Remember way back about four days ago when Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, wet his britches over a tweet by someone at MSNBC that said that right-wingers would hate a new Cheerios ad that featured a biracial family?
The reaction from Priebus and the rest of the conservative throngs was to lash out at MSNBC and demand satisfaction for what they regarded as an insulting insinuation that there were racists in the ranks of the right. Priebus even threatened to boycott the cable network. Never mind that the tweet was thoroughly justified by the fact that right-wing racists actually did hate the very same biracial family when they appeared in a previous version of the ad. In fact, YouTube had to close off the comments on the video due to the volume of vulgar responses. That didn’t stop Priebus from throwing a tantrum and insisting on an apology.
In a classic demonstration of just how pusillanimous a corporate media weasel can be, the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, disgorged a sniveling apology and announced that the person responsible for the tweet had been terminated. It was an embarrassing supplication to conservative bullies whose outrage was transparently fake.
Today we have additional evidence that Griffin’s knee-bending was uncalled-for. An ad for Coca-Cola aired yesterday during the Superbowl (video below) that featured Americans of various nationalities, races, religions, and cultures, all singing “America the Beautiful” in a rich tapestry of the languages that represent our country’s diversity. The response from conservatives to this heartwarming advertisement was predictably hostile. They lit up Twitter and Facebook with hateful messages vilifying Coke, as well as all Americans who do not fit the European, Caucasian mold favored by these bigots. Some of the more prominent feces-flingers were:
Todd Starnes of Fox News, who tweeted“Coca Cola is the official soft drink of illegals crossing the border.”
Tea Party ex-congressman Allen West, called the ad“a truly disturbing commercial,” because “the words went from English to languages I didn’t recognize.”
Michael Patrick Leahy of Breitbart News, who lamented that the “ad also prominently features a gay couple.” and somehow found a message in it that the U.S. “is no longer a nation ruled by the Constitution.”
Eric Bolling of Fox News, who objected to this use of a patriotic song saying “Don’t put it to ‘America the Beautiful.’ You used the wrong song.”
Armageddonist Glenn Beck, who inexplicably derived division from this ode to unity, saying “That’s all this is – to divide people.”
If anything exonerates the unjustly fired MSNBC tweeter, it is this parade of conservative xenophobes who validate the original message about right-wingers hating an ad that honors what really makes America beautiful: as the song says, brotherhood. And if anyone should be fired by MSNBC it’s Phil Griffin, the executive who didn’t have the balls to stand up for what’s right.
Today the highly [er, make that barely] anticipated Superbowl interview of President Obama by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News (video below) went off pretty much how you might expect. Hoping to cover matters of importance to the special broadcast’s audience, the irascible O’Reilly jumped right into the discussion with an issue that has been dormant for weeks and went from there to some of the most overwrought pseudo-scandals that Fox has failed miserably to ignite, despite countless hours of effort.
O’Reilly led off by asking the President about the website glitches that plagued the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare ) when it launched four months ago. He inquired why Obama hasn’t fired his Secretary of Health and Human Services, as if she had personally written the faulty code. And he asked about Obama’s prior statement that “if you like your plan you can keep it.” Of course, Obama has answered all of these questions numerous times, so O’Reilly’s dredging them up could not possibly have produced any new information.
The next subject was Fox News’ favorite mantra: BENGHAZI! This issue is even older than the website failure. The unique angle O’Reilly sought to mine involved the claims of “some people” who O’Reilly said believe that the White House refused to describe the attack as terrorism in order to help his reelection campaign. There’s just two small problems with that: 1) O’Reilly doesn’t explain how that would help the reelection effort. and 2) The President did describe the attack as terrorism the day after it occurred. Nevertheless, O’Reilly insisted that Obama explain why there are people who believe the false premise. Obama had an excellent explanation saying that “They believe it because folks like you are telling them that.”
Next up for O’Reilly’s inquisition was the infamous allegations that the IRS had targeted Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations who applied for non-profit status. Obama pointed out that, despite extensive hearings in Congress, no evidence has been produced to support the charges. In fact, the evidence increasingly reveals that both liberals and conservatives were given scrutiny by the IRS, as they should be. Obama further noted that, just as with Benghazi, “These kinds of things keep on surfacing in part because you and your TV station will promote them.”
Finally, O’Reilly read a question that had been sent to him by a viewer. The viewer wanted to know “Why do you feel it’s necessary to fundamentally transform the nation that has afforded you such opportunity and success.” Seriously? This idiotic bit of tripe has been swirling around the conspiracy theorist community since the first Obama inauguration when it was posited by Glenn Beck. These brain-damaged twerps can’t seem to grasp that a turn of phrase during an election campaign is not a coded reference to some nefarious plot to unravel the American Dream. The only meaning was that then-candidate Obama intended to repair the damage that the previous eight years of President Bush had caused.
So this was the entirety of O’Reilly’s interview. It was a rehashing of tired rumors and slander. Given this platform to reach an unusually large audience, O’Reilly wasted it with bitterly partisan nonsense. He could have addressed some of the issues that are currently on the minds of the American people, like the economy and jobs, immigration reform, the Keystone XL Pipeline, or the situations in Syria and Iran. He could have dug deeper into the President’s recent State of the Union speech and sought to get him to elaborate on income equality. He might even approached the tribulations of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, or legalizing marijuana.
But no. O’Reilly stuck with the Fox News manufactured scandal mongering related to ObamaCare, the IRS, and as always, Benghazi. As a result, the interview was a pitiful waste of time and more proof that Fox News doesn’t have the first clue about what constitutes journalism. But rest assured they will find some sentence fragment in the segment that they will inflate into humungous proportions that will produce buckets of raw outrage by Monday morning.
The Republican Party has been engaged in a prolonged and determined campaign to suppress the votes of citizens whom they believe are inclined to vote for Democrats. Their disingenuous claims to be battling voter fraud are exposed as lies by the fact that they cannot certify any significant incidence of unlawful voting, and the solutions they propose to the non-problem all seem to serve as impediments to voting by youth, minorities, seniors, and the poor. These are all commonly regarded as Democratic constituents, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
Conservative media, and especially Fox News, has been a full partner in this voter suppression effort. They have openly taken positions in support of the GOP’s discriminatory initiatives and given a platform to right-wing partisans who advocate for purging the electorate of Democratic voters. The issue has become a near obsession for the rightist media machine as it seeks support for restrictions that require photo IDs, reduce polling places and hours of operation, and limit the ability of independent organizations to register voters.
All of this is done in the name of cracking down on illegal election activities. Which makes it all the more ironic that Fox News is now defending someone who has been indicted for actual election fraud, Dinesh D’Souza. As a veteran of right-wing punditry, D’Souza is a frequent guest on Fox News and is the writer and producer of the anti-Obama crocumentary, “2016: Obama’s America,” based on his own widely debunked book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”
D’Souza was recently indicted for felony violations of election finance laws. He is alleged to have solicited people to make donations to a candidate for the senate and then reimbursing the donors as a scheme to exceed contribution limits. The response to this by D’Souza’s pals at Fox News was to assert that the prosecution is all a part of a plot by President Obama to silence his critics. It’s an absurd and unsupported claim that doesn’t explain why Obama would go after a minor figure like D’Souza, whom few Americans have heard of, while allowing more prominent critics like Rush Limbaugh to remain free. Nor does it account for the fact that the same Justice Department that indicted D’Souza also convicted a Democrat for the same crime.
The attempt to whitewash D’Souza’s criminal activity included a guest spot on Sean Hannity’s program. Hannity called D’Souza “the latest victim to be targeted by the Obama White House,” without any evidence of White House involvement. Then Hannity gave D’Souza an opportunity to rebut the charges made against him. D’Souza said…
“Well, as you can imagine, it’s been quite a week. I can’t really talk about the case but I will say that I’m determined to continue my work. I’m making a big film called “America,” which is about the greatness of America that’s gonna come out for July 4th this year. So I just want to say that I’m undeterred and I’m marching full speed ahead.”
The notable thing about that response, other than its shameless self-promotion of a future project, is that D’Souza never once denied the charges against him. While he may not be able to discuss the details of the case, there is no prohibition on proclaiming his innocence. It is curious, to say the least, that when given the opportunity to do so in a friendly environment, he would so conspicuously refuse. Then when Hannity inquired whether D’Souza considered the indictment to be political retribution, D’Souza said…
“Well, I will say that “2016” was a film that does seem to have gotten under President Obama’s skin. And the reason for this is that it wasn’t just a critique of ObamaCare or his policies, but I, in a sense, went into Obama’s world and also into Obama’s mind. There I was at the Obama family homestead in Kenya. I interviewed his brother. And, of course, we advanced the thesis that here is a traumatized, and somewhat of a messed up guy who is, in a way, haunted by the dreams of his father, the topic of his own biography. There was a rant against the film on Obama’s own website, that is BarackObama.com, so we know the film rattled him. We know that it upset him. And whether this is some kind of payback remains to be seen.”
Once again, there is no denial guilt. But there is speculation about payback that is not backed up by any facts. There are also some rather ego-drenched assertions that his cinematic screed had a prodigious impact on the President’s state of mind, when in all likelihood Obama never saw it or cared about it. He’s a little too busy being the leader of the free world to be concerned about an amateurish hit piece by a disreputable hack.
Over at Fox’s community website, Fox Nation [see the ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality for documentation of their brazen dishonesty], they posted a link to an article by Charles Hurt on Breitbart News that went even further in defense of the criminal activities alleged against D’Souza. Hurt even conceded the question of D’Souza’s guilt and still excused him saying that he “very well may be guilty of a few winks and nods that wound up violating limits on campaign contributions’ The “few winks and nods” added up to more than $20,000 dollars in fraudulent donations. But the central theme of Hurt’s article is that the prosecutor, Preet Bharara, is some sort of White House enforcer assigned to rubbing out the President’s enemies. The article’s title calls Bharara a “hatchet man,” and Hurt’s first paragraph ominously intones that…
“Mr. Bharara is the snapping jaws of Attorney General Eric H. Holder’s junkyard attack dog and the velvet fixer of President Obama’s thorniest political problems.”
Bharara is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and supervises over 200 lawyers who handle hundreds of cases. He has presided over the recovery of a half-billion dollars in civil fraud cases. He has locked up numerous terrorists, narcotics traffickers, and violent gang members. Yet Hurt’s article cites only a couple of cases that he deems relevant to his theory that Bharara is Obama’s hit man. Neither of these cases were political in nature, nor did they involve any personal interest of the President. One case involved an Indian diplomat who allegedly lied about her employment and payment of a nanny. The other was a case where forty-nine Russians were charged with defrauding Medicare. In both cases Hurt seemed to imply that all of these lawbreakers should have been set free despite their crimes. And having made no logical connection to Obama, Hurt just seems to be praying that his readers are dumb enough not to notice what a laughably insipid argument he is struggling to construct. Since his readers are on Breitbart News, he doesn’t have to pray very hard. Hurt concluded by saying that…
“Certainly, Mr. D’Souza very well may be guilty. Same with the Russian diplomats – and perhaps the Indian attache really needed to be strip-searched. However, a filmmaker skirting campaign donation limits does not tear at the fabric of this nation of laws. Russians cheating our welfare system is not a constitutional crisis. A constitutional crisis that tears the fabric of this nation of laws is a federal prosecutor who uses his office to advance political vendettas.”
Hurt’s argument seems to be that any crime that he doesn’t regard as upending the Constitution should be dismissed. Therefore we should let all the murderers and drug dealers and embezzlers off the hook. Just think how much money we would save by shutting down the federal courts and virtually emptying the nation’s prisons.
Conservatives often portray themselves as being the party of law and order. However, the truth is that they only embrace the law when it serves their purposes, and they abhor it when it gets in their way. That’s why they advocate more laws that would deny a ninety year old citizen the right to vote if she doesn’t have a driver’s license. But they forgive, and even praise, a political crony who breaks the law in order to funnel money to right-wing candidates. It’s a perverse concept of justice that favors elitists and the corporations that they believe are people.
When Sandra Fluke testified before congress on behalf women being treated equally by health insurance companies, she was viciously attacked by conservatives, and particularly Rush Limbaugh who called her a slut and a prostitute. Her argument that women should have access to contraceptive coverage, for which they would pay, was distorted into a repulsive characterization of her as a tramp who wanted taxpayers to finance her promiscuity.
