Romneys “Have a Party” as “Black People Drown”
“They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”
— Yahoo! News Washington bureau chief and former political director for ABC News David Chalian talking over a picture of Ann and Mitt Romney, as caught on an open microphone during ABCNews.com coverage of the Republican national convention, August 28.
PBS Host: Nasty Reporter Is “God’s Gift to Journalism”
“One mistake does not change this. @DavidChalian is God’s gift to political journalism. #IStandwithDavid”
— PBS Washington Week anchor Gwen Ifill in an August 29 Twitter posting shortly after Yahoo! News fired David Chalian for the quote cited above.
Mitt Romney’s Mild Joke = Deplorable “Swipe”
Anchor Scott Pelley: “Just before our interview today, though, he seemed to go out of his way to bring up a discredited charge against President Obama, the old allegation that the President was not born in the United States....(to Romney) Why did you say that?...This was a swipe at the President and I wonder why you took it?”
Mitt Romney: “No, no, not a swipe....”
— CBS Evening News, August 24.
“He [Romney] says it was a joke. Is it funny to kind of pay attention to a fringe group and question the very legitimacy of the President of the United States’s citizenship?”
— NBC’s Matt Lauer referring to Romney’s joke in an interview with Chris Christie on Today, August 28.
Claiming Racism In Everything Republicans Say
“That cheap shot about ‘I don’t have a problem with my birth certificate’ was awful, and it is an embarrassment to your party to play that card. This stuff about getting rid of the work requirement for welfare is dishonest. Everyone has pointed out it’s dishonest and you are playing that little ethnic card there...You know what game you’re playing and everybody knows what game you’re playing. It’s a race card.”
— Hardball host Chris Matthews to Republican Party chairman Reince Preibus on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 27. [MP3 audio [1] (1:07)]
“You notice he [Romney] says ‘anger’ twice. He’s really trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man. This is part of the playbook against Obama. The other-ization, he’s not like us. I know it’s a heavy thing to say. I don’t say it lightly. But this is niggerization, ‘You are not one of us,’ and that ‘you are like the scary black man who we’ve been trained to fear.’”
— Co-host Touré on MSNBC’s The Cycle, August 16.
“I thought it was a very constricted, very negative, very nasty speech....It’s clear that Paul Ryan was talking to people who think about rights as something that were produced by Thomas Jefferson, ignoring the people for whom the rights only came in the 1960s....They never mentioned those things, because they’re talking to people — let’s be honest about this — who didn’t feel the benefit, at all, from those civil rights.”
— Chris Matthews on MSNBC after Paul Ryan’s August 29 convention speech. [MP3 audio [2] (1:04)]
Lecturing Rubio: Don’t You Know You’re Just a Token?
“Look at what the chairman of the Democratic convention, the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, said last night. He said you can’t just trot out a brown face or a Spanish surname and expect people to vote for your candidate. He was referring to you tomorrow night.”
— ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Good Morning America, August 29.
“You are a rising star in this party. How is it changing? Because many people worry that people who are Hispanic, African-American and other minorities don’t have a place in this party. You’re becoming something that is more narrow rather than outreaching.”
— Co-host Charlie Rose to Rubio on CBS This Morning, same day.
How Dare Romney Mock Obama’s Promise to Lower the Oceans!
“That thing about the oceans, that thing about the planet — what’s the point? How narrow-minded, how small and insular and piggish can you be about this country, to say we don’t care about the planet we live on, which is getting hotter....What happened to the stewardship? Every one of our religions believes in the stewardship of this planet. God gave us this planet — to destroy it? To laugh at its demise?”
— Chris Matthews during MSNBC’s live coverage following Mitt Romney’s convention speech, August 30.
Nice Speech — Was that a Rebuke to Your Dumb Party?
“Andrea, Andrea, can I ask a question? It’s Chris Matthews.... Could you ask the Secretary — her speech was so overpowering, and positive, but was it kind of a rejoinder to all the birtherism and the narrowness that she’s heard in her party?”
— Matthews interrupting Andrea Mitchell’s interview of Condoleezza Rice during MSNBC’s live coverage, August 29.
NBC’s Williams Lectures Paul Ryan on Abortion
“Are you prepared to leave this gathering and own the fact that the platform of this party allows a woman, who has been raped, no exception but to carry that child to term?...In a business where you and your opponent are trying to attract, especially, suburban women, does it send the right message?”
— NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams to Rep. Paul Ryan, August 30.
Republicans: Enemy of “Women’s Best Interests”?
“A lot of women look at the Republican platform on abortion, contraception, a number of issues, and ask the question whether Republicans have women’s best interests at heart?”
— CBS anchor Scott Pelley in an interview with Ann Romney shown on the August 28 Evening News.
Using Todd Akin to Attack All Conservatives
Chris Matthews: “Let me start tonight with this right-wing assault on women, this caveman view of the sexes that has now shown its ugly head.... Finally, we meet the missing link, the evidence that the party of Lincoln cannot get in bed with the most freakish elements of the right....”
MSNBC’s Howard Fineman: “What matters is that the views that Todd Akin has espoused and the legislation he’s supported is exactly in line with what the perspective Republican vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, believes and supported. That’s what turns this into a huge issue. Because Todd Akin is the Paul Ryan of Missouri.”
— MSNBC’s Hardball, August 20.
MSNBC Declares: Joe Biden Is a Better Catholic than Paul Ryan
Host Martin Bashir: “Paul Ryan, his budget has been condemned by many Catholic theologians as being unbiblical and out of touch with Catholic teaching on how we should treat the poor....”
MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams: “...He’s [Joe Biden is] far more progressive and more, frankly, in line when it comes to the Church’s teachings, and I think the Catholic bishops and the nuns will tell that.”
— MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, August 22.
Republicans = The “Ignorance” Party
“The Republican Party has a major grassroots problem, which is that a good part of its grassroots now celebrate ignorance. It’s more, it’s more than abortion and women’s rights....It’s, you know, denying evolution, denying the science behind climate change, the birtherism. How is it that when Donald Trump comes out of the closet as a major league birther, he shoots to the top of the polls, the presidential preference polls, among Republicans? I mean, there is an awful lot of celebration of ignorance going on in that party right now.”
— Time’s Joe Klein on MSNBC’s Hardball, August 21.
Offended by Ann Romney Saying America Needs to Be “Saved” from Obama
“Last night, as you wrapped up, you said ‘this man will lift up America.’ In an interview you did with Natalie Morales for my other broadcast, Rock Center, you used different language: ‘I believe in my heart that Mitt is going to save America.’ And that jumped off the screen to me. Someone who knows you conceded that if Mrs. Obama used words like that — ‘Barack was going to save America’ — there’d be all kinds of hubbub. What do you mean? Those are powerful words.”
— Anchor Brian Williams to Ann Romney on the August 29 NBC Nightly News. [MP3 audio [3] (0:34)]
CNN Still Believes Obama’s Massive Spending “Helped the Economy”
“The stimulus passed immediately. Wasn’t that one of the first things that happened? The stimulus was a big thing he got done....And, I think there are firefighters and teachers and police officers whose jobs were kept, would not have had jobs, whose jobs were kept because of the stimulus....If the stimulus hadn’t been passed, then what would have happened to the economy? Didn’t that to a large degree help the economy? You’re not going to argue, certainly, that it didn’t?”
— CNN Starting Point anchor Soledad O’Brien to Representative Mike Burgess, (R-TX), August 20. [MP3 audio [4] (0:38)]
Departing Public Editor Admits New York Times’s Bias
“So many [reporters and editors] share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of the Times. As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in the Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.”
— Outgoing public editor Arthur Brisbane in his final New York Times column, August 26.
Romney and Ryan: “They’re Trying to Kill Us”
“People like Akin that think the vagina is some sort of Magical Mystery Tour and men like that are running this country...This is why I took this job. I have a job already at The View. But I feel this country is going downhill because of people like Akin and Ryan and Romney. They’re trying to kill us and destroy us.”
— New Current TV host Joy Behar, as quoted by the Boston Herald’s Megan Johnson in an August 29 article.
Leno Insists: GOP “War on Women” Is Real
Host Jay Leno: “If the Republican Party is missing anything, it’s this sort of war on women, and compassion-”
Comedian Dennis Miller: “War on women? With Sandra Fluke? She’s 30, for God’s sake. She’s still in school. She wants me to kick in ten bucks a month for her birth control? ...Jay, the war on women, for God’s sake?
Leno: “I think it is. I think it is....[Todd Akin] was saying what the platform is. And that’s what many believe. I’m glad he came forward....I think it shows what many believe.”
— Exchange on NBC’s Tonight Show, August 27. [MP3 audio [5] (1:21)]
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