Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

2008 Elections

Matthews' hypothetical suburbanites: Wife wants woman president; husband cares about finances
On the October 21 edition of the NBC-syndicated The Chris Matthews Show, while discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) proposal to roll back a portion of the Bush tax cuts to pay for her health insurance plan, host Chris Matthews stated: "I think it's time for me to get in trouble again. ... I'm thinking about a woman who lives in the suburbs; she may not work outside the home. They're talking around election time -- the husband and the wife." Matthews, speaking first in the voice of the hypothetical wife, said: " 'I sort of like this Hillary, the first woman president. She's pro-choice.' And the husband says, 'You know, dear, you know, this is going to kill our tax bracket. You know that tuition thing we pay every couple of years for the kids, every year, we can't do that if we get a higher tax bracket. We have to pay more money.' " Matthews then asked Washington Post Writers Group syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker: "So, could the tax issue -- Hillary's threat to raise taxes -- throw a lot of women and men from the suburbs back into the Republican column?" Read more

Without defining them, Wash. Post asserted Brownback "talk[ed] about Christian values"

In an October 20 article, Washington Post staff writer Michael D. Shear wrote that Sen. Sam Brownback's (KS) departure from the Republican presidential race "was a disappointment to many" at the Family Research Council-organized "Values Voter Summit," adding, "Brownback had spent much of his campaign talking about Christian values and stressing his stance against abortion." But Shear did not explain what the term "Christian values" meant or how it related to Brownback's campaign. Indeed, other candidates -- Republican or Democrat -- might define "Christian values" differently than Brownback does. Read more

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