1. CNN's Lou Dobbs Refuses to Reject Idea of Impeaching Bush
CNN anchor Lou Dobbs appeared with the ladies on ABC's The View on Thursday to deliver some rather liberal opinions. He stumped for a minimum wage increase, railed against the influence big corporations have on politics, and pushed for universal health care. But the ABC co-hosts did not even touch illegal immigration, the one issue where Lou Dobbs is famously conservative. Rosie O'Donnell asked the question she has been obsessing on lately: "Mr Dobbs, do you think that some Senator for principle, if not for follow through, should call for the impeachment of George Bush?" Dobbs did not answer the question. Instead, he sighed and exclaimed "boy" before listing his complaints about Bush administration failings. ABC went to a hard ad break before O'Donnell and Joy Behar could get a definitive yes or no out of him.

2. New York Times Once Again Botches Kerry's 'Botched Joke'
Doesn't anyone at the Times know what John Kerry actually said? By repeating a pro-Kerry explanation for his "botched joke," Adam Nagourney on Thursday made the same mistake his colleague made in November. Nagourney, like Kate Zernike before him, spun Kerry's November gaffe about U.S. troops "stuck in Iraq" at a political rally in California to make them seem less harmful. In a Thursday article, "Kerry Will Not Enter Presidential Race," Nagourney recalled: "Mr. Kerry's prepared remarks called for him to say, 'Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.' In his delivery, he dropped the word 'us.'" In fact, Kerry "dropped" more than just the one word "us." Kerry actually said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Kerry didn't say "Just ask President Bush" at all.

3. WashPost Previews Fonda D.C. War Protest With Zero Liberal Tags
Another classic contrast in media bias is emerging with Saturday's "anti-war" march on Washington, just six days after the annual March for Life. Already, the Washington Post is showing more love in column inches for the left-wing protest. The Post had no article previewing the pro-life march, but on the front page of Thursday's Post, in a box promoting its "Faces of the Fallen" pages of the war dead, it ran a promotional blurb for a protest planned for Saturday in the District: "Actors, Other Activists Plan Mall War Protest, Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon are expected for Saturday's anti-war rally and March -- Metro." But the Post never even use the word "liberal" to describe anyone in the story. Jane Fonda was an "actress, author, and peace activist." Jesse Jackson a "civil rights activist." The organizing group simply "describes itself as a coalition of 1,400 local and national organizations," and apparently none of them are left-wing. The story had photos of Fonda, Danny Glover, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon listed in a caption as "among the activists expected."

4. Showtime's 'L word' to Feature 'Unauthorized Abortion of W' Art
Sunday's episode of Showtime's drama centered around the lives of lesbians in Los Angeles, the L word, will feature the "Unauthorized Abortion of W," a sculpture of a woman's body with an exposed womb displaying George W. Bush's adult face with each of his hands holding onto a rocket labeled "U.S. Air Force." The rockets are angled to suggest they represent forceps. (Showtime is part of CBS.)

5. Top Ten Contest's 'Top Ten Signs Rosie O'Donnell Hates You'
The Late Show with David Letterman's online "Top Ten Contest," the "Top Ten Signs Rosie O'Donnell Hates You."

CNN's Lou Dobbs Refuses to Reject Idea
of Impeaching Bush

     CNN anchor Lou Dobbs appeared with the ladies on ABC's The View on Thursday to deliver some rather liberal opinions. He stumped for a minimum wage increase, railed against the influence big corporations have on politics, and pushed for universal health care. But the ABC co-hosts did not even touch illegal immigration, the one issue where Lou Dobbs is famously conservative. Rosie O'Donnell asked the question she has been obsessing on lately: "Mr Dobbs, do you think that some Senator for principle, if not for follow through, should call for the impeachment of George Bush?" Dobbs did not answer the question. Instead, he sighed and exclaimed "boy" before listing his complaints about Bush administration failings. ABC went to a hard ad break before O'Donnell and Joy Behar could get a definitive yes or no out of him.
     [This item is adopted from an item by MRC news analyst Justin McCarthy, posted Thursday with video on the MRC's NewsBusters blog. The audio/video will be added to the posted version of this CyberAlert. But in the meantime, to listen to the MP3 audio or Real or Windows Media video, go to: newsbusters.org ]

