1. On MSNBC, Alter Shoe-Horns Bush Slam Into Don Imus Debate
On Tuesday's Hardball, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter managed to shoe-horn an anti-Bush jab into a discussion about Don Imus. When substitute host David Gregory asked Alter to comment on what the Imus flare-up meant for the overall discussion about race, NBC's contributing correspondent made a tortured argument that the uproar over Imus was a sign of "a thirst" from the public for the kind of accountability that they're not getting from the Bush administration: "There has been such a negative reaction against President Bush's failure to apologize, failure to seem like he is being accountable to where the people are, that we've got more of a thirst for people apologizing when they screw up, and then changing their behavior as a result of having been called to account."

2. Broadway Theater Stages a Bush-'Whacked' Assassination Drama
On the heels of last year's "documentary" by Gabriel Range concocting an assassination of President Bush in "Death of A President," Bill Hutchinson of the New York Daily News reported a new play in the Big Apple that also treads along the Bush-assassination theme. The playwright's thinly disguised Bush-resembling fictional President gets "whacked like Julius Caesar by a confidant."

3. CNN's O'Brien Cheers Kucinich for Taking on Big Oil: 'Go for It'
Delivering some cheerleading for a far-left politician, on Wednesday's American Morning on CNN outgoing co-host Miles O'Brien touted how dark horse Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich "flexes his muscle with big oil over the skyrocketing price of gas, and we say go to it." O'Brien's remark was made during a lead-in to a segment by CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi. Velshi's report gave some details of the ultra-liberal Congressman's efforts: Dennis Kucinich, he's the Chairman of the domestic policy subcommittee, has written letters to seven major oil companies, asking them a question we would like an answer to -- explaining the high price of gas..."

4. O'Donnell on Imus: 'Thought Police' Leads to Guantanamo Bay
In a leap of logic too bizarre for even Joy Behar, on Wednesday's The View, in a discussion about Don Imus's racist and sexist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team, Rosie O'Donnell warned that "it's not a freedom if you outlaw certain words or thoughts, because then the thought police come and then before you know it, everyone's in Guantanamo Bay without representation." O'Donnell's leap from Imus to Guantanamo prompted Behar to exclaim: "What a jump!" A bit earlier on the April 11 show, O'Donnell had fretted about how the Imus controversy is distracting the public from all the deaths in Iraq: "He made that comment on April 4th and it's been all over te news, it's been the top lead story everywhere. Well, since then, 24 American soldiers have died and over 90 have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. My point is, look how we're distracted. Howard Stern said a bad word, Anna Nicole's baby, well don't pay attention to the fact that we're in the middle of a war."

On MSNBC, Alter Shoe-Horns Bush Slam
Into Don Imus Debate

     On Tuesday's Hardball, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter managed to shoe-horn an anti-Bush jab into a discussion about Don Imus. When substitute host David Gregory asked Alter to comment on what the Imus flare-up meant for the overall discussion about race, NBC's contributing correspondent made a tortured argument that the uproar over Imus was a sign of "a thirst" from the public for the kind of accountability that they're not getting from the Bush administration: "There has been such a negative reaction against President Bush's failure to apologize, failure to seem like he is being accountable to where the people are, that we've got more of a thirst for people apologizing when they screw up, and then changing their behavior as a result of having been called to account."

     [This item, by Geoff Dickens, was posted Wednesday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]
     The exchange on the April 10 Hardball:

     David Gregory: "Jonathan, let me start with you. We talked a little bit earlier on the phone about whether this incident has created a race moment for America. Do you think that is the case? And how would you define that?"
     Jonathan Alter, NBC News contributing correspondent: "I think it has created what you could call a teachable moment, the same way that, a couple of weeks ago, when Elizabeth Edwards' cancer recurred and Tony Snow's did, you know, we had a kind of a national conversation about surviving cancer. And I this does give us a chance to talk about the coarsening of discourse in America, about accountability. As, as Reverend Sharpton said, what does accountability mean? Does it necessarily mean firing the person? Or is sometimes changed behavior enough form of, of accountability? You know, David, in the YouTube culture that we have now, everything that somebody says is going to get replayed, and replayed again. And the question becomes, what's the response?
     "And I think something that has happened in the, just in the last couple of years, there has been such a negative reaction against President Bush's failure to apologize, failure to seem like he is being accountable to where the people are, that we've got more of a thirst for people apologizing when they screw up, and then changing their behavior as a result of having been called to account."

Broadway Theater Stages a Bush-'Whacked'
Assassination Drama

     On the heels of last year's "documentary" by Gabriel Range concocting an assassination of President Bush in "Death of A President," Bill Hutchinson of the New York Daily News reported a new play in the Big Apple that also treads along the Bush-assassination theme. The playwright's thinly disguised Bush-resembling fictional President gets "whacked like Julius Caesar by a confidant."

     [This item, by Tim Graham, was posted Wednesday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     The April 11 Daily News reported: "A famed city theater group is inviting controversy by staging a play in which a character thinly veiled as President Bush gets assassinated. 'President and Man' begins a five-day run at The Duke on 42nd St. tonight as one of eight one-act plays staged by the Naked Angels Theater Company, whose members include Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. Conservatives are already panning it as another sick liberal jab at the President."

