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1. Focus on Illegal Immigration Over Iraq Upsets Schieffer Demonstrating how out of touch he is with conservatives in the Republican base, on Sunday's Face the Nation Bob Schieffer, who conceded the "surge" has "frankly" made "more of a difference than I would have thought," expressed his frustration with the focus on immigration over Iraq in the Republican campaign. He fretted to guest John McCain: "Why immigration? I mean, we've got a war going on in Iraq, Americans are dying there, it costs what, about $10 billion a month....And yet, every Republican debate it seems to come down to a shouting match over immigration. We saw this last one with Romney and Giuliani going at it hammer and tong. Why immigration?" In his closing commentary, CBS's chief Washington correspondent acknowledged how "the additional troops the administration put into Iraq this year have made a difference -- frankly more of a difference than I would have thought," but "the whole idea of sending those troops in was to quiet things down so the factions within the Iraqi government could work out ways to share power" yet "they haven't moved an inch." He concluded with an admonition: "Immigration has dominated the recent presidential debates, and it is important to be sure, but Iraq is still the place where Americans are dying. We need to be hearing more about that." 2. Couric, Who Ignored Hyde's Passing, Highlights Knievel's Death A night after the CBS Evening News failed to consider newsworthy -- unlike the ABC and NBC evening newscasts -- the passing of conservative icon Henry Hyde, Katie Couric found time to report the passing of daredevil Evel Knievel: "His name is synonymous with daredevil. Evel Knievel died today. He was an icon of the 1970s, known for his star spangled suit, his heart-stopping motorcycle jumps and spectacular crashes. His obituary was nearly written in 1974, but he survived a failed attempt to jump Idaho's Snake River canyon on a rocket-powered sky cycle. But his injuries eventually took their toll and he had been in failing health for years. Evel Knievel was 69." 3. ABC Reporter Kate Snow Continues to Smile and Spin for Hillary On Friday's Good Morning America, reporter Kate Snow continued her habit of happily spinning Hillary Clinton's campaign maneuvering as nothing less than brilliant politics by the presidential candidate. She parroted talking points from the '08 contender's campaign about how smart it would be to target South Carolina voters who frequent hair salons. Sitting in a sylist booth, a smiling Snow gushed: "It makes a lot of sense, actually. Because women, when you think about it, we talk about everything in the hair salon from family to politics." The segment, which focused on the battle between Obama and Hillary over the black vote, then cut to a quote from Kelly Adams, the South Carolina director of Clinton's campaign, who, unsurprisingly, expressed the same sentiment: "We talk politics....But, you know, there's a lot of conversations had in hair salon, serious political conversations and decisions are made there." The story, first reported over a month ago in the Washington Post, continued a template developed by Snow: Laud any action by the Clinton camp as political gold. 4. A News Article? 'Hillary Hatred Finds Its Misogynistic Voice' Here's a headline that suggests an objective article will not follow: "Hillary Hatred Finds Its Misogynistic Voice." Newhouse News Service reporter Jonathan Tilove, whose beat is usually race relations, indicted John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, former RNC spokesman Cliff May, South Park and Facebook groups as historic forces of hatred and vitriol, putting poor Hillary through a punishing gauntlet never run by men: "Thanks to several years of phallocentric history, there is no comparably vocabulary of degradation for men, no equivalently rich trove of synonyms for a sexually sullied male." 5. Bozell Talks About His Book Monday Night on Bohannon's Radio Show MRC President Brent Bozell tonight concludes his media tour, for his new book, 'Whitewash: What the Media Won't Tell You About Hillary Clinton, but Conservatives Will,' with an appearance on Jim Bohannon's national radio talk show.
