Hillary Haters Who Mocked Her ‘Illness’: Where’s the Apology?

Lauren Ashburn | January 6th, 2013

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Enough with the Liberal Bias, Huffington Post

Bryan Goldberg | January 6th, 2013

Dear Huffington Post,

You are seven years old now. That is nearly 35 years old in Internet years. Don’t you think it’s about time to grow up? Don’t you think it’s time for a new you?

There was a time, when you were a little baby website back in 2005, when the world needed more blogs. It needed more political blogs, especially on the left, to balance against the mighty Drudge Report.

And as the decade played out, a few other left-leaning websites rose to become the voice of Liberal action. The DailyKos was one example of a website that put its political leaning ahead of any sort of “mass appeal,” which is why it has never really gone mainstream or accelerated in traffic. That was their decision, and they have nothing to regret.

But, you, Huffington Post, wanted to be the popular kid.

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Not So Fast: Nancy Pelosi’s Photo Fakery

Jim Moore | January 5th, 2013

So, newly-sworn-in Congresswoman, you can’t show up to be part of an historic portrait, right there on the steps of the U.S. Capitol? It’s too cold outside, you say? Your kids are straggling, you complain? You’ve got other things to do, you aver? No problem.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will just have you photoshopped right in, along with three other of your colleagues who just couldn’t find the time to get their picture taken.

What the heck could have possibly been going through Pelosi’s mind when she made the decision to have staff “fix” the picture of the women of the 113^th Congress assembled outside the Capitol by adding in the four members who were no-shows? As a photojournalist, this is no frivolous issue to me.

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Falklands War Fought Again In Newspapers

Ben Jacobs | January 4th, 2013

What happens when a foreign policy conflict is waged via newspaper advertisements?  We may be finding out in the Second Falklands War where newsprint is replacing ammunition.

30 years ago, the military junta then ruling Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a windswept British possession in the South Atlantic that is home to 3,000 people and 500,000 sheep. The invasion was eventually repelled after an expeditionary force travelled across the ocean from the United Kingdom and liberated the islands from Argentinian occupation. Since then, the Argentinian dictatorship has fallen and democracy has been restored, but it has not halted the saber rattling from Buenos Aires.

On Thursday, the Argentinian government placed an ad in The Guardian reasserting its claim to the Falklands (which it refers to as the Malvinas). The ad, which took the form of an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron from the Argentinian President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, claimed that the UK had taken the islands from Argentina “ in a blatant exercise of 19th-century colonialism.” But, unsurprisingly, it didn’t mention the war.

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Al Gore Sells Out To Al Jazeera

Ben Jacobs | January 4th, 2013

Current TV now belongs to the past.

The left wing television network founded by Al Gore has been bought by Al Jazeera English to provide the foundation of a new network to be called Al Jazeera America. It marks the failure of Gore’s dream of putting together a left-wing television behemoth to rival Fox News on the right—a dream itself, which was born out of the ashes of Current’s failure to survive solely on user-submitted video. It also marks a strange moment in American history as well. Gore, a man who was almost President of the United States, is now selling out to the Emir of Qatar.

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Joe Biden In The Senate, Uncensored And Unscripted

Ben Jacobs | January 4th, 2013

For the media, Joe Biden is the gift that keeps on giving. Joe Biden was at the Capitol yesterday, swearing in all those senators about to start a new term in the upper chamber. But Biden didn’t just recite the oath for senators to repeat. Instead, he was Joe Biden.

Among other things, Biden swore in the infant son of Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy and joked with the husband of North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp to “spread your legs because you’re going to be frisked.” This was just the tip of the iceberg for Biden, whose greatest hits have been compiled by Talking Points Memo in this video. 

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Attention, Reporters: Leave Elizabeth Warren Alone

Ben Jacobs | January 3rd, 2013

It’s only Elizabeth Warren‘s first day as a senator and already she’s being hounded by the press.

Reporters jumped all over Warren today to ask her about whether she was joining John Kerry, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Ted Kennedy’s widow in endorsing Congressman Ed Markey in the upcoming special election for Kerry’s Senate seat. Warren declined weigh in on the race, in which her opponent in this year’s Senate race, Scott Brown, seems more likely than not to be the GOP nominee.

The reasons why Warren are reluctant to jump in are obvious. The convoluted internal politics of the Massachusetts Democratic Party still have to sort themselves out to determine what the primary field will look like. Every possible contender, including Markey, helped out Warren in her tough race against Brown, and as a relative newcomer to politics, she still has to tread carefully as she builds relationships.

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John Boehner’s Reelection Could Have Made for Must-See TV

Ben Jacobs | January 3rd, 2013

The coverage of Election Night in November got quite tedious at times. Although enlivened by Karl Rove as well as actual election results, the evening could drag. After all, exit polls and Nate Silver spoiled all the fun. But, regardless, every television network on the planet had wall to wall coverage as Barack Obama and Joe Biden were re-elected to serve as the two most powerful men in the country for the next four years. Unfortunately, the press punted on covering today’s election to be #3 which was only carried in full on C-Span.

Although John Boehner was re-elected to serve as Speaker of the House for another two years, it was a close-run thing in a suspenseful and surprising vote that wasn’t decided until several previously absent Republicans, including Michele Bachmann, showed up to cast their votes at the last minute.  But, such a close call deeply damaged the Speaker who watched as members of his caucus voted for alternatives ranging from his deputy, Eric Cantor, to former Florida Congressman Allen West. If Boehner had not received an absolute majority of votes, there would have been a second ballot for Speaker for the first time since 1923.

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The Trump Factor: Why Hijacking the Media Is So Damn Easy

Howard Kurtz | January 3rd, 2013

After a year of national gridlock that ended on the precipice of a cliff, Donald Trump went nuclear.

The man who called Barack Obama’s reelection a travesty said Republicans could gain control of the budget showdown because they “are sitting there with a nuclear weapon”: the specter of voting against a rise in the debt ceiling early next year. In other words, the GOP could get its way by again threatening to push the country into default.

The remarkable thing here is not Trump’s apocalyptic advice but that the man who still doesn’t concede that the president was born in Hawaii draws attention no matter what he says. The colorful developer has a knack for hijacking the media—and he’s hardly alone.

In fact, one of the most striking developments in recent years is how easy it is to carry out the hijacking. You don’t need a weapon, nuclear or otherwise. You don’t have to be a famous zillionaire to pull it off. In the Twitter age, almost anyone can capture the spotlight for 15 seconds.

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Is A Justin Bieber Pic Worth Dying For?

Jim Moore | January 3rd, 2013

On Tuesday night in Los Angeles, Chris Guerra, a 29-year-old photographer—a paparazzo intent on getting a picture of pop singer Justin Bieber—was struck and killed by an SUV driven by a 69-year-old woman.  As reported by KTLA, Guerra had been following Bieber’s white Ferrari on Interstate 405 when the sports car was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol and directed off the freeway onto Sepulveda Boulevard—a major L.A. artery. According to the CHP, Guerra parked his car across the boulevard from the Ferrari, crossed the street to take pictures of the police stop, and was hit by the SUV after he took pictures of Bieber’s car and was walking back across Sepulveda to his own car.

In an ironic twist on the fatal paparazzi-induced death of Princess Diana in Paris in 1997, this time it was the overeager photographer intent on snagging a big-money shot of an international celeb who paid the price. And for what? Absolutely nothing. There were no images of Bieber in Guerra’s camera because Bieber was not there. Someone else was driving his car, but Guerra, so focused on the reward for shooting what might have been an exclusive pic, lost sight of his own safety.

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