Sarah Palin Look-a-Like Scott Brown Takes Her Place At Fox News

Posted by on February 13, 2013 at 1:40 pm. 6 Comments :

The worst kept secret in cable news has just been confirmed. After having lost the senate seat he held for a mere two years, Scott Brown has been hired as a contributor by Fox News.

Scott BrownFilling a role that was held by Sarah Palin until her recent dismissal, Brown is the new beauty pageant contestant turned politician who was unable to complete a full term in office to be scooped up Fox, just like Palin. His unique experience having done nothing of substance while in office other than criticize the President makes him the perfect acquisition for a network that has made its reputation by avoiding substance and bashing the Obama administration.

Fox has been struggling to persuade people that they are moderating their tone after having been embarrassed by election coverage that was grossly biased and detached from reality. So they canned Palin and Dick Morris as scapegoats for their ineptitude. However, they kept the core of their conservative message machine with Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Neil Cavuto, the Fox & Friends Kindergarten Krew, etc. What’s more, they hired Erick Erickson (who called a Supreme Court justice a “goat-fucking child molester”) and Mark Levin (who thinks even Republicans are socialists) was tapped to fill the Palin void on the Hannity show.

Anyone who believes that Fox intends to adjust their programming to be more neutral is terminally naive. They are merely throwing a life saver to one of their favorite politicians who is still a potential candidate for either the senate or governorship of Massachusetts in 2014. Fox is well known for employing prospective candidates for political office despite the breach of ethics that presents. They are currently allowing Geraldo Rivera to host his own show while testing the waters for a senate race in New Jersey.

Fox apparently was nervous about not having a Palinesque figure on their payroll, and now they can rest easier with Brown filling her designer pumps. Thanks to Brown, Fox’s tradition of shallow analysis and strident harangues will proceed without interruption.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: Record High Gas Prices Far Below Actual High

Posted by on February 12, 2013 at 10:11 am. NO Comments :

Be sure to read the book that Wonkette calls “A valuable contribution to the effort to chip away at Bullshit Mountain.”
Fox Nation vs. Reality

Perhaps the single biggest driver of economic activity among commodities is the price of gas. It impacts the economy on a multitude of levels from shipping to manufacturing to households, and of course, automobiles. Consequently, it is a favorite subject of Fox News to wield as a club when they believe that it will negatively impact President Obama. They are so enamored of this particular propaganda weapon that they will even deploy it if they have to make up the allegedly bad news.

Fox Nation

The headline plastered atop the Fox Nation web site yesterday screamed “Gas Prices Hit Record High.” The underlying article reported that the national average had just reached $3.59 per gallon. Those of you who pay attention to gas prices are now wondering how that figure can be described as a record high. After all, the national average gas prices were significantly higher in the past, most notably during the summer 2008, during the Bush administration, when they topped out at $4.12 per gallon.

Apparently the record being heralded by the Fox Nationalists is for a single day. It appears that $3.59 sets a record for all previous February 11’s. What the significance of that is remains a mystery. By itself it says nothing about the state of the economy or even the prospects for gas as a commodity. It doesn’t take into consideration the fact that there was a little old hurricane a couple of months ago that shut down imports and refineries throughout most of the eastern seaboard. Neither does it note the impact of the current blizzard slamming the region.

For Fox to misleadingly post a headline that claims record high gas prices without noting the qualification that it only applies to a single day is fairly typical of their journalistic malpractice. And it affirms that they are more interested in proselytizing a message of doom and fear than they are in informing their already ignorant audience.


Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Thinks Latinos Are Idiots

Posted by on February 12, 2013 at 3:40 am. 1 Comments :

“The president likes to divide people into groups. He’s too busy getting the middle class to hate rich people, blacks to hate whites. He is busy trying to get everybody to hate each other. We need to get along.”

That’s the first quote in a New Republic article profiling Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and his latest project to deceive and exploit America’s growing Latino community. And it frames the the rest of the article perfectly by illustrating just how delusional Ailes is if he thinks people are going to buy his Rodney King act.

Roger AilesRoger Ailes is, without peer, the most divisive media figure in America. His stewardship of Fox News brought us Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin. He presides over a ship of fools, liars, and racists who rip apart the fabric of this diverse nation, and now he wants us to believe our literally multiracial president is the source of our division and that Ailes genuinely wants us all to get along?

