Politics

Crybaby Trump is Whining (and Lying) Again that Fox News (and Everyone) is Against Him

Posted by on October 24, 2021 at 4:50 pm. 9 Comments :

The cult of Donald Trump – and Trump himself – likes to pretend that he is a macho man and is predestined to be America’s savior. The reality, though, is that he is a whimpering snowflake who can’t stop wailing about his imagined victimhood. He even admitted that he is “the most fabulous whiner.”

Donald Trump, Snowflakes

On Sunday afternoon Trump alt-tweeted, via his Twitter ban defying spokes-shill, Liz Harrington, another rant against all the “many forces” lined up against him. He was apparently triggered by having seen, or been told about, a negative advertisement on Fox News that was less than flattering: He blathered that…

“What good is it if FOX News speaks well of me when they continually allow horrible and untruthful anti-Trump commercials to be run—and plenty of them. In the good old days, that would never have happened and today it happens all of the time. Ratings-challenged CNN and MSNBC would never run a positive Trump ad—never. With so many forces against us, Big Tech, the Fake News Media, the Radical Left, the RINOs, and more, we are at such a disadvantage, but we will win anyway!”

WTHolyF? So Trump believes that Fox News is obligated to present only positive news about him and then refuse to accept any advertising by parties who have an opposing view. As usual, he doesn’t offer any examples of anything that was “horrible and untruthful” or “anti-Trump.” His willfully blind disciples are just supposed to accept whatever he says without question.

What’s more, Trump has the perverse opinion that there were “good old days” when TV networks would decline to air political ads that didn’t unflinchingly fawn over aspiring authoritarians like Trump. He goes on to falsely assert that CNN and MSNBC don’t air pro-Trump ads. But you have to wonder why he would care when he also claims that no one is watching them.

Trump has never been an ardent fan of free speech. To the contrary, he incessantly yowls whenever anyone exercises it to criticize him. At his recent cult rally in Iowa he complained about the loss of free speech even as he called for banning speech. And after having been evicted from Twitter for inciting violence, he just announced his intention to launch his own social media venture to restore his free speech rights. Although his site explicitly prohibits anyone from speaking negatively about him.

Trump’s pathetic perceptions of victimization are typical of malignant narcissists who view any criticism as unfair and hostile. And Trump has itemized an army of critics including “Big Tech, the Fake News Media, the Radical Left, the RINOs, and more.” But he leads off with Fox News, the network whose editorial mission got him elected in 2016, and is still supporting his “Big Lie” about the 2020 election. Never mind all the times that Trump blasted Fox News as “dead, totally fake, not watchable. lost” etc. There is simply no pleasing Trump because no matter how much you kowtow to him, it will never be enough.

UPDATE: This may be the ad that has Trump’s panties in a twist…

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Displays its Deadly Hypocrisy on Vaccinations in Two Contradictory Commentaries

Posted by on October 24, 2021 at 12:03 pm. 6 Comments :

In case you haven’t heard it by now, Fox News has been yammering for weeks about the “tyranny” of President Biden, and other rational politicians and pundits, advocating for the wildly popular (according to a Fox News poll) COVID vaccine mandates. They are doing that despite the fact that Fox News has imposed an even stricter mandate on their employees.

Fox News, Vaccine

Last week Fox News host Neil Cavuto revealed on his program that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. He noted that he was vaccinated, but that he had health issues that made him more vulnerable to infection and severe outcomes. His situation was not mentioned again by anyone on Fox News after that until Sunday morning when he appeared on Fox’s MediaBuzz, where he made an impassioned appeal for people to get vaccinated for the sake of others:

“We’ve lost five million globally to this. We’ve lost nearly 800,000 in the U.S. Take the political speaking points and toss them for now. I’m begging you. Toss them. Think of what’s good, not only for yourself, but for those around you. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, if you think it’s a pain in the ass, I get that. But think of others around you. I dare say that people who experience this and see loved ones who’ve been affect by this or, heaven forbid, died from this, are not judging the wisdom of Band-Aids. They’re wishing they got vaccinated. And they didn’t. Don’t let that happen.”

