Fox News Latino: Voter ID Laws Could Block Thousands in November

Posted by Mark NC on July 8, 2012 at 8:38 pm. NO Comments :

In another example of Fox News pandering to Latino audiences, the Fox News Latino web site featured an article today that contradicted everything that Fox News reports to their non-Latino audiences.

This article is a reprint from the Associated Press and it covers the issue of voter suppression in a manner that respects the truth. The author correctly notes that instances of in-person voter fraud are nearly non-existent, but that the photo-ID laws advanced by Republicans will disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters:

“The numbers suggest legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent. […]

“Supporters of the laws cite anecdotal cases of fraud as a reason that states need to do more to secure elections, but fraud appears to be rare. As part of its effort to build support for voter ID laws, the Republican National Lawyers Association last year published a report that identified some 400 election fraud prosecutions over a decade across the entire country. That’s not even one per state per year.

“ID laws would not have prevented many of those cases because they involved vote-buying schemes in local elections or people who falsified voter registrations.”

On Fox News the typical approach to this story is the ludicrous accusation that opponents of ID laws are proponents of fraud. Even though they can never cite actual incidents of fraud, people like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Neil Cavuto, Megyn Kelly, and the juvenile miscreants on Fox & Friends, persist in spreading falsehoods about imaginary illegal voters. Then they use their fairy tales to justify legislation that will result in valid voters being turned away at the polls. And just coincidentally, the vast majority of those turned away are seniors, students, and minorities, who are likely Democratic voters.

Republican governors and legislators are the ones pushing these discriminatory policies, with the help of Fox News. However, on Fox’s Latino-focused web site the story is completely different. It is treated with the proper attention to the harm that would befall Latino voters. This is a perspective that never appears on the Fox News mothership.

The purpose is obvious. Fox News is working in concert with the GOP to purge Democrats from the voter rolls. However, they don’t want to completely alienate the fast growing Latino population. So they segregate their news coverage in order to mollify Latino audiences who are rightfully concerned about this issue, but Fox hides this honest reporting from the dimwits who watch Fox News. It’s a cynical ploy that could only be hatched by people who think that Latinos are stupid enough to fall for it. Fortunately, that’s where Fox went wrong.

Fox Nation Asks About Obama’s White Girlfriends – Again

Posted by Mark NC on June 25, 2012 at 2:39 pm. 2 Comments :

Why is Fox Nation so obsessed with President Obama’s college girlfriends, and particularly their race?

The article referenced above links to an item in the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. It discusses excerpts from a biography of Obama by David Marannis. And while it never answers the question in the headline, it does assert unsupported allegations of racial motivations in his love life.

“The U.S. president and his First Lady sometimes seem so well-suited to each other that it’s hard to imagine there ever having been any woman in his life other than the formidable Michelle, whom he met while working for a Chicago law firm in 1989. Obama has reinforced this notion by making only fleeting mention of ex-girlfriends in his carefully calibrated memoirs.” […]

“Time and again, Obama, who has had to fight hard to convince other African Americans of his ‘black credibility’, appears to have burnished his radical credentials, not least by playing up the roles of black people in his life and playing down the roles of the white. And nowhere is this more apparent than in his romantic life.”

Suggestive phrases like “fleeting mention” are designed to insinuate that there is something sinister and secretive in Obama’s past. But how many of George Bush’s old flames can you recall? And were any of them black? More importantly, when have you ever heard anyone even ask about the former girlfriends of any president prior to Obama? It seems that only Obama’s romantic history is of interest to these folks. Just like Obama is the only president ever asked to produce a birth certificate.

Why are these matters of significance with regard to Obama and no one else? Isn’t anyone curious about who Romney courted before hooking up with Ann? Surely he had a fling or two while he lived in Paris proselytizing for the Mormon Church and avoiding military service in Vietnam.

There is very little in the Daily Mail article that is new, and much of it was revealed by Obama himself in his own autobiography, Dreams From My Father. However, this fixation on the youthful romances of Obama is a recurring theme with right-wing racists. The fetish extends to authors on Breitbart News and NewsBusters, along with numerous other conservative bile dispensers. Last year Fox Nation posted this thinly disguised racial attack on Obama.

There seems to be a recurring theme that involves the old fear that white racists have of virile African men defiling their pure Caucasian virgins. And the Fox Nationalists never seem to get tired of invoking it. Similarly, I never get tired of posting this:

Graphic Evidence Of The Bigotry In Fox News Coverage Of The Arizona Supreme Court Ruling

Posted by Mark NC on June 25, 2012 at 11:30 am. 1 Comments :

Today the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the controversial Arizona law against undocumented immigrants. It was a partially mixed decision, however, any objective appraisal would have to note that three of the four major components of the law were struck down, and the fourth (the most controversial part requiring law enforcement to inquire as to the legal status of people they have reason to believe are undocumented) was upheld, but severely limited.

