On October 7, less than a month from Election Day, Nevada law enforcement officials and the FBI raided the Las Vegas offices of the community activist group ACORN, alleging that it was running an illegal voter registration campaign to steal the election for its officially endorsed presidential candidate, Barack Obama. ACORN's "fraud" dominated CNN and Fox News reporting for weeks. But instead of pointing out the basic flaws of this charge, corporate media coverage neglected the facts and hammered home a specious story. Viewers were bombarded by reports that across the country, ACORN had turned in thousands of fake registration [...]

In the final weeks of the campaign, there was good news for feminists: The women's movement had a new leader, ready to finish smashing that glass ceiling Hillary Clinton cracked. Yes, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the fresh new face of feminism, even if feminists were too stubborn or elitist to admit it—or so some in the media would have audiences believe. In what would surely be considered a nontraditional marriage, right-wing pundits attempted to wed Palin and feminism. Her incompatible stances on core feminist issues like safe and legal abortions, access to healthcare for working women and their families, [...]