Free Republic

...it is becoming painfully obvious that Brokaw man should no longer be appearing on television as he has totally lost touch with the present. Remember the Presidential debate he moderated? Whether you supported Obama or McCain one thing about the debate just about EVERYONE agreed on was that it was BORING The people in the audience got to submit a question (and more from the internet) but Tom Brokaw got to select the questions. Brokaw picked questions that only he cared about...The latest example of Brokaw's tentative grasp on reality happened on Meet the Press this past Sunday as he...

What a difference a political philosophy makes when it comes to funeral coverage. Have you heard a word of complaint from the network anchors that perhaps television is "overcovering" the funeral of Ted Kennedy? Of course not. However, after President Ronald Reagan passed away in 2004, both Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather grumbled aloud about how his funeral was being "overcovered" despite the massive turnout of citizens when he was lain in state in the Capitol Rotunda. The difference between Kennedy and Reagan, of course, was their political philosphies which explains the vastly different reactions to their funeral coverage. So...

No matter how much money any government - federal, state or local - puts into public education, it's never enough in some people's eyes. A July 1 "NBC Nightly News" segment detailed a new use of tax payer dollars in one of the worst performing, financially struggling school systems in the country - the Washington, D.C. public school system. They are paying school children with taxpayer funds, part of a social experiment to improve school participation at the middle school level. --more with video--

What were the people at NBC News thinking? Long-time NBC anchor Tom Brokaw was being considered for a White House appointment when he interviewed President Obama on Jan. 5 and covered him on the news. The position in question was to become a commissioner on the White House Fellows Commission. Neither NBC nor Mr. Brokaw ever made any disclosure that Mr. Brokaw had been offered or was considering the position. It was not until June 17 that NBC made public that Mr. Brokaw was joining the commission. According to the White House Web site, the White House Fellows program is...

Former NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw has been reduced to doing infomercials. I don't know if it's because he has some psychological need to be on tv or he lost his money to Bernie Madoff. Perhaps he expects to profit from trading carbon credits. Most of us have watched at least portions of infomercials. They often use a similar format. A shill pretending to be a real interviewer asks the questions the seller wants to answer. Usually the seller has a manufactured product, some medical treatment, a book or perhaps some get rich quick scheme. The format can also be used...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Do you know how sick I am of Obama? I'm going to get to Obama. I'm going to get to the sham of a show in Germany. We're going to talk more about the sham of a speech yesterday in Cairo. Did you see Angela Merkel standing next to the guy? Put this in perspective. She was standing there, and she's not happy because they're not getting along and they haven't gotten along ever. So there he is, he's at Buchenwald today, the concentration camp, and he is beating Germany up, he's ripping them to shreds over...

On January 20th, Tom Brokaw and Joe Scarborough were discussing the Obama inauguration on MSNBC. BROKAW: "I just want to say one thing. Eh, having been in the South in the sixties and Los Angeles and Watts and northern urban areas, umm, uh, when we were evolving as a country. I'm thinking of all the bigots and the rednecks and all the people that I met along the way, and I'm saying to them, "Take this." "Take this" meaning the Obama Presidency. Now wait just one minute there Tom.

Sitting in a Washington bar with the Morning Joe crew on MSNBC Tuesday morning, former NBC anchor grew emotional remembering the 1960s. "I get very emotional. It has been hard for me to walk through the streets. And I think that the day is going to be very emotional." Brokaw even grew bold enough to tell the "bigots and rednecks" he met in the Sixties "when we were evolving as a country" to suffer through the Obama inauguration: "Take this. You know?" The Morning Joe crew was discussing how Barack Obama was so different than past administrations in their lack...

Tom Brokaw: talk show host or DNC enforcer? Barack Obama and Harry Reid were willing to let bygones be bygones, letting Joe Lieberman keep his Homeland Security Committee chairmanship. But Lieberman's professed "regret" for statements he made in the course of supporting John McCain for president wasn't good enough for Brokaw. Interviewing Lieberman on Meet The Press today, Brokaw pointedly observed that he hadn't heard the word "apology" for the senator's lèse majesté. Brokaw broached the subject by asserting Lieberman needed to be held "accountable."

