Brent Bozell’s Oct. 24 column is headlined “Say No to Feisty Liberal Moderators,” but it’s clear that he has only certain feisty moderators in mind.
Bozell wrote that “old PBS hand Jim Lehrer let the candidates debate, and for that he was savaged by liberals for ‘losing control’ of the evening. He also wrote that “liberal CBS anchorman Bob Schieffer did it right. He moderated without asserting his own political opinions. Indeed, if this was all you had as a compass, you’d never know where he leaned.” (That, of course ignores the fact that Schieffer has a personal relationship with George W. Bush, whose debate Schieffer moderated in 2004 — a relationship the MRC has thus far not mentioned to its readers lest that conflict with its lucrative “liberal media bias” storyline.)
Bozell then said that Schieffer and Lehrer were “a welcome change from the Raddatz and Crowley libfests.” He continued:
In the second debate, ABC’s Martha Raddatz demanded fiscal specifics (and then complained she wasn’t getting them) from Paul Ryan, but refused to demand the same from Joe Biden. By the end of the evening, she was interrupting so much it seemed like she was interrupting Biden interrupting Ryan.
In the third debate, CNN’s Candy Crowley outraged viewers at home by selecting questions from clearly left-wing “undecided voters.” She then compounded the error by enabling Barack Obama in his Libya lies. Liberal in the media rallied around Crowley like she’d scored the winning touchdown.
Welcoming a feisty moderator sounds like a terrible idea — at least as long as the Republicans keep lining up a unanimous cast of four media liberals to do the moderating.
Welcoming a feisty female moderator sounds doubly terrible to Bozell.
We’re sure it’s just a coincidence that the two debate moderators Bozell found too “feisty” were both female. Make of that what you will.