Month: April 2011

Andrew Breitbart’s Latest Lie Attacks Labor And Academia

Posted by on April 29, 2011 at 5:15 pm. 8 Comments :

Andrew BreitbartJon Lovitz used to have a character on Saturday Night live known a the “pathological liar.” He would simply make up things to impress his associates and, as he settled on the perfect deceit, would exclaim, “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Andrew Breitbart has taken this notion to new levels. His capacity for dishonesty is boundless and entirely devoid of shame. The latest episode in his recurring series of video lie-fests takes place at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. The video posted at his BigGovernment blog shows a professor and a guest lecturer engaged in a discussion that includes statements that imply they are advocating violence on behalf of labor interests. “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” The only problem with this expose is that, like just about everything else Breitbart does, it isn’t true.

Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC, is the professor in the video. She responded to Breitbart’s smear in an email with several examples of how Breitbart fiddled with the content to deliberately convey a meaning that did not exist in reality. For instance, she writes…

Breitbart is a master of taking quotes out of context, deletion of what doesn’t serve his purpose, and remixing to achieve totally different meaning. For example he has me saying:

o Breitbart’s version: “Violence is a tactic and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.”

o The real version: After students had watched a film on the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, they were discussing nonviolence. I said, “One guy in the film. . . said ‘violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.’. . . ” The class proceeded to discuss and debate this.

It is apparent that Ancel was quoting somebody in the film, not expressing her own views. This is typical of Breitbart and his ilk. It is the point I was making when I posted this video of Glenn Beck admitting that he idolizes Adolf Hitler:

Media Matters has some of the obviously manipulated video as well as the uncut versions that reveal Breitbart’s purposeful deception.

This project has all the earmarks of Breitbart’s modus operandi. It is precisely what he did to Shirley Sherrod. It is the very same tactics he used against ACORN, along with his protege, James O’Keefe. However, there are no credits for the video other than the name “Insurgent Visuals.” It’s odd that no one would want to take credit for what they must regard as a brilliant piece of investigative journalism.

However, after some investigation of my own, I discovered that Insurgent Visuals has a web site. Surely there would be some indication of who was responsible for this story. Nope. Just a short statement on their “About” page saying “We are a small collective of motivated political actionists intent on changing the world.” They are also intent on hiding their identity.

So I continued my investigation and discovered that Insurgent Visuals also had at one time a blog at BlogSpot. The blog was no longer available, but I was able to access it via Google’s cache. Once there I noticed that the blog’s contributors were Bruce Bronson, and some guy named — James O’Keefe! Who’da thunk it? So O’Keefe, a well-known lying video manipulator may have had an invisible hand in Breitbart’s new anonymous smear campaign. He’s certainly the guy I would call if I wanted to produce a phony videotaped assault on someone.

Prof. Ancel’s response to the video is worth reading in full. It outlines the dishonesty that Breitbart perpetuated as well as her outrage at having the privacy of her students violated and the forum for free expression in the classroom replaced with a chilling mood of fear and distrust. The email in full follows:
 
Contine reading →

Glenn Beck vs Glee/My Chemical Romance

Posted by on April 29, 2011 at 2:49 pm. 4 Comments :

We already know that Glenn Beck is a delusional paranoid whose analysis of world affairs is on a par with a lobotomized baboon (no offense intended to baboons). And we have already witnessed his hallucinatory ramblings about commie-infested art planted throughout Manhattan. But now Beck has assumed the role of music critic and the results are just about what you would expect.

On his program yesterday he set off on a tirade against an episode of Glee that featured the cast performing “Sing” by My Chemical Romance. Of course, he divined a meaning to the segment that could only exist in his decayed brain. His dementia was so complete that he kept going back forth from praising the show as brilliant to condemning it as a nightmare:

“I’ve watched it in stunned horror combined with a sense of admiring awe. It is a brilliant, brilliant show. Very, very, very well done. But it is a horror show.”

With his standard demeanor reeking of shock and fear, Beck attempted to convey the danger that he saw in this evil teenage music. He displayed a few of the lyrics on screen to illustrate the horror that these demonic rockers were imparting to our innocent children:

Cleaned up corporation progress, dying in the process
Children that can talk about it, living on the railways
People moving sideways, sell it till your last days
Buy yourself the motivation, generation nothing
Nothing but a dead scene, product of a white dream.

Reading those words, I couldn’t quite figure out what Beck was so worked up about. Was it the insinuation that corporations were involved in something nefarious? Was it the ambiguous reference to a “white dream?” Beck never really explained it himself. He simply said that…

“This is propaganda and it’s an anthem. It’s an anthem saying, join us. How can you and I possibly win against that?”

