How do you solve a problem like Newsweek?

Once thought of as a journalistically proper publication, Newsweek stooped to a new low this week by featuring a 4-month-old Runner’s World photo of Sarah Palin along with a nonsensical headline on its cover.

“How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?” the headline alongside a gym-shorts wearing Palin reads. The sub-head, also with a negative spin, says, “She’s bad news for the GOP — and for everybody else, too.”

I have a question for Newsweek editors, “Who said Palin was a problem?” Maybe in your minds, but not in the thinking of a huge chunk of the population. “Bad news?” You’ve got to be out of your mind. She is the best news for conservative thought in a long time.

Journalistically speaking, where is your sense of balance, Newsweek?

You may be able to pass this kind of weak crap on your National Enquirer fan base, but not here… not to the Tea Party crowd, which you so easily dismiss. I see now why publications like yours are tagged by media analyst Bernie Goldberg as part of the “lamestream media.” You couldn’t prove your Kool-Aid drinking ways anymore than you did with this cover.

Palin’s response came in the form of this note on Facebook:

The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness – a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context.

- Sarah Palin

Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham told Yahoo! News that the photo choice was simply the “most interesting image available”:

“We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do. We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”

Illustrate the theme of the cover? What are you doing? Decorating a bedroom? You are certainly not being journalists.

How do you solve a problem like Newsweek?

Read something else.

– Alexander
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Don’t Get It!

The Persecution of Sarah Palin

Judge: ‘I Believe’ license plates with cross unconstitutional

Federal judge rules that South Carolina can not issue license plates that “endorse specific sect”

AP: Judge Nixes S.C. License Plate with Cross

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that South Carolina can’t issue license plates showing the image of a cross in front of a stained glass window along with the phrase “I Believe.”

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie said in her ruling that the license plates was unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment ban on establishment of religion.

“Such a law amounts to a state endorsement not only of religion in general, but of a specific sect in particular,” Currie wrote.

Her ruling also singled out Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who had pushed the bill approving the license plates through the state Legislature. Christian advocates tried to get the same license plate approved in Florida, but the bill did not pass its Legislature…

FULL STORY

Goldberg: ‘Lamestream media’ runs with 2nd-hand stress angle

Most news agencies avoid the possibility that the Fort Hood massacre was a terrorist act, says media analyst Bernie Goldberg

While prayers go out to the families and survivors of those killed or injured during the worst mass shooting on an American military base, I can’t help but notice that the the majority of the rampant speculation as to what the motive might have been for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is flat out spin.

The investigation of the rampage which included more than 100 shots that left 13 dead and more than two dozen wounded, including the alleged shooter, Army psychiatrist Hasan, should not be about making sure we are politically correct.

There is a wealth of information that now shows that Hasan premeditated this attack … all the while spewing U.S. policy hate and Muslim jihadist verbiage.

“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” said President Barack Obama yesterday. Well, we shouldn’t jump to naive theories either.

Hasan may have acted alone, but he did have a team of enablers co-signing his rants. Now, the question remains … Can America continue to absorb those that hate the very host that harbors them?

Kentucky Governor changes name of Capitol Christmas tree

‘Holiday tree’ terminology is “intended to be inclusive” says Gov. Steve Beshear spokeswoman

SCROOGE ALERT LEVEL: HIGH

AP: Christmas jeer: Kentucky governor’s ‘holiday tree’ angers critics

FRANKFORT, Kentucky — Gov. Steve Beshear has angered some Christians with his yuletide terminology.

A giant evergreen that will brighten the Capitol lawn this winter won’t be called a Christmas tree. Instead, the Beshear administration has dubbed it a “holiday tree.”

The Rev. Jeff Fugate, pastor of Clays Mill Baptist Church in Lexington, said Christians find the change troubling.

“If you call it a holiday tree,” Fugate asked, “which holiday are you talking about? We don’t put up a holiday tree for Easter or New Year’s or Thanksgiving. We put a tree up for Christmas.”

Beshear administration spokeswoman Cindy Lanham said the tree will be in celebration of a variety of winter holidays, including Christmas and Hanukkah…

FULL STORY

Nativity scene gets axed before Halloween

Separation of church and state paranoia hits Michigan’s Satawa County

SCROOGE ALERT LEVEL: HIGH

WorldNetDaily: OK for 63 years, now Jesus in manger gets dumped

John Satawa’s family has displayed a nativity scene on a street median in Warren, Mich., virtually every Christmas season since 1945, but following an intimidating letter sent by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Satawa’s county has put stop to the 63-year-old tradition.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation proclaims its purpose in the letter to the Road Commission of Macomb County was to “protect the fundamental constitutional principle of separation of church and state.”

But Satawa contends there’s nothing unconstitutional about his privately owned and maintained Christmas display. With the help of the Thomas More Law Center, Satawa has filed a case in U.S. district court asking the judge to declare the county’s crèche rejection unconstitutional instead and order officials to permit its display.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Law Center, commented in a statement, “Every Christmas holiday, militant atheists … use the phrase ’separation of church and state’ – nowhere found in our Constitution – as a means of intimidating municipalities and schools into removing expressions celebrating Christmas, a national holiday. Their goal is to cleanse our public square of all Christian symbols…

FULL STORY

American Family Association Action Alert

Re-Twitter: @ScroogeReport PETITION: Ask Macomb County 2 recind their order removing a privately maintained Nativity scene http://bit.ly/10OdA0 #tcot #Christmas