You’ve undoubtedly seen the big news from this week, but here are a few things you might have missed.
Advice for Rep. Weiner from Someone Who Knows Controversy
If you haven’t heard by now about Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account being hacked and lewd picture of...hmm, how to put this delicately...his last name, so to speak, was sent to a 21 year old college student you’re probably Amish, in which case you shouldn’t be online. WeinerGate, as it’s come to be known, has been burning up the cable news networks and blogs all week. I won’t bore you with my opinion on it since you’ve undoubtedly read a dozen others, but I would like to point out one of the most surreal and absurd moments of WeinerGate that I’ve seen. It happened, naturally, on MSNBC on Thursday night when, sitting in for the vacationing (READ: suspended) Ed Schultz, the arbiter of all things good and decent Reverend Al Sharpton offered some advice for the embattled Congressman.
I kid you not when I say the Rev. Al started the segment by saying “As someone who’s been through his share of controversy, I have some crisis management advice to offer Congressman Anthony Weiner.” Seriously, he just dismissed his whole career: Tawana Brawley, Crown Heights, enough episodes of anti-semitism to make War and Peace look like a leaflet and playing the race card like it’s a Olympic Event and he’s going for the gold; Sharpton casually brushed it all of as “his share of controversy.”
There’s no need to rehash all of his greatest hits, and if you don’t know a good chunk of them already you are, as I said before, probably Amish. But to have him guest hosting The Ed Show, or any show for that matter, on MSNBC is yet another feather in the bias cap of that low-rated network. At this point, that bias cap’s feather collection is responsible for more plucked birds than Colonel Sanders.
Seriously, who thought having Rev. Al host ANYTHING was a good idea? Was the royalty charge for the test pattern graphic so high that not losing whatever credibility you have left as a news organization simply wasn’t worth it? What’s next, having a bloated white guy from South Dakota host a special called “The Black Agenda”? Oops, too late. Never mind.
Media Mystery Tour
To say the mainstream media (MSM) hates Sarah Palin is like saying the Sun is hot. Within weeks of her introduction to the national stage in September of 2008, the MSM started chasing down every rumor and innuendo that hit their in-boxes and ears with a ferocity that, by comparison, makes Grover Norquist come across as mildly opposed to, but mostly indifferent toward, tax hikes. The MSM started digging into everything Palin and haven’t stopped. Her every tweet reorganizes MSNBC’s prime-time line-up.
Oddly, while spending the last 3 years telling the American public how irrelevant she is, they’ve covered her more than nearly anyone, with the exception of the “The One,” President Obama. So when she announced she was going on a bus tour of historic sites on the East Coast, the MSM mouth-frothing started.
But a funny thing happened on the way to...wherever.
Almost immediately the MSM started complaining about how Palin was treating them on a trip she didn’t invite them on. They complainedof being treated like paparazzi and not getting her schedule, that she was putting uninvited reporters’ lives at risk by not telling them where they were going next, someone named Martin Bashir (don’t waste your time looking him up) even claimed the whole thing might be illegalbecause she had a bus with the American flag on it (that eye-roll you just did is a natural reaction to disgust).
One of the most petty attacks came from The Washington Post, where Amy Gardner asserted the whole thing was “more of a whirlwind of photo-ops than a deep dive into American history” because she didn’t spend hours at each stop. Seems Ms. Gardner brought at stopwatch with her, noting the Palin family only spent 45 minutes at George Washington’s home, 30 minutes at the National Archives, 20 minutes at Fort McHenry and less than an hour at Independence Hall. Having been to all of those locations several times, I can tell you that’s plenty of time at each. These places aren’t huge, they aren’t the Louvre. Add to that the burden of disrupting the experience of everyone else there because the MSM forms a conga line of distraction and annoyance at every stop, and you might begin to see why she didn’t spend more time at each.
After nearly 3 years of dishonest attacks and innuendo against her, her husband, her beliefs and her children by the media, it’s ironic to see the MSM complain that SHE is treating THEM poorly. They’re like an abusive husband who thinks his wife should be grateful that he took off his rings when he hit her this time. Palin would have none of it, she was a class-act throughout, and was greeted by surprised adoring fans everywhere she went. That, more than anything else, is the real root of the MSM’s vitriol. Despite their best efforts to destroy her, she is exposing just how irrelevant they are.
Also-Ran Stories
The Titanic Gets a New Captain. After driving the New York Times as far into the ground as he possibly could, Executive Editor Bill Keller stepped down and Jill Abramson was announced as his replacement. Upon hearing the news, Daily Beast/CNN personality Howard Kurtz announced he was surprised that her being a woman “Almost seems beside the point...” Salon’s Joan Walsh, a long-time champion of the victim culture, couldn’t let Kurtz’s observation stand without offer her over-priced $.02, chiming in with “I don’t really think it’s beside the point!” Kurtz, realizing he was straying from the herd by celebrating without noting the pillars of liberal victimhood (race/gender/sexual orrientation, etc.), quickly offered a qualifier. This all proved once again that success in the mind of a liberal cannot only based upon accomplishments by individuals, but must be qualified by which restroom a person uses.
Footloose Part II: The Obnoxious Liberal Edition.Video surfaced this weekof several Code Pink zombies, including patient zero in that zombie epidemic, CP co-founder Madea Benjamin, were arrested for a dancing demonstration at the Jefferson Memorial. Yes, you read that right, dirty hippies and mindless drones were taken to the ground after actively taunting police after being warned that what they were going to do, then started doing, was not allowed. Whether you think the ability to demonstrate/dance at the Jefferson Memorial, there’s something satisfying about seeing these people arrested. Disagree with the police or a law all you want, but having had the opportunity to witness someone get a J-walking ticket (it was satisfying in that they had caused me to miss a light), your opinion is one thing, but the law is the law. Think it stupid, fight to change it, but break it and face the consequences. On the plus side, they do look like they showered beforehand, so the police didn’t get too dirty slapping the cuffs on them.
Dishonorable Mention
Former North Carolina Senator and 2004 Democrat Party Vice-Presidential nominee John Edwards was indicted this weekfor slipping his mistress...cash. Prosecutors allege the mother of his child, Rielle Hunter, received money, a lot of it, from his 2008 Presidential Campaign to keep her mouth shut and stay in hiding. Considering the alternative was to be seen in public with John Edwards, Ms. Hunter was overpaid.
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