Fox News covered this ruling in its uniquely racist way by tailoring the story to different audiences. On Fox News Latino the headline accurately reported that the “Court Strikes Down Most of AZ Immig Law.” However, on Fox Nation they went with the misleading, “U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Controversial Part of Tough Arizona Immigration Law.” Even Fox News was more balanced by saying that “Supreme Court Reigns In Arizona On Immigration.”

So once again Fox panders to their Latino audience on the web site aimed at them, while slanting steeply in the opposite direction on Fox Nation, the community of such rancid bigotry that Fox had to close the comments section for fear of the vile postings that frequently occur. Obviously, Fox knows its audience.

Fox News Latino Reports Favorable Poll On Obama Immigration Policy, But Not Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on June 19, 2012 at 8:17 pm. 1 Comments :

Fox News has commenced a new routine wherein they sequester any news of interest to Latinos to their Fox News Latino web site. They do this even for news that is of interest to a broader audience. For example, a Bloomberg poll was released today that showed that 64 percent of likely voters favor Obama’s policy on suspending deportations of certain younger immigrants.

Note that this substantial majority is of “likely” voters, not just Latino voters. So the story has relevance to a wide range of news viewers and could even be an important predictor of who will win the presidency in November. However, Fox News has not run this story. Fox Nation has not run this story. So far, the only Fox destination where you can read this story is on Fox News Latino.

What’s more, the tone of the reporting is distinctly different from that on other Fox properties. There isn’t a hint of hostility toward immigrants. Take, for example , this excerpt:

“The Obama policy orders immigration authorities to use prosecutorial discretion to freeze deportations for undocumented immigrants who arrived before the age of 16, have lived in the United States for five years, have clean criminal records and who are younger than 31.

The decision was prompted by congressional inaction on the DREAM Act, a proposal that would provide a path to citizenship for some undocumented youth who attend college or serve in the military.

The House of Representatives passed the DREAM Act in December 2010, but came up five votes short of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate.”

The story accurately refers to “prosecutorial discretion” as the means of carrying out the policy, rather than the false assertions of Executive Orders or dictatorial overreach that appear on Fox News. The derogatory phrase “illegal immigrant,” used routinely on Fox News, is nowhere in the story, having been replaced by “undocumented immigrant.” The story notes correctly that Congress, not the President, had dropped the ball on the DREAM Act and that it was Republicans who filibustered it out of existence.

None of these treatments of the news item will appear on Fox News. They can segregate the reporting so that their Latino audience will see stories like this one, while the rest of the Fox universe remains steeped in the animus of bigots and conservative partisans. And in this case, the whole story has been excised from the Fox universe outside of the Latino orbit.

Make no mistake, there are good reasons for this uncharacteristic behavior on the part of Fox. Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO, was a Republican strategist and media consultant before launching Fox with Rupert Murdoch. Ailes knows that Republicans have a demographics problem as Latinos continue to grow as a percentage of the population. The Tea Party dominated GOP can’t see past their prejudices and frothing immigrant hatred. But Ailes knows that if the party doesn’t win back some Latino support they will be a minority party for decades to come.

So with Fox News Latino, Ailes is doing for the party what they are too stupid to do for themselves – pandering to the Latino vote. But now they’ve created a new problem by treating Latinos as if they are too stupid to notice they’re being played.

Fox Nation’s Lopsided Reporting On Florida Voter Purge

Posted by Mark NC on June 11, 2012 at 9:44 pm. 3 Comments :

Threats of litigation were flying today between federal agencies and the state of Florida over Florida’s efforts to disenfranchise voters who disagree with the state’s Republican leadership. Governor Rick Scott’s plans to throw people off the voter rolls has been revealed to be a blatant attempt to illegally prevent minorities, senior citizens, and the poor from voting, constituencies that just happen to vote Democratic.

The Justice Department advised the Governor and the Secretary of State (in a detailed letter) that the methods they proposed to use to remove allegedly ineligible names from the voter registration records were both flawed and unlawful. The response from Scott was to announce that he would be suing the feds and that he intended to continue his voter purge.

Fox Nation, however, did not carry a report of this announcement for many hours after it had been made. It was not until a subsequent announcement from the Justice Department that they were planning legal action against the state that the Fox Nationalists finally posted an article on the matter. And, of course, the lede was that the federal government was suing Florida.

The intention by Fox was to portray the government as the aggressors in this litigation. That fits in nicely with their narrative of the Obama government being a dictatorial regime that is abusing its power over the sovereign states. And that’s why they didn’t bother to report that it was the state that initiated the legal action.

