Media

You gotta hand it to those executives of TV stations in and around Massachusetts. Somehow they’ve managed to rake in extra millions of dollars in political ads.

Panicky Democrats and their supporters are suddenly pumping in the big bucks to rescue a Senate race that was considered such a forgone victory for their party less than a month ago.

Republicans are doing the same thing, as they smell blood in the Bay State waters and a chance to hugely embarrass the Dems where it is deep blue, a wrenching mortification considering they would be taking away the seat that was Edward Kennedy's for 47 years until his death last August.

Wow! Let's hear it for Michael Chertoff!! The former Homeland Security chief appears on the same day in the "Corrections" boxes of both "papers-of-record,” The New York Times and Washington Post.

Let's see: After a lot of criticism that stories about Chertoff's stated support for full-body scanners neglected to mention he now represents a company that manufactures the peeping-Tom devices, the Times states "That connection should have been noted in the articles."

I have little nice to say about Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin but in the interests of objectivity and truth want to comment on a bizarre exchange last night on the Chris Matthews show.

Chris and his two guests, Sam Stein of Huffington Post and Melinda Hennenberger, formerly of Huffington and now with a political website, did a promoted segment about Sarah Palin allegedly not knowing the name of any of the Founding Fathers. Read more...

John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s best-seller, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, has so many stunning revelations that, for a political junkie like me, the biggest disappointment was that the publisher does not offer a Kindle edition, so I couldn’t have it immediately.

Forget Harry Reid, the far more shocking revelation is that the day after Hillary lost to Barack Obama (and John Edwards) in Iowa, Bill Clinton called Ted Kennedy to pressure him to endorse Hillary. Bill didn’t leave it there, telling Kennedy, “A few years ago, this guy [Obama] would have been getting us coffee.” Read more...

The firestorm over Brit Hume’s Christian conversion recommendation to Tiger Woods was predictable. Liberal commentators mocked his clumsy dismissal of Buddhism, while conservative commentators defended Hume’s commentary as a perfectly legitimate and deeply personal appeal for Christian conversion. The opposing views suggested that either religion never had a place in public, or that proselytizing was acceptable in any circumstances. Both views lack a more nuanced understanding of what religion’s proper role in the in public discourse should be.

It didn’t have much left, but any shred of credibility Fox News still had was lost this week when it hired Sarah Palin as a political analyst.

What a sad commentary, even for the network whose motto should be: “We distort, you decide.”

First, as we know from previous interviews, the suggestion that Palin has any insights to offer is a joke. Say what you will about their politics, Fox contributors Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove are nonetheless smart, knowledgeable and thoughtful. Palin is none of the above.

The first time I ever talked to a reporter writing a book, it was Mike Weiskopff and David Marinass, who were chronicling the Newt revolution. I wasn’t a big enough fish back then to get myself quoted (not that I am now), but I remember the result of lots of staff and members talking to these two reporters. The book was called Tell Newt to Shut Up, and it caused bruised feeling for months and years to come in the GOP leadership. Read more...

When Andy Rooney retires (which is probably any day now), the producers of “60 Minutes” should inquire if Barack Obama would like to take his place in the rotation.

For the fourth time since he was elected president, Mr. Obama was interviewed tonight on the long-running newsmagazine.

I would be interested in seeing how the president has changed since those first, heady days in the White House and that first, treacly interview with Steve Croft. Obama counts on the easy questions from Croft, and he usually gets them.

You know how we laugh when somebody says, "Show business is my life"? It's a joke. Right?

Perhaps it is, but it's not funny. That's because we live in an age of image-making and media manipulation where much of life is truly showbiz. Reality is what the PR people tell us it is, and their superstar clients are made-up superhumans.

Robert Samuelson continually tries to swim upstream by inventing imaginary cleavages between the generations and fomenting intergenerational conflict. Samuelson recycles some of those arguments in yesterday’s Washington Post, and I could quarrel with most of what he writes, but I thought I would highlight three specific points that Samuelson misses: