Why Is The Fox Nation Rooting For George Zimmerman?

For the past week a murder trial in Florida has fixated the nation and the media. This sort of thing is not unusual as the past trials of Jodie Arias, Scott Peterson, Casey Anthony, and all the way back to O.J. Simpson have proved. What is unusual is the lengths to which Fox News has gone to cheerlead for the defendant.

From the very beginning Fox has sought to portray George Zimmerman as the victim who was only acting in his own defense. At the same time, they cast Trayvon Martin as a violent thug who must have been up to no good. Take a look at the graphic editorializing Fox engaged in early on:

Fox News Racism

In reporting on the court proceedings this week, Fox continued to demonstrate their overt prejudice in favor of Zimmerman. Nearly every commentator Fox put on the air found fault with the prosecution and managed to spin the witness testimony as beneficial to the defense. And the headlines at the Fox Nation Lie Factory tell the story that Fox is desperately trying to implant in the weak minds of their viewers:

  • Zimmerman Blockbuster: Witness Saw Man With ‘Lighter Skin Color’ Getting Pummeled ‘Ground And Pound’ Style
  • ZIMMERMAN PROSECUTION WITNESS IMPLODES
  • Zimmerman ‘Elated’ at Prospect That Trayvon Fight Was Recorded
  • Prosecutors ‘Must Have Had a Stroke’ Over Detective’s Testimony
  • AP: Trayvon Martin’s Legal Troubles Reportedly Covered Up By Police
  • GRETA: THE ZIMMERMAN PROSECUTION HAS A GIANT PROBLEM
  • Travyon Martin’s Friend Grilled By Defense

This parade of pro-Zimmerman analysis is reminiscent of last year’s election analysis on Fox, where every discussion leaned heavily in favor of a Romney victory. Fox irresponsibly led their audience to believe that President Obama was irredeemably unpopular and bound for defeat. Fox would only present disreputable polls that showed Romney ahead, while ignoring all the other surveys (including their own) that forecast an Obama victory. When reality set in on election day, Team Fox and the gullible dupes who watch the network, were dumbfounded at a result for which they were entirely unprepared.

The same thing is happening now with this trial. The obvious zeal that Fox is expressing for a Zimmerman acquittal is not incidental. It fits into their mission to demonize minorities. Try to imagine what Fox’s (or the rest of the media) reaction to this case would have been if the races were reversed. Do you think Fox would be defending a black man who had shot and killed an unarmed white kid walking home with Skittles and iced tea?

Zimmerman-Martin

The consequences of Fox’s disinformation could be troublesome. If Zimmerman is convicted, the response by the racially biased viewers of Fox will be shock and awe. Just like after the election, they will be unable to grasp how a jury had concluded that Zimmerman was guilty when everything they had seen on Fox News convinced them that he was innocent and that there was no chance of a conviction. Fox appears to be priming their viewers to rise up in outrage at a verdict they never saw as even a remote possibility.

On CNN and MSNBC there has been a much more balanced presentation of the court proceedings. When the prosecution flubbed an argument, it was reported as such, even on Al Sharpton’s show, despite the clear bias of the host. When a witness contradicted a defense assertion, that was reported as well. The reason for this is that unbiased journalists do not have a stake in the outcome. Liberals, from the outset, have only wanted justice to be done. They were appropriately disturbed at the start of this affair when Zimmerman was let off without an arrest or investigation. The protests that erupted were focused on those ends, not on railroading Zimmerman into jail.

Now that the people are getting their trial, the judgment of the jury ought to be respected. But That is not the tone that Fox is advancing. The hunger for absolution on Fox is palpable. They are convinced that a black youth with no record of violence or criminal activity initiated an unprovoked attack on a conscientious neighborhood watch captain. And until the jury rules, that is the position Fox is sticking with. If that isn’t racism, then what the hell is it?

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Fox News Rewards Megyn Kelly’s Bootlicking Conservative Bias With A Promotion To Primetime

This just in: “Megyn Kelly will move to FOX News Channel’s (FNC) primetime lineup upon her return from maternity leave, announced Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO, FOX News.”

Megyn Kelly GQThis was just a matter of time as Fox News has pretty obviously been grooming Kelly for a prominent role at the network from the day she was hired. Both Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes had taken a profound (and somewhat creepy) interest in her due to her pinup girl good looks, her background as a lawyer, and her eagerness to fulfill the Fox mission of slandering anyone and everything liberal without regard to honesty or ethics. (See Fox Nation vs. Reality)

Kelly fits the Fox mold to a tee, as a busty blonde presenter who would appeal to the Cialis-chomping, scooter-riding, gold-hoarding, geezers who make up such a large part of Fox’s audience and advertiser base. And Kelly is not shy about marketing her sex appeal as demonstrated by her pictorial in GQ Magazine.

As an anchor, Kelly has fashioned a more palatable version of Glenn Beck’s conspiracy-riddled wingnuttery. The stories she features are a collection of partisan tripe and manufactured outrages that have little basis in fact. From her near-obsession with the irrelevant New Black Panther Party, to her false accusations against then-Pennsylvania senate candidate Joe Sestak, Kelly has been a non-stop, gushing flow of disinformation and gossip. For more examples:

  • Kelly defended an anti-Islam filmmaker as a “patsy” of the Obama administration.
  • Kelly asserted that Americans have “gotta get a little squeamish” about the prospect of being killed by drones.
  • Kelly told her colleague Bill O’Reilly that pepper spray used against student protesters was just “a food product, essentially.”
  • Kelly moderated a discussion that was based on a series of “Fox Facts” that were cribbed directly from a Republican National Committee press release.
  • Kelly featured a disreputable reporter with a history of violence (who was later arrested for sexually assaulting a four year old girl) in her frequent attacks on the funders of the Islamic Center that Fox derisively referred to as the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
  • Kelly misrepresented the results of a Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll to argue that Democrats are defying the will of the people.
  • Kelly helped to cover up the extra-marital affair of GOP senator John Ensign and failed to disclose her personal involvement in the story.

It’s easy to see why Fox would want to advance Kelly to their primetime lineup. The musty presences of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren could surely use an injection of new blood. The problem is that one of them will have to be booted from their perch. The most obvious loser would be Van Susteren, whose show is the weakest performer of the lot. However, Hannity’s position is hardly safe considering that he is despised by most of his colleagues. Even O’Reilly cannot be dismissed since he has floated suggestions that he might be ready to retire.

So we will have to wait until Fox announces their new schedule to see who comes up short. But in the end it will make no difference in the content that Fox offers. It will continue to be rabidly right-wing, with a clearly denoted bias for Republican Party dogma. Kelly’s entry into the club will not change that. In fact, it will congeal the conservative hackery into a younger, more alluring package. But the brain-dead zombies who watch Fox won’t have to worry a bit about whether they will continue to get a daily dose of propaganda devoid of those pesky and annoying facts that make understanding current events so difficult. For them, Kelly will be a comforting and reassuring breath of fresh lies.

[Update: 7/10/2003] There is still no word on where Kelly will land in primetime, but one of the replacements for her daytime gig will be Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson, whose experience as a former Miss America certainly prepared her for a role as a Fox News anchor. Media Matters has prepared an exhaustive look back at Carlson’s credentials.


The GOP Alienates Another Key Constituent Group: Seniors

The Republican Party seems to be on a frantic mission to destroy their reputation with every constituency of voters in America, other than the Taliban wing of the Tea Party Christianists.

The GOP is currently engaged in nationwide battles to give government control over women’s bodies. They are exploiting every opportunity to suppress voting rights for African-Americans and other minorities. They oppose immigration reform that would eventually offer a path to legalized status for Latinos, some of whom have lived their whole lives in the United States. They obstructed the enactment of measures that would have prevented the interest rates for student loans from doubling. And, as always, they work feverishly to protect the wealthy from paying a fair tax rate, while allowing the rates to increase for those less fortunate.

So let’s see…who did they leave out? They got women, African-Americans, Latinos, youth, the poor and middle class. Who is left for Republicans to piss off?

Well, it should come as no surprise that the masterminds running the Republican machine noticed the crack in their strategic foundation and have promptly dedicated themselves to its repair.

