1. ABC's Jake Tapper Laments Some Producers 'Root' for Obama
Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz profiled ABC White House reporter Jake Tapper on Monday, who has stood out a bit for suggesting his colleagues are too soft: "Tapper, who has already clashed publicly with press secretary Robert Gibbs, has been outspoken in his view that many in the media have been too soft on Barack Obama. 'Certain networks, newspapers and magazines leaned on the scales a little bit,' he says over a vanilla latte at Starbucks. Obama's attractive qualities, he says, have prompted some editors and producers 'to root for him.'"

2. Matthews: Sebelius Survive 'Terrorism of Anti-Abortion People?'
On Monday night's Hardball, Chris Matthews feared Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, in her nomination fight to head HHS, would be a target of "the terrorism of the, of the anti-abortion people." Then perhaps realizing he called all pro-lifers terrorists, Matthews feebly attempted to amend the statement, as he tried to clarify: "I mean verbal terrorism."

3. CNN's Hughley: Republicans 'Literally Look Like Nazi Germany'
CNN host D.L. Hughley turned to the standard left-wing tactic of playing the Nazi card against Republicans on his program on Saturday evening: "The tenets of the Republican Party are amazing and they seem warm and welcome. But when I watch it be applied -- like you didn't have to go much further than the Republican National Convention....It literally look[s] like Nazi Germany." He went on to say that blacks weren't welcome in the party: "It just does not seem -- like not only are we not welcome -- not only are we not welcome, but they don't even care what we think." He later described the GOP as "reactionary." The stand-up comedian-turned-TV host made the remark during a segment with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Chuck D, a former member of the hip-hop group Public Enemy. Steele did not verbally react to Hughley's Nazi characterization. Chuck D, on the other hand, expressed his agreement with the host about blacks supposedly not being welcome in the Republican Party.

4. Iseman on CBS: NYT 'Out of Control' on False McCain Affair Story
On Monday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez spoke with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who a year ago was named in a New York Times article implying she had an affair with then presidential candidate John McCain, an accusation Iseman flatly denied: "No, I did not. And four New York Times reporters, two editors, their entire institution, 200 people that they went out and sought to try and figure out if this was true or not, came back and said there's no there, there...They were calling friends and family and colleagues and former staffers, it was just -- people I'd hired and fired at my firm, it was nuts. It was just unbelievable...They became so invested in this that they couldn't walk away...this was just out of control, they just could not, for some reason, walk away."

5. Letterman: 'Bonehead' Limbaugh Looks Like a 'Gangster'
On Monday's Late Show, host David Letterman asked guest Katie Couric about "this bonehead Rush Limbaugh," prompting Couric to plead: "Dave, don't do this to me, please! Don't do this to me." But Letterman was just getting rolling with insults as he asserted Limbaugh's attire on Saturday at CPAC made him look "like an Eastern European gangster." Focusing on Limbaugh's physical appearance, Letterman recited how Limbaugh's "got the black jacket on, the black silk shirt and it's unbuttoned, like, 'oh yeah, when you think Rush Limbaugh, you think ooh let's see a little flesh.'"

6. Tribute to Paul Harvey from ABC Radio
ABC Radio has prepared a tribute to Paul Harvey, who passed away Saturday at age 90, for the radio stations which carried Harvey's "News and Comment." About 37 minutes long, the audio/radio program narrated by Gil Gross recounts Harvey's life and includes many excerpts from his newscasts and speeches he delivered, as well as some about his "The Rest of the Story."

ABC's Jake Tapper Laments Some Producers
'Root' for Obama

     Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz profiled ABC White House reporter Jake Tapper on Monday, who has stood out a bit for suggesting his colleagues are too soft: "Tapper, who has already clashed publicly with press secretary Robert Gibbs, has been outspoken in his view that many in the media have been too soft on Barack Obama. 'Certain networks, newspapers and magazines leaned on the scales a little bit,' he says over a vanilla latte at Starbucks. Obama's attractive qualities, he says, have prompted some editors and producers 'to root for him.'"

