The New York Times‘ lengthy obituary for Ford details how she rose to popularity after her husband replaced Richard Nixon after the latter’s resignation, and highlight her victories against cancer and substance abuse:

The country’s affection for Betty Ford transcended party lines. It began in earnest slightly more than two months after Gerald Ford became president in August 1974, following President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation over Watergate. Mr. Ford had been vice president for less than 10 months, named by Nixon to succeed Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned in disgrace over accusations of bribery and tax evasion. On Sept. 28, 1974, Mrs. Ford had a radical mastectomy after doctors discovered cancer in her right breast.

Few first ladies have been as popular as Betty Ford, and it was her frankness and lack of pretense that made her so. She spoke often in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, endorsed legalized abortion, discussed premarital sex and revealed that she intended to share a bed with her husband in the White House.

Perhaps Ford’s most lasting contribution to American life was her decision to become an advocate for mental health and drug dependency, after admitting to a bout of drug abuse herself. The Betty Ford Center, which helps patients cope with alcohol and drug abuse, now boasts more than 90,000 alumni– including celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli– and thousands still are being treated per year.

Below, via the C-SPAN online video archive, a talk Ford did with Rosalynn Carter on mental health and substance abuse (C-SPAN also has a longer talk Ford conducted about her years in the White House on their front page):

[Photo via NYT]

A fine example is the one Graham uses in the introduction to his piece:

How much of a liberal and Democratic partisan was new White House press secretary James Carney at Time magazine? Digging through the MRC archives provides a dossier of clues. Here’s one. After George W. Bush went jogging with him in 2000, Carney turned around on his fellow Yale alum and “reported” that “Bush tore into McCain like a pit bull let loose in a slaughterhouse.” Balance and equanimity were not Carney’s style. He rose through the ranks to Washington Bureau Chief in 2005 by toeing the liberal line…

That quote is cherry-picked from “My Jog With George,” and while the observation may seem harsh, compared to the reality of what Bush’s campaign did to McCain in South Carolina, the assessment is generous. The balance of the piece paints Bush in a fairly positive light, with much of their conversation remaining off the record. Even granting Graham’s premise, though, is the reader to conclude that Carney was “in the tank” for John McCain?

The liberal blog Crooks and Liars certainly thought so when they accused Carney of saying that “Iraq is McCain’s Winning Issue” as a member of a February, 2008 This Week roundtable. Of course, that’s not exactly what Carney said:

CARNEY: On Iraq, I’m not sure that it’s…that he can’t win that argument. I think that if you’re forward looking, that the public has already decided what it thinks about what happened and how we got in and whether it’s been done well. But I think, you know, McCain can effectively frame an argument that says, you know, “I’m a much better steward going forward” than Democrats who are going to come in and say, “let’s just get out.” Imagine what will happen with the military brass and conservative establishment and people who just don’t want to see us hightail it out of there without honor. I think that can be a very effective argument and the Democratic nominee, whether it’s Obama or Clinton, has to have an answer to that that’s acceptable.

Over the years, liberal media watchdog Media Matters has also whacked Carney repeatedly, most notably regarding his assessment of a McCain campaign ad. They have also published a laundry list of Carney/Time Magazine grievances, and took issue with Carney himself on six other occasions. That’s not the kind of record you’d expect to see from a “liberal and Democratic partisan.”

You also wouldn’t expect such an individual to say that “the left is as full of unthinking Ditto-heads as Limbaugh-land,” which Carney did in response to liberal bloggers who flamed him over his comparison of George W. Bush‘s political standing in 2007 with that of Bill Clinton in 1995. While some might read the Limbaugh crack as a “partisan” jab, it’s fair to say that Rush earned the rebuke fair and square. A year earlier, he attacked Carney and his wife, ABC News National Correspondent Claire Shipman, as “slave-owner and husband.”

Do all of these attacks by liberals prove that Carney is actually biased in favor of conservatives? I haven’t seen anyone, even Media Matters, make that claim. The left’s knock on the mainstream media has long been that they’re too susceptible to the Drudge-driven right-wing echo chamber, and that they respond to charges of bias by replacing objectivity with faux “balance.” In that regard, some of the knocks against Carney are of debatable merit.

Since he’s going to be the next White House Press Secretary, I’ve tried to get a handle on Carney’s work as a journalist, as well. The most remarkable thing, to me, is that in a twenty-year career, Carney has largely avoided controversy, and he hasn’t done so by hiding in obscurity. Not only was he an early adopter of the high-volume, less-filtered blogging platform, Carney has also been a fixture on political television. A review of his Clinton-era TV appearances reveals an analyst with a cool temperature, in stark contrast to the politics of the time. In particular, his take on the third Bush/Gore debate belies any partisan bias at all, as he generally agrees with a panel that awards the debate to Gore on the substance, yet concludes that it helps Bush. It’s an analysis that probably didn’t please either “side,” but turned out to be correct, if self-fulfilling.

What controversy Carney has generated has had more to do with his subjects than himself. He was best known to me for his August, 2008 interview with John McCain, which served the dual purpose of dispelling the notion of an anti-McCain bias (Carney talks about the press’ well-known affinity for McCain to that point), while illustrating the degree to which McCain was becoming desperate in the run-up to his selection of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate.

Days later, in an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Carney took on McCain campaign adviser Nicole Wallace, in an exchange that presciently drew the battle lines for the next several years of our political discourse. Carney challenged the McCain campaign to let Palin talk to reporters, as Wallace mocked the institution of journalism, all while Carney’s future predecessor, Robert Gibbs, watched from the sidelines:

As we all know, Palin did eventually face a mainstream media that asked her “trick questions” like “What do you read,” and the result was the stepped-up effort to discredit journalism that you see today.

That’s why Carney’s supposed “bias” isn’t really the point, here. Until he was named White House Press Secretary, the right didn’t have any problem with Jay Carney. In fact, Redstate chief and CNN contributor Erick Erickson counts himself a “big fan” of Carney’s, whom he called “an awesome reporter. He always played it middle of the road and tried to get both sides.”

Now that Carney is press secretary, his supposed “bias” is irrelevant, but his relationships with his former colleagues are not. Discrediting Carney sets the table for accusations that the White House press corps is going easy on Carney, or that he’s spoon-feeding them stories, and generally reinforces the conservative notion that the mainstream media are a bunch of in-the-tank liberals.

This is perfectly illustrated by Carney fan Erick Erickson, who makes the assertion even as he’s praising Carney as an “awesome reporter:”

Here’s the thing folks: Jay Carney is an awesome reporter. He always played it middle of the road and tried to get both sides, but his biases were always to the left.

See that? Even the most “awesome” mainstream reporter is a biased lefty. How do we know this? Erickson explains that the proof of mainstream media bias is in the fact that Republicans don’t hire them. No, I’m not kidding:

The point here is this: have any major reporters gone on to work for Republicans? The left likes to use Tony Snow as their example, but of course Tony was a well known conservative and Republican, having guest hosted for Rush Limbaugh for a number of years.

But who in the mainstream media ever goes to the Republicans? Linda Douglass of ABC News went with Obama. Carney is going with Biden. What about ABC’s Claire Shipman, Carney’s wife? Do you really think she’s going to cover the political beat fairly with her husband working for Biden? I doubt it.

You might remember Linda Douglass. She’s the former journalist whom Erickson compared to Joseph Goebbels, then falsely accused of making her own Nazi reference. Neither Erickson, nor Newsbusters (who were strangely silent regarding Erickson’s verbal assaults on Douglass) have earned the benefit of the doubt to cast stones at Carney, or the White House press corps.

Time will tell how Carney performs in his new job, but nothing I’ve seen in two years of covering the daily grilling of Robert Gibbs suggests that the press corps has gone easy on him, and if their comments about the challenges facing Carney are any indication, that’s not likely to change.

Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh provided the blueprint for this effort back in 2006, when he offhandedly slammed Carney and his wife, ABC News National Correspondent Claire Shipman, as “slave-owner and husband.”

Limbaugh’s contempt for what he calls the “drive-by media” long predates the emergence of anti-”lamestream”er Sarah Palin as the figurehead of a cresting movement to de-legitimize journalism, so it’s no surprise that Carney would have, at some point, wound up in Limbaugh’s sights.

Still, Carney may prove difficult for the right to pigeonhole, especially when you consider that Redstate chief and CNN contributor Erick Erickson said, in 2008, that he is “a big fan of (Carney’s) work since 2000,” and upon Carney’s shift to the VP’s office, reminded readers that “Jay Carney is an awesome reporter. He always played it middle of the road and tried to get both sides,” adding (because the default position for conservatives is that any reporter who doesn’t work for World Net Daily or National Review is automatically biased), “…but his biases were always to the left.”

The Limbaugh quote offers another treat for liberals with an unquenched outrage jones: Rush’s mini-rant earned him the Worst Person award on the now-defunct Countdown with Keith Olbermann. In the era before “new tone,” Olbermann suggests Limbaugh get his meds adjusted.

Here’s the clip of Limbaugh’s comments, followed by Olbermann’s “Worst Person” announcement:

(h/t 1 Media Matters)
(h/t 2 Media Matters)

The star studded cast includes current “Not Ready for Prime Time” players Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph as Barack and Michelle Obama; as well as past players Will Ferrell as George W. Bush, Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Dan Aykroyd as Jimmy Carter, and Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford (in addition to Carrey and Carvey as Reagan and Bush respectively.)

Writing for Huffington Post, Ryan Grim reports:

Hollywood isn’t generally known for precisely timed or well-defined campaigns aimed at specific legislative language as bills move through Congress. But the clip, directed by Ron Howard and written by Adam McKay and Al Jean, was produced in coordination with Americans for Financial Reform, a major pro-reform coalition based in Washington, and it hits just as Senate negotiators work toward a compromise on the CFPA in the Banking Committee.

The most recent compromise proposal being discussed by Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and two Republicans — Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Bob Corker of Tennessee — would house the consumer protection agency inside the Federal Reserve and limit its authority.

Senate liberals reacted coolly to the proposal. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) went so far as to say he’d introduce his own version as an amendment on the Senate floor if Dodd doesn’t come through with a strong, independent agency.

This is the second notable reunion video on Funny or Die directed by Ron Howard with political impact. You may recall pro-Obama video in which he reprised his roles as Opie Taylor and Ron Cunningham in an effort to help Obama become president.

After Dunne’s death was announced the New York Times David Carr twittered: “Dominick Dunne wld be pissed he died on same day as Ted Kennedy and had to share…a piece of work, but fun as hell.”

The same might be said of Farrah Fawcett who lost the death coverage match (along with the Iran protesters) in spectacular fashion to Michael Jackson.

Then there’s Don Hewitt, whose death followed CBS colleague Walter Cronkite by just over a month, but as the country had already been saturated by glory days of journalism/CBS coverage seemed to merit more muted reaction than might otherwise have been.

Who else has been overshadowed in death? We’ve put together a gallery looking back at the last half century of famous passings.

See more celebrity death matches here.

You see, I really know next to nothing about Walter Cronkite.  He means nothing at all to me. Hearing that he’s dead was like a looking at a well-painted apartment wall. You get the feeling that a good job might have been done but that’s the limit of the emotional or intellectual reaction.

So why does this make me feel young? Well, let’s face it. Cronkite was important to the kind of people whose memories of our public life is full of Kennedy and King assassinations, the hippies fighting cops at Democratic convention in 1968, the ’60s culture wars, Watergate, Gerald Ford, Vietnam, the oil crises, Elvis’s death and Lennon’s murder, Three Mile Island, and Jimmy Carter’s 1979 summer meltdown.

I care about that stuff the way a guy storming the beach at Normandy cared about the Spanish American war. It’s more well-painted walls.

Now, I don’t speak ill of the dead. But I’ll make an exception: I’m pretty sure that if I did care about Cronkite, I wouldn’t like him very much. No good contrarian can like anyone known as “The Most Trusted Man In America.” Also, I have no admiration for the anchor-as-guide to the world version of television news, and I’m glad it’s a dying form. If, as someone on the television said today, we never see anyone like him again, I’d say that this state of affairs couldn’t have come too soon.

Reading a bit here and there about him has made me suspect I’d dislike him even more than that. From what I can tell in Peter Feld’s write up, he seems to have disdained the lives actually lived by most of his countrymen. I guess it’s not surprising to discover an aversion to the lives of ordinary people in someone who spent his life performing a job that put his face in the living rooms of millions of strangers.

I’m sure his family and friends will miss him, and if I knew any of them I’d be sorry for their loss. And maybe I’d tell them to say thanks to Walter for me. Like I said, it’s rare that the death of a public figure makes me suddenly feel young.

John Carney is Managing Editor of Clusterstock. This piece was originally published at Rise If You Must, his personal website.