ACTION ALERT: The New Climate Denial: Don’t Worry, Do Nothing
If “experts are more certain than ever” about climate change, why does WaPo keep printing arguments for inaction based on uncertainty?
Lashing Out at ‘Identity Politics,’ Pundits Blame Trump on Those Most Vulnerable to Trump
Over the past two weeks, pundits from all ends of the spectrum have been scrambling to explain Clinton’s unexpected loss, with reasons spanning from the plausible to the highly dubious; Lately, a new, entirely bogus culprit has emerged from center and center-left circles: “identity politics” and its close cousin, “political correctness.”
George Will’s Freedom to Be Unequal Depends a Lot on Government Coercion
The moral is that the government is part of the economy, whether George Will likes it or not.
With Filibuster Flip-Flops, George Will Displays His (Groucho) Marxist Tendencies
George Will may be the dean of conservative punditry with a reputation for sober consistency, but when it comes to intellectual honesty and principle–well, a person could get whiplash trying to follow his opportunistic and hypocritical positions over the years. On Thursday’s Special Report on Fox News (1/21/13), George Will was sad that the Democrats […]
Covering Weiner
“We shouldn’t even be wasting our time talking about Anthony Weiner,” the pundits say– and then they continue to talk about him anyway.
George Will & Theoretical Liberal Media Bias
George Will offers imaginary headline to prove his point about liberal media bias. Real headlines, unfortunately, don’t back up his case.
FAIR TV: Sequester Spin, Iranian vs. U.S. Propaganda, Stop & Frisk Factcheck
This week we take a look at how the Washington Post challenges some sequester spin. And CBS pokes fun at Iranian claims about Argo–but are the Iranians right that Argo is fiction? Plus George Will has some thoughts about stop-and-frisk policing.
George Will’s Stop & Frisk Factcheck
The ABC Sunday show This Week had not one but two roundtables this weekend. Right-winger George Will appeared on both of them, because… well, he knows a lot of stuff.
Harry Reid, the New Joe McCarthy
Senator Harry Reid started a whole lot of trouble on the campaign trail when he told some Huffington Post reporters that he’d heard that Mitt Romney paid no taxes. As in zero. For an entire decade. Now there are reasons to be skeptical of Reid’s account. As Dana Milbank pointed out, Reid’s record does not […]
The Future of the Planet? Get Over It
You would think—or maybe hope—that journalists who have to appear alongside climate change deniers would find it a bit awkward. It used to be that media were faulted for creating false “balance” in coverage of climate change—quoting reality-based scientists in roughly equal measure with non-scientists who either don’t think there’s a problem or don’t think […]
George Will, Grasping at Something
If you tuned in to ABC‘s This Week (5/27/12) to hear the panel of pundits discussing the economy, you may have George Will say this about Barack Obama: He’s made clear what the choice is this fall, and it really became clear, I think, this week. The president wants capitalism without casualties. He wants dynamism […]
It’s Hard to Change the Discussion of Poverty on Sunday Morning
FAIR’s recent study of the Sunday morning network shows documented a distinct right-wing bias in the guestlists. Republicans and conservatives were everywhere; progressives and people of color, not so much. Since the study was released, there left-leaning commentator/TV host Tavis Smiley has been on two shows, CBS‘s Face the Nation (4/22/12) and ABC‘s This Week […]
Richard Cohen on Candidate Lying Is Half-Baked—and Half Cribbed
Richard Cohen says he envies people who are persuasive liars. He really ought to envy people who are persuasive writers. His column today (4/17/12) is ostensibly about how Mitt Romney is a big liar. It goes almost its entire length, though, before citing any compelling examples of Romney lying. (Cohen does say call Romney’s claim […]
Rush and the Right: The ‘Clown’ GOP Leaders Fear
Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Georgetown student Sandra Fluke–calling her, among other things, a “slut” for advocating for contraceptives coverage–has caused some stirrings on the right that are worth looking at. One outcome is the idea that Limbaugh’s an outlier who sensible people repudiated. Kathleen Parker‘s Washington Post column on Saturday (3/2/12) cheered Limbaugh for uniting […]
Grading George Will on Student Loan Debt
George Will’s January 1 column in the Washington Post was a laundry list of familiar criticisms of progressives and Democrats—they worry too much about climate change, for instance. Another non-problem, in Will’s world, is student loan debt: Political logic suggests that this year Obama will try to rekindle the love of young voters with some […]
George Will: All Over the Map on the War Powers Act
On Sunday George Will wrote a strong Washington Post column about Obama, the Libya War and the law: In a bipartisan cascade of hypocrisies, a liberal president, with the collaborative silence of most congressional conservatives, is traducing the War Powers Resolution. Enacted in 1973 over President Nixon’s veto, the WPR may or may not be […]
Teach for America Is Great Because It’s Great
Richard Cohen recently (FAIR Blog, 2/15/11) took to the Washington Post to argue that Teach for America is wonderful because…. Well, it just is. He predicted that the “best teacher in America” is likely to be drawn from the ranks of the program, which draws recent graduates from elite universities into the teaching profession. His […]
A Whole Lot of Lone Nuts
Right-wing pundits have come out vociferously against the idea that they, their colleagues and the political movement they identify with have anything to answer for in the wake of the Tucson massacre. David Brooks (New York Times, 1/11/11) asserted that “the evidence before us suggests that [shooting suspect Jared] Loughner was locked in a world […]
George Will’s Bogus Tax Math
In his Washington Post column yesterday (10/10/10), George Will offered the kind of analysis one has come to expect from George Will: Today, Barack Obama, a chronic campaigner, is out and about trying to arouse the masses against the inequity of not raising taxes on “the rich.” He opposes extending the Bush tax rates–they are […]
Media Blitz Against the Paycheck Fairness Act
There’s a push for the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act before Congress adjourns for the season, which has sparked some pushback from right-wingers given prominent platforms in the corporate media. The Act, which already passed the House, would help enforce and close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act of 1963; under the law, […]