     Some? Or most, or almost all? Hillary's apparently not a Tapper fan: "Politicians enjoy poking him back. When Tapper recently bumped into Hillary Clinton and asked which of her titles over the years was her favorite, she said: 'I prefer any of them to what we call you when you're not around.'"

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

     Kurtz reported that Tapper drew protests by liberals by having the audacity to list examples where Barack Obama didn't seem so politically adept on patriotism:

Tapper doesn't shout questions, but he can be direct. During the Democratic primaries, Tapper asked Obama about what he called "an attempt by conservatives and Republicans to paint you as unpatriotic." He rattled off examples: "That you didn't put your hand over your heart during the national anthem, that you no longer wear an American flag on your lapel pin, that you met with some former members of the Weather Underground, and now they are questioning your wife's comments when she said she hasn't been proud of the U.S. until just recently."

Some liberals were not pleased. "I get a lot of heat from the left, which is bizarre," Tapper says, given that many conservatives regard him as a "left-wing stooge" for having previously worked for Salon. "I get a lot of heat from the right, too, but the vitriol is from the left."

     Kurtz also described how Tapper revolved into the media from some liberal political jobs.

A Philadelphia native who describes himself as the son of " '60s hippies" -- a pediatrician and a psychiatric nurse -- Tapper graduated from Akiba Hebrew Academy before heading to Dartmouth. He was a garden-variety liberal in college, sporting an earring and a ponytail....After a semester at the University of Southern California's film school, he became the spokesman for a family friend, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, during her successful 1992 campaign for a House seat. Tapper worked for the Democratic congresswoman on the Hill, but "didn't like being in politics, and I wasn't particularly good at it."

...In 1998, while working for the group Handgun Control, Tapper was pondering an offer from Washington City Paper when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. This was of more than passing interest to Tapper, who weeks earlier had gone on a date with the suddenly notorious White House intern. He turned that brief encounter into a cover story -- and a job -- at City Paper.

"I feel bad for poor Monica and feel unclean adding my feeble barnacle to her ship of fame. . . . That said, let the whoring begin," he wrote.

"To be brutally honest, I got with her because I figured that behind her initial aggressiveness lurked an easy, perhaps winning, bit of no-frills hookup," he wrote, but he dropped her off after their dinner with "a very innocent goodbye."

     Not even Clinton succeeded in a "no-frills hookup" with Lewinsky, if we must use that callous casual-sex phrasing. From there, Kurtz suggests that when he joined the Clinton-loving, conservative-hating Salon Web site in the late 1990s, he wasn't as left-wing as the editors wanted:

There were other kinds of clashes as well. "Sometimes he wasn't as liberal as his San Francisco editors wanted him to be," [Salon's Joan] Walsh says. "He wasn't ideological. Other people wanted him to go more in the direction of hitting Republicans harder."

That was true during the endless bus rides of John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. Tapper occasionally wrote critical stories -- one involved McCain referring to his Vietnamese captors as "gooks" -- but also reveled in the bantering atmosphere.

"Jake is a very good reporter, and fun to be around," says longtime McCain adviser Mark Salter. "There were plenty of times I got a little vexed with him. But you always knew he was an equal-opportunity reporter. We'd argue -- sometimes on the telephone, usually in a long chain of e-mails -- and if you made a good point he'd recognize it. You knew he never came with an agenda."...

Tapper was less enamored of candidate George W. Bush, writing about "the media curiously refusing to shine a light on the things Bush doesn't seem to know or understand....He's been spoiled by a press corps that has generally been intimidated or lazy or fawning." Tapper decided after that campaign to underline his neutrality by no longer voting in presidential elections.

He soon branched out, writing a book on the Florida recount and becoming a presence on cable news. He co-hosted a Saturday night show on CNN called "Take Five" and did a stint as a reporter for VH1.

