MSNBC has been leaning forward head over heels to apologize to Mitt Romney over this Thomas Roberts item:

What was that all about? Roberts was quoting a blog that took a phrase Romney has used and found out that the KKK used something similar in the 1920′s. There hasn’t been a more incriminating link established since somebody noticed that Sarah Palin and Nathan Bedford Forrest are both right handed.

Anyway, today, Roberts apologized:

The Roberts apology was preceded yesterday by Chris Matthews:

Matthews yesterday: “It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this, and it showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize, we really do, to the Romney campaign.”

Roberts today: “It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this and showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize to the Romney campaign.”

The latter is dangerously close to adding apology copycatting to the list of things for which he needs to ask forgiveness.

And even Al Sharpton even got in on the apology (“you know it’s bad when…”):

Sharpton also later apologized for accusing Romney of eating all the blueberry pie.

Maybe MSNBC has changed how they operate, because “irresponsible, incendiary and an apalling lack of judgment” didn’t used to be things some of their hosts apologized for — they were job requirements. What gives?
*****

Update: A reader emails to say that Nathan Bedford Forrest was actually left-handed. That’s based on a book about him. I assumed he was right-handed because of a painting and a photo that showed him carrying a firearm on his right hip. Now that I think about it though, if Forrest was actually left-handed, the slight inaccuracy makes the analogy even more appropriate so I’ll leave well-enough alone.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Remember when Hillary Clinton was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and when she came out the band played Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats”? Me neither, because it never happened and won’t ever happen. But the rules of what’s appropriate aren’t politically uniform in the world of “entertainment,” which is why Michele Bachmann is now wanting an apology from NBC:

Republican candidate Michele Bachmann addressed the controversy surrounding her appearance on ‘Late Night With Jimmy Fallon’ this week, saying if what happened to her had happened to the First Lady, heads would have rolled.

When Bachmann was introduced on the Fallon’s show Monday, Fallon’s house band, the Roots, played Fishbone’s song ‘Lyin’ Ass Bitch.’

Fallon has since apologized, and while Bachmann said she accepts the comedian’s apology, she thinks NBC should apologize as well.

“If that had been Michelle Obama, who’d come out on the stage, and if that song had been played for Michelle Obama, I have no doubt that NBC would have apologized to her and likely they would have fired the drummer, or at least suspended him,” she told Fox News.

If Fallon’s band had done that to Michelle Obama (as if), is there much doubt that Brian Roberts would have seen to public floggings of all offending parties and apologized by asking Comcast/NBC employees to double their DNC donations this election cycle?

Imagine the outrage if it was another guest. Below I took an ABC News story and replaced “Michele Bachmann” with the name of a different public figure:
*****

The drummer for the house band on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” apologized sort of for his decision to play ”Lyin’ Ass Bitch” when Rep. Nancy Pelosi appeared on the talk show Monday night.

Though the lyrics refer to a woman as a “slut trash can bitch,” the band sang the “la, la, la” of the refrain.
*****

Fallon’s house band would be lucky to be able to get a gig leading an OWS drum circle by now if it had happened that way.

Possible topic for discussion: Are GOP politicians chumps for going on these shows and subjecting themselves to mockery — be it overt or relatively subliminal — from an industry that is overwhelmingly liberal, or is it a necessary way to reach voters these days and they just need to have a thick skin, a thorough knowledge of contemporary “music” and a healthy repertoire of comeback lines at the ready?

Update, Thursday 8 p.m. EST: NBC apologizes.

**Written by Doug Powers

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Newt Gingrich might have said the worst thing a presidential candidate has ever said. Judging from the reaction of MSNBC’s Mika Brezinski he might have, anyway.

What was the offending Newt Gingrich comment? Gingrich advised “Occupy Wall Street” protesters to “get a job right after you take a bath.” Horror, disgust and crawling skin ensued:

BRZEZINSKI: Someone needs a bath, and I don’t think it’s the people from Occupy Wall Street. That’s all I’m going to say. I’ve got nothing else. I’m so disgusted by that that something horrible is going to come… I, I, am I alone here? Am I over-reacting [note quavering voice]? I’m sickened by that… It’s fair to say he’s in the 1%, correct? He’s telling the 99% to take a bath and get a job? Really? Really, I wonder how they do that right now. How, given the state of this country, how anyone’s going to just get a job and take a bath. Who is this man? Who does he think he is? And why is he surging in the polls? I don’t get it. I mean,to hear Newt Gingrich standing on literally his high horse, after taking advantage of the system, cashing in, being the biggest, literally the biggest hypocrite in the Repubican field, probably in politics today. The biggest hypocrite. And then to cast aspersions and to speak down to these people as if–plghhh–they should be flipped away? It’s disgusting. It’s absolutely disgusting. It’s a very angry way to start the show. I’m extremely sorry. But it’s the first time I’d seen that. And it literally made my skin crawl. I can’t believe he resonates.