     On Wednesday's edition of The View, O'Donnell asserted that "someone, I believe, should call for the impeachment of George Bush" so "the world knows that the nation is not standing behind this President's choices, that the nation, a democracy, feels differently than the man who is leading as if it were a dictatorship, and that we represent this country, he does not lead as a monarch." For more, including video, check the January 25 CyberAlert: www.mrc.org

     The transcript of the January 25 interview with the anchor of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight:

     Rosie O'Donnell: "Lou Dobbs was a lifelong Republican. Who knew I would become such a big fan? But when I realized he had a voice beyond partisanship, he won me over. I love his book. I love his show. His latest book, 'War on the Middle Class,' tells us who's winning and who's losing. Please welcome Lou Dobbs to the show."
     [Cheers and applause]
     O'Donnell: "How are you, sir? Great to see you. So Lou Dobbs, how did 9/11 change your life and career?"
     Lou Dobbs: "Well, I think it changed all our lives. Like most people who live and work in New York, I lost people I knew, friends. I took it personally. I think most Americans took it personally. It raised the standard, I think, for all of us, both in government, in the conduct of our lives, and certainly for us as journalists."
     O'Donnell: "Now, why is it that some took 9/11 and sort of used it to fuel sort of the rhetoric and a hatred and divisiveness in the country and you sort of took it in the opposite direction?"
     Dobbs: "Well, I think that's a choice for all of us. I, I think one of the unfortunate things that we've seen happen in this country is, while we're engaged in a global war on radical Islamist terror, we focus on fear, we focus on limitations, and this country has a tradition of focusing on hope, on aspiration and achievement. And I think too much time in the public dialogue in the national leadership has been on fear and limitations rather than achieving what we should."
     Guest co-host actress Tina Fey: "This is being bugged."
     O'Donnell: "Yeah, really. George Bush is bugging this room. You people at home don't hear it but there's tremendous breakup in the speakers right when you were talking about government. But I'm sure it's just an audio problem and it's not a conspiracy. What do you think about the minimum wage issue we were talking about in the beginning of the show?"
     Dobbs: "I've been calling for the minimum wage to be raised for years. You pointed out, $5.15 an hour. The fact that the Senate blocked it, we put up on our website those Senators who insisted upon business tax breaks to be coupled with a minimum wage increase. To me it is absolutely heinous and reprehensible that Congress, and both parties, frankly, are responsible, but primarily the Republican party, chose not to raise the minimum wage. This nonsense that the minimum wages somehow will make it impossible for small business to function, to make profits and create jobs, is absurd. In point of fact, Congress is only following the lead of the states. 28 states and the District of Columbia have already raised the minimum wages, their minimum wages, above the the federal level. And guess what? Studies between 1997 and 2004 show that those states that have raised the minimum wage are actually prospering. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the principled voice of business in this country now, unfortunately, is utterly wrong. It's conducting a propaganda campaign. You know, if there is such a resistance to the minimum wage, you wonder why the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable doesn't come out and say, you know, 'Congress, why don't you roll back those eight pay increases that you gave yourself over that course of a decade?'"
     O'Donnell: "It says in the polls, 83 percent of Americans are in favor of raising the minimum wage."
     Joy Behar: "They don't seem to pay attention to what the American people say."
     O'Donnell: "How is it that Congress and the government now seems to be so out of touch with the wants and desires of their constituents?"
     Dobbs: "In part because both the Democratic and Republican parties are owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate America. Big business and special interests spend over $2 billion a year to lobby 536 folks in Washington, the president, 100 Senators, 435 Congressmen and women. No wonder the middle class, some 250 to 280 million people in this country can't find a voice in Washington. There is hope. There's a possibility. The Democrats have an opportunity in Congress."
     Behar: "Do you think they'll rise to the occasion?"
     Dobbs: "I have to say they did manage to pass the ethics reform. It's not as strong as any of us would have liked, but at least it's a start. The failure, the failure on the minimum wage is annoying as the dickens."
     Behar: "But you said it was primarily the Republican party that voted against it. How many Democrats actually voted against it out of 50 Sen, out of 100 Senators?"
     Dobbs: "The point of fact, they got a majority vote, but they need 60 to move to legislation."
     Behar: "So this is the fault of the Republican party?"
     Dobbs: "Oh, no question about it, no question about it."
     Fey: "You're an independent now."
     Dobbs: "Yes, ma'am."
     Fey: "Do you feel there's no difference between the two parties, which I whole heartedly agree that there's too much overlap."
     Dobbs: "There's not enough difference. And the way I see it, Tina, I believe in the two-party system. Just that right now I don't believe in either of these parties. They have sorely disappointed us. The level of national leadership, the quality of national leadership in this country -- 300 million people have got to be able to do better than that."
     Behar: "You haven't given the Democrats a chance yet. They just got in and they have some incredible candidates out there right now. We mentioned Webb before. We've got Obama, you know, there's Joe Biden, there's Hillary. I think you have a lot of, a lot of talent now."
     O'Donnell: "But what he's saying, Elisabeth, Joy, is that there's not a lot of difference between big business owning and lobbying a Republican Senator verses a Democratic Senator."
     Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "It's not about the people anymore, is essentially what you're saying."
     Dobbs: "300 million people. In 2004 we put forward two candidates. Kerry and Bush, both men of privilege, from privileged families, both Yale educated, both members of skull and bones. Now that's diversity, isn't it?"
     [Applause]
     Behar: "And also, weren't they both C students?"
     Hasselbeck: "You're also pretty furious over the healthcare situation going on in the country. Do you think universal healthcare is the solution?"
     Dobbs: "I think it absolutely is. There is no excuse for this country not to provide health care for all -- we've got the best health care system in the world. How can we reasonably deny that system and great care to anyone? And principally, by the way, it's the middle class. It's not the poor. We have medicaid and medicare for the poor and aged and infirm. In the middle class, half of whom are making less than $35,000 a year in this country."
     Behar: "A lot of doctors, they don't take medicare, you know. I'm not on it yet, yet. But, but they don't take it. They don't take, they don't take insurance, either. I mean, you have to do a third party put it in. I mean, it's amazing what it costs to get a mammogram these days."
     Hasselbeck: "If the universal health plan is a solution, how do you implement that without removing the competition from companies, and making it hard to get your-"
     Dobbs: "Here is what competition has bought us right now, and that's what this administration has been pushing, the Republican party, for a long time. What competition has bought us is more than double-digit increases in health care costs. 48 million Americans don't have health insurance and meanwhile this administration and corporate America are arguing that gold-plated insurance, health care insurance is just, you know, it's overdone, and we've got to roll it back. That's what competition has brought you. There are other ways to achieve competition and reasonable care. First, take care of the people."
     O'Donnell: "Right. Mr. Dobbs, do you think that some Senator for principle, if not for follow through, should call for the impeachment of George Bush?"
     Dobbs, sighs loudly, then: "Boy-"
     [Laughter]
     Dobbs: "You put a fellow who prides himself on being a straight talk, yeah."
     O'Donnell: "Well, that's why I ask you because there are very few people you could ask that to in the public eye. And I'm just curious if."
     Behar: "You're not running for anything you can tell."
     [Laughter]
     O'Donnell: "Do you think that this nation should do it to say this that, if nothing else, to tell the rest of the world this is what we stand for?"
     Dobbs: "I have to say, that when we look at the performance of this administration on healthcare, on the minimum wage, on free trade, 30 consecutive years of trade deficits, now a few trillion in debt, the conduct of this war and kindly the dissembling-"
     O'Donnell: "Yes or no? We've got five seconds, sir."
     Behar, forming her hand into the shape of a gun and pointing it at Dobbs: "Yes or no? Come on! Gun to the head."
     Dobbs: "I would encourage Senators or Congressman-"
     O'Donnell: "Ah, Lou, you disappoint me."