     Kurtz didn't offer the title of the Florida-recount book: "Down & Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency." He didn't offer any spicy liberal passages. On page 11, he tells of blacks turning out to vote against George W. Bush:

And not just Bush -- and his Bob Jones University-visiting, Confederate flag-waving, itchy-death-row-trigger-finger-wiggling, South Carolina-racist-pandering cracker Texas ass. But also his brother Jeb -- whom many NAACP officials call "Jeb Crow" -- as well as Poppy Bush, whose aides bragged in 1988 that they would make black murderer Willie Horton seem like Gov. Mike Dukakis's running mate when it was all said and done.

     It is this record -- as a liberal -- that ABC accepted by hiring him. And while at ABC he found his wife: "During the 2004 campaign he met his future wife, Jennifer Brown, a field coordinator for Planned Parenthood. They now have a 18-month-old daughter, Alice."

     For Kurtz's March 2 profile, "Covering Obama, Pushy Jake Tapper Presses His Points," go to: www.washingtonpost.com

Matthews: Sebelius Survive 'Terrorism
of Anti-Abortion People?'

     On Monday night's Hardball, Chris Matthews feared Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, in her nomination fight to head HHS, would be a target of "the terrorism of the, of the anti-abortion people." Then perhaps realizing he called all pro-lifers terrorists, Matthews feebly attempted to amend the statement, as he tried to clarify: "I mean verbal terrorism."

     [This item, by the MRC's Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Monday evening on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     The following exchange was aired during the March 2, edition of Hardball:
     CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let's talk about, let's got to something really tough.
     JONATHAN MARTIN, POLITICO: Sure.
     MATTHEWS: Kathleen Sebelius, very likeable, very impressive. I think of the woman who becomes the governor in Mr. Holland's Opus, remember the one who comes back?
     LOIS ROMANO, WASHINGTON POST: Right.
     MATTHEWS: Who becomes the governor, the woman governor. She looks like her, in fact. I she gonna get through the, the terrorism of the, of the anti-abortion people?
     ROMANO: Yeah I think she's gonna do that and I think they've got a clear shot.
     MATTHEWS: I mean verbal terrorism.
     ROMANO: Yeah they're, she'll get through that.
     MARTIN: I think she will, for one important reason. Sam Brownback, her home state senator, an ardent Catholic pro-lifer, Chris, has said kind things about her, signaling that he will not stand in her way. So if that's any, sort of indication I think that bodes well for Sebelius.
     MATTHEWS: But are we gonna have days and days of hearings about what she did about this guy who was a late-term abortion doctor?
     MARTIN: I'm sure it'll come up.

CNN's Hughley: Republicans 'Literally
Look Like Nazi Germany'

     The stand-up comedian-turned-TV host made the remark during a segment with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Chuck D, a former member of the hip-hop group Public Enemy. Steele did not verbally react to Hughley's Nazi characterization. Chuck D, on the other hand, expressed his agreement with the host about blacks supposedly not being welcome in the Republican Party: "I covered the Republican convention in '96 for MTV...and -- seriously, their agenda was totally somewhere else, which totally -- you know, didn't have black people or people of color in mind." He then expressed his belief that there should be more major parties in the U.S.

     [This item, by Matthew Balan, was posted Monday afternoon, with video, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     The CNN host then returned to characterizing the GOP: "A lot of the things I see Republicans do specifically are reactionary. They'll go, you know what -- oh, they don't like Hillary? Let's give them Sarah Palin. They voted for Obama. Let's give them Michael Steele, and the other guy who will not show who he is yet. And so, it is always so -- it is so plastic, that you go, wow, is this what they think?...That's what seems so off-kilter to me."

     Steele responded to this by correcting Hughley's timeline, at least as it related to himself: "There was a Michael Steele before there was a Barack Obama. I mean, the reality of it is, I had established -- I was the only black lieutenant governor in the country at the time. I was the only statewide black elected official when I was lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007. And then Obama got elected in 2005. And so that wasn't about, you know, oh, geez, let's do this because of Obama."

     This isn't the first time Hughley has expressed his disdain for Republicans on cable TV. In March 2006, the comic went on an obscenity-laced tirade against President George W. Bush on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher: "If I hear one more person tell me how this man is a man of faith, I think I'll lose my mother-f***ing mind.... When thousands and thousands of people were being, dying in New Orleans, this son of a bitch didn't do sh*t, and that's very un-Christlike to me."

     For more on Hughley's 2006 comments on Bill Maher's program, see the March 6, 2006 CyberAlert item, "Actor Derides Bush's Faith: 'Son of a Bitch...Very Un-Christlike,'" at: www.mrc.org

     The transcript of the relevant portion of the segment, which began 15 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour of Hughley's program, "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News:"

     D.L. HUGHLEY: ...The tenets of the Republican Party are amazing and they seem warm and welcome. But when I watch it be applied -- like you didn't have to go much further than the Republican National Convention.
     MICHAEL STEELE: Agreed.
     HUGHLEY: It literally look[s] like Nazi Germany -- it really did. I make -- said that point. It just does not seem -- like not only are we not welcome -- not only are we not welcome, but they don't even care what we think. And that --
     STEELE: Well, I'm here now --
     HUGHLEY: That seems to be the way I --
     CHUCK D: I'd like to say -- I covered the Republican convention in '96 for MTV. I have been involved with the Choose or Lose and all -- Rock the Vote for the last 12 to 20 years and -- seriously, their agenda was totally somewhere else, which totally -- you know, didn't have black people or people of color in mind. So they have a big -- they may have the right person to try to sell them. I'm just saying the tricks should be over as using something else to try to get black people. I mean, real talk is going to have to get people of color for real things. I mean, I feel that -- first of all, the two-party system is just played. It has to expand. The Green Party had Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, with issues and dealing with a lot of issues that we kind of felt, but also at the same time, maybe the rest of America would have had a problem with it. So it's got to be a situation where maybe three parties -- maybe four parties, talk to all of the people, and maybe the whole system being repaired.
     HUGHLEY: Well, you're right. A lot of the things I see Republicans do specifically are reactionary. They'll go, you know what -- oh, they don't like Hillary? Let's give them Sarah Palin. They voted for Obama. Let's give them Michael Steele, and the other guy who will not show who he is yet. And so, it is always so -- it is so plastic, that you go, wow, is this what they think? They think that we -- they're missing the entire point of what happened during the Obama transformation. They missed the entire point, and I don't understand that. That's what seems so off-kilter to me.
     STEELE: But let me mention a couple of things. There was a Michael Steele before there was a Barack Obama. I mean, the reality of it is, I had established -- I was the only black lieutenant governor in the country at the time. I was the only statewide black elected official when I was lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007. And then Obama got elected in 2005. And so that wasn't about, you know, oh, geez, let's do this because of Obama. The fact is -- let me make the second point. The second point is -- you know, when I talk about hip-hop, I'm really not talking about specifically just hip-hop. I'm talking about the Republican Party having -- having [an] urban agenda, an agenda where our community lives, where our community is creating wealth, going to school, living and dying -- and have something to say to them. I'm not trying to play off of hip-hop. I'm not trying to use hip-hop. What I'm trying to recognize is there something of value that's happening in the community that's reflected on the economic side of hip-hop, and I think that's something we're talking about.

Iseman on CBS: NYT 'Out of Control' on
False McCain Affair Story

     On Monday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez spoke with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who a year ago was named in a New York Times article implying she had an affair with then presidential candidate John McCain, an accusation Iseman flatly denied: "No, I did not. And four New York Times reporters, two editors, their entire institution, 200 people that they went out and sought to try and figure out if this was true or not, came back and said there's no there, there...They were calling friends and family and colleagues and former staffers, it was just -- people I'd hired and fired at my firm, it was nuts. It was just unbelievable...They became so invested in this that they couldn't walk away...this was just out of control, they just could not, for some reason, walk away."

