-By Warner Todd Huston
Us Magazine had a little tidbit of gossip to blather about when it discovered who made Ann Romney’s and Michelle Obama’s hot pink dresses that each wore to the recent presidential debate. In its headline Us blares that Ann Romney’s dress cost “$1,690.” But Michelle Obama’s ensemble was priced at $3,290 despite the silence of the headline.
Us gives the world the following headline: “Ann Romney Wears $1,690 Oscar de la Renta Dress to Presidential Debate.”
In the body of the piece Us reports this description of Ann Romney’s couture.
Romney, 63, selected a short-sleeved crimped cotton silk dress by Oscar de la Renta. The Spring 2013 design is not yet available in stores, but retails for $1,690.
I expect we are supposed to find it shocking, downright shocking, that a millionaire could afford to fork out nearly $1,700 for a frock.
And yet, “public servant” Michelle Obama’s outfit was almost twice as costly as Romney’s.
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Us Mag. Touts Expense of Ann Romney’s Dress, Buries Higher Cost of Michelle Obama’s”
The idea that President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is in some trouble is dawning on many in the Old Media, these days. The latest to notice that Obama has found some unexpected obstacles — mostly troubles of his own making — on the road back to the White House is the oft times left-leaning National Journal.
Apparently, former ABC News reporter Carol Simpson is a disgruntled debate moderator. In an interview conducted after the recent 2012 debate, Simpson claimed that she was relegated to being the “Oprah” of moderators. Further, she asserted that women are discriminated against as debate moderators. She was even unhappy that they made her wear high-heeled shoes when she moderated the 1992 debates.
It won’t be long before America’s voice for democracy will be silenced in Russia after the 
George Will made a relatively quixotic proclamation immediately after the second presidential debate held at Hofstra University in New York. First of all, he thought the debate was “immeasurably the best” in American presidential debate history. Just as quixotically, Will declared Obama the big winner of the night.
With the focus on the horrible job of “moderating” perpetrated by CNN’s Candy Crowley at the latest 2012 presidential debate, it is instructive to take a look back at some of her past work for CNN. For instance, in a 2010 interview with former President George W. Bush, Crowley dismissed Bush’s correct assertion that women are horribly oppressed by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Voters do not like taxes. So, National Public Radio in New Hampshire seems to have thought it would be nice to help Maggie Hassan, the Democrat candidate for Governor, by doing a little editing work to take the word “tax” out of one of her answers at a recent candidates debate. The radio folks claimed it was a “mistake,” but eliminating the word sure does tend to soften the blow of her policy ideas.
One-time theater critic turned left-wing screedist, Frank Rich, is down in the dumps over that darned ol’ tea party. Far from being down and out, Rich says, 
After the vice presidential debates, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz proved once again why he is the clown prince of the whole MSNBC circus by taking credit for Joe Biden’s smirking, arm waving, belly laughing, constantly interrupting style of “debating” at the October 11 event in Kentucky.
Occasionally it is interesting to check out the Twitter feeds of employees of the Old Media establishment to see what sort of things they like to banter about on social media. Invariably, it seems, when we do this we find that the member of the media in question isn’t as non-partisan as they pretend to be in their work. Such is the case with Larry Shaughnessy, a producer at CNN’s Washington bureau covering the Dept. of Defense and Veterans Affairs.
In the world of journalism, no bad deed goes unrewarded. Take the case of former Washington bureau chief for Yahoo! News, David Chalian. You may recall that he was fired after he was heard saying during the Republican National Convention that Republicans were “happy to have a party with black people drowning.” He may have been fired from Yahoo! for this ignorant statement, but now he’s been hired by Politico.
Washington Post reporter Dan Zak saw a different vice presidential debate than nearly everyone else in the Old Media establishment. Zak saw the debate where Joe Biden was brilliant, Martha Raddatz was fair, and Paul Ryan was like “the perp-of-the-week” on an episode of TVs Law and Order: SVU. That is exactly what he said on Twitter as he watched the debates. 
Whereas most people in the middle and the right saw Biden as a snorting, chortling, constantly interrupting blowhard and “moderator” Martha Raddatz as Biden’s willing assistant during Thursday’s vice presidential debate, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien and Dana Bash saw “perfect pitch” and a “terrific” performance by the left-wing tag team.
Fox News Channel won the race during the vice presidential debate this week; the ratings race. Fox brought in more than twice as many viewers as MSNBC and CNN… combined. Not only that, but Fox even drew more viewers than each of the big three networks individually.
Chuck Todd, NBC’s political correspondent, is not a big fan of all these new polls showing Romney and Obama to be so close. He’s especially down on Scott Rasmussen who has said that he’s been seeing a close race all along, a result that Todd 
Last month, broadcast TV lifer Morely Safer of CBS’s 60 Minutes fame appeared on CSPAN and pronounced himself “appalled” by the denizens of the new media. 
Before we get any further into this story, I have to warn you that this is not satire. That having been said, Buzzfeed’s Zeke Miller perpetrated one of the worst attempts at guilt by association ever made. Miller attempted to intimate that Mitt Romney is a racist because his motorcade drove past private property that had a Confederate flag flying on it as he campaigned in Virginia.
As political pundits delve into Obama’s very poor debate performance, not as much attention is being bestowed upon what he actually said on Wednesday evening. In the case of his claims about his budget, few are noticing that the President repeated his thoroughly debunked deficit reduction claims, claims even his own budget plan proves to be false.
For The New York Times, Steven Ratner had to admit last month that he was pretty darned excited for those Obamacare death panels to get started. “WE need death panels,” he said on September 16. This from the same paper that in 2009 attacked Gov. Sarah Palin for her rhetoric and an Old Media establishment that gave Palin a “lie of the year” award for her claim that Obamacare death panels were coming.
The prevailing opinion on the President’s debate performance last night from partisan and non-partisan alike is that he did poorly, to say the least. But as to exactly why the President was so taciturn, lackadaisical, distracted, and downright peevish is varied and, frankly, in many cases silly. In fact, a number of the President’s supporters are actually blaming debate moderator, 78-year-old Jim Lehrer.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is doing his part for team Obama to make sure that Mitt Romney’s performance at Wednesday evening’s debate is a disappointment, one that will surely lead to his losing the election in November.
Many in the newsmedia are reacting with quite restraint to the revelations of comments by Obam’s racist “spiritual mentor,” Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. Imagine if this were a Republican politician linked to such outrageous talk and you’ll realize how the MSM has been studiously underplaying this controversy. A benefit of the doubt seems to be the rule of thumb for how the media is treating Obama, a benefit that would be denied a GOP candidate. 
Both the Romney and Obama camps are attempting to lower expectations for their respective performances in the upcoming presidential debates with both saying the other has an advantage.