David Letterman And The Goon: Bill O’Reilly

Posted by on April 1, 2009 at 11:57 am. 1 Comments :

The latest installment of the ongoing episodic series, Letterman and the Goon, aired last night, and the madcap misadventures of this odd couple didn’t fail to entertain. The program began with David Letterman revealing how the show got it’s name when he told Bill O’Reilly that…

“I’ve always thought of you as a goon”

From there it segued into an endearing scene that demonstrated the touching bond between the two men, with Letterman obviously lying as he told O’Reilly that…

“You’re too smart to believe what you say.”

That compassionate attempt to spare the feelings of O’Reilly certainly drew a few tears from viewers (or at least Glenn Beck). Everyone knows, of course, that O’Reilly isn’t that smart at all, and likely believes everything he says, no matter how dishonest. But Letterman took the high road on behalf of his friend, just as he did when O’Reilly hilariously declared himself to be a journalist:

O’Reilly: “Glenn Beck is a talk show host. Rush Limbaugh is a talk show host.”
Letterman: “What are you?”
O’Reilly: “I’m a journalist.”

And how do we know that O’Reilly is a journalist? Because he “got a degree” that he “paid a lot of money for.” Well, that settles it then.

The pair did endure a bit of drama when Letterman raised the specter of Al Franken. O’Reilly tried to dodge the issue, saying…

“I’m gonna recuse myself because I don’t like Al Franken and it’s not fair to me to go on and say bad things about him and I don’t want to do that.”

Letterman challenged that position, pointing out that O’Reilly says bad things about people he doesn’t like all the time. O’Reilly insisted that it happens “very rarely.” By very rarely, he must have meant just about every night. Not only does O’Reilly frequently bash his perceived enemies (just ask Sean Penn, Helen Thomas, Jeffrey Immelt, the Dixie Chicks, and any of the hundreds he has labeled “Pinheads”), he has been particularly hard on Franken:

  • “You don’t get any lower than that man, Franken.”
  • “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in American politics – is this man maybe becoming a senator.”
  • “It’s personal with me. He’s lied about me. He’s slandered me.”
  • “The fact that he was even competitive […] depresses me about America.”

Those are all just love notes from a man who now says that it would “not fair to me to go on and say bad things about him.” No wonder Letterman closed the episode by saying…

“I’d like to see you in about six months for a cleaning.”

Precisely. A visit with Bill O’Reilly was pretty much the same as a visit to the dentist.

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If You Believe This Country Is Great, But…

Posted by on March 31, 2009 at 11:48 am. 6 Comments :

Glenn Beck, who has been reduced to tears more often than Tammy Faye Bakker, says that it’s because he loves this country – and fears for it. Apparently he feels that the country he loves is dangerously weak and will collapse, but for his weepy entreaties.

However, his expression of that love always seems to have a disclaimer attached to it. He only loves America if it conforms to his delusive vision. And it isn’t just a few principles or values. In fact, he adds new criteria every day. Here is how he opens every episode of his Fox News program, along with some of his qualifications for loving his country:

If you believe this country is great, but…

  • …progressive fascists are trying to destroy it, this is your wake-up call!
  • …you believe these weasels are really only as trustworthy as far as you can throw ’em — then your voice needs to be heard.
  • …you feel like the government is trying to steer us to mob rule lately, then it’s time to get back on the road.
  • …our government is trying to demolish everything that our founders stood for, it’s time to take our country back.
  • …fear the tyranny that’s starting to take hold, don’t stay silent.
  • …the government is clamping down on your freedom, now’s the time to throw the shackles off.
  • …the government’s solutions are the problem, what do you say we get the government out of the way.
  • …the government is putting our lives, liberty and fortunes in jeopardy, it’s time to say enough is enough.

That’s just a sampling of the many flaming hoops America must jump through to earn Beck’s affection. And it is no coincidence that most of them express an overt antagonism and require some sort of adversarial activism on the part of Beck’s disciples.

So what does Beck love about America? Well, on his program yesterday he hosted Burton Folsom Jr., a revisionist historian who believes that robber barons were beneficial to the country, and that FDR exacerbated the Depression. In the course of the dialogue, Folsom and Beck praised Henry Ford for opposing labor unions and refusing to participate in FDR’s National Recovery Administration. Of course, it was the labor movement that rescued America’s work force, and FDR’s recovery program that restored economic stability.

