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December 20, 2015

Split Screen: Media torn between Syria strategy and King celebration

An exercise in nostalgia and symbolism hearkening back to 1963 had to compete with a plan to rain Tomahawk cruise missiles on a Middle Eastern country in 2013.

December 20, 2015

Media drawing their own red line on Syria

As the administration weighs air strikes against Syria over its use of chemical weapons, even many liberal publications and commentators are invoking the president’s warning a year ago that such weapons were a line that the Assad regime must not cross.

December 20, 2015

Ben Bradlee’s daughter-in-law reveals (almost) all on Facebook

Ben Bradlee, one of the great men of American journalism, celebrated his 92nd birthday yesterday, and his daughter-in-law paid tribute by posting a photo of them and saying "it is a dream to be part of his family." That, however, is only one of the photos that Pari Bradlee has been putting on Facebook. 

December 20, 2015

Why the media are gorging on Miley Cyrus’ MTV gyrations

It's been amusing to watch all the hyperventilating about Miley Cyrus. What she did at the VMAs was terrible, horrible, gross and downright nauseating, the pundits say. And hey, let's look at it again. 

December 20, 2015

Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh and the politics of blame

President Obama blamed some of his problems on Rush Limbaugh the other day. And that may not be a brilliant strategy.

December 20, 2015

Cruz Control: The making of a media star

The Texas Republican hasn’t even finished his first year in the Senate, and he has become the face of Tea Party conservatism and been inducted into the 2016 speculation sweepstakes. 

December 20, 2015

NSA fallout: A CNN pundit’s war on Glenn Greenwald

CNN's Jeffrey Toobin is a former prosecutor and very smart guy whose judgment is really clouded when it comes to Glenn Greenwald. So clouded, in fact, that he has no problem with the fact that British authorities on Sunday detained Greenwald's partner at Heathrow, interrogated him for nine hours and threatened him with jail. 

December 20, 2015

Can Al-Jazeera make it here?

An early look at the programming suggests that the greater depth promised by the promos may be more of a goal than a reality. 

December 20, 2015

Petraeus mistress secretly followed Tampa socialite

When Jill Kelley told me earlier this year that she was "terrified" after receiving anonymous and threatening emails that turned out to be from David Petraeus' mistress, it was hard not to sympathize with someone who'd been drawn into a scandal not of her making. Now we are learning more about what happened. 

December 20, 2015

Do debates lure fringe candidates?

After the GOP spanked both NBC and CNN for their forthcoming Hillary biopics by cutting them out of the 2016 action, Chuck Todd has weighed in with a bit of praise. Todd, who has called NBC's entertainment effort a "nightmare," buried any sense of frustration, calling the GOP's move smart politics.