     ABC then went to black, because of a hard ad break about 56 minutes into the hour, then to an ad.

New York Times Once Again Botches Kerry's
'Botched Joke'

     Doesn't anyone at the Times know what John Kerry actually said? By repeating a pro-Kerry explanation for his "botched joke," Adam Nagourney on Thursday made the same mistake his colleague made in November. Nagourney, like Kate Zernike before him, spun Kerry's November gaffe about U.S. troops "stuck in Iraq" at a political rally in California to make them seem less harmful.

     In a Thursday article, "Kerry Will Not Enter Presidential Race," Nagourney reported: "But Mr. Kerry's hopes were probably most damaged by what he said was a botched joke he told while campaigning on behalf of Congressional candidates in the final week of the 2006 election campaigns.
     "Mr. Kerry's prepared remarks called for him to say, 'Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.' In his delivery, he dropped the word 'us.'"

     Nagourney's January 25 story: www.nytimes.com

     In fact, Kerry "dropped" more than just the one word "us," although from reading Nagourney you'd think that was the only difference between Kerry's prepared remarks and what actually left his mouth in California.

     What Kerry said had little similarity to his prepared speech, and it would have been far more useful for the Times to have actually quoted what Kerry said at the rally, instead of making excuses for him by citing his prepared remarks. Friday's Times carried a lengthy correction (see more below on that).

     [This item is adopted from an article by Clay Waters posted Thursday on the MRC's TimesWatch.org site: www.timeswatch.org ]

     Kerry actually said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Kerry didn't say "Just ask President Bush" at all.

     But Nagourney (or the editor who inserted the paragraph) apparently relied on previous botched work by his colleague Kate Zernike, because nearly the exact same paragraph appeared in Zernike's flawed version of the story on the controversy last year.

     Here's Zernike on November 2, sounding almost the same as Nagourney on January 25: "Mr. Kerry's prepared remarks to California students on Monday called for him to say, 'Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.' In his delivery, he dropped the word 'us.'"

     Nagourney concluded: "For many Democrats, the remark was a reminder of instances of ineptness by Mr. Kerry as a campaigner, including his often troubled efforts to explain his changing views on the war in Iraq. Most famously, he said that he had voted for an $87 billion war appropriation 'before I voted against it,' a piece of videotape that Republicans quickly turned into a defining caricature of him."

     One could also quibble with the word "caricature," as if Kerry's remark somehow didn't reflect what he really thought about the war, which even his Democratic allies admitted was rather muddled during the campaign.

     The Times has appended a "correction" to the posted version of Nagourney's article:
     "An article yesterday about Senator John Kerry's announcement that he would not seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 incorrectly described what he called 'a botched joke' he told before the November midterm elections. In telling the joke, which was assailed as an attack on American troops fighting in Iraq, Mr. Kerry not only dropped a word from his prepared remarks, but he also rephrased his opening sentence extensively and omitted a reference to President Bush. Mr. Kerry's aides said that the prepared text read: 'Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.' What he actually said: 'You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.'"

WashPost Previews Fonda D.C. War Protest
With Zero Liberal Tags

     Another classic contrast in media bias is emerging with Saturday's "anti-war" march on Washington, just six days after the annual March for Life. Already, the Washington Post is showing more love in column inches for the left-wing protest. The Post had no article previewing the pro-life march, but on the front page of Thursday's Post, in a box promoting its "Faces of the Fallen" pages of the war dead, it ran a promotional blurb for a protest planned for Saturday in the District: "Actors, Other Activists Plan Mall War Protest, Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon are expected for Saturday's anti-war rally and March -- Metro."

     The article ran inside the Metro section, on page B-6. Reporter Michael Ruane's story was headlined: "Large Rally Planned Saturday on Mall: Organizes Oppose Increase in Troops and Plan to Seek Withdrawal Deadline." That's a little bland for the hard left, especially when march organizer United for Peace and Justice's (UFPJ) attitude toward the troops is advertised with their website headline "'We Have a Haditha Every Day' -- TAKE ACTION!" See: www.unitedforpeace.org

     The January 25 Washington Post story: www.washingtonpost.com

     But Ruane and the Post never even use the word "liberal" to describe anyone in the story. Jane Fonda was an "actress, author, and peace activist." Jesse Jackson a "civil rights activist." UFPJ simply "describes itself as a coalition of 1,400 local and national organizations," and apparently none of them are left-wing. The story had photos of Fonda, Danny Glover, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon listed in a caption as "among the activists expected."

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

     To complete the "anti-war" fervor in Thursday's Post, the Style section carried an article on a peacenik quilter named Annemarie Zwack: www.washingtonpost.com

     Arts beat reporter Rachel Beckman explained the quilts of protest:
     "A two-panel quilt called 'Standard of Us' depicts tanks rolling over dead bodies and naked prisoners with nooses around their necks. In the quilt 'Witness,' two wide-eyed figures stand in front of the burning remains of an Iraqi city.
     "Not the most cuddly subject matter.
     "'I like the contrast of working in a soft medium to talk about war and bloodshed and things that aren't soft,' she says. 'In some ways, I think it makes it more accessible.'"

