Brent Baker recounted how CBS Evening News spotlighted fifth-grade protester Marcelas Owens on Tuesday night. David Shuster interviewed him on MSNBC on Tuesday morning. What neither network shared with the viewer is how Marcelas has become a constant talking point for his home-state Democrat Sen. Patty Murray, and how he is a spokesman for a liberal lobby, the Washington Community Action Network.

On February 26, Les Blumenthal of The Olympian reported Murray shared the Marcelas talking point at the White House health care summit:

"Sen. Patty Murray has told the story of Marcelas Owens dozens of times before, but Thursday she may never have had a bigger audience as she talked of the 10-year-old Seattle boy whose mother died after she lost her health insurance coverage."

…Marcelas, in a statement released by the Washington Community Action Network, thanked Murray for sharing his story with the president.

"I lost my mom because she didn’t have health care," Marcelas said. "Every day it’s hard not having her around. I don’t want any other kid to go through what I have gone through."

Senator Murray’s campaign website had a fuller version of the statement:

Marcelas Owens, whose entire family have been longtime members of the Washington Community Action Network, issued the following statement today thanking Senator Murray for her leadership:

"I want to thank Senator Murray for sharing my story with President Obama and other people in Congress. I lost my mom because she didn’t have health care. Every day it’s hard not having her around. I don’t want any other kid to have to go through what I went through. That’s why I don’t understand why some politicians are saying that Congress should stop working to pass the health care reform bill. Every day we wait, more kids like me will lose someone they love. Thank you for fighting for me, Senator Murray."

Clearly, a ten-year-old boy who lost his mother is a heart-tugging anecdote. But, aside from the desirability of using grade-schoolers in political debates, more knowledge about how organized this Marcelas campaign is displays that CBS and MSNBC are receptive recyclers of liberal Democrat video-press-release ideas.

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When Rep. Eric Massa resigned Monday and conservative talk radio blazed over a radio interview Massa gave harshly attacking House Democratic leaders and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the Washington Post suggested Massa’s remarks weren’t really newsworthy on their own. Their headline was "Conservatives point to claim by Massa."

The Post website went even further, with the snotty headline "An unlikely hero for the right."

If the parties were reversed, and a resigning member lit into the Republican majority leader and the Republicans’ top White House aide, the headline wouldn’t be "Liberals point to claim by Republican." Because the Washington Post are those liberals.

Reporter Paul Kane overdeveloped the "unlikely hero" line as well. He began: "Conservative activists rallied Monday to the side of a liberal New York Democrat who had resigned from the House, after he charged that his party’s leaders had conspired to oust him over his opposition to President Obama’s health-care legislation."

Kane did not report that conservatives on Monday said Massa shouldn’t have resigned, or defended him on emerging claims that he sexually harassed a male staffer. (Mark Levin, for one, explicitly said Massa is no hero before running his radio-show excerpts Monday night.) On a positive note, Kane’s report did detail the conservative critique of the liberal finagling to pass a health "reform" bill:

Conservatives have complained about other examples of what they see as illegitimate deal-making to secure votes: what they call the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase" in the Senate to line up Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), respectively, and Obama’s appointment last week of a Utah professor — the brother of Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), an opponent of the health bill — to the federal appeals bench.

Massa’s allegation that he was the victim of a setup, in order to lower the number of "yes" votes needed to pass a bill, fed into that growing anxiety about Democratic tactics.

His comments spread quickly online, promoted by conservative blogs such as Red State and National Review Online.

Memo to Kane and his copy editors: NRO is not a "blog." It is a magazine website, with many blogs on it. That’s like calling the New Republic website a "blog." It clearly suggests that Kane’s never visited NRO, even in the midst of his research for this story.

Kane also reported that Rush Limbaugh devoted a chunk of his radio show Monday to Massa, and that Glenn Beck announced he will interview Massa for the whole hour on Fox News Channel on Tuesday.

But Kane noticeably downplayed the vivid claim that a naked Emanuel approached a naked Massa in the showers of the congressional gym and screamed at him for disloyalty.

In paragraph 13 of 15, Kane briefly relayed: "Massa also accused Hoyer of lying about his knowledge of the ethics investigation and said Emanuel was the ‘devil’s spawn’ who once confronted him naked in the shower of the House gym." Kane reported denials from Hoyer, but showed no sign he made a call to Emanuel.

