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Apr 12 2012 4 cmnts

Fox News Escalates The War On Women Out Of All Proportion

Posted by: Mark @ 2:21 pm

Leave it to Fox News to leap on a political molehill and start shoveling feverishly in the hopes of building a mountain.

Yesterday Hilary Rosen, who works for a democratic public relations firm, appeared on CNN and made the mistake of not parsing every single word she said before opening her mouth. The result was a firestorm of criticism aimed a short immaterial phrase that is hardly representative of her full statement. Here is what Rosen said with the part conservatives have latched onto in bold:

“With respect to economic issues, I think actually that Mitt Romney is right that ultimately women care more about the economic well-being of their family and the like. But he doesn’t connect on that issue, either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing. Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why we worry about their future.”

Clearly Rosen was addressing the absurdity of a wealthy housewife assuming the role of Home Economics expert and pretending that she relates to people who have to struggle to make ends meet. Nothing in her comments suggests that she was talking about the difficulty or the satisfaction of raising children. But that’s how the right is spinning this matter, and they are spinning it as hard as their little gerbil feet can spin.

Take a look at the coverage on Fox News where it was the headline story. And their wingnut affiliate, Fox Nation, has posted at least seven articles on the subject – more than any other topic including the presidential election, the Trayvon Martin shooting (and Zimmerman’s arrest), the economy, etc.

Fox News, the Republican PR Agency, has launched a full-blown campaign to help dig Mitt Romney out the hole he has dug for himself with his anti-woman rhetoric and policies. The 19 point deficit Romney suffers in polling for women’s votes was seen properly as an electoral red flag and the flacks at Fox jumped in to rescue the floundering candidate.

Much of the criticism has expanded from jabs at Rosen to swings at President Obama. Never mind that Rosen is not attached to the President or the campaign in any capacity, and those who are have repudiated her remarks.

Jim Messina, Obama campaign manager: I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize.

David Axelrod, Obama campaign strategist: Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.

What’s more, Rosen herself has apologized:

“I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen. In response to Mitt Romney on the campaign trail referring to his wife as a better person to answer questions about women than he is, I was discussing his poor record on the plight of women’s financial struggles. [...] I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended. Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.”

None of that has prevented Fox News from slathering their unique brand of propaganda and hyperbole over this affair in an effort to keep it bubbling up in the news cycle. Megyn Kelly spent a good portion of her program on this issue alone, interviewing several guests including former First Lady Barbara Bush (In a moment of ironic overflow, Kelly raised the issue of women who were fortunate not to have had to struggle financially, to which Mrs. Bush said “It wasn’t always that way for us.” Remember, this is the wife of the wealthy son of an oil baron and former president. Nah, they aren’t out of touch at all, are they?).

Also on Fox, they brought in their resident “Psycho” Analyst, Keith Ablow, who opined that “Hilary Rosen provided a clear psychological window on women who despise other women.” That’s the patented Ablow remote diagnosis of people he’s never met. He then projected this flaw onto Obama, who had nothing to do with any of this.

The whole point of this manufactured controversy is to lay into Obama for having the temerity to be popular with America’s women voters. And if they have to lie and distort reality to pull him down, well, that’s why Fox News exists in the first place.

Tags: Fox Nation, Fox News, Hilary Rosen, Megyn Kelly, Mitt Romney

Apr 11 2012 75 cmnts

General, Propaganda

Graphic Evidence Of The Racism Of Fox News: Racial Photoshopping

Posted by: Mark @ 2:39 pm

News reports are suggesting that later today the authorities in Florida will announce charges against Trayvon Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman. Coverage of this story was handled by Fox News in a manner that is revealing and offensive – and wholly unique to Fox News:

Fox News - Trayvon Martin - George Zimmerman

This is a journalistic lynching. And note, this is not Fox Nation. It is the mothership, Fox News. The editors at this alleged “news” network are demonstrating their overt hostility to both African-Americans and journalistic ethics. If this picture doesn’t finally establish the overarching prejudice of Fox, it’s hard to know what will. Their bias is so clearly being exercised with a zealotry that the Klan would shrink from. How do they get away with this?

[Update] Fox News changed their graphic.

This is a more impartial photo that does not disparage the victim (although it still is not as overtly cheerful as Zimmerman’s pic). You think they got a few complaints about the previous photo? They must have had a reason for changing it.

[Addendum] A couple of commenters have asserted (without proof) that the lighter picture of Trayvon was the one that was Photoshopped. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that they are right and that the picture Fox used was not altered (at least by Fox). That does not change the fact that Fox made an editorial decision to use that picture. They had numerous pictures from which to choose of both Trayvon and Zimmerman, and they chose the most negative picture of Trayvon which they paired with the most positive picture of Zimmerman. That was not an accident. It was the result of deliberate editorial judgment. And it tells us everything we need to know about Fox’s editors.

For more on the subject of media and race, check out the excellent book by Democracy Now’s Juan Gonzalez: News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.

There has also been some discussion as to whether making Trayvon look darker was inherently racist. Two points: 1) Making anyone look darker has the effect of making them look more sinister. And making the subject of a photo look more sinister, regardless of race, is blatant editorial bias. 2) Darker skinned African-Americans are not viewed more negatively by fair-minded people who are free of prejudice, but they are viewed more negatively by people predisposed to discriminate on the basis of race – i.e. Fox News viewers. Fox is playing to their audience and they know who they are. Studies show that the African-American segment of viewers of Fox News in primetime is only 1.38%. That compares to 19.3% for MSNBC, and 20.7% for CNN, numbers that are much closer to the 14% of African-Americans in the population at large. Or, as the Simpsons put it…

Finally, The question of whether or not George Zimmerman is racist, while important, is secondary here. The real problem is the racism exhibited by the local law enforcement authorities who simply accepted Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense without making an arrest and conducting a proper investigation. Exacerbating that is the overt racism of the right-wing press and their followers. The primary focus going forward should, of course, be the pursuit of justice and the suffering of the victims family. After that the focus should fall on the police and the media as this affair winds its way through the courts. But we should be grateful that concerned citizens spoke out and hit the streets to protest this injustice or there would be no court case at all.

Tags: Fox News, Racism, Trayvon Martin

Apr 06 2012 10 cmnts

General, Propaganda, Wankery

CNN’s Corporatist ALEC Fluffer Dana Loesch Is All In For Mussolini’s Fascism

Posted by: Mark @ 9:31 am

The secretive and influential American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been toiling in the political shadows to advance a far-right agenda aimed at enhancing the power of corporations and suppressing the voice of the people. Their so-called “voter integrity” initiatives are thinly disguised efforts to obstruct the voting rights of minorities, students, seniors, and low income citizens. The Center for American Progress authored a study that details ALEC’s operations, it’s ties to the powerful in politics and business, and its pride in concealing its activities from the public:

“Under ALEC’s auspices, legislators, corporate representatives, and ALEC officials work together to draft model legislation. As ALEC spokesperson Michael Bowman told NPR, this system is especially effective because ‘you have legislators who will ask questions much more freely at our meetings because they are not under the eyes of the press, the eyes of the voters.’“

Recently, a campaign was launched by Color of Change and other activists to hold some of the enterprises bankrolling ALEC accountable for their support of the extremist organization. They include Altria, AT&T, ExxonMobil, Phizer, Wal-Mart, and, of course, the Koch brothers. The campaign has enjoyed some success in compelling Coca-Cola to terminate their relationship with ALEC. Pepsi, Intuit, and Kraft Foods are also severing ties with ALEC.

This citizen-driven movement is effective because free people in democratic societies are entitled to express themselves and redress their grievances with public and private institutions that have an impact on their lives. However, some rightist defenders of the ruling elite are appalled that ordinary citizens have found a way to join together and make their concerns heard. One of those is Breitbart editor Dana Loesch, who had this to say on her radio show in response to Coke’s announcement:

“Coca-Cola decided to side with an admitted Marxist, 9/11 truther, cop-killer supporter [...] This is the guy whose company Coca-Cola is siding with. This is what happens. Progressives will target businesses and try to shut them down if they support those who are telling the truth. It’s a fascistic movement. Fascism is alive and well in the United States on the left.”

The alleged Marxist to whom Loesch is referring is Van Jones and her allegations are verifiably untrue. Jones is a firm believer in the ability of free markets to empower people and advance the goals of the American dream. In fact, he wrote the book on it. He never supported the 9/11 truth movement and even proved the allegation to be false. And his efforts on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot be portrayed as supporting a cop-killer if the evidence shows that Abu-Jamal is innocent. Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was rescinded last year in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Also, Jones left Color of Change over two years, so Loesch’s attempt to associate him with this campaign is merely her way of trying to demonize the organization by associating it with a public figure who is hated by right-wingers because of their prior and continuing efforts to demonize him.

With everything that Loesch has gotten wrong in this affair, it is unsurprising that she also doesn’t understand political theory. Her accusations of fascism directed at a citizen effort to persuade Coke and other corporations to refrain from funding an extremist right-wing organization demonstrates her ignorance of the subject. She may want to consult the words of a man who is known to be something of an expert on fascism:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” ~ Benito Mussolini

So Loesch is aligning herself with giant multinational corporations who are seeking with ALEC to integrate their power with that of government, while simultaneously calling those who oppose such activity fascists. If anyone can plausibly be regarded as having fascist leanings it is the American right. Their obsession with advancing the interests of corporations and wealthy oligarchs, to the detriment of the people, is closer to the fascist model than anything else in the American political spectrum. Why do you suppose that Republicans and the Tea Party are funded so heavily by corporatists like Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, and the rest of the Wall Street One Percenters? And is it just a coincidence that Mitt Romney, the GOP’s likely candidate for president, is from the same fraternity of elitists who want to decimate the government programs that benefit the poor and middle classes? Mussolini also said that fascism is revolutionary against liberalism “since it wants to reduce the size of the state to its necessary functions.” Sound familiar, Grover?

Ordinarily the twisted observations of Dana Loesch would be insignificant and harmless, but for their dimwitted asininity. Her radio show, and her work for Breitbart, are confined to the narrow world of uber-rightists who have already bought into the lies and slander of propagandists like Loesch. The problem is that Loesch is also a paid political analyst for CNN. It is wholly inappropriate for an allegedly credible news enterprise to employ someone who accuses millions of Americans of being fascists simply because they exercise their constitutional rights and participate in civic affairs.

Loesch has also accused the president of “siding with terrorists” and defended soldiers who urinated on the corpses of Afghan combatants. Now she maligns civic-minded Americans as akin to tyrants and perpetrators of torture and mass murder. Is that really the caliber of character that CNN wants to project? Unfortunately, based on the direction the network has taken the past couple of years, with the addition of people like Will Cain and Amy Holmes (of Glenn Beck’s Internet operation), and Erick Erickson (of RedState), it appears to be inescapably so.

