HillBuzz noticed the “pundits” on MNSBC, in particular, are nonstop cheerleaders for Obama: even the ones MSNBC claims represent the conservative, ie GOP, perspective. One of the most biased in favor of Obama is Michelle Bernard: the wide-eyed, romantic look she gets when she talks about Obama is shameless. It’s like she has religious moments when merely thinking about him.
HillBuzz is glad others have noticed this bias and have also wondered WHO IS MICHELLE BERNARD?
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From the Daily Howler:
WHO IS MICHELLE BERNARD: In prime time coverage of a White House election, no cable news network has ever been as propagandized as MSNBC currently is. On Fox, Hannity was always paired with Colmes—and O’Reilly, who is a nut on some topics, is relatively fair about major pols. (In Campaign 2000, for example, he was massively more fair to Gore than most big cable hosts were.)
But on MSNBC, the performance of Hardball, Countdown, and now Race for the White House often resembles that of a cult. This brings us to a peculiar question: Who is Michelle Bernard?
On the surface, the question is easily answered. At present, Bernard is CEO of the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative women’s group founded in 1992. (According to Wikipedia, the IWF grew out of an ad hoc group created to support Clarence Thomas.) The groups directors emeritae include such conservative stars as Lynn Cheney, Wendy Gramm, Midge Decter and Kate O’Beirne. To peruse the group’s web site, just click here.
The IWF, like many such groups, is founded as a non-partisan 501(c)(3) group. As such, the group does not endorse candidates. But it does promote a range of conservative causes.
All that is well and good—and Michelle Bernard is the group’s CEO. Which leads us to a puzzling question: As a major conservative, why is Bernard appearing on Hardball so often—to gush about Obama?
Bernard’s remarkable Hardball run began on Thursday, January 24. Since then, she has become a frequent guest on the propagandistic program. Here is the list of dates on which she has appeared:
Thursday, January 24
Friday, January 25
Monday, January 28
Tuesday, January 29
Wednesday, January 30 (regular program)
Wednesday, January 30 (special post-debate program)
Tuesday, February 5
Tuesday, February 12
Wednesday, February 13
Thursday, February 14
Tuesday, February 19
Tuesday, February 26
Tuesday, March 4
Wednesday, March 5
Tuesday, March 11 (regular program)
Tuesday, March 11 (special post-primary program)
Wednesday, March 12
Friday, March 14
Tuesday, March 18
According to Nexis, Bernard has appeared nineteen times since January 24, an eight-week period. During that time:
She has almost never been identified as a conservative.
She has repeatedly and effusively praised Obama.
She has never been asked why she, as a leading conservative, is promoting the Democratic Party’s most likely presidential nominee.
Who knows? Maybe there’s a legitimate reason why Bernard, the head of a major conservative group, is promoting Obama so effusively. But Bernard is appearing on a cable network which is perhaps more propagandized than any such network ever has been during a White House campaign. And she is appearing at a time when at least one major writer is asking a question: Have some conservatives been supporting Obama because they think he would be the easier Democratic candidate to beat? (For Wayne Barrett’s Village Voice piece, just click here.) For ourselves, we don’t know who would be the stronger Dem in November—and we don’t know what different conservatives think. But as we’ve watched Hardball, we’ve become increasingly puzzled by Bernard’s effusive praise of Obama—praise which has never yet been questioned by her host.
Our question: Why is the head of the IWF gushing so over Obama?
And make no mistake—Bernard has been gushing hard about the Dem front-runner. (Such gushing is par for the course on Clinton/Gore-loathing MSNBC.) This Tuesday night, for example, the head of a major conservative group said this about Obama’s speech:
BERNARD (3/18/08): I think that this is probably the most important speech that I have heard in my lifetime. I would say this is probably the best speech and most important speech on race that we have, that we have heard as a nation since Martin Luther King`s “I have a dream” speech. Every single word was riveting. I thought that the way Barack Obama started off the speech talking about how perfect and how—you know, the ideals set forth in our Constitution, but slavery being the original sin of our nation and how our forefathers left it to further, further generations to perfect this union and giving the impression that that time for change is now.
I was riveted by his ability in the speech to actually talk about and explain in a manner that is not scary to the nation the type of anger that consumes men like Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and explain it in an important way by talking about what black men in this nation faced in the 50s and in the 60s and not as a way to—to get away from the fact that some of the problems that still plague black America need to be fixed within the community.
He did a great job of, for example, talking about the importance of personal responsibility in the black community, but also balancing that out with saying we need to fix our public education system so that you don`t see such a great disparity between black children and white children. I think, overall, you know, it ranks right up there as one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard.
On balance, we thought the speech was quite good too—but then, we don’t head the IWF, a major conservative group. But then, Bernard had gushed the previous week, defending Obama during the controversy about Ferraro:
BERNARD (3/12/08): Well, I got an e-mail from a viewer who sent me an e-mail and said, “Look, here’s the thing about Geraldine Ferraro—if her premise was correct, why wasn’t Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton ever elected president? If all it takes to be a black—to become president of the United States is to be a black man, we would have seen one a long time ago. And that`s why it’s offensive.”
He is not an affirmative action candidate. He is highly qualified. He is well spoken. He has captured the imagination of whites, blacks, Hispanics. He’s captured the imagination of everyone in this nation, and she seems to really be denigrating him and kind of saying, “You know what? Realize your place.” It’s almost as if we are beginning to see the evolution of the angry white female, or the angry Democratic white female in this election.
Say what? According to the had of a major conservative group, Barack Obama has “captured the imagination of everyone in this nation?” That would have struck us as somewhat odd, coming from the head of the IWF. Except for the fact that, just one night before, we had seen Bernard gush like this:
BERNARD (3/11/08): I think Iowa, New Hampshire, and all of the states that followed, particularly Iowa, you turn on news and there are literally thousands of white people, you know, standing in line to shake his hand and voting for him and they are—
MATTHEWS: What was your feeling in seeing that?
BERNARD: I was proud. I thought it was a wonderful time in our history. We’ve had other African Americans run for president, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton. Barack Obama represents a new type of black politics.
MATTHEWS: Define it, if can you.
BERNARD: Well, we are going beyond color. You are seeing African Americans competing with whites on their own territory. Like his wife going to Princeton, like Barack Obama going to Harvard Law School. Speaking just as well as the whites, not speaking Ebonics. Going out and giving great speeches.
Barack Obama isn’t speaking Ebonics! It made Bernard feel proud!
At any rate, you get the general idea: Bernard has been pimping Obama quite hard. As such, she fits right in with Hardball’s requirements—and good news! On March 11, Matthews introduced her, for the first time, as an “MSNBC political analyst.” Like Rachel Maddow before her, Bernard seemed to have said the right things—and seemed to have reaped the reward.
In fairness, Bernard is a young African-American high-achiever herself. (She doesn’t speak Ebonics either!) One might imagine that this helps explain the oddness of seeing the IWF head praising a major Dem in this manner. But few Hardball viewers will find themselves wondering about Bernard’s endless praise for Obama. As we’ve noted, Matthews keeps forgetting to tell his viewers that the IWF is a conservative entity; he introduced Bernard as a conservative on January 28 and February 5, but that was the last time he let viewers know about her political orientation. And something else has never happened. As far as we can tell, Matthews has never asked Bernard an obvious question: Why do you, the head of a conservative group, praise the Democratic front-runner so effusively? That is a baldly obvious question. The question has never been asked.
Why in the world is Michelle Bernard praising the Dem front-runner this way? Is this just another of the Jack Welch Net’s endless scams? Why is Michelle Bernard gushing like this? There may be a very good answer to that—but it’s high time the question was asked.
