Michael Walsh - Page 3

Via Jeff Dunetz, Helen Thomas’s last words as a White House Correspondent. Irony meter: off the charts. [youtube nc4OeRu7cfs&feature nolink] Never stop learning. Valedictories welcome.

Various lefty organizations have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to start monitoring “hate speech” on radio and on the internet. According to this story, the groups include: Free Press, the Media Access Project, Common Cause, the Prometheus Radio Project, and

In the 19th century, the heyday of vicious political cartoons and biting satire, Thomas Nast stood above all other editorial cartoonists, attacking the corruption, venality and breathtaking dishonesty of New York’s Tammany Hall with unflinching disdain. The “Wigwam” controlled Democrat

George Stephanopoulos’s “interview” with James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart on this morning’s Good Morning America summed up everything that is wrong with institutional American journalism. No doubt it is even now speeding its way over to the Newseum for permanent

Israeli commandos boarded ships of a flotilla — dubbed an “aid mission” of pro-Palestinian activists — headed for the blockaded Gaza strip. Fighting broke out and at least 10 people have been reported killed, with the death toll likely to

Credit where credit is due: in this case, this story by Steven Erlanger of the New York Times: PARIS — Across Western Europe, the “lifestyle superpower,” the assumptions and gains of a lifetime are suddenly in doubt. The deficit crisis

No introduction from me necessary. Read the whole thing and weep: But what did the “loss” of Daniel Pearl mean? Well, says the president, it was “one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination.” Really? Evidently it never captured

Via Real Clear Politics comes this excellent bit of analysis: Almost all election analysts now agree that 2010 will not be a good year for Democrats. The latest RCP Averages for the major Senate races show Republicans picking up 7

Connecticut attorney general Dick Blumenthal, running for “Tammany” Chris Dodd’s U.S. Senate seat, wants you to know he’s proud of his service in the United States Marine Corps. Who said he wasn’t? Note also the disgraceful use of veterans as

This piece, in the Times of London, is worth reading for many reasons, but most of all to show how far journalism — we used to call it “reporting” — has strayed from its mid-century ideal. To wit: Nicholas Tomalin

[youtube 07DGeLvDw8I&feature nolink] Q. When the past becomes politically incorrect, what kind of country are we living in? A. A “progressive” one. How do you like it now?

There’s no better proof that, while the Soviet Union may have disappeared, its malevolent ideals still live on, than to observe that neither the word “socialist” nor “Marxist” has fallen into ill-repute, or become an all-purpose insult like “Nazi.” This

Here’s our crack Attorney General, Eric Holder, twisting himself into a pretzel while trying to not utter the dreaded name of Lord Voldemort: [youtube HOQt_mP6Pgg nolink] Over at the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn have a fine piece

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., once famously observed that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the entire faculty of Harvard. Buckley was prescient and correct about many things,

As the heyday of the daily newspaper passes into history, expect to see more sites like this one, which is devoted to laid-off staffers from the once-great Baltimore Sun telling their personal stories. As a veteran of a now-defunct daily

Writing in Reason, Jacob Sullum‘s got this one dead right: Last month New York Times legal writer Adam Liptak said two recent Supreme Court cases “suggest that the Roberts Court is prepared to adopt a robustly libertarian view of the

Scott Rosenberg has an interesting take: don’t define and protect “journalists” — protect “journalism.” I’ve been asked to defend the tenet “We are all journalists now.” But there are so many questions in those five words! Who is we? What

The New York Times is letting Charles M. Blow write again. They’re not doing him any favors. Here’s his lede: Racist. Tea Party. Are those separate concepts or a single one? Depends on whom you ask. Probably best to stop

Wonder if this report is worth 25 cents to billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg: Times Square unclas report –

Amazing but true: the Los Angeles Times, which hardly ever met a Democrat it didn’t want to endorse, today has decided to remain neutral in the California primary. On the Democratic side, we find that we’re no fans of incumbent

As a proud former staffer of Time Magazine, where I spent 16 mostly terrific years working with some of the finest writers and journalists who ever graced the business — you’re not going to get any snark from me about

You have to admit that, even against stiff competition, Contessa Brewer is the ideal public face of the asylum known as MSNBC. With her earnest, slightly confused demeanor, her overweening sense of moral self-righteousness, her imperviousness to logic, facts and

To those of us who attended college in the late sixties and early seventies, the killings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 remain indelibly fixed in memory. They came at a particularly turbulent time in the country’s history,

Sad but true: Bill Moyers Journal has shuffled off the air and into the archives of PBS and the

You don’t have to be a big-time MSM journalist to laugh along with the mandarin class. So go ahead, little people, enjoy some yucks. Or not, as the case may be: [youtube aYsGwLWqWI4 nolink]

It looks like the end is near for the dinosaurs formerly known as the news divisions of the Big Three — at least two of them anyway. Hard on the heels of layoffs at CBS came a serious ax-wielding at

Just imagine. Production slip-ups happen all the time, but still… Perhaps you can help the Post distinguish between Malcom X and the President of the United States.

That would be Ross Douthat of the New York Times, the center-right Op-Ed columnist who looks like Attila the Hun next to his allegedly conservative stablemate, the pathetic accommodationist, David Brooks. Writing about the most recent episode of South Park,

How to lose friends and influence people: Lenny Bruce, as played by Dustin Hoffman, on the moral evil of censorship, and what it does to the tongue of a free society. Something to think about as we move toward “Everybody

In light of the news about Comedy Central’s astounding cowardice in the face of some veiled threats from Troglogyte Central, my thoughts turned to this movie, and not just because I wrote the sequel: [youtube 0bdnUM_2m_k nolink] Forget the famous

Except to say that I never thought I would see the day when Americans would so meekly accede to threats, or even hints of violence, this news from Comedy Central is hardly surprising anymore. From the Hollywood Reporter: ‘Muhammad’ now

If you ever have been, are now, or are hoping to become a reporter in the future, this video ought to make your blood boil: [youtube FaBk1dUF9nM nolink] It’s not just the cop’s rudeness and bullying, although that’s bad enough.

Why does Frank Rich still have a job? Not only is Rich the last and least interesting of the Op-Ed columnists of the New York Times — and, given that his competition includes Maureen Dowd and Paul “The End is

Hard to know what to make of this piece by Eliott C. McLaughlin — except, of course, that it pretty much sums up the state of journalistic thinking in the MSM these days, which includes a reflexive disdain for constitutional

Over at Salon, that’s the question on editrix Joan Walsh’s lips as she continues to believe the MSM alternate-reality view of the Tea Parties instead of her own lyin’ eyes. Naturally, she begins with that CBS/New York Times poll that’s

Courtesy of Scott Johnson, one of the stalwarts of the indispensible Power Line blog, comes this illuminating correspondence: My name is Greg Farrell and I would like you to know I have been exchanging emails challenging Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew