Day: 4/27/2011

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.