Day: 6/13/2013

Sarah Palin Returns To Fox News: Two Desperate Peas In A Pod

Posted by on June 13, 2013 at 4:49 pm. 5 Comments :

This has got to be a hoax. I waited a couple of hours just to make sure there wasn’t a late breaking announcement that the the whole thing was a prank cooked up on Twitter. But so far, the news is holding up.

Sarah Palin has been rehired by Fox News.

This is fantastic news. With all of the dark reckonings in recent weeks – the IRS, Syria, tornadoes, etc. – this could not have come at a better time. It has literally brightened my day. And that’s true even though Greta Van Susteren thinks that Palin’s return will drive liberals crazy. Yeah, right. Crazy with joy.

Sarah PalinYou still have to wonder just how desperate both parties must have been to renew their vows (ironically on the same day that Rupert Murdoch announced that he and his third wife are getting divorced. Coincidence?). Fox had managed to unload some ratty baggage when they ousted Palin. Her star had fallen in every venue. Her books weren’t selling. Her cable reality shows were canceled. Her movie flopped. All she had left was her Facebook postings. That paints a pretty good picture of why Palin would be anxious to grab some attention.

As for Fox, after the 2012 election debacle they hired losers like Allen West, Scott Brown, Erick Erickson, Herman Cain, and Mark Levin. Apparently that star-studded roster was not enough. So they have come a-courting Palin. It’s likely they got her at bargain basement prices. After they split in January, Howard Kurtz reported that Roger Ailes had offered her a low-ball contract at a fraction of her previous salary.

We’ll see if Palin manages to earn her keep this time around. An estimate of her prior stint showed that Fox had paid her $15.85 per word for the three year term of her contract. At the time I speculated that they could get her for $15.85 per hour in six months, which is right about now. I sure hope Fox didn’t overpay.

Glenn Beck Welshes On Promised Info To ‘Take Down The Whole Power Structure’

Posted by on June 13, 2013 at 12:11 pm. 11 Comments :

A few days ago Glenn Beck claimed that his vocal cords were paralyzed and he was unable to speak. He then delivered a ten minute sermon with cue cards on the need to end the division in America and to come together with love. This was just one day after he called Michelle Obama a monster.

Beck has been plagued in the past by a variety of health problems including hemorrhoids, blindness, nerve damage in his hands and feet, and of course, paranoid schizophrenia. So it was not surprising to hear about his latest medical tribulations. There seems to be one whenever he needs to boost his media quotient.

Glenn Beck
From News Corpse, The Acclaimed Ebook:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth

But yesterday, apparently, his voice was miraculously back and in fine form. All the better for him to declare that he was in possession of earth-shattering news that will “rock” the country. Let me allow Beck to explain it himself (video below):

“This country is, I believe, going to be rocked in the next 24 hours with some things that are going on in Washington and beyond that we found out about yesterday. And we will be telling you in great detail in the next 24 hours. […] You are going to witness things in American history that has never been witnessed before. We have a whistle-blower on something. […] My people have seen one document. One. This one document would take down pretty much the whole power structure. Pretty much everything. […] It will take down the GOP. It will take down the Democrats. It will take down many members of congress. It will take all of them down.”

Are you scared yet? Beck insisted that this information was so damaging that his source was in fear for his life. Beck also said, contradicting his voiceless condemnation of divisiveness, that this will divide the nation. That’s a curious assertion, because if it is going to take down Democrats and Republicans, who is there left to divide?

Well, it has already been more than 24 hours since Beck promised to unleash his explosive dialogue. He has completed his broadcast today with no mention of the power structure’s take down. This can only mean one thing…

Apparently the power structure has taken down Beck. Someone has obviously gotten to him. Maybe his paralyzed vocal cords were a warning. What other explanation could there be for his not making even a single reference to his shocking announcement yesterday? If there were any hope that Beck is still acting of his own accord, he could easily have said that circumstances required him to delay the disclosure, or that he is conducting further investigation. He could even have said that his source turned out to be wrong. But to go completely silent on the matter after yesterday’s impassioned proclamation is just too much to dismiss cavalierly.

