"Experience? We don't need no stinking experience."

At this time of year, between Christmas and New Year’s, the newsroom was usually about as empty as a church on Monday. So we would pass around those lists and vote on the Biggest Stories of the Year.

As the token conservative, I always thought the lists themselves were a bit tipsy with Liberal White Lighting.  Such as: No. 3 — “The Historic Election of Barack Obama, the world’s greatest African-American president.” Or No. 7, “Sarah Palin Caught Attending an Evangelical Church that Actually Believes in the Bible.”

OK, so maybe not that bad. But you get the idea.

So I would often make my own list of the worst media bias that caused widespread distrust of the press. Here it is for 2009. But please, feel free to add your own nominations in comments.

1. Obama, Obama, Obama. The media is still in fawning full-speed adulation. As the year comes to a close, the coverage is getting a bit more honest, but that’s like saying GM is getting a bit less bankrupt. How can you tell? Obama got a pass on everything from astronomical spending to purile, bowing appeasement of our enemies. And he was routinely allowed to play the Blame Bush card without question.

2. Tea Party protests were a national grassroots revolution against the socialist Obamanation, but the media portrayed them as kooks and crazies. Reporters rolled their eyes and dismissed them obscenely as “teabaggers.” But wherever two or more ACORN members gathered, there was the press with cameras ready. And don’t get me started about the coverage of Cindy Sheehan – the media’s monkey paw to slander Bush.

3. Obamacare is a travesty. Nobody knows what’s in it, even now, after a year of Democrats shoving it through Congress. It was a festival of mendacity, a celebration of crooked politics. Yet the media is still rooting for it and has refused to dig into the details.

Most disgusting media suck-up of 2009: He's still "The One" to the press

4. The meltdown. Several Pulitzers are going unclaimed because the press looked the other way and pretended not to see the insidious scandal at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, perpetrated by Democrats such as Barney Frank and Chris Dodd — who rigged the system with graft and unsustainable bad loans.

5. Obama appointees also got a pass. It took Glenn Beck to point out the Communists and far-left radicals (Van Jones, Anita Dunn). The response of the media: Attack Glenn Beck, of course, and pretend there was no story until they were forced to quietly report that Jones and Dunn resigned. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner won the tax-cheater trophy. Can anyone even imagine the media fits if a Republican put someone in charge of the the IRS who had failed to pay his taxes? But  Geithner’s story had no legs. Ho hum.

Still asking the question everyone else answered: Yes.

6. Terrorism. The media bowed and scraped and took the politically correct Obama line — nothing to see here, folks, move along. It was only the act of an isolated extremist. For weeks the press insisted the Fort Hood shooter was not a terrorist, when everyone knew better.  The same initial reaction to the underwear shooter showed how the media default is to push the PC button — who cares if innocent Americans are murdered in cold blood. We wouldn’t want to offend the Muslims by suggesting it might be Islamic terrorism.

7. Global warming. The naked emperor has been exposed down to the goosebumps on Al Gore, thanks to leaked e-mails showing that global warming has been a hoax perpetrated by a crooked conspiracy of political scientists. There is still no evidence to support the notion that warming is caused by humans, or that it’s anything but a normal cycle. Yet the media is too heavily invested in the mythology to admit it.  So they stick their fingers in their ears and yell loudly, “The science is settled, nah-nah-nah.” Every hot day in July is another proof of global warming, while a blizzard at a warming summit is conscientiously ignored.

And three local stories that deserve dishonorable mention:

8. Democrats are running for their lives as they face re-election in 2010. So where’s the story about Rep. Steve Driehaus, who belongs in the Political Yearbook under “Most Likely to be One and Done”? Driehaus represents a conservative, frugal, Westside district that is so tight with a dollar, the most popular bank is a mattress with a zipper. The district is famously Republican and rebellious against big government. And look who represents them now, thanks to Obama’s coattails: A guy who voted for socialist health care and still defends a Stimulus Bill that put us nearly a trillion deeper in debt, with no visible benefit to anyone who is not a union public employee. If the phrase “deer in the headlights” had not existed, it would have to be invented to describe him at his first town hall, faced by angry voters. Driehaus is toast. If he were a Republican, we’d be reading about it.

9. The city election. The local media decided early on that Republican Brad Wenstrup was a “novice rookie with no experience,” and therefore he did not deserve any coverage in his challenge to Mayor Mark Mallory. But here’s breaking news — the voters still decide elections, not the press. And in spite of the virtual media blackout, Wenstrup gave Mallory a scare. The Mayor won with only 56 percent of the vote. Makes you wonder how close it would have been if the race had been covered fairly. (For the record, I volunteered for Wenstrup and found to my surprise that the Enquirer would not even publish his op-eds challenging Mallory — then criticized Wenstrup in an editorial for not being a tougher critic of Mallory. There’s your media watchdog. Roll over. Play dead. Good dog)

10. Frustrated by failing to find a shred of evidence, the press stubbornly will not give up on the myth that Tasers are deadly lightning bolts of Zeuss that cops use to smite suspects. The panic headlines say, “Suspect injured after Taser use by police.” Later, on the back pages, the follow-up, as in today’s Enquirer: “Coronor: Injury from fall, not Taser shock, killed Mason man.” I am no scientist, but it only took me a little bit of reporting to discover that Tasers prevent more injuries than they cause, and the shock they administer is far less sensational than the headlines suggest. There’s a reason Cincinnati has had far fewer deadly confrontations with suspects who violently resist arrest: ”Don’t Tase me, bro.”