Month: February 2010

Fox News And Breitbart Smear O’Keefe Prosecutor

Posted by on February 2, 2010 at 10:53 am. 2 Comments :

In a report that is jam-packed with falsehoods, Fox News casts sinister aspersions on the motives of the U.S. Attorney who brought the case against pimp/journalist James O’Keefe for his alleged felonious activities in the office of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.

The first paragraph of the article, titled “U.S. Attorney Steps Down From O’Keefe Case,” has nothing whatsoever to do with the story as headlined. Instead, it appears to be no more than an attempt to set up an allegation that the U.S. Attorney’s office deliberately filed false charges against O’Keefe and his accomplices.

“James O’Keefe, accused of trying to tamper with the phones of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, was ‘framed’ by the media and the U.S. attorney’s office, Andrew Breitbart, publisher of BigGovernment.com, told Fox News Monday.”

The second paragraph of the article eventually gets around to the point of the story, but only after asserting a series of additional falsehoods dispensed by ultra-conservative propagandist, Andrew Breitbart.

“The same day the man who first published James O’Keefe’s explosive videos exposing wrongdoing at community organizer ACORN came to his defense Monday, claiming the conservative filmmaker ‘sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney’ while the prosecutor made his case to the media, the U.S. attorney involved stepped down.”

Let’s just set aside the fact that no wrongdoing on the part of ACORN has ever been proven; and that there is no evidence that O’Keefe was denied or delayed access to an attorney, or even an allegation of that by O’Keefe; and that the prosecutor did not make a case to the media while O’Keefe was being held. The first reports in the press didn’t come out until after he was released. Now we can deal with the real issue.

In this article, ostensibly about U.S. Attorney Jim Letten recusing himself from the O’Keefe case, Fox News went to great lengths to juxtapose that news with allegations of wrongdoing from Breitbart. Those allegations were featured in the lede and repeated in the following paragraph that explicitly tied Breitbart’s charges to the recusal. The Fox News version of events was that Letten stepped down the same day Breitbart issued his defense of O’Keefe. The clear implication being that those two events had something to do with one another. Fox News is plainly and irresponsibly insinuating that Letton stepped aside because of some impropriety.

The same implied correlation occurred in the very next paragraph wherein the charge that O’Keefe was framed was repeated, followed by Fox News again connecting that to Letten’s recusal by saying that it took place “hours later.” For the record, the New Orleans Times-Picayune (in an act of actual journalism) has confirmed that Letten asked to be recused a week ago, long before the smear by Breitbart and Fox. The remainder of the article was a virtually uninterrupted platform for Breitbart’s wholly unsupported defense of O’Keefe. Breitbart was quoted extensively making allegations for which he had no foundation.

“James O’Keefe sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney, while the U.S. attorney leaked the information about his arrest, helping the media frame it as ‘Watergate Junior.'”

“The panty bomber on Christmas was given — you know, this guy’s from Al Qaeda, and he’s not even an American citizen, and he’s given access to an attorney right away. I believe that this was a concerted effort, this is just my opinion, to allow for the media to frame the issue to put James O’Keefe in a very bad position.”

“It [O’Keefe’s arrest] is tied to the Justice Department. And we’ve been very aggressive in asking Eric Holder to investigate what’s seen on these ACORN tapes and he’s ignored it.”

Fox News made no attempt to verify any of these remarks, nor did they attempt to interview anyone who might have rebutted them. They let them stand unchallenged as if they were settled facts. However, they did reprint O’Keefe’s prior statement in defense of himself. A statement that had already been demonstrated to be untrue.

“The sole intent of our investigation was to determine whether or not Sen. Landrieu was purposely trying to avoid constituents who were calling to register their views to her as their senator.”

Of course, were that the case, why did he leave Landrieu’s office and try to gain access to the telephone wiring closet at another location? Fox News didn’t ask that question. Sean Hannity didn’t get an answer to that either in his exclusive fluffing interview with O’Keefe yesterday. In fact the whole interview was staged to permit O’Keefe to declare his innocence while refusing to answer substantive queries.

So who is U.S. Attorney Jim Letten whom Breitbart has accused of framing O’Keefe; of manipulating the press; of participating in a DOJ revenge plot against Breitbart?

Letten was a George W. Bush appointee who has served as U.S. Attorney since April of 2001. He is well known for his successful prosecution of former Democratic Louisiana Governor, Edwin Edwards. He has bipartisan support as a federal prosecutor with both Landrieu (a Democrat) and Sen. David Vitter (a Republican) backing his reappointment to the post by the Obama administration. In fact, Vitter was so determined to see Letten reappointed that he held up the nominations of other prosecutors until he had an assurance from Attorney General Holder that Letten would remain on the job.

Is that the profile of a man that would engage in the mischief that Breitbart alleges? Is that someone whom Fox News ought to be insinuating recused himself from a case due to some malfeasance?

To make matters worse, Fox News exploits the confidential nature of recusals to bolster their innuendos about Letten. While they tie the recusal to Breitbart’s attacks, they never entertain the notion that Letten stepped aside for legitimate reasons. For instance, he may know one of the suspects, or his family, personally. One of O’Keefe’s accomplices, Robert Flanagan, is the son of Letten’s fellow Louisiana federal prosecutor, William Flanagan.

This illustrates the lengths to which Breitbart, and his patron Fox News, will go to defame anyone they deem to be obstructing their mission to dispense disinformation and to contribute to the ignorance of their audience. The article from Fox News is so transparently biased as to be bordering on libel. It is without question knowingly malicious and false. And it is a product of Fox’s “news” division, not the primetime TV opinion mongers upon whom Fox usually likes to blame their deliberately deficient reporting.

For Fox, there is no escaping the reality that this is inexcusably unprofessional and prejudicial. And sadly, it is business as usual at Fox.

Paranoia Strikes Deep: The Right’s Irrational Fear Goes Into Orbit

Posted by on February 1, 2010 at 6:23 pm. 1 Comments :

If you thought that Glenn Beck was a fount of surreal conspiracy theories that make Charles Manson look like the Dalai Lama, well, you’re right. But that’s another story. These days the virus infecting Beck is spreading rapidly throughout his community of wing nuts. There are raving rightists railing about fearsome fantasies everywhere you turn.

Senator Jim DeMint, who famously called health care Obama’s Waterloo, now has not only backed away from that statement, but he believes that the media misrepresented it. Even worse, he told a reporter that…

“…the version played over and over on cable news networks was slowed down ‘so it would sound more sinister.’“

I think DeMint saying that stopping Obama on health care “will be his Waterloo. It will break him,” is pretty sinister at any speed.

Then we have radio talker Roger Hedgecock penning a column for WorldNetDaily that could serve as the basis for a sequel to “The Sixth Sense.” Hedgecock’s version would have a kid who sees fatalities from faulty automobiles, except in a surprise ending Barack Obama is a terrorist plotting against a foreign manufacturer.

“But is government ‘greed’ a factor here? As a co-owner of Toyota rivals GM and Chrysler, is the Obama administration and its jihad against Toyota ‘consumer protection’ or revenge against a successful, non-union, red state based rival?

Never mind that Toyota acknowledged and apologized for the problem and the recall. If you look hard enough (and you’re not entirely sane) you can see the government ghosts slandering Toyota on behalf of GM.

And you can’t have an article about paranoia without Andrew Breitbart. The Godfather of pimps is now afraid that the Attorney General and his justice thugs held James O’Keefe incommunicado and leaked information to damage his reputation (as if that were possible). Furthermore, Breitbart believes that the DOJ is out to get him because…

“Well, it’s tied to the Justice Department. And we’ve been very aggressive in asking Eric Holder to investigate what’s seen on the ACORN tapes, and he’s ignored it.”

I can hear it now. O’Keefe was picked up in New Orleans and the call went out to the AG’s office with the White House and the CIA on conference. The whole national security apparatus was fired up as they concocted a scenario to take down a fake investigative journalist and his propaganda baron mentor.

Finally, the master, Beck himself, steps up to spin another of his horror filled tales of doom. In this episode Beck is convinced that some dastardly secret purpose is embedded in the dark recesses of health care or energy reform or education or even college football. The topic doesn’t really matter, Beck will find the evil in it. And it will be something about which he has warned you before:

“I told you for months: Do not allow anything to pass from this congress or this administration. Because they are building something. I don’t know what they’re building but they are putting pieces of whatever it is they are building in all of these bills and we don’t know it.”

I wonder how he knows that they are doing this if he doesn’t know it. And I wonder what he’s afraid of if he doesn’t know what it is. But just to be on the safe side he insists that nothing be passed for another three years, maybe seven. And this isn’t the first time that Beck raised fears of some ambiguous construction project. It’s a good thing we have Beck to cast out the demons of the world, people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom Beck believes is planning some monstrous assault on humanity in the next couple of weeks. We can depend on Beck to stand strong as a righteous defender of virtue:

“[L]iberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles.”

My apology. That last quote was actually Ahmadinejad. Sometimes it’s hard to tell these prophets of paranoia apart.

Fox Nation Inadvertantly Bashes Sarah Palin

Posted by on February 1, 2010 at 12:41 pm. 4 Comments :

There may be no better source for comedy than the comments posted on Fox Nation. They appear to be a nation of town idiots. Even when the subject is something trivial, they manage to elevate their foolishness. This was the case after last Saturday night’s Miss America pageant.

In a lighthearted reference to her fellow Alaskan, Sarah Palin, this year’s Miss Alaska, Sydnee Waggoner, introduced herself by joking that, “No, I can’t see Russia from my house.”

That impudent offense directed at the sainted Queen of the Tea Baggers was all it took to set off the crowd at Fox Nation. However, their ire hilariously ricocheted off of Waggoner and smacked Palin right across her face. The Fox Nationalists began by calling Waggoner a “big mistake,” a “dumb broad,” and a “stupid twit.” Then it really got funny.

Dickn52: “What’s to say. She’s an airhead beauty pageant contestant who hopes to ‘score’ on her looks.”

Liar-berals are Going Down: “Another airhead beauty pageant contestant. Just exactly what has she done? Stupid women are always good for a laugh.”

Um…..Do we really need to remind these geniuses that Palin was an airhead beauty pageant contestant, and Miss Alaska runner-up, hoping to score on her looks and who still hasn’t done anything? Nah, let’s let them wallow in their ignorance.

FYI: This year’s Miss America winner, Caressa Cameron, was asked her views on gay marriage during the the Miss Virginia pageant last year. She said that due to her religious beliefs, her personal opinion was that marriage should be between one man and one woman, but that she opposed laws prohibiting gays from marrying. I wonder if that played into the decision of pageant judge, Rush Limbaugh.