Month: July 2010

Newsy Notes On Netroots Nation

Posted by on July 26, 2010 at 12:13 pm. 3 Comments :

In case anyone missed me for the past five days, I was attending the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas. This was the fifth annual gathering with its largest attendance ever. Both the audience and the roster of speakers and analysts represented the rich diversity of America by any standard. And there was an infectious enthusiasm that permeated the conference.

Somehow that enthusiasm didn’t transfer to certain members of the press. And I’m not talking here about the usual suspects in the rightist media who live to disparage their lefty enemies. I’m talking about the so-called liberal media like:

CBS: Can Liberals Match the GOP’s Enthusiasm?
…the movement that gained its footing opposing the Bush administration and a Republican Congress is now coming to grips with the disappointment many have with the Obama administration and the current Democratic Congress.

And MSNBC: Discouraged, progressives look beyond Obama
President needs to display more leadership, say Netroots activists, but they’ve got a 30-year plan.

Progressives helped elect President Barack Obama, but some of those who gathered in Las Vegas for the annual Netroots Nation convention over the weekend were less than thrilled with his performance so far.

Both of these articles rattled off a list of agenda items that are unfinished or whose results were not entirely satisfactory. The conclusion being that every piece of the progressive agenda has to be completed with 100% compliance to demand or disappointment and disparagement will ensue. Sure, progressives wanted a public option in the health care bill, and they want to see Guantanamo shuttered, but that doesn’t mean they are despondent or have abandoned their fight for more justice and compassion in our public institutions. It just means that, like everything in politics, the fight isn’t over.

What these articles leave out is highlighted in their own sub-headings. CBS makes a note of the disappointment in the Democratic congress, but fails to mention that, while polls show congress with low approval ratings, when broken down by party it is the Republicans who fare significantly worse.

MSNBC’s article notes a desire for more leadership from the President, as if that isn’t a perennial objective for any president and party. And the ominous reference to a having a thirty year plan turns out to be from an off-hand quote attributed to an intern at a DC advocacy group.

What both articles missed was that, contrary to their observations of pessimism, the conference was abuzz with excitement, anticipation, and renewed energy. It was an overwhelmingly positive affair that included uplifting speeches by progressive rock stars (i.e. Ed Schulz, Elizabeth Warren, Van Jones, Alan Grayson, Markos Moulitsas), political leaders (i.e. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Brian Schweitzer, Al Franken), and innumerable panels that were both enlightening and entertaining (I attended two – count ’em, two – panels on satire and snark!).

If anyone should be depressed it’s the losers at RightOnline, a conservative pack of wannabees who follow Netroots Nation around every year. Erik Telford of Americans for Prosperity told his rapt audience that they outnumbered the Netroots crowd. And consistent with right-wing practice, he lied. The figures he gave for RightOnline were “between 1,000 and 2,000.” So he wasn’t even able to narrow it down to within a 100% margin. He might as well have said it was between 1,000 and 100,000. The actual number of registrants was 1,100. Netroots Nation pulled in nearly twice as many with 2,100. So not only are they liars, but they can’t count.

Fox News covered the conferences in their trademarked “fair and balanced” way by leading off with the success of RightOnline:

“After years of being overshadowed by organized, liberal bloggers dominating the Internet, hundreds of conservative writers descended on Las Vegas this weekend for a conference held in the shadow of their rivals.”

The implication in that introductory paragraph is that the conservatives are being overshadowed no more. Fox noted that RightOnline attracted 1,100 attendees but did not mention the 2,100 who attended Netroots Nation. Furthermore, the Fox column quoted Telford from AFP/RightOnline, but no one from Netroots Nation.

Another article on the Fox News blog underscored the stark differences between the truly grassroots assemblage at Netroots Nation and the AstroTurf crowd at RightOnline. At the conclusion of NN attendees were dispatched to a Day of Service where they volunteered to help ThreeSquare, a local program that supplies meals to the underprivileged in the community. The RO crowd was herded into AFP-provided buses and driven to the Clark County suburbs where they went door-to-door handing out anti-Harry Reid literature and canvassing for Sharron Angle.

I can’t help being grateful that the folks I associate with at Netroots Nation are committed public servants and activists for peace, justice, and the welfare of all Americans, and all people of the world. The alternative is dominated by cranks like Michelle Bachmann and Dick Armey who are committed to selfishness and greed, and are activists for corporations, racists and the entitlement of the privileged.