Tags: ALEC, Breitbart, CNN, Color of Change, Dana Loesch, Koch Brothers, Tea Party, Van Jones

Apr 05 2012 2 cmnts

General, Healthcare, Propaganda, Wankery

Remember When Conservatives Were Against Unelected Judges And Judicial Activism?

Posted by: Mark @ 8:47 am

In another brazen exercise in hypocrisy, conservatives have launched a coordinated attack on President Obama for remarks that were entirely reasonable and uncontroversial. The President was asked by a reporter how he would respond if the health care reform bill currently being debated by the Supreme Court were to be ruled unconstitutional. His response said in part…

“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.”

This has set off a round of panic attacks in right-wing circles as knee-jerk contrarians accuse Obama of undermining the constitution, subverting democracy, and even threatening the Supreme Court. Where any objective person can find the presence of a threat in the President’s remarks is beyond incomprehensible. It’s Obama Derangement Syndrome in action. Conservatives assert that these comments were intended by the President to be a warning for the justices deliberating the case. Never mind that Obama in no way implied that there would be consequences if the justices did not arrive at a particular ruling, only that he was confidant of a favorable outcome. That’s pretty much the position taken by anyone interested in a pending judicial proceeding. And as the President said explicitly, he was just reminding conservatives of their own long-held views on judicial activism.

The Right-Wing Noise Machine has been spinning feverishly to push this issue in order to damage the President and cast him as opposed to constitutional principles. Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove called Obama a thug. Mark Levin said that he declared war on the Court. Fox Nation currently has at least eleven articles on this subject. And Fox News has been running numerous segments including one this morning that featured three former George W. Bush staffers to assert that what Obama said was unprecedented and nothing like anything that Bush ever said (see below).

Among the complaints being hurled by the right-wing, extremist opponents of the administration is that Obama’s use of the phrase “unelected judges” amounts to a form of tyranny and is an affront to judicial independence. But it is Republicans who have been more often associated with that phrase over the years as they brandish it every time a court rules against whatever pet litigation they are pushing – especially when it concerns reproductive rights or gay marriage. For example, here are a few instances when the very people lambasting Obama today used identical language when it served their purposes:

Mitt Romney: Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage.
Mitt Romney: The ruling in Iowa today is another example of an activist court and unelected judges trying to redefine marriage and disregard the will of the people as expressed through Iowa’s Defense of Marriage Act.
Rick Santorum: 7M Californians had their rights stripped away by activist 9th Circuit judges.
Newt Gingrich: Court of Appeals overturning CA’s Prop 8 another example of an out of control judiciary. Let’s end judicial supremacy
Speaker John Boehner: This latest FISA proposal from House Majority leaders is dead on arrival. It would outsource critical national security decisions to unelected judges and trial lawyers.
Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO): Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people of California on the question of same-sex marriage demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people.
Sen. Jeff Sessions: This ‘Washington-knows-best’ mentality is evident in all branches of government, but is especially troublesome in the judiciary, where unelected judges have twisted the words of our Constitution to advance their own political, economic, and social agendas.
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL): I’m appalled that unelected judges have irresponsibly decided to legislate from the bench and overturn the will of the people.
George W. Bush: This concept of a “living Constitution” gives unelected judges wide latitude in creating new laws and policies without accountability to the people.
Thomas Sowell: Unelected judges can cut the voters out of the loop and decree liberal dogma as the law of the land.
Laura Ingraham: We don’t want to be micromanaged by some unelected judge or some unelected bureaucrat on the international or national level.
Gov. Rick Perry: [The American people are] fed up with unelected judges telling them when and where they can pray or observe the Ten Commandments.
Pat Robertson: We are under the tyranny of a nonelected oligarchy. Just think, five unelected men and women who serve for life can change the moral fabric of our nation and take away the protections which our elected legislators have wisely put in place.
Robert Bork: We are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own.
Sen. Orrin Hatch: A small minority and their judicial activist allies are seeking to usurp the will of the people and impose same-sex marriage on all of the states. Ultimately, the American people, not unelected judges, should decide policy on critical social issues such as this one.
Steve Forbes: You have judicial activism, where unelected Supreme Court justices are trying to impose a state income tax.
Glenn Beck: Even if you agree that the role of government is to take wealth from one to another, should it be the role of unelected judges and justices that do this?
Sen. John McCain: We would nominate judges of a different kind [...] And the people of America – voters in both parties whose wishes and convictions are so often disregarded by unelected judges – are entitled to know what those differences are.
Justice Antonin Scalia: Value-laden decisions such as that should be made by an entire society … not by nine unelected judges.

If the conservatives quoted above were to be consistent, they would now be pleading with the court not to overturn the health care reform bill that was passed by super-majorities in both houses of congress. Instead, the right is aghast that a Democratic president would deign to remind them of their own principles and is clamoring for a judicial resolution. It has already been demonstrated that Republicans have no problem switching positions once Obama has agreed to them. Cap and trade and insurance mandates were both originally proposed by Republicans, but as soon as Obama announced support for the concepts the GOP reconsidered and insisted they were the socialist ideas of an aspiring dictator.

Now that one of the GOP’s favorite attack lines, judicial activism, has been usurped by the President, conservatives are crawling out of the woodwork to characterize it as an assault on the judiciary. Republicans have always defined judicial activism as the act of judges ruling against them. When judges rule in favor of the conservative position they regard it as following the constitution. So hypocrisy is not a particularly surprising development in this matter. But the degree to which it is demonstrated here may set new records for shamelessness.

Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the University of California Irvine Law School, wrote in his book, “The Conservative Assault on the Constitution” that…

Although there is no precise definition of judicial activism – it often seems to be a label people use for the decisions they don’t like – it seems reasonable to say that a court is activist if it overturns the actions of the democratically elected branches of government and if it overrules precedent. In fact, conservatives, including on the Supreme Court, often have labeled decisions striking down the will of popularly elected legislatures as ‘activist.’”

Activism is in the eye of the beholder, but there is no doubt that conservatives have been at the forefront of scolding courts for ruling against them. Taking that to the extreme is Newt Gingrich who recently told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation that he advocated arresting judges to force them to defend unpopular decisions before Congressional hearings. If that isn’t a threat against the judiciary, what is?

The right has very little problem with violating the constitution when it comes to separation of powers. Just this week a conservative judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals gave a Department of Justice attorney an unusual homework assignment. In a case unrelated to the one before the Supreme Court, Judge Jerry Smith wondered whether Obama was suggesting “that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed ‘unelected’ judges to strike acts of Congress.” Then Smith ordered the attorney to produce a three page letter “stating specifically and in detail in reference to those statements what the authority is of the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review. That letter needs to be at least three pages single spaced.”

It is difficult to imagine on what basis this judge has assumed authority to issue such an order. It is a blatantly political and petulant demand that can only be intended to insult and embarrass the the DOJ and the President, and has no bearing on the case before him. The President never said that the Supreme Court could not overturn an unconstitutional law. He just said that he didn’t believe that this law was unconstitutional and therefore, in his view, and that of many legal experts, should not be overturned. Judge Smith is a bald-faced partisan and would be more at home on Fox News than on the bench.

The question is, what will Republicans say if the Court upholds the health care reform bill? Would that be an act of judicial tyranny against the will of the people (never mind that the bill was passed by the people’s representatives in congress with super-majorities in both houses)? And how can Republicans continue to rail against Roe v. Wade as the ultimate example of an activist judiciary now that they have established that such a charge is tantamount to tyranny and regarded as a threat?

The answer, of course, is that conservatives will do what they always do: pretend that their prior assertions never existed or don’t apply. They will trudge forward with blindfolds over their eyes and plugs in their ears, unimpeded by anything they said previously, no matter how badly it contradicts what they are saying now. It’s hypocrisy at its best and the Republican way of life.

Tags: Antonin Scalia, Barack Obama, Bob Schieffer, Healthcare, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Obama Derangement Syndrome, Republicans, Rick Santorum, Supreme Court

Mar 31 2012 4 cmnts

Environment, General, Propaganda

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Global Warming And The Media

Posted by: Mark @ 4:10 am

The anti-science, faith-based zealots at Fox Nation examined the results of a Gallup poll on global warming and concluded that the headline revelation from the survey was that “42% Of Americans Feel The Media Exaggerates Global Warming.”

Confident that their readers would never bother to look up the Gallup data themselves, the Fox Nationalists blatantly misrepresented the polls results. A full reading of the survey’s results would have revealed that 55% of respondents regard media coverage of the seriousness of global warming as either correct (24%) or underestimated (31%). That’s a clear majority that is 13 points higher than those who believe that the seriousness is exaggerated.

What’s more, the Gallup poll shows that those who regard the coverage as exaggerated are predominantly Republicans (67%), while a minority of both Independents (42%) and Democrats (20%) share that view. Additionally, a majority (53%) believe that global warming is caused by pollution resulting from human activities, and 58% correctly observe that most scientists affirm the existence of global warming. When asked how much they personally worry about global warming, 55% say a great deal/fair amount, four points higher than last year. And again, those numbers include majorities of Independents and Democrats with Republicans and conservatives bringing in the rear.

No wonder the source to which Fox Nation links to support their article is a trifling right-wing blog called Weasel Zippers, rather than to the Gallup poll itself. That’s consistent with their mission to keep their audience as ill-informed as possible.

It’s actually pretty encouraging that most Americans still recognize the risks association with global warming despite the massive campaign by right-wing media (led by Fox News) to belittle it. But it is nonetheless disheartening that any American buys into Fox’s lies. Every time it snows in Connecticut in the dead of winter, some Fox anchor uses that as evidence that global warming is a hoax, but they never report on significant heatwaves and droughts (as in Texas) or that the planet has been recording the hottest temperatures on record for the past decade.

If it weren’t for the concerted effort on the part of conservative media (and their corporate allies) to distort the truth about this issue, there would be an even bigger majority with rational positions on global warming that aligns with the consensus view of the worldwide scientific community. And then we might even be able to do something to resolve the problem, prevent predictable sickness and death, and preserve the viability of the planet as a habitat for life. But then is that really more important than oil company profits and the economic growth of multinational corporations?

Tags: Environment, Fox Nation

Mar 29 2012 13 cmnts

General, Propaganda

Breitbart Whitewashing Zimmerman, Blaming Obama For Trayvon Martin Crisis

Posted by: Mark @ 12:04 pm

The folks over at Breitbart’s joint are feverishly striving to exonerate Trayvon Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman. Their web sites are plastered with stories that either defend Zimmerman or shift the discussion to other persons or subjects.