Cavuto’s remarks are commendable and moving, and they are coming from someone whose personal experience could be persuasive. He is speaking for millions of Americans who are at risk themselves, and for their families and friends as well. There’s just one problem with this pleading. Virtually everything else on Fox News contradicts his point of view, an editorial mandate that has made COVID the Pandemic of Fox News. For example, shortly before Cavuto’s heartfelt remarks, Lisa Boothe, another Fox squawking head, told her Fox confederate, Dan Bongino, that this is why she was refusing to get vaccinated:

“I’m doubling down as a giant middle finger to Joe Biden’s tyranny, because now it’s a fight for freedom. Now it’s a fight against tyranny in America and that’s what this is all about.”

That’s right. She isn’t considering the health risks for herself or those around her at all. She couldn’t care less about the human toll of the pandemic or how her obstinance will contribute it. She is just making a hyper-partisan political statement against her deranged impression of what constitutes tyranny. And Bongino nodded along approvingly throughout.

How is what Cavuto has to say on this subject ever going to break through to the audience of Fox News cultists when people like Boothe are spewing such hateful, ignorant nonsense? And it isn’t just Boothe. Cavuto’s commentary won’t be seen by the people who need to see it most. MediaBuzz doesn’t have nearly the audience as Fox’s weekday, primetime programs where anti-vaccine messaging is rampant. Fox’s top rated host, Tucker Carlson, is a rabid anti-vaxxer, as are his colleagues Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

So while Cavuto is demonstrating compassion for his fellow Americans in the midst of a deadly pandemic, Boothe and the rest of the Fox News roster are flipping them a “giant middle finger” in order to stir up more partisan rancor, regardless of the cost in human lives. That has been Fox’s mission all along. They are convinced that whatever they lose in viewers dying from this virus will be made up by the blind devotion of the survivors. And, of course, the gratitude of America’s most fervent anti-vaxxer, and most divisive hate and fear monger, Donald Trump.

Watch the full segment of Cavuto on MediaBuzz here:

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Corrects Confused GOP Senator Who Forgets Their Anti-Biden, Pro-COVID Narrative

Posted by on October 21, 2021 at 1:55 pm. NO Comments :

It’s not as easy as it might seem to be steadfastly obedient to the right-wing doctrine of Fox News and Republican Trumpism. Considering all of the blatant hypocrisy and flip-flips of Donald Trump and his Foxian Pharisees, their befuddled cult followers should be forgiven if they fall off the wingnut wagon every now and then.

Fox News, Bullshit Factory

An example of this inadvertent heresy occurred during an interview of GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn on Fox Business Network. She was asked by Trump-fluffing host Stuart Varney about the current state of the coronavirus in America. That inquiry led to this exchange:

Blackburn: What we have to realize, the left is desperate to continue the pandemic until the 2022 midterm elections, and we’ve got to find ways to say, ‘Oh no you don’t.'”
Varney: You think he’s trying to continue the pandemic, extend the pandemic. I would have thought he’s losing ground because of his not great understanding or performance with the pandemic.
Blackburn: Well, you’re right.

First of all, Biden’s performance with the pandemic is responsible for getting nearly 80% of the nation’s adults vaccinated. That said, Blackburn’s initial commentary was clearly a departure from rightist orthodoxy. They have been insisting for over a year that Democrats were being too aggressive in fighting to end the pandemic and return the nation to some semblance of normalcy. Now Blackburn is asserting that Democrats want the pandemic to persist.

Not only has the right accused Democrats of over-hyping COVID, but Trump has repeatedly claimed that the pandemic was a hoax that Democrats were temporarily exploiting for political purposes. He insisted that “on November 4th everything will open up.” He said that the shutdowns were “only being done to hurt the economy” until after the election when “the talk will be how low the death rate is.”

