Free Republic

When is a news story not a news story? That question hung in the air much of the day on Friday, as the major cable news networks laboriously steered around any direct reference to the political bombshell that had set social media aflame since the small hours. Once again the mainstream media had been Trumped, made to look floundering and foolish by the Republican clown-prince even as it wrestled with one of the biggest news days of the year. Belgian authorities had apparently captured a leading suspect in the Brussels attacks, and the United States military had apparently killed an...

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has been scoffing at Donald Trump's description of Hillary Clinton as an "enabler" of her husband's serial abuse of women. Trump said: "(Hillary's) got a problem. She's married to a person that's a serious abuser -- and I mean, at the highest level. She's not an innocent victim. She was the one that would go along with him in this whole game that they play. She's not the innocent person sitting by his side, with tears in her eyes ..." In disbelief, Matthews responded: "I have never heard anybody go after Hillary Clinton and say she's an...

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has been scoffing at Donald Trump's description of Hillary Clinton as an "enabler" of her husband's serial abuse of women. Trump said: "(Hillary's) got a problem. She's married to a person that's a serious abuser -- and I mean, at the highest level. She's not an innocent victim. She was the one that would go along with him in this whole game ... In disbelief, Matthews responded: "I have never heard anybody go after Hillary Clinton and say she's an enabler." This is the equivalent of Keith Olbermann's indignant claim -- after it was pointed out that...

..... I’m not here to praise Hillary or to bury her: the first is unnecessary and the second impossible. I’m also not here to provide false hope for the so-called American left, which is far too mesmerized by the debased spectacle of presidential politics and is about to get patronized, bamboozled and bulldozed one more time, and I’m definitely not here to shill for the Democratic Party, whose current identity crisis is embodied with eerie precision in the personage of Hillary Clinton.Maybe you’ve heard about this: Hillary Clinton, who used to be secretary of state and before that a senator...

From Andrew O’Hehir writing at Salon: At some point during the Iran hostage crisis of 1980 – an event that, lest we forget, decisively scuttled the presidency of Jimmy Carter and got Ronald Reagan elected – I remember seeing a hand-painted banner outside a working-class tavern in South Baltimore. Its centerpiece was a caricature of the Ayatollah Khomeini, done in political-cartoon style with an oversized head and undersized body.

FULL TITLE >> Salon: Donald Trump’s ‘Call of the Wild’ Beyond Racism, Nativism — Plays to ‘Embattled Tribal Identity of White America’ From Andrew O’Hehir writing at Salon:  At some point during the Iran hostage crisis of 1980 – an event that, lest we forget, decisively scuttled the presidency of Jimmy Carter and got Ronald Reagan elected – I remember seeing a hand-painted banner outside a working-class tavern in South Baltimore. Its centerpiece was a caricature of the Ayatollah Khomeini, done in political-cartoon style with an oversized head and undersized body. Iran’s Supreme Leader was bent over with his robe...

At one point in the checkered writing career of your humble correspondent, he criticized children's cartoons for displaying fascistic attitudes such as Snow White unfairly taking advantage of the labor performed by the Seven Dwarfs. One important caveat; I was just kidding. Yes, even though some people took me seriously, I meant the story to be satire.In the case of Salon.Com reviewer Andrew O'Hehir, he has no such excuse. He actually meant his absurd review of "Secretariat" to be taken completely seriously. Just how absurd was his review? Well, O'Hehir drops any semblance of sanity in his very first paragraph...