In one article, Breitbrat Dan Riehl makes the inane argument that ABC News was “reckless” in their decision to release a police videotape showing Zimmerman arriving at the police station for questioning. The video is significant in that it contradicts prior assertions that Zimmerman had been beaten and bloodied by Martin. There is no evidence of any injury to Zimmerman in the video.

Nevertheless, Riehl advances rebuttals that sound as if he is working for the Zimmerman legal defense team. He begins by suggesting that the video was too low quality to reveal anything conclusive. Then, contradicting himself, writes, “True, there appears to be no blood on Zimmerman’s shirt.” Then Riehl invents scenarios wherein Zimmerman was allowed by police to change his allegedly bloody clothes before arriving at the station, which would be a severe violation of procedure and ethics. What’s more, it makes no sense because a bloody shirt would be evidence of a struggle during which Zimmerman could claim to have felt threatened. Why would police suppress evidence that would have justified their decision to release Zimmerman?

Riehl’s account is blatantly biased and incoherent. And he tops it off by blasting ABC for releasing the video saying that the network “should be ashamed of its reckless highlighting of a non-story.” So apparently Riehl is of the opinion that ABC should have kept the video a secret. That’s how Breitbart’s BigJournalism practices the craft of journalism.

Another article, this time by Joel Pollak, editor of Breitbart’s BigGovernment site, seeks to tie President Obama to the Martin story. Pollak’s theory is a nearly incomprehensible mashup of Martin, Obama, and Derrick Bell, the subject of Breitbart’s failed attempt to expose the President as a college radical.

Pollak’s article is titled, “Critical Race Theory and the Trayvon Martin Case.” Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a legal/academic concept that Bell had written about and studied. It holds that there is more to racism than just the attitudes held by individuals, that it is also ingrained in society via traditional economic and judicial hierarchies. Pollak simplistically and falsely begins his narrative by defining CRT as “characterized by white supremacy–an idea Obama invoked by insisting that Americans ‘examine the laws’ that supposedly led to Martin’s death.” To be clear, Pollak is referring to the comment Obama made in response to a reporter’s question:

“I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened.

“And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

I’m not sure how any fair person could object to that. Yet that’s the statement that Pollak regards as an evocation of white supremacy. If anything, the Martin tragedy supports CRT by demonstrating the flaws in the judicial system. This is a case where after an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed, his body was tagged as a “John Doe” and tested for drugs. The shooter, on the other hand, was never tested for drugs or alcohol and was released by police with his weapon and no plans to investigate or indict him for any crime. If that isn’t reason enough to examine the laws than what on earth would be?

Pollak continues saying that Obama “waded in, playing up the racial drama,” and then remarkably writes “Obama–the center of the crisis, and to some extent its intended beneficiary.” Obama is only the center of the controversy in the warped minds of extremist, right-wing provocateurs like Pollak. And where he gets the notion that Obama was the “intended” beneficiary is beyond comprehension. If Pollak actually believes that this crisis was conceived and executed to help the President, he is seriously in need of the psychiatric attention that is now available to him thanks to ObamaCare.

Pollak closes by saying that “To speculate that Zimmerman is guilty based on the available facts is one thing; to convict him based on his supposed race, and on Martin’s, is the classic definition of “prejudice.’” However, the people protesting the handling of this affair are not convicting Zimmerman of anything. They are merely demanding that the ordinary process of justice be observed.

Ordinarily after a shooting there is an arrest and an investigation, which could lead to a trial if the evidence warrants. But the Breitbrats are all fired up to whitewash this crime and sweep it under their racist rug. They load up their web sites with tangential stories about celebrity Tweets, and over-zealous protesters, and bogus accusations of media bias, and absurd connections to a conspiratorial White House that must have planned the whole thing.

All I can say is that it’s a damn good thing that Breitbart wasn’t around when Martin Luther King was assassinated. They would surely have defended James Earl Ray and blamed the whole thing on President Johnson.

Tags: Barack Obama, Breitbart, Dan Riehl, Joel Pollak, John Nolte, Trayvon Martin

Mar 22 2012 14 cmnts

General, Propaganda

Fox News Heralds Anti-Obama Marine

Posted by: Mark @ 8:36 pm

Let’s face it, Fox News is unabashedly opposed to Barack Obama and everything his administration represents. The network has virtually conceded that it is nothing more than a promotional vehicle for conservative Republican politics and politicians.

Now Fox News has stepped even further across the line of objectivity by taking up the case of a Marine sergeant whose adventures in social media are blatantly disrespectful to his superiors and teeter toward insubordination or worse.

Sergeant Gary Stein is the founder of a Facebook page called “Armed Forces Tea Party.” According to reports from the Associated Press, Stein had been informed that he was in violation of Pentagon policy prohibiting political activities. The policy specifically forbids military personnel from using contemptuous words against senior officials, including the defense secretary or the president. At first Stein cooperated with his commanders by taking down the Facebook page, but he later restored it based on his own conclusion that he was not in violation of any code. As a result, he is now the subject of an administrative action that could result in a discharge.

Stein is adamant that he is innocent of any infraction. he contends that he was exercising his free speech rights by posting messages in which he declared that he would refuse to follow any order issued by the President, his commander-in-chief, that he deemed unlawful.

“I’m completely shocked that this is happening,” Stein said. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve only stated what our oath states that I will defend the constitution and that I will not follow unlawful orders. If that’s a crime, what is America coming to?”

Technically, I agree with Stein on the matter of a soldier’s obligation to refuse to follow an unlawful order. That is a standard set after World War II that resulted in the inadmissibility of the defense that “I was just following orders.” But Stein had better have a damn good basis (and an opinion from a legal expert) before he engages in what might constitute mutiny. Stein had no such basis when he chose to ignore the orders of his commanders or to declare that he would refuse to follow orders from the President if those orders included detaining or disarming U.S. citizens. That overly broad standard would mean that Stein would not act against Adam Gadahn, the American who is presently the media adviser for Al Qaeda.

Stein’s story was broadcast on Fox News’ America Live with Megyn Kelly. Fox News also featured the story on both the Fox News web site and Fox Nation, where Stein has been treated as a hero for standing up to President Obama. However, he has a pretty thin case to make for his patriotism when he posts comments like this: “I say screw Obama. I will not follow orders given by him to me.” That comment has since been deleted and Stein says that he later qualified his comment to reflect that he would only disobey unlawful orders. But you can still find this comment on his Facebook page without qualification: “Obama is the “Domestic Enemy” our oath speaks about.”

That goes far beyond Stein’s assertion that he was merely stating what the military code says about following unlawful orders. It is an exhibition of overt disloyalty that the military ought not to abide. In fact, it designates the President as an enemy of the state, which would make him a suitable target, in Stein’s warped view, for hostile action or assassination. And that is exactly the view that Fox News, and their audience of pseudo-patriots, are applauding. Disgusting, isn’t it?

[Update] On April 6, a military board recommended that Stein be dismissed from service with “other than an honorable discharge” (i.e. dishonorable).

“The three-member Marine Corps administrative board at Camp Pendleton found that Sgt. Gary Stein had committed misconduct by posting anti-Obama comments on a Facebook page, calling the comments ‘contemptuous.’ [...] The final decision on Stein’s status will be made by the commanding general of the Marine Corp Recruit Depot San Diego.”

[Update II] On April 25, 2012, the Marines formally discharged Stein as the commanding general of the base accepted the administrative board’s recommendation for discharge.

Tags: Barack Obama, Fox Nation, Fox News, Gary Stein, Megyn Kelly, Tea Party

Mar 20 2012 89 cmnts

General, Propaganda

BIRTHERS GONE WILD: New Obama Conspiracy Theory Tests The Limits Of Idiocy

Posted by: Mark @ 1:42 pm

If you thought that the psychotic lunacy of those who still believe that President Obama is not an American citizen had reached its peak, you have obviously underestimated just how severely demented this crowd is. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, these acutely fixated cretins cling to their fables and even expand on them ad absurdum.

The latest addendum to the Birther Chronicles comes from (where else) Jerome Corsi of WorldNetDaily. Corsi is the loser whose book “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” was published just days after the White House released the long-form copy of his birth certificate for which the looney right had been clamoring. Corsi begins his WND article by asking…

“Did the parents of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers help finance Barack Obama’s Harvard education? Did Ayers’ mother believe Obama was a foreign student? And was the young Obama convinced at the time – long before he even entered politics – that he was going to become president of the United States?”

All three of those questions were answered in the affirmative by a retired mail carrier that Corsi interviewed. Allen Hulton, claims to have had the route that serviced the home of Tom and Mary Ayers, the parents of former Weatherman, Bill Ayers. Hulton told Corsi…

“One day, Mary came to the door when I came up to the house with the mail,” he remembers. “After a greeting, she started enthusiastically talking to me about this young black student they were helping out, and she referred to him as a foreign student.”

Hulton went on to say that he recalled Mary telling him the name of the foreign student, which he later forgot, but said that it sounded African. So that pretty much settles it. A mail carrier remembers a customer on his route thirty years ago talking about a student with an African sounding name. If that isn’t conclusive evidence of Obama being supported by the parents of a domestic terrorist, what is?

Setting aside for the moment that none of this can be proven because Mary Ayers is deceased, it also makes little sense from even the most conspiratorial perspective. The implication is that there was some connection between Obama and Bill Ayers’ parents, and that the whole family was part of some anti-American cabal. However, Thomas Ayers, Bill’s father, was not exactly the model of a revolutionary extremist. In fact, he was CEO and chairman of Commonwealth Edison, the largest electric utility in Illinois. Ayers also served on the board of directors of Sears, G.D. Searle, Chicago Pacific Corp., Zenith Corp., Northwest Industries, General Dynamics Corp. of St. Louis, First National Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Cubs, and the Tribune Co. A socialist subversive if there ever was one. Hulton even described him as having “a Marxist viewpoint.” Of course, just like all the other board members of giant, capitalist corporations.

But this conspiracy theory is just getting started. Corsi continued his tale with an allegation that Obama had confessed to being complicit in a plot to usurp the presidency. When Hulton asked the student about his plans for the future, he was taken aback by the response:

“He looked right at me and told me he was going to be president of the United States,” Hulton says. “There was a little bit of a grin on his face when he said it – he sounded sure of himself, but not arrogant. I know how people will say things because they have an ambition, but it did not come across that way,” Hulton says. “It came across as if this young black male was telling me he was going to be president, almost as if it were the statement of a scientific fact that had already been determined, as if his being president had been already pre-arranged.”

Indeed. Who could dispute that account straight from the horse’s mouth? And it surely is not suspicious that Hulton is claiming that Obama casually disclosed the treasonous scheme of which he was an integral part. It is perfectly reasonable that Obama would spill the details of this conspiracy to a complete stranger. All of the attempts to overthrow the American government that I have clandestinely participated in always encouraged us to tell people we had never met before exactly what we were planning. (Oops. I may have said too much).