Upsets Schieffer Demonstrating how out of touch he is with conservatives in the Republican base, on Sunday's Face the Nation Bob Schieffer, who conceded the "surge" has "frankly" made "more of a difference than I would have thought," expressed his frustration with the focus on immigration over Iraq in the Republican campaign. He fretted to guest John McCain: "Why immigration? I mean, we've got a war going on in Iraq, Americans are dying there, it costs what, about $10 billion a month....An enormous amount of money. And yet, every Republican debate it seems to come down to a shouting match over immigration. We saw this last one with Romney and Giuliani going at it hammer and tong. Why immigration?" Of course, the candidates were only responding to the YouTube questions selected by CNN, so Schieffer's beef with the lack of focus on Iraq would better be directed at CNN. In his closing commentary, CBS's chief Washington correspondent acknowledged how "the additional troops the administration put into Iraq this year have made a difference -- frankly more of a difference than I would have thought," but "the whole idea of sending those troops in was to quiet things down so the factions within the Iraqi government could work out ways to share power" yet "they haven't moved an inch." Schieffer concluded with an admonition: "Immigration has dominated the recent presidential debates, and it is important to be sure, but Iraq is still the place where Americans are dying. We need to be hearing more about that." Indeed, Hillary Clinton was tripped up by immigration at a Democratic debate, which illustrated how it is not only Republican voters who are upset about uncontrolled illegal immigration. [This item was posted Monday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Schieffer's question in full to McCain: "Let's talk about the subject that seems to be dominating, at least the Republican debates now, and that is immigration. I'd like to ask you first: Why immigration? I mean, we've got a war going on in Iraq, Americans are dying there, it costs what, about $10 billion a month, is that right?...An enormous amount of money. And yet, every Republican debate it seems to come down to a shouting match over immigration. We saw this last one with Romney and Giuliani going at it hammer and tong. Why immigration?" Schieffer's commentary at the end of the December 2 Face the Nation: The best advice I ever got on covering foreign policy was when someone said, "Don't ever make news of a cease fire the lead of a story about the Middle East," the lesson being events are always so fragile there that the cease fire would most likely be broken before the story made print or got on television. That's why we shouldn't be rolling out the "Mission Accomplished" banner again in Iraq, at least not just yet. Things have quieted down considerably. The additional troops the administration put into Iraq this year have made a difference -- frankly more of a difference than I would have thought -- and those troops deserve great credit. But we must also keep our eye on the prize, or in this case, the continuing lack of one. The whole idea of sending those troops in was to quiet things down so the factions within the Iraqi government could work out ways to share power and rule the country. And so far, they haven't moved an inch. Parliament took the summer off, and since its members got back, they have managed to do exactly nothing. Until they do, until there is some progress in solving the problems that are the root cause of the violence, the turmoil may return once our troops leave. So where do we go from there? Immigration has dominated the recent presidential debates, and it is important to be sure, but Iraq is still the place where Americans are dying. We need to be hearing more about that.
Knievel's Death A night after the CBS Evening News failed to consider newsworthy -- unlike the ABC and NBC evening newscasts -- the passing of conservative icon Henry Hyde, Katie Couric found time to report the passing of daredevil Evel Knievel: "His name is synonymous with daredevil. Evel Knievel died today. He was an icon of the 1970s, known for his star spangled suit, his heart-stopping motorcycle jumps and spectacular crashes. His obituary was nearly written in 1974, but he survived a failed attempt to jump Idaho's Snake River canyon on a rocket-powered sky cycle. But his injuries eventually took their toll and he had been in failing health for years. Evel Knievel was 69."
