News that Newt Gingrich was receiving millions of dollars to advise Freddie Mac has to be a little unsettling for at least some conservative voters, who are accustomed to demonizing the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for causing the housing bubble, and hence the recession. But it's not just right-wing pundits like Bill O'Reilly who are fond of blaming it all on Fannie and Freddie. Here's ABC reporter Jonathan Karl, speaking in conservative shorthand in his job as network news correspondent on This Week yesterday: Meet this week's new front-runner. He's a good debater, man of ideas, and [...]
Aug
29
2011
Ron Paul in the Post–by the Numbers
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Washington Post ombud Patrick Pexton dedicated his column this weekend (8/29/11) to addressing complaints about the skimpy coverage of Republican presidential contender Ron Paul. It's hard to argue with the numbers he's gathered: Still, the Post's coverage of Paul looks thin compared with its stories on Bachmann. In the past six months, the Post has published online or in print 34 staff-written stories plus 12 wire service stories on Bachmann, who has served not even five years in the House, and that doesn't count the blog posts about her on the Fix or Glenn Kessler's Fact Checker pieces. The Post [...]
May
25
2011
Gingrich Out of Touch With 'Rest of America'–but So Is NYT
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The New York Times (5/25/11) is reporting, perhaps accurately, that Newt Gingrich may have trouble living down his $500,000 credit line at Tiffany's. But this sentence by Sheryl Gay Stolberg is so Timesian: The way some voters out in the rest of America might see it, he's a guy who paid more for jewelry than some people pay for their houses. It will no doubt come as a surprise to folks at a newspaper that reports (1/1/97) that $100-a-bottle wine was an "everyday occurrence," and told readers where they could have dinner for two for under $100 as "an experiment [...]
May
19
2011
Gingrich's Gaffes and Wesley Clark's
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The New York Times' Michael Shear has a piece today (5/19/11) reminding readers that presidential candidates often have early stumbles of the sort that Newt Gingrich has been having. He recalls several examples, most of which don't really offer much hope for Gingrich. One is Wesley Clark's brief 2004 campaign: In 2004, General Clark's campaign was premised on his military credentials and his critique of President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. So when the general said, within days of announcing, that he might have voted to authorize the Iraq War, it was a big deal. That's not exactly [...]
May
17
2011
David Gregory's Factcheck Fail on Show's Sponsor
By 14 Comments
Labor journalist Mike Elk (In These Times, 5/16/11) made an excellent point after watching NBC host David Gregory interview Newt Gingrich on Sunday's Meet the Press (5/15/11). Elk wrote: Speaking yesterday on Meet the Press, Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said that "the Obama system of the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] is basically breaking the law to try to punish Boeing and to threaten every right-to-work state." While Meet the Press host David Gregory vigorously challenged Newt Gingrich on details of his personal life, he failed to challenge Gingrich on his false [...]
May
12
2011
NYT's Bai Repeats GOP's 'Family Values' Canard
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Writing about Newt Gingrich's presidential bid on the New York Times' Caucus blog (5/10/11), Matt Bai seems to confuse GOP rhetoric for fact as he suggest that, when it comes to marriage vows, Republicans are generally known for walking the line: Mr. Gingrich, a bit of a rogue in his personal life, has never been a favorite of his party's powerful social conservatives, who tend to think of scandalous affairs as the purview of Democrats, and maybe Rudy Giuliani. In order to maintain a tired and inaccurate cliché, Bai has to have forgotten John McCain, Henry Hyde, David Vitter, Larry [...]
May
12
2011
Newt Gingrich, Intellectual Powerhouse
By 24 Comments
Washington Post reporter Dan Balz has a front-page piece about Newt Gingrich's announcement that he's running for president. Balz calls Gingrich's Twitter declaration a "milestone in presidential politics," adding that Gingrich "is an idea-spewing machine," a "one-man think tank" and "someone who has remained in the forefront of the public policy debate over a span of decades" with his "devotion to the intersection of ideas and politics": Gingrich has "kept himself in the middle of public policy debates on healthcare, education, energy and foreign affairs." One possible downside, Balz warns: "A keen intellect can also translate into the appearance of [...]
Nov
24
2009
Illegally Obtained Info Is a Big Scoop–or a Non-Story
By 9 Comments
The New York Times' reporter on the climate beat, Andrew Revkin, had a front-page story this weekend (11/20/09) detailing the contents of climate scientists' private emails discussing global warming. Predictably, the emails are being taken out of context by climate change deniers–but more interesting to me is the fact that the focus is on the content of the emails, not on the fact that they were illegally obtained. That's not the way corporate media handled the illegally taped cell phone call between Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and other Republican congressmembers in which Gingrich violated the terms of a ethics sanction [...]
Dec
09
2008
O'Reilly Smears Reporter in Defense of 'Anti-Gay Bigotry'
New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg tells (12/5/08) of being targeted by Fox's Bill O'Reilly for connecting Newt Gingrich to "anti-gay bigotry." O'Reilly's grievance against Hertzberg sparks from this passage in the writer's December 1 New Yorker piece: Like a polluted swamp, anti-gay bigotry is likely to get thicker and more toxic as it dries up. Viciousness meets viciousness. "Look," Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, said the other day (on the air, to Bill Oâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢Reilly), "I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared [...]