What Beck didn’t mention is that, at the very same time, Ford was helping to finance Hitler’s rise to power. While American workers were desperate for jobs, Ford opened a new plant in Germany. His anti-Semitic tract “The International Jew” was a Hitler favorite. And the Nazi regime awarded him the highest honor that a civilian can receive.

What, then, is the message that Beck intends to convey? Is it that we should turn to corporatist (i.e. Fascist) policies to allow the robber barons to return and save the nation? You would think so by his defense of AIG executives’ salaries and bonuses. Beck’s personal interest in this was obvious. Despite the fact that he makes tens of millions of dollars a year, he likes to pretend he’s a man of the people, and he had the gall to articulate this stuporously insensitive complaint:

“As a small businessman, I don’t know what they’re going to do next. I don’t if they are going try to come after me, if they are going to raise my taxes, if all of a sudden I’ve got to pay a new carbon tax, or I’m an unpopular… So you don’t know.”

That’s right, Glenn. You’re a small businessman, they’re all out to get you, and you’re an unpopular…(?). Thanks for enlightening us.

After all that, all I can say is … if you believe this country is great, but wealthy blowhards who produce nothing but hostility and division are distorting American values with their self-centered griping … Come on, follow me.


The Fox Nation Launches A Dud

Posted by on March 30, 2009 at 2:16 pm. 7 Comments :

This morning there was a disturbance in the Force. The Fox Nation debuted amidst fanfare and the gnashing of teeth at tea parties everywhere. However, reports of the Fox News secession movement appear to have been a little overblown (by me, mostly). The reality of the Fox Nation is significantly less substantial than previously predicted.

The Fox Nation is apparently not an attempt to abandon the Union (although my satirical representation of it as such was actually taken seriously by some right-wing conspiracy theorists across the InterTubes). It is merely a low grade, right-wing, knockoff of the Huffington Post. The partisan character of its Fox News parentage, however, is plainly visible. The “fair and balanced “ collection of articles featured at the top of its page (see picture above) present the President as “scary” and promote the rightist triumvirate of Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and Beck (oh my). Digging down further we find a plethora of partisanship in reporting:

  • Chris Dodd’s cavalcade of scandal
  • Lobbyist scandal to ensnare Murtha?
  • Dick Morris: Obama soft on terror, hard on charities
  • Daily Beast: Who did Pelosi’s face?
  • Affirmative Action for Muslims in the White House?
  • Stacked!! Obama fills town hall with supporters
  • Hannity holding Tea Party on Tax Day
  • WaPo interrogation story ‘rife with misinformation’
  • Video: Bill Maher smears US troops
  • Limbaugh ratings skyrocket after Democrat attacks

Of course the headlines on Fox Nation must not be taken too seriously. For instance, the article about Obama stacking his town hall with supporters doesn’t actually produce any evidence of that being done. In fact, it reports that invitations were sent to many groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. With regard to the Huffington Post, Fox Nation takes a swipe at them as well, with an article derogatorily titled, “Huffington Post to rummage through your trash.” The actual article is about a new investigative journalism venture by HuffPo, not some dumpster diving sensationalism. We’ll leave that to Fox. Recall also that O’Reilly has compared Arianna Huffington to Nazis. I don’t expect it will be long before he and the rest of the Fox lineup will escalate their war against HuffPo as a competitor the way they have with NBC.

Obviously the intent of Fox Nation is to inject a negative tone whether or not anyone ever clicks through to the articles. And it’s revealing to take a look at the heavily right-weighted array of news sources employed on Fox Nation – including four owned by Rupert Murdoch:

  • New York Post (Murdoch)
  • Wall Street Journal (Murdoch)
  • Fox Business Network (Murdoch)
  • The Sun (Murdoch)
  • Townhall.com
  • Michele Malkin
  • Andrew Breitbart
  • Washington Times
  • NewsBusters
  • National Review
  • Conservative Express
  • NewsMax
  • Matt Drudge

In the end, the Fox Nation is nothing more than a dressed up version of the Fox Forums that already pollute the web. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a potential threat to civil discourse and domestic tranquility. Fox Nation aggregates the Fox audience under a single banner that gives them an identity and a flag to fly. The comments section is as ideologically monochromatic as you would expect from the Fox stable of so-called “news” enterprises. It is also overtly hostile to anyone not sufficiently attuned to neo-Dark-Age conservatism. The community, hyped as “a place to call home,” is as rabidly anti-Obama as it is bewitched by Beck.

It’s still early, and perhaps this is just the first phase of the eventual division of America. It goes without saying that Fox has as its purpose to be divisive and that Fox Nation is in alignment with purpose. It just remains to be seen how far they will go. And for this reason it remains important to keep an eye on future developments.

This just in: Fox News Senior VP Bill Shine says of Fox Nation, “We’re calling it a mix between the Huffington Post and Drudge.” Hmmm.


Bill O’Reilly: MoveOn Forced CNBC To Hire Howard Dean

Posted by on March 29, 2009 at 7:47 pm. NO Comments :

Bill O’Reilly gets funnier by the day (or scarier, depending on your perspective). His latest broadcast falsehood is that MoveOn.org has wielded its mighty power to “force” NBC/Universal CEO Jeff Zucker to hire Howard Dean as a contributor to CNBC. This display of domination was allegedly in response to conservative commentaries by CNBC’s Jim Cramer and Mark Haines.

Even if someone was stupid enough to believe that a relatively small political activist group could boss around the chief of a major entertainment and news empire, the accusation is completely without foundation. In fact, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, who did some actual reporting, unlike O’Reilly, found that:

“…the decision to bring the recently departed DNC Chair on board, the source says, was finalized well before the current wave of CNBC-angst. So while grassroots groups have sprouted up in recent weeks petitioning the network to make wholesale changes, Dean’s hiring can’t be viewed as a direct result of public pressure.”

O’Reilly’s stupidity, however, extends even further. The source he quotes for his baseless and false allegation is Noel Sheppard. O’Reilly identifies him as the author of a column in the Washington Examiner. What O’Reilly doesn’t tell you is that Sheppard also happens to be the Associate Editor of NewsBusters, an arm of the uber-conservative Media Research Center. The MRC was just revealed to be the source for many ideologically twisted stories on Fox News, a fact that former anchor Brit Hume confessed just last week. Now O’Reilly has admitted that he too is disseminating MRC propaganda as if it were news. It should be noted that neither O’Reilly nor Sheppard produced any evidence that either MoveOn or Zucker played any role in Dean’s employment.

As if that were not enough, O’Reilly went on to disparage Dean saying that he “know[s] little about economics.” Where O’Reilly gets the gumption to knock Dean’s credentials is beyond me. Dean served as governor of the state of Vermont for twelve years. For a portion of time he was Chairman of the National Governor’s Association. Prior to that he was a Wall Street stock broker. And his father was a top executive at Dean Witter Reynolds. But O’Reilly, who expounds on economics every day is a former tabloid TV news reader. So on whose advice would you prefer to rely?

On the comedy tip, O’Reilly is even having trouble organizing his outrage. For years he has been hammering NBC and its cable units as being irredeemably compromised by wicked leftists. He reveled in characterizing them as despicable purveyors of group-think. The following quotation, however, reveals a psyche that is sorely starving for air.

“Now many on Wall Street believe Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric which owns NBC, has completely lost control of his company, including the actions of Mr. Zucker. The evidence of that is that MSNBC is supporting and promoting the same far-left loons that are hammering the sister outfit CNBC. I mean, how rich is this?”

First of all, the “many on Wall Street believe” canard is an example of a lazy intellect. O’Reilly won’t, and can’t identify these imaginary critics. Secondly, his complaint that MSNBC is critical of CNBC contradicts his contention that all NBC units think alike. Even worse, by mocking this diversity of opinion, he is implying that he would prefer it if they did think alike. Of course, he would prefer no such thing. He would simply go back to accusing them of being blindly and uniformly liberal. It’s the O’Reilly way


Fox News Secedes From America

Posted by on March 27, 2009 at 4:14 pm. 74 Comments :

Fox NationIt was just a matter of time. With all of the white-hot, ultra-hyperbolic invective radiating from Fox News screens across the land, there was really no escaping the obvious end game. The usual suspects in the Fox Confederacy have been so filled with revulsion by the neo-Socialist path that they believe the country is on, that they can no longer abide nor accept it. So now Fox News is preparing to depart from the union with a fanfare, a blast of light, a loud swoosh and gong. And an advertising campaign.

See also the update to this article:
The Fox Nation Launches A Dud

On first viewing of this ad I thought it may have been a joke akin to the Colbert Nation. It begins by declaring that “It’s time to say ‘NO’ to biased media.” Was Fox News coming clean and denouncing itself? No such luck. It was just that old “fair and balanced” Foxian doublespeak. Instead, Fox was announcing the birth of a nation – The Fox Nation.

This should not come as a surprise. There has been much foreshadowing of this inevitable outcome. Glenn Beck proclaimed his intentions last month when he said:

“…don’t get me wrong. I am against the government, and I think that they have just been horrible, and I do think they are betraying the principles of our founders every day they’re in office.”

Not to be outdone, Bill O’Reilly joins in with his view of a nation that is coming apart:

“We’d love to see America become more unified, but I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. There’s a struggle going on to redefine America. And in 2009, that struggle will become even more intense.”

Beck, O’Reilly, and others at Fox News and across the conservative landscape, have been employing their airtime to turn Fox into a rallying point for rightist revolutionaries. They are recruiting “Culture Warriors” who will be dispatched to “Tea Parties” until they can shout victoriously that “We Surround Them.” The battle lines are drawn and the broadcast brigades are deployed and armed for combat.

This is an unprecedented, and frightening, initiative to use a major television network as an organizing tool for political activism. The sort of advocacy work normally done by independent organizations like MoveOn or Freedom’s Watch is now being conducted by a billion dollar media enterprise with a well known partisan agenda. No matter how much the right wallows in their delusions of NBC or the New York Times being mouthpieces for the left, those institutions have never set themselves up as coordinating committees for social movements.

But this goes far beyond conventional interest group pandering. There is a strain of hostility that runs through the conservative ranks that borders on the violent. Just last April, Rush Limbaugh was encouraging riots in Denver at the Democratic Convention. Now the Fox Nation invites viewers to…

“Be a part of the REAL NEWS of America and join in the online community that believes in the right to express your views, your values, your voice.”

Indeed, the Fox Nation will be a “community that believes in the right.” For a taste of what to expect, just take a look at the community that Fox already provides on their Fox Forums:

Tom BB: America’s enemies rejoice now around the world and in the US. Obama the terrorist is in charge.

Steven: Hell No! Obama is of the devil!

drwoo: MAY OBAMA’S WIFE AND KIDS BE THE FIRST TO BE BLOWN UP, BURNED ALIVE OR HAVE TO JUMP OUT OF A WINDOW ON THE 88TH FLOOR (SPLAT). MAY OBAMA REAP WHAT HE HAS SOWN> AMEN!!!

Jim: The Antichrist has arrived and is doing well in the White House. Say goodbye to what we all know as a free and God loving America.

Jim P: WHEN THE BOYS FROM GITMO GET HERE OBAMA WILL GIVE THEM WELFARE,SECTION 8 HOUSING AND EVERYTHING ELSE THE STUPID ASS PEOPLE WHO PUT HIM IN OFFICE GET. LET THEM LIVE IN DC. THEY WILL BLEND IN WITH THE REST OF THE DC RESIDENTS! HOPE ALL THE LOW LIFE AND WELFARE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR OBAMA ARE HAPPY. BY THE WAY, WHEN WILL THE TICKETS TO THE FORD THEATER GO ON SALE?

Don Brown: Obama needs to be checked to see if he has a 666 somewhere on his body.

It is not presently known exactly what form the Fox Nation will take (We’ll find out on Monday, March 30). As a self-described “online community” it could be modeled on MySpace, which is also owned by Fox News’ parent company, News Corp. But the purpose of the Fox Nation is not hard to surmise. It is just another brick in the great wall dividing Americans from one another. It will likely tap in to existing movements like Beck’s 912 Project and the Tea Partiers. Then these fanatics will be able to accumulate friends and form alliances. One thing is known for sure: There has never been anything like it from a social movement perspective.