Video by way of Newsbusters:

Sure, Gingrich might have generalized just a little bit. Some OWSers do have good jobs and ready access to showers — the anti-Gekkos fighting back against Wall Street from rooms at the W Hotel for example.

But if I was in charge of Newt’s campaign I’d run with it anyway:

I’d also suggest an updated Gingrich campaign theme song:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

On the PBS program Inside Washington, the topic of Solyndra arose. I’ll give Nina Totenberg credit for at least addressing the issue (albeit laughably) and not suddenly clamming up in a fit of bias-induced laryngitis like some people did the other day over at MSNBC. However, Totenberg is of the opinion that there was absolutely nothing political about the decision process that culminated in $535 million taxpayer dollars being poured down the eco-friendly venture socialism port-o-pot.

Totenberg actually believed what was coming out of her mouth until Charles Krauthammer mentioned the timing of the layoffs, to which Totenberg essentially responded “well, except for that…”

Video by way of Newsbusters:

In a world where politicians and political appointees direct “investments” using large amounts of money that isn’t theirs, the odds that these kinds of decisions don’t contain even a hint of politics are between incredibly slim and none, no matter who is in office. To paraphrase a famous quote about equality, “some government decisions are more non-political than others.” The more opportunities for favoritism offered, the more favoritism we’ll see, which is why the whole Department of Energy loan program was a bad idea.

It’s also worth mentioning that news of Joe Biden’s office becoming nearly orgasmic over taxpayer backing of Solyndra isn’t the best evidence that the loan was completely non-political either. You don’t force a politician to “think about baseball” unless something self-serving is in the works.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified to a House Committee on Thursday, and the veracity of his testimony earned a “three Pinnochios” rating from the Washington Post fact check. Why the need to bend the truth and make misleading statements over a totally honest non-political mistake that crosses presidential administration boundaries?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The discussion on Morning Joe was cranking along pretty good during the “criticize the GOP candidates” segment. That is, until Mika Brzezinski changed the subject to Solyndra and looked around waiting for somebody to take the hand-off and run with it. At that point, the “talking heads” quickly turned into just “heads.” Not unlike Solyndra’s executives at a House hearing, the panel invoked their right to remain absolutely silent, allowing the crickets to lean forward and do their thing:

“Uh, but anyway, back to how silly Herman Cain’s hat looks…”

At times I think MSNBC’s discussion panels are begging for a copyright infringement lawsuit from the Concurrence Round Table team:

(h/t Newsbusters)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Probably the most talked about exchange from Saturday night’s GOP debate was the Newt Gingrich/Scott Pelley back and forth regarding the sanctioned killing of American born terrorists overseas (the least talked about portion of the debate was the second hour, because not many people could watch it).

Here’s video of the exchange in case you missed it (h/t Newsbusters):

Since Pelley was so eager to participate, Gingrich could have also posed one question on Pelley’s assumption the terrorist killings were against the rule of law: “Are you asking me if President Obama should be charged with a crime?”

CBS missed the real story here: Some GOP candidates for president agree with Barack Obama on something. The MSM finally gets the “bipartisanship” they often report is so hard to find, and all that the anchor of the CBS Evening News can do is lean forward and offer a healthy dose of smug:

In Pelley’s defense, he might have had that look on his face because of all the potential questions for Michele Bachmann he had to keep bottled up.

(Picture and coinage of the term “smug shot” via The Right Scoop)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Maybe NBC’s Meet the Press host David Gregory thinks he was complimenting the GOP by pointing out that there is in fact no “grand wizard” in the party. Who knows… all we can do is play the “imagine if a right-leaning news host said that” game.

Transcript from Real Clear Politics:

Ann Curry, NBC News: “He’s not stepping down, continuing to suck the air out of the narrative the Republican party really wants to tell. Does the party now wish he would just go away?”

David Gregory, NBC News: “Well there is no, you know, grand wizard in the party right now who can really force the issue…”

Click the pic to roll tape… clear back to about 1870:

Update: David Gregory apologized for the “very poor choice of words” this morning via Twitter.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

As you’ll discover from the video below of Jason Mattera’s appearance with CNN’s John King, chivalry is not dead.

Sheriff Biden, the Beltway Bubble Boy, has lodged a formal complaint with the Capitol Hill Press Police’s Foot-in-Mouth Prevention Division over the Human Events reporter’s “ambush” question regarding Joe’s “raped and murdered” comment.

CNN’s John King didn’t like Mattera’s tactics one bit, and was this close to snapping him with an old pair of suspenders Larry King left under the desk.

Video by way of Freedom’s Lighthouse. For a minute here I was fairly certain King was going to throw down a white glove and challenge Mattera to a duel:

Thinking out loud: Joe Biden is telling Americans if Congress doesn’t pass another tax & spend bill their chances of getting raped, robbed and murdered will go up and Mattera’s misrepresentative?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

ABC’s Diane Sawyer, who is ensconced in the 1% of America that the “Occupy Wall Street” occupiers are complaining about, is nevertheless fairly excited about the rapid spread of the protests. In fact, Sawyer is so thrilled that yesterday she added several hundred countries to the world:

Speaking of Wall Street, we thought we’d bring you up to date on those protesters, the Occupy Wall Street movement. As of tonight, it has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries — every continent but Antarctica.

And of course they are calling for the one percent of richest Americans to find more ways to help the 99 percent and we wondered what’s the gulf between them tonight? So how much does the top one percent in this country earn? Well, on average their incomes, $1.1 million. Compare that to the bottom 90 percent, 100 million households. They earn an average of $31,000.

Occupy Wall Street turned Diane Sawyer into quite the nation builder — literally.

Sawyer seems a little too desperate to give the “movement” galactic legitimacy. Did she mean to say “a thousand cities” around the world? That still seems like a terribly high estimate:

It’s okay — Sawyer was just as fair-minded back when she reported on the Tea Parties. What? Nevermind. Okay, sure, but the Tea Party had that coming for refusing to let John Lewis speak at a rally. Wait, that wasn’t a Tea Party — Now I’m really confused.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

On the evening of Labor Day, CNN preceded an interview with James Hoffa by playing a clip of the Teamsters president saying “Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.” In spite of the quote being a hot topic of discussion ever since Hoffa said it, interviewer John King didn’t even ask him about it in an entire six-minute interview. Why? I have no idea. The left’s defense is that Hoffa was merely using a metaphor for voting Tea Partiers out of office, so it would have been a terrific opportunity for King to explore when the “new tone” stopped applying to metaphors — assuming it was one. But King didn’t seem curious at why civil discourse rules were suspended just before Hoffa’s speech and reinstated immediately after in another act of cosmic hypocrisy.

Late last month, Hoffa made similar comments that mostly flew under the radar. Another difference is that back then Hoffa wasn’t the opening act for the President of the United States like he was on Labor Day (the White House later strongly condemned Hoffa’s harsh and divisive language — just kidding).

The graphics people at CNN even seemed to be taunting King to ask Hoffa about it, because they featured the quote at the bottom of the screen quite a bit — but not once did King take the bait. What a disciplined journalist!

Click the pic for the video at Real Clear Politics:

Is this the same John King who apologized because a colleague used the term “crosshairs” metaphorically? Yep:

Selective Sensitivity Syndrome can strike when you most expect it.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The editor of the New York Times just got religion: He thinks it’s time to ask GOP presidential candidates “tougher questions about faith.” Oh, brother, where wast thou in 2008? The Fishwrap of Record led the whitewashing of Barack Obama’s wacky black liberation theology pals and freaky-deaky Chicago pastors.

Now, the skews-paper is ready to start asking “tougher questions about faith?”

Snortalicious, dear readers. Snortalicious.

Just a reminder before I get to his latest doozy: NYT editor Bill Keller is the same one who claimed “we are agnostic as to where a story may lead; we do not go into a story with an agenda or a pre-conceived notion. We do not manipulate or hide facts to advance an agenda. We strive to preserve our independence from political and economic interests, including our own advertisers. We do not work in the service of a party, or an industry, or even a country. When there are competing views of a situation, we aim to reflect them as clearly and fairly as we can.”

In his latest demonstration of journalistic agnosticism, Keller writes that GOP candidates are members of “mysterious or suspect” churches who deserve greater scrutiny:

This year’s Republican primary season offers us an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life — and to get over them. We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a “cult” and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not “overly religious.”) Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.

“Fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity?” Newsflash: Santorum is a member of the same fervid church that Keller grew up in — the mysteriously suspect Catholic church.

As for getting over their “scruples about the privacy of faith in public,” what on earth is Keller talking about? When have lib journalists ever let their “scruples” get in the way of plumbing the faiths of Republican politicians? When? Ever?

I also love how it’s safe for Keller to hide behind the “many…have been taught” Mormonism is a “cult” so that he doesn’t have to say it himself. Can you imagine if he substituted Islam for Mormonism? Nah. The Dhimmi Times would never dare.

Clay Waters at Newsbusters adds:

His newspaper certainly wasn’t at the forefront of dissecting Barack Obama’s Christian beliefs, during the 2008 campaign, especially the then-senator from Illinois’ relationship to his racially inflammatory and conspiracy-minded pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Keller downplayed the Wright controversy in half a sentence, making sure to balance it with a John McCain reference: “In the last presidential campaign, Candidate Obama was pressed to distance himself from his pastor, who carried racial bitterness to extremes, and Candidate McCain was forced to reject the endorsement of a preacher who offended Catholics and Jews.”

The Times didn’t do much pressing of Obama on his toleration of Wright’s radicalism. It took the paper months to accurately quote one of Wright’s most inflammatory sermons: “Not God bless America, God damn America!” The Times also glossed over Wright’s despicable ranting “sermon” five days after the 9-11 attacks. In Wright’s rant, September 11 was a sign that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and for supporting “state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans.” After Obama was obliged to address the issue in a speech on March 18, 2008, the Times fell over itself to praise the politically necessary address as Lincolnesque.

You can see Keller’s extensive questionnaire for each GOP candidate about all their religious beliefs, readings, and relationships with various controversial pastors.

I’d link to his questionnaire for Obama about the following mysterious and suspect religious leaders in his life, but there isn’t one.

Funny that.

***

Flashback May 30, 2008 — Greatest hits: All of Barack Obama’s men of bad faith…

Here’s a handy little video guide to Barack Obama’s various men of bad faith–a quick blog cheat sheet with all the poison preachers in one place, each accompanied by a trademark demagogic YouTube clip, for easy reference and ranked in order of unhingedness. It’s getting crowded in the crazy uncle attic, sweetie.

4. Current Trinity pastor and N-word-spouting Ice Cube fan Otis “At war with the enemy” Moss, whom Obama refers to as a “wonderful young pastor:”

3. James Meeks.

“We don’t have slave masters. We got mayors. But they still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able, or to be educated.”

“You got some preachers that are house niggers. You got some elected officials that are house niggers. And rather than them trying to break this up, they gonna fight you to protect this white man.”

2. Embarrassment to the Catholic Church Michael “There’s a black man stealing my show!” Pfleger.

1. And the one and only Jeremiah “God damn America!” Wright, with thanks to the North Carolina GOP for defying the McCain camp and spreading the word:

See also Stanley Kurtz’s probe of Wright’s Trumpet.

How many more?

Sigh. Seriously, Tina Brown?

Yes, I’m talking about you, Oxford University-educated Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown.

You’ve resorted to recycling bottom-of-the-barrel moonbat photo cliches about conservative female public figures and their enraged “crazy eyes?” Really?

Who’s in charge of Newsweek cover graphics now — a Media Matters Soros Monkey? A random Daily Kos commenter? Keith Olbermann’s intern’s intern?

The once-mighty Newsweek magazine-turned-Beast is apparently so proud of its Democratic Underground-pandering Michele Bachmann cover and title that its editors are promoting the photo and pushing the hashtag #QueenofRage on Twitter.

And the left-wing press is eating it up:

Gawker, predictably: “Ha ha, just kidding—they don’t call her CrazyEyes for nothing.”

The Village Voice rejoices after receiving a high-res image of the cover (and dutifully cropping Bachmann’s eyes).

More reax: Newsbusters and Dana Loesch (who launches her own caption contest for Tina Brown).

Rep. Bachmann is unabashedly conservative, willing to take both parties’ leaders to task, passionate about her work, popular with grass-roots activists on the Right, committed to reining in the size, scope, and power of government, and yes, expressive. For all this, she must be destroyed.

No doubt the editors and photog will deny doing anything to make Bachmann look bad.

But here’s what GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann looks like in a straight photo.

A link-filled reminder: The liberal media fetish of demonizing conservative women and their looks goes back years.

In 2005, I blasted USA Today for altering a photo of then-GOP Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to demonize her eyes. The before:

And after:

After a massive backlash from bloggers, commenters, photography software experts, and readers who called out the newspaper’s sneaky photo doctors, USA Today removed the retouched photo and admitted it had been enhanced — “giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.”

It is, however, in keeping with the “crazy eyes”/”batsh*t crazy” narrative that’s a mainstay in the progressive blog sewer:

As documented by Karrin Anderson on the left-wing blog Bag News Notes, the Bachmann-eye-bashing editors of Rolling Stone and the Huffington Post already beat Brown and her Newsweek/Beast to the punch.

Yep, the magazine that popularized those “conventional wisdom” charts is now slavishly following the conventional crap-flinging of puerile progs on the Internet.

When I came out with Culture of Corruption in 2009, for example, one Soros-employed lefty’s response consisted entirely of multiple freeze-frame shots of my “crazyface” and “wide-eyed zealot” TV appearances, including these:

To repeat what I said last month: I’d rather have “crazy eyes” than willfully blind ones.

Also: “Crazy eyes” are also useful for doing the Mom Death Stare on unruly kids. Invaluable weapon. Wouldn’t trade these peepers for anything.

While Anderson notes that a few liberal female politicians also have faced the exaggerated crazy-eye photo treatment, she fails to recognize that those images are almost all relegated to Internet humor/blog sites — as opposed to the mainstreaming of demon conservatives images by national media publications.

As faithful readers will recall, The Atlantic magazine hired unhinged photog Jill Greenberg in 2008 to take a cover photo of then-GOP presidential candidate John McCain…

…which Greenberg then altered for her website thusly (this is just one of several bizarro images she photoshopped and featured on her professional website)…

…causing The Atlantic to issue this mortified editor’s note:

We stand by the respectful image of John McCain that we used on our cover, and we expect to be judged by it. We were not aware of the manipulated and dishonest images Jill Greenberg had taken until this past Friday.

Jill Greenberg has obviously not done that. She has, in fact, disgraced herself, and we are appalled by the manipulated images of John McCain she has created for her Web site.

It wasn’t just about vetting her political views, though. It was her previous record of unethical and unprofessional behavior motivated by left-wing malice. Greenberg tricked McCain into standing over a light to create ugly shadows on his face. Manipulation is her stock and trade. (Indeed, it’s her Twitter handle.) Four years earlier, she deliberately terrorized children, stripped them, ordered parents to “step out of the studio for a couple minutes” in concerted attempts to make children cry who were not cooperating, and then captioned the photos of the children with anti-Bush slogans.

Later, she admitted to trying to make Glenn Beck look bad (a failed attempt that he laughed off) in photo art published by Time magazine.

Time magazine has previously carried distorted photos and photoshops of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

Disseminating unflattering photos of conservatives isn’t journalism. It’s Alinskyite narrative-shaping. And for holier-than-thou highbrow poseurs from Time and Newsweek to the Soros zoo and rage photog Jill Greenberg, it’s a hard habit to break.

***

Question: When was the last time Time or Newsweek put a halo around a conservative politician? Hmmm?

A few days ago I wrote about Time magazine editor Richard Stengel’s cover piece entitled “One Document, Under Seige” in which Stengel seemed to reluctantly conclude that the Constitution does matter, just not as much as we think it does (though it always matters when Time needs to hide behind it).

At Patterico, Aaron Worthing dismantled the Time piece and found 13 factual errors.

Without a doubt the next issue of Time will address these discrepancies by publishing a lengthy article on how Michele Bachmann is factually-challenged.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

I’m shocked that Reuters didn’t use the word “unexpectedly” to describe the latest rise in jobless claims, a habit they and other mainstream news outlets have had for the past couple of years that has been mocked relentlessly in the blogosphere.

This morning Reuters proved they’re starting to catch on… sort of. Now they’re expecting jobless claims to rise, just not as fast as it’s happening:

Baby steps.

Next week’s headline: Lack of lower jobless claims not fully anticipated

Update: There’s an in-depth compilation of “unexpectedly” at Pundit Press.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Dozens of journalists dutifully monitored the hundreds of citizens they recruited to do pro-bono muckraking for the MSM, and the overall efforts to find dirt in Sarah Palin’s emails are finally starting to produce fruit.

This New York Daily News headline explains the developing scandal: Sarah Palin writes at an eighth-grade level in recently released emails, say writing analysts:

She may have attended four universities, but Sarah Palin still writes like an eighth-grader.

AOL Weird News gave two writing analytic companies samples of the former Alaska governor’s recently released emails and both agree that the Tea Party favorite writes as if she’s in middle school.

You have to keep going to find out that it’s not as bad as they try to make it sound:

It turns out Palin’s writing skills are still better than most educated Americans. Global Language Monitor gave Palin’s emails a score of 8.2, which actually exceeds that of most chief executives.

“She’s very concise. She gives clear orders. Her sentences and punctuations are logical,” said Paul Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. “She has much more of a disciplined mind than she’s given credit for.”

The Daily News didn’t mention one of those chief executives by name. Sarah might not be so dumb after all. Unflippingbelievable!

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe