Townhall magazine previewed the cover of its August issue Monday, and it’s a doozy (larger version and commentary after the break):

HE’S BIASED, ARROGANT, IGNORANT, FOUL-MOUTHED, BOORISH, AND NASTY. AND HE’S HELPING MSNBC DIG ITS OWN GRAVE.

Honestly, we couldn’t have said it ANY better.

Bravo! 

As a delicious sidebar, the folks at Townhall tweeted their cover story to Olbermann on Monday. This was his response:

Imagine this guy criticizing anyone for low ratings. The final airing of "Countdown" before he went on his much-needed vacation, Olbermann garnered a whopping 957,000 viewers.

This put him behind:

• The O’Reilly Factor– 2,236,000 viewers
• Glenn Beck – 1,862,000 viewers
• Special Report w/ Bret Baier – 1,833,000 viewers
• Hannity– 1,717,000 viewers
• On the Record w/ Greta—1,652,000 viewers
• The Fox Report w/ Shep – 1,403,000 viewers
• FOX & Friends- 1,020,000 viewers 

That evening, Olbermann even got beaten by the 11:00 rerun of "The O’Reilly Factor" – 1,048,000 viewers.

So really, Keith, you mocking Townhall for its readership is like Verne Troyer calling someone short:

It’s your vacation, Keith. Put down the cell phone and rest. You need it:

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The new season of the popular musical series Glee is coming September 21, and there is a guy who will be joining the cast: Chord Overstreet. According to a statement released by FOX, Chord will be playing Sam, “a high school athlete who starts off as Finn’s protégé but becomes his competition,”.

If his face looks [...]

Related posts:

1. Glee: Rain on My Parade!
2. Watch Glee Episode 10 ONLINE “Ballads”
3. John Stamos Hotel Fire! Naked People Evacuated!

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Newsbusters reported earlier on the double standard of MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer on reporters appearing at fundraisers. During the same news hour, Brewer simply couldn’t understand the Republican position on extending the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, and jokingly wondered if the Republicans are even human.

"What I don’t get is a lot of the people who are shouting about letting these tax cuts expire…are the same people who are shouting about the deficit, and how troubling it is that the national debt is skyrocketing," Brewer pouted. "And you can’t have it both ways."

Russert then pretty much confirmed where the news anchor stands on the issue, noting that it’s "an argument that a lot of Democrats are saying." He then pointed out that Democrats have wanted to extend the middle class tax cuts which would add to the deficit, although not as much as the tax cuts that include higher income bracket earners that Republicans are pushing.

Russert concluded that "it all depends on who gets the message out better in November." Brewer didn’t find that very comforting, as she lamented that it’s "sad" that "it’s all on the success of the message, instead of about the facts."

"That’s politics," Russert reminded Brewer.

Brewer then completely changed the topic to a message that was sent from House Minority Leader John Boehner to his GOP colleagues telling them to curtail the late-night partying with female lobbyists. Brewer even joked that those Republicans are not fully human.

"They’re all human, right?" Russert said of the GOP congressmen. "I don’t know, are they?" Brewer responded. Awkward silence ensued, before Brewer covered for herself. "It was a joke. Bad joke."

Russert discussed the 2006 GOP scandals and said that House Republicans are listening to Boehner, who is adamant about no stupidity from his colleagues before the elections. "There’s all sorts of things that they do not want to touch, shall we say, going forward into November," Russert reported about the House Republicans.

"They’re moving the dates on the calendar to ‘Oh, how about if I meet you at the end of November instead?’"Brewer snidely remarked about the aforementioned congressmen.

Of course, Russert never touched upon any of the Democrat sex scandals from 2006-onward – how quickly they forgot Eric Massa – and he did not say whether or not the House Democrats are going through the same headaches as they try to avoid scandals distracting from the Democratic campaign message.

A transcript of the segment, which aired on July 26 at 12:35 p.m. EDT, is as follows:

CONTESSA BREWER: And what I don’t quite get is a lot of the people who are shouting about letting these tax cuts expire, they don’t want it to happen, are the same people who are shouting about the deficit, and how troubling it is that the national debt is skyrocketing. And you can’t have it both ways.

LUKE RUSSERT: That’s an argument that a lot of Democrats are saying is, "Well how could Republicans be concerned with the deficit when this will add hundreds of billions of dollars to it?"