Today there is a news story that Fluke is considering a run for the California congressional seat being vacated by Henry Waxman. When this story was posted on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, it unleashed a torrent of misogynistic comments that reflect the mindset of the Fox News audience. Here are just a few (click to enlarge):
Whether or not Fluke decides to enter the race, this demonstration of how the Fox Nationalists regard women who seek to serve their country is revealing. And coming just one day after Fox News and the Republican Party made such a big deal out of a petty tweet that they thought was offensive, you have to wonder where their outrage is over these comments on their own website.
When you preside over a political party that is the subject of frequent criticism for the racist rhetoric of its members and supporters, it might be a good idea to avoid bringing attention to that gaping wound of oozing hatred. But never let it be said that the leaders of the GOP are capable of recognizing a good idea.
The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, went berserk today over a tweet by some anonymous social media intern at MSNBC. The comment that so furiously enraged him was a reference to a commercial for Cheerios that features a biracial family (video below). It is a sequel of sorts to a similar ad that played last year. Here is the offending tweet:
Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go aww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ bi-racial family. http://t.co/SpB4rQDoAR
That was all it took to send Priebus into a frenzy over what he perceived as a deplorable insult directed at innocent right-wingers. His response was to announce that he would order a boycott of MSNBC unless its president, Phil Griffin, made a personal and public apology. He sent letters to Griffin as well as an open letter to “all Republican elected officials, strategists, surrogates, and pundits,” that said that he was “banning all RNC staff from appearing on, associating with, or booking any RNC surrogates on MSNBC,” and asking anyone affiliated with the GOP to join the embargo.
And of course Fox Nation made this their top story.
Read Fox Nation vs. Reality for more tales from the loony side.
First of all, how would anyone know that a boycott had been initiated by the GOP against MSNBC? Most Republicans already refuse to go on the network simply because they know they will be challenged when they lie, unlike the friendly reception they get at Fox. But for the RNC chair to feign outrage over such a trivial tweet defies reason. The message conveyed by the tweet was simply that this heart-warming advertisement was likely to irk many conservatives whose intolerance for diversity is well documented. And where would the tweeter get an idea like that? Perhaps from the response that followed the release of the first Cheerios ad with the same biracial family. As reported at the time…
“A new Cheerios commercial that included an interracial family drew so many racially motivated hate comments on YouTube that the video-sharing website shut down the commercial’s comment section. […] some of the comments made reference to Nazis, ‘troglodytes’ and ‘racial genocide.'”
With that historical perspective, why would anyone doubt that the same right-wingers who spewed such vile hatred at the ad’s charming family last year, would react any differently today? Conservatives who are offended by the tweet ought to look at their own confederates to understand why everyone else regards them as hardened bigots who would hate the Cheerios ad. It isn’t MSNBC’s fault that conservatives openly express themselves in such a thoroughly reprehensible manner. However, the behavior of the rightists when this ad’s first installment was aired justifies the sentiment in the tweet. For some additional evidence of the unbridled bigotry on the right, have a look at…
These comments on the Fox Nation website following the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
Or note the graphic racism by the Fox News photo editing department in a story about murdered teen Trayvon Martin.
And recall that Fox continues to disparage Latinos as “illegal aliens,” even when they are here legally.
And who can forget the time Fox distorted a poll so that they could feature the headline “Obama Has A Big Problem With White Women.”
The notion that MSNBC would be a target of a boycott simply because they recognized the bigotry that is inbred into much of the American conservative movement is especially ironic when you consider that Fox News, the mouthpiece of the rightist agenda in the media, is so brazenly racist. It’s a network that regularly demonizes minorities as criminals or moochers. What’s more, Fox feverishly advocates public policies that are detrimental to minorities, such as voter suppression laws and slashing benefits for low income workers. If any news outlet should be boycotted for insulting broad swaths of the American public it should be Fox
Which brings us to the subject of hypocrisy by the infuriated right. There actually have been efforts to embargo Fox News and persuade Democrats to avoid appearing on the network. During the Democratic primaries in 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus successfully shut down a Nevada debate that was to be broadcast on Fox. The response by Republicans was that the Democrats were either misguided or cowards, and would be afraid to face our enemies if they couldn’t face Fox. Fox anchor Chris Wallace said that “the Democrats are damn fools [for] not coming on Fox News.” Do these criticisms now apply to the boycotters of MSNBC?