Unfortunately, this question did not come up in the debates.Now it looks like we may be stuck with Beelzebub in the White House for the next 4 years.It appears Barack Obama was not properly vetted after all.Newsweek wonders:"Is Obama the Antichrist?" On Nov. 5, Todd Strandberg was at his desk, fielding E-mails from around the world. As the editor and founder of RaptureReady.com, his job is to track current events and link them to biblical prophecy in hopes of maintaining his status as "the eBay of prophecy," the best source online for predictions and calculations concerning the end of...

Mexico and the rest of Latin America likely will continue to receive scant attention during the early part of the Barack Obama administration, the founder of a Latin American think tank in San Antonio said Friday. State Department program funding in the Bush administration is flowing to Asia and the Middle East, not to Latin America. The crush of the global economic downturn and the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars likely will continue to divert attention of the incoming Obama administration away from Latin America, said Ted Terrazas, founder last year of the Center for Strategic Studies of the Americas. “We...

Something seems a little fishy here. First, Barack Obama says he is rushing home to Hawaii to his critically ill grandmother. It takes him three days to “rush” to her side. He arrives early Friday morning to spend an hour with her. Friday evening, U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick tosses out a lawsuit brought by Philip J. Berg claiming Obama was born in Africa. Now the governor of Hawaii seals Obama’s birth records. If there is nothing to hide and he was actually born in Hawaii, why seal the records? There is too much cover up here. It seems...

Hi there. I voted for Obama, but have been reading a lot of Freerepublic lately to see how the other side is reacting. I'm not trying to troll here - honestly - but if you feel I am, that's understandable. I just wanted to offer a perspective on this that I think may be interesting to some of you. Oh, and this is much longer than I intended. And I'm fairly certain I'm not posting this the right way...for which I apologize. When Bush was elected in 2000, I was upset. And yes, I whined about him "stealing" the election....

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas and Jon Meacham shared a bizarre Obama love-fest session with Charlie Rose on the PBS host’s program on Wednesday. Meacham stated that he was "very struck watching the stagecraft" of Obama and pointed out how Obama gave his victory speech by himself: "...[H]ave you ever seen a victory speech where there was no one else on stage? No adoring wife, no cute kid -- he is the message." Thomas went one step further in this vein: "There is a slightly creepy cult of personality about all of this." Rose confronted him on his use of this phrase,...

The media haven't done enough to tell us who Barack Obama really is. "After all this time with him, I still can't say with certainty who he is," wrote Peter Nicholas of the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday about Mr. Obama, with whom he's spent roughly 18 hours a day for most of this campaign.

RUSH: Now, on Charlie Rose Show last night on PBS. Are they doing their pledge drive yet? Is PBS doing their drive? Because, you know, "Without your Pledge, we cannot dust." He had on Tom Brokaw last night, ladies and gentlemen. Here's a montage. Now, this is last night. As you listen to this, keep in mind everything you've heard from Brokaw and others in the Drive-Bys can for the past six months, three months, two months or whatever. This is a montage of Charlie Rose and Brokaw trying to figure out who Obama is. ROSE: I don't know what...

The connection between Goldman Sachs and ACORN is admittedly weak but we thought we'd report it anyway because it's interesting. The current CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, sits on the board of directors of the Robin Hood Foundation. As we reported, that foundation is funded by George Soros's Soros Fund Charitable Foundation and has given money to ACORN. The Robin Hood Foundation gave ACORN $821,000 consisting of a $456,000 grant in 2003 and a $365,000 grant in 2004. According to guidestar.org, Blankfein, unlike fellow board member Tom Brokaw, was in fact a Robin Hood board member in the years...

"Meet the Press" interim moderator Tom Brokaw sits on the board of a liberal foundation that has given radical left-wing group ACORN $821,000 and that in turn is funded by liberal uber-donor George Soros, research reveals. Conservatives have long considered Brokaw's political views to be somewhere on the left, but these revelations raise new questions about the former NBC News anchor's objectivity.

RUSH: What a sad state journalism must have to be in. We know it is, but it was on display last night, the sad state of journalism. You know it's bad when they have to drag Tom Brokaw out of Jurassic Park to moderate the debate. What happened to Brian Williams? What happened to Charlie Gibson? What happened to Katie Couric? Why go to Jurassic Park? Folks, I am sitting here, all I can do today is laugh. I've been having so much fun getting ready for today's show and I'm going to share it with you, greetings, great to...