The truth is that Ailes has belatedly realized that the patently offensive portrayal of Latinos as illegal, drug-using, job-stealing, criminals, has had a negative effect on both the Republican Party’s electoral prospects and the network’s bottom line. So not long ago he added a web page to the Fox News site aimed at pandering to this audience while he continued to insult them daily on Fox News. The obvious contradiction was apparent in how the two entities covered the same story.

Fox News Latino

Note the Latino site’s adorable child draped in an American flag, and the Fox Nation site’s “illegals” handcuffed on the ground. That editorial disparity is evidence of Ailes’ intent to manipulate people for whom he clearly has no respect. And manipulation is at the core of the next quote:

“The fact is, we have a lot — Republicans have a lot more opportunity for them. If I’m going to risk my life to run over the fence to get into America, I want to win. I think Fox News will articulate that.”

Notice how Ailes started to say “we have a lot,” then switched to “Republicans have a lot,” having caught himself nearly admitting that Fox is indeed the Republican network. And his assertion that Fox will articulate a message that they want the people they characterize as invading moochers to be more successful in that pursuit is ludicrous. Ailes isn’t the least bit interested in moderating the rhetoric on immigration, despite his remarks to the New Republic:

“Republicans haven’t used the right language. They keep talking about illegal immigration. I think the word ‘illegal immigration’ is a false name. You are talking about two separate issues. One is sovereignty….Immigration is a separate issue.”

That is just gibberish. It’s Ailes’ way of justifying a position that discriminates and insults Latinos and ignores entirely that his network is the only major news enterprise that still regularly calls undocumented workers “illegals.” If he honestly objected to the term he could simply instruct his employees to discontinue the use of it. He hasn’t done that because he still regards them as illegals and he knows that his audience does as well. At least the Fox News audience. Now he also has to worry about the Fox News Latino audience and, according to the New Republic, he persists in clinging to the demonstrably false notion that there is no difference in the way they handle their reporting.

“There’s an assumption that Fox News Latino is softer on Latinos than Fox News in general. That’s ridiculous.”

For Ailes to support that view he would have to explain all the documented examples of Fox News Latino reporting stories in a relatively fair manner while the Fox mothership was blatantly disparaging and downright racist.

Ailes may have intended this New Republic piece to be a bit of PR to advance his campaign for Latino dollars and votes, but his own words betray the disrespect he has for the Latino community. And if he thinks he can fool them into thinking that his transparently self-serving Fox News Latino web site absolves him of any responsibility for the hatred oozing from the rest of his news empire, he really doesn’t understand people, and he will be sorely disappointed when he discovers that they are not as stupid as he thinks they are.


Texas GOP Congressman Invites Hitler To Holocaust Memorial Service

Posted by on February 11, 2013 at 4:01 pm. 4 Comments :

OK, that headline may be a little over the top. But only a little. The real story is that “Texas Congressman Invites Ted Nugent, Who Threatened The President’s Life, To The State Of The Union.” Yep, that is actually happening.

Ted Nugent SOTU

“I am excited to have a patriot like Ted Nugent joining me in the House Chamber to hear from President Obama,” [Rep. Steve] Stockman said on his congressional website on Monday.

Stockman is the GOP crackpot who promised to fight President Obama’s perfectly reasonable gun safety proposals with everything, up to and including, filing articles of impeachment. Now he will be personally escorting into the halls of Congress the washed-up schlock-rocker who publicly told Obama that…

“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.”

And then there was the time that he said…

“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 Vow

And who could forget his threat that…

“If Barack Obama becomes the President in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

Nugent is an utterly repulsive, pseudo-patriot whose very presence at the State of the Union is an insult to the solemn historical address that is mandated by the Constitution. Furthermore, it is an overt act of disrespect on the part of Stockman to invite a man who expresses such vulgar disdain for this president and the country who elected him. However, it does help to make clear the level of hatred that the Republican Party harbors and how eager they are to embrace the sickest freaks in their flock. America will be able to judge the dignity (or absence thereof) of the GOP and their guests as compared to, for instance, Michelle Obama’s guest, Cleopatra Cowley, the mother of slain fifteen year old Hadiya Pendleton, a victim of the sort of gun violence that is the predictable result of Nugent’s NRA agenda.

Stockman and Nugent are well aware of the deliberate controversy and divisiveness they are inciting. It is their intent to drive a wedge between Americans who are anxiously seeking common ground on the critical issues that will be discussed by the President. And it is the sort of brazenly political gesture that has resulted in Republicans sinking to record lows in favorability and congress having a lower rating than cockroaches, lice, and root canals.

[Addendum] Media Matters has posted a collection of 20 Inflammatory Comments by Ted Nugent. Don’t click unless you have a strong stomach. And while these remarks reveal Nugent to be a humongous douche nozzle, they say far more about the congressman who is making Nugent his date to the SOTU prom.


Pope TV: The Fox News Connection To The Vatican

Posted by on February 11, 2013 at 10:27 am. 2 Comments :

Well, here we go again. There’s gonna be another new Pope and for some reason American television is going to be plastered with wall-to-wall coverage of a religious enterprise’s loss of its CEO and their search for a new leader.

Pope TV

With the announcement that Pope Benedict will resign at the end of this month, it also seems like a good time to reprise this article about how a Fox News reporter became the PR man at the Vatican:

Awash In Scandal, Vatican Turns To The Pros At Fox News For Help
[June 24, 2012] It was announced yesterday that Greg Burke, the Fox News correspondent in Rome, has accepted the position of senior communications adviser in the Vatican’s secretariat of state. The article in the Associated Press notes that the Vatican has been having a number of problems such as “a scandal over Vatican documents that were leaked to Italian journalists,” […] “Benedict’s now-infamous speech about Muslims and violence, his 2009 decision to rehabilitate a schismatic bishop who denied the Holocaust, and the Vatican’s response to the 2010 explosion of the sex abuse scandal.”

When an institution as prominent as the Vatican requires professional guidance through a maze of public relations challenges as steep as these, it only makes sense that they reach out to experts in the propaganda arts. Conveniently, Burke was at hand in Rome and, as a member of the ultra-conservative Catholic prelature, Opus Dei, his accordance with Church dogma is not in doubt.

Presumably the Vatican is confidant that Burke will bring some measure of expertise to his new duties whitewashing the Vatican’s malfeasance. However, Fox News is better known for their prowess in inventing scandals that never occurred (i.e. Birthers, voter fraud, war on Christmas, fast and furious, etc.), rather than in quelling actual scandals. Nevertheless, Burke’s first statements after the hiring suggest that he is precisely what the Vatican is looking for:

Burke: You’re shaping the message, you’re molding the message, and you’re trying to make sure everyone remains on-message.

In other words, Burke will be doing for the church exactly what Fox News has been doing for the Republican Party for years. Which raises a question far more interesting than the one about a Fox News correspondent going to work for the Vatican: What was a member of Opus Dei doing covering the Vatican for an alleged “news” organization for the past ten years? That would be indisputably unethical. It would be fine if he were assigned to farm subsidies or Wall Street, but not the church with which he is so closely associated. That would be like having a top Republican strategist working as a political analyst at a news network.

Oh wait…Karl Rove is already doing that at Fox News. And Fox also employed four prospective GOP presidential candidates in the past year. And they also employ executives who were caught instructing their news staff to slant their reporting to favor Republicans. And they invite Republican politicians and advocates to appear on the air far more often than Democrats or liberals. Mitt Romney alone as appeared on Fox & Friends 21 times in the last year, while appearing only once on any Sunday network news program.

It may be be indisputably unethical, but it’s also the Fox News business model. Whether or not it works at the Vatican remains to be seen. However, the Republican Party and the Vatican have much in common. They are both trying to sell stories on faith to ill-informed people who are motivated by fear.

So get ready for the onslaught of PopeMania that is bound to persist at least until a new Pope is crowned sometime between now and the end of March. Mr. Burke is already on the story and has secured a high profile Op-Ed on Fox News written by John Moody, Executive Vice President and Executive Editor at Fox News, as well as a Pope John Paul II biographer. Moody’s article, not surprisingly, concludes by praising Benedict as “brave” and reminding the Fox Flock that “the promise of heaven [is] lasting and infinite.” You know…..journalism in the proud tradition of “We preach, you deify.”


Memo To Media: Don’t Cover The Phony Tea Party Response To The State Of The Union

Posted by on February 10, 2013 at 10:19 am. 5 Comments :

It was announced last week that GOP Sen. Rand Paul will be giving the “official” Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. In previous years it was Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann (who CNN carried live).

Tea PartyThere hasn’t been any indication yet of whether the media will carry Paul’s response live, but it should be noted that to do so would be a total farce. There is no such thing as the Tea Party. It is simply a fringe wing of the Republican Party. Rand Paul is, of course, a Republican. He represents the views of the rest of his party, as well as those of the person giving the official GOP response to the President, Marco Rubio (who is also a Tea Partier).

What this means is that the GOP is trying to get two bites of the post-SOTU apple. The media should not fall for this ruse. Paul was even quoted on CNN as saying that his remarks would not be competing with Rubio’s and would just be “extra.” Therefore, coverage of his comments would only serve to double up the opposition to Obama’s speech.

The Tea Party has recently sunk to new lows in support from the American people. Their caucus in congress is much smaller than that of the Democrats Progressive Caucus (Tea Party, 49; Progressive, 71), despite having more Republicans in the House.

If the media is intent on giving undeserved attention to the Tea Party, fairness would require them to give equal time to a progressive response. Perhaps they could invite Bernie Sanders to respond to the President. He would surely articulate a message that differs from the administration in greater measure than Paul would differ from Rubio. Or maybe they could call on Carolyn Maloney, whose advocacy of reforms for gun safety would be a timely subject.

In any case, it would be unethical for the media to grant an unpopular fringe group the opportunity to propagandize the nation when they already have an official spokesman in Rubio. And if they did so without balancing the coverage by presenting a progressive response it would affirm their right-wing bias. Will the media act unethically? Well, it aint like they haven’t before.

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Fox News Accidentally Posts – Then Deletes – Lesbian Wedding Photo

Posted by on February 9, 2013 at 11:38 am. 3 Comments :

The traditionalists at Fox News, who still think that women should be subservient to the men in their lives, have been publishing a series of articles by contra-feminist Suzanne Venker (niece of Phyllis Schlafly). Her basic premise is that modern women are worse off because of feminists butting in and fighting for trivialities like voting and equal pay and freedom from discrimination and violence. Venker blames feminists for what she believes is the inability of today’s women to land a husband (which is, of course, their sole reason for living).

From the start the articles were ripped apart by saner voices who respect the right of women to fully realize their potential in an equal society. But in the latest chapter, Fox News accompanied the article with a photograph meant to illustrate the joys of traditional marriage. The only problem is that the photo selected by Fox was one of two women celebrating their marriage – that’s right – to each other.

Fox News Lesbians

After a flurry of well-deserved mockery in the press and social media, Fox has now removed the photo of the joyful lesbian couple. Apparently the sight of wedded bliss between members of the same sex was too much for their sheltered audience. However, their choice for a replacement photo is just as worthy of mockery. Instead of a picture portraying the happiness of a loving embrace, they now have a generic symbol of neutered clip art figures safely not touching each other. That is surely an improvement to convey the article’s message of happiness through inequality.


Crazy Ann Coulter: We, Of Course, Found Weapons Of Mass Destruction In Iraq

Posted by on February 8, 2013 at 1:05 pm. 7 Comments :

Last night on CNBC’s “Kudlow Report,” (video below) Ann Coulter delivered another of her patented wingnut flameouts. In a discussion about the trumped up Benghazi scandal, Coulter called the media a “threat to democracy” before wandering off into a realm of such utter delusion that even Fox Nation picked up the story despite it being the work of their arch-rival NBC.

Ann Coulter

“The things that they went crazy over when Bush was president — I mean, remember that video at the White House Correspondents dinner? We, of course, found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but were not the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. He had a little video — I don’t know, like the dog looking for the weapons of mass destruction under the White House furniture. It was a silly little video. You would think someone died. Well, here in this case under Obama, four people did die.”

Let’s start with the easy part – Coulter’s absurd claim that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. That has proven false more times than anyone can count. No credible source, even on the right, is making that assertion. The most they can say is that the intelligence was wrong, but the evidence points to them fabricating and/or distorting the intelligence and giving credence to disreputable figures like the covert informant “Curveball.”

Moving on to the “silly little video,” it was not a dog that was looking for weapons. It was Bush himself, making an astonishingly insensitive joke about not finding the weapons that he used as an excuse for an invasion that cost the lives of more than 4,000 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Then for Coulter to snidely dismiss the righteous anger of those who criticized Bush’s silly little video by saying “You would think someone died,” she dishonored the thousands of Americans who did in fact die due to Bush’s deceit. And she compares those 4,000+ casualties to the four people who died in Benghazi at the hands of terrorists, not the incompetence of a corrupt administration.

Neither host Larry Kudlow, nor any of the other guests, bothered to correct Coulter’s gross misrepresentations of the facts. They all sat smugly as she lied and disgraced the memory of their fellow Americans. And this wasn’t even on Fox News. It was the Kudlow Report on CNBC, but it would fit in nicely as a lead in to Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity.


