Councilwoman Tish James (Photo: Facebook)

Councilwoman and candidate for Public Advocate Tish James wants an apology from the Fox News host who suggested rapes do not occur on college campuses during an appearance on the roundtable show The Five.

"Questioning whether rapes happen on college campuses is deeply offensive to all, especially those who have suffered irreparable harm as a result of these vicious crimes," Ms. James said in a statement. "Furthermore, when the very existence of rape is challenged in a public forum, such as a widely-viewed cable news channel, it discourages the reporting of an already under-reported crime."

Bob Beckel, one of the quintet of co-hosts on The Five, sparked a major controversy with his remarks, which he made during a discussion of a Colorado bill that would allow women to carry concealed weapons on college campuses to prevent sexual assaults.

"When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?" Mr. Beckel asked.

The other co-hosts immediately challenged Mr. Beckel's remark and, in the end, the panel concluded women should indeed be armed on campus. However, Ms. James still wants to see an apology from Mr. Beckel and the network.

"Bob Beckel and Fox News should immediately apologize for Mr. Beckel’s outrageous and offensive comments," said Ms. James. "They have no place on the public airwaves or anywhere else in our society."

Megyn Kelly (Photo: Getty)

According to Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Bill de Blasio has a special power, and it's not his son's afro.

Mr. de Blasio, the city's public advocate and recently-announced mayoral candidate, faced a barrage of criticism from Ms. Kelly over his position that New York City should divest its pension funds from the gun industry. Needless to say, the host viewed Mr. de Blasio's advocacy in rather authoritarian terms.

"Why not go out there and say, 'World, this is how I feel,'" she inquired. "Why go to a law-abiding company that employs thousands of American citizens and say, 'You're blacklisted. You're done, no relation should be had with you  because I don't happen to like the right you're exercising."

While expressing some incredulity that Mr. de Blasio's job position even exists, Ms. Kelly went on to argue that Mr. de Blasio's has "special power" as an elected official to "silence viewpoints" and affect public behavior. This could be inverted, she explained, to advocate for conservative preferences too.

"Bill de Blasio, public advocate--that's a thing we have in New York. He's an elected official. Public Advocate. You can say whatever you want, but once you blanket yourself in state authority, it takes on a new meaning," she explained. "It gives you more power. It gives you this special power to silence viewpoints and cause people to behave in a way that they might not  otherwise want to behave. And there's a question as to whether it's abusive. I mean, what if you had a politician who was targeting women who obtained legal abortions and tried to say to their landlords, 'You're allowed to rent to them. But they had abortions. We'd really strongly discourage you from renting to a woman who had an abortion.'"

In response, Mr. de Blasio skipped the philosophical argument and simply said there is a context surrounding the gun industry makes divestment a particularly appealing option.

"There's no parallel. I'll to you why. We're talking about an industry, a huge powerful industry, the single most powerful lobby. The single most powerful lobby in the country. It is funded by the gun industry," he countered. "The industry and the N.R.A. are inseparable. They're stopping legislation that the majority of Americans want. If I don't speak up as a public official, if I don't use my power to break that logjam, there's something wrong with me. I'm obligated to fight for the people this way."

Ms. Kelly, however, warned Mr. de Blasio again about the "slippery slope" his logic would travel down should Republicans take control of New York City.

"What happens if we have a Republican mayor, right?" she asked. "[He] comes out and says, 'Well, I'm very pro-life and those are babies who are killed and I'm just doing what I can to protect the lives of those unborn babies.' You see the dangers? The slippery slope that you put us down by down by using the blanket of government to sort of impose your viewpoint on law-abiding citizens?"

Mr. de Blasio said he appreciated "the attempt at a parallel" and proceeded to again stress the dangers of the gun industry.

Watch a video of their interaction below:

Piers Morgan manning his Twitter feed at the RNC.

TAMPA, FL -- Sarah Palin took to Facebook yesterday to accuse Fox News of canceling all of her scheduled appearances on the network during the Republican National Convention, but CNN host Piers Morgan said he'd be glad to have her on his show during the RNC festivities. However, Mr. Morgan said Ms. Palin, who has a contract with Fox News through January, has yet to take him up on his invitation.

"I'm serious, if she's fallen out with Fox, I'd love to get her on. It's the one reason we haven't had her since I've been on air, because of her contract with Fox," Mr. Morgan told Politicker at the CNN Grill at the RNC last night. "Clearly, if she's had an issue with them and can now do us, I'd love to interview her."

Mr. Morgan made his initial entreaties to Ms. Palin on Twitter last night and said he is "pushing hard" to make an interview with the former vice presidential candidate happen.

"I see a chink in the armor," said Mr. Morgan with a laugh.

President Obama having a beer at Ziggy's (Photo: Getty)

"As he thanked the group for their support, one of them, Jeff Hawks, gestured to one of the TV's and said, 'You're in a building that has Fox news on.'

Obama suggested that Hawks ask for it to be changed. 'The customer is always right,' he said."

The pool report did not specify whether Mr. Hawks followed through with the president's suggestion.

Fox News wasn't the only awkward content for the president at Ziggy's. The pool noted another one of the pub's TV's was playing a CNN "report on Mitt Romney's large fundraising haul" when the president arrived.

While at Ziggy's, which has a wi-fi network with the password "DRINKBEER," the president enjoyed a few brews. According to the pool, his beverages of choice were Miller Lite and Bud Lite.

Update (9:55 pm): About an hour after he sent his first pool report, Mr. Landler sent another one with an addendum making it clear for anyone who couldn't tell the first time that the president "made the remark" about Fox News "in a humorous exchange."

Illustration, by Drew Friedman

“I’m loving it,” said Roseanne Barr, recently announced presidential candidate. “I find that I can be more honest in politics than in Hollywood.”

Not that she’s ever been accused of demurring in either realm.

Seeking to run on the Green Party line, Ms. Barr’s presidential bid, she said, is primarily motivated by her dissatisfaction with both major political parties—in particular their candidates, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, whom she referred to as “total buffoons.”

“That’s what I say: I’m the only serious comedian in this race,” Ms. Barr added.

In a career spanning more than 40 years, including rollicking standup performances, a watershed sitcom and a memorable performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Ms. Barr has been at turns provocative, endearing, innovative and combative. As of February, she has turned her considerable personality toward the interests of the American electorate. In a pair of lengthy interviews with The Observer, she outlined not only her political aspirations, but the possibility of returning to television—and not necessarily in the way you would expect.

“I feel sorry for the American people who’ve been hoodwinked by both of these parties of nothing but criminals that sit in Congress there enriching themselves,” she began.

As it happens, legalization of marijuana is the first issue in the political platform posted on Ms. Barr’s website. She said she has a prescription to use the drug for glaucoma in California and vowed to smoke a joint at a public press conference if she is victorious in the Golden State’s Green Party primary this week.

“I don’t really smoke it, but I have a salve of it, you know, and if you rub it into your wrists, you don’t get high,” Ms. Barr said. “You’re not getting high but you feel release. I have salve and I have cookies.”

Other issues on Ms. Barr’s platform include ending the Federal Reserve, stopping “debt slavery” by “forgiving all school loans,” withdrawing military support for Israel and making war “obsolete.”

“Wars make the stock market go up and are fueled by profits. Where one puts their money is where one puts their energy,” Ms. Barr explains on her site. “The Military Industrial Complex is our shadow government.”

She also is concerned about preserving the environment, particularly water resources.

“Those that lead us have allowed the corporations to cross over the web of life and they have destroyed the genetic code,” she wrote. “They have befouled our food and water supply.”

She describes her economic policy—if that’s the right word—as a synthesis of free enterprise and the social safety net.

“We can have a really great world. We can have a world that was at peace and was prosperous and efficient and just ... I just think, wow. I think we’re really in that cosmic space where we can actually command our group will to make something change very quickly. I think we’re just so on the verge of that,” Ms. Barr said. “I just like to encourage people to jump off, man. Jump off and start thinking clearly.”

Cookies, indeed.

Another point Ms. Barr emphasized is that being a woman makes her a more insightful leader.

“This is a post-patriarchal age, and that’s what I represent; it’s a return to actual values of the Earth like growing food that we can eat. Not tomatoes made of fish skin,” Ms. Barr said. “We know how to get things done and we know how to get them done cheaply and efficiently.”

The problem with that notion, however, is that Ms. Barr’s main opponent, and the favorite for the Green Party nomination, is also a woman, Dr. Jill Stein, an academic and environmental activist who has been representing the Green Party in political campaigns at the local level since 2002, when she ran (against Romney) for governor of Massachusetts. Though Ms. Barr says she agrees on many things with Dr. Stein, she believes she is the better candidate—and took a shot at her opponent from the left, or at least from left field.

“I think I have far more to say than she does,” Ms. Barr said of Dr. Stein. “Some of the things that I say, they’re not out of a book and they’re not out of the party bible.”

For her part, Dr. Stein, declined to comment.

“They’re resisting me and the message that I’m bringing in a big way,” Mr. Barr doubled down. “To ask working people to show up and then go get their ballot notarized is nothing but voter suppression. That’s making me very angry, and I really beseech the Greens to be who they say they are and get their act together.”

Based on the most recent numbers provided by the Green Party, Dr. Stein is currently leading the race for the nomination with 143 party delegates compared to Ms. Barr’s 40. There are two other candidates, Kent Mesplay, who has 7.5 delegates, and Harvey Mikkelson, who has won just 1.5 delegates.

“I don’t know what the outcome will be. I know it’s a possibility that I could receive 99 percent of the vote. I also know that it’s a probability that I will not,” Ms. Barr admitted. “I’m just trying to encourage people to look at the whole picture, the whole big picture, and I want to bring up subject matter that isn’t covered in other presidential platforms.”

Should she not make it to the White House, she is more than willing to return to her day job—or at least to her job playing someone with a day job. During the final two years of her career as a the star of her eponymous show, Roseanne, Ms. Barr ranked as the second-highest-paid woman in showbiz (behind only Oprah Winfrey). The sitcom ran on ABC from 1988 until 1997 and, for its first seven seasons, held a spot in the top 10 on the Nielsen ratings charts. That’s a bankability the networks don’t soon forget

And though she’s done a couple of short-lived reality shows, including one entitled Roseanne’s Nuts, she may soon be reprising the form that made her career. Her latest effort is another sitcom, a pilot called Downwardly Mobile, in which she portrays the owner of a trailer park whose denizens include a “young Hispanic boy” adopted by the residents after his mother was deported and “a Wall Street couple that lost all their money.”

“It was about cooperation rather than competition, the key values that I hold dear and America needs,” Ms. Barr said emphatically. “I just wanted the American people to once again see themselves as heroic on television.”

Downwardly Mobile, which Ms. Barr wrote and executive produced, would reunite her with John Goodman, her husband on Roseanne. She says she “patterned each character” after the family she and Mr. Goodman headed on her successful sitcom. NBC picked up the pilot for Downwardly Mobile last fall, but according to Ms. Barr, the show was initially shelved because of her outspoken political views.

To hear her tell it, Downwardly Mobile tested well in California, but days before it was scheduled to be shown to audiences in New York, the conservative entertainment website Big Hollywood published an article based on leaked reports the show was testing poorly due to Ms. Barr being a “leftist.” Ms. Barr complained to NBC about the reported leak.

“I got really mad and I said, ‘Why would you release that information?’ And I was told, ‘We didn’t, that’s just a fake website,” she said. “Well, it turned out to be completely true.”

Once the show tested with audiences in New York, Ms. Barr says she was told it wouldn’t be picked up because network executives deemed it too “polarizing.”

“How they figure what is polarizing is blows my mind. It really has blown my mind,” she said. “I guess it went back to the sponsors on the East Coast and some of them are—they don’t like me no matter what I do and they don’t like the things I say, so it’s kind of like blacklisting or something. But the fact is that I still think it’s weird to blacklist, or whatever you want to call it, in Hollywood, someone who has a huge—whose show had a huge audience and still does after 20-something years.”

Downwardly Mobile may have foundered at first, but the pilot is apparently still alive, despite Ms. Barr’s fears of being blacklisted. During our first conversation with Ms. Barr, she said the show had been killed. When we spoke a few hours later, she told us NBC was giving it another chance as a potential midseason replacement.

“The Downwardly Mobile thing, I just kind of heard that it’s not completely dead,” said Ms. Barr. “Since I talked to you I got a phone call and I might be getting a chance to retool it, which I hope and pray I would get.”

But in her own estimation, even her television career has been a political effort, in many ways.

“I really hate to toot my own horn, but since I’m a woman I feel I have to,” she told The Observer. “I not only pushed the boundaries, I introduced the subject of gay characters on television,” said Ms. Barr, whose brother and sister are both gay. “That was at great peril to my own career and against all of my advisors. I brought the whole issue of gay to television.”

And just as her television career was politicized, she plans to bring her political career to the screen.

“I am making a movie of my campaign. I’m making a documentary of it for many reasons, and it is funny,” she said. “I am using the crew and the team of my friend Michael Moore, and I am documenting running for president and how hard it is.”

There’s another area of the political realm Ms. Barr says she could potentially get involved with—cable news punditry. Despite her obviously liberal leanings, Ms. Barr says she’d be interested in doing a show with Fox News.

