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Ailes vs. Alter "Let the media war begin," Paul Bedard writes in the Washington Whispers column of U.S. News & World Report. "What started with a Newsweek column imagining the Watergate scandal today has turned into a delicious fight. Last week Jonathan Alter's column took a dig at the Fox News Channel, suggesting that Fox boss Roger Ailes would have banned the word 'Watergate' on air, choosing instead the pro-Nixon 'Assault on the Presidency.' Funny stuff to lefties. But not to the folks at Fox, who saw nothing but sour grapes: Alter, it seems, had once sought a job from...

I was saying only yesterday that I haven't laid eyes on Larry O'Donnell since his absolute meltdown opposite Swiftboat Vet John O'Neill on Hannity & Colmes last week. Guess they let him out of Bellevue after the election. Al Franken is up next. Jonathan Alter of NEwsweek just concluded. Ben Stein is also coming up. Dennis is taking NO PRISONERS tonight, the show has been extremely funny so far. We're going to be taping this one when it repeats.

In an effort to galvanize the message Kerry wants to deliver in the time remaining, he convened a powerful roster of journalists and columnists in the New York City apartment of Al Franken last Thursday. The gathering could not properly be called a meeting or a luncheon. It was a trial. The journalists served as prosecuting attorneys, jury and judge. The crowd I joined in Franken’s living room was comprised of: Al Franken and his wife Franni; Rick Hertzberg, senior editor for the New Yorker; David Remnick, editor for the New Yorker; Jim Kelly, managing editor for Time Magazine; Howard...

I'm in a rental car with Al Franken, and we're driving across New Hampshire on the Sunday before the nation's first primary, heading to a John Edwards rally. The Democrats are in a kooky mood following the sudden collapse of Howard Dean in Iowa, and Franken -- comedian, celebrity, scourge -- is spending two days in the state not in any official capacity but as a sort of good-will representative from the party's satiric wing. He is not, as you might think from the outrageous trappings of his comedy, an extreme lefty but rather a devout party man, one who...

"THEY'RE CLOWNS"....Atrios has some excerpts from Jonathan Alter's appearance on the O'Franken Factor this morning: "The level of incompetence is so staggering here, and yet there's this gap between how astonishingly incompetent — and we can go over particulars in the last year if you want to — how astonishingly incompetent they've been and the perception is still of them as solid citizens..." ... "The only way you can sort of start to let the public know is to say, no, they don't know what they're doing. They're clowns." ... "I was among those people who was deceived. When I...

Listening to Imus this morning and Jonathon Alter was his guest. Usually I turn him Alter off because he is such an insipid liberal, but Bill Bennett was in commercial so I left him on. Towards the end Imus asked him, "So how are things with you?" and Alter hesitated for a moment before giving a generic "Okay." Imus, sensing some comic opportunity, started asking about the state of his marriage, etc., before Alter finally revealed that he is undergoing chemotherapy. Imus was taken aback a bit. Alter didn't indicate what kind of cancer he had but clearly implied it...

The Death of Journalistic Ethics There has been a subtle shift in opinion journalism in America in the past few years. Now, we have people working for newspapers and magazines who are devoted to getting certain polticians -- namely the left -- elected to office. While Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing talk show cadre are entertainers -- and describe themselves as such -- these people are embedded in the elite media and are not supposed to be political activists. In a stunning admission in Sunday's New York Times, the following people attended a meeting with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in...

To win over 'The Apprentice' audience, the Dems are out to invent something new in American political history—a friendly, patriotic, positive populism. [snip] The November election offers good reality-TV suspense. If the Democrats slip into antibusiness bitterness and forget to articulate an optimistic pro-growth agenda, they lose. If the Republicans can't get the job-creation numbers up enough to convince applicants that they will find good work, they're done. The basic decision is the same as the one made by Donald Trump each week. But this time it's the voters who get to come into the room last, sit in the...

Rush, to Judgment It’s been a bad year for bully-boy conservatives. Time for them to taste their own bitter medicine. NEWSWEEK Oct. 20 — If you listen hard, you can hear the booming voice: Look, the Clinton liberals and feminazis won’t tell you, but here’s the problem with this big talk-show host who turns out to be a prescription-drug junkie. You have a guy who finally stops spinning and fesses up for his actions. Fine. He says he won’t play the victim. Good. He’s off to rehab. God bless. But what he and his apologists want you to forget is...

You Say You Want A Revolution... In the Middle East, unlike in the U.S.S.R., young rebels are the enemies of the West. Bin Laden’s picture is the forbidden icon Edward Teller and Paul McCartney didn’t know each other, but maybe they should have. The nuclear physicist and father of the H-bomb, who died last week at 95, was the model for Dr. Strangelove. A fierce anti-communist, his advice to Ronald Reagan to launch Star Wars is credited by some conservative analysts with sweeping the Soviet Union into the dustbin of history. AND THE CONNECTION between Teller and the Beatles would...

May 26 issue — For journalists, one of the most depressing dimensions of the Jayson Blair fiasco is this: why didn’t more of the subjects of his dozens of bogus stories in The New York Times complain about the phony details and concocted quotes? Are some readers so jaundiced about the press that they no longer even expect us to get stuff right? Do they just assume we make it up? Ouch. THE EROSION of trust doesn’t result from more liars and plagiarists working in the business or a widespread decline in standards. In fact, it used to be that...

NEW YORK, March 6 — “Hey, buddy.” That was David Bloom’s all-purpose greeting for anyone who crossed his path. Usually when someone develops a shorthand like that, it’s a cover for not remembering the other person’s name, or not much caring. For David, who used it with even his oldest friends, the effect was the opposite. He was gifted in his ability to establish a human connection almost immediately, which is part of what made him a gifted broadcaster. But it was more than that. He made you feel he was your buddy because he was. He mixed sincerity and...

<p>March 7 —  He was steely, determined, resolute—and totally unconvincing to anyone who didn’t already agree with him.</p> <p>AT HIS PRIME-TIME PRESS conference Thursday night—only his second since assuming the presidency more than two years ago—President Bush showed why he’s in this diplomatic vise. He’s got a good case but has made a hash out of it. His two key mistakes: a failure to build momentum and a failure to drill down to a deeper, more compelling logic for war.</p>

I was reading last weeks Newsweek and came upon Jonathan Alter's article, "Down in the Dumps; MEMO TO: The Democratic Party. Mixed in with the other advice was the following paragraphs... "Close the discipline gap. Republicans have long been better at developing a party line (for example "Tom Daschle is an obstructionist"), repeating it endlessly and using their allies in the conservative press and talk radio to drive the message home. You Democrats don't even send out emails to keep your folks on the same page. To close the gap you need some Charlie Michaelsons. He was the long-forgotten publicist...