     [This item, by the MRC's Kyle Drennen, was posted Monday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     While Iseman detailed how absurd the Times' accusations were, Rodriguez still worked to give the paper the benefit of the doubt: "So everybody believed that you had an affair with him, even though the article, according to the Times, didn't mean to imply that and certainly didn't prove that, all of a sudden you were that girl?...You sued the New York Times, they printed a note to the readers that said 'we never intended to imply she was having an affair with him.' Where do you think they went so wrong? Because they have sources and they did try to contact you. Where do you think the New York Times failed here?

     Here is the full transcript of the March 2 interview:

     MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: For the first time this morning, a Washington lobbyist linked romantically to Senator John McCain is speaking out. This news broke during the peak of Senator McCain's presidential campaign. When the article came out in the New York Times we heard from Senator McCain, but we have not heard from Vicki Iseman she is here this morning for an exclusive interview. Good morning, Vicki.
     VICKI ISEMAN: Thank you for having me.
     RODRIGUEZ: Thank you for being here. Let's start with the question that everyone wants to hear you answer, did you have an affair with Senator John McCain?
     ISEMAN: No, I did not. And four New York Times reporters, two editors, their entire institution, 200 people that they went out and sought to try and figure out if this was true or not, came back and said there's no there, there.
     RODRIGUEZ: So let -- was there anything in your behavior towards him that could have given people that impression?
     ISEMAN: No, this all went back to one singular person, a political operative who had left the Senator's campaign under acrimonious circumstances and this is where everything -- all roads lead back to him.
     RODRIGUEZ: You're talking about John Weaver, who is the only source that is named in that New York Times article. Let's talk about the time that you had close contact, you say it was the only time you had close contact with Senator McCain, you were on a plane flying back from an event with John Weaver and Senator McCain, after that trip, John Weaver says that he called a meeting with you to tell you to stay away from the Senator. Is that true?
     ISEMAN: John Weaver did ask me to visit with him for coffee, which I did, and when I met with him, we sat down and he said he had taken umbrage with a conversation, brief words that I had with Senator McCain about the fact that Senator McCain just asked 'what did you think of my speech?' at something. John Weaver was there and I said, you know, I like it when you interact with the audience better and apparently, I don't know if John Weaver had written the speech, or -- I don't know what the circumstances were, but John Weaver took offense at that, and decided he's sit me down and sometimes this the situation, this is a political guy, not a -- not a staff guy on the hill, but a political guy, who decided that, you know, his ego I guess had been bruised somewhat and that he was going to very aggressively and assertively make a point to me that my opinion was something that I should not share with the Senator, whether he asked for it or not.
     RODRIGUEZ: So up until that time, you only saw the Senator occasionally, as a lobbyist, you had that one trip with him, after which you had that meeting with John Weaver. He told you -- he scolded you for criticizing the speech, but that was it? He never said 'stay away from the Senator, you're getting to close to him.'
     ISEMAN: That was it-
     RODRIGUEZ: That never happened.
     ISEMAN: -but to be very clear, I was a big supporter of Senator McCain's back in 2000 and I wanted him to win, I thought a lot of him, I -- you know, I debated people on the fact that I thought he should be president, so I was a supporter, I mean that -- that was very clear. But as far as John Weaver or anybody else, and again, all roads go back to him, any assertions that there is anything inappropriate, ethically, or, you know, professionally or personally, are just not true.
     RODRIGUEZ: Alright, so you believe that John Weaver goes to the New York Times, they start to investigate this, they call you, they send you emails, and you tell them if they have any questions, 'send them to me by email.'
     ISEMAN: I did, but that was after they showed up at my house, that was after they started calling people in my office asking specifically if I had had an affair with Senator McCain. It was unbelievable. I mean, I -- they were calling people who I hadn't seen in fifteen years, they were finding names of people who used to live with me out of college from my utility bills. They were calling friends and family and colleagues and former staffers, it was just -- people I'd hired and fired at my firm, it was nuts. It was just unbelievable.
     RODRIGUEZ: You -- you respond to questions via email, they print the story, how does your life change at that point?
     ISEMAN: You know, I -- it was, it was stunning, it was absolutely stunning. They had four camera crews show up at my niece and nephew's school in rural western Pennsylvania. People are calling my grandmother to say 'aren't you embarrassed that you're daughter isn't speaking out?' And I didn't want to speak out, I didn't want to be part of this campaign. I mean, I believe in the process, this is why I'm in this world, and it just -- it was crazy. People would say to me 'I'm not getting in an elevator with you.' A woman walked up to me on an airplane and said 'you should be ashamed of yourself for what you did to that man.'
     RODRIGUEZ: So everybody believed that you had an affair with him, even though the article, according to the Times, didn't mean to imply that and certainly didn't prove that, all of a sudden you were that girl?
     ISEMAN: The Times developed a caricature of me that they knew was not true. They put a photograph of me in a gold dress. They talked about the fact that I had showed up at events with the Senator -- and the implication was many. You just can't do this, you practically can't do this. I cannot pick him up, show up at events, be at his arm, have to be pulled away from him, this just doesn't happen. And by the way, he was running for president, he wasn't even in D.C. when -- during the time frame they said that this was happening.
     RODRIGUEZ: You sued the New York Times, they printed a note to the readers that said 'we never intended to imply she was having an affair with him.' Where do you think they went so wrong? Because they have sources and they did try to contact you. Where do you think the New York Times failed here?
     ISEMAN: I think they became so invested in this I believe that they would have had to have believed in the beginning that this was true and they became so invested they -- they ended up sending people across the country that I know of, to L.A. at least three times, to rural Mississippi to find a young woman who had worked with me ten years ago that wasn't returning their calls. They became so invested in this that they couldn't walk away. It -- I can't think of any other reason why, then, again, at least two of these reporters I respected in the past and this was just out of control, they just could not, for some reason, walk away.
     RODRIGUEZ: Alright, Vicki Iseman, thanks for sharing your story this morning.
     ISEMAN: Thank you very much, appreciate it.
     RODRIGUEZ: Appreciate it.

