FrontPage Magazine » Ben Johnson

Heartfelt Condolences to Teresa Heinz Kerry, Fighting Breast Cancer

Ben Johnson — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:45:43 +0000

Fighting the good fight.

I’m the author of two books on Teresa Heinz. The first, 57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry’s Radical Philanthropy, came out weeks before the 2004 election. The second, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s Radical Gifts, came out four years later. In tandem, they document how she used tax-exempt grants t0 underwrite the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the Tides Foundation, environmental extremists, and a film festival that glorified same-sex teacher-student pedophilia. Together, they run several hundred pages.

Teresa, who is notoriously harsh toward her critics, probably never thought a positive thought about me.

When I read of her diagnosis with breast cancer yesterday morning, my heart broke.

For too long, it’s been assumed ideological differences rend any ties of compassion. The politics of polarization have the incensed calling for one another’s blood. If they drive us to deny the good aspects of others, or wish them ill, it is proof we have poisoned our own souls.

According to the Huffington Post story, Teresa’s cancer was “discovered through mammography and argues that younger women should continue undergoing the tests despite a federal panel’s recent recommendation to reduce their frequency.” No, this will not be a jeremiad against health care rationing — it is a commendation for Teresa Heinz providing good and responsible advice in the wake of a devastating circumstance. It is to be hoped she will also provide a good example, when she overcomes cancer.

As head of a large, well-funded endowment, she is uniquely situated to offer more than advice. Channeling more of the tremendous resources at her disposal toward hospital care, medical equipment, and clinical research could make an immeasurable difference for the thousands of women who may face her affliction. And, according to her Catholic faith, these corporal acts of mercy would do much to commend her soul to God.

I have long been critical of anyone who pines for the deaths of his political opponents. There comes a time when transitory political divisions are subsumed by our common humanity. This is one of them. May God be with her in her fight.

ObamaCare: The Other Socialist Connection (Meet Marilyn Katz)

Ben Johnson — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:29:35 +0000

SDS radical, New America Movement leader, and Obama/Jarrett friend Marilyn Katz

John Perazzo has another chapter in the ever-growing list of Obama Communist associations and influences at FrontPage Magazine. “The Communists Behind Obama’s Health Care Goals,” which draws on the research of Trevor Loudon, traces the influence of Dr. Quentin Young, a former Young Communist League who went on to join the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — and who attended the first Obama fundraiser at Bill Ayers’s house. Young claims his organization, Physicians for a National Health Program, convinced Obama to support a single payer health care plan — the goal to which the present bill is the first step.

There is a connection the article misses, though, one even closer to Obama. As Perazzo mentions, Young was associated with the New America Movement (NAM), which eventually merged with the DSA. A NAM founder and its national political secretary was Marilyn Katz. As I exposed in my original article “Valerie Jarrett: The Next Van Jones” in September, Katz was closely associated with Chicago city hall and helped Obama’s alter ego and intimate adviser Valerie Jarrett get her start as a slumlord at Habitat.

And Katz, a lifelong socialist revolutionary who said last August that she “probably” rejects violence, is a close friend of Jarrett — and of Barack and Michelle Obama. She even visited the White House this July.

Michelle Obama biographer Liza Mundy quotes Katz as saying the moment Jarrett introduced Michelle Obama to her friends, Michelle “was recognized as brilliant and beautiful, and immediately accepted into a very sophisticated social circle.” Mundy writes Michelle “and Barack…enjoyed a range of relations with people who shared their lifestyle, as well as their progressive views and political involvement. ‘These are folks,’ says Marilyn Katz, a member of their social circle, ‘who talk to their friends a number of times a day.” Katz repaid her friend by becoming a campaign bundler for Obama ‘08.

…And possibly trying to buy Jarrett a senate seat. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has indicated, after Obama’s presidential election, Katz contacted his wife, Patti, with a deal to name Valerie Jarrett to the open senate seat in exchange for a White House payoff, brokered through SEIU.

Despite the controversy, in late July Katz joined Valerie Jarrett and Susan Sher in Washington for the Obama administration’s celebration of the 37^th anniversary of Title IX.

Given her radical history (beginning with SDS during the Days of Rage) and close association with our president and first lady, it may be that Katz helped introduce or reinforce Young’s arguments to the Obamas. They could have been sold socialist ideology by any number of their friends, acquaintances, and contacts. The relationship of Katz, Jarrett, Ayers, the Obamas, Young, Carl Davidson, the New Party, the late Rabbi Arnold Wolf, and many others are as hazy as they are disconcerting. It seems a constellation of Marxists hovers over the first couple at all times — and this is not by chance.

By all accounts, the Obamas are close with their friends — including Katz. The nation is at peril when the White House has an unrepentant ’60s radical on speed dial.

Genius Envy: Ed Schultz Repudiates Ed Schultz

Ben Johnson — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:12:46 +0000

In a remarkable moment in last night’s edition of The Ed Show on MSNBC, Ed Schultz got carried away and made a small government case against mandatory health care insurance. Perhaps channeling his former line of work as a Rush Limbaugh impersonator on the Right, Schultz said:

The bill makes the insurance mandatory for all Americans. This mandate is one of the most unAmerican things, I think, the Senate has ever done. This isn’t the same thing as mandating for car insurance or home owners insurance. I mean, there’s nothing more personal than your body…Forcing people, by the way, to buy health care, in my opinion, that’s not liberty. It’s not reform. It’s restriction. It’s a restriction of freedom that’s not democratic.

Evidently, Schultz switched back from conservative Jeckyll to leftist Hyde so swiftly that he did not realize he had repudiated his own position on health care “reform.”

Ed has long supported a single-payer system, similar to the one in Canada. That would force everyone to “buy” insurance through taxation, then allow the government to choose who receives coverage or is denied treatment. This is unlike the present system, which Ed and others on the Left call “rationing,” in which the insurance company opts not to pay for a treatment. Now, a patient denied treatment can pay out-of-pocket expenses and be covered. Under a government system, the only options left open to a patient denied coverage are to leave the country or convince a doctor to break the law.

Sorry, Ed: The only thing more personally oppressive than being compelled to purchase health insurance is being compelled to die on top of it.

Still, the momentary lapse of good sense was so refreshing, we’re tempted to give Ed Schultz a pass this time.

Midnight Snack: Adolf Hitler Sings the Theme to “The Jeffersons”

Ben Johnson — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:49:25 +0000

Mel Brooks once said he devoted his life to ridiculing Adolf Hitler through comedy. This video is presented to that end.

Open Thread – The Public Option in 40 Seconds

Ben Johnson — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:00:01 +0000

Genius Envy: Ed Schultz’s Next Target?

Ben Johnson — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:07:33 +0000

This series of posts is dedicated to the proposition that 90 percent of everything Ed Schultz, the host of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, does is motivated by envy (and the same could be said of the Left). Schultz has raged against his more successful colleagues Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck. The folks at Politico give an indication of who Schultz’s next target may be: Bret Baier of Fox News’ “Special Report.” A side-by-side comparison with Ed’s direct competitor is damning:

Nielsen numbers show “Special Report’s” overall viewership is up 28 percent this December compared with last December, while competing programs that air at the same time — “The Situation Room” on CNN and “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” (now “The Ed Show”) on MSNBC — fell by 37 and 18 percent, respectively. “The Situation Room” averaged about 597,000 viewers this month, while “The Ed Show” averaged about 491,000 viewers.

Nielsen ratings are the measures TV (and radio) announcers live and die by, and the numbers prove The Ed Show has actually driven away a not insignificant portion of his network’s former audience. As Winston Churchill quipped about Clement Atlee, Ed Schultz has “much to be modest about.”

Genius Envy: Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller “Barely Qualify as Men”

Ben Johnson — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:25:03 +0000

Does Ed Schultz read this blog?

I have long held MSNBC host Ed Schultz’s erratic behavior stems from his political and professional status: he envies those whose careers surpass his. As David Swindle noted in the roll-out of this series, “Ben’s posts on Schultz are collected and all future articles will be collected here under the series name ‘Genius Envy,’ a play on a well-known Freudian term.” I came up with the name “Genius Envy” to highlight the way much of Ed’s incendiary rhetoric seems to be rooted in his offended masculinity. I was gratified to see my thesis was proven correct in less than a week. Last Thursday Schultz, the poor mind’s Rush Limbaugh, wanted to compare his manhood with Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller.

He began this segment of The Ed Show by ripping “[f]ailed comedian and sportscaster Dennis Miller” over a joke he made at the WWE Slammy Awards, then criticized Bill O’Reilly’s reaction to the skit on The O’Reilly Factor. Ed crowed, “O’Reilly condone[d] that despicable display of unapologetic sexism,” and criticized Bill for donating $25,000 to Miller’s favorite charity at Christmastime (!).

When he rolled the footage of O’Reilly calling Miller “a good man,” Ed launched into his manhood measurement moment:

Well, actually neither one of them are good men. As a matter of fact, you barely qualify as men. Real men argue the issues. They don’t engage in this kind of low-rent, sexist psycho talk!

Schultz’s offended pride gave him any number of reasons for presenting himself as the uber-male denouncing the two “failed” figures as nothing more than girly men:

Ed Schultz, a former quarterback and lifelong sportscaster, has never hosted Monday Night Football;
Schultz makes occasional jokes on his show; Miller hosted “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live for six years;
Dennis Miller’s well-received, eponymous programs on HBO and CNBC won him five Emmys decades before Schultz hit the airwaves; Ed has parried by belittling Miller’s ratings;
Bill O’Reilly is the most successful man in Schultz’s third chosen profession; Schultz has mocked O’Reilly by stealing credit for his former radio station’s Peabody Award;
Has Schultz ever talked a donor into donating $25,000 to charity during the holidays? Has he ever made such a donation himself? Inquiring minds doubt the Hell out of it.

Schultz’s actions vindicate two equally brilliant, small government philosophers: Ben Johnson and Friedrich A. Hayek. My vindication is noted above. Yet Schultz’s left-turn bears out what Hayek wrote in The Constitution of Liberty, that the “only major result of” socialism is the “gratification of the envy of the less-well-off.”

Genius Envy: Ed Schultz Discovers Obama’s Thuggery

Ben Johnson — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:11:20 +0000

Thuggery for me, not against me.

Ed Schultz has joined Howard Dean and others who believe the Democrats should kill this health care bill unless it contains a “public option.” He had a brief, relatively tepid exchange yesterday morning with David Axelrod on Morning Joe and decided he was being persecuted. Ed opened his show last night saying:

The White House — ooh, are they a little touchy as of late? Desperate to sell what they are calling health care reform — I don’t buy it. They are trying to vilify now anyone who opposes it. That’s what’s happening to Howard Dean.

Ed tried to push himself into the fray, noting that Axelrod had been on Hardball just before The Ed Show and had said:

Ed Schultz is a very passionate person, and I think he genuinely wants what’s best for people.

Behold the Passion of Ed Schultz.

Ed’s words are (mildly) significant (for once) because they mark the first time anyone on the Left acknowledged what the rest of us have long known: this president is a thug. However, Ed overlooks the fact that violence and intimidation are the modus operandi of the Left. And he ignores the vilification and character assassination he perpetrated against those who opposed socialized medicine from the bill’s introduction until this week, which includes quite a litany:

Big Ed said:” The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kinda like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her”;
He lied that Physicians Council for Responsible Reform slaps the names of random doctors on its published ads; and
He fibbed about tea party protesters carrying signs that read, “Bury Obama with Kennedy” — although his TV screen showed the correct sign. Jimmy Carter recycled the lie the next day.

…In September alone.

Just last month, Ed Show guest host David Shuster said an anti-socialism rally in Washington, D.C., “had all the trappings of a proverbial orgy of bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, and hate!”

So, who’s being “touchy,” Ed?

Genius Envy: Would-Be Lieberman Assailant Asks, “Where’s the Hate Speech on Joe Lieberman?”

Ben Johnson — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:30:11 +0000

Suggesting someone beat up a U.S. senator is not "hate speech" according to this man.