That’s why Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the senate, jumped into action to attack Hillary Clinton, a prospective candidate for president in 2016, as an old hag, thus insulting the final demographic group that may still have had some affection for the GOP. McConnell uproariously joked…

“Don’t tell me Democrats are the party of the future when their presidential ticket for 2016 is shaping up to look like a rerun of the ‘Golden Girls.'”

Let’s just set aside the fact that “The Golden Girls” was a successful and popular sitcom that ran for seven years, with a cast of mature women who had active lives professionally, socially, and romantically. America’s seniors, who already have some cause to reject the Republican agenda that has sought to dismantle Social Security and cut funding for Medicare, can’t be too thrilled with being portrayed as useless fossils who should be consigned to history’s dustbin. Now they have been directly assaulted as has-beens, in the words of Karl Rove, who said of Clinton and her peers that “we’re at the end of her generation and that it’s time for another to step forward.”

For the record, Hillary Clinton is 65, Karl Rove is 62, and Mitch McConnell is 71. In January of 2017, when the next president is inaugurated, Clinton will be a year younger than Ronald Reagan was when his term began.

Mitch McConnell

McConnell had better start paying more attention to what’s in his own Depends. He is approaching his thirtieth year in office and has one of the lowest favorability ratings of any sitting senator. He is up for reelection next year and his first announced opponent is the 34 year old Kentucky Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes. Not exactly what you would call a “Golden Girl,” unless you what you meant by golden was someone with a rich set of skills, experience and support.

It’s hard to understand what the Republican Party is up to by alienating so many voters. Perhaps their plan to is expand their efforts to define corporations and fetuses as persons and give them the right to vote. But if they have to depend on Teabaggers, End-Timers, and NRA-theists, they are likely to find themselves elected only in districts dug into underground bunkers with ham radio reception that only gets Glenn Beck and Pat Robertson.


Half-Term Governor Sarah Palin Calls Obama ‘Lackadaisical’ In Racist Rant

Sarah PalinFox News is already getting its money’s worth by re-hiring Sarah Palin. When the need came for an imbecile to provide an incoherent rhetorical jumble of nonsense in response to President’s Obama’s remarks about NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Fox was fortunate enough to have Palin back on the payroll. Who else could deliver a level of idiocy that so perfectly meshes with the bigoted leanings of the Fox audience?

President Obama was asked Thursday about his involvement in efforts to bring Snowden back to the United States. His answer was measured and appropriate: “I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” Obama said. Indeed, there is no justification for engaging in acts of war over one guy who has had a negligible impact on foreign relations. Whatever one thinks of Snowden, his apprehension certainly has no discernible impact on international relations and doesn’t require the attention of the President.

That, however, is not the way Sarah Palin sees it. She appeared on Fox News with her predictable objection to whatever Obama might have done. But in this case she revealed an ugliness that is known to many, but which she tries to disguise.

Palin: “With Obama deciding to just, oh I guess, lead from behind on this issue too, that’s the community organizer in our president. That’s a little bit of that lackadaisical, eh you know, don’t have to take responsibility. And his resume proves he hasn’t had to take responsibility for much in all these years. This is just another issue, another example that falls in line with a community organizer.”

“Lackadaisical?” Surely Palin is aware that this word is associated with derogatory racial stereotypes that have persisted for decades. African-Americans have long been portrayed in the media and popular culture as lazy and shiftless. It’s an enduring insult that is kept in circulation by racists like Palin. And this isn’t the first time she has resurrected a classic vulgarity to attack the President. Last October she reached into her bag of verbal bigotry to say that “President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.”

Even from a substantive perspective, there is no logic in her repulsive condemnation of Obama. If she ever met a community organizer she would know that they are the hardest working people in politics. There is no activity in public life that requires more commitment and devotion to mission than pounding the pavement and securing the support of diverse constituencies in pursuit of a political goal.

But how would Palin know these things when she didn’t even have the fortitude to complete the one term as governor to which she had been elected and for which she had begged the people of Alaska for their support? For someone with such a lazy approach to duty, Palin has a lot of nerve to invoke a repugnant reference to the work habits of others. She doesn’t even have the good sense to educate herself on the issues on which she pontificates in order to avoid appearing the fool that she is. Now that’s lackadaisical.

This is not an isolated incident. This is a pattern for Palin and most of her conservative cohorts. It is repeated frequently on a daily basis. Both racism and lethargy (especially with regard to obtaining and reporting facts), are hallmarks of the Palin wing of the right. They are emblematic of the Tea Party’s absence of moral integrity and commitment to anything other than their narrow self interests. And they are also characteristics that fit squarely into the editorial philosophy of Fox News.

[Note: To those who argue that marking Palin as a racist because she used the word “lackadaisical” is too far a reach, please understand that it is not the word by itself, it is the context and the history. Maligning African-Americans as lazy goes back for decades. Disparaging representations abound, from Stepin Fetchit to “welfare queens.” Like the rest of the kneejerk Obama-haters, Palin has often characterized the President as a determined socialist bent on destroying America. Well, she can’t have it both ways. If Obama is a hard-working tyrant, he can’t also be sluggish lout. And for Palin to portray him as such can only be interpreted as an effort to associate him with the old and offensive stereotype.]


The Fox News Campaign To Keep Citizens From Learning About ObamaCare

We all know about the Republican support for a health care system that gouges patients, fails to serve at-risk constituencies, and enriches heartless corporations (who in turn enrich the Republicans). We know about the right-wing’s indifference to families who are thrust into bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical bills. And we are all too aware of the Tea Party conservatives’ fixation on repealing the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), which they have voted on thirty-seven times in the House of Representatives knowing full well it would never advance to the senate.

There is no ambiguity in the fact that the GOP is determined to defend a broken system that favors the rich and abandons everyone else to a Randian law of the jungle that guarantees that people will die unnecessarily. And Fox News is a critical component in the anti-health propaganda fest designed to keep the American people ignorant and sick.

Fox News
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In recent days Fox News has been escalating their disinformation campaign by attacking uncontroversial plans to give the American people information about their options under the new law and to educate them about the health insurance exchanges that will be launching next year. Fox has taken the side of the GOP anti-health zealots by criticizing routine efforts to provide the public with details about the program.

Reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to publicize the availability of insurance plans by advertising and otherwise partnering with sports leagues, libraries, and schools have been met with ludicrous objections from the right. They have characterized these efforts as communist-style indoctrination and tyrannical coercion, even though they are nothing more than free market publicity. Fox News anchor Bret Baier went so far as to call it “threatening.”

Bret Baier: Forget reading, writing and arithmetic, you are paying about a million dollars to train public school children in California how to promote President Obama’s health care reform law. […] Officials are promising – or threatening – strict enforcement of the grants with monthly, quarterly, and annual reports.

Holy crap! Now the feds want reports to ascertain whether federal grant money is being used effectively. What’s next, concentration camps?

Other plans being discussed include working with the NFL and the NBA to educate citizens about their options. This has been lambasted by right-wingers on Fox who seem to think that providing information to citizens about programs that they are entitled to use is the work of Satan. They call it propaganda, but it is no more propaganda than public service announcements about seat belts or the dangers of drug use.

The only propaganda here is that employed by Fox News who is trying desperately to misrepresent ObamaCare and the efforts to educate the public about it. Their arguments against publicity campaigns that work with sports leagues, schools, and libraries, consist mainly of phony attempts to turn it all into a political debate. However, ObamaCare is not a political debate – it is the law. And consequently, people are entitled to know what it is and how to use it. There is nothing partisan about that.

What Fox and the GOP are hoping to do is to sabotage the new health care law. They want it to fail (like everything else this administration tries to do) so that they can achieve their goal of repeal and restore the previous system that made them all rich, but that left millions of Americans without coverage. And the best way to produce failure is to make sure that the American people are kept ignorant of the program, which would keep enrollment down. So any effort by the government to let the people know what their options are must be shot down by any means necessary.

This campaign of deceit by Fox and their benefactors is meant only to harm citizens who may be interested in improving health care for themselves and their families. It is not an effort to persuade anyone of the political merits of the plan. It merely informs people of what is currently available. But the anti-health right prefers that the nation be kept as ignorant as possible. That’s something that is apparent to any objective person who watches Fox News. But in this case, the result is not merely being ill-informed, it can lead to serious repercussions for the medical well-being of innocent citizens who are more interested in the health of their families than the phony political controversies that Fox is trying to create.

Fox is embarking on a shameful exercise in greed over humanity. And even Fox viewers should be concerned that their network is working so hard to make sure they stay stupid.


ObamaCars: The Latest Loony Fox News Conspiracy Theory

What do you do when you are the national mouthpiece for vile propaganda against a political party and a president that you were created to destroy, but all of your efforts have collapsed into a pile of bullshit due to the complete lack of evidence or even common sense? Well, just ask Fox News who have seen their every attempt to manufacture scandal blow up in their lying faces.

From Benghazi to the IRS, Fox News has struck out in their efforts to hang a juicy controversy around President Obama’s neck. So their answer to the question above is to trot out a brand new conspiracy theory that they invented from scratch: ObamaCars.

Fox News

For more made-up Fox-aganda, get the acclaimed ebook:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault on Truth

On Fox & Friends, the curvy couch potatoes were joined by radio shrew Laura Ingraham, Bush’s former press secretary, Dana Perino, and Rupert Murdoch’s personal lawyer, Peter Johnson, Jr. (the man with three names that are all synonyms for penis). In the course of their conversation they introduced a budding scandalette that they clearly believe will rip the heart out of their beastly foe in the White House.

What the Foxies are alleging is that, in the words of Steve Doocy, “there’s a provision in the Immigration bill that could be used to give free cars, motorcycles, scooters, and other vehicles, to young people.” Oh my. That would troubling – if there were even a scintilla of truth to it which, of course, there is not. This laughably ridiculous claim seems to have originated at the Official Birthplace of Laughably Ridiculous Claims, Breitbart News, where they extrapolated a nonsensical analysis of an amendment attached to the bill to allocate funding for youth job programs. The language that Breitbart and Fox found so offensive simply described that the funds were to be used…

“…to provide summer employment opportunities for low-income youth, with direct linkages to academic and occupational learning, and may be used to provide supportive services, such as transportation or child care, that is necessary to enable the participation of such youth in the opportunities.”

“Supportive services,” as regards transportation, are nothing more ominous than bus fare. They are certainly not promises to purchase vehicles for kids looking for work. Yet that is precisely what the conspiracy theorists at Fox have alleged. This delusion was directly refuted by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the author of the amendment, who said that…

“…the program has the option of providing funding for bus fare or subway tickets or other means of transportation. It is only the wild imagination that we have come to expect from Fox TV that would come up with this preposterous idea that we are buying automobiles for young people.”

This Fox fantasy was also refuted by Tea-publican Sen. Marco Rubio and was given a “Pants-on-Fire” designation as a lie by PolitiFact.

Where does the dementia end with these people? It would be one thing if this were a fringe newsletter published by radicals in robes and hoods, pretending to defend liberty from their wilderness camp in Idaho. But is this Fox News, the most-watched cable news network, and their leading anchors and contributors. The next thing we can expect to hear from Fox is that Obama supporters were found to be using their ObamaPhones while driving their ObamaCars which led to their need for emergency ObamaCare. Don’t laugh. I’m sure they are working on this story right now.

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DOMA vs. Voting Rights: Justice Scalia’s Jaw-Dropping Hypocrisy

The rulings today from the Supreme Court will undoubtedly dominate the part of the news cycle that isn’t filled with testimony from the George Zimmerman trial.

The decision on California’s Prop 8 was essentially a punt wherein the Court ruled that the plaintiff did not have standing to bring the case. The result is that the lower court ruling that struck down Prop 8 remains in effect and gay marriages will resume shortly in California.

The decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was the more profound ruling as it struck down the legislation congress had passed in an attempt to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Consequently, the federal government is now prohibited from discriminating against same-sex couples with regard to marriage.

Not surprisingly, the media has pounced on these events with analysis, interviews, and opinions from across the political spectrum. However, one fairly obvious observation seems to have been ignored by many in the mainstream press. And that is the rank hypocrisy of Justice Scalia when you juxtapose his opinion from yesterdays ruling on the Voting Rights Act (VRA) with today’s dissent on the DOMA case. On DOMA Scalia complained that…

“We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation […] That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive.”

But just the day before Scalia had signed on to the Court’s majority decision to strike down the Voting Rights Act – which, of course, was democratically adopted legislation by the people’s representatives. In fact, the law was just reauthorized by congress in 2006 with a vote in the senate of 98-0 and in the House by 390-33. The reauthorization was signed by then-President George W. Bush who effusively praised the bill.

Nevertheless, Scalia condemned the VRA previously despite its broadly bi-partisan approval in congress. He belittled it as a “racial entitlement” that was somehow immune to the “normal political process.” He even noted the huge majority vote it received, but portrayed that with derision as if it were a defect.

“And this last enactment – not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. […It is] a phenomenon that is called ‘perpetuation of racial entitlement.’ Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political process.”

So on one day Scalia takes a position that congress is incapable of making valid decisions on behalf of the people and, consequently, the Supreme Court must step in to make the decisions for them. That was his justification for striking down the VRA. However, the very next day Scalia bitterly castigates his colleagues for taking action to invalidate a law that had been enacted by the people’s representatives, and he repudiated the notion that it is the Court’s role to second guess the congress. That was the gist of his dissent on DOMA.

Literally overnight, Scalia went from asserting the Court’s authority over congressional actions, to asserting that the Court had no such authority. So the question is: Is that just Scalia being a hypocritical jerk, or is the 77 year old jurist suffering from a cognitive disorder?

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Antonin Scalia


Romancing The Unabomber: Fox News ‘Psycho’ Analyst Praises Terrorist’s Manifesto

What can you say about Keith Ablow, the Fox News ‘psycho’ analyst who recently charged that President Obama was waging psychological warfare on the American people? You may recall “doctor” Ablow as the lunatic who actually praised Newt Gingrich for being unfaithful to multiple wives; who welcomed the pain of Americans suffering through the recession; who repeatedly diagnosed President Obama and others without ever having met them. No wonder he was booted from the American Psychiatric Association.

Well, despite all the odds, Ablow has managed to surpass his own Olympian record for demented commentary by writing an op-ed for Fox News paying tribute to the philosophy of convicted murderer and terrorist, Ted Kazcynski, aka the Unabomber.

Keith Ablow
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After making an obligatory condemnation of Kaczynski’s crimes, Ablow proceeds to express his admiration for the ideas laid out in the “manifesto” that the serial killer demanded be published in exchange for his promise to stop blowing people up.

Ablow: “Kaczynski’s ideas, however, described in a manifesto entitled, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” cannot be dismissed, and are increasingly important as our society hurtles toward individual disempowerment at the hands of technology and political forces that erode autonomy.”

Ablow then describes Kaczynski’s work as a treatise in opposition to “the industrialization of America and the world, and our increasing reliance on technology,” which he and Kaczynski believe is “short-circuiting the ability of human beings to think for themselves.” There is kernel of truth in this concept. However, there are also dozens of other, more reputable proponents whom Ablow could cite if he were interested in advancing these theories.

However, Ablow quickly reveals that he isn’t interested in this as a discussion on societal progress. Like everything else he touches, this is just another opportunity for Ablow to disparage the President and hurl screwy psychological insults at his perceived enemies. Ablow is nothing if not consistently obsessed with liberal bashing. His article continues with an overt swipe at “the left” that he borrows from Kaczynski.

Ablow: “He [Kaczynski] saw the political “left” as embracing these technologies with special fervor, because they were in keeping with the “leftist” ideology that centralized power was the way to govern men.

“He saw these “leftists” as psychologically disordered—seeking to compensate for deep feelings of personal disempowerment by banding together and seeking extraordinary means of control in society.”

For those of you who have wondered what the Unabomber thought about liberal politics, it’s true that Kaczynski had some harsh criticisms of leftists in his manifesto. But there are three problems with Ablow referring to them in order to make his point.

First of all, whether or not you have some philosophical agreements with someone like Kaczynski, it is utterly insane to cite him as a corroborating source. It’s like trying to persuade a friend to become a vegetarian because Hitler was one. You might have better results if you use Einstein as an example.

Secondly, even if you were foolish enough to try to associate yourself with Kaczynski’s aversion to liberals, you would have to dishonestly and deliberately hide the fact that he also despised conservatives. Which is exactly what Ablow did. Here is what Kaczynski wrote about the right:

Kaczynski: “The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.”

Even worse, Kaczynski assailed one of the most cherished sacred cows of the right when he wrote this…

Kaczynski: “Conservatives’ efforts to decrease the amount of government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For one thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated because most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it to private corporations. What this means for the average man is that government interference in his life is replaced by interference from big corporations, which may be permitted, for example, to dump more chemicals that get into his water supply and give him cancer. The conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Nevertheless, I would never promote the fact that Kaczynski said something with which I agree. Not when more ethical folks like Robert Reich, or Howard Zinn, or Bernie Sanders, or a thousand other people’s advocates, have also said these things and don’t happen to be deranged killers. Which brings us to third reason not to recruit Kaczynski as an ideological ally: HE’S NUTS!

Still, Ablow expands on his tribute to Kaczynski with the assertion that the emergence of social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) must have caused Kaczynski to have “even more certainty, that he was onto something,” and to “marvel at the ease with which technology taps the ego and drains the soul.” Ablow further speculated favorably that Kaczynski must have wondered whether “the widespread use of GPS…erodes your real sense of direction — on highways and, perhaps, in life.” Seriously. Ablow actually believes that using GPS can erode your direction in life. That would explain why so many people looking for the nearest Starbucks ended up with their noses in copies of Atlas Shrugged.

Now, if you think that Ablow has reached a pinnacle of dementia, you don’t know Keith Ablow. He segues from his comically delusional analysis of new media to his favorite target, President Obama. Ablow sets about to connecting non-existent dots to draw a picture of the President as a master manipulator who is putting “the core of human life” “under seige.” Ablow’s evidence of this is that Obama won election to the presidency “in part, by mastering the use of the Internet as a campaign tool.”

See what he did there? According to Ablow/Kaczynski, technology is an evil usurper of individual autonomy that will destroy traditional values and make us all slaves to Big Government and/or Big Business. And Obama is the master of technology. Could it be any clearer? Obama must be the Techno-Anti-Christ – a demon so rare and powerful that only Ablow is aware of its existence. And aren’t we lucky that he is here to warn us?

So essentially, Ablow, who once declared that Obama “has it in for America,” constructed this whole article as a vehicle to cast the President as a monstrous aberration bent on America’s ruin. The surprising thing is that he enlists the help of a domestic terrorist to make his case. And to insure that no one misses the point, he closes his column with a profoundly flattering review of Kaczynski’s opus saying that…

Ablow: “It is time for people to read “Industrial Society and its Future,” by convicted serial killer Ted Kaczynski. His work, despite his deeds, deserves a place alongside “Brave New World,” by Aldous Huxley, and “1984,” by George Orwell.”

There are some notable differences between Kaczynski’s rambling, psychotic screed, and the inspiring fiction of Huxley and Orwell. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the latter two were gifted novelists who never murdered anyone. And the former is a criminally insane sociopath who has found common ground with a member of the Fox News Medical “A” Team. God help anyone who takes advice from this maniac. And if I were you, I wouldn’t open any packages with Ablow’s name on the return address.


Wonkette: IRSgate Joins Solyndragate and Benghazigate In Fake Scandal Heaven

I’d like to thank Wonkette for saving me the trouble of writing the post-mortem on the phony IRS scandal. After new evidence emerged revealing that groups other than conservative Tea Party organizations were subjected to stricter scrutiny, I intended to write a detailed report exposing the partisan fraud manufactured by Rep. Darrell Issa and his right-wing cohorts.

Tea Party Republicans

But Wonkette just published a superb summary of the affair with an abundance of humor and righteous mockery. So I’m gonna just leave it to them. Read it here for yourself, but here are a few tasty excerpts:

“In addition to being a cosmic turd straight from Satan’s bunghole, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is now just a laughing stock on Capitol Hill. If anyone anywhere takes this clown seriously in the future, we will be shocked.”

Actually, I won’t be shocked. There will be plenty of idiots at Fox News, WorldNetDaily, and the Tea Party Gazette, who will continue to take Issa seriously.

“[S]uck it all you teabagger crazies complaining about how much butthurt you went through while suffering from your goddam persecution complex. Turns out you are all a bunch of whiny babies who jumped the gun before all the facts were in, and now you look like completely incompetent political hacks who are better off crawling back to whatever cosmic bunghole you came from.”

As reported here at News Corpse, evidence has been emerging for weeks that the whole premise of the scandal was falling apart. Most of the principles turned out to be Republicans. Issa was cherry-picking information to release. The more data that was made public, the more obvious their lies became. And now Issa, who had decided before any of this began the President was guilty of masterminding the whole thing, is whining about prejudging.

“Rep. Issa is worried that someone else is jumping to conclusions! We are pretty sure there is a word for that, but at the moment all that comes to mind is ‘fuck that guy.'”

The article is actually full of relevant facts and links, and is well worth a look-see. Thanks again, Wonkette. Now I can concentrate on more important matters like the Fox News “psycho” analyst who is praising the Unabomber (yes, that’s real).

I’d also like to thank Wonkette for their fantastic review of my book, Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth, that they called “A valuable contribution to the effort to chip away at Bullshit Mountain.”


Judicial Bipolar Disorder: Republicans Respond To Court Ruling

Judicial Bipolar Disorder

This morning the Supreme Court issued a decision on the Voting Rights Act that struck down Section 4 which provided for constitutional reviews of voting practices in jurisdictions where there has been a history of discrimination. As might be expected, opinions began flying around as soon as the news hit the wires. Here are some of the views expressed by Republicans and other conservative figures:

  • Mitt Romney: Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people.
  • Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO): Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people … demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people.
  • Sen. Jeff Sessions: This ‘Washington-knows-best’ mentality is evident in all branches of government, but is especially troublesome in the judiciary, where unelected judges have twisted the words of our Constitution to advance their own political, economic, and social agendas.
  • Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL): I’m appalled that unelected judges have irresponsibly decided to legislate from the bench and overturn the will of the people.
  • George W. Bush: This concept of a “living Constitution” gives unelected judges wide latitude in creating new laws and policies without accountability to the people.
  • Thomas Sowell: Unelected judges can cut the voters out of the loop and decree liberal dogma as the law of the land.
  • Laura Ingraham: We don’t want to be micromanaged by some unelected judge or some unelected bureaucrat on the international or national level.
  • Gov. Rick Perry: [The American people are] fed up with unelected judges.
  • Pat Robertson: We are under the tyranny of a nonelected oligarchy. Just think, five unelected men and women who serve for life can change the moral fabric of our nation and take away the protections which our elected legislators have wisely put in place.
  • Robert Bork: We are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own.
  • Sen. Orrin Hatch: A small minority and their judicial activist allies are seeking to usurp the will of the people … Ultimately, the American people, not unelected judges, should decide policy on critical social issues such as this one.
  • Glenn Beck: Even if you agree that the role of government is to take wealth from one to another, should it be the role of unelected judges and justices that do this?
  • Justice Antonin Scalia: Value-laden decisions such as that should be made by an entire society … not by nine unelected judges.

If you haven’t already figured it out, these are not responses to today’s decision on the Voting Rights Act. These opinions were expressed following other legal cases where the rulings were contrary to the wishes of these conservative hypocrites. If they had any intellectual integrity, they would be joining liberals who are disappointed with today’s ruling.

When a decision like today’s is handed down, the wingnuts are ecstatic that our judicial branch upheld the rule of law and preserved democracy and liberty. But when the courts rule against them the judiciary is filled with collectivist tyrants who despise freedom and dismiss the people’s will. This demonstration of Judicial Bipolar Disorder is a sad commentary on the state of modern governing. Let’s hope that science can find a cure before too many more suffer from this plague. It would also help if the sufferers believed in science.