I would encourage everyone to attend Netroots Nation (next year in Minneapolis). It is inspiring, educational, and fun. That said, I’m glad to be home where the temperature isn’t 108 and slot machines aren’t taunting me at every turn.

Andrew Breitbart Is Proud Of Being A Liar

Posted by on July 20, 2010 at 9:34 pm. 12 Comments :

The terminally choleric Andrew Breitbart is up to his old tricks in a new and bizarre tale of dishonesty and ethical collapse. It is startling that anyone even pays attention to this bombastic deceiver after all the examples of his low moral and professional character. This is, after all, the emotionally stunted jackass who posts videos of rivals picking their nose. Is this someone who should be taken seriously?

The latest trumped-up scandal from the Breitbart lie factory involves his posting a video that purportedly shows an African-American employee of the Department of Agriculture admitting to racially prejudiced behavior toward a white farmer. The problem with this (and every other) Breitbart video is that it has been deceptively edited to deliver a message that is patently false. Breitbart knows that the impression given in his cut does not represent the truth, yet he still says this about it:

“We are in possession of a video from in which Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, speaks at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia. In her meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience, this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions. […] In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer.”

Breitbart flatly states the Sherrod discriminated against someone she was supposed to be helping in her role as a USDA representative. However, the truth is that Sherrod was relating an experience she had over twenty years ago when she was not working for the government at all. And furthermore, it was an experience wherein she shared her revelation that race had nothing to do with carrying out her duties in public service. It was, in fact, an inspiring story of tolerance and equality.

Despite these facts, Breitbart’s lie was quickly disseminated to the right-wing press who cooperated by regurgitating the lie and further slandering Sherrod and the Obama administration for whom she worked. But the most troubling part of this story is that the administration, and even the NAACP, accepted the phony video as factual and acted on that basis. The NAACP condemned Sherrod’s behavior and the Department of Agriculture fired her. All of this before attempting to ascertain the facts.

What is going to to take to get people to realize that Breitbart operates a thoroughly dishonest enterprise and ought not to be regarded as credible? His attacks on Van Jones were lies. His attacks on ACORN were lies. He demonstrated his support for child molesters when he sent ambushers out to harass Cong. Alan Grayson over a bill that would protect children. If the administration, or anyone else, continues to act on the garbage that emanates from Breitbart they will continue to be embarrassed and to hurt good people, as they have done to Sherrod in this sorry episode.

As if this weren’t enough, after Breitbart’s video was revealed to be a fraud, did he apologize or express regret? Of course not. He criticized the NAACP and the Obama administration for believing him. Seriously! After conceding that his own video took Sherrod’s remarks out of context, Breitbart didn’t try to correct the record or apologize for the damage he caused. Instead, he pointed accusatory fingers at the people who were naive enough to assume that he could be honest. He actually took pride in the fact that his bogus reporting shook up the administration and resulted in an unfair termination. This followup on Breitbart’s web site is like a perverse episode of Punk’d.

“…it shows the extent that Breitbart, Fox, and the Tea Party have gotten under the skin of the White House. Rather then to think it through they overreacted and forced Sherrod to pull over on the side of the road and resign without telling her side of the story.”

In effect Breitbart is boasting that rather than recognize that he is a scumbag liar, they believed him. And now Breitbart is mocking them for thinking he was honest. It would be understandable for me to criticize the administration for believing Breitbart, but for him to offer that criticism is downright schizophrenic. Breitbart is taunting them with something like this:

“Ha ha. You thought I was telling the truth when I’m really just a sleazeball who lies for sport. Boy are you dumb.”

In the end, the administration deserves to be mocked. They should have learned long ago that Breitbart, and Beck, and Limbaugh, and Fox News in general, are not to be taken seriously. They should certainly never be the impetus for any official action without first obtaining independent verification.

The NAACP has already retracted their statement condemning Sherrod and apologized to her. The White House should see to it that she is reinstated. And everyone should take to heart the lesson that is obvious to those of us who have been paying attention: The disreputable fakers in the rightist media should be spurned, condemned, or at the very least, ignored. And for God’s sake, stop thinking that they will ever be honest.

Media Plotting To Invent Liberal Media Plot

Posted by on July 20, 2010 at 1:54 pm. 1 Comments :

A new threat is being unraveled by the liberal media about a plot by the liberal media to advance the agenda of the liberal media against the dictates of the liberal media.