[This item was posted Friday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Long-time conservative Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, a hero to conservatives for his ideological consistency and efforts to limit abortions, passed away Thursday morning at a Chicago hospital. While ABC and NBC noted his death, at age 83, on their Thursday evening newscasts, and even managed to avoid any pejorative ideological labeling, the CBS Evening News ignored Hyde. But Katie Couric made time to highlight how, in a Time magazine interview, Barack Obama said if he wins he'd give Al Gore a job "in a minute" and a position to Bill Clinton "in a second." Couric added on Clinton: "Obama said 'there are few more talented people out there.'"... For the entire CyberAlert article: www.mrc.org
and Spin for Hillary On Friday's Good Morning America, reporter Kate Snow continued her habit of happily spinning Hillary Clinton's campaign maneuvering as nothing less than brilliant politics by the presidential candidate. She parroted talking points from the '08 contender's campaign about how smart it would be to target South Carolina voters who frequent hair salons. Sitting in a sylist booth, a smiling Snow gushed: "It makes a lot of sense, actually. Because women, when you think about it, we talk about everything in the hair salon from family to politics." The segment, which focused on the battle between Obama and Hillary over the black vote, then cut to a quote from Kelly Adams, the South Carolina director of Clinton's campaign, who, unsurprisingly, expressed the same sentiment: "We talk politics....But, you know, there's a lot of conversations had in hair salon, serious political conversations and decisions are made there." The story, first reported over a month ago in the Washington Post, continued a template developed by Snow: Laud any action by the Clinton camp as political gold. On October 1, she reported on the former First Lady's laugh, which many found odd and off-putting. However, according to the GMA correspondent, the cackle is representative of someone either having a great time or "she's the master of a shrewd political skill, disarming her critics with a gleam in her eye and a roar straight from the belly." See the October 2 CyberAlert: www.mrc.org (A gallery of Snow, always smiling as she commits bias, can be found below.) [This item, by Scott Whitlock, was posted Friday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] A few weeks later, on October 25, Snow rhapsodized over Hillary Clinton's 60th anniversary and how Bill and Hillary are both "masters of spin" and are experts at "turning bad news into good." The ABC reporter, beaming once again, marveled that "instead of facing gray hair and retirement, for Hillary Clinton, being a member of AARP is fund-raising gold." She also credulously touted marriage talking points: "On the eve of this birthday, Hillary is trumpeting the strength of their marriage." See the October 26 CyberAlert for more: www.mrc.org In early November, Snow reported on the then-developing scandal relating to planted questioners in Hillary Clinton's political events. Somehow, she managed to ignore her own networks' role in inserting a friendly query at a GMA event in March. See the November 13 CyberAlert for more: www.mrc.org Regarding the November 30 hair salon story, it should be noted that "Good Morning America" appeared to crib much of the details from a piece that appeared on the front page of the October 14 Washington Post. Snow quoted Clinton's South Carolina state director, as did the Washington Post. Snow's piece did highlight the angle of which candidate, Clinton or Senator Barack Obama, would receive the black vote. But the tone of the GMA piece seems remarkably similar. The Washington Post article can be found here: www.washingtonpost.com A transcript of the November 30 segment, which aired at 7:17am, follows:
DAVID MUIR: And we turn now to the Democrats and this story. They're both looking for candidates -- voters anywhere they can find them. Barack Obama in New York, of course, last night to rally the black vote at the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem. But the latest ABC News poll shows Hillary Clinton is leading among black voters by almost ten points. Both candidates are now looking for votes among some unconventional places and GMA weekend anchor Kate Snow has the story.
Its Misogynistic Voice' Here's a headline that suggests an objective article will not follow: "Hillary Hatred Finds Its Misogynistic Voice." Newhouse News Service reporter Jonathan Tilove, whose beat is usually race relations, indicted John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, former RNC spokesman Cliff May, South Park and Facebook groups as historic forces of hatred and vitriol, putting poor Hillary through a punishing gauntlet never run by men: "Thanks to several years of phallocentric history, there is no comparably vocabulary of degradation for men, no equivalently rich trove of synonyms for a sexually sullied male." The November 29 story began, as published in the Seattle Times: In the coming months, America will decide whether to elect its first female president. And amid a techno-media landscape where the wall between private vitriol and public debate has been reduced to rubble, Sen. Hillary Clinton is facing an