Nationally syndicated liberal radio host Thom Hartmann is no Keith Olbermann — he’s not allergic to conservatives on his show. But that doesn’t mean he’s kind, or even fair. Focus on the Family has a new "True Tolerance" campaign focused on stopping school bullying — against everyone — but without programs that promote moral acceptance of homosexuality. FOTF’s Candi Cushman appeared on CNN this week to debate this, but Anderson Cooper wasn’t half as rough as Hartmann on Thursday afternoon. He mentioned that gay teens are much more likely to attempt suicide than straight teens and then just asked Cushman, point blank: "How many more children will have to die before you guys back off?"

This, in itself, is a form of bullying. You must accept left-wing lesson plans formulated by Obama "safe schools" czar Kevin Jennings and his group GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) or you favor gay teen suicide. Like a typical liberal, Hartmann wants the liberal, secular worldview on sexuality taught because it’s based on "science" and the opposing conservative view is infected by religion, which must not be allowed to inform a viewpoint anywhere in a public school. He lectured Cushman:

The reason why I don’t want your viewpoints promoted in school is, a) they’re not based in science, they’re based in religion, and I believe in a separation of church and state, and b) taken to the extreme, maybe not yours but many of the people in your movement, what they do is they cause more kids to commit suicide…I think that you and the work that you’re doing and the people who you’re associated with are creating an environment that is killing our children. 

Hartmann has provided yet another example of how liberal talk radio is not a reasonable or civil space to discuss and debate issues. It’s far too often a forum for mudslinging of the most vicious kind.

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The Poynter Institute welcomed disgraced former CBS anchor Dan Rather to share his thoughts on his long career and on the media in general this week. In an interview with Poynter’s Mallary Tenore, he complained "So often, particularly covering politics, enterprises that describe themselves as journalistic enterprises, and journalists who describe themselves as journalists, in fact just become transmission belts."

That’s exactly what Poynter’s interview was, a transmission belt for Rather’s lamest hits, including how the press needs a "spine transplant" and his shameless insistence that his phony-documents Texas Air National Guard story is still true. If Poynter cared about the reputation of journalism, why continue to entertain and spread doubt about the falsehood of Rather’s most atrocious "scoop"?

The only thing fresh here is Rather’s growing socialism, as he insists (just like Bill Moyers) that money is corrupting politics and the government needs to break some alleged media monopoly where only four mega-corporations distribute most of America’s news:

So number one is journalists need to get back to their business of being patriotic journalists in a free and democratic country and perform their function as watchdogs, as part of the system of checks and balances. We all know that huge sums of money are corrupting the whole political process, beginning with elections.

For example, the last presidential election in this country, when all was said and done and you put everything together, costs more than $2 billion. That’s what was spent through the primaries, through the general election, all told. That money, not all of it came from special interests, but the bulk of it came from special interests — big pharmaceutical companies, big broadcasting networks, television, radio, electronic, big labor — and that’s a very short list. But you have a more recent example here in Florida where just to win a primary, at least two candidates spend what, more than $50 million or $60 million of their own money. This has reached the serious out-of-whack stage.

So you say how can we improve coverage? Getting serious about where the money comes from, who gives it to whom, for what purpose — and most of it is given for a purpose. The case can be made — and I’m here to make it — that very large, international corporations, conglomerates control the government, and I would include some elements of big labor in that.

The public is not well-served by political coverage as it is today. And I think it has to be noted, and there’s no joy in noting this, that in many important ways, very big business is in bed with big government and whoever’s in power in Washington, whether it be Republicans or Democrats — not in the public interest, but in the business interest of the huge corporations and in the staying in power business of those in Washington. And this seriously affects news coverage.

Someone might say, well what is he talking about? Well let me give you an example. As recently as the 1950s, mid-1950s, there were more than 50 news enterprises, which is to say businesses, in the country that could accurately be described as having national distribution or large regional distribution.

Now, there are no more than six, and I would argue only four, very large conglomerate, international corporations who control more than 80 percent of the national distribution of news. This is out of whack. Let me pause and say I’ve never worked for anybody in the enterprise other than a profit-making enterprise. I believe in the capital system, but as applied to media, we have in no small degree monopolies now.

Now a great Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt did his party great service, and more importantly his country a great service, by breaking up the trust, which is to say the monopolies at the turn of the 20th century…. I’m not a business person, but in the end I think they’re not in the best interest of American business. I recognize that one gets criticized very heavily when get into this area, but I’m at the age and stage in my own career where I try to draw from my experience.

I love this country, I want the country to be better for my children and grandchildren as most Americans do. And when and if the public finally get focused on this — that too few big international companies control too much of the national news distribution — then I think it may change. But until the public really understands what is happening with this, and understands that it is not a special pleading of journalists such as myself, can we come back to a really vibrant, truly independent, fiercely independent press that is important to the survival of freedom and representing government as we know it.

Rather should really be writing for The Nation or Mother Jones, with this kind of hard-left talk about capitalism despoiling democracy.

Poynter’s Tenore is especially embarrassing when asking Rather about the latest Internet trends, where he is clearly not well versed. He claimed "There are very few journalism enterprises on the Internet" and couldn’t answer whether he has his own personal Facebook page:  "I don’t think so." Shouldn’t a journalist who insists his craft is so grievously lacking be a little more up-to-date?

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In 2005, NBC and MSNBC and CNN were up in arms that conservative “Jeff Gannon” was allowed into the White House briefing room by Team Bush to ask “questions other reporters considered softballs.” Up until now, liberal talk-radio hosts like Ed Schultz have been seated in the front row of Obama press conferences, but they didn’t ask softball questions. On Thursday, it happened. Liberal radio host Bill Press asked press secretary Robert Gibbs to denounce Glenn Beck’s attacks on the president’s “committed Christianity.”

BILL PRESS: Robert, over the last four days, Glenn Beck has criticized the president for believing in liberation theology, which he calls a Marxist form of Christianity. Two questions, Does the president, in your knowledge, even know what liberation theology is?

ROBERT GIBBS: I don’t know the answer to that. I will say this, Bill, um, a crude paraphrasing of an old quote, and that is, people are entitled to their own opinion, as ill-informed as it may be, but they’re not entitled to their own facts. The president is a committed, mainstream Christian. I don’t, I have no evidence that would guide me, as to what [whether?] Glenn Beck would have any genuine knowledge as to what the president does and does not believe.

PRESS: So this Marxist form of Christianity?

GIBBS: Again, I can only imagine where Mr. Beck conjured that from.

The double-ignorance of this exchange is impressive. How can Bill Press suggest that Barack Obama is ignorant about anything? They’re defending Obama now by suggesting he’s uninformed about progressive strains of Christianity? For his part, Gibbs is stonewalling athletically to assert there’s no evidence that any Obama opponent could assemble to assert Obama’s church of two decades, Trinity United Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago, embraced "black liberation theology" and its leading light, James Cone. In defending Obama, the liberal magazine The Christian Century acknowledged:

There is no denying, however, that a strand of radical black political theology influences Trinity. James Cone, the pioneer of black liberation theology, is a much-admired figure at Trinity. Cone told me that when he’s asked where his theology is institutionally embodied, he always mentions Trinity.

Video of the Meet Bill Press exchange is supportively offered at a Hillary Clinton-founded media pressure group.

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MSNBC’s Morning Joe seemed to be trying very hard to avoid the Discovery Channel hostage incident on Thursday morning — even though NBC had the exclusive of speaking with hostage-taker James Jay Lee before he was shot. With Willie Geist and Chris Jansing guest-hosting the show, they talked a lot about Middle East peace negotiations, and Hurricane Earl, and sinking Democratic midterm prospects, and even anonymously sourced hit jobs against alleged serial liar Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair. In the whole three hours, they never blabbed with guests about James Lee’s inspirational figures or his ultra-left website weirdness.

The subject only came up about six minutes into the 6 am hour, before a Tom Costello news report. Jansing relayed: “Disturbing details are emerging about that gunman who was shot and killed yesterday after holding three people hostage at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Maryland. Court records show the 43-year-old, identified as James Jay Lee, was a radical environmentalist who said he experienced quote, ‘an awakening’ when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. In a manifesto Lee wrote, he also railed against shows like Kate Plus Eight for encouraging the birth rate [of] quote, “parasitic human infants.”

At 7:30, after another airing of the Costello report, Geist and Jansing talked to NBC News producer Rob Rivas, but even as Rivas vaguely mentioned the Lee manifesto, the hosts stepped right around any loose talk about Lee’s eco-inspirations:

GEIST: First of all, how did you get the guy on the horn?

RIVAS: Well, we had initial reports of some kind of situation at the Discovery Channel but nothing confirmed so as part of our standard operating procedure, we started calling authorities and one of the places we happened to call was the discovery channel and in the course of making that conversation, he answered the phone.

GEIST: He answered the phone.

CHRIS JANSING: I mean, what goes through your mind? You’re calling to get a confirmation presumably from somebody who works in public relations for discovery and next thing you know, you have a potentially volatile situation on your hands.

RIVAS: Well, absolutely, and you know, as soon as we found out that to the best of our knowledge this was, in fact, the gentleman who was making threats against the building, we contacted the police immediately, and we just — I did my best just to keep him on the line. I figured if he was talking to me, he wasn’t doing anything else in the building, hopefully.

MIKE BARNICLE: When did you realize that you were talking to the suspect?

RIVAS: Well, he sounded like an individual when we called the facility that didn’t belong there. He seemed a little bit anxious and he identified himself right away as the gentleman who was, in fact, you know, wearing a device.

BARNICLE: There was a very good line of inquiry, just in the clips that we played. How did you get there with the questions? It was very good.

RIVAS: Well, you know, you never want to be part of the story. I just wanted to get as much information that was pertinent to hopefully report it in the future, but also you want to keep him talking. He was very actively promoting his website, which was sort of a manifesto, if you will, of several bullet points. So at the same time we were asking him questions, we were reading the website where we could go next with the questioning, primarily just to keep him on the line.

That was the obvious place to shift to the politics, but MSNBC wasn’t going there.

GEIST: How long did you keep him on the phone? How long was the call?

RIVAS: Probably about 10, 15 minutes max.

JANSING: Did he hang upon you ?

RIVAS: He did. He got another phone call or a phone rang in the background and he dropped off of our line.

GEIST: And at what stage of the crisis was this? Was this early on? Was this right before he was shot, or where was this?

RIVAS: This was several hours before he was shot. I believe the police or someone was trying to get in contact with him because it probably continued another three hours before it ended.

Mike Barnicle strangely thought of the human connection between reporter and eco-terrorist, but Rivas admirably shifted the sympathy back to the innocent folks:

BARNICLE: How’d you feel? You know, you talked to him at 2:00 and at 5:30, the guy you talked to on the phone had been shot to death.

RIVAS: It’s surreal, and I’m just glad nobody in the building, none of the innocent folks were hurt.

GEIST: Rob, you did a great job on the phone, keeping him on the line. Good questions. Thanks for coming in to tell us about it.

Rivas might not have been the first choice for windy analysis of the Big Picture. But it’s fascinating that MSNBC can do entire one-hour Chris Matthews specials about the frightening, impending dangers of right-wing rhetoric, and then go all silent when the threats and violence emerge from the other side of the ideological fence.

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Never tell a feminist politician she’s "attractive" and "a good mother." To some, that’s a "toxic" insult.

Thursday’s Washington Post offered a story on how "Women’s groups target sexism in campaigns: Advocates monitoring what they call ‘toxic’ media environment." Reporter Krissah Thompson never identified the groups as "liberal," or even "feminist," or noted that one of them, the Women’s Media Center, (foolishly) opposed an innocuous Tim Tebow pro-life Super Bowl ad as offensive without having seen it. Thompson began:

The list includes the radio talk show host who called a female senator a "prostitute" for cutting a deal to benefit her state, the male challenger who referred to his female rival [as] "attractive" and "probably a good mother," and the TV host who noted that the candidate’s wife looked like an angry woman.

Those comments and others have been collected by a group of advocates for women running for office who are monitoring what they consider a "highly toxic" media environment that makes it difficult for female candidates.

Thompson’s Post article never explains that the "attractive"-wielding offender was being "toxic" to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the Democrat appointed to  replace Hillary Clinton from New York. Jill Marcellus at the Women’s Media Center recently wrote up a ticket for Republican candidate Bruce Blakeman:

“I think Kirsten Gillibrand is an attractive woman, I think she’s bright, and I think she’s probably a good mom herself,” Blakeman announced Tuesday at a debate with rivals Joe DioGuardi and David Malpass.

If you’re experiencing some 1950s flashbacks right now, it’s not just because of the black and white photo of the candidates, arranged in height order, found at that link.  It’s 2010, and we are still judging women by ‘50s standards.  True, Blakeman’s concession that the successful leader is “bright” could bear on her qualifications as a Senator, but he sandwiches it between evaluations of her looks and of her skills as a mother.

Blakeman, of course, believes this is a compliment:

“I hope Senator Gillibrand will say that I’m bright, that I’m attractive and that I’m a good dad. I’d be very happy with that and I would not be offended.”

He wouldn’t be offended because it would never occur to Senator Gillibrand or anyone else to say that about him at a debate.  With his comments, he admits that he sees her first as woman, and second, if at all, as a politician.  Gender never obscures Blakeman’s role in office.

A comment is not a compliment if it suggests a politician shouldn’t be in the Senate because she belongs in the home.

That’s funny. You might think it would be an insult to feminists if you said Gillibrand was ugly, stupid, and said she was a bad mother for having a career. But it’s an insult if you say anything personal about her at all. (For her part Gillibrand said she was much more concerned about the GOP’s Bush-trickle-down answers, and when a reporter pressed if she had cringed, she laughed and said "I smiled." She’s obviously not feminist enough.)

The irony of all this is that the GOP candidates were asked in the debate to say something nice about Gillibrand, and they’re hardly going to say they think her policy ideas are fantastic. Even "say something nice" questions are a minefield. Perhaps Blakeman should have said "no thanks. I don’t have anything nice to say about her."

Thompson’s report suggested conservative talk-show hosts were going to get pressed: "The effort to track sexist comments and put pressure on advertisers that help bankroll the media figures responsible for some of the remarks comes as women campaign in several high-profile races this year, including for governorships in South Carolina and California as well as Senate seats."

Nowhere in the story do the feminist groups cite the unsubstantiated charges of adultery against South Carolina Republican Nikki Haley, but they do express outrage that people questioned that Sarah Palin could be a good mother and be vice president. But then, those offenders included people in the liberal media who are supposedly feminist.

For the record, in Thompson’s lede, she also neglected to say the talk show host tossing the "prostitute" moniker was Glenn Beck talking about Sen. Mary Landrieu being offered millions in Medicaid funds for her state in exchange for her support of ObamaCare. The talker who said a candidate’s wife looked angry was Bill O’Reilly talking about Michelle Obama.

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The secular-left stronghold of National Public Radio dumped on conservative Christians again last week. On the August 25 edition of the nationally distributed talk show Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the topic was Christianity vs. Islam in northern Africa. Gross’s guest was author Eliza Griswold, who Gross explained was the daughter of Frank Griswold, "the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America in 2003, when Gene Robinson became the first openly gay person ordained as a bishop in the church."

With those PC credentials established, Gross asked about Griswold accompanying Rev. Franklin Graham to Sudan in the Bush years, when Graham asked the Muslim dictator there for the right to preach the Christian gospel, and he was refused. But NPR’s Gross was most worried that "very extreme" Graham was ruining America’s reputation in the Third World:  

GROSS: I guess, you know, I’m wondering, when Franklin Graham, who was perceived in the United States by a lot of people as very extreme, when he goes to a place like Sudan, establishes hospitals there, meets with the president, is he seen as representative of what Americans believe?

Ms. GRISWOLD: Very, very much so. And that is one of the more dangerous realities of how conservative evangelicals abroad can shape the perception of the West.

Especially, this is especially sensitive in the Muslim world. And this is not new. You know, I mean, this really goes back to post-World War II and the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which largely came out of trying to be a Muslim YMCA because the only Westerners Muslims saw at that time were Christian evangelicals coming to spread their faith.

So this kind of defensive posturing of Islam, Islam is under threat by the West, unfortunately, a handful of evangelicals can misrepresent what the West is about and make Muslims feel very much under threat.

So blame the YMCA for radical Muslim groups. That’s a view NPR spreads with our tax dollars. In the other interview on that August 25 show, Gross spoke (again) with leftist author Jeff Sharlet, promoting his new article in the September issue of Harper’s magazine, entitled  "Straight Man’s Burden: The American Roots of Uganda’s Anti-Gay Persecution." Uganda’s debating a bill that would punish homosexual sex with the death penalty, and American leftists blame American conservatives for the "genocidal" threat. It turned out that Uganda’s legislators had found Sharlet through his appearances on Gross’s show.

SHARLET: And because Ive been reporting on it, and here was, really, the author of this really potentially genocidal bill, saying come on over and I’ll tell you what it’s all about. I thought I had to take him up on that invitation.

GROSS: How did he know your work? (Laughter)

SHARLET: "Fresh Air," actually.

GROSS: Oh. (Laughter)

SHARLET: Because we had spoken about this before and a sort of a report on that interview was on the front page, I believe, of major Ugandan newspaper. And it sort of amped things up a little bit.

In a 25-minute interview, Gross and Sharlet didn’t really focus hard on which American Christians are for "genocide," although Sharlet talked about evangelist Lou Engle. Sharlet talked about how Ugandan legislator David Bahati told him he’d be arrested for promoting homosexuality if he returned again to Uganda. Obviously, this being NPR, Gross wasn’t going to discuss how promoting opposition to homosexuality is beginning to get preachers in legal trouble in the West.

NPR’s pledge drives ought to say "NPR is where you can learn more about the far corners of the globe, and how conservative Christians are ruining our image there, and may be responsible for causing oppression and death."

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The secular-left stronghold of National Public Radio dumped on conservative Christians again last week. On the August 25 edition of the nationally distributed talk show Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the topic was Christianity vs. Islam in northern Africa. Gross’s guest was author Eliza Griswold, who Gross explained was the daughter of Frank Griswold, "the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America in 2003, when Gene Robinson became the first openly gay person ordained as a bishop in the church."

With those PC credentials established, Gross asked about Griswold accompanying Rev. Franklin Graham to Sudan in the Bush years, when Graham asked the Muslim dictator there for the right to preach the Christian gospel, and he was refused. But NPR’s Gross was most worried that "very extreme" Graham was ruining America’s reputation in the Third World:  

GROSS: I guess, you know, I’m wondering, when Franklin Graham, who was perceived in the United States by a lot of people as very extreme, when he goes to a place like Sudan, establishes hospitals there, meets with the president, is he seen as representative of what Americans believe?

Ms. GRISWOLD: Very, very much so. And that is one of the more dangerous realities of how conservative evangelicals abroad can shape the perception of the West.

Especially, this is especially sensitive in the Muslim world. And this is not new. You know, I mean, this really goes back to post-World War II and the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which largely came out of trying to be a Muslim YMCA because the only Westerners Muslims saw at that time were Christian evangelicals coming to spread their faith.

So this kind of defensive posturing of Islam, Islam is under threat by the West, unfortunately, a handful of evangelicals can misrepresent what the West is about and make Muslims feel very much under threat.

So blame the YMCA for radical Muslim groups. That’s a view NPR spreads with our tax dollars. In the other interview on that August 25 show, Gross spoke (again) with leftist author Jeff Sharlet, promoting his new article in the September issue of Harper’s magazine, entitled  "Straight Man’s Burden: The American Roots of Uganda’s Anti-Gay Persecution." Uganda’s debating a bill that would punish homosexual sex with the death penalty, and American leftists blame American conservatives for the "genocidal" threat. It turned out that Uganda’s legislators had found Sharlet through his appearances on Gross’s show.

SHARLET: And because Ive been reporting on it, and here was, really, the author of this really potentially genocidal bill, saying come on over and I’ll tell you what it’s all about. I thought I had to take him up on that invitation.

GROSS: How did he know your work? (Laughter)

SHARLET: "Fresh Air," actually.

GROSS: Oh. (Laughter)

SHARLET: Because we had spoken about this before and a sort of a report on that interview was on the front page, I believe, of major Ugandan newspaper. And it sort of amped things up a little bit.