So obviously Blackburn was off script with her claim that Democrats want to hold on to the pandemic. And Varney told her so in no uncertain terms. She had to be quickly steered back into the conservative corral where Biden was a “failure” for not waving a magic wand and making the virus disappear. And it had to be done on the air where everyone could witness it. After which Blackburn immediately straightened up and conceded that Varney’s take was the correct one, without acknowledging that she had just said the exact opposite.

This is an object lesson in how Fox News disseminates its propaganda. They have pre-approved ideological mandates that must be adhered to by every faithful follower. Even if they change from day to day, or hour to hour. It’s how they justify attacking Biden’s vaccine mandates, even though Fox News imposes mandates that are even more strict. Or how Tucker Carlson can criticize the White House parental leave policy, while ignoring his own colleagues who enjoy the same policy at Fox. Or how Trump can whine that his free speech is being abridged as he calls for banning free speech. It’s just how Fox News operates and, fortunately for them, their viewers are too dimwitted to notice.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

FINALLY! Fox and Friends Host Acknowledges the Strict Vaccine Mandate at Fox News

Posted by on October 20, 2021 at 2:42 pm. 2 Comments :

Last month President Biden announced his plan to relieve the suffering and tragic loss due to the COVID pandemic. The plan included proposals aimed at getting more Americans vaccinated in the workplace, in schools, and in government agencies.

Fox News, Cov-Aid

Biden’s plan was received with overwhelming popular support by the American people. That popularity was even affirmed in a poll by Fox News, the nation’s most staunchly pro-COVID network.

Ever since Biden’s plan was made public, and in stark contrast to the results of their own poll, Fox News doubled down on their anti-vaccine rhetoric. They went particularly hard on the concept of mandates, which they maligned as communist decrees and instruments of tyranny. Never mind that the corporate policy at Fox News contained an even stricter mandate than the one in Biden’s plan.

Undeterred by reality, the squawking heads at Fox News lashed out Biden and any of the companies that were implementing vaccine mandates ahead of his initiative, which has not yet gone into effect. But for some reason, they never bothered to mention the “oppressive” mandate under which they themselves were forced to toil. It was always some other enterprise that was abusing its employees.

Well, that error of omission officially ended on Wednesday morning when the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends brought up the subject. Co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade had a bit of a testy exchange:

Doocy: Our company, like a lot of companies have vaccine requirements. We either had to have gotten the shot or get tested every day. And when we’re in common areas everybody needs to wear a mask. There are a lot of companies coast to coast – I was just looking at brand new ones, General Electric, Union Pacific – are requiring their employees to get the shots. They joined Tyson Food, Walmart, Boeing, IBM, Raytheon, already on board.
Kilmeade: So they’re saying get the shot or you’re fired.
Doocy: Essentially.
Kilmeade: Fantastic. Be prepared to lose 10 to 15 percent of your workforce. I hope that’s okay.
Doocy: Well, people are getting accommodations in certain circumstances.

Setting aside Kilmeade’s counterfactual alarmism (there haven’t been any reports of any significant workforce resignations due to vaccine mandates), Doocy’s belated acknowledgement that Fox News has a corporate mandate is a milestone for the network. It comes as his primetime colleagues are still disseminating disinformation, such as Tucker Carlson’s false proclamation that vaccines don’t work.

Carlson tops the list of those at Fox who have attacked mandates at other companies, while demonstrating their cowardice by ignoring the one that he is silently obeying. Dan Bongino is another, who recently pretended to threaten to quit his radio network because of its vaccine mandate. Although he hasn’t had the guts to say anything about quitting Fox.

It will be interesting to see if any other Fox hosts admit that their employer has a vaccine mandate. But either way, we can rest assured that Fox will continue to deprive their viewers of honest information about the pandemic that is literally a matter of life and death.