Win against what? An anthem calling for what? Joining what? Beck never says. So I went to the source. I looked up the song on a video that contained all of the lyrics. I’ll report, you decide:

So far as I can tell, this is song that inspires self-esteem and the determination to stand up for yourself in the face of critics and bullies and the martinets of conformity. It’s a call for pride in individualism and a rejection of corporate mandates of style and character. It’s a tribute to the honor of outcasts and those whom society regards as defective.

No wonder Beck is afraid. The more kids listen to this message, the harder it will be for them to be manipulated by commercial evangelists like him; the harder it will be to sow doubt and insecurity; the harder it will be sell useless crap that promises to make you popular and desirable. This song is an assault on the crass consumerism that fattens Beck’s wallet and those of his sponsors.

This song’s refrain is seemingly dedicated to Glenn Beck: “Sing it out for the ones that’ll hate your guts.”

[Update] My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way responded to Beck on his blog. My favorite part:

“I’m actually shocked that no actual fact-checking was done on the lyrics. I mean Fox is a major news channel, covering factual topics in an unbiased and intelligent – oh wait-“

Well said.

Priorities USA: More Of This, Please

Posted by on April 29, 2011 at 11:06 am. 6 Comments :

Prioroties USA just released this video exposing the dangers of the extreme (aka mainstream) Republican/Tea Party:

Transcript: The extreme right is aptly named. They are extremely powerful, extremely well-funded, extremely frightening, extremely paranoid, extremely hateful, extremely irresponsible, extremely ill-informed. And just plain extreme. Which makes them all extremely dangerous. It’s time to stand up and fight back. Join us at PrioritiesUSAAction.org. Taking on the politics of fear and smear.

This video addresses the cream of the rightist assault on America. It covers everything from the Koch brothers, to Glenn Beck to Karl Rove and more. The folks behind Priorities USA are familiar Democratic operatives like Bill Burton, former deputy White House spokesman. The group appears to be a lefty version of Rove’s CrossroadsUSA.

It’s about time. While these sort of groups are exploiting the onerous Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court that permits unlimited, anonymous donations by corporations, as long as that decision is the law of the land, the GOP should not be alone in benefiting from it. In fact, Democrats should exploit the hell out of it in the hopes that Republicans will eventually see the harm and join Democrats in drafting a legislative repeal.

So, as the video says, “It’s time to stand up and fight back.”

Fox News Hosting GOP Debate With No Debaters

Posted by on April 28, 2011 at 3:54 pm. 8 Comments :

Does this say more about Fox News or the Republican slate of candidates for 2012?

“It’s slated to be the kickoff event of the 2012 Republican primary season. But as a scheduled May 5 debate hosted by Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party rapidly nears, it’s unclear whether any major presidential candidates will actually be there.”

Actually, it’s unclear whether any candidates at all will actually be there. So far, not a single candidate has confirmed their intention to participate. The debate is scheduled for next Thursday, May 5, with a deadline for confirmation on May 3. That leaves just three business days to comply with a long list of requirements for participation. Fox is stoically insisting that the show will go on.

To be fair, this isn’t the first GOP primary debate that was scuttled this season for lack of candidates. An NBC/Politico debate at the Reagan Library was set for May 2, but that one was postponed until September.

The GOP field is conspicuously hesitant to make a commitment to running. Most haven’t even formed exploratory committees. And of course, some, like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, are delaying any statement in order to continue collecting paychecks from Fox News. So, in effect, Fox is keeping candidates out of the race by keeping them on the payroll. That’s an unprecedented intrusion into the political process by a media entity.

If Fox News is lucky they might get Buddy Roemer and Rick Santorum to show up. That should provide a stimulating and valuable forum for curious Republican voters. Otherwise it may be up to whoever they get to moderate the debate to fill an hour with right-wing propaganda – in other words, just like any other hour on Fox News.

Let’s Keep Kicking Fox News While It’s Down

Posted by on April 27, 2011 at 8:15 pm. 12 Comments :

Fox News’ ratings are beginning to reflect the general disenchantment that America is experiencing with the lunatic fringe as represented by Republicans and Tea Partyers (but I repeat myself). In the latest Nielsen reporting for April 2011, the most prominent Fox programs have precipitously declined:


What is especially notable about this is that almost all of the competing cable news programs saw robust increases in viewers in the same time period – many up by double digits (including Rachel Maddow who beat Sean Hannity last Friday). The one exception is MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, but that is only because it is being compared to Keith Olbermann’s numbers for Countdown which was in O’Donnell’s time slot last year.

This is part of a continuing downtrend for Fox and the Right-Wing Carnival that includes Birthers, Climate Hoaxers, Unplanned Parenthoodies and, of course, Tea Baggers. The recent tax day rallies sponsored by the Tea-publicans struggled to attract a few dozen whiny protesters, while Democrats and union members showed up by the tens of thousands to protest rollbacks of long-held rights for workers. Town hall meetings are being crowded with progressive citizens intent on rescuing Medicare from regressive GOP legislation. The ultimate cinematic fantasy of rightist ego-centrism, Atlas Shrugged, is such an abysmal failure at the boxoffice that the producer has already come out publicly to state that he is reconsidering his plans to expand the release and make any sequels.

It appears that the audience for idiocy is drying up. And the primary platform for aggregating that audience, Fox News, is feeling it where it hurts – in the ratings. They have already ejected the king of the idiots, Glenn Beck, whose program has been losing viewers and advertisers for months. Now it’s time to return focus to the remaining disinformers on Fox like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, and Neil Cavuto. These people were every bit as bad as Beck before Beck joined the network, and they should not get off the hook now.

By maintaining pressure on Fox News we can have a real impact on the media environment. Viewers must be made to feel embarrassed by any association with the network of lies. And other media organizations must cease to regard Fox as a legitimate journalistic enterprise.

This is the time to ramp up efforts to prod cable companies to make all news networks available on the basic tier so that there aren’t some that have unfair advantages over others. And while we’re at it, we should advise our cable providers that we will cancel our service rather than pay more to support Fox News. Fox is presently renegotiating some of their cable contracts and demanding much higher fees. We need to make the argument that they don’t deserve them, particularly if it impacts the bills of consumers who don’t want Fox to begin with.

There has never been a better time to advance this cause. Fox is weakening by the day, and we have the wind at our backs. Keep up the pressure. Keep educating your family and friends. Keep Tweeting and sharing on Facebook. Fox is wobbling and it will fall down if we push hard enough.

[Update:] A new Gallup poll confirms the evolving distaste for right-wingedness. The Tea Party unfavorable ratings are at their highest point ever.

Atlas Sucks As Fox & Friends Suck Up

Posted by on April 27, 2011 at 5:03 pm. 3 Comments :

OK, this has got to be embarrassing.

The kids in the Fox & Friends Day Care spent a couple of minutes yesterday fluffing Atlas Shrugged and feigning amazement at its unprecedented success. Steve Doocy beamed that it’s “amazing” and that “it has really taken off.” Brian Kilmeade exuberantly delivered the film’s stats saying that “this is a lot of money for people in the business – they say this is staggering.” He gleefully mused that “the profit’s gonna go through the roof.” Juliet Huddy was glowing as she claimed that there was so much demand for the film that the producers “don’t have enough copies of the film.” She continued saying that “It sort of just came out of nowhere and it really blossomed.”

Wow! This must be a blockbuster in the making. I may have to retract my previous article calling the movie a bomb. Or maybe not. Because today the producer came out and spoiled the whole thing for the Foxies by saying that “he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.”

“Critics, you won,” said John Aglialoro, the businessman who spent 18 years and more than $20 million of his own money to make, distribute and market “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,” which covers the first third of Rand’s dystopian novel. “I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2.”

Nice of him to blame it on the critics and not his shoddy filmmaking. Aglialoro also said that he is reconsidering his plans to expand to 1,000 screens by the end of this month. That decision is probably being helped along by the fact that there aren’t 1,000 theaters who want the film, despite Huddy’s giddy imaginings.

It’s all over for Atlas Shrugged. Rarely does a film’s producer go public with his project’s epitaph after the second weekend in release. All of the Tea Bag Media who were falsely claiming that the film was a surprise success are now revealed to be liars. And it doesn’t get much worse than the dishonesty exhibited by the Fox & Friends crew whose fatuous hype was deflated the next day by the film’s producer. That’s what they get for acting as the PR agents for a crummy movie.

Obama’s Birth Certificate Will Not Appease Wingnuts

Posted by on April 27, 2011 at 10:16 am. 4 Comments :

Since I posted this yesterday, the White House has prevailed upon the state of Hawaii to waive their policy and provide copies of his “long-form” birth certificate. In a statement the President said that “I have better stuff to do,” than be distracted by made up controversies. The problem is, the crackpots driving this nonsense don’t.

The release of this document is not likely to put the matter to rest. President Obama’s fanatic opponents will nimbly shift to challenging the authenticity of the document or some other equally demented, phony controversy. How can they let it go when they have so much invested in it?

Wingnut Extraordinaire and Swiftboat Liar, Jerome Corsi still has a book coming out next month titled “Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President.” Is there still time for the publisher (WorldNetDaily) to slap a disclaimer on the cover? Will they quietly permit their investment to become worthless? Not likely.

Donald Trump has already declared that this news is a personal victory. In his announcement he lost no time suggesting that the document might be a fake. But more significant is that he and other mental deficients have never rested their hallucinatory accusations on the birth certificate alone. As I wrote yesterday, they had previously set the stage for back-up conspiracy theories covering Obama’s religion (they still thinks he’s Muslim), his authorship of his autobiography (they think Bill Ayers wrote it), and his academic accomplishments (they think he’s too stupid to have gotten into Harvard).

Some allegedly sane Republicans have rejected the Birther arguments. They recognized that it does more harm than good to the party. They castigate its proponents as clowns. And some even accuse Obama of orchestrating the whole controversy to make the GOP look foolish (as if they needed any help). Obama has given these nutcases a gift. He has presented them with the opportunity to drop the lunatic pose and find something more relevant to the American people to demagogue. Will they accept it?

What now will become of the Birther entrepreneurs Orly Taitz and Alan Keyes? And what about Gary Kreep and his client Wiley Drake, the preacher who has prayed for Obama to die? His case is currently pending in federal court. Where will it leave Trump? Where will it leave Corsi? Where will it leave the Tea Party (AKA Republicans), 45% of whom think Obama isn’t an American citizen. Where will it leave Fox News?

So many questions, so little sanity.

Don’t Pigeonhole Donald Trump As A Birther

Posted by on April 26, 2011 at 12:55 pm. 13 Comments :

While Donald Trump has been manically proselytizing the Birther issue for the past few weeks, it would be a mistake to play down the broad scope of his fledgling (and most likely fake) campaign for president. He is so much more than a one-issue candidate. Take a look at the diversity of his platform:

Donald Trump

1) Obama’s Citizenship: This is without a doubt the cornerstone of Trump’s campaign. He talks about it at every appearance – even those where he pretends to not want to talk about it. Obama has shown the only document that the state of Hawaii issues for births. If Trump wants to continue to believe that the Obama family (and assorted communists and Muslims) hatched a plot almost fifty years ago to raise a mixed-race, foreign-born child to become an illegitimate president, that’s between him and his racist, delusional followers.

2) Obama’s Religion: Despite the fact that the President has repeatedly affirmed his devout Christianity, Trump suspects that he is secretly a Muslim and the proof may be on his birth certificate. Never mind that any religious designation on a birth certificate would be irrelevant. Obviously the baby Barack did not select his faith, but the adult has been clear and consistent.

3) Obama’s Authorship: Trump has embraced the WorldNetDaily crackpots who believe that Bill Ayers was the ghostwriter of Obama’s autobiography “Dreams From My Father.” The evidence of this fraud is the observation that both used certain phrases like going “against the current.” Well, that settles that.

4) Obama’s Academics: Most recently, Trump has questioned Obama’s academic career, insisting that he was too stupid to get into Harvard. He says he is investigating this (are they the same investigators he says he has looking into the birth certificate?). Of course it is documented that Obama had graduated from Columbia before getting a scholarship to Harvard where he became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. Oh, and by the way, Obama is currently the President of the United States of America, a job that Trump, with his bachelor’s degree from Wharton Business School, is lusting after.

See? Trump has a comprehensive outlook on all of the critical issues facing the nation, so long as the nation is as obsessed with phony, right-wing, Obama mythology as he is. In addition to those obsessions, Trump wants to balance the budget by stealing the oil from Iraq and Libya, and threatening a trade war with China.

Trump, or his affiliated businesses, have declared bankruptcy four times. He has the singular distinction of having operated a casino that went bankrupt (that takes real imagination and/or incompetence). Each time he restructured his operations he was forced to trade ownership share for more favorable terms on his debt and more time to repay. So his net worth is very likely far less than he’s leading you to believe. His current income probably consists mostly of his licensing his name to other real estate developers and appearing on a reality TV show alongside Gary Busey and Meatloaf.

What better resume could you want for a potential president? No wonder he is leading the Republican primary polling. The only thing more embarrassing than having Trump as the leading GOP contender is the fact that the rest of the field is even worse.

Rachel Maddow Beats Hannity’s Media Bias Special

Posted by on April 25, 2011 at 11:33 pm. 5 Comments :

It’s time for the folks at Britannica to replace whatever picture they’ve been using to illustrate “poetic justice” and insert Rachel Maddow’s picture in its place.

