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Do a search for “Larry Elder” and gorilla on the CNN website and nothing comes up. Washington Post? Zilch. Nothing comes up on The New York Times site either, although if you make it to the 15th paragraph of a story titled “The Vice President pushed back against the effort to recall Newsom in the Bay Area,” you will find a bland passing reference to Wednesday’s disgusting incident. According to our nation’s media leaders, it’s not a story that a white person wearing a gorilla mask attacked Larry Elder, a black man seeking to become the first non-white governor of...

So, our Coronavirus Czar is going to be … Mike Pence. Feeling more secure? “I know full well the importance of presidential leadership,” the vice president said as soon as he was introduced in his new role. Totally qualified. First criterion for every job in this administration is capacity for praising the gloriousness of our commander in chief. Yeah, when you think of Mike Pence you maybe don’t think about Pandemic Fighter Supreme. But as President Trump pointed out repeatedly, he has already run Indiana. Well, it probably could have been worse. Having a czar does make you feel there’s...

Some of you may find it disturbing that one of Trump’s chief apologists was basically saying that he talks policy like a drunk at happy hour. Some of you may hear Trump constantly contradicting today what he said yesterday and decide he’s an idiot. From now on I’m going to try to think of him as a little bit like my dog, Frieda. Frieda is extremely intelligent, but her memory is only good for about 90 seconds. When you listen to Trump’s Inaugural Address, or his first State of the Union, keep reminding yourself that he’s reserving the right to...

There are two problems in this section of Collins's column: First, she accuses Walker of dishonesty, but she's just quibbling over semantics. Is it really inaccurate to describe someone named an "outstanding first-year teacher" by the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English as a "teacher of the year" for short? I've never seen much of a difference: In the headline of this 2011 piece, I described Sampson as a "teacher of the year," but in the body of the piece I precisely described her award. Walker has been telling this story for four years, and no one thought his description...

Rick Perry! The man who has been governor of Texas since pterodactyls roamed the plains took his leave at the State Capitol this week. He is not saying anything for sure about running for president. Mum’s the word until springtime. However, he recently told a reporter that if voters want to break from the Obama era, “I am a very clear and compelling individual to support.” Wow, the Republican race is getting to be like one of those crime shows where the detectives have to paste pictures all over the wall so they can keep the suspects straight. So many...

Have you noticed how many lawmakers from Texas were doing crazy things during the government shutdown debacle? We need to discuss this as a matter of simple justice. These days, when you say “Texas” in the context of heavy-breathing Republican extremism, everybody immediately thinks of Senator Ted Cruz. Which is really unfair when there are so many other members of the state delegation trying to do their part. I am thinking, for instance, of Representative Randy Neugebauer, who harangued an innocent park ranger about a shutdown-shuttered war memorial, insisting that the ranger and her colleagues should be “ashamed of themselves.”...

Gail Collins, the New York Times columnist who was best known for a snarky book about how Texas has far too much influence over how the United States is run, turned her gimlet eye toward the civil space program. Her column was a meandering look at the current crisis over which destination to pick for space exploration efforts going forward, with some side swipes against her favorite targets, Texas politicians such as Lamar Smith and Ted Cruz. Should be go to an asteroid (or rather, as the administration wants to do, bring it back) or go back to the moon....

One thing can be said about Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is that he attracts media ire as much as a Hollywood celebrity attracts paparazzi. If one’s worth is measured in the number of one’s enemies, Cruz is richer beyond the dreams of avarice. Chris Matthews, the MSNBC talking head, left a blog post on May 24, 2013 that stated, without apparent irony, “Pay attention to Senator Cruz because he is the unsmiling, contemptuous face of the wild, nasty, hard-right fringe of a party that once competed with the Democrats to be the country’s governing party.” Bill Maher, also without irony,...

In soft-pedaling that 2009 encounter, Giffords was doing a balancing act that she’d perfected during her political career as a rather progressive Democrat in a increasingly conservative state. She was the spunky Western girl with a populist agenda mixed with down-home values, one of which was opposition to gun control. But those protesters had been following her around for a while. Her staff members were clearly scared for her, and they put me in touch with Ruiz, who told me the story. Back then, the amazing thing about the incident in the supermarket parking lot was that the guy with...

Bush's fault! Liberals love to blame former president George W. Bush for such a wide variety of perceived woes that it has often turned into a joke. Don't like the current deficit? Bush's fault! Polar ice cap might melt in a century? Bush's fault! A baseball playoff game is called off because it was snowed out? Bush's fault!The above are all jokes but to Gail Collins of the New York Times it is no joke. Bush's fault! And in her latest blame Bush rant, Collins blames Bush for the unlikelihood of the current Cap and Trade bill being passed by...

