Ha, Ha, We
Only Joke About Being Tough on Obama
CBS’s Harry
Smith:
"People in the mainstream media have been accused of being afraid to speak truth to
power, and I’ve got — I’ve got some truth to power for you right now."
President
Barack Obama:
"Okay, go ahead."
Smith: "I’ve been
observing, your dog looks like he’s out of control."
—
Interview shown on CBS’s The Early Show, June 23. [Audio/video (0:18): Windows Media | MP3 audio]
Obama’s
"Tender Moment" with the AMA
ABC’s Dr. Tim
Johnson:
"It was a very tender moment. I have to say, George, the vast majority of physicians
I know, and have worked with over the years, would much rather be healers than bean
counters, or as he put it, ‘paper pushers.’ And so I think he struck a raw nerve
with those words and he got an extended ovation during those words, and I think he was
right on target at reaching out to the heart of most physicians."
Fill-in
anchor George Stephanopoulos: "We’ll see if it
brings them around."
—
Discussing President Obama’s speech before the American Medical Association, most of
whom oppose a government takeover of health care, on World News with Charles Gibson,
June 15. [Audio/video (0:21): Windows Media | MP3 audio]
"Demonizing"
Gov’t Health Care "Out of Touch with Reality"
"Germany, Switzerland
and France all have a mixture of public and private plans. None of those countries are
trying to roll back on a public plan. In Britain we have a purely public plan and even the
Conservative Party calls it one of our great national treasures. So the countries that
have some sort of a public plan actually, you know what, they seem to like it. It seems to
actually work pretty well and no one wants to get rid of it. So, this idea of demonizing
this as some sort of step toward socialism — it just seems to me so out of touch with
reality."
—
BBC Washington correspondent Katty Kay on HBO’s Real Time, June 19.
Papers Paint Spies
for Cuba as Endearing Elderly Couple
"He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who
loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice
frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was
nothing out of the ordinary. ‘We were all appalled by the Bush years,’ one said.
What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday,
was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him
willing to spy for Cuba for three de-cades....Larry MacDonald, who lives at the marina in
Anne Arundel County where the Myerses docked their 38-foot sloop, said the couple were
admired for their intelligence and graciousness: ‘When I heard they were arrested, I
felt like they had arrested Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.’"
—
June 7 Washington Post front-page profile of Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, charged
with spying against the United States on behalf of Castro’s Cuban dictatorship.
"She was twice divorced and fresh out of South Dakota when she fell for his worldly
sophistication. He came from one of this city’s most privileged families, and admired
her work helping ordinary people. Together, Gwendolyn and Kendall Myers set out to give
the second half of their lives new meaning....The authorities said that other than being
reimbursed for equipment, the couple were not paid for spying. On the contrary, according
to the statements cited in the complaint, which one federal magistrate said made the case
against the couple ‘insuperable,’ the couple felt disdain for America’s
foreign policy — Mr. Myers’s diary described watching the television news as a
‘radicalizing experience’ — and a romanticized view of Cuba’s
Communist government...."
—
Correspondent Ginger Thompson in her June 19 New York Times front-page profile of
the couple.
TV Anchors Awed that
Obama Can Swat a Fly
Correspondent John
Harwood:
"He had this fly that was persistently buzzing around him....He swatted his hand and
he said, ‘I got the sucker.’ He threw it onto the ground. It was a, you know,
Dirty Harry ‘make my day’ moment."...
MSNBC
anchor David Shuster: "Amazing...An amazing
interview....It never fails — great weather, rainbows, incredible speeches, and
three-point basket. A fly and he nails it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable."
—
Exchange on MSNBC shortly after Harwood’s CNBC interview with President Obama
concluded, June 16. [Audio/video (1:17): Windows Media | MP3 audio]
Co-anchor Meredith
Vieira:
"Some may question his policies but no one can question President Obama’s
precision....Don’t mess with him. Jeez! Look how neat he is though, the President.
Takes his fly and left.
Fill-in
co-anchor David Gregory: "They left it there
for the balance of the interview. Just as, it’s like a scene from Goodfellas!
You know? It’s like ‘You’re not so tough now, are you little fly?...’"
Vieira: "It’s like a
subtle, subtle warning to the Republicans."
Gregory: "It would have taken
me four days to kill that fly, you know? I mean, it’s, that’s not easy."
—
NBC’s Today, June 17. [Audio/video montage of all three morning
shows (3:39): Windows
Media | MP3 audio]
"He’s looking. He raises his hand....He stares at the fly. How many times have
each of us tried to do this? Look at the hand coming up. The poise. The cupping. And the
quick slap....He’s very quick....The President has cat-like quickness."
—
ABC’s Chris Cuomo on the June 17 Good Morning America, using a Telestrator to
show how Obama swatted the fly.
"We’ve also just confirmed the President is a Ninja."
—
CBS news anchor Chris Wragge on The Early Show, June 17.
Clarification:
"I Was Not Being Literal" When I Said Obama Was "Like God"
"Appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews on June 5, I compared President Obama with
God. Or at least that’s how it seemed to some bloggers and talk-show hosts, who made
me a poster child for the argument that the liberal press is hopelessly in love with
Obama....What I said was: ‘In a way, Obama’s standing above the country, above—above
the world, a sort of god.’ I was not being literal."