That’s not all that Fox failed to report. The substance of the dispute between Florida and the DOJ concerns the state’s unlawful purging of legitimate voters. The Tampa Bay Times conducted a review of the state’s proposed list of ineligible voters and found a total of forty non-citizens. Out of those, they identified at most six who “might” have voted. Conversely, they found more than 500 people who were determined to be actual citizens entitled to register and vote. Yet Scott continues to assert a justification for stripping the right to vote from 500 (mostly Democratic) citizens in order to block a half dozen ineligible voters.

The Justice Department is not the only party suing Florida. The ACLU has also filed a suit over the same issues. If you want to help you can sign this petition from MoveOn.org calling on AG Eric Holder to “to block Gov. Scott from illegitimately kicking Floridians off the voter roll.”

On a side note, I wasted a little time perusing the comments attached to the Fox Nation article. In the process I observed some pretty revolting language and overt racism. Here is a representative example of the sort of people who populate the Fox community:

Judging from the context of the reply, my guess is that the first comment was just a well-reasoned defense of Holder and Obama. The FoxPods, not capable of tolerating that, pounced on it by clicking the “Flag” button to get the comment removed, but not before one disgusting reply was posted. Later, the entire comments section was closed and removed. There were about 300 comments when I was there, but now they are all gone. That tells you something about both the Fox community and the managers of the site.

Right-Wing Racists Ask: Where Da White Women At?

Posted by Mark NC on June 1, 2012 at 2:58 pm. 5 Comments :

If you think that’s funny, you should hear the remarks made by Tim Graham, the Director of Media Analysis for the uber-conservative Media Research Center. In an interview with NRA News, Graham was curious as to why the press refrained from reporting a particular aspect of President Obama’s past:

“…they talked about his white girlfriends in college. Which again you would think that would be a story that a news media that is so conscious about race seemed to not think that was an interesting development, that Obama had these white girlfriends.”

Really? Why exactly would that be an “interesting development?” Is there something wrong with interracial relationships? Was Graham disturbed that the purity of his white sisters was being defiled by a young black man? How would he have the media report this scandalous revelation? And what relevance does he think it has to the presidential election today?

Graham has outted himself as a most vile bigot. He pretends that there is some social significance to the fact that Obama had white girlfriends, but the reality of it is that he’s just plain racist. And this is a theme that right-wingers have attempted to sneak into the campaign ever since Obama emerged as a national figure. Last year Fox Nation posted this thinly disguised racial attack on Obama.

It’s five months before the election and already the conservative haters are loading their attacks with overtly racist themes. And then they complain when people correctly point out their flaming prejudice. Well I have one message for them: If you don’t like being called racist, stop being racist.

Fox News Incites Race Riots: Creates Trayvon Martin Controversy From Unrelated Crime

Posted by Mark NC on April 24, 2012 at 4:21 pm. 21 Comments :

Despite the seemingly constant stream of racist propaganda and rhetoric emanating from Fox News, they still manage to exceed their own repulsive standards with ever more dishonest and hateful distortions of the news. After publishing stories that blame Trayvon Martin’s demise on his clothing, and pictures that deliberately seek to put Trayvon in a negative light, Fox has rocketed to new heights of blatant prejudice and painfully perverse journalism.

In Mobile, Alabama, a white man was hospitalized from a beating by a group of African-Americans after a dispute over the use of the street for a game of basketball. The assault was inexcusably brutal and the police are searching for suspects who deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. But that would not be a sufficiently sensational reaction for the twisted editors at Fox News. They published their stories on Fox News and Fox Nation this way:

The facts of this crime are fairly clear. It was an extreme overreaction to a neighborhood argument that concerned only the parties involved. It had absolutely nothing to do with the incident in Florida last month where an unarmed teenager was shot to death while walking home from the market. The only connecting factor was the claim by the victim’s sister that she heard one person say “Now that’s justice for Trayvon.” There have been no other witnesses who have corroborated her account, but even if there were the only significance of it would be that one of the perpetrators was a jerk in addition to being a thug.

That’s not how Fox News sees it. Their headline at Fox Nation veritably declares that the hoodlums who committed the assault were a “Justice for Trayvon Mob,” as if it were a political statement emanating from the Florida incident. Nothing in the facts of this crime point to that in even the most remote sense. The headline on Fox News itself states matter-of-factly that the “mob invoked Trayvon.” However there is only one unconfirmed report that a single witness alleged that a single person brought Trayvon’s name into this. That hardly justifies associating the whole mob’s actions with Trayvon. Fox’s headline also implies that this should be designated a hate crime despite any evidence of that being the case.

The entire purpose of these overt distortions is to fuel racial animus directed at Trayvon Martin specifically, and to African-Americans generally. There is a stench of incitement in Fox’s words that suggest their desire to stir up other racially motivated crimes or even full-on race riots. It is horribly irresponsible for a so-called news enterprise to sink to these depths of cynicism and antagonism.

From the very beginning of the Trayvon Martin incident, Fox News has tried to advance the impression that African-Americans are animals on the verge of erupting into violence. Fox has suggested that riots would occur if George Zimmerman were not arrested, or if he were not convicted. The view at Fox is that African-Americans are incapable of respecting the progress of justice. And even when no riots ensue, Fox can sit back smugly and celebrate having created the impression that civil unrest was narrowly averted.

It’s a good thing that African-Americans (and most Americans in general) are far more civilized than the bigoted neanderthals at Fox. These brazen tactics are designed to manufacture potentially dangerous hostilities and are more at home in the quarters of Klans and racist militias. How Fox News gets away with this is unfathomable. Their audience should find it revolting and their peers in the press should speak out against this sort of noxious activism. Although it is unlikely to succeed, it certainly can’t help. This isn’t news, it’s hate speech.

National Review Writer’s Racist Notion of ‘Intelligent, Well-Socialized Blacks’ (IWSB)

Posted by Mark NC on April 7, 2012 at 2:29 pm. 7 Comments :

The excerpts below are from an article titled “The Talk: Nonblack Version” by John Derbyshire. It is presented by Derbyshire as a rebuttal to the conversation many African-American parents have with their kids to help them avoid trouble with racist people or institutions they may encounter. However, the only thing that Derbyshire accomplished was to expose his nauseating prejudice and ignorance. Be prepared, as you read this, for some of the most repulsive rhetoric you will ever hear outside of a Klan lynching.

(9) A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.

(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.

(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.

(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).

(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

(13) In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.

Derbyshire is a writer for the conservative National Review. It is incomprehensible that they could keep him on the payroll after publishing this disgusting piece of trash. While some of their staff and editors have criticized Derbyshire, there is no indication that he will be terminated, suspended, or otherwise held accountable.

The first consequence for this atrocious column should be for Derbyshire to be forced to forfeit any IWSB’s he may have acquired. Then he should be forever associated with an acronym that better suits him: Ignorant Racist White Fuckwad (IRWF). [Note: African-Americans are not required to collect IRWF’s as amulets or for any other purpose.]

[Update] National Review does the right thing and fires Derbyshire.

The Fox News Channel: Still #1 With Racists

Posted by Mark NC on March 14, 2012 at 10:53 pm. 17 Comments :

This doesn’t need much embellishment. A story on the Fox News web site about an archaeological discovery in China elicited what we now recognize as typical responses from the Fox News community.

The list of brazenly racist comments above was abridged to remove the many duplicates. Apparently the Fox News racists have very limited imaginations and most of them kept posting the same stupid “jokes” repeatedly. In the spirit of the hatred they espouse, I would just like to say that the IQ of the “stone-age” man in the picture is probably two or three times that of the average Fox viewer.

Racism has a home on American television, and that home is Fox News. You might think that they would be embarrassed by this, but it occurs with such frequency that it is clear that they are aiming for this audience.

Rush Limbaugh Goes There: Calls The President “Boy”

Posted by Mark NC on March 9, 2012 at 5:49 pm. 13 Comments :

I guess it had to come to this. The undisguised racism of many pundits on the far right has at least avoided the most vile expressions of their hate when anyone outside of their private circles was listening. Today the hate came bubbling to the surface as Rush Limbaugh said this while mocking the way he thinks liberals view Republicans:

“You notice how everything Republicans do is venal? Everything is calculated for political advantage? Everything is done to try to harm our little boy president, Barack Obama?”

There it is – out in the open. Although this is nothing new for Limbaugh. For three years now he has been referring to Obama as a “man-child.” And what is a “man-child” but a boy. It was his way of calling the President boy without bearing the consequences of being more literal. His listeners knew what he was saying.

This sort of disrespect runs deep through the right-wing media. Fox Nation posted this graphic last year along with a story about Obama:

And even worse, they deliberately mangled the results of a poll in order to run a story with this headline: Obama Has A Big Problem With White Women. Could they have come up with a more racially charged banner with which to introduce a story on a public opinion poll? This framing deliberately recalls the worst of a hate-filled era characterized by irrational fears of marauding black predators stalking innocent and vulnerable Caucasian virgins. I’m just a little surprised that Fox didn’t go with this headline: “Obama Polling: Where Da White Women At?”

Perhaps this is an intentional ploy on Limbaugh’s part. He has been taking considerable heat lately for having insulted Sandra Fluke, a law student who did nothing more than speak her mind on a matter of importance to her and all women. Limbaugh has lost dozens of advertisers. His show airs in some markets with only free PSAs (public service announcements) or even dead air. This may be his way of trying to divert attention from that controversy to something he thinks will be less volatile. Good luck with that, Rush.

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