Month: September 2010

Glenn Beck Admits He Disgusts Himself. He’s Not Alone

Posted by on September 30, 2010 at 4:15 pm. 3 Comments :

In a new profile of Glenn Beck for the New York Times, Beck summarizes how most of America feels about him:

“You get to a place where you disgust yourself…Where you realize what a weak, pathetic and despicable person you have become.”

It’s about time. The article, by Mark Leibovich, is an in-depth examination of the Fox News prophet of paranoia. It covers a fair bit of ground personally as well some highlights (and lowlights) of his professional career. As for the causes of Beck’s self-hatred, there is sufficient justification for it in his past behavior:

“He was in therapy with ‘Dr. Jack Daniels.’ He smoked marijuana every day for about 15 years. He fired an underling for bringing him the wrong pen. And, according to a Salon.com report, he once called the wife of a radio rival to ridicule her – on the air – about her recent miscarriage.”

Now it’s bad enough that he was an abuser of drugs and alcohol, and a world class jerk who didn’t care about anyone but himself, but those things occurred during a difficult time in his life and prior to his having entered rehab and finding God. So let’s give him the benefit of a doubt and take a look at how sobriety and religion changed him and how he mellowed to merely…

“…joking about poisoning the speaker of the house or talking about choking the life out of a filmmaker or fantasizing about beating a congressman ‘to death with a shovel’ (as Beck did for Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore and Charles Rangel, respectively).”

I think I liked him better when he was tokin’ doobies. At least none of his delusions invoked bloody murders. Also since his “recovery” he has embarked on a non-stop campaign to convince his followers that President Obama and a phalanx of progressives are amassing to destroy America, revoke all freedom, confiscate every penny you earn, defile your daughters, rebuke your Lord, and otherwise end civilization as we know it. Then, after making the case for how these heathens are plotting to unleash a millennium of evil, he softly interjects that their Satanic onslaught should not be met with violence. But nevertheless, you must not allow them to get away with it. And thank God for the Second Amendment.

Mixed signals? Not really. Beck knows very well that his disciples will take up arms to defend themselves against the Hellish regime of slavery that he prophesies. Who wouldn’t if they really believed that was imminent?

Glenn Beck

The ramifications of Beck’s rhetoric stretch ominously into Apocalyptic territory. His rants run the gamut from political extremism to fanatical, pseudo-evangelistic cultism. More often than not he makes no sense at all, but that hardly matters. His audience can read between the lines, as he once begged them to do:

“[I]f you hear me stop saying these things, it’s because I can no longer say them to you. But hear them between the sentences. Hear them, please. I will be screaming them to you.”

It’s that sort of madness that has many wondering if Beck is doing more harm than good (including Beck who wrote that very question in an email to Sarah Palin). It isn’t just liberals who are wondering this. According to the article in the Times Beck’s raving is causing some consternation amongst many conservatives and even his colleagues at Fox:

“Several Fox News journalists have complained that Beck’s antics are embarrassing Fox, that his inflammatory rhetoric makes it difficult for the network to present itself as a legitimate news outlet. Fearful that Beck was becoming the perceived face of Fox News, some network insiders leaked their dissatisfaction in March to The Washington Post’s media critic, Howard Kurtz, a highly unusual breach at a place where complaints of internal strains rarely go public.”

This is nothing new. In recent months former Foxies have been all too willing speak up. Jane Hall, an associate professor in the School of Communication at American University, and a Fox News contributor, quit Fox in part because of Beck. Eric Burns, the former anchor of Fox News Watch told the press that he is grateful that he no longer has to “face the ethical problem of sharing an employer with Glenn Beck.” And it isn’t just jealous on-air competitors. The Times went on to reveal that Beck’s bosses are also having second thoughts:

“The cross-promotion can be a sore spot at Fox News, particularly for its president, Roger Ailes, who has complained about Beck’s hawking his non-Fox ventures too much on his Fox show.” […]

[Ailes has] been vocal around the network about how Beck does not fully appreciate the degree to which Fox News has made him the sensation he has become in recent months. In the days following Beck’s Lincoln Memorial rally, which by Beck’s estimate drew a half-million people, Ailes told associates that if Beck were still at Headline News, there would have been 30 people on the Mall.”

While Ailes is a potentially dangerous enemy, he has enemies of his own. Members of Rupert Murdoch’s family, who will inherit his media empire, have not been shy about their distaste for the programming style of Ailes. Murdoch’s son-in-law publicly said that he was ashamed and sickened by Ailes.

In all likelihood, Beck probably feels that he can afford to weather these storms. He sees himself as a messenger from God with a congregation of devotees who will support him and, if necessary, avenge him. Fox would be treading on thin ice if they contemplated canceling his show. This is one of those situations where Beck would have to be caught with either a dead girl or a live boy before he could be cast off. In this case we can add any connection to the sort of acts of domestic terrorism that his outrage inspires.

So even though Beck disgusts you, and me, and his fellow hosts, and his bosses, and even himself, he is going to have to slip up pretty bad to lose his perch.

Tea Party Coloring Book Causes White Crayon Shortage

Posted by on September 30, 2010 at 12:37 pm. 3 Comments :

A new coloring book has hit the shelves that is based on the Tea Party and openly advocates for the principles espoused by the right-wing movement. The publishers say that sales are brisk. But this has resulted in an unforeseen problem that could dampen demand for the book.

There is now a worldwide shortage of white crayons. In order to properly fill in the Tea Partiers portrayed in the book, kids have exhausted the current supply of white drawing implements. America’s children are eager to represent the movement accurately, and this has caused a run on many toy stores. Parents have begun advertising on Craigslist and other sites in a frantic search to satisfy the desires of their kids.

Some parents, in a fit of desperation, are trying to to persuade the young artists to use other colors. “That’s why they call them ‘colored people,'” one anxious mother vainly tried to explain to her crestfallen son.

In addition to the marketplace chaos, the coloring book’s content has political connotations. I wonder what Sean Hannity would have to say about this. He, and many other Fox News shoutcasters, have railed against President Obama for what they called “indoctrination” of children whenever the administration spoke to students or distributed learning materials to schools. And it didn’t have to be a government entity to stir up the Foxies wrath. Private companies and non-profit groups received the same treatment and were likened to Nazis poisoning the minds of our youth. Yet this book has not generated the same criticism despite its explicit advocacy of partisan opinion, as seen in this excerpt from the book:

“When taxes are too high, the high tax takes away jobs and freedom. In 1773 we had a Tea Party and this led to freedom from high taxes. Today we are having another Tea Party and this will lead to freedom from high taxes again!”

The reaction to this book from Fox News isn’t nearly as hostile as their response to anything similar from the White House or those who published more liberal fare. In fact, Fox provided valuable airtime to promote the book and its publisher, which should serve to boost sales. The selective outrage exhibited by Fox and other conservatives demonstrates that indoctrination is not regarded as threatening if it is coming from the right.

Revised and corrected cover of the The Tea Party Coloring Book:

Glenn Beck Quivers In Fear Of One Nation Working Together

Posted by on September 29, 2010 at 3:56 pm. 10 Comments :

Last week Glenn Beck offered his best wishes the organizers of the One Nation Working Together rally. He supported their right to assemble and hoped that they would have a successful event. He expressed the same sentiment toward the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies. At the time it was clear that he was only trying to get on record as appearing to be unconcerned with them. Obviously he doesn’t really want them to succeed.

This week his true feeling have come to the surface. He has spent the past couple of days, both on radio and TV, bashing the One Nation rally as a collection of traitorous degenerates with ties to Stalin or Satan or something:

“All of these groups, and the President of the United States, want nothing short of fundamental transformation of America. It is not about cleaning up corruption. It is only a beginning. A beginning of a radical, revolutionary Marxist land.

“Do not allow them to get away with the lies. Do not allow them to say that we are just one nation working together. We’re just trying to put America back to work and put America back together. These people, a lot of them, have fought their entire life to destroy America.”

So now Beck demands that his disciples not allow these deceivers to get away with their plot. It makes me wonder why he previously was so supportive of it. Is he perhaps in on it and these new comments are just a ruse to draw suspicion away from himself? He has associated the President with the rally as well, although there has been no White House involvement of any kind.

Beck has been yammering about some of the groups listed amongst those who have endorsed the One Nation rally. While, by far, the most populous factions are connected to unions and civil rights advocates, the list does include far-left organizations like the Communist Party USA. But there needs to be a distinction made here that is critical to understanding these relationships. The groups in the list have endorsed the rally. The rally is not endorsing the groups in the list. If Beck wants to disparage the rally because a few groups he considers to be evil have endorsed it, then he should condemn his own “Restoring Honor” rally last month because it was endorsed Birchers and racist, white nationalists like Stormfront.

It’s hard to understand how anyone can take Beck’s criticisms seriously. In the middle of his communists-are-everywhere rant he went to the absurd extreme of displaying an old communist tract with the phrase “Yes we can,” on the cover. To Beck that was irrefutable evidence that Obama, who used the same phrase during his campaign, is himself a communist. That will come as disturbing news to Bob the Builder:

The real purpose of Beck’s attack on One Nation is to try to preemptively discredit the event before it occurs. I think he underestimated the potential success of the event at first, but now he is beginning to worry that it might just surpass his Fundamentalist Revival Meeting in attendance and make him appear weaker and impotent by comparison. So now it has become imperative for him to take steps to suppress turnout and to build an argument to dismiss it after the fact.

You don’t flip from being patronizingly supportive to asserting a partnership with Lucifer overnight without some sort of catalyst. The catalyst here is that Beck is afraid. He fears the One Nation rally will eclipse his Holy Rollover Acute Paranoia Revue and find him facing the thing he fears most of all: irrelevance.

Fox News Pimp James O’Keefe Tries To Deep Throat CNN

Posted by on September 29, 2010 at 11:42 am. 3 Comments :

James O'KeefeFox News porn star and convicted impostor James O’Keefe has managed to land himself in the news again in another embarrassing exploit that is becoming routine for this loser.

CNN is reporting that O’Keefe attempted to ensnare a CNN reporter in a juvenile and salacious prank aboard his boat that was designed to embarrass the reporter and the network:

“A conservative activist known for making undercover videos plotted to embarrass a CNN correspondent by recording a meeting on hidden cameras aboard a floating ‘palace of pleasure’ and making sexually suggestive comments, e-mails and a planning document show.

James O’Keefe, best known for hitting the community organizing group ACORN with an undercover video sting, hoped to get CNN Investigative Correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat filled with sexually explicit props and then record the session, those documents show. “

The first place O’Keefe went wrong was in thinking that any rendezvous with him would constitute a “palace of pleasure.” More like a “rathole of wretch.” O’Keefe’s scheme was so misguided and revolting that his own accomplice blew the whistle and alerted Boudreau to the plot. Additionally, emails and other documents were obtained that revealed how lame and desperate O’Keefe is trying to come up with a sequel to his ACORN escapade. Those documents include detailed plans that described setting up their love boat with a condom jar, dildos, pornography, fuzzy handcuffs, and a mirror on the ceiling. O’Keefe’s plan called for him to make an introductory speech for the video that went like this:

“My name is James, I work in video activism and journalism. I’ve been approached by CNN for an interview where I know what their angle is: they want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort…”

“Instead, I’ve decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I’m going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I’m going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she’ll get seduced on camera and you’ll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath.”

“Please sit back and enjoy the show.”

Gee. I wonder why anyone would want to portray O’Keefe and his friends as crazies and non-journalists. All the great investigative reporters in the past have sought to seduce their colleagues who were working on stories about them. Edward R. Murrow would never go anywhere without a jar of condoms, and Bob Woodward’s dildo collection was legendary. He would never have won over Deep Throat without it. The planning document also contained a projection of how they thought the dialogue would go between O’Keefe and Boudreau:

AB: Is this a gag?
JO: Abbie, I’m not really into S&M, so I don’t have any toys like that…
AB: No, is this a joke, are you kidding?
JO: Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were talking about S&M, what do you mean is this a gag?
AB: You can’t be serious, I’m married.
JO: Abbie, there’s never going to be a right time for you and I. There’s only right now. We have to make the most of the time we’re given, and we’re being given right now.
AB: Are you serious?
JO: I’ve never met a woman like you, one who had the drive, ambition, and the same creative power, the same creative juice. We’re the same person Abbie, We’re meant to be together. I’m serious because my heart is serious.
AB: James, this is not professional.

Boudreau wrote in her response to this scam that it was so juvenile she suspected that the real scam was the revealing of the fake scam. That shows good sense on her part. For anyone else that might have been the case (and maybe still is). After all, in his own dialogue he has Boudreau behaving professionally and rejecting his advances. Here is Boudreau’s video account of the meeting:

O’Keefe really is this juvenile. It fits his persona that is obsessively preoccupied with sex (i.e. his pimp and hooker routine). And speaking of persona, here is how his document described the one O’Keefe planned to assume: “James should have a more sleazy persona than normal.” That’s a tall order, but one I’m sure O’Keefe is up to. And he even has a contingency in the event his plot is discovered that includes this advice:

“…point out the hypocrisy in CNN using the inherent sexuality of these women to sell viewers and for ratings, passing up more esteemed and respectable journalists who aren’t bubble-headed bleach blondes…”

I assume he means more esteemed and respectable journalists like Gretchen Carlson, Martha MacCallum, Megyn Kelly, and Courtney Friel. Compare those brainiacs to Candy Crowley or Susan Candiotti or Christiane Amanpour (who recently moved over to ABC).

Remember, O’Keefe is best known for his prank on ACORN wherein he reportedly dressed up as a pimp and accompanied his hooker (Hannah Giles) to ACORN offices to elicit some sort of embarrassing video. As it turns out, he never wore the pimp outfit as he claimed. That was part of his elaborate and misleading editing of the video done after the fact. ACORN was later absolved of any wrongdoing and were shown to have acted appropriately in reporting O’Keefe to the police.

He went on from there to his now famous affair in the office of Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. That mission got him a conviction for pretending to be a telephone repairman and seeking access to the Senator’s phone system.

After that, O’Keefe enlisted himself in a census scam wherein he tried to assert some sort of impropriety on the part of the census takers. That scheme was so devoid of content or authenticity that Breitbart wouldn’t even carry it.

It is important to note that O’Keefe is not some fringe player on the right who is dismissed by more sober and thoughtful conservatives. He was featured on Fox News numerous times and was named the Power Player of the Week by Chris Wallace, anchor of Fox News Sunday. He is supported and published by Andrew Breitbart, one of the right’s most popular media mavens. He won the Impact Award at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year.

The conservative establish embraces their young soldier, they are proud of him. And why shouldn’t they be? He represents all of the same values of corruption and deception that has been part of the right’s platform for decades. He is their puppy and they will honor and protect him. What do you think the odds are of Fox News covering this story?

[Update, 9/30/10] As expected, there was no reporting on this story by Fox News. Not a single report about their rising star whom they featured so prominently a few months ago. Also, Andrew Breitbart not only failed to post a story about his protege’s pleasure palace, he denied in a tweet that he was even associated with him. Never mind the fact that O’Keefe posted a story on BigGovernment just one week ago.

Obama: Fox News Is Ultimately Destructive To Country’s Long-term Growth

Posted by on September 28, 2010 at 11:48 am. 22 Comments :

President Obama has not been shy in the past expressing his views of Fox News. It is always encouraging to hear him or his spokespersons articulate clear-eyed perspectives of the network that has made it their mission to destroy his administration and elevate hostility to unprecedented levels. Even before he was elected he knew:

Obama: I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls. If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?

In a new interview in Rolling Stone Magazine, President Obama has once again stated the obvious as regards Fox news:

Rolling Stone: What do you think of Fox News? Do you think it’s a good institution for America and for democracy?

Obama: [Laughs] Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.