I’m on the road this weekend to attend a family Seder, which our family makes something of a movable feast . . . By coincidence, Gail Collins’ NYT column, noting the coincidence of Easter and Passover this week, adds this: “Americans with less religious inclinations can look forward to the upcoming Earth Day celebrations, when the president is planning to do something as yet unannounced, but undoubtedly special, and Arbor Day, when rumor has it that he will not just plant a tree, but personally reforest a large swath of the nation of Mali.” Collins writes with tongue somewhat-in-cheek, but...

Though O.J. Simpson was sentenced for robbery and related crimes yesterday, thirteen years ago he walked on a double-murder charge. That might be an isolated case, but Gail Collins apparently believes there are tens of millions of murderers roaming free in America. We call them by a different name: hunters. Collins made her inane hunting = murder analogy in her column today in the course of taking one more gratuitous swipe at Sarah Palin. The gist of "The Senate, Snowe and Dinkytown" is that in a Senate where Democrats will fall one or two seats short of the magic 60,...

Bob Herbert just doesn't get it. As Noel Sheppard has noted, in his NYT column today Herbert accuses Barack Obama of "lurching right when it suits him, and . . . zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash." The NY Times columnist goes on to condemn the candidate for "pandering to evangelicals;" agreeing with Justices Scalia and Thomas on a "barbaric" interpretation of the 8th Amendment; and playing a "dangerous game" with his "shifts and panders." No, no, no, Bob! That's not what's happening at all. Obama isn't flip-flopping. He's simply fulfilling...

It's one of the great MSM rituals of presidential politics: the labeling of leading Dems as "moderates" or "centrists." Gail Collins honors the tradition in her New York Times column of today. Now it's true that Collins ostensibly speaks more of Obama's tone than of his politics. But, ultimately, as you'll see, she melds the two to portray a thoroughly moderate man [emphasis added]:

...As the presidential candidates tell them every single day, Iowans deserve to be the nation’s kingmakers because they are exceptional citizens who take their responsibilities very, very seriously. So tonight, even though it’s very cold — even though it’s Hokies vs. Jayhawks in the Orange Bowl — the sturdy Iowa voters will pull on their parkas and go out to fulfill their historic destiny. Perhaps as many as 15 percent of them! “Money will become irrelevant once somebody wins the Iowa caucus,” said John (I Currently Have No Money) Edwards. “The winner of the Iowa caucus is going to have...

Gail Collins might not be as crude as Billy Shaheen. But in her own Grey Lady way, the NY Times columnist has recycled the insinuation that transformed Shaheen into an ex-Hillary co-chair. Let's first have a look at Shaheen's statement, as reported by the Washington Post: "The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight ... and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use." Shaheen said Obama's candor on the subject would "open the door" to further questions. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to...

OK, this is getting downright weird. Not one, not two but now three Gail Collins columns within three weeks dealing in one way or another with Rudy Giuliani's sentimental attachments. On November 8th came the suggestively-headlined "Pat Loves Rudy," about the Robertson endorsement. As observed here, that column contained Collins lurid allusion to Rudy being "busy committing adultery." Just two days later, as noted here, Collins captioned her column about the Kerik indictment "Rudy and Bernie: B.F.F.’s" ["Best Friends Forever," in the lingo of groovy gals like Gail]. Comes Collins column of today, and wouldn't you know it: Gail is...

Just two days ago, Gail Collins christened her column about the Pat Robertson endorsement "Pat Loves Rudy." As I observed then, "a conservative columnist writing the equivalent might well be condemned for making an unsubtle appeal to homophobia. But Collins will surely get a pass in PC quarters, since it's a well-established fact that liberals are incapable of prejudice." Then comes today's Collins column, and I'll be darned if she hasn't done it again. The NY Times columnist has entitled her piece about the Kerik indictment and related matters "Rudy and Bernie: B.F.F.’s" ["Best Friends Forever," for those no longer...

Over the course of his political career, Bill Clinton was literally and figuratively embraced by countless pastors, most of whom presumably went to their pulpits on Sunday to preach traditional values, including marital fidelity. If memory serves, neither Gail Collins nor other liberal pundits noted any irony in people of the cloth endorsing the spectacularly straying Clinton. But let a preacher praise a Republican with a personal history, and Gail Collins thunders like Billy Sunday with a bad migraine. Here's the opening paragraph of her "Pat Loves Rudy" in today's New York Times [emphasis added]: "Back in mid-2001, when Mayor...

Oh sure, Hugo Chavez might have his quirks. But at least he's not George Bush. That's Gail Collins' operative thesis in The Great Clock Plot [subscription required] in this morning's New York Times. Collins riffs off an announcement Chavez made this week of his plan to move Venezuela's clocks ahead by half an hour. Writes Collins: Reaction was swift, with many people recalling the scene in Woody Allen’s “Bananas” when a revolutionary hero becomes president of a Latin American country and announces that from now on, “underwear will be worn on the outside.” That democracy-repressing strongman really cracks Gail up....