Free Republic

If you're a sleazy male Democrat, you can always count on Nancy Pelosi to run interference for you and your pervy proclivities. While she has soaked up plaudits as a champion for women (most recently as the VH1 Trailblazer Honors recipient last month for International Women's Day), what she really deserves is Cheerleader of the Year Award from the Democratic Bad Boys Club. The latest beneficiary of her soft-glove treatment is former Vice President and potential 2020 Democratic presidential aspirant Joe Biden -- a.k.a. the veep creep. She gently advised him to "pretend you have a cold" and joked during...

Boy, it’s getting interesting out there. Take the Republicans’ War on Women (WOW) for example; it’s probably the Stockholm Syndrome, butt apparently women are beginning to identify with their oppressors:Why? Well, I’ll let Tina Brown (yes, that Tina Brown) explain why women feel “unsafe” with Obama: “Economically, they’re feeling unsafe. With regard to ISIS, they’re feeling unsafe. They feel unsafe about Ebola. What they’re feeling unsafe about is the government response to different crises.” “I said, handle it!” “And I think they’re beginning to feel a bit that Obama’s like that guy in the corner office, you know, who’s too...

Tart-tongued Tina Brown is at it again. On today's Morning Joe, seeking to explain why Republicans are doing surprisingly well with women voters this year, Brown said: "they had their rabies shots." Brown was responding to a Politico article reporting that President Obama is under water with women voters, and that this is spilling over into Senate races. In Colorado, for example, a poll shows Republican Cory Gardner leading Dem Mark Udall by nine points among women. And even Alison Lundergan Grimes [who may or may not have voted for Barack Obama], only leads among women by two. Brown's ugly...

Monica Lewinsky’s ‘Vanity Fair’ article reluctantly plunges us straight back into the frothing world of ‘90s gossip. It may be painful but it answers so many questions about today’s media. The Monica Lewinsky confessional in Vanity Fair brings back a torrent of unfond memories of the appalling cast of tabloid gargoyles who drove the scandal. Remember them? Treacherous thatched-roof-haired drag-queen Linda Tripp, with those dress-for-success shoulder pads? Cackling, fact-lacking hack Lucianne Goldberg, mealy-mouthed Pharisee Kenneth Starr—the whole buzzing swarm of legal, congressional and gossip industry flesh flies, feasting on the entrails. And, of course, hitting “send” on each new...

rom the living room of Barry Diller’s Manhattan apartment in the Carlyle Hotel, it is possible, on a clear day, to see the Midtown skyline, where the Condé Nast building rises like a ziggurat from the Gilded Age of magazine journalism. The view was an appropriate one for a man who in the autumn of 2010 was about to pour millions of dollars into the dead tree business. Diller runs IAC, a portfolio of Internet companies that includes Match.com, OkCupid and Vimeo. His tolerance for risk is such that his friend David Geffen once described the fireplug of a billionaire...

Liberals don’t like Ted Cruz. Many hate him. But why? Is it his conservative politics? That might have something do with it. The most plausible explanation is that liberals fear any politician who dares to be non-white, non-conformist, and non-complacent, and who challenges their 1940s Rooseveltian worldview. Whenever someone like Ted Cruz comes along, liberals cling to their outdated values, and immediately set out to neutralize this threat via a process known as “othering.” According to Yahoo! Answers: Othering is a way of defining and securing one’s own positive identity through the stigmatization of an “other.” Whatever the markers of...

How shambolic of a smoking ruin is the Obama presidency? When Tina Brown surveys the wreckage, the best—the best!—thing she sees, the thing she believes will be Barack Obama's shining legacy, is his handling of Iran and Syria, which she declares to be "smart," and of course, "nuanced." The Obamacare catastrophe? Not to worry. On today's Morning Joe, Brown assured us that those problems are "transient." No, look over here, at President Obama's masterful handling of foreign policy! Yes, years from now, when the minor hiccups of the Obamacare rollout will be long forgotten, people will still be marvelling at...

Despite those positive signs, the Beast is believed to be on track to lose as much as $12 million this year, per knowledgeable sources, and IAC chief Barry Diller’s goodwill may be running out. He already publicly showed he’s losing patience for losses, infamously saying it was a “mistake” to buy Newsweek.

When the Obama scandals pile up and Obama's image of integrity starts to enter the shredder, what do the most partisan reporters do to fend off the bad publicity? Try to portray the conservatives as "nutso" impeachers. At The Daily Beast, there was this headline Monday: "The Coming Attempt to Impeach Obama: The idea of impeaching Obama is industrial-strength insane. Republicans will probably try anyway, predicts Michael Tomasky." Tomasky portrays conservatives as "crazy" and Obama as the most clueless of presidents: he knew absolutely nothing about the Benghazi talking points? Then who elected him expecting a competent executive? Tomasky leads...