That’s still somewhat more forgiving than I would have been. Fox is not guilty of merely expressing “a point of view.” They shamelessly traffic in lies and personal insults. They have called him a racist, a socialist, and by virtue of their false assertions of him being a Muslim, they imply that he is either a terrorist, or a terrorist sympathizer.

These are the sort of allegations that used to be the exclusive domain of lunatic fringe groups. But Fox has promoted them to the mainstream. They have made it possible for establishment politicians and pundits to parrot the most preposterous rhetoric. And they have provided a platform on television, radio, print, and the Internet, to peddle their invective.

So while Obama continues to be more conciliatory than perhaps he should be, at least he recognizes the basic truth that the Fox model of news can only be harmful to the country in the long-term. I would suggest that it is also harmful in the short-term, and any term in between.

Limbaugh, O’Reilly, And Beck. Oh My

Posted by on September 27, 2010 at 5:45 pm. 2 Comments :

A new poll by Politico and George Washington University has some interesting data regarding the Three Stooges of the American Right.

It will certainly boost the giant, economy-sized egos of these already self-absorbed narcissists to learn that they ranked highest in terms of favorability in the survey. And if they stop reading there they will be fine. However, upon closer examination they will find that they are also ranked as the three most unfavorably viewed in the poll.

I guess you either love ’em or hate ’em. But don’t ever accuse them of being divisive.

What You Missed At The Beverly Hills Tea Party

Posted by on September 27, 2010 at 10:37 am. 24 Comments :

In lieu of the next 1,000 words…


The much ballyhooed Beverly Hills Tea Party took place yesterday and exceeded all expectations – for lameness. It was the epitome of a Beverly Hills Flop. The turnout was a paltry couple of hundred in a city of four million. And, not surprisingly, it was almost exclusively white.

Just to underscore the significance of that, the population of Los Angeles, which surrounds the tiny patch of real estate that makes up Beverly Hills, is only 49% Caucasian. It would be nearly impossible to snap a photo at random anywhere in L.A. County without capturing a fair representation of people of color. Only at a Tea Party could this homogeneity be accomplished. [Note to Tea Partiers: Relax, that’s not a gay reference. Look it up]

What they hope to achieve by staging an anti-tax rally in the heart of one of the most affluent communities in the country is difficult to surmise. The denizens of Beverly Hills are the prime benefactors of Republican policies that favor the rich and well-connected. And since those are the same people who bankroll the Tea Party you can’t help but notice a certain conflict of interest. The sad part is that the Tea Partiers have fallen for this crusade on behalf of the enfranchised insiders and truly believe that these elitist millionaires are fighting for the interests of working and middle class citizens.

The festivities were led by ancient pop crooner Pat Boone. And it just got better from there. The speakers roster included the terminally choleric Andrew Breitbart, the neo-fascist David Horowitz, and internationally renowned political analyst Victoria Jackson, who sang her big Tea Party hit “There’s a Communist Living in the White House.” That’s just a representative sample of the reality-based insight emanating from the 90291 stage.

And what Tea Party would be complete without Fox News pumping up the propaganda volume? William La Jeunesse covered the event for Fox like a giddy high school newspaper correspondent at a Justin Bieber concert. After a perfunctory acknowledgment that L.A. is predominately liberal, as are many actors, directors, etc., he says that behind every one of those celebrities are numerous grips, electricians, and production people, who he implies would sympathize with the Tea Baggers. Had he spent more time in Hollywood he would know that those people are mostly union workers who support health care reform, Wall Street regulation, taxing the rich, and other Democratic initiatives that form the basis of the Tea Party’s grievances.

To be sure, there are celebrity types who embrace conservative causes, including those held by the Tea Party. They include inspiring contemporary artists like Chuck Norris, Jon Voight, and Ted Nugent. But if they think that their little soiree in the park adjacent to Rodeo Drive is an indication of their widespread acceptance, they are even more delusional than was previously believed.

NewsBusters: The Most Powerful Name In Stupid

Posted by on September 26, 2010 at 8:29 pm. 6 Comments :

You know that you’ve reached new lows in stupidity when you make it necessary to defend CNN/Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz. But Noel Sheppard, NewsBusters’ Associate Editor, can hang his head in pride at having achieved just that feat.

In an article “analyzing” a segment of Kurtz’s Reliable Sources, Sheppard manages to demonstrate an astonishingly deficient ability to comprehend simple English. In this segment Kurtz correctly criticized Fox News in general, and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity in particular, for falsely asserting that Democratic Delaware senatorial candidate Chris Coons had “admitted” to being a Marxist. The basis for the assertion was this excerpt from an article Coons wrote 25 years ago in college:

“I spent the spring of my junior year in Africa on the St. Lawrence Kenya Study Program. Going to Kenya was one of the few real decisions I have made; my friends, family, and professors all advised against it, but I went anyway, My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe a strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear thinking Americans and sends back Bearded Marxists.”

It’s plain from reading this that it was Coons’ friends who raised the subject of his being a Marxist, and even that was clearly stated to be a joke. There is nothing there resembling an admission of Marxism, and there is no way a person with a functioning cerebrum could arrive at that interpretation. Which neatly explains how Beck and Hannity managed to do so. Kurtz, for whom I rarely find anything worthy of commendation, deserves credit for calling out the pair of Fox News hacks for their blatant and deliberate deceit.

Here’s where NewsBusters steps in to lather themselves in shame. Sheppard begins with an inquiry as to why Kurtz didn’t mention a previous article that appeared in Politico and referenced the Coons article. Sheppard asks…

“Why didn’t Kurtz scold Politico? After all, [Politico author Alex] Isenstadt appears to be the first national reporter to bring this article to light.”

The answer, of course, is that Isenstadt never alleged that Coons confessed to being a Marxist. There is nothing wrong with drawing attention to prior writings by political candidates. The problem comes when someone dishonestly portrays the contents of it, as Beck and Hannity did. Isenstadt didn’t do that so there was no reason for Kurtz to scold him.

Next Sheppard quotes a line from Isenstadt’s article that cites Coons’ campaign spokesman calling the “bearded Marxist” reference a joke. Sheppard then asks…

“Is this where Kurtz got the idea that the whole article was a joke? From Coons’s campaign spokesman? That doesn’t seem like good journalism, does it?”

Sheppard wouldn’t know good journalism if it reached out of his monitor and slapped him. The first idiotic hokum in this question is the premise that Kurtz held that “the whole article” was a joke. Kurtz never said that, nor did Coons or his spokesman. But where Sheppard goes off the rails is by suggesting that Kurtz got the idea that it was a joke from the campaign spokesman’s comment rather than from the actual text of Coons’ article that said explicitly, “My friends now joke that…” It was right there in black and white, in the original article, that Kurtz, and everyone else who can read, got the idea that it was a joke. It couldn’t be more clear if you pasted a picture of Henny Youngman above it. I guess it’s that clarity that accompanies reality that confused Sheppard.

And yet Sheppard persists in making a fool of himself. He concludes his analysis by complaining that Kurtz has a double standard because he criticized the coverage of Coons but not that of his GOP opponent, Christine O’Donnell. However, Kurtz was criticizing the Coons coverage because it was wrong. The coverage of O’Donnell was merely replaying video of her own performance on television. Nobody mischaracterized what she said, they just broadcast it as it was. If there was something wrong with it, even Sheppard didn’t bother to point it out. But he did take one more swing at the debunked smear that Coons was a self-avowed Marxist:

“As such, an autobiographical article by Coons in which he referred to himself as a bearded Marxist is all a joke while comments O’Donnell made concerning her religious faith are somehow relevant to this campaign.”

Once again, Coons did not refer to himself as a “bearded Marxist,” and his friends who did so were joking. And both candidates’ histories are relevant to the campaign, but they must be presented accurately. Unfortunately, Sheppard prefers the lying gasbag approach.

~~~

On a separate matter from the same program, Kurtz earned himself another commendation by calling out his own network, CNN. They declined to broadcast a story of war atrocities by Michael Ware due to graphic imagery. Kurtz observed that a story of this importance should still have been aired, and if the images were deemed too disturbing they could have simply left them out of the broadcast. He also took the network to task for refusing to make anyone available to discuss the matter. Kurtz deserves credit for that position. I hope we see more of this sort of media criticism going forward, but I’m just a cockeyed optimist.

Fox Nation: The Week The Democrat Media Industrial Complex Died

Posted by on September 26, 2010 at 12:08 pm. 11 Comments :


Classy as always, Fox Nation has posted a headline graphic of an ass with its head up its ass (and, no, it isn’t Bill O’Reilly, which would have made more sense). Remember, this is the online face of Fox News, an enterprise that wants to be viewed as a legitimate purveyor of journalism. I guess that this is the visualization of what journalism means to Fox News.

The accompanying text reads: The Week The Democrat Media Industrial Complex Died. OK then, that settles it. Since this is the week it died it is safe to assume that there will be no more assertions of Democratic control of the media; no more accusations of the press being dominated by liberals; no more whining about bias against conservatives. All of that died this week, so SHUT UP!

Of course, the illusion of the liberal media has always been a false claim by conservatives who can’t take honest criticism. The notion that a few multinational media corporations, run by billionaires, whose self-interests are squarely aligned with the right, are somehow advancing liberal ideas could only be believed by a mental patient with a fresh lobotomy.

The article that the Fox Nationalists linked to from their juvenile image was posted on a site (jedeckart.com) named for a character in the movie Red Dawn, a favorite of rightist revolutionaries and Tea Baggers everywhere. Eckart was a militia-style dissident fighting a guerrilla war against Russian invaders. It is a mythology that appeals to right-wingers who pine for a new civil war.

The content of the article is just a short list of cliche conservative complaints. Only one even relates to the media. Obviously the Fox Nationalists just wanted to exploit the link for its headline which they must have found amusing.

Now that the fictional Democrat Media Industrial Complex has been declared dead, let’s get to work on the real Corporate/Media Complex that is perverting our press. Let’s break up the Big Media conglomerates that monopolize the industry. And let’s reveal the distortions and dishonesty of propagandists like Rupert Murdoch, Phillip Anschutz, and the Koch brothers. Addressing these real problems with a media that seeks to further its own power and profits will do far more to move us forward than the childish posturing we see on Fox Nation.

Uh Oh. CNN Takes A Sharp Turn Toward Hell

Posted by on September 25, 2010 at 1:50 pm. 4 Comments :

Remember the old days when CNN was the dominant cable news network? Or the even older days when it was the only cable news network? I didn’t think so. It was a long time ago. Viewers today don’t appreciate how remarkable an achievement it was to launch a 24 hour news channel when nothing like it existed at the time.

Whether or not you like Ted Turner, you have to give him credit for being a pioneer, although given the state of cable news today, I’m not sure he’d want the credit/blame. However, he recognized the unique environment in which his experiment was born, and he further recognized the changes that took place in subsequent years that preclude anyone from ever doing the same (see My Beef With Big Media).

Now CNN is mired in third place, overtaken by a bombastic, right-wing, agenda-driven, Fox News, and a lukewarm, marginally liberal, MSNBC. So it should come as no surprise that the brass at CNN would be looking to shake things up in hopes of recovering their glory days. To that end, yesterday CNN announced that its president, Jon Klein, would be leaving the network. That, in and of itself, would appear to be a routine response to poor performance in the marketplace. The problem here is not that Klein is leaving. It’s who they are elevating to his post that is worrisome.

Ken Jautz, presently the head of CNN’s HLN (formerly known as Headline News Network) has been tapped to replace Klein. He is a brash, iconoclastic, executive who is more interested in ratings than journalism. But perhaps the most disturbing item on Jautz’s resume is that he is the man who brought Glenn Beck to HLN, and to television. Looking back at that millstone in broadcast media is one of the best ways of getting a handle on what may be in store for a Juatz-run CNN. Here is what he had to say upon hiring Beck back in January of 2006:

“Glenn Beck is the next piece of the puzzle,” said HLN prexy Ken Jautz. “Glenn’s style is self-deprecating, cordial; he says he’d like to be able to disagree with guests and part as friends. It’s conversational, not confrontational.”

If Beck is Jautz’s idea of cordial, I hope never to meet anyone he considers to be rude. What’s more, Beck is not known for having guests with whom he disagrees, friendly or otherwise. And the notion that he is not confrontational is absurd on its face. Calling the President a racist; charging that progressives are a cancer; tagging anyone with whom he disagrees a Marxist; declaring his hatred for Woodrow Wilson as well as 9/11 families; these are not behaviors generally associated with being non-confrontational. Jautz went on to say…

“As part of the continued evolution of the network, we wanted another primetime show,” Jautz said. “We didn’t look for a conservative, a liberal or anyone of a particular ideology. It was about getting the best talent that would resonate with the most viewers.”

Well then, it’s a good thing he wasn’t actually looking for a conservative. He would have ended up with a modern version of Attila the Hun (or did he anyway?). It should also be noted that his desire to find the “best talent” who would “resonate” with viewers, was unfulfilled. Beck’s show was a dismal ratings failure on HLN. He would not be a success until he moved to Fox News with its built-in audience of pre-cooked FoxBots.

Given the remarks Jautz made when taking over HLN and bringing Beck into the fold, it is fair to say that he was somewhat disingenuous with regard to his public appraisals. And he was similarly disingenuous in private. In the book “Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck And The Triumph Of Ignorance,” author Alexander Zaitchik noted that Jautz mislead his employers at the time as to his intentions in reforming the channel:

“Facing a staff weary of rumored changes, Jautz gently presented Blue Sky [his programming initiative] as a trial balloon. He promised that CNN standards would not be diluted in the makeover and that soon-to-be-hired Headline News personalities would not appear on traditional CNN news programming. He broke both promises.”

Indeed he did. Glenn Beck not only appeared on CNN, he was permitted to fill in as a guest host on Larry King Live. Taking into consideration the duplicity of Jautz’s comments when he assumed command of HLN, it might be prudent to take note of what he is saying now with regard to his promotion at CNN. Jautz was interviewed by The Wrap and said…

Q: Can we expect a tone change, or any sort of ideological shift?
A: I think that CNN needs to be as lively and engaging and as informative as it is known for its reporting.

Whatever that means.

Q: For a long time, Jon Klein resisted any sort of partisan programming — especially as expressed by the hosts. Can we expect to see more opinions — or at least opinionated hosts — under your watch?
A: CNN has always been about adhering to non-partisan programming in general. And it will continue to be.

However, I do not believe that “facts-only” programming … it will not work. Viewers, if they’re looking for just the news, they can get that anywhere now. The news that happened that day, they probably know already. They want context, perspective and opinion. And we’re going to give that to them. As long as it’s non-partisan, in the aggregate, from all ends of the spectrum.

In other words, we will continue to be non-partisan except when we’re being opinionated. And none of those pesky “facts” that clutter up the news.

Jautz did improve the standing of HLN. But he did it by ramping up the volume with shouters like Beck and Nancy Grace, and by diving head-first into the tabloid world of pop culture and celebrity gossip. Could that approach help to restore CNN’s prior leadership? Who cares? It isn’t what anyone who truly cares about responsible journalism would want.

And that’s the problem with contemporary corporate media: It is more interested in serving the shareholders than in serving the public. Unless Jautz has recently had a revelatory transformation, CNN has taken a giant step backwards by giving him the reins to the network. The prospect of the man who launched Glenn Beck’s television career running a cable news network is troubling, to say the least.

In related news, NBC/Universal has announced that it’s chief executive, Jeff Zucker, will also be leaving his post. This is an entirely different situation than the one at CNN. NBC is presently the number one network in evening news, morning news, and Sunday news. CNBC is still the top business channel. Plus, under Zucker’s reign, MSNBC moved up from third place to second. The staffing change at NBC is due to its imminent acquisition by Comcast. It remains to be seen who will be replacing Zucker.

Sometimes these sort of changes are merely shifts designed to put a new management’s imprint on the merged entity. But Comcast has baggage that makes it important to keep an eye on them. And they will have an unprecedented range of influence as a result of the merger. Stay tuned.