“They’ve always been so fair and nice to me at Fox,” she elaborated. “I just don’t like Fox when it doesn’t get the complete fair and balance, but I do think they do try to, even though some of the people like Sean Hannity and stuff, the things they attack are just ridiculous. But yet, they have the right to do that. You can’t discount that people have the right to freedom of speech. I told Fox I’d sure like to have a show on there, because the people who watch Fox News are people like me also. So, it would be good to be really fair and balanced and have a nice left point of view on there.”

Ms. Barr told us she has been in talks with the network and, at one point, Fox News was ready to give her a show.

“They do talk to me about it … We’ve had beers and laughed about it and stuff. Offers have been made and I just didn’t get on with it because I was trying to just do that sitcom,” Ms. Barr said. “It could happen. Stranger things have happened. It could happen definitely.”

hwalker@observer.com

Fox News President Roger Ailes (Photo: Getty)

Fox News head honcho Roger Ailes gave a commencement speech at Ohio University yesterday in which he accused MSNBC, the AP and The New York Times of left wing bias and described Daily Show host Jon Stewart as a "socialist." Media blogger Jim Romenesko compiled Tweets describing the content of the speech that were written by media lawyer Media lawyer and Harvard Law & Policy Review blogger Jonathan W. Peters, who witnessed the address and posted quotes from Mr. Ailes' remarks.

"Jon Stewart is a comedian. He wouldn’t do well without Fox. And he basically has admitted to me, in a bar, that he’s a socialist," Mr. Ailes said, according to Mr. Peters. "The New York Times is a cesspool of bias."

Mr. Peters' Tweets also described Mr. Ailes blasting CNN and MSNBC:

"I would love for the AP to go back to being a neu[t]ral news source. But it slants stories, slants headlines. It tips to the left."

"MSNBC is out of the news business. Brian Williams, a sincere newsman, wouldn’t want to be caught dead over there."

"Media Matters writes all of the primetime programming for MSNBC. All of it. That’s what a recently published book says."

"The only difference between Fox talk shows and those on CNN or MSNBC is that Fox invites liberal voices to engage in dialogue."

According to Mr. Peters, Mr. Ailes also criticized profiles of him published in Rolling Stone and Esquire as inaccurate:

"The security apparatus around me is nothing like the one described in Rolling Stone, Esquire. But I do get threats, most contrived."

"The guy who wrote the Esquire article about me a few years ago was a bit of a whack job."

Read more Tweets from Mr. Ailes' speech at JimRomenesko.com.

The logo accompanying Mr. Cain's email promised a "Cain Solution Revolution."

Herman Cain was knocked out of the presidential race after a series of sex scandals, but he's not going quietly. As the other candidates duke it out in Iowa today, Mr. Cain sent an email to supporters promising big plans ahead. "I will soon be announcing a major new initiative. This is a crusade so critical to the long term health of our American economy that we simply must prevail," Mr. Cain wrote. 

Mr. Cain said his announcement will come during Wednesday night's episode of "The Sean Hannity Show" on Fox News.

"I know many of you were disappointed when I chose to suspend my presidential campaign. I was disappointed, too. But make no mistake, the mission remains even if I am not seeking the position," Mr. Cain wrote. "We will work to achieve our original objectives, which is to take back this country, jump-start the economy, and truly help our nation become one that is governed of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Mr. Cain has previously hinted at his desire to remain in the spotlight. Last month, Mr. Cain expressed an interest in a cable news career. He also launched a website called "The Cain Solutions" where he promised to debut his second act.

"The Cain Solutions" contains few clues about what Mr. Cain has in mind, but it seems like it might involve peanut butter. The site was registered by Bell Plantation, an agricultural research company that sells a powdered alternative to peanut butter. "The Cain Solutions" features little else beyond a picture of a farmer that is also used on the Bell Plantations homepage. Mr. Cain previously served as chairman of Bell Plantation's advisory board. His email contained a logo identifying it as part of "Cain's Solutions Revolution."

Sandra Lee said her boyfriend, Governor Andrew Cuomo, enjoys hardboiled eggs.

Congressman Peter King said Mitt Romney is the "most competent" Republican presidential candidate. 

Eva Vachal, Herman Cain's former assistant at Godfather's Pizza said she never saw "a woman raise an eyebrow about Cain’s conduct." “Once in a while, he would tell me how attractive I looked in my pantsuit, or whatever, but I liked it."

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly said pepper spray is no big deal. "It's a food product essentially."

Former Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko was sentenced to a decade-and-a-half in prison for allegedly extorting millions during his time as an advisor to disgraced ex-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.