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.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart lit into both Erickson and CNN last night, highlighting a Reliable Sources segment in which Howard Kurtz grilled the Redstate chief about some rhetorical skeletons in his closet. While Stewart’s real criticism was of CNN for acting shocked at Erick being Erick, it’s also a pretty good bet that Erickson wouldn’t mind if his “Greatest Hits” could just stay in the vault from now on.

Before you watch this, though, some of these  might seem familiar to you. Most of these doozies were trotted out by Stephen Colbert in a January interview with Erickson. What a difference a few weeks make. Then, Erickson tried to pull a fast one on Colbert, explaining that his comparison of White House adviser Linda Douglass to Joseph Goebbels was a response to a similar remark from Douglass.

He almost got away with it, but Colbert had Douglass on the next night to refute Erickson’s claim. This time, it looks like he’s just saying “My bad!” and moving on.

As it happens, I disagree somewhat with Stewart’s assessment of Erick Erickson. While there’s no shortage of incendiary rhetoric in his portfolio, that’s the currency of the blogger’s realm. Without original reporting, there are only a few ways to draw the eyeballs, and stepping over the line is a reliable one.

However, Erickson, like him or not, has grown Redstate into the Coca Cola of conservative blogs. He didn’t do that just by calling people Nazis or goat-f***ing child molesters. He did it by understanding his audience, who constitute the broadest swath of mainstream conservatives. That’s what he brings to CNN, the true mainstream pulse of conservatism. Unfortunately, that happens to include the occasional spitting on Ted Kennedy’s grave.

Erickson made the accusation by way of explaining his own use of a Nazi reference, when Colbert confronted him with this tweet:

Linda Douglass really is the Joseph Goebbels of the White House Health Care shop: http://bit.ly/3y276U

The link in that tweet is dead now, but it pointed to this AP story about the much-criticized Price-Waterhouse report on healthcare reform, which did contain a quote from Douglass:

White House health care spokeswoman Linda Douglass concurred. “This is an insurance industry analysis that is designed to reach a conclusion which benefits the industry, and does not represent what the bill does,” she said.

In fact, there’s no record of Douglass ever making any kind of Nazi comparison, unlike Erickson. He must have been counting on Colbert not to have done the research, and never to bring it up again. No such luck.

Colbert brought Douglass on to respond to the charge, and while she wouldn’t call Erickson a liar, she did say this was an example of “crazy, made-up stuff.” You know who else made up crazy stuff? Joseph Goebbels! Did I just nail Linda Douglass?

I have to wonder why Erickson didn’t just cop to using the Goebbels reference as pure hyperbole, or even double-down on it. Is Redstate really going to lose readers because the editor compared an Obama administration official to a Nazi? Far from exacting a cost, the users of this kind of rhetoric are routinely rewarded. Redstate doubtless got a Colbert traffic bump, and other practitioners of Godwin’s law also achieve varying levels of exposure.

Since Roman Polanski was arrested Saturday night in Switzerland for fleeing the U.S. after pleading guilty in 1977 to unlawful sexual intercourse (a plea deal for a rape accusation), you’ve been speaking out in droves to defend the director. CNN describes it as “Hollywood Embraces Polanski“, Fox News calls it “Hollywood Left Bands Together to Fight Polanski Arrest“.

Here’s a tip: stop.

We get it – Polanski is a brilliant director. “Rosemary’s Baby” was fantastic. “Chinatown” is a masterpiece. He finally got an Oscar for best director in 2003 with “The Pianist” a heartbreaking film that opened the door for Adrien Brody to make out with Halle Berry. You even gave him a standing ovation that night – even though he wasn’t there to accept the award (video on next page).

Of course, that’s because he’d be arrested if he set foot in the United States, due to that whole raping a 13-year-old thing. But let’s not dwell on that right now.

Hundreds of you guys and others like you in the film world abroad have signed a petition demanding Polanski’s release. People like Woody Allen, who is a bit of a creepster himself (although, notably, has not had sex with a 13-year-old). People like Monica Bellucci, who was cinematically raped (for art). People like Harvey Weinstein, who says he is “calling on every filmmaker we can to help fix this terrible situation.”

And here’s kind of the problem, Hollywood. You think this whole thing is happening to you (or at the very least, to brilliant people like you). Whoopi Goldberg wanted to make very clear this week that what Polanski did wasn’t “rape rape.” That doesn’t make much sense sense, of course, and doesn’t address the fact that the director never served his sentence because he fled fled. Even Sharon Tate‘s sister, who thinks Polanski is a “good guy” and of course “brilliant”, wanted to draw the very obvious distinction that “there’s rape and then there’s rape.”

NEXT: How Polanski is not Joseph Goebbels.