But keep in mind, Contessa, Democrats want to extend a lot of these middle class tax cuts. Those are also going to extend the deficit if they go through. So even if you just cut taxes on the folks under $250,000, it’s going to extend the deficit. So either way, it will be that the Republicans would extend it more, saying it’s vital and necessary to bring this money back into the economy. Democrats say "Stop at $250,000 and under." That being said, it all depends on who gets the message out better in November, in which people actually believe more, honestly.

CONTESSA BREWER: That’s sad, you know, like that it’s all on the success of the message, instead of about the facts.

LUKE RUSSERT: That’s politics.

CONTESSA BREWER: Hey let me ask you, on a totally unrelated topic, but given that you are our congressional correspondent – we did this story last week about how John Boehner was going to some of his Republican congressmen and telling them, "Hey, lay off the late-night partying with female lobbyists." Is there any indication that his words of warning have had an impact?

LUKE RUSSERT: Well one Republican I spoke to today said that Boehner has been absolutely, very, very much iterating a strong message of "Don’t do anything stupid in the run-up to the midterms." Remember, back in ‘06, Republicans had a whole plethora of ethical problems regarding improper relationships — that Mark Foley had with a page.

There’s all sorts of things that they do not want to touch, shall we say, going forward into November. They do not want – they believe that their message, running against the Obama administration’s referendum – that’s what they really want to do, a referendum on the Obama administration. They believe that message can play very well with the electorate, they believe that they’re gaining traction, they win on a lot of generic ballots. They do not want that to be overshadowed because of affairs, and because they’re looked at as Washington insiders, slimy politicians if you will.

So Boehner has been very adamant about not getting in trouble, especially a few weeks before the election. Every Republican I have spoken to says they’ve understood the message quite clearly, and don’t expect those stories to come out again. But–

CONTESSA BREWER: They’re moving the dates on the calendar to "Oh, how about if I meet you at the end of November instead?" Luke, thanks.

LUKE RUSSERT: Well Contessa, at the end of the day, they’re all human, right?

CONTESSA BREWER: Are they? (Pause) They are, I’m kidding. It was a joke. Bad joke.

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Damned if you do, damned if you don’t . . .

Imagine if a Republican candidate had been caught on tape praising birthers.  Chris Matthews would have been all over him. So what happens when a Republican candidate is caught on tape criticizing birthers?  Why, Chris Matthews is . . .  all over him, of course. Bizarrely, the Hardball host actually labelled the matter "Macaca 2.0," invoking the incident that–with the help of scores of stories in the Washington Post–brought down George Allen.

The candidate in question is Ken Buck, whom Matthews described as the front-runner for the GOP nomination for US Senate from Colorado.  Matthews rolled audio of Buck calling birthers who confront him with questions about Pres. Obama’s birth certificate "dumbasses."

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Ken Buck, frontrunner in next month’s Republican primary for Senator from Colorado is counting on the backing of Tea Party folk, but listen to him in this secret recording from a June campaign event.  Buck was speaking with a Democratic party operative when he offered this less-than-flattering remark about birthers, those people who challenge that Barack Obama was born in the US.

KEN BUCK: Would you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera?  What am I supposed to do?

MATTHEWS: "Dumbasses"!  Anyway, caught making fun of people he needs next month, Buck through a spokesman tried damage control today, saying something about not using appropriate language or whatever. He did not deny that he dumped on the birthers, and he did not retract what he thought of their open and relentless skepticism about Obama’s Americanism.

The irony of course is that Allen was questioning the Americanism of the Dem operative who was videotaping him.  Here, Buck was rejecting those who question Obama’s Americanism. You might have thought that Matthews would have praised Buck. But no, for the Matthews and the MSM, the greater good is attacking Republicans.  So call it Macaca 2.0–and damn the logic.

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Like a dog chasing its tail, the left has spent a great amount of time trying to determine who the leader of the Tea Party movement is. And often, there are accusations of prevalent racism among its members. But according to CNBC’s Rick Santelli, the Tea Party is more of a philosophy than a group, which has nothing to do with racism.

In an appearance on NBC’s July 25 "Meet the Press," Santelli, known as the father of the Tea Party movement, took on the argument that Tea Party protesters are racist.

"First of all, we should have zero tolerance for racial discrimination, period," Santelli said. "Beyond that, if the indirect question is, ‘Is the Tea Party racist?’ I think the real question is, ‘Are there racists in the Tea Party?’ And I would contend that statistically there’s going to be racists in any group."

Santelli explained the Tea Party is a philosophy and that its members were from different parts of society - with the central focus of fiscal responsibility.