The Birther conspiracy has always been an exercise in idiocy. Despite having never had any basis in fact, it required its adherents to believe that the whole thing began as a plot to usurp the presidency of the United States. And now the Manchurian part of the scheme has been articulated out loud. They really do believe that Obama was created in a Kenyan petri dish, grown to adulthood in a communist laboratory funded by George Soros, handed a fictional resume and a pre-programmed Teleprompter, and escorted to the White House by some alien power that had the ability to hypnotize a majority of the American voters.

Seriously, these numbskulls are certifiable. I suppose the First Amendment protects their right to say astonishingly stupid things, but out of concern for public safety, they should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery, drive cars, or otherwise engage in activities that could bring harm to themselves and others. If they can’t be committed, I hope at least that they get the medical and pharmaceutical treatment they so desperately need.

[Update:] A follow up at WND, with no byline, was posted alleging that there is now a “full-blown media cover-up” of this ludicrous story. As evidence they cite this article, so get ready for some incoherent rightist rhetoric in the comments (they’ve already begun).

WND chief, Joseph Farah writes that this story was “deliberately spiked” by the mainstream media and even that “Big time talk-radio was tipped off on the story, as well – in advance. They didn’t bite, either.” Gee, I wonder why. Could it be because it’s insane? Farah, however, consoles himself with the fantasy that…

“…millions got the first-person, eyewitness evidence that Barack Obama was helped through Harvard by the family of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers back in the late 1980s.”

Farah obviously has a very low threshold for what constitutes evidence. In this case it’s a thirty year old memory of a brief and trivial conversation that is uncorroborated and didn’t even affirm what the source alleges. But that’s enough for the dimwits that read WND.

Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Birther, Jerome Corsi, WorldNetDaily

Mar 08 2012 3 cmnts

General, Propaganda, Racism

Breitbart’s Campaign Against Obama At Harvard Is Pure Racism

Posted by: Mark @ 2:07 pm

Yesterday was the day that the video Andrew Breitbart promised of a racially divisive Barack Obama in his days as a student at Harvard was released. It was almost universally panned as a pathetic and desperate boatload of nothing. After first yammering that the video posted by Buzzfeed (scooping Breitbart) was “selectively edited,” the Breitbartians posted what they said was the “uncut” video. Their version contained about two seconds more that consisted entirely of Obama hugging Prof. Derrick Bell, whom he had just introduced at a rally.

Since the video itself was proven to have no material evidence of anything the least bit detrimental to Obama, much less the cataclysmic data that would doom his career, the Breitbartians resorted to Plan B: Demonize Prof. Bell and tie him around Obama’s neck. This was a coordinated plot that began with Breitbart editor-in-chief Joel Pollak robotically repeating the mantra that “Derrick Bell was the Jeremiah Wright of academia.” Pollak even went on CNN and admitted that the video was irrelevant, and when Soledad O’Brein asked him “Then where’s the bombshell, I don’t see it?” Pollak responded that “The bombshell is the revelation of the relationship between Barack Obama and Derrick Bell.” But that wasn’t any revelation at all.

The argument that the Breitbartians are making rests on their assertion that Bell’s writings on Critical Race Theory define him as a racial radical. In fact, CRT is an aggregation of legal concepts that bring together law, politics, economics, etc., in a broad-based study of race and power in society. It posits that there are institutional barriers to eradicating racism that must be addressed at the root level. Those barriers are evident in things like employment practices and school admissions. Another example is the judicial system that incarcerates a higher percentage of African-Americans than their representation in the population. Affirming that example is the fact that crack cocaine, used by more African-Americans than whites, is punishable by sentences ten times more severe than powder cocaine, for which you find more white offenders.

Nevertheless, the Breitbartians are deliberately misinterpreting the legal theory in order to condemn its proponents, including Bell. In this way they can assert that Obama, as a result of his having studied at Harvard, is also a racial radical. The object is to incite fear among those who are ill-informed that Obama aspires to threaten their status in society. He is coming after your jobs, your schools, your churches, all the trappings of your comfortable, privileged lives.

In the wake of the initial flop of the video’s release, the right-wing media has been redoubling its efforts to stir up a phony controversy. Fox Nation has posted multiple stories on the subject (it has been at the top of their page for two days running). Fox News has featured it on their broadcasts, notably the video “exclusive” presented by Sean Hannity. Ironically, Fox Nation posted a video of a debate about Bell between Michelle Malkin and Juan Williams, but edited out Williams entirely.

Note the edit at about 2:20 where Hannity says that Juan’s gonna disagree, but then fades to Malkin saying “No, no. no.”. What Williams said in between was…

“Well, first of all, I must say, I thought this was going to be so much more. I thought this was going to be the smoking gun, as you describe it. But it really didn’t come too much. I mean, I just don’t think that there is.”

And that’s all that Williams was permitted to say in the entire segment, but they even cut that out when they put it online. And then they have the nerve to complain, falsely, that others “selectively edited” video.

Pollak and his Breitbart colleague Ben Shapiro have been making the rounds on the lamestream media. On CNN they argued with Soledad O’Brien over the meaning of Critical Race Theory, but spoke very little about what any of it had to do with Obama, despite O’Brien’s attempts to steer them back to the topic. That’s a tactic designed to keep the focus off of substance and aimed squarely at innuendo and slander. For good measure they threw in a bashing of the media for trying to suppress the video (for what reason, they never make clear), and to silence them (even while they are speaking on the air).

For its part, the Breitbart web site has been piling on with articles that reek of racism. One article was authored by J. Christian Adams, a notorious race-baiter who has accused Eric Holder’s Justice Department of coddling civil rights violators if they happened to be black. He wrote that…

“Both Obama and Bell demanded that Harvard hire professors on the basis of race. [...] The Obama-Bell connection is the latest in a pattern of Barack Obama’s associations with individuals who promoted a racially divisive America.”

That’s an open assault on affirmative action, which was not developed to produce hiring on the basis of race, but to put an end to it. Adams also repeated the lie that Obama had appeared with a member of the New Black Panther Party. In fact, Obama attended a civil rights rally that was attended by thousands of people, one of whom happened to be an NBPP member. Obama had no control over who came to a massive, public rally. Adams also characterized cases of civil rights abuse as “crackpot racial grievances.” That pretty much reveals his personal bias.

Another story posted by the Breitbartians alleged that “Obama Forced His Students To Read Bell at the University of Chicago Law School.” Their evidence was a document describing a course that Obama was teaching. The course was “Current Issues in Racism and the Law.” It would be difficult to teach such a class without the textbook materials by one of this generations most respected scholars on that subject. But the allegation is made even worse by that use of the word “forced” as if it were under duress. By that measure isn’t every student forced to read something? In fact, many of the references to Bell’s writings specifically said that they were optional reading.

Meanwhile, over at NewsBusters, there was an article that alleged that the non-event video was being suppressed as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by George Soros (Isn’t is always?). The evidence of that was that Soros’ foundations had made donations to Harvard (where the video took place) and WGBH (the public TV station that owned the video). Using their logic I can surmise that the Koch brothers are behind this whole phony video scandal because they have made contributions to NewsBusters.

And, believe it or not, they even have a Plan C: It’s a Cover Up! The video was a bust. The racial attacks could backfire. So if all else fails, blame it on a massive cover up. The Breitbartians took on another black Harvard professor, Charles Ogletree, by posting a video wherein he said that “We hid this during the 2008 campaign…” He was referring to the video of Obama at Harvard. Of course there would have been no reason to do that since, if anything, the video shows Obama in a positive light. The truth is that Ogletree was joking. He even laughed immediately after, which proves that he was humorously dismissing the throw-away line. but, not surprisingly, the humor-challenged righties didn’t get, even though Ogletree’s audience did.

The absence of any substance on the video has led to a redirection by the right to their usual stance against Obama – he’s black. His associates are black. And they advocate for radical concepts like equal justice under the law. They support fairness in hiring and other social contracts. They oppose discrimination.

If anyone is advancing a racialist philosophy, it’s the right-wingers who are peddling this repulsive nonsense. And if there is anything positive to take away from this, it is that they have once again shown their true colors. It isn’t about a video of a young future president. It isn’t about health care or oil prices or deficits. It is, and always has been, about one thing for these meatheads. They just can’t accept a black man in their White House.

Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Barack Obama, Derrick Bell, George Soros, J. Christian Adams, Joel Pollak, NewsBusters, Racism, Sean Hannity

Mar 07 2012 16 cmnts

Election, General, Propaganda

Buzzfeed Scoops Breitbart: The Obama Harvard Video

Posted by: Mark @ 1:55 pm

At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Andrew Breitbart said that he had videos of President Obama in his college days at Harvard. The implication was that the content of the videos was so scandalous that it would have an impact on Obama’s reelection. Breitbart gleefully announced that…

“I have videos. This election we’re going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008. The videos are going to come out, the narrative is going to come out.”

Well, they came out today. But Breitbart’s survivors at BigGovernment.com had nothing to do with it. The “vetting” was done by Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed. Kaczynski acquired video from WGBH TV in Boston of the future president speaking at a rally for more diversity in the Harvard faculty.

The Breitbart crew immediately blasted Buzzfeed for releasing what they said was a “selectively edited” copy of the video.

“[T]he video has been selectively edited–either by the Boston television station or by Buzzfeed itself. Over the course of the day, Breitbart.com will be releasing additional footage that has been hidden by Obama’s allies in the mainstream media and academia.”

Gee, I can hardly wait. This should be endlessly informative since the Breitbart clan is intimately familiar with the practice of selectively editing videos. BigGovernment’s Joel Pollak says that the unveiling of the uncut video will take place tonight on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News. There’s another sign of how much credibility any of this will have. Hannity is famous for airing videos of sparsely attended Tea Party rallies that turned out to be from completely different, and crowded, events.

The most remarkable thing about this video is how little Obama has changed. He had the same oratorical style and poise then as now. At the time Obama was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was speaking on behalf of Prof. Derrick Bell, the first tenured African-American professor in Harvard’s law school. The occasion was a rally in support of greater diversity in general, and specifically the hiring of an African-American woman in the law school.

Pollak further promised to expose Bell as a “radical academic tied to Jeremiah Wright.” I’m surprised that he isn’t also tying him to George Soros, Van Jones, Saul Alinsky, and Che Guevara. However, Bell was a respected legal scholar and author who served in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, at the NAACP as an associate counsel, as the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law and, in addition to Harvard, also taught at USC, Stanford, and NYU. Clearly a dangerous anti-American. But Breitbart’s ghost is already setting in motion the smear campaign.

