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New NBC Show Turns Conservative Hypocrite Into Liberal Hero — But Even MSM Ridicules Plot

NBC tonight (10 PM EDT/PDT, 9 PM CDT) debuts a new drama, Outlaw , centered on a conservative Supreme Court justice who, as a gambler and a philander, is a hypocrite played by Jimmy Smits. Realizing his political misdirection, he resigns from the court so he can become a crusading lawyer for liberal causes. But the program is so awful, even MSM TV critics are ridiculing it. (Joe Scarborough has at least one cameo in it.) “The show is so ludicrously dumb that your eyeballs will hurt from rolling so much,” Hank Stuever warned in Tuesday’s Washington Post. In USA Today, Robert Bianco pleaded : “Surely NBC’s joking. There’s awful, and then there’s atrociously, hilariously awful — a line NBC and Jimmy Smits soar across with Outlaw.” He proceeded to describe the show’s premise: A gambling, womanizing, conservative Supreme Court justice who chucks the court to become a crusader for the outcast and oppressed? That’s not a prime-time show, it’s a Saturday Night Live  sketch. We meet Smits’ Justice Cyrus Garza as he’s being thrown out of a casino for counting cards. Outside, he stops to debate a case he’s due to decide with a pretty ACLU protester (because you know those justices, yak, yak, yak) — whom he then beds. But her words move him, and he resigns to become a trial lawyer. Recognizing the commonality of TV shows that ridicule conservatives as hypocrites or people with dark and nefarious motives, Bianco asked: “Do we really need another show promoting another shadowy, conservative cabal, this one with tentacles in the Senate and the court and an anti-Garza agenda?” The take from James Poniewozik on Time.com : Outlaw — sneak-peeking tonight before moving to Fridays — starts in a direction of implausibility and keeps on going. The premise: Cyrus Garza (Jimmy Smits) is the most conservative justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the son of a famous and passionate liberal attorney. After his father dies in an accident, Garza re-examines his life and decides to embrace his father’s beliefs. He further decides that the legal system he works in is flawed, in such a way that he cannot do any good as a Supreme Court justice [!]. So he quits the bench and decides to become a freelance lawyer, traveling and taking on highly controversial cases. In the second episode we’ll get liberal guilt-tripping on Arizona, Bianco noted: “Friday, when Outlaw moves to its regular slot, the case involves racial profiling and Arizona’s immigration law.” NBC.com has posted an uninspiring four-minute trailer , which includes a scene with Joe Scarborough playing himself.

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New NBC Show Turns Conservative Hypocrite Into Liberal Hero — But Even MSM Ridicules Plot

Former CNN Anchor O’Brien Attacks ‘Nutbag’ O’Donnell on Twitter

Former CNN anchor Miles O’Brien (no relation to current CNN special correspondent Soledad O’Brien ) slammed Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell as a ” Tea Party nutbag ” in a Tweet on Wednesday evening . O’Brien continued that he “forget [sic] her ignorant nonsense ,” referring to her defense of the creationist viewpoint during a 1996 appearance on his former network. O’Brien, who was let go by CNN in 2008 after they closed their science unit, linked to an article on the left-wing website Talking Points Memo after his attack on O’Donnell. The article, by Eric Kleefeld, highlighted an item by Dan Amira of New York magazine , who “dug up” the Republican’s March 1996 appearance with O’Brien and Dr. Michael McKinney of the University of Tennessee-Chattanoga. During the panel discussion, O’Donnell defended the creationism. Kleefeld labeled it as just another part of the social conservative’s ” religious right work ,” citing her apparent ” long career in anti-sex and anti-masturbation activism .” The former anchor’s Tweet is not surprising, gives his record of liberal bias when he was at CNN, particularly on the issue of climate change. On February 9, 2006 , O’Brien accused scientists skeptical of the theory of manmade global warming as being ” bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry .” Over two months later, he suggested raising gasoline taxes to “help pay for these alternative fuels.” During 2007, the then-CNN anchor insisted to former Republican Congressman J. C. Watts that the ” scientific debate is over ” on the climate change issue. O’Brien also dismissed critics of Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” later that year. Less than a year before his dismissal from CNN, he compared manmade global warming skeptics to Flat Earthers . More recently, O’Brien, working a special correspondent for PBS’s NewsHour program, helped promote Dubuque, Iowa as a “city of a future” during a June 17, 2010 report, for its transformation from a former industrial center into a “green” capital, with the help of money from the Obama administration’s “stimulus” package. Outside of the global warming issue, the journalist conducted other left-leaning advocacy. He helped CNN promote the controversial “Death of a President” movie depicting the assassination of former President George W. Bush during an October 27, 2006 segment with director Gabriel Range. He labeled four American contractors who were kidnaped in Iraq ” mercenaries ” less than a month later . In April 2008, he tried to spin the 40% approval rating the Democratically-controlled Congress had at the time: “Democrats are marking 100 days of their congressional reign now, and they’re riding pretty high .”

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Former CNN Anchor O’Brien Attacks ‘Nutbag’ O’Donnell on Twitter