Last Friday, Fox News broadcast a special episode of the Sean Hannity program that promised to get “Behind the Bias,” of what he called the liberal, Obama-mania media. What was truly special about the show is that it came in second place to Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC. Maddow beat Hannity in the key advertising demographic of 25-54 year olds. How fitting for Hannity to lose to a liberal on the night he thought he would be exposing them.

Hannity began the program by saying…

“Now, it is common knowledge that the mainstream media, from the major television networks to the country’s most influential newspapers, are biased against the GOP.”

Common knowledge? Sure it is. It is common in that it is unexceptional or of inferior quality. And it is knowledge in the same way that lemmings “know” to follow their fellow lemmings off the cliff.

Hannity provided nothing in the hour-long program to support his opening assertion of bias against the GOP. He certainly didn’t address the fact that the top Sunday news broadcasts have featured far more Republicans than Democrats. And he failed to note that all three broadcast networks are owned by giant, multinational corporations with predictably conservative leanings. And there was no mention that even newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post advance conservative themes like support for Wall Street and foreign wars. And, of course, he didn’t discuss the role of Fox News itself as the preeminent organ of institutional bias and its being a part of a conservative empire that includes the Wall Street Journal, 27 television stations, dozens of newspapers, Internet sites, and satellite broadcasting.

The show was mainly a collection of incidents that Hannity regarded as bias. However, that does not actually prove bias. It only catalogs it. And since Hannity makes no effort to catalog all incidents of bias, including those on the right, he proves nothing. Furthermore, there is a difference between cataloging random, subjective soundbites by individuals, and conducting an objective content analysis that looks at the whole institution of the media. Hannity doesn’t come anywhere near that sort of examination.

In short, Hannity’s program on bias was blatantly biased. It would be easy to collect twice as many examples of right-wing media disparaging the left as Hannity presented directed at Republicans. But what is even worse is that Hannity had to manufacture some of his evidence of bias.

For instance, he played a clip of Katie Couric saying “Good morning. The Gipper was an airhead.” Hannity left that sentence fragment hanging with the implication that it was Couric expressing her own opinion. Had he played the clip for a few seconds longer, his audience would have heard her say “The Gipper was an airhead. That’s one of the conclusions of a new biography of Ronald Reagan that’s drawing a tremendous amount of interest and fire today.” She went on to say that the book’s conclusions were “startling” and that the author still thought Reagan was “a great president.” But Hannity chose to misrepresent a tiny slice of the comment in order to advance his phony premise.

It is heartening to know that Hannity’s hour of deceit was so poorly received. It is even more gratifying that he was beaten in the ratings by someone as conscientious and committed to honest discourse as Rachel Maddow.

House GOP Lawyer Is News Corp Board Member

Posted by on April 25, 2011 at 6:01 pm. NO Comments :

Earlier this year the White House announced that they would cease to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), believing that it was, in fact, unconstitutional. That stirred up a frenzy of Fox News fury over the audacity of the President refusing to enforce the law of the land. Of course, that utterly dishonest characterization distorted the fact that the administration was only declining to defend constitutional challenges, but would continue to enforce the law.

Not to be appeased, last week, Speaker John Boehner’s office announced that House Republicans would hire their own attorney, for $520 per hour, to litigate the GOP’s support for DOMA. The attorney they hired was former Bush Solicitor General Paul Clement of King & Spaulding.

Now ThinkProgress is reporting that King & Spaulding has dropped the case and Clement has resigned from the firm. King & Spaulding released a statement saying that they “determined that the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate.” However, speculation is that the firm, which has a strong track record with gay issues, acceded to complaints from gay advocates and concluded that this case was not consistent with its mission.

In the meantime, Clement announced that he would continue to represent Boehner’s pro-DOMA case with his new law firm Bancroft PLLC. Bancroft’s lead partner is Viet D. Dinh, a former high ranking official in the Bush Justice Department. More interesting is that Dinh is also a member of the Board of Directors of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the parent company of Fox News. This raises the question as to how Fox News will cover this constitutional controversy.

Fox has already taken a radical position with contributor Newt Gingrich warning that Obama could be impeached, saying that “clearly it is a violation of his constitutional oath.” Anchor Megyn Kelly said much the same thing, and contributor Monica Crowley went further, portraying the President as a dictator: “That is Mubarak Obama. You can’t just pick and choose which law you’re gonna enforce.”

If this is what we have presently with Fox News aggressively asserting its opinion on the matter of equality, what can we expect going forward when the counsel for House Republicans is working for a member of the Board of Directors of News Corp? Clearly, the legal ethics at Fox News is no better than their journalistic ethics.