Month: August 2010

Dumbass Of The Day: Erick Erickson

Posted by on August 14, 2010 at 1:31 pm. 1 Comments :

Congratulations are in order for Erick Erickson of RedState and CNN. He has run away with today’s Dumbass Award despite many deserving contestants. Here is a series of Tweets from Erickson that lowered him to the depths of depravity:

How exactly do our founding principles require the President to support a mosque at ground zero?

People citing freedom of religion as the reason Obama says our founding principles *demand* he support the mosque are not that bright.

Paging the Church of Satan: Our founding principles demand Barack Obama support your rights to human sacrifice. Carry on.

Paging random religious sects that still practice polygamy: our founding principles demand Barack Obama support group marriage.

Paging Islamofascists: Our founding principles demand Barack Obama support Jihad.

First of all, Dumbass, The mosque is NOT at ground zero. It is three blocks away. Secondly, our founding principles include the free exercise of religion. You may not think that supporting the First Amendment is bright, but that’s just your dumbassedness clouding what remains of your reason.

Finally, your comparison of constructing a legal building to human sacrifice, polygamy, and terrorism, all of which are against the law, demonstrates how worthy you are of this award.

Congratulations Dumbass.

America Hates The Media – Thank You Fox News

Posted by on August 14, 2010 at 12:39 pm. 5 Comments :

A new survey by the Gallup organization reveals that Americans have all but given up on old media services like newspapers and television. Only about 25% of respondents say that they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in either. This puts the legacy media on a par with perennially hated institutions like banks, HMOs and congress.

It isn’t difficult to surmise the reason for this deep distrust. While the media has long been held in low esteem, there was a noticeable decline that began in the mid-1990s. Since that time confidence has dropped about 30%. And just as a point of interest, Fox News launched in 1996.

There isn’t really anything coincidental about it. Fox News has always had as its purpose the discrediting of news as an institution. I made the case for this last year in Fox News Confidential: The Truth Behind Its Secret Mission:

The real mission of Fox News is [cue trumpets] to so thoroughly tarnish the practice of journalism that majorities of the public would recoil in disgust at all of it. Murdoch and Ailes knew that the introduction of a single cable network would have a difficult time enshrouding the whole of the mediasphere in their veil of lies. So rather than try to change people’s minds, they would endeavor to poison the relationship that people have with the press.

Mission accomplished. By trivializing journalism with tabloid-style sensationalism, and diluting its authority with speculation and hyperbolic opinion, Fox has succeeded in producing large majorities of the American public who are now repulsed by the “mainstream” media that barges into their homes every day. The lies Fox News spews are secondary to the campaign of defamation that they launched against the media as a whole. As a result, their fictional accounts of current events are more enduring because people are paying less attention overall.

The saddest part of this scenario is that the non-Fox media have essentially cooperated with Fox’s disparagement of them. Rather than defend themselves and the integrity of their profession, they went along and allowed Fox to create the negative impressions that are now dominant in society. Even worse, they actually helped to reinforce those impressions.

The Washington Post apologized for not covering more of the fakery of Andrew Breitbart. CNN bent over backwards to endorse the wacko wing of the right by hiring RedState’s Erick Erickson. MSNBC continues to host disreputable characters like Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan. And everybody persists in covering non-entities like Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. With respect to the latter, Sarah Palin just came in fourth (pdf) amongst Republicans in a preference poll for 2012. And the Tea Party registered a measly (pdf) 30% favorable rating with an even smaller percentage (25%) saying they would vote for a candidate with a Tea Party affiliation. Yet these two subjects get wall-to-wall coverage across the media spectrum.

Perhaps if newspaper and television reporters would cover issues that actually address the interests of their audience they would not be so universally reviled. If they could manage to resist the melodramatic minutiae that Fox News has embraced they could recover some of their lost respect. And above all they need to put objectivity and honesty at the top of their agenda, not ratings and revenue.

In other words, if they deliver a product that is informative and useful, and contributes to people’s lives, profits and popularity will follow. If they continue to pursue the Fox model they will only succeed in further damaging their reputation and their prospects for the future. To say nothing about the damage they are doing to a country whose democracy relies on a well-informed population.

Laura Schlessinger’s Problem Is Not The N Word

Posted by on August 13, 2010 at 11:05 am. 90 Comments :

There is a lot of buzz this morning about a discussion on the Dr. Laura radio program where Schlessinger got heated up about what constitutes racist language.

In her response to an African-American caller who was disturbed about comments that she regarded as racist, Schlessinger accused her of being hypersensitive. She went on to justify the use of the “N” word because black comics use it all the time on HBO:

“Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is ni**er, ni**er, ni**er.”

This has set off a flurry of outrage from offended African-American activists, journalists, and plain old ordinary citizens of every race. I won’t presume to lecture people on what they should or should not be offended by, but I’m not particularly disturbed by Schlessinger’s remarks in the context in which they were used. She is correct in saying that she didn’t call anyone a ni**er, she merely offered an example of how the word is used in a real-life scenario.

I don’t believe that any word should ever be permanently excised from our vocabulary. Words are just collections of letters and their meaning is assigned by the user and the context. I would not want Lenny Bruce or George Carlin to have been silenced for using words that people found offensive. Their application of language actually helped make our society better.

However, I am offended by remarks Schlessinger made on the same program that I find far more offensive than the “N” word. For instance:

“We’ve got a black man as president, and we have more complaining about racism than ever. I mean, I think that’s hilarious.

Hilarious? Schlessinger thinks it’s funny that the election of a black president results in an escalation of racist commentary and behavior. She doesn’t understand how that could happen. She seems to think that racism ended on November 4, 2008, because “Whites voted him in.” It’s all over, stop complaining.

Schlessinger needs to be reminded that some 48 million people voted against Obama. It’s safe to say that some percentage of them were racists. They didn’t go away after the inauguration either. It is the very fact that we have a black president that incites racists to be come more aggressive in their hate. It causes people who are inclined to draw these distinctions to press harder. Which brings us to the next notable remark from Dr. Laura:

“[W]hat I just heard from Jade is a lot of what I hear from black-think.”

Black-think? That is precisely the sort of distinction that is used to divide people. I would be interested to hear what her definition of black-think is – and what makes her an expert on it. It still amazes me how someone so incredibly dense has a platform on radio and TV to demonstrate their stupidity and utter lack of comprehension.

I find both of these comments far more offensive than a simple reiteration of the word “ni**er.” Just like my use of it there, it is intended only to let the reader know what word is being discussed. But the latter remarks are indicative of a more overt expression of racism on Schlessinger’s part. Or at the very least a striking inability to comprehend how race factors into society and relationships. She actually told the caller (whose husband is white) that if she didn’t have a sense of humor she shouldn’t “marry out of her race.” I suppose we should test all the interracial couples in America to make sure they are sufficiently funny.

I hope that Schlessinger’s appalling attitude about racism is brought more into the foreground and is not crowded out of the debate by a couple of incendiary words. Her problem is not a specific word, it is her whole mentality.

Update: In a hilarious bit of melodramatic tantrumizing, Dr. Laura has announced that she will be quitting her radio show at the end of this year. Her reason is that she wants to get her free speech rights back. By shutting down her nationally broadcast platform for speaking??? Um, OK.

Glenn Beck: We Are Only Delaying Our Death

Posted by on August 12, 2010 at 4:23 pm. 3 Comments :

On his radio program today, Glenn Beck laid out a plan for creating economic havoc and bankrupting the country. This exceeds Rush Limbaugh’s famous desire for President Obama to fail. Beck is proposing an action plan to achieve that end.

In a discussion that began with a biblical reference to Ecclesiastes, Beck preached that “To everything there is a season.” and that “This is the season for awakening.” Beck’s awakening is one that calls for Americans to recognize the futility of striving to make America a better country, and instead to let it collapse into ruin:

Beck: For this system to work you’ve got to spend money. But I’m telling you this system will never work. We’re only delaying our death. Let us do what Coolidge did. Let it come down and retool. It led to the roaring twenties.

Beck is expressly advising his disciples to withhold spending. Our fragile economy is thirsting for the consumer confidence that will drive growth, create jobs, and save families, but Beck is telling his viewers to that there is no hope, that “this system will never work.” That advice can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Which, of course, is exactly what Beck wants. He says so explicitly when he calls for “let[ting] it come down.”