This isn’t even the first time that Priebus has floated the boycott balloon. Just last year he sent similar threatening letters to NBC and CNN because they had plans to produce films about Hillary Clinton. However, he didn’t make the same threat to Fox, who also had Hillary projects in the pipeline. It seems that Priebus is just itching for a boycott, unless the offender is his PR department (aka Fox News).
The pitiful part of this story is that MSNBC has already caved in to the demand for an apology. Phil Griffin issued a statement calling the tweet “outrageous and unacceptable,” which it certainly was not. Even worse, he said that he had “dismissed the person responsible.” That is a monumental injustice and overreaction. This merely proves that the network that conservatives like to demean as unfailingly liberal is just a facade that will collapse at the slightest whiff of controversy. It’s why MSNBC issues apologies every other week and fires people for little reason.
Fox News, on the other hand, is far worse when it comes to offending liberals and Democrats, but they will never apologize, nor do they correct their many “errors” of fact. But if MSNBC keeps bowing down to competitors who seek its destruction, they will remain a perennial loser and shed any credibility they hope to maintain. This silly boycott threat should be cause for celebration by MSNBC. It serves as an opportunity to remind people of why Republicans are correctly perceived to be racist. It relieves them of the burden of making excuses for why the GOP is not represented on the channel. And it allows them to focus on expanding their audience among the key demographics that are most likely to tune in.
What this all comes down to is that Priebus is throwing a tantrum to attract attention and donations. The tweet that started the whole thing was provocative, but perfectly justified. But that doesn’t stop the disingenuous onslaught of phony rage that turns into a ludicrous threat that no one will notice should it be carried out. We are witnessing a drama that is more painfully shallow than the typical reality TV tripe that consumes way too many hours of broadcast time. And, sadly, “Keeping Up With The Republicans” has even less reality in it than you’ll find over at the Kardashians place.
[Update: 1/31/2014] Fox News is cashing in on this controversy. So far they have featured it on The Five, Fox & Friends, and the Kelly File. Greg Gutfeld of The Five injected the mandatory Nazi reference by calling MSNBC a “one-stop shop for master-race-baiting.” And Megyn Kelly asserted that liberals have a “kneejerk instinct to accuse conservatives of racism.” In her segment that featured uber-rightist flame-thrower Brent Bozell, she went on to say…
“They [liberals] saw this ad and said, ‘Oh the conservatives will hate it because it’s a black man and a white woman together in a family.’“
Wrong Megyn. They said “Oh the conservatives will hate it because that’s exactly the response they had to it when the first version of it came out last year.” What better evidence can you have of how someone will respond to something than their own prior response?
And this morning Fox’s media analyst, Howard Kurtz, called the MSNBC tweet “an outrageous and really disgusting message,” before excreting this BS:
“You do have to wonder about the culture there, and whether there is such a loathing for conservatives that things that are so clearly way, way, way over the line are somehow deemed acceptable.”
Once again I have to say ARE YOU FRIGGIN’ KIDDING ME? The outpouring of loathing by Fox of liberals (and African-Americans, and Latinos, and gays, and women, and the poor) is a daily – even hourly – occurrence. For Kurtz to say that with a straight face is proof of his total devotion to the dishonest promulgation of Fox’s propaganda, hate, and commitment to the corporatocracy they were invented to defend.
The biggest ego on cable news is fond of propping himself up and exalting his intellect and insight. Unfortunately, Bill O’Reilly is so often wrong that he becomes a parody of himself.
On his program Monday night, O’Reilly embarked on a mission to belittle President Obama and the State of the Union speech that would be delivered the following night. Consistent with the Fox News philosophy of disparaging all things Democratic – even before they occur – O’Reilly asserted that the American people wouldn’t care about the speech, but would be enthralled by Papa Bear himself.
O’Reilly: There is no question that President Obama’s first five years in office have been troubled. Tonight he will try to regroup, but Talking Points believes that few Americans will be paying close attention to him. In fact, I predict that this broadcast you’re watching right now, will be higher rated on the Fox News channel than the president’s actual address. We’ll see.