As an example, Fox host Neil Cavuto announced yesterday that he tested positive for COVID and is taking precautions due to health conditions that increase his risk. He strongly encouraged viewers to get vaccinated. However, Cavuto’s disclosure and advice has not been mentioned at all on Fox News ever since, although it has been reported on MSNBC and CNN. That should tell everyone something about Fox News’ commitment to the welfare of their audience.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Biden Restores Respect for America Worldwide After the Abominable Era of Trump: Poll

Posted by on October 19, 2021 at 2:35 pm. 4 Comments :

Nearly a year after the 2020 presidential election that Donald Trump has still not conceded he lost, the former reality TV game show host’s legacy of embarrassing America continues to unfold. Trump remains the loser with the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, having never even reached 50%.

Joe Biden, Donald Trump

As it turns out, the American people are not the only ones disgusted by Trump’s anti-democratic antics and authoritarian aspirations. A new Gallup Poll just published its findings after surveying 46 nations. The results reveal how the rest of the world has warmed up to the United States since Trump was disposed of by a significant majority of voters:

“Six months into Joe Biden’s presidency, approval ratings of U.S. leadership around the world had largely rebounded from the record-low ratings observed during the Trump administration.

“A new Gallup report shows that as of early August 2021, across 46 countries and territories, median approval of U.S. leadership stood at 49%. This rating is up from the 30% median approval at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency and matches the rating during former President Barack Obama’s first year in office in 2009.”

The difference between Biden’s approval and Trump’s is profound. An increase of 19 points cannot be dismissed as routine or attributed to political partisanship. Clearly Trump was an anchor around America’s neck, and the negativity that he excreted has been largely eliminated by Biden in less than a year. In fact, Gallup’s analysis found that the roots of the positive effects of the new administration were observable much sooner than that:

“In the first few hours of his presidency, Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Accord and halted Trump’s decision to leave the World Health Organization. And, in his first foreign policy speech as president, Biden vowed to repair U.S. alliances through diplomacy and restore the image of the U.S.”

Biden is continuing on a path that is quickly rehabilitating the nation’s reputation at home and abroad. He recently put the U.S. back on the United Nations Human Rights Council. He has donated 140 million doses of COVID vaccines to at least 93 countries. He has reversed the Trump doctrine of embracing enemy tyrants and alienating allies.

Ironically, there were just three countries where U.S. approval declined. At the top of that list was Trump’s favorite dictatorship, Russia (along with Serbia and Benin). As for Trump, he has been making noises for months about the U.S. losing respect since his electoral smackdown. He recently tweeted (via his Twitter ban defying proxy) that…

“A year ago we were respected all over the world under President Trump. Now the Biden regime has made us a humiliated laughingstock without a real president.”

Obviously, that couldn’t further from the truth. Which is something that it has in common with almost everything that Trump says. His abhorrent and infantile “personality” is reflected in the way he just eulogized Colin Powell, a former Secretary of State and our nation’s top diplomat. Powell’s death was reported less than 24 hours ago, but Trump, utterly lacking in decorum, common decency, or consideration for a grieving family, has already lashed out at him tweeting that “He made big mistakes” and that “He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans.”

This Gallup poll isn’t the first one to show how despised Trump is around the world. In July Pew Research published a survey that found…

“…a significant uptick in ratings for the U.S., with strong support for Biden and several of his major policy initiatives. […] Looking at 12 nations surveyed both this year and in 2020, a median of 75% express confidence in Biden, compared with 17% for Trump last year.”

So there is a pretty consistent consensus that Trump was a repulsive figure who soured America’s relations with its international allies. Fortunately, he has been disposed of and replaced by Joe Biden, a leader that the world respects and admires. And time will only reinforce these views as Biden’s achievements are accrued, and Trump’s crimes are revealed.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Jen Psaki Reminds Fox News that Trump Corrupted the DOJ and Incited an Insurrection

Posted by on October 19, 2021 at 10:31 am. 1 Comments :

The daily White House press briefing is intended to provide a platform for the administration to outline its agenda and for the press to pose questions to the administration. Ordinarily the press would compose questions that would elicit information of interest to their readers and viewers, the American people.