On the web-only "Overtime" segment of HBO's "Real Time" with host Bill Maher, guest Tina Brown, editor in chief of Newsweek/Daily Beast, said if President Obama were former President George W. Bush he would have been impeached by now.

Newsweek, a US magazine that has been running since 1933, will be going digital-only at the start of next year. After running for nearly 80 years, the magazine will print its last paper-based edition on December 31, 2012, and will instead be using apps and a website to pass news and articles to its readers. The publication will rebranded to Newsweek Global, and will be a single, worldwide edition that is optimized for tablets and paid for by a subscription. The Daily Beast, a companion publication, will continue to host some of Newsweek's content. Despite only being four years old,...

“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather.) “Fidel Castro is one hell of a guy! “You people would like him!” (Ted Turner to a capacity crowd at Harvard Law School during a speech in 1997.) “Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly—even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (Andrea Mitchell.) “Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful, his presence is commanding.” (Barbara Walters.) “Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Jesse Jackson while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.) "Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and...

A big publishing story of 2010 was when stereo equipment magnate Sidney Harman bought financially troubled Newsweek Magazine for $1 in the hopes of revitalizing the venerable old publication into the "thought leader" it once was. Now, since Mr. Harman's death, his family seems poised to bail on the old man's publishing charity case along with the left-leaning Daily Beast website. Since Sydney Harman bought Newsweek and took controlling interests in the Daily Beast, neither has become a profitable venture. This has caused the Harman family to re-think their position. [Snip] Things are changing, says the Harmans. "However, given the...

[snip] Dowd portrayed Obama as lazy, nihilistic, removed and self-absorbed. Now comes Brown on today's Morning Joe, calling Obama "aloof" and not "lovable." Daily Beast editor Brown made her comments in the context of criticizing Obama's decision to stay out of Wisconsin, not deigning to come to the aid of Tom Barrett, the Dem candidate looking to unseat Republican Governor Scott Walker in today's recall election. View the video here.

Early frontrunner for the most preposterous political analogy of the year . . . On today's Morning Joe, Tina Brown said Rick Santorum was "like Judas Iscariot." And just what was Santorum's sin that merited comparing him to the man who betrayed Jesus Christ for thirty pieces of silver? That Santorum, 15 years after the fact, now regrets having supported Arlen Specter when his then-fellow Republican senator from Pennsylvania ran for president. View the video here.

Recently on Morning Joe it was Jon Meacham suggesting that Barack Obama doesn't particularly like people and was in the wrong line of work. Today it was Tina Brown's turn, opining that PBO doesn't dig his gig. Discussing PBO's ever-paltrier poll numbers, Brown opined that Obama "doesn't like his job." View the video here.

Q. How does someone seeking the Republican presidential nomination know he might have stepped in it with the people who will actually vote in the primaries? A. When a position he's taken has the likes of Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown suddenly saying she likes him, and calling him a "shining star." Newt Gingrich might thus be having a "ruh-roh" moment this morning. On today's Morning Joe, Brown repeatedly said "I like Newt" and saddled him with her "shining star". It was Newt's position on immigration, in which he called for a "humane" solution that would find a path to...

Is there no double-standard depths to which the liberal media won't sink when it comes to provocative political speech? No—judging by the pitiful performance of two MSMers on today's Morning Joe in defending James "take them out" Hoffa. Newsweek editor Tina Brown brayed that we must not "sanitize" political speech or take the "juice" out of it--all the while condemning Michele Bachmann and Glen Beck for some of their remarks. And the preposterous Mike Barnicle somehow defended Hoffa on the basis of the "context" of his remarks. Say what? Hoffa was introducing the President of the United States! View video...

The buzz about Michele Bachmann's crazy eyes photo on the cover of Newsweek refused to go away on Tuesday, a day after the magazine came out. Editor-in-chief of Newsweek and The Daily Beast Tina Brown defended the photo on Twitter. Her one-line response was simply: 'Michele Bachmann’s intensity is galvanizing voters in Iowa right now and Newsweek’s cover captures that.'

The president of the National Organization of Women actually rose to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s defense yesterday (didn’t see that coming!), while Newsweek editor Tina Brown tried to justify the “Crazy Eyes” cover that inspired so much conservative commentary yesterday. But one person seem disinclined to talk about the cover one way or another and that was Bachmann herself. As of yesterday afternoon, Bachmann still hadn’t seen the picture and she didn’t seem to care too much to talk about it when she could be talking about her campaign and her ideas for the country: Brown claims the cover is OK...