Fox News has a large and faithful following. Their daily exhortations to rise up against the Socialist hordes they imagine are occupying Washington could be channeled into an army that is loyal only to the hallucinatory paranoia of the Foxian mindset. Beck, O’Reilly, and Hannity, don’t view themselves as commentators so much as they do as saviors. O’Reilly has confessed that he believes that he was “blessed with talent” and that he is “here for a reason.” Beck beseeches his viewers at the start of every program to “Come on, follow me.” Hannity leads into his All-Star Panel sermonizing with a preachy “Let not your heart be troubled.” An evangelical fervor literally drips from these would-be prophets like a poisonous sap.

So now Fox wants to start a new nation populated with believers and disciples. The nation that the rest of us inhabit is far too corrupt and sinful. It is infested with Secular-Progressives and far-left loons. There is no course left for the righteous, but to secede. The mysterious video that Fox is airing to promote the launch of the Fox Nation ends with this comforting enticement that seems deliberately crafted to appeal to lost souls:“Finally, a place to call home.”


Fox News Is Heavily Invested In A Bear Market Rally

Posted by on March 27, 2009 at 1:23 pm. 2 Comments :

From March 10, 2009 to March 26, 2009, the Dow Jones has advanced 1,377 points. That’s a 21% increase in 16 days – a feat that has not been recorded in modern stock market history. Yet despite the right-wing howling over weak market performance since President Obama’s inauguration two months ago, there has been no subsequent praise for the more positive turn taking place. To the contrary, the right’s biggest megaphone is broadcasting failure on a daily basis. These are all recent quotes from Fox News:

  • Sheppard Smith: We’ve been in what I guess a lot of people figure is a bear market rally, though nobody really knows, it sort of feels like a bear market rally to most of the experts. I don’t know. But that’s what they’re saying.
  • Tobin Smith: By definition, this is a bear market rally.
  • Damon Vickers: We could have a rally that could take us up to 8,000. It wouldn’t change the fact that we were still in a bear market and that the trend was still down.
  • Peter McKay: The stock market bear market rally resumed on Tuesday.
  • Gary B. Smith: My primary concern is that the markets rose straight up this past week. Often, this is what we see in a bear market rally.
  • Neil Cavuto: What if, playing the other side of that coin, the market is telling us something of substance here, and that this does represent more than just that presumed – presumed bear market rally?

Note to Cavuto: You and your network are the biggest promoters of the bear market presumptions. When Obama spoke gloomily about very real dark days for the economy, Fox berated him for his negativity and implied that such talk would lead to even worse times. Now that there has been bona fide cause for optimism, it is Fox who is gloomy and negative. This is really just their way of joining in with the crowd that is hoping for Obama to fail. Fox News is heavily invested in failure.

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Bill O’Reilly’s Attack Puppy Jesse Watters Strikes Again

Posted by on March 23, 2009 at 4:43 pm. 3 Comments :

Whenever Bill O’Reilly has some dirty work to do that doesn’t involve a loofah, he sends his trusty minion, Stuttering Jesse Watters. In the field, Watters pretends he is the progeny of Mike Wallace (whose real progeny, Chris, is also a Fox News toady). Watters plots elaborate ambush “interviews” with people who wouldn’t otherwise get within spitting distance of him, or O’Reilly either for that matter.

This past weekend, Amanda Terkel of ThinkProgress was literally stalked by Watters while she was on vacation.

Terkel: Watters and his camera man accosted me at approximately 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, in Winchester, VA, which is a two-hour drive from Washington, DC. My friend and I were in this small town for a short weekend vacation and had told no one about where we were going. I can only infer that the two men staked out my apartment and then followed me for two hours.

This harassment was orchestrated by O’Reilly as payback for Terkel’s reporting on O’Reilly’s appearance before the Alexa Foundation, a rape victims support group. It was a personal assault that had no news value, just the desire to harm someone he believed to be an enemy. The action taken against Terkel violated even O’Reilly’s criteria for ambushing:

O’Reilly: [W]e do not go after people lightly. We always ask them on the program first, or to issue a clear statement explaining their actions.

However, Terkel was never contacted for either a statement or an invitation to appear on the Factor. This is typical O’Reilly behavior. Remember, this is the same guy who pushed an Obama aide and threatened him not to “block the shot.” He is a textbook bully, as well as a paranoid narcissist. Dispatching so-called “producers” to harass people you don’t like is closer to organized crime than to journalism. Perhaps O’Reilly and Watters could be prosecuted under the RICO statutes.

Update: O’Reilly’s segment with the Watters ambush just aired and it was a stunning piece of sensationalistic, libelous, garbage. The encounter with Terkel, whom O’Reilly branded a villain, was edited so as to paint a thoroughly dishonest picture of her, while permitting Watters to spew a running commentary of vile character assassination. Then O’Reilly took a cognitive leap to turn his fire on Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC, without explaining what he had to do with any of this. Clearly, O’Reilly just wants to take every opportunity to bash NBC as a proxy for his nemesis, Keith Olbermann, who also had nothing to do with this.

Also notable in the segment was O’Reilly’s description of the rape trial for the perpetrator of the crime committed against Alexa Branchini, for whom the Alexa Foundation was created. O’Reilly said that the defense put on a case intended to “prove the rape was consensual.” That is, to say the least, a curious phrasing. He did not refer to whether the “sex” was consensual. It appears that O’Reilly thinks that sometimes a rape victim may have consented to being raped, or was otherwise responsible. And that is precisely what Terkel noted in the article that started all of this – that O’Reilly was an inappropriate speaker to a rape victims organization because of his previous insensitivity for implying that some victims are responsible for bringing about their own assault. Somebody needs to tell O’Reilly that rape is NEVER consensual.


The Horror Of A Laughing President

Posted by on March 23, 2009 at 12:21 pm. 4 Comments :

It’s really sort of pathetic how utterly humorless modern conservatives have become. Following Barack Obama’s interview last night on 60 Minutes, a torrent of indignation was released across the mediasphere that blew past Politico, Drudge, and countless right-wing blogs. What had Obama done to unleash such fury, even causing interviewer Steve Kroft to inquire if Obama was “punch drunk?” He laughed. Yep, that’s it. He laughed.

To any rational viewer, the moment merely demonstrated the President’s amusement of the relentless curiosity of media figures that don’t get it. At worst, he was just using laughter as a stress reliever. That’s something that many real people do during anxious times. For critics who have been hammering him for weeks about being too glum, it is absurd for them now to assert that a gentle laugh suggests that, all of a sudden, he is too flippant and detached.

All of this fits right in with the sorrowful character of conservatives. They were dismayed when they thought Obama did not do enough to assuage their grief. Now they are disturbed that he is not exhibiting enough grief of his own. Either way they are consumed by their incessant grieving and blaming it all on Obama.

The lack of humor on the part of the right is reaching epidemic proportions. Their comic heroes are Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. How sad is that? Last week Tucker Carlson presumed to lecture Jon Stewart on the art of comedy. This weekend, Bill O’Reilly’s column attempted to bring the funny, but missed miserably. The article is a collection of fake headlines (something O’Reilly and Fox News should be adept at), aimed at mocking the liberal media. But there are two significant problems with O’Reilly’s comic foray. First, it isn’t remotely funny. Second, the only thing he succeeds at making a mockery of is himself. In the first paragraph he says:

O’Reilly: The other day, left-wing muckraker Seymour Hersh went on MSNBC and said he had information, provided by the usual anonymous sources, that Dick Cheney was running an assassination squad out of the White House.

However, the Pulitzer Prize winning Hersh never went on MSNBC with this story. So in an article seeking to ridicule the liberal media for making up news stories, O’Reilly actually made up a story of his own in the part of the article that he presented as factual. Is there any part of his wretched reality that doesn’t put satire to shame?

So where are the funny conservatives? Where is the right’s Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Chris Rock, Tina Fey, George Carlin (RIP), etc.? Is Rush going to have to be both the head of the Republican Party and the chief conservative comic? Or will it be the indecipherable Dennis Miller or Fox’s Greg Gutfield, who just got a few yucks at the expense of dead Canadian soldiers? There is, of course, the hysterical escapism of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, but if you don’t already suffer from acute paranoia, do you really want to assume that risk?

It really is pathetic how desperate and forlorn the right has become. They appear to have nothing left but to invent outrage where non exists, and to cling to leaders who offer only obstacles. And when the human spirit requires uplifting more than ever, they are stuck with clowns who have painted on permanent sneers. And even worse, their melancholy is magnified merely by witnessing the horror of a laughing President. It makes me sad just thinking about it.


Brit Hume Confesses To Fox News Right-Wing Bias

Posted by on March 21, 2009 at 2:26 pm. 5 Comments :

The Media Research Center, an uber-conservative media watch organization headed by professional propagandist Brent Bozell, held its annual gala last week to honor the heroes of rightist disinformation and to mock liberals and truth-tellers. The event featured Republican stalwart, war correspondent, and political strategist, Joe the Plumber, who greeted the crowd by announcing that their adulation made him “horny” (I know…eewww).

The main event of the evening was the presentation of the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence to Fox News’ Brit Hume. Hume’s acceptance speech provides further evidence that Fox News has always been a Republican mouthpiece:

Hume: I want to say a word, however, of thanks to Brent and the team at the Media Research Center […] for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report, I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. It was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it.

A tremendous amount of material that he made tremendous use of? It sounds like the MRC was Fox News’ wire service. They saved Fox the trouble of having to go out and make up the news by themselves. It is this sort of admission that could get Hume into trouble for saying too much. But this isn’t the first time a Foxian has revealed that they are in the employ of rightist ideologues:

  • Fox Anchor Jon Scott was caught reading directly from a Republican press release as though it were news.
  • Rupert Murdoch admitted that he tried to shape public opinion on the war in Iraq.
  • Murdoch also boasted that his Fox Business Network would be a more “business friendly” network.
  • Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, noted that he generally agrees with Sean Hannity.
  • In a revealing bit of staff development, George Bush hired Fox anchor Tony Snow to be his press secretary.
  • Just added 3/23/09: In an interview with NPR, Fox News VP Bill Shine blurted out that Fox is the “voice of opposition.”

In addition to Hume’s shout out to the MRC, he lashed out at new media and blogs as being responsible for a narrowing of political views in the media.

Hume: I think that we also have the danger that everything will be presented from one political viewpoint or the other, and that the media that confront us are going to be more partisan than ever.

Exactly. You certainly wouldn’t want to have a network that only presented a single point of view, would you? Just ask Roger Ailes:

Roger Ailes Newsroom


Tucker Carlson Goes Crawling Back To Fox News

Posted by on March 20, 2009 at 1:20 pm. 1 Comments :

There aren’t too many more pitfalls for a guy like Tucker Carlson. He has already failed on PBS, CNN, and MSNBC. He embarrassed himself by appearing on Dancing With the Stars, and compounded the pain by being voted off first (although that may actually have been a blessing). His game show pilot, shot last year, has apparently been shelved. He will forever be remembered as the “dick” from Crossfire, thanks to Jon Stewart. But now he has taken another fall down the rabbit hole of shame.

Tucker Carlson

Carlson is the latest in a long line of Fox News sideshow freaks that includes everyone from Karl Rove and Judith Miller to Joe the Plumber and Ted Nugent. His emergence on Fox’s America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer must be particularly humiliating for him considering his history with Fox.

In 2003, Tucker was asked on air for his home phone number. He thought it would be funny (in an infantile sort of way) to give out the number for Fox News instead. Not surprisingly, Fox was besieged by anxious Tucker “fans.” So Fox did what only Fox would do. They posted Tucker’s home number on their website asserting that they were merely correcting Tucker’s poor journalism. In a snit that ignored every trace of irony, Tucker called Fox News:

“…a mean, sick group of people.”

Despite that colorful characterization, Carlson has now been welcomed warmly into the fold. Hemmer greeted him on air with a sly nod to the inevitability of his fate:

Tucker Carlson senior fellow for the Cato institute and a former member of a couple of other news networks that we don’t want to mention here. What’s happening my old friend? […] It’s nice to see you – it’s about time you showed up, frankly.

I guess there was no alternative outcome. Carlson could not withstand the very laws of gravity. Like Glenn Beck before him, he had to succumb to his master – no matter how mean or sick. He is now fully acclimated, and he will serenely conform to Fox’s faux reality. As Hemmer said, “It’s about time.”