     The headline was "Right-wingers outraged by Prez slay play." In this case, the MRC's Tim Graham took the phone call:
     "'Would this happen if the President were a Democrat?' said Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog. 'I can't recall anybody who made assassinating-Clinton plays.'"
     "The play, written by Louis Cancelmi, depicts a besieged commander in chief, who gets whacked like Julius Caesar by a confidant. Cancelmi insists his fictional President, played by Oscar-nominated actor Chris Sarandon, is not modeled after Bush.
     "'There probably are parallels people could draw,' Cancelmi said. 'It's about a President who's lost confidence in himself and who seems to have lost confidence in the people he governs, and has become paranoid about being gotten rid of, as it were.'"

     Hutchinson then turned to the playwright to contradict the critic, who had no idea this play was so brief: "Cancelmi scoffed at Republicans and conservatives for knocking his 15-minute play, adding that such themes are 'trodden ground' in the theater. 'You don't have to look very far into Shakespeare's plays to find examples of regicide,' he said.

     The April 11 New York Daily News article: www.nydailynews.com

CNN's O'Brien Cheers Kucinich for Taking
on Big Oil: 'Go for It'

     Delivering some cheerleading for a far-left politician, on Wednesday's American Morning on CNN outgoing co-host Miles O'Brien touted how dark horse Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich "flexes his muscle with big oil over the skyrocketing price of gas, and we say go to it." O'Brien's remark was made during a lead-in to a segment by CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi. Velshi's report gave some details of the ultra-liberal Congressman's efforts: Dennis Kucinich, he's the Chairman of the domestic policy subcommittee, has written letters to seven major oil companies, asking them a question we would like an answer to -- explaining the high price of gas..."

     [This item is adapted from a Wednesday posting, by Matthew Balan, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     Velshi elaborated: "So Kucinich is asking these oil companies to explain particularly refining. He cited examples in California where he says prices of refining a barrel of oil have jumped from $17 a barrel five years ago to $39 a barrel, and that's creating a big upward swing in the price of gasoline.
     "He also wants to know about refining capacity in California. Again, he says that in 1985, the refineries were operating at 76 percent of capacity, so lots of room to grow. Now, they're running at 92 percent of capacity, which means that there's not enough room. If a refinery has to go down for maintenance or repair or switch over blends of gasoline, what happens is then they can't refine more gas, and it becomes a supply and demand issue. Gas prices spike. We see this every spring. This is what happens. We're not growing refineries in this country. So he would like responses. He's asked for detailed and documented answers to a series of questions that he has laid out in a letter by April the 25th. We will be eager to hear what those responses are."

     As the segment closed, O'Brien and Velshi listed some of the reasons why new refineries have not been built.

     O'Brien: "No one wants a refinery in their backyard."
     Velshi: "They're dirty. They're hard to get approval for, but they are, and they're expensive, but we got to do something. We got to use less gasoline or build more refineries."

     O'Brien and Velshi, however, failed to mention two other major reasons there aren't any new refineries: too many regulations and litigation costs. Check: www.cnsnews.com

O'Donnell on Imus: 'Thought Police' Leads
to Guantanamo Bay

     In a leap of logic too bizarre for even Joy Behar, on Wednesday's The View, in a discussion about Don Imus's racist and sexist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team, Rosie O'Donnell warned that "it's not a freedom if you outlaw certain words or thoughts, because then the thought police come and then before you know it, everyone's in Guantanamo Bay without representation." O'Donnell's leap from Imus to Guantanamo prompted Behar to exclaim: "What a jump!"

     A bit earlier on the April 11 show, O'Donnell had fretted about how the Imus controversy is distracting the public from all the deaths in Iraq: "He made that comment on April 4th and it's been all over te news, it's been the top lead story everywhere. Well, since then, 24 American soldiers have died and over 90 have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. My point is, look how we're distracted. Howard Stern said a bad word, Anna Nicole's baby, well don't pay attention to the fact that we're in the middle of a war."

     [This item is based on a transcript the MRC's Justin McCarthy created for a NewsBusters.org posting: newsbusters.org ]

     Guest panelist Jamie-Lynn Sigler, of HBO's The Sopranos, got O'Donnell going with this observation: "I think people who have a public voice just need to be conscious then of what they're saying and the effect that it can have and understand that there's going to be consequences if they say things like that."
     O'Donnell: "Right, you just worry if the consequences, you know-"
     Behar: "Because you could be next."
     O'Donnell: "-impede upon, which is all right. If that happens, it happens. But the point of the story is, if it impedes on free speech in America, democracy is at stake. Because democracy is based on freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So we really have to worry about that in this country."
     [Applause]
     Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "And we should be concerned and responsible with our freedom too."
     O'Donnell: "Right, but it's not a freedom if you outlaw certain words or thoughts, because then the thought police come and then before you know it, everyone's in Guantanamo Bay without representation."
     Hasselbeck: "That would be impossible to enforce."
     Behar: "What a jump!"

     Earlier in the segment, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and surprisingly, Joy Behar commented on the lack of moral authority Imus' harshest critics, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton possess.

     Joy Behar: "There's also something about casting the stone, when you, everybody else is so innocent? You know."
     Hasselbeck: "Yeah look at Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. I mean they, they've been quoted-"
     Behar: "Jesse Jackson, don't you remember his 'Hymietown' remarks?"
     Hasselbeck: "Yes."
     O'Donnell: "Yeah."
     Behar: "That, you know, he's not innocent either on this topic. So, you know, let's not be so hypocritical about all this."
     Hasselbeck: "And where does that stop? Where do you draw the line?"
     Behar: "It was an obnoxious, racist remark, true, but it's all over the place."

-- Brent Baker