Month: September 2012

Fox News Struggles To Find A Line Of Attack For Michelle Obama’s Speech

Posted by on September 5, 2012 at 4:17 am. 4 Comments :

Day one of the Democratic National Convention is over and now the the biggest threat to Barack Obama’s convention appearance is rising to the level set by his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama.

Michelle Obama
America. We Built That!

The First Lady has set the bar so high that the convention’s headliners, including Bill Clinton, are going to have to bring their best game in order not to be overshadowed. Her speech hit on every level – emotional, political, personal – and served as an inspirational motivating kickoff to the President’s campaign.

The speech was so good, in fact, that Fox News was sweating bullets in an effort to find something to complain about. Immediately following Michelle’s address, Chris Wallace came on and described her performance as “masterful” before descending into criticism that it was negative and focused too heavily on government solutions. Then Fox turned to Bret Baier who also began with praise for Michelle as a prelude to bashing the segment in her speech where she said that the President didn’t “care if you’re a Democrat or Republican.” Baier perpetuated the myth that Obama is a divisive figure when in fact it is the GOP that has engaged in unprecedented obstructionism. Finally, the world’s worst pundit, Dick Morris, published an editorial on Fox News online that conceded that Michelle’s speech was powerful, but asserted that she was selling herself and not the President.

Expect one or more of those themes to be sprinkled throughout Fox’s programming on Wednesday until they find some mud they think will stick. One desperate smear attempt is already taking shape in the form of a soundbite plucked from a DNC video where the narrator says…

“We are committed to all people, we do believe you can use government in a good way. Government’s the only thing that we all belong to. We have different churches, different clubs, but we’re together as a part of our city or our county or our state. And our nation.”

The Fox misinterpretation of that centers on the phrase “Government’s the only thing that we all belong to.” Their tortured reasoning pushes the notion that this is a message that the government owns us. However, the actual context makes it clear that the meaning of the word “belong” in this usage is not ownership, but membership. While we all have different personal associations and relationships, we are all still Americans. That’s the message of patriotic unity that Fox and other right-wing manglers like Breitbart, Malkin, and Ericksen, are trying to twist into statist slavery.

Despite Fox’s efforts, Michelle’s speech is probably going to be received positively by the vast majority of those who see or hear it. It may go down in history as the best speech by a First Lady ever. The writing was sharp and emotive. The delivery was heartfelt and exuded both strength and empathy. And the only problem with it is that it presents an enormous challenge for the remainder of the convention’s speakers to live up to. However, if Barack is worried he doesn’t show it in this picture from the White House where he watched Michelle with his daughters (and a special guest):

Watching Michelle

Motor City Jackass: Romney Surrogate Ted Nugent Threatens Obama Supporters

Posted by on September 3, 2012 at 2:50 pm. 10 Comments :

Last March Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney personally solicited the endorsement of washed-up raunch-rocker, and demented pseudo-patriot Ted Nugent. At the time Nugent disclosed Romney had phoned him and that “after a long heart&soul conversation with MittRomney…I endorsed him.”

Last week Nugent appeared at a senile rockers concert in Ft. Worth and delivered a message to the audience that was really meant for people who wouldn’t be caught dead (literally) at a Nugent affair:

“I vow that I will use our freedom to get these dirty c*ck-suckers out of the White House. The president is a bad man. The vice president is a bad man. They’re all bad people. If you don’t get that, you’re a dead motherf*cker.”

Ted Nugent & Mitt Romney

It is not particularly noteworthy that Nugent said something hostile and stupid. He rarely says anything else. But somebody needs to hold Romney accountable for the sort of people who he has embraced as his surrogates. Nugent’s latest tantrum is obviously profane in the extreme, but it also borders on terrorism. What exactly does he mean when he says that people who “don’t get that” are “dead.”

This is a man who has made openly hostile threats before. Last April he earned a visit from the Secret Service for saying “If Barack Obama becomes the President in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” And then there was his notorious meltdown at a concert in Chicago where he brandished automatic weapons and shouted…

“Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk? Obama, he’s a piece of sh*t and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns. Let’s hear it for them. I was in New York and I said, ‘Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch.’ Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns. Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore.”

President Obama is constantly hounded by the press any time a remotely liberal person says something that Tea-publicans find offensive, even if the speaker has no relationship to Obama or his campaign. But Nugent was personally selected by Romney to represent his candidacy, yet he is never asked to repudiate Nugent’s abhorrent behavior. That’s the “liberal” media for you.

News From The Future: Viewers Tune Out Obama’s Convention Speech – Ratings Plummet

Posted by on September 2, 2012 at 12:40 pm. NO Comments :

The Republican National Kvetch-a-Sketch wrapped up last Thursday with a speech by Mitt Romney that threatened to put the makers of Ambien out of business. The speech was mostly notable for what he left out.

The television audience for Romney’s address was less than spectacular. Nielsen reports that about 30 million people viewed the speech. That’s down 25% from the 40 million viewers of John McCain’s nomination acceptance speech in 2008. And most analysts would not have put anticipation for McCain’s speech very high.

Fox News chose to ignore the dismal ratings for what they said was the most important speech of Romney’s political life. However, that cannot be said about Fox’s coverage of the Democrat’s convention next week in Charlotte, North Carolina. My sources from the future tell me that Fox News will feature bold headlines announcing that President Obama’s popularity, measured by the television ratings for his re-nomination speech, has crumbled in comparison to 2008’s ratings. Here is the headline from Future Fox declaring that American’s have rejected Obama:

Future Fox News

Never mind that most analysts expect the ratings to decline considering that the last time around Obama was a new face on the political scene and the first African-American ever nominated for the presidency by a major political party. And set aside the fact that Fox didn’t think that Romney’s dismal ratings were newsworthy. It’s a pretty good bet that Fox will make a different assessment should Obama’s ratings fail to match or surpass those from 2008. And should he come up short, we can expect stories to proliferate on Fox and other right-wing media celebrating the downfall of Obama.

It’s important to remember that Obama does not need to match the exceptional ratings produced by an historic election year. He simply needs to stay ahead of his opponent through election day. Prior to the GOP convention, Romney’s campaign gave a Powerpoint presentation wherein they projected that Romney would get an 11 point bounce in the post-convention polls. So far Romney’s bounce has been a statistical zilch. So their prognostications are about as reliable as their “facts” are provable.

Another interesting observation from the television ratings is that the decline for Romney occurred almost entirely on networks other than Fox News. For Fox the drop was only 2% from 2008. The other broadcast and cable networks lost between 25% and 50%. What that tells us is that Fox’s audience is still just as insular and cult-like as ever, while the other networks more accurately reflect the lower levels of engagement in the current campaign. The result is evident in the degree to which Fox viewers have such a divergent and unrealistic appraisal of the political landscape. All they know is what they see on Fox with it’s distinct biases, so they come away with far more negative views of the President and far more positive impressions of Romney’s prospects for victory.

We’ll know by next Friday whether my future correspondent is correct. If so, the results will be posted here at News Corpse. Until then, I’ll see you in the future.