In a 25-minute interview, Gross and Sharlet didn’t really focus hard on which American Christians are for "genocide," although Sharlet talked about evangelist Lou Engle. Sharlet talked about how Ugandan legislator David Bahati told him he’d be arrested for promoting homosexuality if he returned again to Uganda. Obviously, this being NPR, Gross wasn’t going to discuss how promoting opposition to homosexuality is beginning to get preachers in legal trouble in the West.

NPR’s pledge drives ought to say "NPR is where you can learn more about the far corners of the globe, and how conservative Christians are ruining our image there, and may be responsible for causing oppression and death."

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Twitter can be a very revealing place to learn about "objective" journalists. ABC Nightline anchor Terry Moran tweeted on Tuesday there was a "Great piece" by Newsweek columnist Dahlia Lithwick on the liberal site Slate.com suggesting that Sarah Palin owed her every success to the real Mama Grizzly, leftist Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who never found an abortion she wouldn’t defend. Palin was a fraud next to the real feminist. But Moran (and Lithwick) blamed their fellow liberals for not supporting a left-wing Palin figure: 

In a thoughtful piece in the New York Times, Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister argued that Democrats have given up on full-throated feminism, and in doing so have ceded the field to Palin and her clan of Grizzlies. Holmes and Traister point out the irony that it was progressives who launched Palin’s meteoric rise: "As a teen, she played basketball thanks to Title IX; as an adult, she enjoyed a professional life made possible by the involvement of her load-bearing husband Todd, entering Alaska’s governor’s mansion at 42 with four children in tow and giving birth to a fifth while there."

Democrats gave on on "full-throated feminism" as Obama plopped two hard-core female abortion advocates to the Supreme Court? That’s just odd. Lithwick didn’t include this paragraph in her article, which was the central thought of the Holmes/Traister piece: 

Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.

ABC’s Terry Moran no doubt agrees with that sentiment, too. But Lithwick only built on the notion that Palin owes Justice Ginsburg in a major way: 

To which I would just add that Palin and the Mama Grizzlies also owe a debt of thanks directly to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who almost single-handedly convinced the courts and legislatures to do away with gender classifications in matters ranging from a woman’s right to be executor of her son’s estate (Reed v. Reed, 1970), to a female Air Force lieutenant’s right to secure housing allowances and medical benefits for her husband (Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973), and the right of Oklahoma’s "thirsty boys" (her words) to buy beer at the Honk n’ Holler at the same age as young women (Craig v. Boren, 1976).

It was in Craig v. Boren that Ginsburg secured the court’s agreement that—in her words—the "familiar stereotype: the active boy, aggressive and assertive; the passive girl, docile and submissive" was "not fit to be written into law." The seed for Sarah Palin was sown. And whether Palin wants women to be allowed to buy beer at 18, or 21, or not at all, the fact that the legal system doesn’t care whether you’re a woman or a man anymore changed her life. You can draw a straight line between Ginsburg’s fight against these seemingly harmless gender classifications that were rooted in seemingly harmless gender stereotypes and the Mama Grizzlies who roam our political landscape today.

Those who like to believe they have picked themselves up by the bootstraps sometimes forget that they wouldn’t even have boots were it not for the women who came before. Listening to Palin, it’s almost impossible to believe that, as recently as 50 years ago, a woman at Harvard Law School could be asked by Dean Erwin Griswold to justify taking a spot that belonged to a man. In Ginsburg’s lifetime, a woman could be denied a clerkship with Felix Frankfurter just because she was a woman. Only a few decades ago, Ginsburg had to hide her second pregnancy for fear of losing tenure. I don’t have an easy answer to the question of whether real feminists are about prominent lipsticky displays of "girl-power," but I do know that Ginsburg’s lifetime dedication to achieving quiet, dignified equality made such displays possible….

This is what Terry Moran calls the "hard work of real feminism," but ignored the fringier parts of Ginsburg’s resume, like her advocacy in the 1970s for the sex-integration of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and of prisons, and of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Or her belief in a constitutional right to prostitution. Or her recent declaration to The New York Times that Medicaid should have paid for abortions since "there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."

Lithwick concluded her ABC-endorsed "great piece" with a love pat: 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn’t growl and doesn’t issue threats, and she rarely eats small forest dwellers. But she is still the mother of all grizzlies to me.

[Ginsburg caricature by Kerry Waghorn]

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The Washington Post put Glenn Beck on the front page again Tuesday with the headline "Beck’s marriage of politics and religion raising questions: Commentator may be unlikely leader for conservative Christians." Post religion correspondent Michelle Boorstein underlined why: Beck’s Mormonism. He sounded like an evangelist at his rally, and "Yet the Mormon convert seems an unlikely leader for conservative Christians, many of whom don’t regard Mormonism as part of their faith."

It’s clear that the Post editors are furious that Beck questioned Barack Obama’s claim to "committed" Christianity, so they are turning the tables. That theme runs through the whole Boorstein story, which raised the question if Beck had "seized the mantle of the religious right." Salem Radio hosts and executives clearly aren’t a stable of Beck fans:

"Politically, everyone is with it, but theologically, when he says the country should turn back to God, the question is: Which God?" said Tom Tradup, vice president for news and talk at Salem Radio Network, which serves more than 2,000 mostly Christian stations. "How much of this is turning to God? How much is religious revival and how much is a snake oil medicine show?"

Boorstein also quoted Salem host Janet Mefferd, who was just picked up nationally by Salem in March. (Beck’s radio show is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks.) Boorstein left the Salem affiliation out of the Mefferd quote. She didn’t like his talk of divine destiny:

"I’m a little nervous about that kind of talk," said Janet Mefferd, a nationally syndicated Christian talk show host who said most callers Monday wanted to talk about Beck. "I know he means well and loves this country, but he doesn’t know enough about theology to know what kind of effect he’s having. Christians are hearing something different than what he thinks he’s saying."

Mefferd’s website also links to an article insisting if Beck truly embraces Mormonism, he is not a Christian.

The Post’s On Faith blog was explicit in a headline:

Is Obama a Christian? Is Beck? Glenn Beck, a Mormon, says Obama is not a Christian.

It’s not uncommon for Christians to question Mormon theology. What’s uncommon is a liberal newspaper like The Washington Post suggesting someone’s not Christian enough for the Christian right. It’s like letting abortion advocates pick who leads the pro-life movement.

The first Christian leader featured in the story was Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, who found Beck’s attempt to get the blessings of religious-right leaders "extraordinary…I’ve never heard a cultural figure of that popularity taking that overtly about his faith. He sounded like Billy Graham." Boorstein later added:

Although he doesn’t consider Mormons to be Christians, Land said he agrees with Beck’s basic premise that American society must be "rebuilt from the bottom up." Land accepted an invitation to be part of a group of more than 200 clergy members whom Beck calls his "Black Robed Regiment," a reference to pastors from the Revolutionary War who stirred up opposition to colonial rule.

Asked who would be considered conservative Christian leaders today - with Graham in his 90s and the recent death of Jerry Falwell - Land said that "leaders are leaders because people follow them. Obviously, Glenn Beck is a leader. He’s in a category by himself. He’s not a minister, he’s not a politician."

The most ridiculous sentence in Boorstein’s story is yet another lame definition of "liberation" theology:

To those who embrace it, liberation theology is a means to empower the poor, the weak and politically oppressed. The term became politicized during the 2008 presidential campaign because it is used by Obama’s controversial former pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

As Stanley Kurtz noted, "Theologically," Wright’s theological hero James Cone affirms, "Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.’" Cone also wrote: "If God is not for us and against White people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of Black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the Black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

But The Washington Post thinks all the religious controversy belongs with Beck, not Barack Obama’s longtime pastor.

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On Monday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough returned to attacking the “anti-Muslim bigotry” inspiring protests against a Ground Zero mosque, asking Grover Norquist to denounce religious bigotry. Norquist obliged in a major way, comparing today’s Ground Zero activists to Calvinist leader Peter Stuyvesant trying to forbid synagogues in the New Amsterdam colony in the 1650s. Norquist explicitly suggested a Mormon like Beck should realize that he’s only been pushing the bigotry that was used against his own religious brethren.

Scarborough also bizarrely found scandal in Beck questioning Obama’s Christianity, insisting “I don’t really know what his version of Christianity is. But I don’t think it’s any of our business to judge other people’s religious faith. What? But Joe Scarborough definitely questioned the Christianity of ObamaCare opponents on July 21, 2009 as he pressed conservative Sens. Tom Coburn and John Barrasso:

SCARBOROUGH: In the ‘90s, everybody was wearing these "What Would Jesus Do" wrist bands. I wonder, what would Jesus think about walking in to any emergency room in any urban center at 11:00 or 12:00 at night and seeing all of these moms bringing their children from poor families who don’t have health care having to use emergency rooms as their primary care. Is that a moral system? Is there a better way to do it? How do we do it? We can’t just say no, can we?

On Monday morning, Scarborough begged Norquist to dispose of the notion that Beck was holding a religious rally:  

SCARBOROUGH: I think those people were there more out of fear, fear of where Washington’s heading than the people that were up on the stage. But Glenn Beck has said this was a religious rally. It wasn’t a political rally. That’s not really true, is it?

NORQUIST:  I tend to think most of the people were coming there because they were speaking to the concern and fear that people have about all the massive spending and debt that’s been coming down the pike. And he was making religious comments. I guess it’s helpful after the Romney campaign where there was so much anti-Mormon bigotry sort of under the surface that Beck, who’s a Mormon, could comfortably participate in a movement like that and perhaps we’re beginning to put anti-Mormon bigotry behind us.

SCARBOROUGH: But, but now we have anti-Muslim bigotry and you actually —

NORQUIST: They are sticking with the M’s.

SCARBOROUGH: You actually have Glenn Beck questioning Barack Obama’s version of Christianity. Now I really don’t know what his version of Christianity is. But I don’t think it is any of our business  to judge other people’s religious faith. I said it last week about Muslims and the week before about Muslims. I say it now about Glenn Beck, the day after this rally, questioning somebody’s version of Christianity. Isn’t there something a bit ominous about that and sort of throwing the Muslim shadow on Barack Obama? Because he thinks — I don’t think — he thinks that’s a bad thing.

NORQUIST: it’s an interesting question, because when the mosque in New York came up, the Forward newspaper, the Jewish newspaper in New York pointed out that in history, in Manhattan under the Dutch and the British, synagogues were illegal. So the sort of — People have been through this. When the anti-Mormon feeling was very strong in the United States, when UItah wanted to send a senator, a Mormon leader senator to congress — to the Senate, it took four years of hearings before he was seated. And in New York, Mormon missionaries were banned by the mayor. So when people look at modern political uses of religious bigotry, we’ve been there before with the Mormons. We’ve been there before with the Jews. And you sort of hope that people whose own religious heritages have been hit by that would recognize what is happening and speak out, as many are doing.

The article Norquist seems to be citing, by Brandeis professor Jonathan Sarna, isn’t quite as black and white as Norquist suggested. Stuyvesant, Sarna wrote, wanted Jews barred from the colony, but “Stuyvesant’s superiors in Holland overruled him, citing economic and political considerations.” In any case, comparing peaceful Jewish immigrants in the 1650s to Ground Zero after 3,000 Americans died is a flawed analogy.

From there, Mika Brzezinski pressed Norquist to declare that something more “substantive and productive” than anti-socialist fears was driving this protest:

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: But real quickly, what is the next step? Are you with a president who feels this is perhaps someone, a couple of people capitalizing on fears during tough economic times where there are many fears? Was it being driven by that, or something more substantive and productive? Was there a second sentence or —

SCARBOROUGH: What is the follow-up? Yeah.

NORQUIST: The follow-up, this is one of many rallies. I’m not a fan of national rallies. I would rather have had 300,000 people in 300 congressional districts with thousand-person rallies because that’s how you changes things and make real progress.

About ten minutes into the 6 A.M, Brzezinski noted that according to Gallup, Obama’s highest approval rating is among Muslims (78 percent, compared to 60 percent of Jews, 50 percent of Catholics, 43 percent among Protestants, and just 24 percent among Mormons). She insisted she liked Obama talking about his faith to defend himself and accused conservatives of "promulgating evil" by suggesting Obama’s a Muslim: 

I would say some even want it to be worse. It’s wrong, and incorrect and basically promulgating, I think, evil when you’re lying that way about someone’s heritage and then leaving — and about their faith and leaving kind of a dark nasty cloud over it and that is exactly what is happening. It is nothing less. And it should be condemned. 

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