There is a great deal wrong with that advice. First and foremost it is an advocacy of failure and hardship. It would cause profound and unnecessary pain for millions. But his justification for this dreadful path is that it could lead to something resembling the roaring twenties. Well, we know how that turned out: The stock market crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression. This is what Beck is actively engaged in bringing about by misleading his gullible congregation into deliberately making matters worse.

Perhaps he believes that we deserve to suffer; that we have brought this hardship on ourselves. Perhaps he believes that God has forsaken us, and for that we must endure the cleansing pain of a divine fire. He spoke repeatedly of fire on television today, which fits nicely with what he was saying on the radio this morning:

Beck: Is this land less blessed than we’ve all been raised? Well not all of us. Not the Marxists – almost everybody who works at the White House. Are we somehow or another less blessed as a land than we always have been? I think the answer to that one is yes.

So Beck has concluded that America is less blessed, which is another way of saying that God has turned his back on us. Then Beck went full-throttle televangelist, discarding all talk of politics and policy. He sermonized passionately that the only hope for America is to turn to faith. And then he made it an article of faith to attend his revival meeting in Washington DC in a couple of weeks.

All that’s left of Beck’s spiel is hucksterism and lies. He sees himself as the sword of God and the shepherd of his unhinged flock. With every day his appeal to fear escalates. But what’s truly frightening is that he has said that his upcoming rally will be an historical event that will be a turning point for the nation. Now he must feel some pressure to deliver. I wonder what the Hell he is planning (with the emphasis on Hell).

Rupert Murdoch Doesn’t Own Me

Posted by on August 11, 2010 at 10:21 am. 8 Comments :

He thinks he owns the sky. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is embroiled in a trademark dispute over the name of its European TV division, BSkyB, which operates under the name Sky TV. It has recently been revealed that News Corp is challenging Skype and seeking to prevent them from using their name and logo. From The Telegraph (a Murdoch owned rag)…

Sky is involved in a long-running dispute with Skype in relation to several trade mark applications filed by Skype, including, but not limited to, television-related goods and services,” the spokesman said. “The key contention in the dispute is that the brands ‘Sky’ and ‘Skype’ will be considered confusingly similar by members of the public.

Really? Then you would think that Murdoch would have a problem with the name of this web site: News Corpse. If adding two letters to the end of the word “sky” is confusingly similar, then why not adding two letters to the end of News Corp?

Some other potential targets of Murdoch’s legal team may include actors Ione Skye and Michael J. Fox. Big Sky, Montana may be at risk as well. And don’t forget that Murdoch also owns the Wall Street Journal, so New York may have to change their street name. In fact, since Murdoch’s global enterprise uses the word “news,” every other company that does so might have to lawyer up, including NBC News and the Dallas News.

But none of these scofflaws are as brazen as I am. Apparently Murdoch is afraid of me as he sits trembling in his penthouse watching his fingernails grow. What other reason could there be for his cowardly silence in the face of what he must regard as obvious infringement?

Yo Rupert…I got your confusingly similar right here. So bring it on you crusty, old, lily-livered, wretch.

Glenn Beck Admits That He Is A Terrorist

Posted by on August 10, 2010 at 4:09 pm. 7 Comments :

A few minutes ago Glenn Beck made a declaration that ought to cause some consternation in the executive suites of his employer, Fox News. It ought to, but it probably won’t. They have already dismissed his declarations concerning…

  • The President being a racist.
  • A Jewish leader being the cause of Nazi death camps.
  • A major News Corp shareholder (Saudi Prince Alwaleed) being involved in 9/11.
  • The Jews killing Jesus.
  • The only hope for America being Osama Bin Laden deploying a weapon of mass destruction in the U.S.

That’s a long (and incomplete) list of astonishing and repulsive commentaries that Beck has gotten away with to date. The only conclusion is that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes and the rest of the Fox News hierarchy agree with Beck. So presumably they agree with this as well:

Beck: “Terrorism, in its broadest form, is just designed to scare you into changing your way of life.”

That makes sense to me. And it works pretty well too. After 9/11, Americans, through fear, accepted changes to their way of life that included having their phones tapped without warrants; abandoning habeas corpus; restrictions on travel; and engaging in apparently endless wars that have nothing to do with national security.

But if you were to select someone in the American media that conforms best to Beck’s definition of terrorism, it would be none other than Beck himself. His program is a daily rant on fearsome policies, politicians, and prospects for the future. Beck believes that President Obama should be feared as a Marxist bent on destroying the country. He believes that Congress should feared for their alleged efforts to usher in Socialism. He believes progressives should be feared as a cancer that will “eat the Constitution.” He believes that the economy portends a future so frightening that you must liquidate your investments and buy gold and guns with the proceeds. He fervently believes that America is in grave danger, as are you and your family and all the values and principles you hold dear.

Beck’s entire raison d’etre is to incite fear and persuade his viewers to change their way of life. It goes far beyond his investment advice. Beck wants to shape your spiritual development. He warned his disciples to “run as fast you can” from any church that espouses social justice. He regularly condemns churches for abandoning what he regards as their mission. He even accuses them of perverting their faith. This may be the most terrifying example of Beck’s scare tactics because he is exploiting people’s fear of their relationship with God and eternity.

In pursuit of that goal, and in his role as a wannabe-Messiah, Beck is promoting a new event that promises to “heal your soul.” Is this some new ability he has acquired? Perhaps you can touch the hem of his robe if you buy his latest book. The event will be held on the evening before his DC rally on August 28, and is called “Glenn Beck’s Divine Destiny.” Seriously! This is a play for worship or martyrdom. Beck is plainly moving closer to becoming a full-fledged televangelist, or more accurately, a cult leader in the vein of Jim Jones or David Koresh, religious figures who also used fear to subjugate their followers. The pre-8/28 event is being advertised by Beck as…

“…an eye-opening evening at the historic Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C that will help heal your soul. Guided by uplifting music, nationally-known religious figures from all faiths will unite to deliver messages reminiscent to those given during the struggles of America’s earliest days. The event will leave you with a renewed determination to look past the partisan differences and petty problems that fill our airwaves and instead focus our shared values, principles and strong belief that faith can play an essential role in reuniting the country.”

I wonder if these “religious figures from all faiths” will include Muslims or Buddhists. And it will be interesting to see how Beck transcends “the partisan differences…that fill our airwaves” when his rhetoric is so weighted down with hatred for progressives and others with whom he disagrees. The notion of Beck placing himself in the position of “reuniting the country” is nothing short of surreal.

Glenn Beck is the archetypal fear monger. He has adapted the fire and brimstone model of spiritual revivalists to his brand of theo-political crusades. He routinely warns that if we do not quickly change our course, our way of life, we are doomed. If that doesn’t fit the profile of the terrorist that Beck spoke of today on his program, I don’t know what does.

Blaming Bush For The Economy Is About The Future

Posted by on August 10, 2010 at 12:47 pm. 1 Comments :

Republicans, and their PR agency Fox News, are infuriated that President Obama and other Democrats continue to lay the blame for the economy on the shoulders of former President Bush. Their apoplexy centers on the notion that at some point Obama must assume some responsibility for the current state of affairs.

That would be a fair argument if sufficient time had elapsed to make a judgment about Obama’s economic policies. Most economists agree that a recovery from the sort of economic collapse that this nation just suffered takes several years to accomplish. It has only been a year and half. And even in that short time there have been notable achievements, including stemming the rate of job loss and injecting billions of dollars of stimulus funds into the economy.

But that isn’t what’s ultimately wrong with the complaints by Republicans. Blaming Bush for the economy isn’t a function of looking backward. First of all, Obama’s criticism has not been directed at Bush personally, but at his policies.

Obama: The policies that crashed the economy, that undercut the middle class, that mortgaged our future, do we really want to go back to that, or do we keep moving our country forward?

It seems inconceivable that anyone could defend the Bush plan knowing what we know today. Yet Republicans in the House and Senate are offering nothing new in the way of solutions. In fact, the only initiative they will articulate out loud is to preserve the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy that are about to expire.

Republicans are so adamant about carrying water for the rich that they appear to be willing to allow taxes to rise for the 98% of Americans who are not so privileged. What’s more, they also appear to be ready to abandon their concern for deficits since the tax cuts for the wealthy will balloon the deficit by more than $700 billion.

It is not surprising that Republicans should defend themselves and their former leaders. But the media should not be carrying their banner. The criticism of Obama for “bashing” Bush is thoroughly misplaced. If Republicans were offering a new set of solutions that deserved consideration, then they should be accommodated. But if all they are offering are the same ideas that came from the Bush administration, then the debate ought to be over. We already know what that would accomplish.

Therein lies the fallacy of the “blame Bush” complaint. Obama is not reaching backwards to assign responsibility for current conditions to the past president. He is forecasting the future consequences of repeating those mistakes. It is the Republicans who are bringing the Bush era back to the table by proposing nothing but what the Bush administration did. So the Obama administration has no choice but to rebut those proposals. That is not an attack on Bush. It is an attack on the current crop of Republicans who are parroting Bush.

Note to the media: While Obama has every right to remind the nation that the Bush policies got us where we are, that isn’t what he is focused on today. He is merely responding to Congressional Republicans who are advocating the failed Bush policies of the past. It is the Republicans who are reaching back to define a course for the future. Obama is looking forward to chart a course that avoids past mistakes and learns from them.

Fox Nation Exposes Presidential Nuzzling Scandal

Posted by on August 9, 2010 at 10:45 am. 10 Comments :

Just when you think that Fox Nation has demonstrated an utter disengagement from reality they prove that Einstein was right when he said that only…

“…two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

The Fox Nationalists posted a story this morning that truly exceeds the boundaries of stupidity. And if that weren’t enough, it is also an obvious and brazen lie. In the photo below Fox Nation accuses President Obama of “nuzzling” Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan and Jorge Muñoz, who was being honored for his work providing meals for the homeless in Queens. In reality, as the video shows, the President was merely leaning over to speak to them. But this is how the Fox Nationalists presented it:

Obama Nuzzle

To make matters worse, the comments by the Fox Nationalists veer off into the repulsive and overtly racist diatribes that they so often complain about. Here is a representative sample:

“The only thing that is surprising is that he doesnt smell butts like the other dogs that make up the so called Progressives.”

Just to be fair and balanced, I thought I would offer this composite of our previous president displaying his affection side:

Bush Kisses

Notice that Bush goes significantly beyond nuzzling. Could Lieberman and Rove be any closer without puckering up? And Bush is plainly sucking face with his Saudi “friend.” And for all we know he may be rounding second base, on his way to third. And doesn’t McCain look content and secure?

It’s getting harder and harder to take these idiots seriously.

Fox News: Last In Online Ratings

Posted by on August 8, 2010 at 12:43 pm. 16 Comments :

Pray for Fox NewsFor much of the last decade Fox News has dominated the Nielsen ratings for cable news networks. They spend a great deal of their time on air bragging about it too. In reality they haven’t got that much to boast about. Their audience is relatively larger because they corral conservative viewers on one network while all the other networks divide the broader, more mainstream audience into smaller shares. And even with high numbers for cable news, it needs to be noted that cable news is a far smaller market than that for broadcast news. The lowest rated national broadcast news program (CBS) still gets higher ratings than the highest rated cable news program (O’Reilly).

So despite their Narcissistic self-glorification, Fox News doesn’t have nearly the influence they like to pretend to have. And nowhere is that more apparent than on the Internet. MediaWeek reports that Fox News’ presence online is dead last in their sector, landing far behind CNN, MSNBC, and even Yahoo News.

“Foxnews.com averages around 12 million or 13 million monthly unique users, according to Nielsen Online, rarely approaching the 35 million to 40 million uniques that leaders Yahoo News, MSNBC and CNN regularly deliver in aggregate.”

The article offers speculation as to the reasons for Fox’s failure ranging from presentation quality to age demographics to the inability to translate the Fox flavor from TV to Cyberspace. There is some truth in all of that. Particularly the difficulty in recreating an online version of Fox’s trademark shoutcasting model, with blustery partisans and rhetorical melodrama. But whatever the reasons, Fox faces some troubling prospects for the future.

Being the number one cable news network may not be such a prize in the years ahead. News consumers, along with everyone else, are moving online for more and more of their information, interaction, and commerce. The next generation may have a very limited relationship with cable news, other than for entertainment and affirmation of positions already held. The preferred destination for learning about your world and your community is increasingly the Internet. This trend is even more evident in younger populations who will shape the future market for news delivery.

What will that leave Fox News when cable news is an afterthought and Fox is last in Internet news? It may be too soon to tell. The Internet marketplace is still fairly malleable and Fox has plenty of money to throw at it. Rupert Murdoch seems concerned about the digital future and has been touting the iPad as a game-changing device, though his focus in that area has been on his crumbling newspaper empire.

Perhaps the most profound observations in this regard are related to News Corp’s history with new media. It isn’t pretty. They had an early failure with the Delphi Internet service. They bombed with their acquisition of MySpace which nosedived promptly after the deal was signed. Their FoxNation site is an embarrassingly contrived pandering to the most repugnant elements of their right-wing base. They have taken a strikingly short-sighted position against Google and other news aggregators (despite being an aggregator themselves). And they are rolling out a doomed policy of locking up their content behind pay walls which will only serve to reduce their customer base further.

If the past is any indicator, Fox News is headed for more misery online, though there is this one bit of consolation: They will always have their most devoted disciples. Their rank for loyalty amongst visitors is the one bright spot for them in the ratings numbers. However, it also exposes their weakness as a niche enterprise that is operating more as a cult than a news outlet. With the past a trail of ruin, and no indication that the future is being attended to, Fox News is headed into a well deserved irrelevancy.

Rachel Maddow Schools Bill O’Reilly – In Latin

Posted by on August 7, 2010 at 4:13 pm. 3 Comments :

Let’s face it, it doesn’t take much to reveal the intellectual vapidity of Fox News characters like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, or Bill O’Reilly. When their arguments are not devoid of logic, they are devoid of facts. Most of the time they manage to include neither. But leave it to Rachel Maddow to escalate a debate with a Fox Newsie to the point of employing Latin definitions to make her case.

In this video, Dr. Maddow had to correct an earlier appraisal of Bill O’Reilly’s attacks on her as “ad hominem.” To be accurate, the attacks were “ad populum.” The distinction is important, as Maddow says, because the former is an attack based on personal insult, while the later is an attack based on popularity. In this case, it was Bill O’Reilly asserting that he was right and Maddow was wrong because more people watch his show.

I made the point years ago that this was an irrelevant measure. It would be like saying that since McDonald’s is the #1 restaurant it must have the best food. In truth, McDonald’s just delivers the cheapest crap that is loaded with filler and seasoning to appeal to the largest number of consumers with the least sophisticated taste. Which, by the way, is exactly what Fox News does. Now, thanks to Dr. Maddow, I now the Latin term for it.

This segment from Maddow’s show is significant for another reason. After straightening out the rhetorical matter, Maddow went on to the substance of her debate with O’Reilly. It began when she quite correctly observed that Fox News makes a habit of presenting (or inventing) stories, the purpose of which are to incite their predominately white audience (only 1.38% of Fox viewers are black) into fearing black people. This is what O’Reilly objected to, but had no substantive response for. He merely boasted about his ratings and said that Maddow had no evidence. Of course the evidence is readily available: Van Jones, ACORN, New Black Panthers, Shirley Sherrod, etc.

At this point Maddow gets down to brass tacks. She describes O’Reilly’s assertion that she had no evidence of her claim as “…something stupid. Something stupid enough that it doesn’t even get dressed up in Latin phrasing.” Whereupon Maddow played a brilliant highlight reel of just O’Reilly’s contribution to these phony so-called news items.

Lest anyone complain that Maddow has now engaged in the very sort of ad hominem attack for which she criticized O’Reilly, just settle down. The evidence to back up calling O’Reilly’s position stupid is plentiful. And since there are millions more people that do not watch O’Reilly than do, we can also make an ad populum argument as to his stupidity. So there.