"I think the Tea Party is more a thought, more a feeling, more a philosophy than it is a party," he said. "And I think in February of ‘09, when I was the lightning rod for this movement in many ways, many different, diverse groups of people from all walks of life, all races, all from different areas of the socio-economic spectrum, all intersect in an area that’s philosophical. And I think the issue is fiscal responsibility."  

But he did explain how the focus of Tea Party movement, if successful, could impact minorities.

"But with that there’s a less spending issue," Santelli continued. "Less spending affects entitlements. And if you connect the dots, ultimately what we are - the, the Tea Party seems to represent is a movement that we can control spending and we can have good strategies without negatively impacting minorities, which might be a higher proportion of some of these programs, again, affected by spending."

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Aimee Sun father is Sun Tao-tsun (孫道存), the former chairman of Pacific Electric Wire Cable; and her mother is He Nian-ci (何念慈), the vice-chairwoman of Yuanta Securities. Sun attended Dominican International School and Taipei American School for elementary school, and studied abroad at the University of Southern California. In June 1999, she married Henry Liao(廖鎮漢).

Aimee Sun (Chinese name: 孫芸芸; pinyin: sūnyúnyún; born May 14, 1978) is a Taiwanese socialite, heiress, media personality, jewelry

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Biography for Jo Hye Ryun

* Name: 조혜련 / Jo Hye Ryeon
* Profession: Actress, singer and MC
* Birthdate: 1970-May-29
* Height: 160cm
* Star sign: Gemini
* Family: Younger brother/actor Jo Ji Hwan

TV Shows

* Smile Again (SBS, 2006)
* Cheers For The Women (SBS, 2000)
* Mister Q (SBS, 1998)

Movies

* Love of South North (2003)

Trivia

* Education: Hanyang University

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Barack Obama will make history this week when he becomes the first sitting president to appear on ABC’s daytime ladies talk show "The View."

I guess when you’re likely the most liberal Commander in Chief the nation has ever seen with poll numbers plummeting faster than a coin tossed off the Empire State Building there isn’t a better place to have your ego massaged than on a couch surrounded by gushing females tossing softballs at you as the cameras roll.

Most interestingly, the announcement published at ABCNews.com referred to the President’s sagging approval ratings giving one the impression that even the show’s producers know why he’s coming to chat with the girls (h/t NBer SickofLibs):

The president will take the hot seat among the show’s five female hosts, who represent a range of backgrounds and political views, at a time when his administration grapples with challenges from the economy to the BP oil spill.

Obama’s approval ratings have hit new lows, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Nearly six in 10 Americans say they lack confidence in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a majority doubt his handling of the economy. 

Interesting way to preview a guest’s appearance, wouldn’t you say?

Makes you wonder if the ladies will be loaded for bear when this is taped on Wednesday…or maybe not. 

After all, the last time he was on back in March 2008 when he was just a candidate, host Barbara Walters said he was very sexy:

The day after he was elected President, the ladies were still slobbering as NewsBusters reported at the time. 

With this in mind, given his poll numbers and the mood of the nation, will Thursday be another slobberfest?

Stay tuned. 

Matthew Balan assisted with the research for this piece. 

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On Saturday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Jim Axelrod reported on the death of former CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, declaring that he "was an old-school broadcast journalist, he was the last working reporter who’d been one of Edward R. Morrow’s boys." An on-screen headline read: "Celebrating Daniel Schorr; Legendary Journalist Dead at 93."

Axelrod touted Schorr’s reporting from CBS’s Washington bureau, "ending up on Richard Nixon’s enemies list during Watergate, which he always called his greatest achievement." He briefly noted Schorr being fired from CBS after reporting a leaked classified CIA report, and described the reporter’s time at CNN and NPR in later years. Axelrod quoted one NPR colleague of Schorr, Scott Simon: "’Dan Schorr was around from the Russian Revolution to the digital revolution.’" Axelrod remarked: "Simon could have added ‘and we were all better informed for it.’" He never used the word liberal to describe Schorr.

As NewsBusters’ Brent Baker earlier reported, one way in which Schorr infamously "informed" viewers while at CBS was to compare Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater to the neo-Nazi movement in Germany: "It looks as though Senator Goldwater, if nominated, will be starting his campaign here in Bavaria, center of Germany’s right wing….Hitler’s one-time stomping ground….there are signs that the American and German right wings are joining up."