Online the Post offered an audio clip of Massa’s radio show appearance, but avoided the shower-confrontation story. Instead, they chose a snippet where Massa described he and Emanuel screaming profanities at each other, but then Massa declared a pox on both parties and criticized the tea-party movement.

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New York Post film critic Kyle Smith disliked Matt Damon’s new movie Green Zone so much he was tempted to call for a boycott of NBC Universal:

I can’t believe what I just saw, so I’ll think about it some more before I go into detail. But if I were the kind of excitable guy who believes in boycotts, I’d say "Boycott NBC Universal" for its appalling new anti-American flick "Green Zone," an absurdly awful would-be actioner that stars Matt Damon as a US warrant officer in 2003 Baghdad.

I would never have accused director Paul Greengrass, who made the astonishingly powerful "United 93," of being simplistic. But he has made a $100 million war film in which American troops are the bad guys. There are moments that we’re supposed to cheer because our soldiers are getting shot down — but it’s okay because they’re evildoers at worst or stooges at best who are trying to kill the one guy in the country who can prevent an insurgency from taking root.

The movie also makes it look as though the flawed intelligence about the war was traceable to a single smarmy jackass (played by Greg Kinnear) working in Pentagon intel who fabricated WMD intelligence, said it came from a mysterious source (a general in Saddam’s army code-named "Magellan"), planted that intel with a Judith Miller-like reporter (Amy Ryan - who, hilariously, is shown working for The Wall Street Journal rather than The New York Times because Hollywood liberals can’t accept that The Times ever gets anything wrong) and then, when his ruse began to be suspected, sent his henchmen out to kill the general, who was willing to deal with the Americans but who vowed to launch an insurgency campaign if the Americans didn’t live up to their promises. In other words, the U.S. wasn’t merely incompetent - it caused the insurgency to occur.

Orlando Parfitt of IGN UK thought the movie was exciting and entertaining, but the politics were shallow and heavy-handed:

Early on Matt Damon’s character doesn’t question why America invaded Iraq. But as the story goes on and he delves further into the conspiracy, Miller ends up virtually going to war with the American army and protecting a ruthless former Ba’ath party general who represents - the film suggests - a preferable alternative as rulers of Iraq to the US government. It’s just the first of several plot developments that - along with some extremely heavy-handed dialogue - reinforces the movie’s implicitly anti-American stance in a way that isn’t particulary subtle.

The problem with taking such a highly opinionated approach is that most of the film is fictitious. Green Zone recalls moments we can all remember seeing on the news (we see snippets of speeches made by George Bush for example). However the bones of the plot - Miller’s investigation into the complex web of fabrication that lead the US to believe Saddam Hussein had WMDs - is almost entirely made up; dreamt up by screenwriter Brian Helgeland.

It’s an approach that undermines the entire argument. Green Zone uses evidence from its invented thriller plot to damn the real-life American government.

(Hat tip: Creative Minority Report, which asked "Does Matt Damon Hate America?)

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At the end of a discussion of Haiti on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, actor Sean Penn went on a rant in defense of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, suggesting prison time for American journalists: "every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies."

This is a little strange, since a study by our Business and Media Institute of Chavez coverage from 1998 to 2006 found Chavez’s much-criticized human rights record was mentioned in only ten percent of stories, and he was described as a leftist in only 12 percent of stories. Maher shifted to Chavez and the end of the Haiti interview, asking Penn to make a case for his man Chavez:

MAHER: His image in the media is just a buffoon. You have been there. You know him. You’ve talked to him. That’s all I really know about Hugo Chavez, is what I read in the media. A dictator, took over a lot of the branches of government, wants to be president for life. What do you know that I don’t know, that I should not have such a harsh feeling about this guy?

PENN: I think that if you’re more happy with 20 percent of a population having the access to dreams, access to the feeling they have an identity and a voice. If it’s okay with the 20 percent, versus the 80 percent he gave it to, then you can criticize Hugo Chavez. You know, there are a lot of complicated issues that comes simply out of perspective. We in the United States have a difficult time putting ourselves in the shoes of what has been the history of Venezuela, the history of Latin America, and many other places.We’re very monocultural. And then we are hypnotized by the media. For example, Hugo Chavez. Who do you know here who’s gone through fourteen of the most transparent elections on the globe, and has been elected democratically, as Hugo Chavez?

