate our government,” with that unpatriotic hatred somehow including veterans of every war, and George Washington, who “signed the…