Perhaps Pollak has portions of the video where Obama advocates the violent overthrow of the government by black nationalists or discloses his Kenyan birthplace, but somehow I doubt it. It appears that the Breitbart folks are just upset that their phony plot to trickle out snippets of an entirely harmless video in order to create a fake controversy has been foiled by the lamestream media (if Buzzfeed qualifies as that). Now they will have to resort to smearing the name of a deceased law professor and pretending that there is something wrong with Obama supporting a more diversified Harvard faculty. Fox Nation has already jumped in with an item about this story headlined: Obama Harvard Video: Rally for Race-Based Hiring. So there’s your talking point, righties. Go at it.

Late Breaking: Breitbart’s site released the “uncut” video and the only additional footage on it is of Obama embracing the professor he had just introduced. It was not exactly a secret that Obama admired his Harvard law professor. But the real problem for the Breitbart clan is that they have been bashing Buzzfeed all day long about having “selectively edited” the video, but now they have been shown to be lying.

PBS/WGBH posted the REAL uncut video here.

Hannity and Co. spent over 20 minutes discussing this embarrassing flop of a scandal, even though the exclusive broadcast of the uncut video offered nothing new. The pair from Breitbart.com (Ben Shapiro and Joel Pollak) fidgeted nervously as they desperately tried to set some sort of fire under this non-event, but they utterly failed to come up with anything other than a bumper sticker criticism of Bell which they repeated incessantly to make sure the brainwashing stuck: Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia.

Just as I suspected, that’s the talking point they are running with. It’s so pathetic that I actually feel a little sorry for them. Their leader passed away last week and now they are floundering like lost orphans. What a sad spectacle.

Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Barack Obama, BigGovernment, Derrick Bell, Joel Pollak

Mar 05 2012 1 cmnts

General, Propaganda, Racism

Fox News Slanders DOJ Attorney As A ‘Terrorist’ Lawyer

Posted by: Mark @ 1:58 pm

Once again Fox News is demonstrating their overt hostility to anything and everything in the Obama administration. It doesn’t matter if unemployment has dropped two points or that Osama Bin Laden is dead, somehow everything this administration does is tantamount to treason.

Case in point: The Department of Justice recently announced that it had promoted Tony West, the head of the Civil Division, to a new post as Associate Attorney General. This promotion was the result of his exemplary performance. In his role as the head of the Civil Division, West “recovered more than $8.8 billion in taxpayer money, the highest three-year total in department history.” Ordinarily that sort of accomplishment would be heralded by a deficit-obsessed right-winger. But we are dealing with an epidemic of Obama Derangement Syndrome, the symptoms of which are all too predictable. Here is how Fox News framed the story:

The headline on the Fox News web site declared “Terrorist Lawyer Gets Influential Justice Post.” On the air Fox News described Mr. West as a “Taliban Defender.” Both of these were deliberately designed to create the impression that West is affiliated with America’s enemies. Even worse, the story is being driven by a former DOJ attorney from the Bush administration, J. Christian Adams, who is defaming West and the entire Justice Department. Adams appeared on Fox & Friends with an all-encompassing allegation that Attorney General Eric Holder is…

“…filling [the Justice Department] with attorneys that, before they came to Justice, took on the most radical causes. And now they’re filling the Justice Department from top to bottom.”

Adams provides no support for his charge. And for someone with a record of dubious accusations that were easily debunked, Adams should be more careful with his unsubstantiated rebukes. He has previously tried to concoct DOJ conspiracies to prosecute civil rights cases against white defendants while letting black defendants off the hook – again, with no evidence to support it.

The characterization of West as a terrorist sympathizer stems from his having worked for a law firm that defended John Lindh, aka the American Taliban. That service is viewed by right-wingers as fraternizing with the enemy. American conservatives have long sought to portray themselves as the defenders of the Constitution despite the fact that they frequently show disdain for its most fundamental principles. For instance, the Sixth Amendment that guarantees a right to an attorney. That is the principle that West was patriotically upholding when he helped to represent an American citizen charged with a serious crime. But Adams expressly believes that respecting the Constitution in this manner disqualifies you from ever serving your government.

The larger condemnation that Fox is attempting to assert is that Obama and his entire administration is in cahoots with Al Qaeda. It is part of their years long effort to paint the President as a foreigner, a Muslim, and an anti-American socialist. That anyone actually believes those allegations is a testament to the success Fox has had in instilling ignorance in their audience. In the three years that Obama has been in office there have been more terrorists brought to justice (captured or killed) than in eight years of the Bush administration – and that includes Osama Bin Laden. So obviously Obama is working with Al Qaeda. It is part of their devious plot to allow him to dispose of their own members to make the American people think he isn’t one of them.

It is also notable to observe just who the right chooses to target when they make nonsense allegations like this one against West. The previous targets have included Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Eric Holder, UN Ambassador Susan Rice – all African American advisers and cabinet members. And let’s throw in Energy Secretary Steven Chu (Asian American) and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis (Latina American). But how often do you hear right-winger complaints about Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Tom Vilsack, Shaun Donovan, Ray LaHood, or Arne Duncan – all white cabinet members? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Tags: Barack Obama, Fox News, J. Christian Adams, Racism, Tony West

Mar 05 2012 2 cmnts

Election, General, Propaganda

Andrew Breitbart’s Vetting Of Barack Obama Begins With A Dud

Posted by: Mark @ 11:13 am

The recently deceased Andrew Breitbart delivered a stem-winding speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last month. In it he dangled a tempting treat before the assembled disciples of rightism in the form of a promise to expose the radical, Marxist roots of the young Barack Obama. Breitbart announced that…

“I have videos. This election we’re going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008. The videos are going to come out, the narrative is going to come out, that Barack Obama met a bunch of silver ponytails in the 1980s, like Bill (Ayers) and Bernadine Dohrn, who said one day we would have the presidency, and the rest of us slept as they plotted.”

That’s pretty heady stuff. It got the CPAC crowd worked up and initiated a stream of anticipation throughout the conservative community. What does Breitbart have? Are there videos of Obama conspiring with fugitive members of the Black Panther Party? Does the future president show up on film plotting the overthrow of the government?

Not exactly. The first part in the presumably continuing series of slander is not a video at all, but consists entirely of a poster for a play about conservative bogeyman Saul Alinsky.

The play “The Love Song of Saul Alinsky” was staged in 1998 in Chicago. Obama was a state senator at the time and, as a student of local history, had some knowledge of Alinsky and his work in the city. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Obama would participate in a post-play panel discussion about the author and community organizer. Nevertheless, Breitbart’s survivors at BigGovernment think they have unveiled the next Watergate via their crack investigation of the world of the theater.

Despite the dishonest headline that calls the play “Barack’s Love Song To Alinsky,” he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. This is another attempt to smear the President by association with a demon that the right invented. Alinsky was not the Marxist menace that Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, and Fox News make him out to be. In fact, he explicitly rejected the communists of his era saying…

“My only fixed truth is a belief in people, a conviction that if people have the opportunity to act freely and the power to control their own destinies, they’ll generally reach the right decisions. The only alternative to that belief is rule by an elite, whether it’s a Communist bureaucracy or our own present-day corporate establishment. You should never have an ideology more specific than that of the founding fathers: ‘For the general welfare.’ That’s where I parted company with the Communists in the Thirties, and that’s where I stay parted from them today.”

Alinsky was always, first and foremost, an advocate for the underclass in society that was abused and oppressed by the powerful. That’s a message that Tea Partiers could adopt if they weren’t such tools of powerful manipulators like the Koch brothers.

It is a sad and ironic tribute to Breitbart that his web site has published his last article and it is brimming with the sort of lies and distortions for which Breitbart was famous in life. If this is any indication of what Breitbart meant when he claimed to have explosive materials that would impact the President’s reelection, then the Democrats don’t have much to worry about. But I wouldn’t rest too easy because the Breitbart machine is still alive and it is probably working overtime to fabricate its next batch of propaganda.

Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Barack Obama, Saul Alinsky

Mar 03 2012 2 cmnts

General, Propaganda

At Fox Nation, Puerile Propaganda Doesn’t Take Weekends Off

Posted by: Mark @ 3:16 pm

The busy news fictionalizers at Fox Nation are hard at work this Saturday creating the stream of asinine idiotainment that their glassy-eyed readers demand. Here is an abridged selection of what Fox regards as newsworthy reporting today:

Starting off with a hard-hitting investigative news item, the Fox Nationalists uncover a juicy morsel about a new Obama campaign hire. Apparently this low-level social media promoter in a Wisconsin campaign office used to be employed by Charlie Sheen. That automatically makes him the subject of ridicule deserving of taunts from the Fox family of dimwits. No matter what you think of Sheen, his social media presence is impressive. He has 6.7 million followers on Twitter and 2.3 million people “LIKE” his page on Facebook. Anyone who contributed to that success could be a real asset for any political campaign.

On the other hand, in the world of unfortunate associations, Mitt Romney has picked up the endorsement of the incontinent Ted Nugent. It will be interesting to hear Romney defend Nugent’s assassination threats against President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and senators Feinstein and Boxer (if anyone in the media has the integrity to ask him).

Nugent: I was in Chicago last week I said, “Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk?” Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns. Let’s hear it for them. I was in New York and I said, “Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch.” Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns. Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore.

Fox Nation continued its quest for journalistic malpractice with a story it headlined: Memo: Obama To Raise Taxes For Middle Class If Re-Elected. The source to which Fox linked was an article at a web site called WeaselZippers. That should be the first sign of its credibility. The truth behind the data that Fox is deliberately misconstruing is related to the tax cuts for the wealthy that Bush pushed through more than a decade ago with a sunset provision that has already passed. It was Bush who predetermined that taxes would go back up. Obama has repeatedly tried to cut a deal where only the tax cuts for the rich would expire, but the GOP has fought him every step of the way.

The next story is one that tries to imply that Obama’s Department of Justice is aligning itself with Taliban terrorists. Just how stupid do they think their readers are? (Don’t answer that). The real story is that an attorney who has been working for the DOJ for three years has been promoted as a result of his exemplary performance. In his role as the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Tony West “recovered more than $8.8 billion in taxpayer money, the highest three-year total in department history.” One of the many things that the right-wingnuts never understand about the Constitution is that every defendant is entitled to representation. It is the foundation of our justice system. And trying to smear an attorney for carrying out his constitutional obligations is reprehensible.