Tom Brokaw using Democrat Party talking points makes an attempt to ambush Rudy Giuliani with an assortment of Democrat talking points used previously by other Democrat Party operatives. Further exposing the lame attempts by Obama sympathizers. An effort to aid the sinking Obama Presidential campaign.

How distasteful was Donna Brazile's line about Jesus being a community organizer and Pontius Pilate a governor for purposes of making an invidious comparison between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin? Enough that even ardent Obama-phile Chris Matthews rapped Dem congressman Steve Cohen's knuckles for repeating it on the House floor. But, incredibly, when Rudolph Giuliani appeared on Meet the Press today, Tom Brokaw used the same line to confront Rudy over comments in his GOP convention speech about Obama's community organizing. Brokaw went so far as to display a button [screencap after jump] bearing the phrase. Brokaw might just as...

Tom Brokaw had his Pauline Kael moment on MSNBC this morning. Though the story might be apocryphal, the late NY Times film critic is famously credited with saying she was shocked by Nixon's 1972 victory, since everybody she knew had voted for McGovern. Here's Brokaw on today's "Morning Joe," discussing the importance of the upcoming debates. TOM BROKAW: Debates should be judged on two big counts: tonal and substance. You know, are you comfortable with this person? Look, everybody believes that on debating points, John Kerry probably beat George Bush, the 43rd, the last time around. But people liked Bush.

Move over, Rasmussen, and let Howard take over! It's been a wild week, so how about a little comic relief? Turns out Howard Dean does his own personal polling—among his wife's employees. And, surprise! They tend to agree with him! The DNC Chairman was chatting with Tom Brokaw on MSNBC this afternoon. TOM BROKAW: What did you think of Sarah Palin last night? HOWARD DEAN: I think the first half was terrific. I thought she really laid out who she was. I was fascinated. The second half, she sounded like Dick Cheney, she really did. The same old attack stuff,...

What does it say about Sarah Palin that some of my favorite targets, um, subjects raved about her this morning? Andrea Mitchell and Mika Brzezinski could hardly have been more complimentary, Tom Brokaw and Jay Carney chipping in with positive comments. ANDREA MITCHELL: Here was a novice on the national scene, with the lowest of expectations. People said sure, she'll be able to perform. But it was an amazing, amazing speech in terms of the way it connected to people. I talked to people afterwards on the floor, a lot of women. One woman from California who said it didn't...

It appears that Keith Olbermann might be vying for the title of Most Annoying Anchor On Television. First we had Olbermann dissing Joe Scarborough during a live broadcast on Monday from the Democrat convention. Then a day later, Olbermann managed to enrage Chris Matthews during another broadcast. And now it looks like Olbermann is going for broke in the insult department by pushing to have Tom Brokaw banned from appearing on MSNBC as reported in Page Six of today's New York Post: At a forum on Sunday, when Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell called MSNBC "the official network of the Obama...

Tom Brokaw says his most conservative friend has told him he might vote for Hillary Clinton. I for one believe the former NBC News anchor. Hillary supporters might indeed constitute the rightward fringe of his friend set. The revelation occured on today's Morning Joe. View video here.

A billionaire and a receptionist walk into the IRS bar. They each order a beer. The IRS bartender charges the receptionist $2.50 and the billionaire . . . $2,260. Who got undercharged? If you're Warren Buffett or Tom Brokaw, the answer is the billionaire.

Tom Brokaw will praise President Ford in the eulogy he will deliver later today. But it was Brokaw in a much more familiar role -- that of criticizing a Republican administration -- that was on display on this morning's "Today." Discussing the execution of Saddam and the possibility of a surge, Brokaw opined: "The manner in which Saddam Hussein was executed reveals the essential truths about Iraq: that this is a deeply divided country along tribal lines. And the idea that we're going to impose the rule of law and democracy there by putting in more troops now will...

Confusion on Today: Brokaw Says US Had 'No Allies' in Iraq After Lauer Calls Blair 'War Ally' Posted by Geoffrey Dickens on December 7, 2006 - 14:10. It seems Matt Lauer and Tom Brokaw can't get their story straight. On this morning's Today show Brokaw falsely stated the U.S. went to war in Iraq without allies but apparently this was news to Matt Lauer as he opened the show identifying British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a "war ally." Appearing live from Pearl Harbor, Brokaw comparing World War II to the current action in Iraq declared: "The irony of course is that we're trying...