OK, if that didn’t make sense to you it’s because the the whole conspiracy being peddled doesn’t make sense. This breaking news first appeared in Tucker Carlson’s right-wing Daily Caller with this headline: Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright Not surprisingly, based on the shoddy record of Carlson & Co., there were no documents that said any such thing. What he had were private communications amongst individuals who were members of the JournoList listserv, a community of progressive columnists and academics, not powerful media barons. [The JournoList was recently discontinued due to the breach of privacy] But even these stolen, candid remarks did not amount to the conspiracy that the Caller alleged with unsupported assertions like this:

“According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate.”

The “radical steps” were nothing more sinister than like-minded colleagues commiserating amongst themselves about the sorry state of the media. They were mostly people recognized for their opinions, not straight reporting. They were not focusing on Rev. Wright, but on pointing out the “factual inaccuracies” of mainstream reporting and the abysmal performance of the anchors in the presidential debates. One comment on the JournoList even explicitly refuted the conclusion of the Caller:

“This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

Serving the people. That’s the sort of depraved plot the Daily Caller is outraged by. The Caller’s embarrassing analysis totally fails to explain why the media, which they regard as hopelessly liberal, would need to take such measures to insert their bias into the reporting that they supposedly control. And how could the stories about Wright have saturated the airwaves as they did when it’s the liberals that control them? Clearly the all-powerful liberal cabal was not able to kill the stories as the Caller charged.

The real irony here is that the Caller is accusing liberals in the press of something that they themselves are doing with this very item. No sooner was it posted on the Daily Caller’s web site this morning than it suddenly popped up on Fox Nation, the National Review, Hot Air, NewsBusters, WorldNetDaily, Pajamas Media, and the Wall Street Journal. Of course Fox News got in on the act with the execrable Megyn Kelly carrying the water of the conservative propaganda machine. She is making a specialty of trumped-up scandals. [Add Glenn Beck to the ConservoList crowd].

So the question is, what list is the right-wing circulating that would produce this instantaneous barrage of reporting on a fabricated scandal? As they attempt to stimulate outrage with regard to a fearsome liberal plot, they are instead exposing the clandestine workings of their own confederacy. And somehow the media that is supposed to be tainted by unfettered liberalism is still all too happy to cover this nonsense.

The Lord Smites Glenn Beck With Blindness

Posted by on July 19, 2010 at 5:53 pm. 6 Comments :

Glenn Beck Messiah

Glenn Beck broke down again this weekend as he revealed to his congregation of American Revivalists that he may, or may not, go blind in the next year. It was a stirring moment wherein he sobbed as he confessed that, were he to lose his sight, he would miss reading more than seeing his wife or his kids as they grow up. How touching. His family must feel so loved.

I couldn’t help but wonder how this potentially devastating hardship would fit into Beck’s evangelical perspective. While he professed to accepting his fate as the will of God, it seemed to me that he was missing some pretty ominous signs.

Beck claims to be a devout Mormon and Christian. He certainly piles on the sermonizing during his radio and television shows. So he must be familiar with Deuteronomy 28:27-29, and the punishment from God if you fail to follow his laws:

27: The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.
28: The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart.
29: And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.

Taking these one at a time, verse 27 speaks of being smited with emerods, known today as hemorrhoids. A couple of years ago Beck was not only so smited, but it nearly killed him. He posted a bizarre video of himself recuperating and railing against the private, for-profit health care system under which he suffered.

In verse 28 the Lord warns of being stricken with the blindness that Beck may now be facing. It also warns of madness and astonishment (i.e. confusion, panic). You only need need to watch a few random minutes of any episode of Glenn Beck to see that he is consumed by panic. He freely admits to being confused, and he is quite obviously mad.

Verse 29 very plainly addresses things that could be interpreted to refer to Beck’s professional misfortunes. Certainly he is still a very wealthy man, but having over a hundred advertisers abandon his noonday program surely impacts his prosperity, if not his reputation. And today his most reliable remaining advertiser, Goldline, International, was informed that they are being investigated for fraud. That’s just the tip of the criminal iceberg surrounding Beck’s advertisers.

The only reasonable conclusion is that God has had enough. He is no longer tolerating Beck’s heresy, dishonesty, and arrogance. He is probably not to thrilled with Beck portraying himself in Messianic terms either. However, God may have to be a bit more demonstrative before Beck gets the picture. A few prophecies from Deuteronomy may be sufficient to alert most people to their sinful ways, but let’s face, Beck has been “blind” for a long time. It may require locusts and pillars of salt for him to see the light. His ox may have to be slain. Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to floods, because that could hurt a lot of innocent people.

With the specificity of these Biblical prophecies, the hemorrhoids, the panic, the loss of prosperity, the madness, and now the looming blindness, it would be foolish for Beck and his disciples to dismiss these ominous signs. For it can only mean that God’s wrath is seething and that Beck’s fate is dire. Either that or he’s masturbating too much.

Fox News Rejects Ad From Veterans Group (Again)

Posted by on July 19, 2010 at 1:52 pm. 6 Comments :

For the second time, Fox News has rejected an advertisement from VoteVets, a veterans advocacy organization. The ad featured retired Brigadier Gen. Steven Anderson explaining the importance of moving the country to cleaner energy from domestic sources.

“Our enemies know that we’re hooked on their oil…That’s why breaking our addiction must not only be a military priority, but America’s mission, and why the Senate needs to pass a clean energy climate plan. It will put Americans to work developing new energy technologies that will save lives overseas, make us less dependent and more secure.

The previous time that Fox News refused an ad from VoteVets they claimed that it would be “too confusing” for their audience. Well, they oughta know. At that time I wrote…

The confusion that Fox is worried about is that their carefully trained viewers might wind up agreeing with these vets that our security is threatened by enriching our enemies in Iran and other unfriendly oil oligarchs. This ad could undo so much of Fox’s painstakingly hypnotic propagandizing.

So Fox’s solution is to censor the ad and protect their gullible audience from hearing any argument that might conflict with the Fox News world view. Fox undoubtedly regards this as their obligation to shield their viewers from the anxiety of having to think for themselves. Heaven knows that’s often confusing and so does Fox’s standards and practices department.

What Fox didn’t say is that Saudi oil tycoon, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, owns 7 percent of News Corp. He is the largest shareholder outside the Murdoch family. That wouldn’t have anything to do with Fox’s reluctance to air an ad proposing to reduce expenditures on Middle-East oil, would it? Or is this just confusing the matter?

I concur with me.

Fox Nationalists Oppose Tea Party/NAACP Summit

Posted by on July 19, 2010 at 12:54 pm. 4 Comments :

Over at the Fox Nation this morning they are asking their readers: Should Tea Parties Hold Racism Summit With NAACP? Here is a sampling of the response:

No, absolutely not. It would be like attending a abusive spouse seminar after someone asks you if you still beat your wife.

No. It would be a moot point,meaningless to people like that, who live to cry raceism,victumhood,it’s all about me mentality. The accusations would not stop.

No, proverbs state that if you try to reason with a fool, you only end up hurting yourself.

Why should we associate ourselves with the NAACP. We do not associate ourselves with the dark side.

The answer is NO. The Tea Party should do all it can to distance themselves from people who are openly racist. Which is more than I can say for the NAACP.

Absolutely not. Why would the Tea Party want to tarnish it’s image by associating with a known racist organization like the NAACP?

WE DON’T OWE THEM AN APOLOGY…THEY OWE US!!!
Are you f**king kidding me??? Grovel before the NAACP??? For what?

ABSOLUTELY NOT! We have nothing to defend, the NAACP does! No longer silent! They owe the nation and apology for their vile racism and black supremicist behavior!!

Meeting with the NAACP will only validate their witch hunt. The NAACP is an irrelevant, racist organization.

Why….naacp is no longer the organization it started out as. They stand for racism now. After all the minorities are more important than the whites.

Well…that clears that up.

Ironically, according to the article to which Fox Nation links, it was the leader of the Tea Party Federation who suggested the summit between themselves and the NAACP. Apparently the Tea Bagging rank and vile won’t hear of it. At the time of this writing there was not a single affirmative response to the notion of a summit. But there was quite a bit of hatred directed at the nation’s largest civil rights organization.

If these people don’t like being called racists, the best way to prevent it would be to stop acting like racists.

Tea Party Caucus Forms As Tea Party Fractures

Posted by on July 18, 2010 at 1:24 pm. 6 Comments :

Michelle Bachmann (TP-MN) has received acceptance of her request to form a Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. In a report on Fox News it was heralded as a “victory in Congress for the Tea Party.” It was further stated that the approval was acquired in record time for a new caucus.

I’m sure that Democrats around the country are sending their congratulations and best wishes to Bachmann. This may be a masterstroke of self-destruction for the Minnesota Republican. She would be wise to consider why the Committee on House Administration, with six Democrats and three Republicans, would so quickly sign off on her collective.

It will be interesting to see how many of her colleagues she recruits into her caucus. Membership will present a measure of risk as the decision to join will require a difficult political choice: Do you associate yourself with a controversial army of right-wing extremists and radicals by joining? Or do you suffer their unforgiving wrath by snubbing them? That dilemma is likely going to limit the growth of Bachmann’s Baggers.

Tea Party RacismAlliance with the Tea Party is becoming more hazardous with every day. The NAACP just passed a resolution calling on Tea Party leaders to renounce the overtly racist elements of their movement. That was met by flurry of outraged Tea Partiers who insisted that there was not even a trace of racism in their curiously mono-toned ranks. Then they switched to offense asserting that it was the NAACP that is racist.

In the course of this debate, the founder of the Tea Party Express, Mark Williams, posted a “parody” on his web site that was so offensive he was summarily booted out of the Tea Party Federation. Only right-wingers have the audacity to swear up and down that there are no racists among them even as they are kicking out a leader for being a racist. And Williams isn’t the first racist Tea Party leader to get the hook. Dale Robertson, founder of TeaParty.org was ousted earlier this year for sporting a sign with the “N” word (misspelled). We have yet to see Williams’ response to his ouster, but it may provide some more fireworks.

So as Bachmann is putting together her congregation of Tea-publicans in DC, a fissure is widening in the heartland. And they were never a particularly harmonious faction to begin with. Earlier this year there was a Tea Party convention that was roundly criticized by fellow Tea Partiers for being a for-profit event. They even committed the sacrilege of bashing keynote speaker Sarah Palin for participating. Bachmann herself was scheduled to speak, but bailed out with a lame excuse blaming the House Ethics Committee.

The followup to that convention was supposed to have been this past week in Las Vegas, but they claim to have rescheduled it for an unspecified date in October. That was a month ago and they still have no announced venue or dates.

It is notable that the Tea Party advocates responded to charges of racism by denying them, feigning ignorance (OK, maybe not feigning), and hurling back similar charges. I’m going to let Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP show them how it ought to be done. When confronted with allegations about the New Black Panther Party’s offensive and racist rhetoric, Jealous unhesitatingly replied…

“You know, bigots come in all colors. We absolutely denounce the New Black Panther Party. But they aren’t in our group. These folks are in your groups.”

What would have been so difficult for the Tea Baggers to simply respond that they don’t believe that racism is rampant in their movement and that they agree with the NAACP’s goal of stamping out racism wherever it is found? The reason they do not respond in that way is that they know that racists are a prominent and influential component of their coalition and they don’t want to alienate them. The action they are taking now is merely a consequence of the bad PR they are hoping to constrain.

As the truth about the Tea Party continues to be revealed. Bachmann’s campaign for legitimacy will flounder. And while she is getting attention from the press for her promotion of the Tea Party, I’m more interested in whether they will provide the same level of coverage a few weeks or months from now when her caucus meets and she brings her gavel down on an empty room.

Fox News Fires Up Vacation-Gate

Posted by on July 17, 2010 at 5:04 pm. 2 Comments :

Here’s the headline from Fox News:

“Seizing on Good Week, Obama Takes Another Vacation Despite GOP Criticisms”

Another vacation? For anyone keeping track, Obama has taken about 65 vacation days since assuming office. By this point in his first term George W. Bush had taken twice as much time off (120 days). And that was in the midst of our nation still responding to 9/11.

The story Fox News ran was attributed to their own Wendell Goler and the Associated Press. Goler lifted most of the details from the AP, including the Obamas’ bike rides and stops for ice cream. However, he neglected to include the information on Bush’s vacations, which was in the AP’s article. That’s a pretty egregious failure to provide relevant context for a column whose title was so deliberately biased.

This omission cannot be explained away as an editorial decision to focus on Obama and leave former presidents out of it, because Goler did include Bush in the article by way of interviewing his former deputy press secretary, Scott Stanzel. Stanzel’s contribution to the story was to criticize Obama for taking his vacation in Maine rather than in Gulf Coast (where Obama has already been at least four times). Stanzel further defended Bush’s many excursions to Crawford, Texas, as being appropriate because he still got work done there. Although there was no similar defense of Obama who, like all presidents, is working 24/7.

Bush and McCain Eating CakeGoler also went out of his way to lie about one occasion when Bush was vacationing in Crawford and a hurricane happened to nearly destroy New Orleans. Goler said that Bush cut his vacation short, but the truth is that he extended it to play guitar with a country singer and to visit John McCain in Phoenix to celebrate his birthday.

You don’t get many better examples of deliberate bias than this. Goler based his reporting on an article from the AP that was actually pretty fair and balanced. But for Fox News it had to be altered to eliminate any context that might reflect favorably on Obama, while adding fiction that whitewashed Bush’s failures.

More proof that Fox News is the enemy of fairness and the defiler of balance.

Glenn Beck: The Jews Killed Jesus

Posted by on July 16, 2010 at 2:25 pm. 5 Comments :

How many times, and in how many ways, can Glenn Beck insult and offend people of different ethnicities than himself – and get away with it?

I missed this morsel from earlier this week, but Keith Olbermann picked it up:

Beck: “Jesus conquered death. He wasn’t victimized. He chose to give his life. He did have a choice. If he was a victim and this theology was true then Jesus would have come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did, that’s an abomination.”

Olbermann correctly pointed out that it was the Romans who crucified Jesus and that most Christian doctrine, including the Catholic Church, repudiated the accusation against the Jews. Although Jesus may not have made the Jews pay, generations of his followers picked up the cause and still endeavor to extract payment to this day. And now we can count Glenn Beck amongst them.

The discussion of this subject occurred during an interview with Alexander Zaitchik, author of Common Nonsense, Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, a highly recommended read. Watch the video from Countdown:

Tucker Carlson vs. Keith Olbermann: Master Of Your Domain

Posted by on July 15, 2010 at 1:35 pm. 3 Comments :

Tucker Carlson - Biggest LoserIf there were a contest for Most Pathetic Pundit, Tucker Carlson would get the Lifetime Achievement Award. He has been a recidivist failure on PBS, CNN, and MSNBC. After being canceled more times than a Shane MacGowan dentist appointment, Carlson was picked up as a pity play by Fox News, an organization he previously called “…a mean, sick group of people,” but for whom he now dutifully performs his organ-grinder monkey routine.

Now Carlson is proving that he is not merely an incompetent boob, but a hypocritical jerk as well. With the brashness of a child delighted at his ability to pull the wings off a fly, Carlson has announced that he, and his web site the Daily Caller, has acquired ownership of the domain name KeithOlbermann.com:

“This is part of our long-term growth strategy,” added Publisher and CEO Neil Patel. “Our future acquisition targets include several other annoying cable news commentators.”

Daily Caller - CrybabyThat seems like a brilliant business plan, and in keeping with their mission, having been founded by one of the all-time annoying cable news commentators, Carlson himself. On today’s front page of the the Daily Caller is a big, close up photo of Olbermann beneath an all-caps headline shouting, “CRYBABY.” The sub-head says, “Keith Olbermann threatens legal action against TheDC.”

This is a typical case of cybersquatting, wherein someone takes possession of an Internet asset that belongs to someone else. Domain names are subject to laws that protect intellectual property, trademarks, and copyrights. The hypocrisy comes into play when you learn that just two years ago. Carlson pursued a complaint against someone squatting on his domain name. He filed his complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization and won a decision to reclaim his name. The complaint said in part…

Complainant states that he is “an internationally famous television news anchor and author, most famous for his role as anchor of the eponymous televised newsmagazines Tucker (MSNBC) and Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered (PBS), as well as for his role as co-host of Crossfire (CNN).” Complainant states that his television debut came in 2000 as co-host of The Spin Room (PBS) and that he has also appeared on television as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars (ABC), the Tonight Show With Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Complainant states that his writings “are regularly featured” in Esquire, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic and The New York Times Magazine. And, Complainant states that he has appeared as an actor in various television shows and movies.

Apparently Carlson is “internationally famous” for getting canned repeatedly. It is also notable that just a couple of years ago it was Carlson who was the crybaby. His complaint conveniently outlines the very same arguments that Olbermann could make to retrieve ownership of his domain name. He even damages his own case by confessing that he intends to use the name for a commercial purpose.

As an added bonus, Carlson implied that Olbermann would be infringing on his First Amendment rights if he were to sue Carlson for the name. Of course, having to turn over the name does not in any way restrict Carlson from speaking. Especially since the name is only being used presently to pull up the Daily Caller home page. And accusing Olbermann of violating his rights would also be admitting that he violated the rights of the party he sued to get his name back.

So go ahead and cry about it, Tucker. You are only affirming your place in history as a miserable louse with no talent, intellect, or ethics. But most of us already knew that.