onslaught of open misogynistic expression. Step lightly through that thickly settled province of the Web you could call anti-Hillaryland and you are soon knee-deep in "bitch," "slut," "skank," "whore" and, ultimately, what may be the most toxic four-letter word in the English language. We have never been here before. No woman has run quite the same gantlet. And of course, no man. Thanks to several thousand years of phallocentric history, there is no comparable vocabulary of degradation for men, no equivalently rich trove of synonyms for a sexually sullied male. As for the word beginning with C? No single term for a man reduces him to his genitals to such devastating effect. SUSPEND Excerpt What? Tilove has never heard a man called a "dick"? Jon Stewart applied that phallocentric label to Tucker Carlson on CNN, for example. The first instinct on a "news" story like this is to ask: Where is the "commentary" label? Or even that loose "news analysis" title? Newhouse seems to think this is just another hard-news piece. Tilove thinks harsh Internet criticism ("teeming misogny" focused on Hillary Clinton on social-networking sites is an urgent story that must be injected into the media mainstream: There are no rules. And so far there is little recognition in the political and media mainstream of the teeming misogyny only a mouseclick away. He quickly dips into his Rolodex of Hillary-boosting feminist experts. "Part of the way a culture asks, 'Where are the boundaries?' is somebody makes it the topic of a meta-conversation -- let's talk about the talk," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. That's what happened after Don Imus called the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." "It's a discussion we are going to have if Hillary Clinton is nominated," said Jamieson, who originally went searching the Web for racist invective aimed at Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, only to find the raw sexism being directed at Hillary Clinton far more common and virulent. "I've been waiting," Jamieson said. "When is somebody going to make this stuff visible enough to have that conversation?" SUSPEND Excerpt Tilove brought up the John McCain incident where a woman stood up to ask how Republicans will beat "the bitch." That cannot be alleged to have gone ignored by the mainstream media, but Tilove asserts that no one has been troubled by its meanness: Viewed nearly a million times on YouTube in just the week afterward, "How Do We Beat the Bitch" has entered the lore of the 2008 campaign, but with barely a hint of soul-searching about what it means. "Can you imagine if that woman had said, 'How do we beat the "n-word"?'" asked Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics. For McCain, said Walsh, or at least for those who think the nation might have benefited by examining why that woman felt so free to say what she did so publicly, "It was a terrible missed opportunity." SUSPEND Excerpt Speaking of soul-searching, has Tilove considered that the people most eager to view and popularize the YouTube video indicting McCain and casting Hillary as a victim would be...the Hillary Clinton campaign and its supporters? His article implies that the YouTube viewers were all Hillary "haters" who thrilled to hear her called the B-word. Meanwhile, Tilove has quoted two experts, and each of them have compared Hillary "haters" to people using words like "hos" and the N-word. Is this the way the racism-beat reporter justified switching topics? His third expert, C. J. Pascoe of Berkeley, suggested that a conservative Republican woman wouldn't face the same onslaught: To be sure, apart from her gender, Clinton is a polarizing figure, half of a personal and political partnership with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, that weathered countless storms â€" most sensationally his impeachment growing out of a sex scandal. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has at times appeared the kind of feminist icon who stokes male insecurities about changing gender relations. A conservative Republican woman running for president might provoke a far less angry male response, said sociologist C.J. Pascoe, a researcher with the Digital Youth Project at Berkeley's Institute for the Study of Social Change. "This would not be happening if it were Elizabeth Dole," Pascoe said. But, she said, Hillary Clinton offers young men on social networking sites a ripe target for their aggression. SUSPEND Excerpt From there, it was on to the Internet offenders: Facebook, popular with high school and college students, has dozens of anti-Hillary groups, many of which take great, sweaty delight in heaping abuse on Clinton as a woman, imagining her reduced to a subservient role, and visiting violence upon her. One is "Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich," with more than 23,000 members and 2,200 "wall posts" â€" Internet graffiti in which discussants have fantasized about Clinton being raped by a donkey. Eschewing the slightest wit or subtlety, some high school boys in Olathe, Kan., created "Punch her in the c---!!". With about 200 members, this group features the discussion topics "Why we hate Hillary Clinton," "Why you REALLY hate Hillary Clinton" and "What will we do if Hillary becomes president," which drew two replies â€" "death" and "shooter in the cooter?" Another Facebook group, more temperate in tone and with about 13,000 members, is "Life's a bitch, why vote for one? Anti-Hillary '08." Like several other anti-Clinton sites, this one promotes a T-shirt: "Hillary for President. She Puts the C--- in Country." What's going on here? Is this merely some adolescent "guys gone wild" (most but by no means all of the Hillary haters are male)? The rank rituals of the rec room revealed for the whole world to see? The proprietors of the Facebook group "Hillary Clinton Shouldn't Run for President, She Should Just Run the Dishes," with 2,159 members, offer a pre-emptive disclaimer to offended visitors: "Do not message just to say how sexist we are and how the Lord will strike us down for hating women. That is just ignorant. It's been really hard to respond to all of the e-mails without saying the C-word, don't make us start now." SUSPEND Excerpt After quoting some members of these Facebook groups either suggesting they're not sexist haters or declining to comment for danger or ruining their budding academic careers, Tilove moves back to Jamieson for the indictment of Rush and Tucker and the rest: Jamieson said the tone of sex-specific "vilification" of Clinton is set in the mainstream media. On his radio show, which reaches 14.5 million people, Rush Limbaugh talks about Clinton's "testicle lock box." On his MSNBC show, Tucker Carlson says, "There's just something about her that feels castrating, overbearing and scary," and a guest, Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, says that if Clinton is going to appeal to women for support on the basis of her gender, "at least call her a vaginal-American." Young people, said Jamieson, take their cues from family and friends in a foggy geography of pop culture replete with misogynistic music, video games and crude comedy, where what separates fact from satire, bluster from menace (and for that matter, adolescence from adulthood), is hard to divine. Comedy Central is a source of both entertainment and political news for its audience, which is heavily young and male. Among its most popular offerings is the outrageous animated show "South Park," which in March had an episode in which terrorists (Russian mercenaries hired by Queen Elizabeth II, bent on the reconquest of America) place a bomb in Hillary Clinton's vagina. (The episode provoked much less outrage than another mocking Tom Cruise and his religion, Scientology.) SUSPEND Excerpt In the end, the reader begins to wonder whether this story was urgent because it so offended Hillary supporters, or because it helped create new Hillary supporters: Jamieson concurred. "This has the potential to push a lot of moderate Republican women toward her," she said. The Clinton campaign may be counting on that. END of Excerpts The Clinton campaign can certainly count on Jonathan Tilove and the Newhouse News Service.
For the story in full, as posted by the Seattle Times: seattletimes.nwsource.com
on Bohannon's Radio Show MRC President Brent Bozell tonight concludes his media tour, for his new book, 'Whitewash: What the Media Won't Tell You About Hillary Clinton, but Conservatives Will,' with an appearance on Jim Bohannon's national radio talk show. Bohannon's show airs live from 10pm to 1am EST. Bozell will be on in the first hour tonight (Monday). In the Washington, DC area, Bohannon is carried by "3WT" at 107.7 FM from Warrenton, Virginia; 1500 AM from Wheaton, Maryland; and 820 AM in Frederick, Maryland. For a list of affiliates around the nation: www.westwoodone.com Bozell's book will make a great Christmas gift. Here's more about the book published by Crown Forum and where to order it online: Bozell's book: Uncovering a Fifteen Year Love Affair How could America's presidential front-runner be a woman who has held only one elective office and had staggering numbers of personal, political, and financial scandals? How did the First Lady to a disgraced, impeached president become a presidential front-runner despite never having held elective office before 2001? And how did this happen given her staggering number of personal, political, and financial scandals -- and her leftist political agenda? Authors L. Brent Bozell and Tim Graham peel back the layers of Hillary Clinton's success to expose the real shocker -- not Travelgate or Whitewater -- but a fifteen year love affair by the liberal media, starting with Time magazine, who first introduced Hillary Clinton to the country as an "amalgam of Betty Crocker, Mother Teresa and Oliver Wendell Holmes." The elite media's continued and unprecedented favoritism is the key to Hillary's mythic political standing. They have downplayed or ignored her every scandal and recast her ultra-liberalism as being in the political center. What's even more stunning is the incredible number of stories that have been under-reported, excused and buried. To expose the truth, the authors interviewed dozens of leading conservatives who want Americans to hear the whole story, including Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Cal Thomas, Newt Gingrich and many others. Whitewash: What the Media Won't Tell You About Hillary Clinton, But Conservatives Will Order your copy today! Go to: www.mrc.org
Or, to order from Amazon: www.amazon.com
-- Brent Baker
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