It’s safe to assume that his source has been terminated and now Beck is racked with fear for himself and/or his family and has decided to clam up. Or perhaps he is being watched by a shadowy figure just out of camera view. It could be the agents of Agenda 21, or the Common Core conspirators, or the UN’s gun confiscation squad, or even the {gasp} IRS. For now, whatever he planned to reveal will remain a mystery for such time as Beck’s safety has been compromised.

But fear not. Beck’s infamous bravery (see his confrontation with frightful professional wrestlers) and devotion to country will propel him to find a way out of this nightmare and he will fulfill the mission for which God has selected him. After all, he has seen “the finger of God,”

Glenn Beck - Finger of God

Just stay tuned to his radio program, subscribe to his Internet videocast, buy his books, and send him any spare change you find in the sofa cushions. That’s surely the best way to help him now in his hour of need.

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Honored By Ultra-Rightist Bradley Foundation

Posted by on June 13, 2013 at 9:30 am. 6 Comments :

Roger AilesConfirming what everyone with a pulse already knows, Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News, is a revered figure in the realm of wealthy, right-wing, evangelical, political manipulators. The latest evidence is the tribute to Ailes from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, an organization that rivals the Koch brothers for their advocacy of extremist conservative issues. Huffington Post reports that…

“Over the past decade, the Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation has given away more than $400 million to fund conservative causes, including school voucher campaigns, anti-union ‘right to work’ laws, pro-marriage initiatives, global warming denial groups and efforts to combat voter fraud.”

The Bradley has also been one of the biggest funders of AstroTurf Tea Party groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, as well as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a secretive assembly of corporations and politicians who draft custom legislation to enrich themselves.

In his acceptance speech, Ailes spewed typically jingoistic rhetoric that reeked of American supremacism. His words betray a repulsive bigotry that seeps into the reporting on Fox News every day.

Ailes: “We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by others, many who of whom want to impose their culture and laws under the manufactured utopian idea that all cultures are equal and most are better than America’s.”

Ailes doesn’t say who the “others” are who have been manipulating us. However, his use of the term is just the sort of divisive alarmism that bigots generally employ. Ailes also doesn’t bother to describe what the American culture is. Considering that the United States has grown out of a wildly diverse population of immigrants, it would be difficult to define a specific set of cultural elements that compose an American identity, unless it is one of wild diversity. In which case, it is the imposition of other cultures that has specifically shaped what is unique about us.

Nevertheless, Ailes goes on to state that…

“Traditional American culture influenced me greatly as I created the Fox News Channel for Rupert Murdoch. We knew that a fair and balanced news channel could succeed, as long as no views were rejected and conservative views were allowed to be heard.”

It’s interesting that he claims to reject no views, but only stipulates that conservative views be heard. That subtle prejudice is affirmed in the following paragraph where Ailes praises his network for reporting stories that others do not. He cites as examples the Dr. Gosnell story, the trumped up Benghazi hysteria, and the IRS/Tea Party affair – all conservative leaning news items. And with regard to the IRS, Ailes ventures off into conspiracy theory lunacy by advancing nutty allegations about the hiring of some 16,000 armed IRS agents enforcing ObamaCare (when is he going to give Alex Jones a show on Fox?).

As if to tie up his speech with a demonstration of the ignorance and shallow thinking that is so rampant on Fox News, Ailes makes the absurd (and factually erroneous) statement that…

“You know how I know this is a great country? Because everybody is trying to get in, and nobody is trying to get out.”

First of all, it is ridiculous to try to establish America’s greatness by what those on the outside think. There are at least as many foreigners who hate, or disapprove of, America, as admire it. What’s more, there are millions of people who want to get out of America. Three million leave every year. As for the people trying to get in, they are not doing so because America is great. They are coming because America is rich. Contrary to the worshipers of wealth with whom Ailes associates, that is not the same thing.

It is entirely appropriate that Ailes would receive this tribute from an organization that celebrates Randian-style greed and selfishness. And his acceptance speech perfectly illustrates his devotion to that philosophy. It’s just too bad that the $250,000 award is going to someone who is already a multimillionaire, and whose life has been dedicated to hiring other rich people to tell middle-class people to blame the poor for all of their problems.