This is a collection of NBC Nightly News clips that start the nightly broadcast...it is put together over a short period of time and it does nothing else but prove...NBC goes out of its way to give negative news first and constantly...round the clock. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ytj-0SjZ68&NR

NBC anchorman emeritus Tom Brokaw has taken the network's obstreperous White House correspondent David Gregory to the woodshed, warning him not to let his relationship with brand new White House press secretary Tony Snow devolve into a foodfight. "David and I have actually talked about this," Brokaw told radio host Don Imus on Thursday. "I would succumb to this from time-to-time," the veteran newsman recalled. "You get into that bubble in the White House press corps and you begin to think that it's between you personally and the press secretary. Or that you're showing off for your colleagues in the...

Retired NBC Nightly News anchorman Tom Brokaw learned many life lessons at the knee of what he calls the "Greatest Generation" - the men and women who survived World War II and helped build the nation. Their lessons - unity, humility and sacrifice - are sorely lacking in today's culture of political polarization, where there is little dedication to maintaining common ground, he said Thursday during a visit to Corpus Christi. The challenges Americans face today, whether it be the war on terrorism abroad or the war against mother nature at home, present an opportunity to find that common ground...

Delivering the commencement address Sunday at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw seemed to put on Americans some of the blame for Arab/Muslim rage as he asserted that "we cannot wish away the complex set of conditions that fuel a rage across a broad band of the globe" and chastised Americans: "Many of them...love our culture and speak our language but we show, in their eyes, no interest in returning the favor." He argued: "We must see the ancient Arab culture as something other than just a pipeline from their natural riches to...

Will Tom Brokaw, the Today show, Chris Matthews and CBS's Early Show offer a correction? As Brit Hume noted Thursday night, the Washington Post corrected a Wednesday article which reported, that on Hardball Tuesday night, Pat Buchanan had called Mark Felt a "traitor." The correction explained: "Buchanan said that Felt had no personal loyalty to President Richard M. Nixon, 'so I don't consider him a traitor in that sense.'" In fact, it was Matthews who first falsely claimed that Buchanan had tagged Felt a "traitor." On Wednesday's Today, Brokaw was appalled by Buchanan's supposed characterization: "I think Pat said yesterday...

The reviews of the film The Interpreter have been extremely positive. "Two thumbs up," say Ebert & Roeper. Larry King calls it "spellbinding." Rolling Stone calls it "smart." We agree with that last characterization. As we noted in a column, the film is political propaganda designed to boost the image of the United Nations and make the U.S. look bad for opposing the International Criminal Court. It is one of the smartest pieces of political propaganda to come out of Hollywood. Meryl Gordon's article about U.N. boss Kofi Annan, in the May 2 edition of New York magazine, notes that...

Had it appeared on the SciFi Channel, “Supervolcano” would have received little attention other than a few random reviews. Instead, it was broadcast on Discovery and was hyped even to the point of having trailers appear in movie theaters. According to the advertising, “This is a true story. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

Dan Rather deserves more than a kick in the pants on his way out the door to a fly-fishing stream in West Texas. With Tom Brokaw's retirement just ahead of Rather's, this is the official end of an era, not just in television but in the cultural life of the nation.

In honor of the clumsy half-witted spineless mindset of Senator’s Kerry, Kennedy and Boxer, everyone calm down a dog-gone minute! Let’s not overemphasize what’s happening in Lebanon as we speak! I can just envision these socialist gutless windbags scrambling for an emergency DNC strategy session as I write… First the people of Afghanistan, then the people of Iraq and now the people of Lebanon, all throwing off the shackles of tyranny and fear as they take to the streets by the thousand, ousting tyrannical regime after tyrannical regime across the Middle East, demanding freedom and liberty….Good Lord, you’d think they...

"Denial" – that popular psychobabble term – gained immense credibility in the last century as a result of "experts" who tried to convince the public that people who looked at a blue sky and called it pink were somehow not responsible for their perceptions. If one really believed that, they said, he or she must be "in denial" and therefore more worthy of "treatment" (or pity) than scorn. The idea had widespread implications. Simply excise the notion of accountability from the public imagination and anything was possible! Women who chose to destroy their in-utero infants could deny their acts by...