Stay with the transcript here, because Penn’s talk gets very fuzzy and inarticulate, but his primary point is that Venezuela and Cuba helped him provide assistance to Haiti, when he knew next to nothing about how to help, so he is frustrated that anyone would speak negatively about them:

PENN: Hugo Chavez, who when I went to Venezuela, when I went to Haiti, because when I, starting up an NGO [non-governmental organization, in U.N.-speak], how do I , an actor in Hollywood, order bulk narcotics? [Laughter] But meanwhile –

MAHER: Oh, I know you do know how.

PENN: But on a serious note, you know, this is where amputations, reamputations after gangrene sets in – it was Venezuela, Cuba, were – supplied us with those to be able to get them to hospitals. And then later when I – it wasn’t because the Americans weren’t, it was because I didn’t know how – It seemed I didn’t know the same people that I know to be able to do it.

Penn wrapped up the segment by insisting that he’s a little sympathetic to anti-American conspiracy theories about occupation, because this is the kind of gunk that gets thrown at his hero Hugo, and it should be punished by jail time:

PENN: The collaborative opportunity in Haiti, when you talk about Hugo Chavez, and some of the other people who are demonized [think Castro], and you know, when some of these countries accuse us of an occupation — where I believe this was strictly a humanitarian action by the United States military, and an incredible one – I’m a little sympathetic. Because every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.

Penn did not offer praise for the network news reporters who spoke well of Chavez, as BMI reported:

Jessica Yellin of ABC’s Good Morning America" portrayed him as the "wildly popular Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez" and added "it’s clear the real star in these parts is Mr. Chavez, the protest leader" in her Nov. 5, 2005, broadcast.

Ironically, an Aug. 16, 2004, "NBC Nightly News," report actually noted concern had Chavez lost the election. Anchor Tom Brokaw expressed that sentiment: "There had been concerns that a Chavez defeat could further disrupt oil supplies."

Chavez and Penn do seem to agree on George W. Bush, as BMI noted:

A Feb. 5, 2006, Reuters report quoted him [Chavez] saying: "The imperialist, genocidal, fascist attitude of the U.S. president has no limits. I think Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W. Bush."

So Penn doesn’t think Chavez isn’t more of a demonizer than a demonizee?

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John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported that NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory faced a conservative question at a National Association of Broadcasters state leadership event, but he insisted NBC does a great job of presenting both ends of the political spectrum:

During a Q&A session following Gregory’s talk, a broadcaster in the audience suggested network news execs themselves might be guilty of only looking at a sliver of the country. He said one of the issues he had with networks, particularly as they continued to shrink, is that the decisionmakers had a world view limited by their schooling in the "Boston-to-Washington axis." Covering issues of faith, for example, was one place where they "had no concept of this reality of the rest of the country."

The broadcaster asked whether NBC was doing anything to "stop and realize that they have to look outside the small cocoon that they see as normal."

Gregory said the point was important, but one that could be "overmade." He said he thought NBC was doing a good job in its political reporting of covering "both ends of the spectrum" and had made "pretty good strides absorbing and reflecting different points of view."

Gregory conceded that the point about being East Coast-centric was valid, but he also said that NBC tries to keep in mind the "multi-background point of view that has to enter into our decisionmaking about what we cover and how we cover it."

That’s not the feeling you might get from hearing the rest of his message: that it’s unfortunate there’s no "common purpose" in Washington – that is, no agreement on passing Barack Obama’s legislative agenda. The story began:

Talking to broadcasters in Washington Tuesday at a National Association of Broadcasters’ annual state leadership conference , Gregory suggested that Washington, with the aid of the media, has divided itself into disparate streams that eschew common ground.

The theme of his talk, loosely, was community. That included the community broadcasters can create with the Olympics, the kind of appointment TV broadcasters do well. But he was also talking about the community spirit that seemed to be lacking in Washington. "There is no sense of common cause or common purpose," he said, and "no willingness to compromise. "

He suggested that the current media climate has made it easy for people to seek out only the news that fits their views. "We see in our media as well such a polarized environment that there is this connective tissue on the left and on the right to bond everyone together in a national way. So, you can seek out familiar viewpoints on demand. You can go throughout your whole day in your news consumption cycle without really hearing any contrary points of view to what you believe. And it has led to a very difficult environment in Washington."

He cautioned against misinterpreting the ease with which information can be accessed or disseminated to the weight it should be accorded. "Sometimes we forget how big and vast the country is," he said. "I got on twitter early on and have a lot of followers. I’ll go on there sometimes, though I will try to stop doing this now because you read several pages of venomous attack and you think: "maybe I won’t do that next week.’ But you can also get trapped into thinking, ‘Oh, yeah, this somehow represents what is really going on out there." And I’m sorry, it doesn’t. It represents a sliver of what is going on."

Speaking of Obama’s legislative agenda, on last Sunday’s Meet the Press, it stuck out that Gregory seemed insulted that former Rep. J.D. Hayworth would use the words "socialist" and "Obama" in the same sentence:

GREGORY: You are in a, a primary battle for re-election against former Republican Congressman J.D. Hayworth of Arizona. And on the issue of health care, this is what he says on his Web site, on the issues, "Nowhere is the Obama administration’s socialist agenda more evident than in their attempts to grab control over 17 percent of our nation’s economy." Socialist agenda, do you think that goes too far?

McCAIN: Look, you’ll have to have Mr. Hayworth on to explain the things he says.

GREGORY: All right.

McCAIN: I’m, I’m not ready to do that.

GREGORY: Do you think that goes too far?

McCAIN: Oh, well…

GREGORY: That this is a socialist agenda from the president?

McCAIN: Look, look, there is no doubt in my mind America’s a right-of-center nation and this administration is governing from the left. That’s why the president’s approval rating’s continued to, to decline. And I know you want to get off health care, and I will. But I want to say again–and Eric Cantor who’s coming on later will affirm this–we want to sit down and have negotiations, and we have a positive agenda, and we would love to see that agenda…

GREGORY: But–OK, but…

McCAIN: Yes.

GREGORY: …my question is do you think that kind of–because you’ve heard that description before, not just from J.D. Hayworth but others. Does it go too far to say the president’s agenda is a socialist agenda?

McCAIN: I, I think I gave my description. I think they’re governing from the left on a broad variety of issues, but I’ll let others speak for themselves. I, I have enough time taking care of my own misstatements.

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The leftist blog The Raw Story is hyping an exclusive: "Famed NYT reporter tells Michael Moore capitalism driving humanity’s downfall." It’s merely an outtake from Moore’s hostile movie Capitalism: A Love Story. Former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, the radical author of books like "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America," warns of the coming eco-catastrophe.

But in one clip cut from the documentary — which Moore provided exclusively to Raw Story — he interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, who explains how capitalism is actually contributing to the very downfall of the human race and the "degradation of the planet."

Hedges is not a scientist. He’s been a foreign correspondent. It’s anybody’s guess how reporting from Africa or the Middle East makes you an authority on climate patterns:

"All sorts of people who have spent their lives studying climate change, from Bill McKibben on down, have warned us that we don’t have a lot of time left," Hedges said. "So it’s not just that capitalism has destroyed our economic system and hijacked our political system, but it literally is extinguishing the system that sustains life.

If that’s not thwarted, soon — and we already know that the planet will continue to heat up, no matter what we do, even if we were to stop 60 percent of our emissions now, which is sort of the minimum that most people are calling for….we will begin to see massive dislocations, environmental refugees, further depleting of natural resources. Overpopulation is also an issue. The UN estimates that by 2050 the size of the planet will double."

Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, a spinoff of the hard-left magazine The Nation. That’s a comfortable anti-capitalist match. He was awarded an honorary doctorate along with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright last May  from a Unitarian Universalist seminary, the Starr King School for the Ministry, in Berkeley, California.

Hedges recently wrote that Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney were right about Barack Obama being part of the corporate state, and that the time has come to support third-party candidates like Nader for the White House. 

If the New York Times thinks it’s fair to associate the tea-party movement with its most radical elements, can we do the same with them?