— Newsweek’s
Evan Thomas in "The Perils of Punditry," June 22 issue.
MSNBC’s Advice
to GOP: Time to Dump "Morals and Values"
Daytime anchor
Contessa Brewer:
"We’re talking about these personalities and who can be the leader of the
Republican Party. What about their policies? Until they change policies — I mean,
that’s what it took for conservatives in Great Britain to win — is a real change
in focus away from morals and values into things that affect people’s daily
lives."
New
York Times/CNBC correspondent
John Harwood:
"Well, bingo, Contessa, that’s exactly right."
—
Exchange on MSNBC Live, June 15.
Calling Obama a
"Socialist" = "Right-Wing Idiot Talk," "Old-School Insult"
"Where Obama exudes the new Washington equanimity, [former House Speaker Newt]
Gingrich exalts in the old-school insult. He is ruthless in caricaturing anyone who gets
in his way as a ‘pagan’ or ‘statist’ or ‘socialist’ or
‘racist’ — all words Newt has hurled in recent days....It is hard to shake
the feeling that Gingrich’s new prominence is more a sign of the GOP’s
desperation than faith in its future...."
— Newsweek’s
Howard Fineman writing in the magazine’s June 22 edition.
"There’s become this new ‘idiot button’ on the right, where you have
to punch this button in order to be considered a real conservative now: ‘Obama is a
socialist on health care. He’s a socialist. All his fiscal programs are insanely
socialistic.’ You have to punch that button....If you don’t talk in that, that
right-wing, idiot talk you’re not considered a conservative any more."
—
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, June 16.
Blaming Museum
Murder on Radio Criticism of Obama?
"Was there a tone in
this country that was actually started with the election of our first black president that
is bringing the crazies out of the woodwork, and are they being motivated to move by
right-wing pronouncements, like he’s dangerous, he’s a socialist, he’s a
Muslim, and he isn’t even a U.S. citizen? This is what we hear on some TV and radio
outlets, which, by the way, according to our Constitution, they are entitled to what they
believe and even propagate."
—
CNN Newsroom anchor Rick Sanchez setting up a segment suggesting "hateful
talk" can be blamed for the Holocaust museum shooting, June 11.
Regressive America
Lets Free Market Determine Benefits
"There are only three countries in the world, according to many study groups, that
have [government-mandated paid maternity leave] policies equal to the United States: Swaziland,
Liberia and Papua New Guinea. Even in Iraq, women get one year of leave, six months at
full pay, and six months of half pay. And so many other countries, particularly
industrialized nations, offer similarly generous benefits for women who are taking
maternity leave. But ‘the new normal’ in America finds some American women
afraid of taking any leave at all."
—
ABC’s Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America, June 16.
NYT Editor Insists:
We’ve Been Tough on Obama
"Don’t confuse
attention with love. I mean, here is a new President who has promulgated one, huge,
ambitious program after another. So, of course, he gets a lot of big, page-one headlines.
But I don’t think, at least up until now, it’s been unskeptical or uncritical.
Read our business columnists on his approach to the deficit, his quasi-nationalization of
the auto industry. He’s getting examined pretty microscopically."
— New
York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller on ABC’s This Week, June 21.
Hostile Media Impede
Progress By Painting Real Liberals as "Buffoons"
"Barack Obama is not a socialist. He’s not even a liberal. That’s the point
I’m trying to make, is that this country needs a left wing. It doesn’t have it,
and part of the reason is the media. Part of the reason is because Newt Gingrich — I
have to look at his fat face on television every day — he represents, I don’t
know what, that far-right of kooky-town. And yet, where’s the left wing? You know,
Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich — these are left-wing people, although their ideas are
not really that radical. But they’re presented as radical in the media. They’re
seen as buffoons."
—
HBO Real Time host Bill Maher on CNN’s The Situation Room, June 16.
Can’t Resist
Lefty Cliches in Piece on Diving Rehab
"These waters guard a
secret: some of the finest coral reefs on Earth....These waters are home to something else
unique: The most infamous military base in the world. These are the waters of Guantanamo Bay....The
heat here, this month, will reach a hundred degrees. The glare of world criticism is even
hotter. Gitmo is notorious for the detention camps put here after 9/11....In Gitmo’s
core are several hundred men accused of being some of the most violently anti-American on
Earth, put here by the Bush administration on the notion that this place is not America
after all and thus not under the purview of U.S. law. The result: Hostile detainees on the
inside and international anger from without."
—
Former CBS, ABC and NBC correspondent Jon Frankel in a story ostensibly on a therapeutic
program for wounded soldiers that lets them go diving, June 23 Real Sports with Bryant
Gumbel on HBO.
PUBLISHER: L.
Brent Bozell III;
EDITORS:
Brent H.
Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
MEDIA
ANALYSTS: Geoffrey
Dickens, Brad Wilmouth, Scott Whitlock, Matthew Balan, and Kyle Drennen
RESEARCH
ASSOCIATE: Michelle
Humphrey
INTERNS:
Mike Sargent,
Sam Theodosopoulos
MEDIA
CONTACT: Colleen
O’Boyle (703) 683-5004
|
