The Politico reported on November 22 that Time Magazine's Mark Halperin scolded the media for it's sycophantic treatment of Barack Obama during this election cycle calling the favorable treatment "the most disgusting failure" of the press he's seen for years. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage," Halperin said at a Politico/USC conference held on Friday.

It's all pretty amusing, though, to see Mark Helprin complain that his fellow journalists didn't do a good job reporting on Obama's record because back in March, NewsBusters reported on how Halperin himself was claiming that Obama represented a "centrist" politician despite the fact that Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate! What happened to being tough on The One then?

UPDATE: More absolutely must-see videos have been added below the fold. Some great additions. Keep 'em coming, NBers!

Let's do it again.

Here are the rules: suggested videos should be tasteful, unoffensive, and sent this evening to both Noel and Warner via PM or EM (nsheppard@newsbusters.org, igcolonel@hotmail.com). Please don't link videos in the comments section, for we want all content to be filtered.

The phone lines are open!

Our first offering is a humorous look at a drunk driving test:

Both of Chicago's major dailies have sold out editions containing special "commemorative" sections devoted to Barack Obama.  Judging by today's Chicago Tribune, perhaps the strategy is to push out an Obama commemorative issue every day.

The top half of the front page includes a huge color photo of a smiling Obama in a Chicago deli yesterday, a color picture of Obama with one of his daughters, and a color shot of a Chicago crowd watching Obama's motorcade speed by.  "At home: A brief taste of normalcy" is the accompanying story and it notes:

On Friday, he made time to leave the office briefly to pick up a corned beef sandwich and cherry pie from Manny's Coffee Shop & Deli, a favorite spot for Chicago politicians.

"I'm just glad to be out," Obama said amid applause and shouts of congratulations from surprised diners.

Yet the roughly 15-minute stop seemed more designed to provide a media photo opportunity—the first in nearly a week—than to let the president-elect step out for some fresh air.

CNN has corrected a bogus story the network's Rick Sanchez pathetically aired Wednesday about leaders at last Saturday's G20 meeting snubbing President Bush as if he had "cooties."

For those that missed it, Sanchez played a video (embedded below the fold) of Bush seemingly being ignored by most of the leaders of the free world as they lined up to take a group picture:

I want you to look at this video, all right. It seems almost sad. Look at this. This is the president of the United States walking out on stage to take a picture with world leaders invited to the G20 summit over the weekend. Look at him. And he seems like the most unpopular kid in high school that nobody liked -- you know, the one with the cooties? 

Actually, what seems sad, Rick, is that as your colleague Jeanne Moos reported Friday, you didn't know what you were talking about (video embedded right, h/t Hot Air via NBer R D Helms):

Brent Bozell's culture column this week delved into the ditch that is Fox Entertainment. Although many find Fox News to be a breath of fresh air in news, Fox Entertainment often seems lewd, crude, and even coming unglued. Armed with plenty of cash to defend the right of Hollywood lame-brains like Nicole Richie and Cher to swear on awards shows in front of the Supreme Court, Fox's lawyer, Carter Phillips, proceeded to make a complete buffoon of himself:

When Justice Stevens asked if there were changes in community standards over the last thirty years, if society had grown more tolerant of curse words, Carter Phillips, the profanity-favoring attorney for Fox, proclaimed: “I believe that society is significantly more tolerant of these words today than it was 30 years ago.” Justice Scalia replied: “Do you think your clients have had anything to do with that?”

Comedians have been having fun this week with the idea of old-fashioned piracy re-emerging on the Somali coast (enough of the Johnny Depp jokes). But Associated Press reporter Mohamad Olan Hassan filed a story with a strangely cheering tone for how Somali pirates can take their ill-gotten gains and "transform villages into boomtowns." You have to read it to believe it:

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women — even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for their hostages.

And in an impoverished country where every public institution has crumbled, they have become heroes in the steamy coastal dens they operate from because they are the only real business in town.

"The pirates depend on us, and we benefit from them," said Sahra Sheik Dahir, a shop owner in Haradhere, the nearest village to where a hijacked Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude was anchored Wednesday.

Governor Palin is in demand. Every newshound, every TV talking head, every newsertainer in the country is after her. She is being pursued for TV shows, book deals, movie roles, hounded by photographers and every hanger on in both Hollywood and the newsertainment industry. But the Associated Press wants to be sure you understand one thing: she is a FAILURE! That's right, in discussing Palin's current celebrity, the main concern AP has is to make sure you know she is a big ol' loser. The AP is so intent to remind you she lost that it has to tell you she lost over and over again. You know, just in case you were unaware she and McCain didn't win the election.

So, did you know Sarah Palin lost the election? Here, let the AP remind you (My bold throughout)...

Some potentially exciting games today:

• No. 15 Michigan State at No. 8 Penn State
• No. 14 Brigham Young at No. 7 Utah
• No. 20 Pittsburgh at No. 19 Cincinnati
• No. 2 Texas Tech at No. 5 Oklahoma

Anybody want to talk College B-Ball? Or my amazing Sharks? Are we heading for another Celtics-Lakers final?

Below the fold, NBer Caringwhiteguy raises an interesting question about FSU's Myron Rolle:

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: teenage suicide.

A South Florida college student killed himself by overdosing on drugs in front of a live online audience as some computer users egged him on, some debated his method, and others tried to talk him out of it.

When I read this yesterday, I cried for about ten minutes. Maybe it's because I have a son that age. However, I'm wondering how this story has impacted others, and if this is emblematic of the problems in our society today. Or, is this just a teenage suicide with an Internet twist thereby making it both shocking and novel but nothing more?

CBS News is starting the next wave of Obama intoxication. Rename your school for our Historic Leader:

A school on Long Island has been renamed Barack Obama Elementary School in honor of his historic rise to the presidency.

The move at the largely black and Hispanic school in Hempstead is among the first in what will likely be a wave of name changes around the world now that Mr. Obama has been elected president, from schools and streets to parks and mountaintops.

The prime minister of the Caribbean nation of Antigua has said he's taking measures to have the island's highest mountain peak renamed Mount Obama. In Portland, Ore., students want to rename Clark K-8 At Binnsmead school. Elsewhere on Long Island, the Clear Stream Avenue School in Valley Stream will consider a renaming resolution in December. And parents already have been naming newborns Barack.

For years, little would upset liberals more than the suggestion they were less patriotic than other Americans.  The crowd spewing "Bush-Hitler-Genghis-Khan-baby-killers-AmeriKKKa-Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh"? Great patriots, all.  Bill Ayers trampling a flag?  Dissent is patriotic, dude.

But now that Barack Obama has been elected, comes an admission, unintended as it may be. Yeah, maybe we weren't so much before, but it's cool to be patriotic. Now.  Such can be seen in Derrick Z. Jackson's Boston Globe column of today, 'It's OK to be an American now." From Jackson's opening paragraph [emphasis added]:

Before Obama's victory speech in Chicago, the crowd of 125,000 people said the Pledge of Allegiance. In my 53 years I have never heard such a multicultural throng recite the pledge with such determined enunciation, expelling it from the heart in a treble soaring to the skies and a bass drumming through the soil to vibrate my feet.

Ya gotta hand it to them. The Associated Press knows how to cut out all the extraneous background noise and get right to the important issues of the day. Barack Obama will surely be in the center of the vortex of some of the most important decisions in the world during the next four years and even his preparations for taking office are vitally important as a marker to what he might do in office. There are wars and rumors of wars, disasters and relief efforts and historic decisions will soon be made. But no decision is so important, as the AP dutifully tells us, than the one of what the president elect had for lunch. The shocking, heartwarming and resolute decision the leader of the free world... no the leader of all mankind... made for his lunch was apparently a corned beef sandwich.

Darfur still swirls with genocide, Iran is still making plans to destroy Israel, China is on pace to build the largest most dangerous army on Earth, the European Union still angles to lay America low, but all that pales in comparison to the important report the AP could muster (no, not mustard). Yes, the AP brings us the most salient story of our day: "Obama grabs lunch at local deli, greets patrons."

The Associated Press reported tonight that Barack and Michelle Obama will send their daughters to a private school:

President-elect Barack Obama and his wife have chosen Sidwell Friends School for their two daughters, opting for a private institution that another White House child, Chelsea Clinton, attended a decade ago.

"A number of great schools were considered," said Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama. "In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now."

The AP further noted:

Michelle Obama went to public schools on Chicago's South Side, and understands the importance of strong public schools, Lelyveld said, and the administration plans to work hard on that issue.

Naked Emperor News has unearthed a 2007 KJFK radio interview Barack Obama gave to host Christiane Brown.  He promised that one of his first acts as president would be to call on his new Attorney General to investigate the Bush administration(emphasis is mine:)

BROWN: And when you are... if you were to be elected president of the United States, Senator Obama, do you feel that we need to look back if the investigations have been done on this administration find out what happened, because there’s a fear there’s a dangerous precedent being set... the CIA interrogation tapes missing, warrant-less wire tapping, all of these are violations of the Constitution, and people can be forgiven for thinking that it seems like we only enforce the Constitution when its politically expedient.

OBAMA: Well one of things that I’ve said, and I’ve said this repeatedly publicly, since I taught constitutional law for ten years is that...one of my first acts as president is going to be call in my new attorney general to review every single executive order that’s been issued... to overturn those that are undermining the Constitution, undermining our civil liberties, that are promoting this cockamamie theory of Unitary government, that says that somehow the executive branch does not need to obey the Constitution…uhh

(Cross talk)

While ABC, CBS and NBC on Friday night all touted how news that New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner will be nominated for Secretary of the Treasury fueled a market rebound, NBC was the most excited with Andrea Mitchell, sounding completely in the tank, hailing President-elect Obama's “all-star cabinet” as she maintained “Obama is determined to pick the strongest, smartest people he can find, knowing that he is facing an economic crisis of historic proportions.” A Nexis search turned up no references on NBC, in December 2000-January 2001, to President-elect Bush's “all-star cabinet” though it featured some stars, such as Colin Powell.

NBC Nightly News put “OBAMA MOVES THE MARKET” on screen as anchor Brian Williams teased: “On our broadcast here tonight, Obama moves the market. Stocks go on a huge rally with first word of the President-elect's choice of a Treasury Secretary.” As he set up Mitchell, viewers saw “TAKING ACTION” beneath a picture of Obama.

You might think media bias is a new thing, but a 40 year confession of a newspaper reporter gives us a peek behind the curtain as to how horribly biased newspapers have been for nearly a half century. Martin Dyckman, a former reporter for the leftist St. Petersburg Times, reminisces about the day he read over the wire that John F. Kennedy had been killed in Dallas.

The St. Petersburg Times newsroom was in controlled pandemonium. I don’t recall whether I handled any assassination copy that day; more likely, I was editing state and local news. But I was standing at the teletype when the first flash came in that a suspected Marxist, Lee Harvey Oswald, was being held in connection with the shooting. Times Publisher Nelson Poynter was standing nearby when I announced that.

His face fell.

"Oh, no," he said. "I was hoping it would be a right-winger."

That's right. He wasn't angry that a student of oppression tried to destroy this nation. He was disappointed that the President of the United States wasn't killed by a conservative, stealing an opportunity to fuel conservative hate. Some things never change.

Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent of CNN and a contributor to CBS's 60 Minutes, displayed her liberal joy for Obama as she emceed an event for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. As recounted by the Rush & Molloy gossip column in the New York Daily News:

CNN's Christiane Amanpour, who emceed, showed her political stripes when she told the crowd that in the last few months, she'd felt like she was covering "a foreign country having its first-ever democratic election. ... When was the last time we saw the whole world come into the streets dancing in celebration of America instead of demonstrating and burning the flag?"

The New York Observer also observed Amanpour offered her best I'm-not-worthy props to RFK when asked at the naming of New York's Robert F. Kennedy Bridge what she'd like named after her:

At the top of Thursday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric referred to a recent court ruling to release five Guantanamo Bay detainees as: "A big legal setback for the president's war on terror." Couric later introduced a report on the ruling and reiterated the idea of the ruling being a defeat solely for President Bush: "...a federal judge ruled today that five suspects held at Guantanamo Bay must be released...it's a major defeat for the Bush administration in