Yes, we shall indeed see. But first of all, isn’t it cute that O’Reilly refers to himself as “Talking Points,” as if it were an anthropomorphic entity with opinions separate from his own? Well, Mr. Talking Points might be disconcerted to learn that 33 million people watched the State of the Union speech. That is actually fewer than watched in recent years, but still a hefty chunk of viewers that exceeds all other conventional programming.
More to the point, O’Reilly’s prediction that his own show would outperform the speech has blown up in his face. The Factor drew only 3.5 million viewers, which means he was off by a mere 90 percent. O’Reilly’s broadcast didn’t even beat just the viewers who watched the speech on Fox (4.7 million). And since there was no rational way to spin his prognostication failure, O’Reilly simply ignored it last night in his first post-speech broadcast.
This is typical of O’Reilly’s pompous conceit as he strives to present himself as an omnipotent and infallible observer of human events. It recalls his dreadfully wrong prediction that the Supreme Court would overturn ObamaCare, when he promised to admit that he was an idiot if he were wrong. He was wrong, and he broke his promise. But that came as no surprise to those who pay attention to his daily blather.
New York Magazine columnist Frank Rich believes that the war on Fox News is over – and Fox News lost. His article published this week is titled “Stop Beating a Dead Fox,” and counsels liberals and media critics to retreat from the battle against Roger Ailes & Company because we have already won.
Rich is both right and wrong, but through it all he is clear-headed and thought provoking. But in the end his conclusion is faulty, and I will explain why along with some highlights from his article.
“The most interesting news about Fox News is that for some years now it has been damaging the right far more than the left. […] Democrats have won the popular vote five out of six times. You’d think they’d be well advised to leave Fox News to its own devices so that it can continue to shoot its own party in the foot.”
The fact that Fox has been a dead, stinking albatross around the wrinkled neck of the GOP is a point I made more than four years ago in an article with the understated headline “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” Finally, the mainstream media is catching up with me. Rich continues…
“The million or so viewers who remain fiercely loyal to the network are not, for the most part, and as some liberals still imagine, naive swing voters who stumble onto Fox News under the delusion it’s a bona fide news channel and then are brainwashed by Ailes’s talking points into becoming climate-change deniers. They arrive at the channel as proud, self-selected citizens of Fox Nation and are unlikely to defect from the channel or its politics until death do them part.”
This is another revelation I made when I exposed “The Cult Of Foxonality” five years ago and observed that “Fox viewers are married to the channel and couldn’t care less what’s playing down the dial.” The Fox audience are hardened partisans with a devotional attachment to their tele-church. And finally, Rich says that…
“Rather than waste time bemoaning Fox’s bogus journalism, liberals should encourage it. The more that Fox News viewers are duped into believing that the misinformation they are fed by Ailes is fair and balanced, the more easily they can be ambushed by reality as they were on Election Night 2012. […] we should start considering the possibility that it now works to the Democrats’ advantage that Fox News does manufacture its own facts.”
Here is where Rich and I part company. While there may be some entertainment value in watching floundering wingnuts desperately trying to make sense of a reality that contradicts their delusions, in the end it is bad for the nation to encourage ignorance. And even though the antics of Fox News have been proven to drive down the approval ratings of Republican politicos, we would still be better off if there weren’t a disinformation factory poisoning the minds of our friends and family and neighbors.
That’s why the need to be vigilant in exposing the lies and bigotry of Fox News and other rightist propagandists is still vitally important. It is crucial that the record be set straight because an unanswered lie can too easily become a perverse version of the truth. It isn’t a mission embarked upon out of concern that the Republican Party is getting its ass whooped in national elections. It’s out of love for those who do not deserve to be exploited and abused by the mouthpieces of corporations and nationless plutocrats. So laugh, if you will, at the dunces who spew their hate-filled rhetoric of greed and bigotry, but never surrender to it.
In case anyone has forgotten that last year Louisiana’s GOP governor Bobby Jindal called Republicans the “Stupid Party,” Tea Party radio screamer Mark Levin has generously volunteered to remind us.
In his response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, Levin went berserk over what he perceived as a tyrannical usurpation of power by the President. In Obama’s speech he castigated our do-nothing congress for its relentless obstructionism and gave them this rather diplomatic warning:
“I’m eager to work with all of you. But America does not stand still – and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do.”
That’s all it took for the the right-wing outrage machine to get fired up and begin a frantic crusade against what they believe to be an unprecedented overreach. Of course, the truth is that every president has and uses his executive authority to proceed with initiatives that Congress fails to act upon. It is consistent with the constitutional jurisdiction of the executive branch of government, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from bellowing about dictatorship.
Mark Levin’s post-speech rant took the form of advice to the Republicans in congress. He concluded that they were toO weak to do what he really wanted – which is to impeach Obama for some reasons he didn’t bother to specify. So he proposed an alternative in the form of a congressional resolution:
“Whereas the President of the United States has exerted executive powers not granted to him under the United States Constitution, the House of Representatives hereby asserts, as an equal governing institution, that all such acts by the President of the United States are null and void. The House of Representatives further asserts that no federal department, federal official, or federal employee is authorized to appropriate any sum of taxpayer dollars in furtherance of any unconstitutional act by the President of the United States.”
The Stupid Party (aka the Tea Party, aka the Republican Party) strikes again. First of all, no act by the President, or the Congress for that matter, is unconstitutional until the Supreme Courts says it is. The House of Representatives has no authority to unilaterally designate something the president does as unconstitutional. Secondly, any acts declared unconstitutional by the court are already null and void and don’t require a congressional resolution to be recognized as such. Nor is a prohibition of funding necessary for an act ruled unconstitutional. Since it cannot be carried out, no funds would be allocated to it.
What is laughably pathetic about Levin’s resolution is that it would probably fail the test of constitutionality itself were it ever enacted and challenged in the court. As noted above, the legislative branch cannot rule on the constitutionality of executive actions. And even more idiotic is the fact that Levin doesn’t seem to comprehend that his proposed law could not be enacted without the President’s signature. Does Levin think that Obama would sign this asinine bill?
So what does Fox News do with this utterly delusional rant by a crackpot who clearly doesn’t understand constitutional law? Well, they feature on their Fox Nation website along with all the other blatant lies and disinformation. And thus, the cycle of stupidity continues to flow from wingnut pundits to dishonest news outlets to an audience of willful dimwits.
By now no one should be surprised that Fox News, and the congregation of Tea Party conservatives they represent, would oppose legislation intended to benefit America’s working class. Fox has consistently fought against reforms that make it possible for people to take care of themselves and their families and to advance economically. Any policy that is viewed by their corporate benefactors as negative to their profit margins, or that might adversely impact their multimillion dollar compensation, is attacked by Fox News, and the rest of the rightist press, as anti-business or even socialist.
That is precisely the case with the current debate over whether to increase the minimum wage, which has not been done in seven long years. Raising the minimum wage is generally seen as politically popular, so in order to derail it, opponents have to pitch tortured arguments that have very little backing by knowledgeable, non-partisan economists. But the tactic being used by Fox today is particularly devoid of reason and is wholly unethical, even by the standards of Fox News.
In an effort to manufacture a false claim of hypocrisy, Fox News is presenting an absurd comparison. Their story asserts that “Most sponsors of minimum wage hike bill don’t pay interns.”So F**king What? Internships are temporary positions made available to students so that they can get some real-world experience in their field of study and credit for school. They are not intended to be employment for personal gain. They serve the same purpose as the classroom at their school, and they don’t get paid for that either. Internships generally have a fixed term of a few weeks during the summer or other school hiatus. To compare that to jobs where people are working in order to support themselves and their families makes no sense whatsoever.
That said, there may be some good arguments for compensating interns, particularly in business where the enterprise has sufficient resources to do so. But to assert that members of Congress who support raising the minimum wage are being hypocritical for allowing students to get an up-close look at how government operates is simply a wild and irresponsible attempt to obstruct progress on policies that bring tangible relief to struggling Americans, as well as a substantial boost to the economy.
What makes this story even more repulsive is that Fox is citing data from a disreputable source with a vested interest in the welfare of the corporations it exists to serve. According to Source Watch…
“The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) is one of several front groups created by Berman & Co., a Washington, DC public affairs firm owned by Rick Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries.”
