Which is sadder…the fact that the distinction between the Washington Times and Fox News is virtually non-existent, or that the Times has simply stopped trying to do anything resembling responsible reporting and is simply reposting from blogs without doing any fact-checking?  At what point do should you be required to no longer refer to yourself as a journalist?  When does a newspaper stop being a newspaper?
Wash. Times posts doctored transcript to claim Jennings called for mandatory “LGBT course” for teachers | Media Matters for America

Continuing her paper’s witch hunt against Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, The Washington Times’ Kerry Picket reprinted a doctored transcript — originally posted by a conservative blog — of 2008 comments by Jennings to falsely claim Jennings had said he wanted teachers to be required to “take an LGBT course” — a claim also echoed by the Fox Nation.

So the Washington Post produces and distributes a sort of mini-news paper called the Express, which focuses much more on fluff than on “real” news.  It’s distributed at every metro station every morning — I always grab it* because, hey! free crossword puzzle!

And I’ve been noticing a trend — it seems to take a MUCH more feminist approach than most newspapers.  I don’t know why this is.  I don’t know if, because it’s the fluff paper, it has more woman writers, or if it’s because it’s trying to be “edgy,” or what, but, well, check out the articles below and tell me if I’m wrong here.

The saddest part is how shocking I consider these articles.  That a reviewer — in a real newspaper!  Produced by the WASHINGTON POST!  A REAL NEWSPAPER! — would refer to a movie as “almost misogynistic**”.  Or that a headline would take a sarcastic tone about how Kate’s career got in the way of Jon’s comfort.  Or that a blurb would just flat out say “Chris Brown beat Rihanna,” rather than completely disappearing the crime and/or the perpetrator (see an nigh-infinite series of crime articles from every newspaper about how a victim “was raped,” “was beaten,” or, even better “had sex forced upon her”).

I really wish I could copy and paste from these, but I can’t, so I’m adding the .pdf links:

All About Steve review, page 28
Headline “Being a Working Mother is Now Spousal Abuse,” page 58
Blurb contains the sentence “A judge sentences Chris Brown to serve five years of probation and perform six months of community service for beating Rihanna,” page 30

*The Washington Times produces a similar mini-paper, the Examiner.  I give it a pass because, hey!  It’s the Washington Times!
**If the movie bears any semblance to the review at all, it’s not “almost” misogynistic.”  But zie is headed in the right direction.

Sometimes I’m watching Comedy Central and I realize that George Carlin is dead. Mitch Hedberg is dead.
But Dane Cook won’t shut the fuck up.

Media Matters – Most Outrageous Comments of 2008
I got too fucking mad.

So Campbell Brown took a remark from a politician and really twisted it around.
Whats unfortunate is that many of her points are absolutely spot on. They just have nothing to do with the actual remark.

Rendell: Janet’s perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19-20 hours a day to it

Calling this sexist, without any context is just silly. For all we know, he might have said the same thing if a single man was nominated. For all we know, he might have then gone on about how qualified Janet is for the job.
Now, she could have just used the comment as a jumping off point, sort of saying “this makes me think about…”, but she doesn’t. In fact, she makes it very clear that she sees the remark as sexist.

Again Gov. Rendell, I don’t mean to rake you over the coals.

And, in fact, she’s practically deceptive:

But it is fascinating to me that that is the quality being highlighted here as so perfect. C’mon. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is married with two grown children. His predecessor, Tom Ridge, had a family. Anybody remember a debate about whether they would have trouble balancing the demands of work and family?

I’m sorry, did I miss this debate? Because I’m pretty sure Ms. Brown just implied that handful of words was a debate.
Campbell makes a number of good points about how women are treated differently based on their age and relationship status. These are things that DO need to be talked about, these are things that are real problems.
But, lets talk about them, not point fingers and cry ’sexism’ for no reason.

Recently, the antenna to my satellite radio and I’ve been stuck listening to ‘terrestrial’ stations.

Mostly, I listen to NPR on the way to-and-from the metro, but today I was driving around listening to some music channels, and I think something has to be said to the people who run our radio stations.

Every time one of your DJs goes on and on about some crap unrelated to music but is supposedly ‘edgy’, every time you play a song with a radio edit because ‘goddamn’ and ‘fuck’ are too offensive to be heard by anyone, even though most of us here those words almost every day, every time you decide that its better to just not fight the FCC and the paranoid, puritanical, think-of-the-children throwbacks that have managed to sink their claws into the organization that, in many ways, controls our ‘Freedom Of Speech’, you lose another person to satellite radio.

And you deserve no better.  You are cowards, you have sold your souls to the dark ages, and you have decided that ultimate conformity is OK if it looks like rebellion, no matter how many rules you actually follow.

Think Progress » Infuriated About Tough CNN Interview, McCain Cancels Larry King Appearance

Funny thing, though…this is more or less the kind of stuff they do on BBC’s World Service. They ask questions and expect answers.

Yes, don’t forget, it looks like McCain may be breaking federal law

Of course, that doesn’t matter.  What matters is Obama changed his mind, completely legally, to do his own fundraising, completely legally.  Again, there’s these cries of ‘flip-flop’.  I don’t understand that.  I suppose mindlessly sticking to whatever decision you made in the past, no matter what changes, is admirable if, say, you are…wait…no, it really isn’t admirable at all, is it?  It borders on suicidal.  And, in the case of Still-President-Bush, homicidal.

But I digress.

Obama takes part in legal activites and people smack him around.  McCain may have broken federal law, no one cares.

Our media, ladies and gentlemen.

So, in case you missed it, yes, we know, we were lied to, and have continually been lied to, about the Iraq war.
Here’s a couple snippets from the NYT article.

Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

–
John C. Garrett is a retired Marine colonel and unpaid analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including in Iraq

At the same time, in e-mail messages to the Pentagon, Mr. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. “Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay,” he wrote in January 2007, before President Bush went on TV to describe the surge strategy in Iraq.

–
A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

–

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”

More than anything, this shows the absolute contempt the Bush Administration feels towards the people they serve.

But we knew that.

And how horrible the media is for helping them.

And we knew that too.

Well, some of us did.