Finally, the Fox Nationalists were kind enough to post a link to the GOP response to Obama’s weekly address. But astute observers will note that they never posted a link to the address that the GOP were responding to. You know, the one Obama delivered. It’s like posting the answer to a question without ever posting the question. Fox is valiantly protecting its readers from any exposure to information that would give them a full and complete understanding of current events. That explains why they are so pitifully ignorant. Thank Fox’s dedication to fairness and balance for that. Here, by the way, is the Obama video:

Tags: Barack Obama, Fox Nation, Mitt Romney, Ted Nugent

Feb 27 2012 4 cmnts

General, Propaganda

The Fox Effect: The Book That Terrifies Roger Ailes And Fox News

Posted by: Mark @ 9:55 am

A new book from Media Matters was just released that chronicles the history of Fox News and explains how a small group of wealthy, politically connected conservative partisans conspired to build a pseudo-news network with the intent of advancing the right-wing agenda of the Republican Party. And that network, known for its drooling anti-liberalism, is scared spitless.

The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine, was written by David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt (and others) of Media Matters. It begins by looking back at the early career of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and his role as a media consultant for Republican politicians, including former president Richard Nixon. From the start Ailes was a brash, creative proponent of the power of television to influence a mass audience. He guided the media-challenged Nixon through a treacherous new era of news and political PR, and his experiences formed the basis for what would become his life’s grand achievement: a “news” network devoted to a political party, its candidates, and its platform.

When Ailes partnered with international newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch to launch a new 24 hour cable news channel, he was given an unprecedented measure of control to shape the network’s business and ideology. The Fox Effect examines the underpinnings of the philosophy that Ailes brought to the venture. His earliest observations exhibit an appreciation for the tabloid-style sensationalism that would become a hallmark of Fox’s reporting. Ailes summed it up in an interview in 1988 as something he called his “orchestra pit theory” of politics:

“If you have two guys on stage and one guy says ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls into the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?”

That’s the sort of thinking that produced Fox’s promotion of hollering town hall protesters during the health care debate and their focus on lurid but phony issues like death panels. It is a flavor of journalism that elevates melodrama over factual discourse.

This article also appears on Alternet.org.

The book exposes how Fox was more of a participant in the news than a reporter of it. Through interviews with Fox insiders and leaked internal communications, The Fox Effect documents the depths to which the network collaborated with political partisans to invent stories with the intent of manipulating public opinion. The authors reveal memos from the Washington managing editor of Fox News, Bill Sammon, directing anchors and reporters on how to present certain subjects. For instance, he ordered them never to use the term “public option” when referring to health insurance reform. Focus group testing by Fox pollster Frank Luntz had found that the phrase “government option” left a more negative impression, and they were instructed to use that instead.

There is a chapter on the Tea Party that describes how integral Fox was to its inception and development. The network literally branded the fledgling movement as FNC Tea Parties and dispatched its top anchors to host live broadcasts from rallies. The Fox Effect also details the extensive coverage devoted to the deceitfully edited videos that brought down ACORN. Fox was instrumental in promoting the story and stirring up a public backlash that resulted in congressional investigations and loss of funding. The book followed the story from Andrew Breitbart’s new and little known BigGovernment blog to Glenn Beck’s conspiracy factory to the wall-to-wall coverage it enjoyed on Fox’s primetime. This chapter is where the authors introduce what they call “The Six Steps” that Fox employs to create national controversies:

STEP 1: Conservative activists introduce the lie.
STEP 2: Fox News devotes massive coverage to the story.
STEP 3: Fox attacks other outlets for ignoring the controversy.
STEP 4: Mainstream outlets begin reporting on the story.
STEP 5: Media critics, pundits praise Fox News’s coverage.
STEP 6: The story falls apart once the damage has been done.

This is a pattern that has played out with varying degrees of success. Fox used this blueprint to engineer the career-ending slander of presidential adviser Van Jones and Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod. But the strategy was less effective when used against Attorney General Eric Holder and Planned Parenthood, although not for lack of effort.

These, and other examples of deliberate bias, illustrate why most neutral observers regard Fox News as the PR arm of the Republican Party. The Fox Effect makes a convincing case to affirm that view and even offers admissions to that effect by Fox insiders. It is a damning exposé of how a political operative and a right-wing billionaire built a propaganda machine thinly disguised as a news network. The research and documentation are extensive and compelling.

For that reason, Fox News has mounted an unprecedented attack on Media Matters in advance of the book’s release. [Note: Actually it's not so unprecedented. Fox set the precedent itself last year with a sustained campaign to do tangible harm by tacking an article to the top of the Fox Nation web site with a headline that read "Want to File an IRS Complaint Against Media Matters? Click Here..."] In the week prior to publication of The Fox Effect, Fox News broadcast no fewer than a dozen derogatory segments across all dayparts and on their most popular programs, including The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, Fox & Friends, etc. It was the sort of blanket coverage usually reserved for a natural disaster, a declaration of war, or a lewd TwitPic of a politician. The attacks never contained any substantive argument or even example of error on the part of Media Matters. However, they are brimming with the most nasty form of personal invective imaginable.

The basis for the Fox News broadcasts was a series of articles by the Daily Caller (TDC), the conservative web site of Tucker Carlson, who just happens to also be on the Fox News payroll. The gist of the story, as described by TDC, is that Media Matters is manipulating news organizations, coordinating messaging with the White House, and struggling to cope with the “volatile and erratic behavior” of Brock, whom TDC alleges is mentally ill. TDC never reveals from where they got their psychiatric credentials, nor when they had an opportunity to examine and diagnose Brock. Likewise, they never reveal where they got any of the other information for the allegations they make against Media Matters as every source is anonymous.

Media analysts have universally condemned TDC’s reporting. Howard Kurtz interviewed author Vince Coglianese on CNN’s Reliable Sources and assailed the absence of any evidence to corroborate the allegations of his anonymous sources. Coglianese could not even confirm that events alleged in the article ever occurred. He laughably argued that the absence of a denial from Brock was evidence of guilt, rather than a simple disinclination to raise the profile of a poorly written article. Jack Shafer wrote for Reuters that “the Daily Caller is attacking Media Matters with bad journalism and lame propaganda.”

Media Matters was created to document conservative media bias and work to implement reforms that would produce more balanced reporting. Yet, Fox is confused by the fact that Media Matters’ research is cited by progressive organizations and publishers. The grunt work of aggregating video and other reporting is appreciated by those who use Media Matters materials. Much of it is provided without any editorializing. The right has always been fearful of any entity that would simply record their disinformation, nonsense, and hostility, and then hold them accountable for it. But they have yet to criticize NewsBusters or their parent organization, the Media Research Center, despite the cozy relationship they have with Fox News. Brit Hume, the former managing editor of Fox News, however, was abundantly grateful:

Hume: I want to say a word, however, of thanks to Brent [Bozell] and the team at the Media Research Center [...] for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report, I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. It was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it.

Joining in on the assault is the Fox Nation web site that is engaged in a relentless barrage of critical articles with disturbingly insulting and hyperbolic headlines. For instance:

Is Media Matters’ David Brock A ‘Dangerous’ Man?
Were Media Matters Donors Duped?
Inside Media Matters: Founder Believed to be Regularly Using Illegal Drugs, Including Cocaine.

But even those paled in comparison to what Fox News was posting on the screen graphics that accompanied their broadcasts:

MEDIA MATTERS’ MONEY: David Brock is an admitted drug user
THE MONEY BEHIND THE MACHINE: David Brock committed to a quiet room
A LIBERAL INFLUENCE: Brock spent time in a mental ward

Note that the subjects of the broadcasts were financial in nature. Fox was reporting on TDC’s discovery that Media Matters donors were largely progressive individuals and foundations (not exactly what one would call a scoop). However, Fox News appended assertions as to the mental stability of Brock, which had nothing to do with their topic. It was merely an opportunity for them to take swipes at a perceived enemy. And this mud-slinging occurred during what Fox regards as their “news” programming, not the evening hours that they designate as the opinion portion of their schedule.

In order to cement the impression that David Brock is a mental defective, unfit to lead any organization or to be given serious consideration, Fox News brought in their resident psycho analyst, “Dr” Keith Ablow. As a part of the Fox News Medical “A” Team, Ablow appeared on the air in a segment that painted Brock as seriously disturbed and even dangerous:

“If you are filled with self-loathing you will see demons on every street corner because you project that self-hatred. [...] He’s a dangerous man because having followers and waging war, as he says, or previously being a right-wing hitman, this isn’t accidental language. It’s about violence, destruction, and he feels destroyed in himself.”

This diagnosis was an invention by Ablow who has never examined Brock, or even met him. That in itself is a violation of the American Psychiatric Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics, something Ablow does not need to concern himself with because last year he was compelled to separate himself from the APA due to ethical “differences.”

This is actually the second time Ablow has appeared on Fox News with his absurd fantasies (or projections) about Brock. And Brock isn’t his only pretend patient. A few weeks ago he published an op-ed on FoxNews.com that praised Newt Gingrich’s serial infidelity as evidence of traits that would help him to make America stronger were he president. Seriously! And who could forget his deranged psycho analysis of President Obama?

If Fox News wants to engage in “remote” psychiatry they ought to at least be fair and balanced about it. However they pointedly make no mention of the reported paranoia of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. No mention that he was cited as the reason that the NYPD provided police protection for the Fox headquarters at a cost of $500,000 a year to the people of New York. No mention of the obsessive fears described by Tim Dickinson in a Rolling Stone profile:

“Ailes is also deeply paranoid. Convinced that he has personally been targeted by Al Qaeda for assassination, he surrounds himself with an aggressive security detail and is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. [...] Murdoch installed Ailes in the corner office on Fox’s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having ‘bombproof glass’ installed in the windows – even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet.”

I really have to wonder if even the Fox News audience is so intellectually comatose that they wouldn’t recognize the feverish anxiety gushing from Fox in advance of the Media Matters book. A tree stump would notice that they are laying it on awfully thick. So the obvious question is what are they so afraid of? And the answer is that Fox News can no longer hide from their reputation as a dishonest purveyor of slanted propaganda and tabloid trash on behalf of a right-wing agenda and the political operatives who advance it and benefit from it.

The Fox Effect is a thoroughly documented investigation into the inner workings of both the organization and its principle managers and backers. It peels away the layers of the conservative cabal that has so effectively poisoned the public discourse on many significant issues. And like the fraudulent Wizard in the city of Oz, Fox wants us all to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain (Roger Ailes), or to the curtain (Fox News), or the corporation that controls it all (News Corp). And to that end Fox has embarked on a massive smear campaign to destroy the credibility of the book, its authors, and the organization that produced it. But Media Matters has already succeeded. As noted in the book’s epilogue:

“Fox News will no longer be able to conduct its campaign under the false pretense that the network is a journalistic institution. There is heightened awareness in the progressive community and in the general public of the damage Fox causes.”

And that is exactly what Fox is afraid of.