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Cam Edwards at NRANews.com passed along a New Jersey Star-Ledger story showing how gun dealers are held in low esteem. Matt Carmel of Maplewood, New Jersey was rejected when he applied to sponsor a little-league baseball team:

Carmel, a licensed gun dealer, applied to sponsor a team in the local Babe Ruth/Cal Ripken baseball league, using the name of his business — Constitution Arms.

He was rebuffed.

"Arbitrary, capricious and unfair," Carmel said of the perceived slight. "I don’t like being pigeonholed."

But what really makes the story maddening (and worth wider attention and commentary) are the sponsors that have been allowed:

But, Carmel notes, other sponsors could be deemed "inappropriate" as well. The league overseers, he said, have permitted sellers of liquor and tobacco, as well as a Cluck-U Chicken eatery whose promos feature a scantily clad woman in a bikini with the suggestive words "Large Breasts, Juicy Thighs. Luscious Legs."

One would think that people who are nervous about controversy might avoid a "Cluck-U Chicken" team for young boys. Here’s more detail:

It all started in October, when Carmel, an NRA certified pistol instructor and licensed firearm dealer, sent a letter to the South Orange-Maplewood Baseball Committee, which oversees 120 softball and baseball teams with 1,250 children ages 5 to 15.

Since his 10-year-old son, Kalman, had played the season before, Carmel wanted to put up the $300 fee to sponsor a team himself.

But in an 8-1 vote, the volunteer committee said thanks, but no thanks.

"I voted against it," said Craig Gruber, secretary of the committee. "Personally … given the nature of that business, I’m certain there’d be quite a bit of contention. We don’t need the headache. … We have our hands full with deciding whether infield fly rules should be in effect for 9-year-olds."

Carmel said he learned of the decision via e-mail last Sunday, after weeks of exchanging letters that warned of the "potential controversy."

The committee, Gruber said, hasn’t taken up-or-down votes on sponsors, at least in his seven years’ experience. But this time, Constitution Arms caught its eye.

"My sense was the backlash would be extraordinary," he said.

To Carmel, the rejection flies in the face of the perception South Orange-Maplewood, which share a school system, is a proverbial big tent open to all ideas.

"Only if you agree with them," he said. "But if you don’t, the tent is not that big."

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In the upside-down universe of the Daily Kos, Tom Brokaw is a conservative who rooted for Bush-Cheney, and his Thursday night CNBC special on Boomers lauded the "Greatest Generation" at the expense of the real patriots, the ones that dropped acid and protested the evil military-industrial complex that ran America:

I know plenty of people with battle scars from nightsticks and tear gas who did it out of a love for this country and dedication to its founding principals [sic]. Kent State proved to all of us that we didn’t have free speech. Our country, our National Guard would open fire on any student and not just those who protested. If we didn’t agree to die in Vietnam - they’d kill us here instead.

We got the message Mr. Brokaw. Our country killed our heroes and was taking aim at us. It would have been safer to go along with the establishment. But these were people of conscience, people of great courage. They were patriots in the truest sense of the word.

Brokaw goes on to say that most people were pro-war and cites the election of Richard Nixon as proof. Richard Nixon who promised to end the war in six months, and then let it drag on for another five years. Richard Nixon who defeated a Democratic Party that was torn apart by the assassination of our primary candidate Robert Kennedy.

Mr. Brokaw the people who survived the depression and won the war and freed the Jews from Nazi concentration camps were our parents. When they came home from the war, America had the only functioning economy in the world. The television said "See the USA in your Chevrolet" and they did. The made up for what they lost by going on a buying binge. They discovered GI loans and bought houses and cars and shiny new appliances and boats and kids, lots and lots of kids. But life in those identical houses that lined suburban streets was not always as good as it looked. Some of those soldiers brought the war home with them. Some of those soldiers made war on their families. Some of those soldiers made homes that were concentration camps. And we were those children.

We wanted no war. We knew that all the fancy gadgets in the world would not buy happiness. But most of all, we hated the lie, the smile for the photographs lie.

The women, who had kept the home fires burning and kept the rivets in the planes during the war, were told to remember their place and sent to the kitchen. Soldiers who had fought bravely were denied the right to vote in the county they defended. The black soldiers were sent to ghettos that looked a lot like concentration camps.