So this organization is directly tied to the industries who are the most virulently opposed to a minimum wage increase. That should cause a legitimate news agency to steer shy of them if they are interested in unbiased information. But it doesn’t dissuade Fox, and a bevy of other wingnut “news” outlets, from eating up the self-serving tripe.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Berman & Company is also notorious for feathering its own nest. The bulk of the funds received by the organizations under its control goes right back into Berman’s pocket. For instance, the Employment Policies Institute reported $1,629,930 in total revenue for 2011, and $2,103,896 in total expenses. But despite running a half million dollar deficit, it paid Berman more than a million dollars that year. That alone should cast doubt on the quality of the economic advice they might dispense.
What we have here is a lobbyist who created a fake think tank so that he could raise funds from corporations to advocate on their behalf – and against the interests of average Americans. Then this fake think tank gets fake news enterprises (like Fox) to disseminate their tendentious opinions. That’s how the right-wing media machine poisons the public debate on important issues. And this particular article got spread to the the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Caller, Newsmax and other conservative mouthpieces.
To counter that, here is some more information on the benefits of raising the minimum wage. These articles explain in more detail why the nation should move forward with this legislation:
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis must be terrifying to Texas Republicans. Why else would they be resorting to some of the most asinine tactics and ludicrous lies in order to defeat her?
In recent days Davis has been attacked by Republican opponents and the conservative press for a variety of manufactured pseudo-scandals. Among them is a claim dug out of a profile of Davis that appeared in the Dallas Morning News. Apparently her official bio said that she was a teenage single mother who struggled to make a better life for her family through hard work and education, eventually graduating from Harvard Law School. The newspaper noted, however, that Davis was not divorced until she was twenty-one years old and thus not a teenager when she became a single mother. Wingnut media immediately jumped on that discrepancy and howled with outrage that Davis was a liar who fabricated her life history.
Setting aside the fact that the difference between nineteen and twenty-one has no relevant bearing on anything, Davis’ critics also ignore the possibility that she and her husband were separated and living apart for a couple of years prior to their divorce being finalized. This is the sort of trivialities that Texas Republicans find it necessary to distort and exploit in order to smear their foes.
Another example of the GOP’s desperation was displayed in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post where a headline declared that “Wendy Davis has no future in politics.” The article’s author came to this conclusion after learning that Davis’ second husband was granted custody of their children when that marriage ended.
The Post falsely wrote that Davis had “lost custody of her children to her ex-husband.” The truth is that Davis agreed to the custody arrangement for the benefit of the kids to minimize any disruption to their lives. What’s more, the media’s characterization of this made Davis out to be an uncaring mother who abandoned her suffering little babies. For the record, her daughters were 23 and 17 at the time. And they apparently were not scarred for life because they are currently working on her campaign for governor and have appeared in commercials supporting her (video below).
[Update: Davis’ daughters are speaking out against the lies, negativity, and hatred that has been directed at their family.]
One of the most ridiculous assaults on Davis came when she was responding to these phony attacks on her character. She released a statement saying…
“I am proud of where I came from and I am proud of what I’ve been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn’t walked a day in my shoes”
Unbelievably, the right-wing outrage machine fired up a charge that Davis was mocking her prospective opponent for governor, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, for the disability that put him in a wheel chair. It seems that old cliches about experiencing things from the perspective of others are too harsh for the tender sensitivities of the American Wingnut. No one with a functioning brain could interpret Davis’ comment as a slap at Abbot’s disability. Thus it says something about Abbott that he ran (well, he didn’t actually run) to Fox News where he whined about how wrong it is to belittle someone for their handicaps. Of course, not only did she not do that, she didn’t even refer to Abbott in her remarks.
Is this really all they have? Has the Republican Party of Texas exhausted every other means of communicating with their constituents? In Texas, of all places, you would think they would have a stronger case to make for their conservative brand of politics. If they will sink this low in Texas in order to defeat a liberal Democratic candidate, they are clearly frightened in a major way. They must be aware on some level that they are a dying breed. They have alienated so much of their base that they are finding it difficult to succeed in territories they used to take for granted. And with the demographic shifts taking place in Texas, and the rest of the South, there isn’t much that they can take for granted anymore. And that’s why we’re seeing this sort of desperation play out in a state where not many expected there to be much of a contest.