Tags: Alternet, Bill Sammon, Daily Caller, David Brock, Fox News, Keith Ablow, Media Matters, Media Research Center, Roger Ailes, Tea Party, Tucker Carlson

Feb 14 2012 9 cmnts

General, Propaganda

EXPOSED: The Reason Fox News Declared War On Media Matters

Posted by: Mark @ 7:13 pm

Yesterday Tucker Carlson of The Daily Caller (TDC) posted what he said was the first in a series of articles that would reveal the inner workings of Media Matters for America (MMfA). It was a pathetic little screed that proved nothing but how desperate the right-wing noise machine is to prevent the world from knowing what they are up to.

Today TDC posted a second chapter with even less substance than the first. So far as I can tell, the entirety of their problem is that MMfA revealed in a memo that they were considering…

“…hir[ing] a team of trackers to stake out private and public events with Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors and senior network/corporate staff.”

In other words, MMfA was plotting to do precisely what media watchdog groups always do.

More interesting is the extent to which Fox News has been promoting this astonishingly thin expose. Yesterday they broadcast three segments with their star anchors, Steve Doocy, Megyn Kelly, and Bill O’Reilly. They also posted four separate articles linking to the same TDC piece on Fox Nation. Today they added four more items on Fox Nation, an article on FoxNews.com, and two more Fox News broadcasts, including an interview of Carlson by Doocy that featured this startling exchange:

Doocy: They [MMfA] seem to be an extension of the Democratic Party. And now for this tax exempt organization to do this, where they’re gonna hire private investigators to dig into people’s backgrounds, that seems crazy.

Carlson: It’s pretty over the top. I would use the term Nixonian, because that’s what it is. The memo compares it to a presidential campaign, but no presidential campaign, no sane politician would ever engage in something like this because in some cases it might be illegal.

So digging into people’s backgrounds is crazy? Nixonian? Yet it is exactly what Carlson is doing with his intrusive and unsubstantiated article that accuses MMfA’s founder, David Brock, of everything from drug addiction to media manipulation to mental illness. It’s pretty personal stuff. Never mind that MMfA has never done anything remotely similar. In their monitoring of Fox News they have always focused solely on the delivery of the news – or whatever it is that Fox calls news.

The massive amount of attention that Fox is paying to a single column on an Internet blog is a curious affair. What could possibly motivate this outburst of bad publicity? Well, now we know.

David Brock and his colleague Ari Rabin-Havt have written a book that is scheduled to be released next week:

The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine

The book is “Based on the meticulous research of the news watchdog organization Media Matters for America, David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt show how Fox News, under its president Roger Ailes, changed from a right-leaning news network into a partisan advocate for the Republican Party.”

It is further described as “Featuring transcripts of leaked audio and memos from Fox News reporters and executives, The Fox Effect is a damning indictment of how the network’s news coverage and commentators have biased reporting, drummed up marginal stories, and even consciously manipulated established facts in their efforts to attack the Obama administration.”

In other words, the book is an investigation of the overtly partisan Fox News network and its efforts on behalf of a political agenda. So far as is discernible from their own marketing copy, it is not personal. It doesn’t slander Fox principals as insane or criminals. It sticks to factual representations of a news enterprise that abandoned its ethical obligations in favor of promoting an extreme right-wing ideology.

So a week before the release of a book from MMfA purporting to unveil the biases of Fox News via leaked memos and investigative reporting from within the organization, there is a pseudo-investigation published, and relentlessly hyped, that smears MMfA using allegedly similar tactics, albeit not particularly effectively? Is it just a coincidence, or is Fox News engaging in a preventative first strike in order to shelter themselves from the coming storm?

We report, you decide.

Tags: Daily Caller, David Brock, Fox News, Media Matters, Tucker Carlson

Feb 13 2012 16 cmnts

General, Propaganda

Right-Wing Noise Machine Still Terrified Of Media Matters

Posted by: Mark @ 6:21 pm

Further affirming the desperation of the mavens of the conservative media, a new campaign of slander and innuendo has been launched to tarnish the reputation of Media Matters for America (MMfA), and its founder David Brock. This is reminiscent of a similar campaign orchestrated last year.

This latest barrage of defamation was initiated by Tucker Carlson’s Internet rag, The Daily Caller (TDC). Carlson is a Fox News contributor so it isn’t surprising that Fox immediately jumped aboard this effort with featured segments hosted by Steve Doocy and Megyn Kelly. They also posted the story on their Fox Nation web site, twice. [Update: Carlson later appeared on Bill O'Reilly's program as well]

The gist of the story, as described by TDC, is that MMfA is manipulating news organizations, coordinating messaging with the White House, and struggling to cope with the “volatile and erratic behavior” of Brock, whom TDC alleges is mentally ill. TDC never reveals from where they got their psychiatric credentials, nor when they had an opportunity to examine and diagnose Brock. Likewise, they never reveal where they got any of the information for the other allegations they make against MMfA.

MMfA was created to document conservative media bias and work to implement reforms that would produce more balanced reporting. Yet, TDC is confused by the fact that MMfA’s research is cited by progressive organizations and media analysts. Why that would confuse them is, in itself, confusing. MMfA makes its materials available for that very purpose. They are providing a service that other interested organizations are free to employ or ignore. They are not manipulating anybody, nor are they forcing anyone to coordinate with them. Additionally, TDC thinks it’s unusual that people and enterprises who share an ideological viewpoint might produce commentaries that have certain similarities. Of course they do. It would be unusual if they didn’t. Does TDC think it’s unusual when John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh say similar things?

TDC’s multipart series on MMfA kicks off with a personal attack on Brock:

“David Brock was smoking a cigarette on the roof of his Washington, D.C. office one day in the late fall of 2010 when his assistant and two bodyguards suddenly appeared and whisked him and his colleague Eric Burns down the stairs. [...] The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? ‘Snipers.’”

TDC then asserts that Brock is suffering from severe paranoia and believes that there are right-wing assassins out to get him. But how can Brock be characterized as paranoid when, while he was having a leisurely break, his security team took action to protect him. Perhaps the bodyguards are paranoid, but nothing in this story suggests that Brock is.

For contrast, it should be pointed out that there is no mention by TDC of the reported paranoia of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. No mention that he was cited as the reason that the NYPD provided police protection for the Fox headquarters at a cost of $500,000 a year to the people of New York. No mention of the obsessive fears described by Tim Dickinson in a Rolling Stone profile:

“Ailes is also deeply paranoid. Convinced that he has personally been targeted by Al Qaeda for assassination, he surrounds himself with an aggressive security detail and is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. [...] Murdoch installed Ailes in the corner office on Fox’s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having ‘bombproof glass’ installed in the windows – even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet.”

The TDC article went to great lengths to expose something that ought to have been obvious – that liberal news outlets like DailyKos and Salon would utilize information compiled by MMfA. [Full disclosure: News Corpse has used MMfA materials frequently. It isn't coordinated. It's just reliable, documented content] The grunt work of aggregating video and other reporting is appreciated by those who use MMfA materials. Much of it is provided without any editorializing. The right has always been fearful of any entity that would simply record their disinformation, nonsense, and hostility, and then hold them accountable for it. But in condemning MMfA for providing such content to liberal media, they demonstrate their rank hypocrisy. They have yet to criticize NewsBusters or their parent organization, the Media Research Center. However, the former managing editor of Fox News was abundantly grateful:

Brit Hume: I want to say a word, however, of thanks to Brent [Bozell] and the team at the Media Research Center [...] for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report, I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. It was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it.

Much of the remaining TDC article is a montage of incongruous allegations and lame assumptions. For instance, they cite a meeting between Brock and Obama aide Valerie Jarret as signaling some sort of conspiracy. It was a one-time meeting that occurred over a year and a half ago. They complain that reporters would “get a thousand hostile emails” after exposure on MMfA. But isn’t that sort of accountability the point of an enterprise whose purpose is to unmask media bias?

TDC posted a link to a video of Brock that they labeled an “odd media appearance,” but which seemed pretty restrained and composed to me. They described his aspiration to develop a political action committee to challenge Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS as “unsettlingly grandiose.” Is that just their standard put-down for anyone who would dare to take on the mighty Rove? And perhaps the most disturbing revelation of all was that “there were very harsh penalties for getting things wrong. And justifiably so.” Imagine that…Brock actually insisted that his staff pay attention to detail and accuracy. What a beast! After all, they are just an organization that monitors the detail and accuracy of other organizations. Who cares if they get some things wrong? They should adopt the attitude of Fox News anchorette Gretchen Carlson:

“When we make a mistake reading the news headlines, whereas at a [broadcast] network you’d probably get fired, instead, we’re like, ‘Eh, we screwed up.’“

TDC says that there will be additional installments of this series throughout the week. I should hope so, because there was nothing in this installment that could be considered newsworthy. However, I expect that the upcoming chapters will be equally devoid of any useful information. So far the only thing that TDC has achieved with this expose is wasting their bandwidth with unsourced, anonymous gossip and personal insults. If it gets any play at all it will be due to the help they got from Carlson’s bosses at Fox News. And the only thing that any of it proves is how dreadfully afraid the conservative propagandists are of Media Matters. It is astonishing how the innocent act of recording their words can set the rightist empire to trembling.

[Update] The Fox Nationalists just posted their ~~third~~ fourth item about Media Matters (although all of them link to the same TDC article). Apparently the other two did not have sufficiently sensationalist headlines to stir the scandal-lust of their perverted readers, so this time they packed in unsubstantiated allegations that Brock is “believed to be” using illegal drugs.

My anonymous sources have confirmed to me that Rupert Murdoch is believed to be funding the New American Nazi Party and patronizing Mistress Helga in swastika-print diapers.

Tags: Brit Hume, Daily Caller, David Brock, Fox News, Media Matters, Roger Ailes, Tucker Carlson

Jan 18 2012 5 cmnts

General, Media Bias, Propaganda

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Case Of The Tea Party Smoke Bomber

Posted by: Mark @ 11:42 am

If there is still anyone who wonders where Fox News gets the information it publishes, let there be no mistake – They make it up. Take, for instance, this article featured on Fox Nation with the headline, “Occupier (Not a Tea Partier) Throws Smoke Bomb Over White House Fence.”

The Fox Nationalists linked to an article on their own FoxNews.com about the protest in Washington by Occupy Congress. Nowhere in the article was there any evidence that the smoke bomb was thrown by an Occupy protester. There are no witnesses, no suspects, no statements from the authorities – nothing that implicates a protester.

Nevertheless, Fox makes a declarative statement of fact that the smoke bomb was thrown by an “Occupier.” They also make a similar statement that the smoke bomb was not thrown by a Tea Partier, an assertion for which they also have zero evidence. And we already know that Tea Partiers have conspired to create disruptions at progressive events and blame the progressives. Here are just two verified examples:

Patrick Howley, an assistant editor for the uber-conservative American Spectator magazine, admitted to infiltrating OccupyDC for the purpose of undermining it. He then attempted to lead a group of protesters into storming the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The protesters, being much smarter than Howley, did not play along. Howley stormed the museum alone and was pepper-sprayed by security.

Mark Williams, former spokesman for Tea Party Express, told his radio listeners that he was planning to sabotage union rallies with the intention of making them look “greedy and goonish.” And he beseeched his listeners to do the same. Williams was the one-time spokesperson for the Tea Party Express, but was dismissed for publishing a virulently racist article on his blog.

Given their history of attempts to implicate Occupiers for crimes they did not commit, it is entirely possible that a Tea Party, or other right-wing activist, was responsible for the smoke bomb. But I’m not leveling any charges because there is no evidence one way or the other. That, however, doesn’t stop Fox from inventing news stories that advance their agenda. Fox News has always been more interested in disseminating propaganda than in upholding ethical standards of journalism.

Tags: Fox Nation, Fox News, Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party

Jan 09 2012 10 cmnts

General, Propaganda

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Beware The Lethal New Ice Age

Posted by: Mark @ 10:49 am

Fox Nation is starting off the new year determined to exceed last year’s Cavalcade of Crackpottery. An article posted this morning sports the headline, “Human Carbon Emissions Could Put OFF a Lethal New Ice Age, Say Scientists.” According to the Fox Nationalists, the perpetrators of Global Warming are actually rescuing the planet from a frigid doom.

“Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere could actually insulate against a catastrophic ice age which would see glaciers advance over Europe and north America.”

The conclusion drawn by Fox Nation is that rising levels of CO2 are actually beneficial and that we should continue to pollute the atmosphere if we are to survive an icy catastrophe in the year 3512. The only problem with that conclusion is that the scientist they reference for the article, Luke Skinner, has a completely different conclusion. He says that he anticipated this response amongst climate crisis deniers and that they are…

“…missing the point, because where we’re going is not maintaining our currently warm climate but heating it much further, and adding CO2 to a warm climate is very different from adding it to a cold climate.

“The rate of change with CO2 is basically unprecedented, and there are huge consequences if we can’t cope with that.”

Skinner told the BBC that the results of the study point to the sensitivity of the climate system to “quite small changes in CO2, let alone the huge changes that we’ve been responsible for over the last 200 years.” Of course, none of that is included in the Fox Nation article. They flagrantly neglect the obvious point that by the time the presumed ice age begins in 1,500 years, global warming, if unchecked, would have already put half the planet’s current land mass under water.

It is also worth noting that the Fox News climate crisis deniers have long argued that temperatures are not rising and that, even if they were, it could not possibly be due to anything that human beings are doing. But in order to adopt the dishonest interpretation that Fox puts forth here, they would have to reverse that argument and agree that the planet is warming and that humans are responsible for it.

It’s nice to see that Fox is now admitting that man-made global warming is real. Now, if they would just take in the entirety of Skinner’s research, rather than their cherry-picked, out-of-context soundbites, we might actually be able to get together and solve the bigger problems that are facing us.

Tags: Fox Nation

Jan 05 2012 1 cmnts

General, Propaganda

Faux News Analyst Rails Against Faux News

Posted by: Mark @ 12:51 am

Gretchen Carlson, ordinarily seen peddling GOP talking points as a co-host on Fox & Friends, was filling in as an anchor on Fox’s “America’s Election Headquarters” news program this morning when she introduced her guest:

“Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. thinks that Republican presidential hopefuls are being portrayed as a weak field by the liberal-leaning press.”

Actually, Republican presidential hopefuls are being portrayed as a weak field by pretty much everyone – including the Republican presidential hopefuls. Gingrich called Romney a liar. Santorum called Paul disgusting. Perry tagged Romney and Gingrich as the Washington establishment. Huntsman said…well, no one knows what Huntsman said because he can’t get on TV.

Conservative pundits from Karl Rove to Charles Krauthammer have lambasted the GOP candidates repeatedly. Tea Party leaders insist that they will not support one candidate or another. Even rightist icons like Dick Morris and Ann Coulter have admitted that they will probably have to hold their tongues and support the Republican nominee despite their lack of enthusiasm.

That said, legal analyst Johnson was bent out of shape over what he viewed as a liberal cabal to diminish the stature of the Republican candidates (as if they needed help). The source of his wrath was the allegedly biased reporting he encountered from what he called the “left-wing Politico” and “some of the less successful news channels.”

“GOP candidates are not only running against each other, but they’re also running against the mainstream media.”

He doesn’t explain how these news channels can be both less successful and mainstream. But he does go into some detail about the danger of misrepresenting oneself as a journalist.

“If you’re a commentator and an analyst – and I’m a commentator and an analyst – say you’re a commentator and an analyst. If you’re an activist, say you’re an activist. But to pretend that you’re a news person, to pretend that you’re giving a fair and balanced view of things, when in fact you have no credentials to do that, and your only history is to engage in activism, is to engage in politics, is to engage in propaganda, then that’s an unfair portrayal of the news to the American people.”

Well said. That’s exactly what I would have told Gretchen Carlson, who every day pretends to be a news person while having no credentials and engaging in propaganda. In fact, that little speech would apply to almost everybody on Fox News. It’s startling that Johnson was allowed to express himself so candidly. And Carlson deserves some credit for taking this criticism with such poise. It was like she didn’t even know that she was being harshly denigrated as an unethical hack.

I’m certainly going to save Johnson’s remarks so that I can refer to them whenever someone on Fox pretends to be a news person – which is pretty much whenever they are on the air.

Tags: Fox News, Gretchen Carlson, Peter Johnson

Jan 01 2012 9 cmnts

General, Media Bias, Propaganda

Fox News: The Most Powerful Propagandist Since Goebbels

Posted by: Mark @ 10:33 am

Fox News waited until the last day of 2011 to publish the most absurdly hyperbolic piece of journalistic comedy/trash of the year. And that’s a high bar for Fox.

Dan Gainor is a VP for the Media Research Center, an ultra-conservative operation that exists to bash Democrats and advance the myth that the media is liberal. In an op-ed for Fox, Gainor breaks all records for overstatement and ironic tunnel-blindness. He begins the unintentionally hilarious article by declaring that the…

“Huffington Post, HuffPo, as it is sometimes called, has evolved from a simple news aggregator into one of the most sophisticated propaganda operations the world has ever seen. [...and that Arianna Huffington is...] the most powerful propagandist since a guy named Goebbels.”

That’s the kickoff to Gainor’s Fox News article that castigates Arianna Huffington and the Huffingtong Post as left-wing missionaries of fascism. [This just in: The CEO of Huffington Post/AOL, Tim Armstrong, has contributed the maximum donation this year to the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.]

It doesn’t get much better after that. Gainor carelessly contradicts one of the primary edicts of conservative free marketing: that Fox News and talk radio are so abundantly successful because the media consuming public prefers the conservative message. He says of Huffington that…

“The site was started by political chameleon Arianna Huffington, who used to be conservative before she discovered it was far more lucrative to be liberal.”

There you have it. Apparently the people do want liberal media. From there Gainor goes into a diatribe against HuffPo that would make a much better tirade were it directed at Fox’s own Fox Nation. It’s astonishing how oblivious he is to the twisted irony of his words. For instance, he wonders aghast that “Everywhere you look on the site, Republicans and conservatives are doing something bad.” Replace “Republicans and conservatives” with “Democrats and liberals” and you have a perfect description of Fox Nation. Then he continues his HuffPo rant…

“The few stories that mention Democrats at all are such puff pieces that most journalists would be embarrassed to be associated with them. One shows a baby putting his hand in Obama’s mouth: ‘Obama Gets A Mouthful,’ readers are told in this thoroughly silly story.”

Fox Nation - Obama Eats Baby Hand Indeed. A thoroughly silly story that most journalists would be embarrassed to be associated with. Which must be why Fox Nation featured it for six days running as their “Pic of the Day.” And their version was adorned by a mocking headline that evokes child abuse and cannibalism. Would they have chosen that imagery for a white president?

But Gainor is clearly unaware that he is insulting the journalistic integrity of his pals at Fox. Just as he is unaware of the similarity of the following invective aimed at HuffPo to the Fox Nation business model:

“Of course, they don’t write it all themselves. The HuffPo staff is masterful at combing the internet for stories and digging through them for one nugget that makes their point. They write a couple graphs about the nugget, package it with a sometimes huge headline and a stock photo and, voila, their work is done.”

That’s Fox Nation in a wing-nutshell. Except that they write none of it themselves. Every single article on Fox Nation is merely a reference and a link to some other (usually brazenly biased) source. And often its presentation is overtly dishonest as demonstrated here. And Gainor isn’t through yet.

“But the site doesn’t work if it doesn’t generate traffic. After all, Americans aren’t forced to read Arianna’s propaganda. So it’s filled with sex, more sex, comedy and enough other trash to keep people visiting.”

You mean like this? I took a look at Fox Nation’s “Pic of the Day” for just this year and found an abundance of evidence that they are obsessed with naked women, particularly their breasts.

And being a young blonde in a short skirt appears to be a prerequisite to be a female reporter on Fox News. Just ask Megyn Kelly, Martha MacCallum, Shannon Bream, Gretchen Carlson, Monica Crowley, Ainsley Earhardt, Courtney Friel, Alisyn Camerota, Molly Line, Molly Henneberg, Julie Banderas, and Steve Doocy. [Oops. I have to scratch one of those. Julie Banderas is not a blonde].

For Gainor to use an editorial on Fox News as a platform to gripe about the Huffington Post being a liberally-slanted web site is an Olympian feat of hypocrisy. But for him to venture off into Nazi references is offensive in the extreme. Arianna Huffington is not responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocents and the comparison to Hitler’s regime trivializes the horror that was the Holocaust. Furthermore, his assessment of HuffPo as biased is an affirmation of acute self-delusion. He is so altogether unaware of his perversion of reality that he can utter this phrase about HuffPo without meaning it sarcastically: “It’s also unmatched on the right.”

Unmatched on the right? Certainly Gainor has read Fox Nation. He is also presumably aware of The Daily Caller, The Blaze, BigGovernment, Townhall, National Review, Weekly Standard, Drudge Report, RedState, WorldNetDaily, Washington Times, NewsMax, and many more.

Gainor’s editorial is typical of the ignorance-inducing disinformation that is the hallmark of Fox News and his own Media Research Center (publisher of the reprehensible net newsrag, NewsBusters). He launches odious insults, accuses his targets of improprieties that he engages in himself, and ignores obvious information if it contradicts his predetermined conclusions. And all of this intellectual mendacity comes together at the start of a new year as if to christen 2012 for a journey to new and more loathsome states of dishonesty and thought control.

Happy New Year, America.

Tags: Arianna Huffington, Dan Gainor, Fox Nation, Fox News, Huffington Post, Media Research Center