     Zwack contended the quilts "convey a sense of mourning for the destruction of the land and the people." But she's not a leftist, she's merely a "socially conscious" person:
     "Zwack comes from a socially conscious family. Her sister is a union-side labor lawyer in Washington. Her parents, a former priest and a nun, worked as missionaries in east Africa.
     "Zwack and Keeler practice what they call 'intentional living.' They try to grow their own food, or at least know the farmers who grew it. In 2001, Zwack ran for the Ithaca Common Council as a Green Party candidate (she lost, but got 41 percent of the vote).
     "In a different era, they would have been called hippies. Zwack has also made quilts of left-leaning heroes Michael Moore, the filmmaker, and Julia 'Butterfly' Hill, the woman who lived in a redwood tree for two years to save it from loggers."

     Michael Moore, left-"leaning"? Beckman really knows how to craft an understatement. But you have to wonder: if liberals are "socially conscious," does that make conservatives "socially unconscious"? Anyway, while the Post showed one flag-resembling quilt in photos on the front of Style and inside, Beckman failed to note the flag quilt's meaning from Zwack's own press release:
     "The most boldly graphic piece in the series is entitled 'Flag.' Similar in format to the U.S. flag, the horizontal stripes are a crumpled and dirty off-white and desert camouflage gold. Instead of stars on a blue field, the raw canvas silhouette of soldiers march on. 'American militarization has sullied our national image and identity,' says Zwack." See: www.zwackart.com

Showtime's 'L word' to Feature 'Unauthorized
Abortion of W' Art

     Sunday's episode of Showtime's drama centered around the lives of lesbians in Los Angeles, the L word, will feature the "Unauthorized Abortion of W," a sculpture of a woman's body with an exposed womb displaying George W. Bush's adult face with each of his hands holding onto a rocket labeled "U.S. Air Force." The rockets are angled to suggest they represent forceps. (Showtime is part of CBS.)

     In a promo for the January 28 episode, character "Bette Porter," the dean of a university's art school played by Jennifer Beals, tells a new character played by Marlee Matlin: "I'm bringing one of our biggest donors to tour the studio. There's a radical sculpture." Through a male interpreter, the deaf Matlin character, whom the L word's Web site describes as "an artist whose work is politically incendiary," observes: "He's not going to like that piece." Porter/Beals confirms "no." Then as a man comes into view, presumably the big donor, the camera quickly pans the figure of Bush in the womb as Matlin explains: "This is called the 'Unauthorized Abortion of W.'"

     [This item was posted late Thursday night, with video, on the MRC's NewsBusters blog. The audio/video will be added to the posted version of this CyberAlert. But in the meantime, to listen to the MP3 audio, or to watch the Real or Windows Media video, go to: newsbusters.org ]

     The L word airs at 10pm EST/PST Sunday nights on Showtime with an immediate re-run at 11pm EST/PST and several more airings during the subsequent week. The episode with Bush being aborted is the fourth of the new season and -- if you care to catch up -- Showtime will re-run the first three episodes Saturday night starting at 9pm EST/PST.

     Home page for the weekly program: www.sho.com

     Showtime's page for the "Bette Porter" character played by Jennifer Beals: www.sho.com

Top Ten Contest's 'Top Ten Signs Rosie
O'Donnell Hates You'

     From the weekly Late Show with David Letterman's online "Top Ten Contest," the "Top Ten Signs Rosie O'Donnell Hates You." Submissions were accepted last week and the list was posted Monday online and in the Late Show Newsletter. The page with last week's list and a space to submit entries to this week's contest ("Top Ten Signs Paula Abdul Is Nuts"): www.cbs.com
10. Well, for starters, you're sane and normal (Mark M, Batavia, OH)

9. She got so worked up, she almost missed a meal (Frank C, Toronto)

8, Appearances of your name on her "People I Hate" blog have risen 87% (Bruce E, Oakville, ON)

7. Wake up in bed next to Donald Trump's head (Eric U, Highwood, IL)

6. Using her connections with Dick Cheney's daughter to get you shot in the face (Donny N, Navasota)

5. You were on the commission that banned trans-fat in New York City (JR R, Lubbock, TX)

4. She won't take a free box of Girl Scout cookies from you (Neil Y, Sardinia, OH)

3. Just to be sure you get the message, she emits a repulsive odor enveloping your entire city (Bill S, Federal Way, WA)

2. She interrupts a Joy Behar menopause story to slam you (Chris S, Grinnell, IA)

1. Madonna just wacked you in the shin with a tire iron (Nelson S, Torrance, CA)

-- Brent Baker

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