David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star There was an old song “to know know know him is to love love love him” but that Mitt Romney seems to be inspiring among many GOP conservatives is “to know know how him is to hate hate hate him” as the scramble is on to find someone who can head the ticket who is not Mitt Romney. An exaggeration? What’s unfolding now with the polls showing former...

Your Local Broadcast News is Making Us Stupid by Tina Dupuy “The media,” as it’s referred to, is not a monolith. We don’t just have one channel, one paper or one Web site with one nefarious dude pulling levers. “The media” consists of books, newspapers, magazines, television, billboards, radio, blogs, vlogs, ebooks, webcasts, podcasts and movies etc. The media is a vast and...

BEIJING — Even the briefest acquaintance with this smoggy, sprawling capital is basis enough to conclude that much of the campaign rhetoric we’re hearing about China is unrealistic, dishonest or just dumb. This is my first visit to China, and I plan to spend the next few columns reporting what I see and learn. I spent enough years as a foreign correspondent to know how tricky first impressions...

No one is suggesting anymore that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is running for Presidents strictly to sell books or to increase his speaking fees. As he watches his poll numbers zoom and sees himself attaining front-runner status in some key polls, he now looks like he’s seriously going for it. For instance, note these recent attack comments against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is still...

TIME Covers For 5 December 2011 Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? What do these covers say about American news consumers, compared with news consumers globally, and what do they say about the editorial policy of TIME Magazine? In the U.S., TIME tells consumers that “Anxiety Is Good For You” but in the rest of the world, TIME acknowledges the upheaval that has returned to Egypt and that is...

Four I’ll Miss by Peter Funt Four top notch news guys died this fall. Their individual styles of journalism could not have been more different, and yet they were alike in their dedication to keeping audiences informed and entertained. They touched us all, but for me each had a special connection. Tom Wicker was more than a great reporter, he was a progressive thinker who dared tread close to the line that...

The Washington Post reports: Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain rebutted charges on Monday that he had a 13-year affair with Ginger White, who he said was just a friend. The charges will air on an Atlanta TV station at 6 p.m Monday evening, and arrive on the heels of four women accusing the former Godfather’s pizza CEO of sexual harassment in the 1990s. “It was pretty simple,” White said....

A little over two weeks ago, we reported on a massive explosion inside an Iranian military base near the capital, Tehran. At the time, the semi-official Fars news agency issued a statement by the Revolutionary Guards which said the blast happened in an arsenal at a base in Bidganeh, inside a Revolutionary Guards weapons depot near the city of Karaj when weapons were being moved. Apparently, a large part of...

This time CNN gets it…

Julie Sullivan isn’t angry with her daughter, Emma, for tweeting disparaging remarks about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback during a Youth in Government program last week in Topeka: “She was talking to 65 friends. And also it’s the speech they use today. It’s more attention grabbing. I raised my kids to be independent, to be strong, to be free thinkers. If she wants to tweet her opinion about Gov. Brownback,...

As self-unaware as this may seem, I didn’t realized until hearing of his death that the journalist that I had modeled myself most closely after was the legendary New York Times op-ed columnist, who died on Friday of an apparent heart attack at his Vermont home. During the 25-year run of his column, “In the Nation,” Wicker never courted controversy but he never shied away from it. He was an...

Another milestone for American print newspapers? A Kentucky newspaper runs a Huffington Post story.

Arcadio Esquivel, La PrensaUnfortunate Reality (TV) by Tom Purcell “Do you know what I want to be when I grow up, Daddy?” “I am so proud of my little girl. You want to be a doctor? Or maybe a medical researcher?” “Don’t be silly, Daddy. I want to be a reality-TV star.” “Huh?” “I have it all figured out. First I’ll make a sex tape with my boyfriend...

A few days ago I posted a piece both at The Moderate Voice and The Huffington Post on the failed attempt by the notorious dentist-lawyer-birther, Orly Taitz, to have president Obama officially removed from the New Hampshire primary ballot. It also mentioned the re-release by the Obama campaign of their limited-edition coffee (or tea) mugs with Obama’s mug shot on one side and a copy of Obama’s official birth...

In Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (a book that you’ve either read or will never read, so there’s no spoiler here) Yank Tyrone Slothrop turns out to have been the infamous (within psychological conditioning circles) Baby Tyrone. Young Baby (as opposed to Old Baby, which would be Toddler) Tyrone is conditioned to a Pavlovian response. And, when the scientists realize that the experiment...

The President pardoned two birds yesterday after Congress went home for the holidays. In the annual White House rite, he acknowledged the other fowl escapees, noting that “some of you may know that recently I’ve been taking a series of executive actions that don’t require Congressional approval. “Well, here’s another one. We can’t wait to pardon these turkeys. Literally. Otherwise they’d end up...

Imagining pepper spray possibilities is all the rage — and raging on the Internet.

And they deserve each other.

During World War II, between 1942 and 1945, or approximately 70 years ago, brave Allied aviators flew numerous transport missions over and across the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains — they called it the “Hump” — to resupply units of the U.S. Army Air Forces based in China. These pilots had to wind their way between, around and sometimes over mountains as high as 15,000 feet in two- and...

In his first TV ad of the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney inserts a voice clip of Obama mocking his 2008 presidential campaign opponent, John McCain, for not wanting to talk about the economy. What Obama said during an Oct. 16, 2008 speech at a Londonderry, N.H., campaign stop, was this: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re...

Resigned Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s political star ain’t what it used to be — particularly once she announced that despite a loooooooooooooooong political tease she wasn’t going to run for President. And particularly since she didn’t announce it on Fox. Which upset Fox News maven Roger Ailes. Why did she go to talker Mark Levin instead? For the same reason she often appears on...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

If you want to be invited onto Fox News Network you better not be a high profile Republican critic of Republican Party Higher Power, talk show titan and seeming key party strategist Rush Limbaugh. Or so suggests David Frum… Photo via shutterstock.com

An impression of Bumble the Beadle is Newt Gingrich’s latest turn in a one-man show of Dickens impressions as he tells Harvard students that he wants to turn schools into workhouses by hiring poor kids as janitors: “You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing…Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students...

The times they are a changin’; the serpents are a-writhing’. MSNBC reports this morning [emphasis added]:   Exclusive: Lobbying Firm’s Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street (VIDEO) Sat Nov 19, 2011 5:53 AM PSTby Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky (crossposted from MSNBC’s “Open Channel” blog)A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial...