Glenn Beck Orders His Troops To Stand Down – For Now

Posted by on August 4, 2009 at 12:50 pm. 9 Comments :

In what may be one of the most surreal television episodes ever to stumble across the airwaves, Glenn Beck of Fox News concluded yesterday’s program with an appeal to his congregation that raises some serious questions. And while it may have been an unprecedented moment in news programming, it was fairly common for the sort of Apocalyptic cult leaders on whom Beck models himself. He began by saying…

BECK: Now let me give the warning to you. If anyone thinks that it would be a good idea to turn violent, think again. It would destroy the republic.

This sermon was, on the surface, a call to stand down. Some of his minions may have been acting out a little too aggressively. Just a few days ago, a Long Island, NY, woman with ties to Beck and FEMA camp conspiracies, was arrested outside an Air National Guard base with a cache of weapons. And a few weeks ago, a man in Washington, D.C. shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum on a rampage that was fueled by the fear of a black president who was marching the nation to Socialism.

So now we have the spectacle of a national cable news network’s host admonishing his viewers to refrain from violence. In this video, Beck beseeches his audience to be “forceful, but peaceful” in their fight against a government that he aligns with Marxism; a government that he asserts is destroying our American way of life and consigning us all to slavery. After whipping his followers up into a frenzy with talk of tyrannical doom, he now seeks to spread a layer of calm across their fevered brows. But why now? Does he know something? Has he been receiving more disquieting ravings from his lunatic corps than usual? Or is it because of stuff like this:

“Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President’s Secret Service.”

On one hand, I am glad that Beck may have finally recognized the imminent risk that his rhetorical incitations present. And even if he doesn’t, at least he is yielding to more prudent advice from his bosses and/or lawyers. On the other hand, it is deeply disturbing that there should ever be a need for such an admonition. I can’t think of any other mainstream broadcaster who has had to qualify his lectures by adding “Oh yeah, don’t be killin’ anybody.”

Beck, of course, is a special case. He is more than just a cable TV host. He leads an army of ignorant, disinformed (by him, mostly), soldiers of faith who are unstable and unpredictable. That is why he finds it necessary to assuage their more frightening tendencies from time to time. But even in the act of dialing down the crazy that he and his disciples have come to embody, he still manages to disgust. In his plea to abstain from mass murder, Beck serves up this reasoning:

BECK: Just one lunatic like Timothy McVeigh could ruin everything that everyone has worked so hard for, because these people in Washington won’t pass up the use of an emergency.

Allow me to break this down. Beck is cautioning against committing acts of terror, not because of the tragic loss of life and personal suffering, but because it will harm the movement he is leading – it will “ruin everything.” He is opposed to orgies of homicide, not because it is morally repugnant, but because some unnamed denizens of Washington will exploit the catastrophe for their own nefarious purposes.

What really ought to alarm anyone who is truly concerned about the increasingly hostile and violent language that emanates from Beck and his ilk is that, if he can order his troops to draw down, can he also command them to advance? In fact, is he already doing so? Just last week he told his audience that he is afraid that he might be silenced and that he would have to disguise the true meaning of his commentaries.

BECK: And if you hear me stop saying these things, it’s because I can no longer say them to you. But hear them between the sentences. Hear them, please. I will be screaming them to you.

With that, Beck has given his most depraved disciples permission to interpret anything he says any way they want. Now, take another look at yesterday’s appeal to be peaceful, this time interpreting it from the demented perspective of a Beckian who believes that the government has already commenced suppressing Beck and his message.

BECK: Now let me give the warning to you.
TRANSLATION: Read between the lines at what I am “screaming” to you.
BECK: If anyone thinks that it would be a good idea to turn violent, think again. It would destroy the republic.
TRANSLATION: Since the republic is irreversibly on the road to Marxism, it ought to be destroyed. Don’t you think?
BECK: Just one lunatic like Timothy McVeigh could ruin everything that everyone has worked so hard for, because these people in Washington won’t pass up the use of an emergency.
TRANSLATION: Just one hero could ruin everything the tyrannical usurpers in Washington have worked so hard for. Is there a hero amongst you?

Beck and his Fox News masters are probably convinced that they have sufficiently shielded themselves from any legal liability in the event of a catastrophic, Beck-driven calamity. But they cannot wash their hands of this so easily. Especially when Beck continues to preach the sort of hateful diatribes that feed the doomsday fantasies of his flock. He can’t keep shouting…

HEY! There is a mob of rabid, pillaging, Satanists on their way to rape your daughters and kill the rest of you. It’s time to stand up and fight back against these hordes who threaten everything we hold dear. They have spit on your flag and blasphemed your God and now they are here for your honor and your lives.

And, oh yeah, when they get here you should be “forceful, but peaceful” with them. After all, I don’t believe in violence.

It is not enough to periodically deny an agenda that you promote on a daily basis. It is not enough to pretend that you oppose what you so vocally advocate. As long as Beck persists in blowing on the embers, he is responsible for the fire that ensues.

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Bill O’Reilly Books, Then Bumps, WorldNetDaily Birther

Posted by on August 3, 2009 at 12:57 pm. 7 Comments :

Joseph Farah is the editor of the uber-conservative WorldNetDaily. He is also one of the chief proponents of the Birther Conspiracy that holds that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president because, they hysterically allege, he isn’t a U.S. citizen. This thoroughly caramelized nut case for reversing last November’s election has been debunked repeatedly, but continues to be peddled by dogged rightist reality deniers.

Now, the WorldNetDaily is reporting that their leader, Mr. Farrah, was all set to appear on The O’Reilly Factor until his list of demands was rejected by Bill O’Reilly himself. Here is the list as printed at WND:

  • Though a sober and civil discourse is always welcome, shouting is not;
  • No other guests on during the segment with Mr. Farah;
  • Discussion to be limited to the facts of the story;
  • Accurate, approved description of Mr. Farah and news organization he represents;
  • Screen ID chyron to be approved by Mr. Farah.

If this account is true, then O’Reilly retracted his invitation to Farrah because he objected to constraints on his freedom to shout at people and distort facts. But just the fact that a right wing web editor felt it necessary to itemize a list of criteria that included no shouting, stick with the facts, and chyron approval, for a right wing TV host, is pretty delicious irony. Even O’Reilly’s natural allies don’t trust him.


GE And FOX Agree To Censor Their News Divisions

Posted by on August 1, 2009 at 2:58 pm. 7 Comments :

In a report in the New York Times, the corporate parents of NBC and Fox News were brought together at a summit for CEO’s in an attempt to settle a long-simmering feud. Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, and Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, sat down to try to work things out.

What they were striving to resolve was the eternal and bitter competition between MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly. This affair has been a rancorous, and often humorous, battle wherein Olbermann frequently awarded O’Reilly his “Worst Person in the World,” trophy, and O’Reilly countered by slandering NBC, GE, and Immelt personally (O’Reilly would never utter Olbermann’s name). According to the Times’ Brian Stelter…

“It was a media cage fight, televised every weeknight at 8 p.m. But the match was halted when the blood started to spray executives in the high-priced seats.”

There are two things that are immensely disturbing about this backroom handshake. First and foremost, the corporate parents of news enterprises ought not to be dictating the content of their news divisions, or the opinions of their commentators. That is especially true if the reason for the ivory tower interference is to dampen any blowback on the parent company’s business or executives resulting from controversial positions. This is about the best example of why it is unwise for corporations with vested interests in broader business and government affairs to own news publishers to begin with.

Secondly, the result of this inter-cable warfare is precisely what Fox News wanted. MSNBC is caving in to a deliberate tactic designed to halt criticism of Fox and its personnel. It is a one-sided victory for Fox that comes at the expense of MSNBC’s best interests and dignity. It was less than four months ago that Fox News CEO, Roger Ailes, laid down the threat from which they are now reaping the harvest. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reported the tantrum Ailes threw in response to the escalating on-air debate:

“Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

That’s precisely what happened, and it didn’t even take two weeks for Fox to follow through on its threat. Now we see this truce in effect at least partly because Immelt doesn’t like being called “a despicable human being” by O’Reilly. And the worst part is that Fox’s blatant bullying is being rewarded with a complete capitulation by MSNBC.

For these networks to enforce this agreement is nothing short of censorship. Olbermann responded with an email that said that he was not a party to any agreement, but he also seems to have halted his once routine attacks on O’Reilly and Fox News. As for Fox, their position now is that it is appropriate to direct their commentators to steer clear of certain topics. But that appears to apply only to topics that negatively impact the company brass. Just last week, after Glenn Beck called President Obama a racist, Fox released a statement that said that beck had merely…

“…expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions.”

That freedom, of course, has limitations. From the Fox News point of view, it is alright for one of their hosts to comment disparagingly on the President of the United States, but it is not OK to comment on the president of the company. The company, after all, is sacrosanct and its interests are superior to those of the nation.

It is disheartening to see this sort of corporate thuggery imposed on what should be independent news divisions. One can only hope that the truce will fail and free expression will prevail.

Update: Olbermann returned from vacation and struck down any notion that the network brass would dictate the content of his program. To prove it, he returned Bill O’Reilly to the “World’s Worst” list and reprised his old “Bill-O the Clown” routine. Apparently, news of a network truce were exaggerated. That’s good news.


Fox Nation Touts Grand Theft As A Fun New Sport

Posted by on July 31, 2009 at 11:23 am. 5 Comments :

Fox Nation - Smart CarsThere is an item today on Rupert Murdoch’s The Fox Nation that links to an article in Murdoch’s English newspaper, The Sun. The Sun’s report concerns Dutch victims of criminal vandals who are stealing and destroying automobiles. What sets this apart from conventional crimes is that the perpetrators have singled out owners of Smart Cars for their felonious conduct. The Sun dismissively refers to the thieves as “pranksters,” but that is not nearly as bad as Fox Nation who ran with the headline: Fun New Sport? Flipping Smart Cars.

So the right-wing, Republican, law and order, traditional values, pretenders at Fox Nation think that it’s “fun” to steal the property of innocent people and destroy it by, amongst other things, throwing it into canals. This obviously creates a burden for the victim, but it is also impacts the insurance companies, the car dealerships, the municipalities charged with retrieving the vehicle, and the police who must allocate resources to the case.

What amuses the Fox Nation hypocrites is the fact that the targets of the criminals’ animus are people who have elected to purchase environmentally responsible vehicles. Apparently these folks deserve to be victimized. I wonder if Fox would regard it as equally humorous if vandals went around slashing the tires of SUVs? Of course, when Earth Liberation Front activists torched Hummers on dealer lots (not private owners), they were labeled “eco-terrorists.”

The article in The Sun quotes a Smart Car dealer who points out that they do not want to give these incidents too much attention for fear that it will inspire additional criminal activity. So Murdoch’s people promptly publish it in the The Sun and on Fox Nation. They are virtually promoting more crime by describing it as “fun” and a “sport.” They clearly have no regard for the victims or any sense of decency. This fact is affirmed by some of the comments posted at Fox Nation vilifying environmentally conscious consumers. But it gets even worse than that…

This blatantly racist comment should not surprise anyone familiar with Fox Nation, Fox News, or the rest of the Murdoch Korporate Klan. There are many similar examples of such hostility to be found on Fox enterprise assets. But you would think that calling President Obama “Buckwheat” and referring to his “death certificate” would raise the ire of Internet values enforcers like Bill O’Reilly who often castigates sites like Daily Kos or the Huffington Post for what he calls hate speech.

If there is still anyone who has not concluded that Fox is a hate factory disguised as a news channel, they must now be regarded as lost souls who have irretrievable succumbed to the doctrine of loathing and ignorance that is Pastor Murdoch’s domain.


Sarah Palin’s Radio Career Canceled Before It Begins

Posted by on July 30, 2009 at 4:28 pm. NO Comments :

Earlier this week there was some industry speculation that Sarah Palin was shopping herself around for a talk radio gig. But before you can say “You Betcha” her hopes of radio stardom were quickly dashed.

Broadcasting & Cable:“While you might assume Palin would be a better fit for conservative radio than the less partisan world of syndicated broadcast TV, my sources say the country’s biggest radio conglomerate, Clear Channel, has already passed on her.“

It must be an especially difficult defeat for Palin to be rejected by Clear Channel, an outfit whose standards are low enough to admit Glenn Beck. But their reasoning is sound. There is little evidence that Palin could hold listeners for three hours of her gibberish.

So where does this leave the former half-term governor? Only one option ever really existed for her: Fox News! Since she can’t speak extemporaneously for the duration of a daily radio show, and she wouldn’t appeal to the broader audience necessary to succeed in television syndication, she would have to find a situation where she would have the comfort of a prepared script and an pre-selected audience of rightist lemmings who would worship her every word (and wink) no matter how asinine. Ergo, Fox News.

I predicted a Palin show on Fox News last year, even before the she lost the election. And earlier this month, when she announced that she was quitting her job in Alaska, I said…

A Palin show on Fox News has always been a good fit for both her and Fox. Neither have an interest in, or reputation for, honesty or accuracy. And both have profited from exploiting controversy and sex. Plus, she wouldn’t be the first potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate with a show on Fox, would she, Mike Huckabee?

What more could Fox ask for than a former beauty queen who cheerfully calls the President a Socialist who pals around with terrorists? And what more could Palin ask for than a network gig that allows her to spew nonsense and practice her fancy pageant walkin’?

I think that about covers it.


Glenn Beck: Fox News Evangelist Of The Coming Obama-Pocalypse

Posted by on July 29, 2009 at 9:01 pm. 13 Comments :

Glenn Beck’s unique brand of asylum-spawned demagoguery has drawn comparisons to some notable cranks in history and fiction. Most often he has been likened to either the 1930’s fascist radio priest, Father Coughlin, or to the prototypical, paranoia-crazed tele-pundit, Howard Beale, from the film “Network.”

While both of those models contain poignant resemblances to Beck, neither by themselves comes close enough to capture the full spectrum of his dementia. They don’t even begin to explain his silly costumes and props; his facial tics and nonsense, gurgling noises; his panic-laden admonitions of doom. This is a man who, every day, adds new items to his list of things that cause blood to shoot from his eyes. Were he to be taken literally, he would be severely anemic by now, and his studio would be a quarantined biohazard zone.

However, I think I have just found someone with whom Beck shares a more striking resemblance. I was watching Beck at his white board, attempting to connect everything he hates to everything he fears. It was a ludicrous spectacle that never approached making a sane point:

And it was then that my recollection of another televangelist came to mind:

Dr. Gene Scott broadcast something that he regarded as a study of life’s most pressing dilemmas as they related to Bible teachings. But his show was also intended as entertainment that included rock music and self-produced videos of him riding his award-winning horses.

Is it going too far to compare Beck with a fringe religious cult leader? Not when he seems to invite the comparison. Beck has not been shy about his spiritual rebirth. He often relates the story of his descent into alcohol and drugs, and how his surrender to a higher power saved him from desperation and suicide. His conversion may be less than sincere (he confessed to John Stossel that he only became a Mormon because his then girlfriend, now wife, would not have sex with him unless they were married), but he nevertheless peddles his piety like a used car salesman. At one point during today’s program he beseeched his viewers to get down on their knees and pray. At another he mocked the President as “the all-knowing Messiah.” At the beginning of each and every show he implores his audience to “Come on, follow me.” Plainly religion is at the heart of his crusade.

I would not be the first to observe that the rhetoric of Beck has escalated to dangerous levels. His ravings are so far beyond reasonable discourse that even his bosses at Fox News had to distance themselves from him (albeit in the weakest manner imaginable). What may be more worrisome is that he is also beginning to display the traits of Apocalyptic cult leaders like David Koresh and Jim Jones. It appears that he views himself as an embattled beacon of God’s truth who is besieged by the forces of evil. He frequently prefaces his conspiracy theories with laments like “Is it just me…?” He wonders aloud why no one else can see the doom on the horizon that to him is so evident. And, like any good Apocalyptic cult leader, he imagines that he is a target and that his time on Earth is near an end.

Beck 5/12/09: “If I’m ever in a weird car accident, or I commit suicide or something, after the media stops celebrating my death, could they check into it? Because I’m not suicidal. And I’m a pretty good driver.”

Beck 7/27/09: “I fear that there will come a time when I cannot say things that I am currently saying. I fear that it will come to television and to radio, and I will stop saying these things. Understand me clearly. Hear me now. If I ever stop saying these things, you will know why. Because I will have made a choice that I can only say certain things, and I haven’t lost all of the rights. But know that these things are true. And if you hear me stop saying these things, it’s because I can no longer say them to you. But hear them between the sentences. Hear them, please. I will be screaming them to you.”

Are these words a foreshadowing of another Jonestown? Does Beck really believe that unseen forces are amassing to oppose and silence him? It should be noted that Beck’s family has a record of suicide (his mother and sister). Beck himself has publicly stated that he has been suicidal on at least two occasions. How far off would it be for him to imagine that a step toward eternity was really a bid for martyrdom? He could go out in a blaze of Patriopathic™ glory on behalf of the country he loves so much it brings him to tears.

I hope somebody’s watching him – and monitoring his meds.

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Irony Alert: Glenn Beck Says Obama Is A Racist

Posted by on July 28, 2009 at 12:51 pm. 2 Comments :

Fox News freakshow and rodeo clown, Glenn Beck, appeared on Fox & Friends this morning and had an amusing exchange with the mental deficients that inhabit the A.M. program.

“This President has, I think, exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture. I don’t know what it is.”

When the brown haired guy who isn’t Steve Doocy challenged Beck by noting that “70% of the people we see everyday” from the Obama administration are white, Beck clarified his remarks:

“I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. He has a…This guy is, I believe, a racist.”

That should explain it for all the liberal media weasels out there who want to smear Beck. He is definitely not saying that Obama “doesn’t like white people.” He is merely saying that Obama is a racist who has a “deep seated hatred for white people.” Two completely different things. No?

Update: Fox News VP Bill Shine released a statement distancing the network from Beck’s remarks:

“During Fox & Friends this morning, Glenn Beck expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions.”

What I find interesting is that he never thought it necessary to release a similar statement when Fox News contributor Ralph Peters said that the Taliban should execute an American soldier. Or when Michael Scheuer said that America’s only hope was for another attack by Bin Laden.


Neil Cavuto’s Cable Clinic And Medical Tourism Scam

Posted by on July 28, 2009 at 3:26 am. 7 Comments :

Neil Cavuto, Fox News VP and host of “Your World”, has a consistent record of misrepresenting the facts of pretty much any issue he addresses. Whether it’s the economy, national security, climate change, etc., you can rely on his determination to construct the most absurd and untrue arguments to advance his partisan agenda.
 
 
 
Healthcare has long been on that list of subjects as evidenced by the ridiculous graphic above from his program in July 2007.

Recently he has spent much of his program presenting a parade a of patients disappointed by the healthcare they have received in Canada. These unfortunate folks have had to endure some sort of healthcare calamity that they and Cavuto characterized as the inevitable consequence of national healthcare. The result of this substandard care, according to Cavuto, is the creation of a swarm of medical tourists fleeing Canada for superior treatment here in the U.S.

Amongst the guests that Cavuto welcomed as witnesses were a couple of Canadians who came to warn America of the horrors of free, accessible healthcare. However, in both cases the patients’ stories revealed that the U.S. system was actually worse than the one they were allegedly fleeing.

Shona Holmes told Cavuto that she had to mortgage her house to get treatment in the U.S. Lucky for her, she had a house to mortgage. Americans facing similar ordeals have lost their homes and gone into severe debt from which they may never recover. And those without homes have no options whatsoever, unlike Holmes and her fellow Canadians.

Lin Gilbert suffered from debilitating back pain that she says was untreated in an untimely manner in her native Vancouver. She was also unemployed and on welfare. Eventually she got the surgery she needed and is pain free today. It cost her nothing. She has no debt related to her medical treatment. An American with the same problem would still be suffering or would have racked up an unmanageable debt that would haunt them and their family for the rest of their life.

I can’t speak to what delayed the treatments in Canada for these women, but surveys show that they are the exceptions. Most Canadians are satisfied with their healthcare program, with an overwhelming 82% saying that they prefer their system to a private system like that of their neighbors to the south. Furthermore, a Gallup poll showed that Canadians are far more satisfied with their system than we Americans are with ours.

In what may be the most outrageous tale of medical panic, Cavuto invited an American, Linda Dorr, to his program to describe her condition and the choices she made. She was diagnosed as having the beginning stages of breast cancer. She was covered by insurance and there were many treatment options available to her, but she elected to have a double mastectomy because – if you can believe this – she was afraid that if Obama’s healthcare plan went into effect, and she needed further treatment years down the road, that it would not be approved by the government health bureaucrats that she assumed would be rationing her care in the future.

Think about that. The double mastectomy was not medically indicated. There was no reason to presume that less intrusive measures would not have been effective. There was no reason to believe that she would ever need such drastic surgery. What’s more, there was no evidence that, should her condition have deteriorated, she wouldn’t have been approved for whatever additional treatment she would have required under the Obama plan. In fact, considering the way the Congressional process is proceeding, there is a possibility that Obama’s plan will never be implemented at all. So based on the fear that a legislative program that has not even been voted on might eventually pass, and that the this phantom plan might impose some sort of harsh rationing that would deny treatment to certified breast cancer patients, and that she might have a more severe recurrence of her cancer – on the basis of all of those assumptions she elected to have a double mastectomy that was not presently necessary and might never be. And her doctor performed it!

As far as I’m concerned, her decision making skills were impaired, perhaps understandably, due to her diagnosis. It would be an understatement to say that her election was an overreaction to a set of circumstances that had not, and might never, take place. Her doctor, on the other hand, should have his license revoked for performing an operation that was not medically indicated simply because of his patient’s irrational and unfounded fears.

The broader objective of Neil Cavuto’s cavalcade of discontented Canadians, and one delusional American, is to steer public opinion away from meaningful healthcare reform. It is a deliberate campaign to foment fear and distrust of reforms that he casts as foreign and risky. He has embarked on a mission to scrape up every disgruntled Canadian he can find and imply that there is a swarm of them trampling across the border in bandages and wheel chairs, moaning and praying as they beg to be admitted to our hospitals of mercy.

There’s just one thing ….. Not only is there no such exodus from Canada, the medical refugees are actually heading out of the U.S. in much larger numbers than those coming in.

Despite Cavuto’s dishonest attempt to portray America as a haven for the world’s sick who are flocking here for the best healthcare in the world, the truth is quite the opposite. A Deloitte study last year revealed that about 400,000 people worldwide sought care in the U.S., while more than twice that many Americans went abroad. And the number of American medical adventurers is predicted to grow to six million by next near. A poll of Americans by Gallup showed that as many as 40% would consider leaving the U.S. for treatment if the quality was the same and the costs significantly cheaper. Those criteria have already been met to the satisfaction of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Yet disinformation agents like Cavuto still manufacture witnesses to argue against reality. And it isn’t just Cavuto…

SEAN HANNITY: People from Canada flock to the U.S. Why would you want to ruin the best health care system in the world with the greatest advancement of pharmaceuticals and technology?
GLENN BECK: America has the best health care system in the world. Is it perfect? No. But it’s still the best. Yet we’re about to throw it all away in favor of… government-run health care.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: We’ve got the greatest health care system in the world. Nobody leaves this country for health coverage. Everybody in the rest of the world comes here.

The facts are obviously contrary to the ravings of these lunatics. And in their ignorance, they continue to assert that the as-yet unwritten proposal constitutes a “government-run” plan despite the fact that no version of the known drafts could accurately be described that way. Even the comparison to Canada is misleading because no one has proposed a Canadian-style plan either.

So the next time you hear xenophobic cheerleaders espousing the fiction that the United States has the best healthcare in the world, remember the facts outlined above. Remember that the World Health Organization ranked the U.S. 37th in the world. Remember that those falsely bragging about America’s healthcare preeminence are generally well off, well insured, and well indebted to the institutions, corporate and political, that profit from the status quo.


All You Need To Know About Rush Limbaugh

Posted by on July 26, 2009 at 8:24 pm. 5 Comments :

In another in a series of Fox News PR events for Republican dickwads, Greta Van Susteren hosted Rush Limbaugh, giving him two days of airtime on her show. There is a great deal of inane banter to be mined from this auto-neurotic strokefest, but I’ll just focus on one brief segment wherein Van Susteren sought to ascertain Limbaugh’s preference for President in 2012:

VAN SUSTEREN: But not in terms of horse race. I’m looking at who do you sort of, from an ideology point of view, do you think is the smartest or best candidate in your mind now?

LIMBAUGH: Well, that’s — I don’t want to answer that criteria, smartest and best. I’m looking right now at who can win.

That about says it all. Limbaugh, and the Republican establishment, is unconcerned with intelligence or qualifications. They just want any old douchebag who can pull in some votes. That would explain George W. Bush back in 2000. It would likewise explain Sarah Palin who, as it turns out, is the candidate that Limbaugh singles out for her ability to excite audiences and frighten Democrats.

For the record, there isn’t a Republican on the horizon that would thrill me more as their candidate in 2012 than Sarah Palin. In fact, a Palin/Steele ticket would be a dream come true. I’m not sure who Limbaugh thinks is afraid of her. Every Democrat I know is praying for her to be the nominee. The only thing I’m afraid of is that she’ll flame out before the campaign gets started.

It is notable that Van Susteren specifically requested that Limbaugh answer her question “not in terms of horse race.” Limbaugh completely ignored that request and gave a response that centered solely on the horse race and his preference for a winning candidate over one who is smart or best suited for the job. Then this hypocrite has the gall to say that he cares about the United States and the American people. And to compound his hypocrisy he follows that up with:

LIMBAUGH: “It’s not about — it’s not about personalities. It’s not about horse races. It’s about the country.”

He really needs to make up his mind. First he refuses to answer a question about what is best for the country in favor of his assessment of the horse race. Then he says it isn’t about the horse race at all.

And there are people who really buy this garbage?


Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by on July 24, 2009 at 11:56 am. 38 Comments :

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a blight on the media map. It is bad for journalism. It is bad for Democracy. It is bad for America. A so-called “news” network that repeatedly misinforms, even deliberately disinforms, its audience is failing any test of public service embodied by an ethical press.

I, personally, have made the case for an embargo of Fox News by Democrats and progressives (see Starve the Beast: Part I, Part II, Part III), documenting via studied analysis that there is no affirmative value to appearing on Fox News – a network that has established itself as overtly hostile to the Democratic message and its messengers.

However, there is another side to this that has not been addressed previously. Republicans might be well advised to avoid Fox News as well. There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names.

Fox News has descended into depths heretofore reserved for fringe characters. They are openly promoting the wackos who believe that President Obama is ineligible to hold office because he isn’t a U.S. citizen. They feature commentaries by secessionists and even those calling for an overthrow of the government and the Constitution. This explains how folks like Ralph Peters, a retired military officer who said that the Taliban captors of a U.S. Soldier would be saving us a lot of trouble and expense if they would just kill him, earn airtime on Fox. Peters previously told Fox News that he favors military strikes against media targets. This explains how Glenn Beck can agree with a guest that it would be a good thing if America were attacked again by Osama bin Laden. And don’t even get me started on Victoria Jackson, who has joined an ever-lengthening line of psycho-Chicken Littles who compare the President to Hitler.

Good Advice:
“If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it.”
~ Bill O’Reilly, 7/16/09

The list of loonies extends to politicians like Michele Bachmann, entertainers like Ted Nugent, and of course, the talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh, whose maniacal rantings are elevated by Fox into their version of political dialogue. It’s a dialogue that is consumed with ACORN conspiracies and Manchurian presidents. The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

As a result, the Fox News audience is being dumbed down by a parade of paranoid know-nothings. This strategy appears to be successful for Fox in that it has attracted a loyal viewership that is eager to have their twisted preconceptions affirmed. The conflict-infused fare in which Fox specializes is a ratings juggernaut – just like any good fiction. However, this perceived popularity is having an inordinate impact on the GOP platform. By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

With the Fox network unabashedly promoting the most ridiculous rumors, myths, and nightmares of the rightist fringe, moderate and independent Americans will grow ever more suspicious of the Fox/GOP agenda. Most Americans do not believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist; or that FEMA is constructing concentration camps; or that we are on a march toward socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever the right is peddling this week. Most Americans do not believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a reptilian alien, or the anti-Christ. In short, most Americans think that the loopy yarns spun by Fox News are fables told by madmen – and believed by even madder men and women who wallow in their doomsday utopia.

Fox News is fond of boasting about their ratings dominance. It is a daily occurrence and the structural core of their argument that they reflect the mood of America. The GOP has bought this argument in its entirety. So it is important to note here that success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants. That is a subset of the population at large, and not a particularly representative one. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are just those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t creeped out by that. What’s more, viewing choices are not necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.

As for what constitutes success in the television marketplace, due to the broad diversification of available programming, it doesn’t take much to be heralded as a hit. A mere 3 share (3% of people watching TV) will land you in the top 10. For cable news the bar is set even lower. In fact, the top rated show on the top rated cable news network (The O’Reilly Factor) only gets about 3 million viewers. That’s less than 1% of the American population. It’s also less than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program). By contrast, America’s Got Talent is seen by 12 million viewers – four times O’Reilly’s audience.

Numbers this low ought not to inspire much excitement from political operatives. Nevertheless, Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.

The inevitable result of this system of rewarding those farthest from reality is the creation of a constituency of crackpots. It is an endorsement of the philosophy brewed by the Tea Baggers that espouses racism, tyranny, and armed revolt. It is enabling a frightening corps of openly militant adversaries of democracy, free speech, and Constitutional rule. It is the sort of environment that produced the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns.

This is a textbook example of how the extreme rises to the top. It is also fundamentally contrary to the interests of the Republican Party. The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds. It seems like such a waste after all of the effort and expense that Fox put into building a pseudo-journalistic enterprise with the goal of confounding viewers with false news-like theatrics.

Make no mistake, Fox News is still managed by hard core party patrons. And I’m not referring just to opinion-driven commentators like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, although they are bad enough. No, I am talking about executives and editors like CEO, Roger Ailes, former Nixon and Bush media consultant. I’m talking about Washington Managing Editor and VP, Bill Sammon, an avid right-wing alum of the Washington “Moonie” Times. I’m talking about Business News Chief and VP, Neil Cavuto, antagonistic interrupter extraordinaire. And let us not forget the head hype-master, Rupert Murdoch, whose UK operations were just discovered to have been unlawfully wiretapping celebrities, politicians, and even members of the Royal Family. Augmenting that executive roster are the GOP regulars who are straight out of the just retired Republican White House: Karl Rove, Dana Perino, John Bolton, Dan Senor, and Linda Chavez. And then there are the Fox News clowns…er…“contributors” like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Goldberg, Michele Malkin, and on and on. If nothing else, Fox is a full-employment program for rightist weasels (and they also operate the Conservative Book Promotion Club).

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.