Here is a full transcript of Axelrod’s July 24 report:

8:13AM

BETTY NGUYEN: And we at CBS News want to note the passing of a former colleague, legendary newsman Daniel Schorr has died after a brief illness. He was 93. Jim Axelrod has his story.

DANIEL SCHORR: This is Daniel Schorr in Moscow.

DAVID AXELROD: Daniel Schorr was an old-school broadcast journalist, in fact, he was the last working reporter who’d been one of Edward R. Morrow’s boys.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Celebrating Daniel Schorr; Legendary Journalist Dead at 93]

DANIEL SCHORR: My territory is central Europe, the region that straddles the iron curtain.

AXELROD: He joined CBS in 1953, opened the Moscow bureau in ‘55, and left in 1957 after his application for a new visa was denied by the Soviets. Following his interview with Nikita Kruschev.

SCHORR: Can I bring this down to a concrete question? Because this leads towards disarmament.

AXELROD: He continued working for CBS in Washington, ending up on Richard Nixon’s enemies list during Watergate, which he always called his greatest achievement.

SCHORR: At one point he got so mad at me, that he called J. Edgar Hoover and had Hoover launch an investigation on me, trying to get some dirt on me.

AXELROD: Born in the Bronx, a son of Russian immigrants, Schorr clashed not only with government officials, but news management, and left CBS in 1976 after an uproar over his reports on the CIA. Schorr was the first reporter Ted Turner hired when he started CNN in 1979 and Schorr joined NPR in 1985 as a senior news analyst. He never stopped working there. His last ‘Week in Review’ was just two weeks ago. Scott Simon, the host of the NPR program where Schorr delivered his analysis, said ‘Dan Schorr was around from the Russian Revolution to the digital revolution.’ Simon could have added ‘and we were all better informed for it.’ Jim Axelrod, CBS News, New York.

NGUYEN: And he will be missed.   

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The New York Times went to town on Andrew Breitbart and Fox News on Sunday and Monday, rehashing the racial controversy over the Shirley Sherrod tape and suggesting conservative media outlets were guilty of "tilting the field," blowing "obscure or misleading stories…out of proportion" and presenting "political opposition research" as news. Hmm. Isn’t that what the New York Times has been doing to conservatives for years?

Media reporter Brian Stelter made the front of Monday’s Business page with his Fox News-bashing take on the controversy, "When Race is the Issue, Misleading Coverage Sets Off an Uproar."

In the last couple of days, Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Web site operator, has been called a liar, a provocateur, a propagandist — and even a race-baiter. But he says he knows who the true race-baiters are: some Democratic activists.

Andrew Breitbart highlighted the edited video clip of Shirley Sherrod on one of his Web sites. "It’s warfare out there," he says.

It was one of Mr. Breitbart’s Web sites, BigGovernment, that highlighted the heavily edited video clip of Shirley Sherrod, a black official at the Department of Agriculture, apparently saying that she had been biased against a white farmer she was supposed to help. Ms. Sherrod’s full speech actually demonstrated the opposite, but do not expect Mr. Breitbart to be embarrassed.

Stelter later evinced a convenient concern for journalist credibility for "when obscure or misleading stories are blown out of proportion and when what amounts to political opposition research is presented as news." Stelter must have missed the Times’s hit pieces on John McCain alleging an affair and suggesting his birthplace made him unqualified to serve as president, or the paper’s sabotage of two successful Bush-era terror-fighting programs it disapproved of.

But it is an open question whether conservative media outlets risk damage to their credibility when obscure or misleading stories are blown out of proportion and when what amounts to political opposition research is presented as news.

Stelter pivoted to take on the bigger enemy, the Fox News Channel.

In the last month, Fox doggedly pursued an accusation of voter intimidation by a fringe hate group called the New Black Panthers on the day of the last presidential election. One news anchor, Megyn Kelly, devoted dozens of segments to the incident. (Ms. Kelly was even upbraided on the air by a Fox News contributor, Kirsten Powers, who accused her of doing the "scary black man thing.")

Not mentioned: Powers is a regularly appearing Democratic strategist/conservative foil on Fox News.

Stelter seemed to call Breitbart’s stories "scurrilous."

Scurrilous stories meant to taint the Obama administration regularly take root online before gaining traction on television and radio. Mr. Breitbart calls this the "undermedia."

Yet after all the "conservative"-baiting, Stelter somehow managed not to stick a liberal label on Arianna Huffington or her popular leftist website: "Back in 2005, Mr. Breitbart helped Arianna Huffington set up The Huffington Post. Mr. Breitbart’s work for Ms. Huffington did not last long."

David Carr was another Timesman to bite in his Monday media column, "Journalists,  Provocateurs, Maybe Both."

Carr faulted new media conservatives for the current state of affairs, where "many are less interested in covering the game than tilting the field." This "tilting" is apparently an exclusively right-wing phenomenon that applies solely to conservative "provocateurs," not the New York Times.

Andrew Breitbart, a conservative blogger, lighted the race fuse by promoting a heavily edited tape of a relatively ancient speech by Shirley Sherrod, an Agriculture Department official. And last week, Tucker Carlson, creator of The Daily Caller, published another set of private postings from Journolist, a now shuttered e-mail list, that seemed to reflect a kind of conspiracy of left-leaning thinkers and journalists.

Both men, professed conservatives, would seem to be as much provocateurs as journalists. Mr. Breitbart famously brought Acorn to its knees by releasing heavily edited video clips that suggested the poverty organization had provided advice to a conservative activist posing as a pimp. Mr. Carlson has, among other things, bought the domain name KeithOlbermann.com, one more bit of mischief intended to bring attention and hits to The Daily Caller.

There’s sure been a lot of huffing about The Daily Caller website trying to boost its hits. Is that not the mission of every single page on the Web? At least Carr made a stab at balance here:

There have been times when it seemed that Rush Limbaugh was acting as de facto head of the Republican Party, as the Democrats picked up talking points from Rachel Maddow. And Sarah Palin, through Facebook and Twitter accounts, has become an important source of political wisdom for many Americans.

Carr could have also mentioned that an extended clip from the June 25 edition of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show was featured in a clip from President Obama shown to Netroots Nation, the left-wing blogger convention in Las Vegas this weekend.

Carr sniffed:

Even the most tradition-bound journalists would concede that while watching the world spin, they like to nudge it every once in a while. Why, after all, would someone spend their professional life enmeshed in the civic conversation unless they had a stake in it somewhere? But what is emerging is more of a permanent crusade, where information is not only power, but a means to a specific end.

As content providers increasingly hack their own route to an audience, it’s becoming clear that many are less interested in covering the game than tilting the field.

Luckily columnist Frank Rich was there to make Carr and Stelter seem reasonable in comparison, providing unhinged overkill on the Sherrod fiasco. First he called conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart a "racial provocateur." And then Rich really got offensive, in his Sunday column, "There’s a Battle Outside and It Is Still Ragin’."

This country was rightly elated when it elected its first African-American president more than 20 months ago. That high was destined to abate, but we reached a new low last week. What does it say about America now, and where it is heading, that a racial provocateur, wielding a deceptively edited video, could not only smear an innocent woman but make every national institution that touched the story look bad? The White House, the N.A.A.C.P. and the news media were all soiled by this episode. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans, who believe in fundamental fairness for all, grapple with the poisonous residue left behind by the many powerful people of all stripes who served as accessories to a high-tech lynching.

Rich, always at hand with a hysteric metaphor, compared John Lewis’s beating at the hand of racist state troopers during the Civil Rights era was somehow comparable to unsupported allegations of racial epithets shouted at him, as a congressman, on the frenzied final day of the health care debate on Capital Hill.

Rich, like the rest of the media, assumed as gospel truth the racial slurs alleged by Lewis’s colleagues, though there has never been any documentation. In his column, Rich even made up "hundreds of eyewitnesses" to the epithets — though again, none have surfaced to claim to have heard racial slurs at the rally and none revealed on video or audiotape, despite the air being thick with recording equipment.

Even the civil rights hero John Lewis has been slimed by these vigilantes. Lewis was nearly beaten to death by state troopers bearing nightsticks and whips in Selma, Ala., just three weeks before Sherrod’s father was murdered 200 miles away in 1965. This year, as a member of Congress, he was pelted with racial epithets while walking past protesters on the Capitol grounds during the final weekend of the health care debate. Breitbart charged Lewis with lying — never mind that the melee had hundreds of eyewitnesses — and tried to prove it with a video so manifestly bogus that even Fox didn’t push it. But he wasn’t deterred then, and he and others like him won’t be deterred by the Sherrod saga’s "happy ending" as long as the McConnells of the conservative establishment look the other way and Fox pumps racial rage into the media bloodstream 24/7.

Note: This is a condensed version of three articles that appeared earlier today at Times Watch.

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