Letterman: 'Bonehead' Limbaugh Looks
Like a 'Gangster'

     CBS posted the exchange as the "Big Show Highlight" preview for Monday's show. As of Tuesday morning it's now the lead video in rotation on the Late Show's home page where it is displayed under the "Rush in the Flesh" heading. See: lateshow.cbs.com

     You can also view the Flash video clip from this interior page: lateshow.cbs.com

     [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Monday night, with video, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     The relevant portion of the preview clip for the March 2 Late Show with David Letterman:

     DAVID LETTERMAN: What about this bonehead Rush Limbaugh? Honest to God, I mean what is going on there?
     KATIE COURIC: Dave, don't do this to me, please! Don't do this to me.
     LETTERMAN: He gets up in Washington and he's the keynote speaker at some function, and he comes up, he looks like an Eastern European gangster. You know, he's got the black jacket on, the black silk shirt and it's unbuttoned, like, "oh yeah, you think Rush Limbaugh, when you think ooh let's see a little flesh." [audience laughter] Honestly, you know, what is he doing?
     COURIC: On a serious note, although I'm thrown by the Rush Limbaugh flesh in one sentence, but I think it's sort of indicative of this power vacuum that exists right now in the Republican party...

Tribute to Paul Harvey from ABC Radio

     ABC Radio has prepared a tribute to Paul Harvey, who passed away Saturday at age 90, for the radio stations which carried Harvey's "News and Comment." About 37 minutes long, the audio/radio program narrated by Gil Gross recounts Harvey's life and includes many excerpts from his newscasts and speeches he delivered, as well as some about his "The Rest of the Story."

     ABC Radio News has a tribute page, with a statement from former President George W. Bush: www.abcrn.com

     MP3 audio of the 37-minute "ABC News special on the life and career of Paul Harvey," check: caster.wgnradio.com

     MP3 audio of the 6 minute version of the special narrated by Gil Gross on Harvey, see: caster.wgnradio.com

     WGN Radio in Chicago has a page with about two dozen MP3 clips of Harvey from over the years: wgnradio.com

-- Brent Baker