So F**king What? Fox News Thinks TV Promos Are Sermons

Posted by on February 8, 2013 at 11:22 am. 3 Comments :

Almost since its inception Fox News has confused the role of television journalist with that of televangelist. Their anchors and guests routinely veer away from reporting to the advocacy of what they regard as Christian values and dogma. If they aren’t waging battle in the War on Christmas, they are admonishing President Obama and others for not being sufficiently pious. Any perceived slight of religion by not saying “God” enough times in a speech or committing the sin of showing respect for the diversity of faith in America, is evidence of covert Satanism.

Today Fox News published an op-ed by Dan Gainor, the Vice President for Business and Culture of the ultra-rightist Media Research Center, with the title, “Reverend Al Sharpton expels God in MSNBC promo sermon.”

Fox News

Umm…What is a “promo sermon?” The video clip to which Gainor is referring is actually an advertisement for Al Sharpton’s program on MSNBC. It is no more a sermon than the familiar program interruptions that compel you purchase hamburgers or Viagra (although some of them can seem kinda preachy). Gainor’s characterization of the ad as a sermon exposes his own twisted analysis of media.

The specific complaint Gainor has is that Sharpton left out the words “under God” in a part of the promo that quoted from the Pledge of Allegiance. Sharpton said…

“We must have a renewed fight for many of the things we fought for. Because voting rights, and women’s rights, and the rights of people against discrimination, whether they’re African-American, Latino, lesbian and gay, must be protected, until we have a nation that is really living up to the creed of one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Not all of one kind. But all.”

So F**king What?

Gainor objected feverishly that Sharpton had not accurately quoted the Pledge. However, Sharpton left out almost all of the Pledge, including the part that said “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands…” Gainor didn’t seem to be the least bit upset about those omissions.

In fact, Sharpton only included the parts of the Pledge that directly related to the point he was making about the diversity of the American people and how they all need to be treated equally under the law. And no matter how obsessed Gainor is with proselytizing his faith, this was still just a TV commercial and not a sermon. It is typical for the far-right martinets of virtue to impose their perception of God on the rest of the country, but to turn a marketing promotion into a religious screed borders on the surreal. In America we do not worship via the solicitations that come in between programs on television. Unless, of course it’s for Goldline or Exxon or some false prophet being promoted by Fox News.


GOP Sleaze Meister Roger Stone Rears His Repulsive Head In Defense Of The Tea Party

Posted by on February 7, 2013 at 2:50 pm. 1 Comments :

With the GOP in a historic internal battle between the forces of the hard-right establishment (Karl Rove & Co.) and the confederacy of right-wing dunces (the Tea Party), an old warrior has made an appearance on the battlefield.

Roger StoneRoger Stone is a veteran Republican operative who cut his teeth in the nastiest campaigns of Richard Nixon. More recently he founded a group to oppose Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign in 2008, that he called “Citizens United Not Timid,” or C.U.N.T. So it is not particularly surprising that Stone would resurface in order to take the side of the Tea Party in their war against Rove. Nor is it surprising that Stone would find the most disgusting way to articulate his support for the inexorable Teabaggers. He told TPM Livewire that…

“These are the storm troops of the Republican Party. Don’t offend them.”

Hmm. I wonder how the Tea Party would respond to being compared to Germany’s special forces who advanced the art of brutality. With friends like Stone who needs enemas?

Keith AblowThe Tea Party is not the only new friend that Stone has made. Keith Ablow, the Fox News “Psycho Analyst,” was recently mulling a bid for the senate seat vacated by John Kerry. A couple of days ago he decided against entering the race and made this statement:

Ablow: As I made clear, with the sprint to the Special Election in June, a primary fight was not in my blood. I have conferred with my chief advisor Roger Stone, who agreed with my assessment of a primary as an unwise choice for me.

So Ablow has revealed that he has chosen for himself a chief advisor who calls Clinton a “cunt” and the Tea Party “Storm Troopers.” That’s a curious selection considering that Ablow regards himself as an exemplar of morality. Perhaps it was Stone who advised Ablow to praise Newt Gingrich for his serial infidelity, or to engage in diagnoses of public figures whom he had not examined, in violation of the ethics codes of the American Psychiatric Association.

Ablow has been a relentlessly repugnant presence on Fox News with his offensive misrepresentations of other people’s motivations. He further disgraced himself by coauthoring a book with Glenn Beck. But now that we know who has been behind the scenes giving him advice, it all makes much more sense. Ablow and Stone were made for each other, and if they weren’t both homophobic bigots we might see them one day tie the knot.