Three full days after he wondered why no one had punched Joe Lieberman (“Traitor Joe,” as he calls him), Ed Schultz of MSNBC’s The Ed Show insisted no one on the Left had ever defamed the distinguished senator from Connecticut. Last night, Schultz asked former Republican Congressman Ernest Istook about Democratic infighting over the health care bill. Istook, now a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, replied things had gotten so bad that “if conservatives said the things about liberals that liberals are saying about each other now, we would be accused of using hate speech.” This sent the easily agitated Schultz into a lather:

Now, Ernest, you’re saying the Left is doing some hate speech. Now, where’s the hate speech on Joe Lieberman? Come on!

Big Ed could begin with his video library from this week…

On Tuesday, December 15, Ed fumed:

What is the feeling towards Joe Lieberman? I mean how do you, you know, go into a room without punching the guy out after what he’s done to the progressive movement in this country?

Leftists believe any deviation from the “progressive” party line requires physical punishment. This isn’t hatred; they’re doing it for your own good.

Genius Envy: War on Terror, No! War on “Conservadems,” Yes!

Ben Johnson — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:30:36 +0000

Osama bin Laden or Joseph I. Lieberman: Guess which one makes her blood boil?

Leftists who decried the War on Terror now use the same terminology to describe center-Left members of their own party. On last night’s episode of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Ed Schultz interviewed Katrina vanden Heuvel about President Obama’s “sellout” on the health care bill. Katrina complained Obama’s is “a White House which has emboldened the conservadems, people like Joe Lieberman” who “is now holding hostage” socialized medicine. She repeated the elocution moments later while appealing to “citizens who don’t want to be held hostage by the insurance companies.” Schultz thanked her for appearing, adding, “Always the truth coming from you and The Nation.”

The truth is Katrina used language about Joe Lieberman she would be hesitant to apply to Islamist terrorists. In a 2004 Nation editorial entitled “Dissent is Patriotic,” vanden Heuvel faulted Republicans for saying the Party of Defeat’s characteristic rhetoric “emboldened the enemy,” accusing the GOP of breeding “a culture of fundamentalism and intolerance.” (But Katrina has had consistency troubles before.) The domestic Left sees far greater danger from conservatives than jihadists and apportions its disdain accordingly.

This ignores a cardinal reality about Joe Lieberman: he is not a conservative. I substantiated this beyond doubt in 2006, when the New York Times quoted another Lieberman critic: then-Congressman Rahm Emmanuel.

Emanuel, who ran the Democrats’s House campaigns that year, referred to Lieberman as George W. Bush’s “love child.” (If ever a phrase called out for the rejoinder “Where’s the birth certificate?” that is the one.) I wrote at the time:

Joe Lieberman is anything but Bush’s “love child.” He votes with Senate Democrats (and thus against Bush) 90 percent of the time. He has an Americans for Democratic Action lifetime voting record of 76 percent, higher than his predecessor, Lowell Weicker. Lieberman filibustered reauthorization of the Patriot Act, voted against drilling in ANWR, tried to include gays and lesbians in “hate crimes” statistics, and opposed the federal marriage amendment. Despite heated floor rhetoric, he voted against a Partial Birth Abortion ban half-a-dozen times and opted not to impeach the “immoral” Bill Clinton. True, he once entertained doubts about Affirmative Action and school choice, but upon his selection as Al Gore’s vice president, he did what principled Democrats like Gore, Clinton, Jackson, Kucinish, and others did: began parroting the party line post haste. In this primary, he was endorsed by the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, and the League of Conservation Voters. Reading the handwriting on the wall, Lieberman assured if he ran “as an Independent Democrat,” he would vote with the Democratic leadership. His bona fides were not enough, because the war, and the war alone, was the decisive issue for Democrats.

Incidentally, later in the segment, would-be Lieberman vanquisher Ned Lamont repeated President Obama’s telling phraseology, “We’re on the precipice of an important vote. I’m ready to vote.”

Just So We’re Clear….

Ben Johnson — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:12:04 +0000

This isn’t me.

No related posts.

Genius Envy: Ed Schultz’s Plan to Motivate Joe Lieberman is “Punching the Guy Out”

Ben Johnson — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:30:47 +0000

Sen. Joe Lieberman opposes the current health care bill, so MSNBC’s Ed Schultz has a solution: punch him out. On last night’s episode of The Ed Show, Schultz asked Democratic Senator and way-too-frequent guest Sherrod Brown, D-OH:

What is the feeling towards Joe Lieberman? I mean how do you, you know, go into a room without punching the guy out after what he’s done to the progressive movement in this country? I mean, that’s how I think a lot of people feel. What attitude, what attitude — is he still just a beloved, friendly, fraternal senator, or is he a jerk in the room?

The courageous Brown, after hearing the violent tirade against his colleague, replied:

He’s not beloved, for sure.

What a Sister Souljah moment, Sherrod.

After a boring few weeks, when MSNBC brass must have told the rabid ratings failure to hold things down, Ed’s showing his true colors again. At least he only threatened to clock Lieberman; he invited a Rep. Michelle Bachmann to slit her wrists on his program.

Remember his violent outbursts the next time someone on MSNBC moans about “incivility” or worries a tea party attendee will “inspire violence” by waving a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.

Marc Lamont Hill — Back at Fox?

Ben Johnson — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:22:26 +0000

He’s ba-aaack. Or at least, he seems to be.

Bill O’Reilly’s impact segment on tonight’s edition of “The O’Reilly Factor” featured a discussion about providing health care for illegal immigrants between O’Reilly and none other than Marc Lamont Hill.Â As I noted on October 16, Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media (AIM) reported Fox News had fired Marc Lamont Hill. Hill later confirmed this to The Huffington Post.

The firing occurred after David Horowitz revealed Hill’s admiration of Assata Shakur, a cop-killer who fled for refuge to Castro’s Cuba. Kincaid then devoted a number of articles to Hill’s heroes, including Louis Farrakhan, Mumia Abu Jamal, and Fidel Castro.

(NewsRealâ€™s extensive coverage of Hillâ€™s pro-cop-killer radicalism continues here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) As Kincaid pushed Rupert Murdoch about Hill’s radicalism at NewsCorpâ€™s annual meeting, Murdoch stated Hill had been “fired” the previous week.

If Hill has returned to Fox’s airwaves, Fox is the poorer for it. We admire Fox’s commitment to present conflicting viewpoints, but there are any number of other, more articulate leftists than Hill, leftists whose expertise is not in “hip-hop” and who do not lionize cold-blooded murderers. Their responsibility should be rewarded with the remainder of Hill’s contract. Fox should begin by sending the message that once someone lionizes cop-killers and totalitarian monsters, he is no longer welcome in an international media forum.

MSNBC Falsifies Transcripts, Again. For “The Ed Show.” Again.

Ben Johnson — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:47:58 +0000

On Monday, Schultz " />MSNBC is at it again, editing its transcripts to make Ed Schultz sound less crazy. Leftists complained — falsely — for years that Republicans questioned the patriotism of anyone who opposed them. On Monday’s edition of The Ed Show, Schultz called Joe Liberman a “traitor” yet again — so MSNBC changed this into a jovial reference to a grocer’s chain.

Schultz said Lieberman was one of the senators “cheating on the American public” by opposing a public option. After accusing the senator of economic adultery and playing a video clip of Lieberman saying the bill will not pass, Schultz used one of her favorite terms for Lieberman: “Traitor Joe.” (You can verify the audio/video here.) But according to MSNBC’s transcript, Big Ed said: “Oh, yes. But Trader Joe is not alone.”

What’s that — with Ed’s Fargo accent, you can’t tell which phrase he used? Schultz took all guess work out of it earlier this month. On November 12th, he and Bill Press had an in-depth discussion about smearing a liberal Democrat who occasionally votes centrist:

Look, you know, what I call Joe Lieberman? Traitor Joe. And I’m not talking about the store where you guy [sic.] the good wine and cheese. I mean “Traitor Joe.”

The following Tuesday, Ed Schultz used the phrase — and MSNBC transcribed it “Trader Joe.”

Not only is Schultz’s rhetoric polarizing and pejorative; it’s plagiarized. For all these reasons, MSNBC lies on.