Jen Psaki, Donald Trump

Unfortunately, that is almost never the case with ultra-partisan right-wing outfits like Fox News. Their correspondents routinely craft inquiries whose only purpose is to malign the President or advance their pre-chewed conservative doctrine. And there is no better example of this media malfeasance than Fox’s Peter Doocy. Every time he is called upon by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Doocy scrapes the barrel bottom of pseudo-journalism and opens himself up to well deserved ridicule.

On Monday Doocy sought to trap Psaki by asserting that President Biden had broken a promise not to interfere with how the Justice Department operates. Earlier this week Biden was asked about whether the House Select Committee on January 6th should enforce its subpoenas against witnesses who refuse to cooperate. Biden replied that he hopes “that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable.” When asked whether he believed the Justice Department should prosecute them, Biden told reporters, “I do, yes.”

That was a somewhat imprecise phrasing of the administration’s position. A Justice Department spokesperson quickly clarified that the DOJ “will make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law.” But unlike Donald Trump, at no time did Biden direct the DOJ to take any particular action. He was merely expressing his “hope” that the law be upheld.

Doocy demonstrated his inquisitory impotence by falsely asserting in a blatantly leading question that Biden broke a promise regarding the administration of the Justice Department. Psaki asked him how Biden had broken any promise. But all that Doocy could come up with was a rewording of the same assertion that Psaki had already answered. That went on for another couple of rounds before leading up to this exchange:

Doocy: What’s changed since last year when [Biden] said ‘I will not do what former president Trump does and use the Justice Department as my vehicle to insist that something happen?’
Psaki: Since you’ve given me the opportunity here, former president Trump used his department to incite an insurrection. He put political pressure on senior DOJ officials to propagate lies about the election to the point where they threatened to resign en mass. I think there is hardly a comparison there.
Doocy: President Biden said, ‘the Justice Department and my administration will be totally independent of me,’ and he said he would not enter into any decisions about what cases the agency will bring and not…
Psaki: And he has not, and he will not .And criminal prosecutions are the sole purview of the Department of Justice. That is the President’s position. That is what he nominated the Attorney General to operate under.

It was helpful of Doocy to remind everyone that Trump had “used the Justice Department as [his] vehicle” to pursue his personal interests and acts of vengeance. Indeed, Trump had repeatedly corrupted the independence of the Justice Department by ordering it to act as if they were his private attorneys. He was even doing it after he was no longer president.

Psaki correctly pointed out to Doocy that “Trump used his department to incite an insurrection” and to “put political pressure on senior DOJ officials.” Trump tried to get the DOJ to buy into his “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him. But that still didn’t deter Doocy from reiterating his failed argument that Biden had somehow interfered with DOJ decisions. He didn’t. And Psaki affirmed that he wouldn’t.

In the end, the only thing that Doocy accomplished was to provide Psaki with an opportunity to explain in further detail the White House’s dedication to the independence of the Department of Justice. While simultaneously refreshing the public memory about Trump’s misconduct in office and his gross inability to comprehend the proper role of the presidency. So perhaps we don’t give Doocy enough credit for helping Psaki to set the record straight. Thanks Pete.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Exploits Colin Powell’s Death to Fear Monger About Breakthrough COVID Cases

Posted by on October 18, 2021 at 12:18 pm. 7 Comments :

America’s most notoriously pro-COVID cable “news” network, Fox News, is demonstrating just how grossly callous they can be in pursuit of their reprehensible political agenda. There’s a reason that the current state of the coronavirus in the United States can be accurately called the Fox News Pandemic.

Fox News, Covid

On Monday morning it was announced that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had died. The cause of death was revealed by his family as complications from COVID-19. Sec. Powell is now another tragic statistic of a viral plague that has resulted in more than 700,000 deaths and brought grief to millions of American families.

So leave it to Fox News to leap on this announcement in a way that manipulates it in order to bleed some smarmy partisan gain out of it. On Monday’s episode of Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes couldn’t let this personal misfortune go by without profiting from it politically. Co-host Will Cain offered a perverse eulogy that furthered Fox’s mission to increase the death toll from COVID (video below). After reporting Powell’s demise, Cain said that…

“There will also be conversations about the fact that he was fully vaccinated according to his family and he died from complications from COVID. We are beginning to see statistics like this grow in frequency. We know that the vaccine does wane over time and its ability to protect you from, not just transmission and infection, but from severe complications and hospitalization, and obviously death as well.” [adding that] “all of us are at potential risk.”

Aside from being profoundly disrespectful to the passing of Powell, this is nothing but pure scare tactics to create more of the doubt and hesitancy about vaccines that Fox News has been disseminating since they became available. It is servile conformity to Donald Trump’s anti-vax alt-facts.

Fox News is lying that “statistics like this grow in frequency.” The truth is that deaths from breakthrough cases are extremely rare. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention there have been about 7,000 such fatalities out of more than 187 million vaccinated Americans. That’s about 0.0037%. Not exactly a threat that suggests that “all of us are at potential risk.” To the contrary, it underscores how effective the vaccines are.

Fox also failed to mention that Powell, who was 85 years old, was also diagnosed previously with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that weakens the body’s ability to protect against infections. These are conditions that put him at greater risk. But Cain wasn’t finished with his dishonest fear mongering. He continued with what he falsely said were “the implications on everyday Americans…”

“The family has made a point on their post on Facebook this morning that Colin Powell was fully vaccinated. And as Americans out there wonder what lies ahead for them and they search and they need truth moving forward, we’re seeing data from across the world. We’re seeing data from Europe, from the United Kingdom, the fully-vaccinated people are being hospitalized and fully-vaccinated are dying from COVID. And here we have a very high-profile example that is going to require more truth, more truth from our government, from our health leaders as well.”

Once again, Cain is repeating the deceitful implication that “fully-vaccinated people are dying” in order to frighten Fox’s already panicky viewers. He also baselessly implies that government and healthcare leaders are being insufficiently truthful. And he goes even further to criticize rational measures to mitigate the pandemic, including mandates for vaccination such as the one that is place at Fox News.

Fox News couldn’t wait even a single day before launching this political exploitation of Powell’s death. They are single-mindedly focused on telling tales of terror to keep their audience shivering and glued to their rancid rhetoric. Consequently, they weren’t about to miss out on this fleeting opportunity to stir dread and doubt among their dimwitted devotees.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Jon Stewart Laments that There is Too Much Focus on Donald Trump

Posted by on October 17, 2021 at 12:40 pm. 14 Comments :

It has been six years since Jon Stewart left his post at the Daily Show, disappointing millions of Americans who got humor, insight, and solace from his take on the media and its impact on society. He left a vacuum that still hasn’t been filled by his successors in the comedy world during times when political satire was needed more than ever.

Donald Trump, Jon Stewart

Now Stewart has returned to television with a show on AppleTV+ that looks to be a bit more serious. And to promote his new venture, he is making the rounds on the PR circuit, including an appearance on Sunday’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on CNN.

Tapper did an extended interview (video below) of Stewart that touched on many subjects and provided him with a platform to express his ideas about contemporary media and politics. There was much to admire in his commentary. But there was a brief moment where Stewart may have drifted slightly off the mark:

“I think the media does a terrible job at de-escalation. And de-escalation is the antidote to all this nonsense. And I don’t mean civility, and I don’t mean non-partisanship. I mean focusing on things that are more urgent and elemental in people’s lives and really hammering away at those things.”

Stewart is making a good point about the need to “hammer away” at the issues that really impact people’s lives. There is a bizarre tendency at some media outlets – particularly Fox News – to feature pseudo-culture jamming trivialities like gay Legos, or Chick-fil-A Sauce Shortages, or the infamous Dandelion-Gate.

However, to say that “media does a terrible job at de-escalation” is to suggest that the media regards its job as de-escalating and is failing at it. To the contrary, right-wing media actually considers it their mission to escalate controversy, and they are really quite good at it. They are profoundly successful at stirring up hostility and division which, in turn, acts as a magnet that compels viewers to be viscerally afraid and to stay perpetually tuned in so that they can satiate the addiction that the media itself created. A bigger misstep by Stewart, though, was his assertion that…

“I think we make a mistake focusing this all on Donald Trump […] He has just been an effective vessel.”

If Trump is a “vessel,” then he is a super-tanker loaded to the brim with a toxic cargo that he’s intent on polluting the entire planet with. While it would be a great relief to never again have to be assaulted by Trump’s visage or voice, as long as he is being dredged up by his cult followers and the wingnut press, we need to be vigilant and cognizant of the massive harm that he is capable of inflicting.

While Stewart’s point that Trump is not the originator of the noxious ideas he espouses is correct, he is far and away the most prominent dispenser of them. No one else in Republican politics commands the blind loyalty and propensity for violence that Trump does. And if anyone has the potential to lead an anti-democratic revolt, manned by armed, dangerous, fanatical zealots, it’s Trump.

Consequently, Trump must remain squarely in our focus. That doesn’t mean having the media donate unlimited hours of uninterrupted coverage for his hate-filled cult rallies, like they did in 2016. It doesn’t mean offering his tainted and ignorant perspective of every issue. And it doesn’t mean focusing solely on Trump. What it means is exposing his lies, nefarious intentions, and unsavory relationships, at every opportunity.

Along with an aggressive progressive agenda that benefits all Americans, there must be a focus on stopping Trump and Trumpism. His rancid rhetoric must be neutralized and his authoritarian aspirations quashed. Failure to do so will allow his neo-fascism to spread and fatally infect the nation. Jon Stewart is one of the best voices to achieve a positive end. Let’s hope he stays in that fight.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Tucker Carlson Attacks White House Parental Leave Policy, Which Fox News Also Offers

Posted by on October 15, 2021 at 12:34 pm. 3 Comments :

Leave it to the Fox News Senior Hate Monger, Tucker Carlson, to find a way to malign fatherhood, while viciously insulting LGBTQ people, and simultaneously displaying rank hypocrisy, all with the smirk of an elitist, trust fund baby, shielded from consequences by his right-wing employer.

Tucker Carlson Fox News

On Thursday evening Carlson was compelled to assault the institution of the family, an ironic position for the network that pretends to be the defenders of family values. Carlson’s tirade was triggered by the audacity of Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, availing himself of the parental leave provided to all federal employees. But Carlson is apparently ignorant of the family leave policies of his own employer. This was revealed in a video contrasting Carlson’s homophobic mockery of Buttigieg, with a clip of Fox and Friends co-host Todd Piro:

Carlson: Pete Buttigieg has been on leave from his job since August after adopting a child. Paternity leave, they call it. Trying to figure out how to breastfeed. No word on how that went.
Piro: Fox is amazing. It’s a great organization. Really a family friendly organization. They give us six weeks as dads for paternity. I’m taking that six weeks. I can’t wait to bond with my little one.

Carlson’s crack about “breastfeeding” demeans all fathers who love their newborns enough to take some time off of work to care for them and their wives. That includes his colleague Piro, as well as Jesse Watters who, after the birth of his child with his second wife (a Fox News producer with whom he was cheating on his first wife), said that “Now I am pro-paternity [leave]. I used to mock people for taking paternity.” That’s the same brand of family “values” practiced by Donald Trump.

So Carlson deliberately neglects to mention that Fox News has a family leave policy that gives fathers six weeks off after the birth of a child. Even worse he criticizes Buttigieg for taking leave in the most insulting and infantile manner possible.

This, however, isn’t the first time that Carlson as lambasted a Biden administration policy that mirrors those of Fox News. Carlson also attacked Biden’s vaccine mandate policy. He characterized Biden’s efforts to get more people vaccinated, thus saving lives, as tyrannical and as waging a war on the American people. Never mind that Fox News has a similar policy that is even stricter than Biden’s, and which Carlson is abiding by.

How many other Fox News directives does Carlson oppose, but is too dishonest and cowardly to say so? Who knows? What we do know is that Carlson is a weaselly hypocrite who will suck up to whoever he needs to in order to benefit himself. After all, before he was rescued by Fox News, Carlson was fired from PBS, CNN, and MSNBC. He also had a run in with Fox before they hired him that resulted in him calling them “a mean, sick group of people.”

Now Carlson happily toils in Fox’s lie-mining caves like a good supplicant. He furthers their ultra-rightist agenda by embracing and dispensing their hate, lies, and conspiracy theories. All while maintaining his hallmark smirk and confused (constipated?) expression.

UPDATE: Mayor Pete responds saying that Carlson “doesn’t understand the concept of bottle feeding, let alone the concept of paternity leave. […and that…] This attack is coming from a guy who has yet to explain his apparent approval for the assassination of Harvey Milk.”

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

WHUT? Tucker Carlson of Fox News Boldly Refuses to Verify that His Disinformation is Reliable

Posted by on October 14, 2021 at 12:24 pm. 3 Comments :

The Olympic grade hypocrisy at Fox News continues to shine through everything they do. And nowhere is that more evident than with matters related to the coronavirus and the tragedies it has wrought on America, largely attributable to the lies and disinformation disseminated by Fox and Donald Trump. Studies show that the nation is currently suffering through what can accurately be described as The Fox News Pandemic.

Fox News. Tucker Carlson

Leading the way down to the depths of viral hell is Fox’s Senior Deceiver, Tucker Carlson. He has already peddled dangerous and flagrant falsehoods such as his promotion of quack cures, his paranoid conspiracy theories that the vaccines don’t work, his support for the unlawful use of fake vaccination cards, and his urging of viewers to make false police reports of child abuse against parents whose children wear face masks.

Despite that record of deliberate and deadly deception, Carlson is now complaining about social media sites trying to encourage the accurate and honest sharing of information upon which lives may depend. Because who would want that? On Wednesday night’s episode he delivered a diatribe against Instagram for what he falsely said was censorship. He was triggered by a message he received when he tried to post a video that was lousy with lies:

“When we put that video on Instagram the following message appeared: “Make sure the information is reliable before sharing!” And then it attempts to redirect you to a site, “Get Vaccine Info.” From some approved site. I guess info about policies at a company they don’t work at? So if you’re not allowed to explain information that you have first hand, credible knowledge of, like your own employer’s own policies, then what rights do you have?”

So Carlson is outraged that Instagram politely asked that he be certain of the reliability of what he was about to post. How dare they care about the accuracy of critical health data? Especially when they are asking someone who is so renowned for spreading lies that his employer, Fox News, argued in court that he couldn’t be guilty of defamation because “no reasonable person” would believe him.

Carlson falsely characterized Instagram’s message as censorship, claiming that he was not allowed to post his dishonest video. He also put his complaint in a chyron that read “Big Tech Tries to Censor this Show Once Again.” However, there was no censorship because Instagram allowed him to click through the message and post his video, which he did.

Another chyron in this segment told another lie regarding the video that he did, in fact, post on Instagram. This one read “There is no Vaccine Mandate at Fox News.” The truth is that Fox News has a policy that does mandate that their employees get vaccinated. It’s a conditional mandate that requires them to be tested daily if they are not vaccinated. That’s almost exactly the same as the policy that President Biden recently announced, except that Biden’s policy is actually less strict. requiring only weekly tests for the unvaccinated.

Apparently Carlson doesn’t know the Fox News position on vaccinations, despite having “first hand” knowledge of his “own employer’s own policies.” And in his ignorance he has slandered Biden as a tyrant for “forcing” people to get vaccinated. But if Biden is “waging war” on the American people, than Fox News has escalated it. Yet, as was scathingly pointed out by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Carlson is too cowardly to call out his bosses, or demonstrate an iota of integrity by quitting. And that goes for the rest of the Fox News roster of hypocrites who are nearly as bad as Carlson.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.