We looked at the black soldiers and said, isn’t that just like what the Nazis did? Aren’t we better than the Nazis? We looked at women who had been capable of building airplanes and were now being told that they couldn’t turn on the television properly. We wondered why.

We watched the Nuremburg trials and swore never to be Good Germans. We never wanted to commit atrocities simply because we were following orders. We questioned authority. We rejected inequality everywhere we found it. We fought, peacefully at first, to make our country better. More just.

Yes, Mr. Brokaw, we are the children of your Greatest Generation. We are their creation. So if we failed, so did they. But you’re wrong, we didn’t fail.

Look around Mr. Brokaw. See the colors and the beautiful diversity? Inequality still exists but very few people try to justify it. Very few people say it’s "God’s way." We made our presence known. We made this a better country even if you are blind to it.

Mr. Brokaw, I thought I saw you grin when you announced that Bush had defeated Gore. You turned away quickly but I’m sure I saw it. Is that why you were so very slow to see that Bush was incompetent? Or were you, like him, itching for another game of war?

Apparently, in the land of the Kosmonauts, unless the radical left is in charge of the government, America is a predator nation that should be hated. Even now, with Obama and liberals in charge of Congress, these people still spit at the alleged awfulness of Americans to see the radical light. On Monday, a blog by "One Pissed Off Liberal" unloaded on the country, since nothing has changed yet from the hellish Bush-Cheney era:

Back in October a poll was published declaring the USA to be the world’s most admired country… Assuming there is any substance to the poll results at all…I hate to ponder what it means for the rest of the world.

Sure, we overcame our racism enough to elect Barack Obama, but beyond that what have we really accomplished? We are still living a nightmare…

Bush is gone. Cheney’s gone. But sadly, somehow, some way, for some f—ed-up reason their brainless criminal moronic a–hole policies are still very much with us. Tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires? Check. Bush wars? Check and double check. Lobbyist infestation of government? Yessirie bob. Secrecy? Domestic spying? Gitmo? Torture? Police state tactics? Yep, yep, yep, yep and yep.

And now suddenly, supposedly, we’re the most admired nation in the world? Go figure. The land where war criminals and torturers get off Scot-free? The country that didn’t have the common decency to impeach Bush/Cheney? The country that gave up single-payer without a fight? The land where the opinions of war criminals are deemed worthy of publication in prominent national magazines? 37th in healthcare, 19th in preventable deaths, 16th in secondary education, first in warmongering imperialism, first in the imprisonment of its own citizens, unemployment, homelessness and foreclosures through the roof, world’s biggest debtor nation at 12 trillion dollars and counting, home of Fox News, corporate personhood, compulsory health insurance, those awesome teabaggers, the dead-assed dollar and way more than our fair share of the dumbest motherf—ers on the planet – what’s not to admire eh?

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In one of those segments so beloved by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Tuesday’s Joy Behar Show on CNN Headline News featured Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir. In the midst of jokey discusssion about how even fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi thought Weir was "too gay" for figure skating, Behar brought up Jesus and Parade magazine’s controversial recent interview:

BEHAR: Ok, so he said you were too gay, A little too gay. And Elton John, by the way, says Jesus, he thinks Jesus was gay. So you’re in very good company.

WEIR: I suppose so. I think Jesus was a woman.

BEHAR: You do? Okay, well, that could make news, it’s possible.

Earlier, Behar had referred to two "nasty" Canadians who suggested there might need to be a "gender test" to figure out where Weir should compete:

BEHAR: But this — the two Canadian commentators said that you`re mannerisms might hurt other men competing in skating saying that you should get a gender test. That`s nasty.

WEIR: It`s very nasty.

BEHAR: I mean — you know –

WEIR: You know, like — I`m a figure skater, I`m an athlete. I was at the Olympics representing the United States –

BEHAR: Yes.

WEIR: — and myself and just showing everyone what I can do. And seven days after I actually finished the competition is when these comments surfaced. And I had to hold a press conference talking about my opinion about things and I`m totally an advocate of freedom of speech and freedom of expression.So I`m not hurt that the commentator said it. I just wish they would think before they actually said it. There are so many kids like me coming after me whose parents might repress them just because they saw what these guys said about me, that their kids are going to turn out to be like me.