Vicious, Right-Wing Hate Crime Was a Hoax: Left Punked Again

Ben Johnson — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:06:31 +0000

The Left’s most recent blood libel has been dispelled. The Associated Press reported today a Kentucky census worker found killed in a national park committed suicide. On September 12th, 51-year-old Bill Sparkman was found naked with a rope around his neck in Daniel Boone National Forest, bound with duct tape, with the word “Fed” scrawled on his body. (He was not “hanging,” as the media often reported.) The Left, at a loss over the town hall uprisings across the country, found another useful corpse and blamed conservatives for the murder. But according to the AP:

Authorities said Sparkman alone manipulated the scene to conceal a suicide…Sparkman had recently taken out two life insurance policies that would not pay out for suicide, authorities said. If Sparkman had been killed on the job, his family also would have been be eligible for up to $10,000 in death gratuity payments from the government.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow went out of her way to make this connection on her program. The night Sparkman’s death hit the national media, Maddow asked her guest: “Have you heard anything? Are you hearing anything, even circumstantial evidence, in that regard?”

In a subsequent interview with Gilbert Acciardo, a friend of Sparkman’s, Maddow had an anti-climactic exchange.

In terms of this part of southeastern Kentucky…are folks in this area familiar with the census and its purpose? I don’t know if there’s any way to generalize about that. Is there any fear that you’re aware of that the census might be seen as kind of a government intrusion?

Translation: Didn’t you all star in Deliverance? You’re almost as backward as John Murtha’s constituents, right? Acciardo replied:

No. I’m not aware — Of course, it’s been 12 years since I worked for the state police. I wasn’t aware of any problems then, and I’m not aware of any problems like that right now.

Time magazine stirred the pot in an article entitled, “Did Government Distrust Lead to a Census Taker’s Death?” The down-the-middle, straight-shooting journalists wrote:

The discovery of the body of Bill Sparkman, 51, a substitute teacher and a field worker for the bureau, comes at a time when talk media, tea parties and white-hot town-hall meetings have fanned antigovernment sentiment. Speculation has run rampant that the Sparkman case may be related to the vitriol. Kentucky, like many other Southern states, voted overwhelmingly for Senator John McCain during the 2008 presidential election.

As it turns out, it was suicide. (Much like leftism itself.) The case should tell us everything about leftists. They see a cancer survivor commit suicide and blame Middle American Moms; they see a radical Muslim phone al-Qaeda before going on a terrorist shooting at Ft. Hood and blame exhaustion.

Random Observations from Barack Obama’s America

Ben Johnson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:02:28 +0000

Lou Dobbs has come closer to death in the last year than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

MSNBC “Progressive, Not Partisan”?

Ben Johnson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:55:01 +0000

The Obama administration’s designated anti-Fox hit woman Anita Dunn joined Valerie Jarrett in branding Fox News as partisan while reserving any such judgment about MSNBC. Tim Graham, Director of Media Analysis at Media Research Center, noted that on her way out of the administration (sorta) Anita Dunn called MSNBC “progressive but not partisan.”

To cite three examples of the network’s lowest-rated host , Ed Schultz of The Ed Show, Republicans are treasonous, money-grubbing infidels who quiver with joy when women contract cancer.

“Non-partisan” example #1:

The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kinda like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her…My God, Democrats, what’s wrong with you?! You can’t deal with these people, at all!

“Non-partisan” example #2:

The same crowd that says they support the troops didn’t support the United States getting the Olympics. They only support the troops when it’s good for them. They only support America when it’s good for them. They only support America when it’s good for their political agenda. What the Republicans did I think rivals Jane Fonda sitting on a gun in North Vietnam.

“Non-Partisan” example #3:

The Republicans can’t [offer an alternative health care plan, which they did in May]. They won’t do it. Because they’re about the money. It’s all about the tax cuts. It’s all about the big insurance, the Big Pharma, it’s all about livin’ for the lobbyists. That’s what they’re doing.

These are representative of of Big Ed’s program every night of the week, distinguished by its low-ratings and its relative reserve compared to Keith Olbermann.

MSNBC Blames Recession on a Racist, Wall Street Conspiracy; NAACP President Becomes the Voice of Reason

Ben Johnson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:20:44 +0000

The vast, racist conspiracy against Barack Obama is no longer limited to evil 9/12 protesters, Fox News, and those who utter the obviously racist code word “socialist.” According to an MSNBC talk show host, it has spread to Wall Street, which is deliberately prolonging the recession to keep the black man down.

On Tuesday night’s episode of The Ed Show, host Ed Schultz asked NAACP president and CEO Ben Jealous if he agreed America was in recession because “there are maybe some institutions on Wall Street that do not want to see a black president succeed?” Jealous, to his credit, disagreed. (You can watch the question at 4:52 in this video. N.B. how Jealous’s mouth involuntarily contorts into an Elvis lip-sneer when Ed launches into Louis Farrakhan territory.)

Ed Schultz: “Mr. Jealous, I’m going ask you a direct question here tonight, and it has not been talked about in the media, but I’ve thought about this in recent weeks, because the credit should not be this tight as much as the American taxpayer has done for Wall Street: Do you think that there are maybe some institutions on Wall Street that do not want to see a black president succeed, and that’s why the money is tight?”

Ben Jealous: “I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t subscribe to those theories…We’ve got to stop focusing on race, start focusing on reality, which is all of us are hurting.”

What a theory: Wall Street has lost billions of dollars in wealth to spite the president. Good thinking, Ed!

This rebuttal of a theory Schultz admitting thinking about for “weeks” is no small story, coming from the organization that blamed George W. Bush for James Byrd’s murder, and that is headed by Julian Bond, who wrote a comic book in 1967 presenting Ho Chi Minh as a freedom fighter and comparing the Viet Cong to colonial Minutemen.

Jealous was right, of course. The economy is bad, and blacks are hit harder than other Americans. That should make every black American think twice about uncritically supporting a job-killing president — who shuffled from Hawaii to Harvard, from Hyde Park to Pennsylvania Avenue — because they happen to share an ethnicity. Not only is that racist; it’s counterproductive. Those who maintain uncritical support for Obama will eventually be forced to seek solace in conspiracy theories spun by pale leftists like Schultz. For the moment, at least some are unwilling to go that far.

How crazy do you have to be to be repudiated by an organization as left-wing as the NAACP has become? Crazy enough to host a show on MSNBC.

Katrina vanden Heuvel Cites “The Great” Saul Alinsky

Ben Johnson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:23:35 +0000

Barack Obama is not the only one giving a shout out. On Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Ed Show Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel hailed the godfather of community organizers:

The great community organizer Saul Alinsky talked about organized people vs. organized money. We are seeing the mugging of the common good everyday.

How can the Left continue to claim anyone- seeking to understand its motives or modus by reading Alinsky’s writings is paranoid?

The show also represented the continuation of Katrina’s self-contradiction tour on the issue of the filibuster. Now that Republicans are filibustering socialism, she is in favor of its abolition — but that was not the case lo, many, many (well, four) years ago. She said Monday:

We can talk about the need for deep reform of the Senate, abolishing the filibuster.

As I noted earlier this month, when the Democrats were the Congressional minority using the filibuster in an unprecedented manner against Bush judicial nominees, Katrina posted a “warning to the Republic” written by Sen. Robert Byrd, and Nation ran numerous articles on such topics as “Checks, Balances, and the Duty to Filibuster.”

The Nation: still following the party line after all these years.

We’re Not Media Matters: A Case in Point

Ben Johnson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:04:05 +0000

Tuesday’s episode of The Ed Show on MSNBC gives NewsRealblog a chance to show how we are different than some “media analysts” on the Left. Tuesday, Rep. Gary Peters, D-MI, taunted 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain to come to Michigan, insisting the U.S. auto industry would recover just fine. Peters insisted: “He campaigned on ‘America First.’ That was his slogan.”

No, that was the campaign slogan of Pat Buchanan. McCain campaigned on “Country First.” Were we Media Matters, Peters’ statement would be a federal case. We would send out a mass e-mail noting his “error,” perhaps writing that Peters had spread “disinformation”!

But this is an innocent mistake. We won’t pounce. We wish others on the Left had such a sense of proportion and human frailty.