Chris Matthews performed a public service on his show, taking on one of the all-too-common rightwing bloviators that populate the airwaves. His guest--a particularly obnoxious representative of the genre--was screaming about how right Bush was to call Obama an appeaser. Matthews did what too few reporters and television hosts are willing to do, and the results were delicious.

read more | Sheila Suess Kennedy's blog | 1 comment

I'm getting ready to head out the door to Sheila's. We're going to watch the election results come in. I, the wine spritzer drinker, am going to be drinking gin...from my niece's silly straw.

read more | Lalita Amos's blog | login or register to post comments

Have trusty cellphone, will audioblog, ya'll. Listen to me try to figure out who the hell I'm going to vote for...and, um, what happened to my precinct. Seems that, in my zeal over the presidential primary, I neglected (read: didn't give a flying fig about) who was running in the other matchups.

read more | Lalita Amos's blog | 1 comment

Reverend Wright is never going to disappear. He's found a national pulpit and he's reveling in his notoriety and isn't going to step away lightly.

In case you missed it, here's the good reverend at the National Press Club this past Monday.

Part 1

read more | Lalita Amos's blog | login or register to post comments

I was watching Morning Joe (I like a side of indigestion with my morning smoothie). For six weeks, Scarborough has been touting what looked like a Clinton blowout with poll numbers having her lead Obama by 20 or more points.

read more | Lalita Amos's blog | login or register to post comments

From a post at Daily Kos:

read more | Sheila Suess Kennedy's blog | login or register to post comments

You've got to wonder why the incendiary remarks of Obama's pastor, Reverend Wright (three or four plucked from THIRTY YEARS of sermons!) get so much more media attention than the messages of clergy who've endorsed McCain. You can dismiss Hagee--perhaps--but Ron Parsley has been identified by McCain as his personal spiritual advisor.

read more | Sheila Suess Kennedy's blog | login or register to post comments

There are many competing theories about what has gone wrong with American media; many of those theories fault the emergence of the blogs. There's a great smackdown of that argument--and a very thoughtful analysis of how we've gotten to our current sad state--on Daily Kos this morning. Here's a clip to whet your appetite:

read more | Sheila Suess Kennedy's blog | login or register to post comments

Bill Moyers, whose words are almost always thoughtful, if not profound, has a wonderful post about the role of the media over at the Huffington Post. Just one brief snippet:

read more | Sheila Suess Kennedy's blog | 1 comment

This speaks for itself:

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

"Yoo and torture" - 102

"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73

"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16

"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043

"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)

"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607

read more | Sheila Suess Kennedy's blog | 5 comments