BEHAR: Yes.

WEIR: And I think me is pretty fabulous.

BEHAR: You are fabulous and I love your Snooki hairdo, also. [Snooki is a cast member of MTV's reality series Jersey Shore.]

WEIR: Thank you, it’s Marie Antoinette.

BEHAR: Oh, Marie Antoinette, not Snooki?

WEIR: No.

BEHAR: Oh, okay. So Snooki must have stolen it from Marie Antoinette also?

WEIR: I think so, but you know what? I don’t know that much about Snooki. Is she cool?

BEHAR: That’s okay. Don`t worry about it.

Earlier in the chat, Weir also suggested that he deserved the gold medal, instead of sixth. He suggested that skating is a "political sport," and there was only one spot on the medal stand for an American. It was an Evgeny Plushenko moment, but on this occasion, the I-was-robbed routine came from the home front:

BEHAR: You wanted the gold. Well, everybody wants the gold.

WEIR: Well, everyone wants the gold.

BEHAR: Yes.

WEIR: Well, I felt like that day I deserved it.

BEHAR: You did.

WEIR: And I was great. It was the best I had ever been. But figure skating is a judged sport, a political sport. And there was already one American assured a medal — a medal spot and maybe they were saving room for the — two Americans couldn’t be on that –

BEHAR: Well, that could be some — maybe the choice is all political at times you know?

WEIR: Absolutely.

BEHAR: But you had a lot of controversies with the whole Olympic Committee. I mean, they`re a little nasty. Are these two Canadians –

WEIR: They’re staid, I like to say.

BEHAR: They are very staid?

WEIR: Yes, just very rigid and frigid in some cases.

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Jon Stewart aired a long satire segment on Wednesday bashing Fox News and Megyn Kelly for suggesting the Democratic health-care reform bill was unpopular. But when Stewart turned to actual data instead of humor, was he innocent of manipulating the polls? A quick look proves Stewart and his researchers mangled the poll numbers he used on screen. Near the very end of his Megynoscopy, poll numbers ran past Stewart’s head as he said:

Numbers don’t lie. Now sure, with polling, you can always come in with caveats like ‘well, it depends on how the question was asked’ or you could point to other polls that Americans do want the health care reform bill [applause] , and that a majority favor the public option, and a plurality support this bill’s actual provisions once the provisions are explained to them.

Anyone reading the small print on screen (which might require a rewind) can see that The Daily Show wasn’t proving Americans "do want the health-care reform bill." Instead, Stewart was citing two poll questions that asked merely if Congress should "keep trying to pass" a health plan or should Congress "give up."

Even conservatives might choose "keep trying  to pass" with the idea that conservative reforms might be considered. Choosing "give up" sounds cynical and negative.

Stewart ran an ABC News-Washington Post poll number that 63 percent should keep trying to pass a plan. But the actual money question of Yes or No on the health plan in that February poll was 47 percent in favor, 49 percent opposed.

Stewart also ran a February Quinnipiac University poll that 52 percent favor the "keep trying" option over the "give up" option. That poll is much more dramatic: 35 percent favor the current bills in Congress, while 54 percent disapprove.

Now add Stewart’s biggest stretch: his poll that a majority favor a public option – 59 percent in a CBS/New York Times poll – is from December 4 to 8. Speaking of "how the question was asked," it was the usual do you favor "the choice" of a public option "to compete" with private health plans?

"Would you favor or oppose the government offering some people who are uninsured the choice of a government-administered health insurance plan — also known as a ‘public option’ — that would compete with private health insurance plans?"

The fourth poll Stewart featured was the lamest (and one we already took apart): that a "plurality" support the bill’s provisions "once they’re explained to them." But their original numbers in that February Newsweek poll were 40 percent in favor, 49 percent opposed – before Jon Meacham’s hired pollsters started listing all the favorable-sounding things and pushed people again to switch their opinion.

If the best argument liberals like Stewart can make is that perhaps Democrats should pass a health care bill that a "plurality" supports after pushed around by pollsters, then the desperate spinners are not the Fox News personnel.

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