IF Democrats want to run around like fools trying to persuade voters in red America that they are kissing cousins to Billy Graham, Minnie Pearl and Li'l Abner, that's their problem. Pandering, after all, is what politicians do, especially politicians as desperate as the Democrats. But when TV news organizations start repositioning themselves to pander to Nascar dads and "moral values" voters, it's a problem for everyone. There's a war on. TV remains by far the most prevalent source of news for Americans. We need honest information to help us navigate, not bunkum skewed to flatter one segment of the...

Laura's Weekly E-Blast http://www.LauraIngraham.com December 3, 2004 WHY I WON'T MISS TOM BROKAW So, are you holding up out there? Do you think you can drag yourself through the day? What do you mean you're okay? Don't you realize that NBC's Tom Brokaw has finally--really, officially, sort of, at least until his next Dateline report--left your living room? And are you really prepared for that day in the spring when CBS's Dan Rather will trot off to that unknown frequency? The networks and their buddies in the mainstream papers have been blubbering about these stories weeks. For Brokaw's departure we...

Tom Brokaw, like a good wine, aged nicely, and he still has the boyish looks easy on female eyes. Brian Williams, even easier on the eyes, will continue in that tradition at NBC. The reporting, however, is of diminishing importance. ...CBS could choose a not-so-pretty face, like Tim Russert of "Meet the Press," who may be the best in the television business for asking tough questions.

"Prior to his broadcasting career, Williams worked in the White House during the Carter administration, beginning as a White House intern."

Good night, Tom. An emotional Tom Brokaw, 64, signed off from the "NBC Nightly News" yesterday for the last time, thanking viewers of his top-rated evening newscast for watching him, his co-workers and especially "The Greatest Generation" of World War II veterans he has profiled so often in several books. "Whatever the story, I had only one objective — to get it right," he said in the closing moments of the broadcast as he recounted what he has learned after nearly 23 years in the anchor chair. "[The Greatest Generation] did not give up their personal beliefs and greatest...

Blogger angst NBC's Tom Brokaw signs off the air tonight after 21 years as anchorman, and will be replaced tomorrow by correspondent Brian Williams. Both have opinions about Internet bloggers — whose dogged pursuit of CBS' Dan Rather helped expose his use of forged documents in a "60 Minutes" story that questioned President Bush's National Guard service. Mr. Brokaw is not threatened by bloggers. --snip-- Mr. Williams — who called himself a "big NASCAR freak, a 'gear-head,' " in an NBC interview yesterday — is even less receptive. Bloggers are "on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with...

12/1/04 Anybody watch the special 2-hour Tom Brokaw Retrospective this past Friday night? Me neither. But today we celebrate the reason for the big deal: the retirement of Tom Brokaw after 20 years anchoring NBC Nightly News. Tonight's broadcast will be his last sit-down at the anchor desk! Brokaw saw himself has unbiased: "The idea that we would set out, consciously or unconsciously, to put some kind of ideological framework over what we are doing is nonsense." (on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, 5/25/01) While it is true that Brokaw may have spent less time in the crosshairs of media bias activists...

Power Line has a story right now about how Brian Williams dismissed bloggers as "on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with a modem." Whether Williams actually said that or not, the source of the story is CBS Marketwatch. Am I the only blogger who smells a rat here? PL's Hindrocket mentioned that Williams went out of his way to talk to him on election night, so unless he wanted to thank Power Line personally for helping expose Rathergate, something isn't adding up. Think about it, everyone: Bloggers have become a new and very powerful weapon. Why shouldn't...

The dirty little secret that Brian Williams has kept carefully hidden is that his name was originally Brad Wilson but he had to change it because it sounded too ethnic.

Whoever CBS picks to replace Dan Rather, they should make the announcement on Tom Brokaw's last day on "Nightly News" next Wednesday. That way, a big, fat chunk of Thursday's newspaper space that would have been devoted to covering Tom's tearful farewell will get sucked up by all the stories about CBS's new anchorman. -snip- ...CBS News officials are adamant they won't name Rather's successor until at least the beginning of next year, or maybe later... Maybe that will give them enough time to come up with some more imaginative candidates than the names being floated this week — John...

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