The Fox News Paranoid Conspiracy Follies And The Collapse Of Society

Posted by on February 19, 2013 at 2:51 am. 11 Comments :

Last year there was a flurry of panicky hand-wringing by notorious conspiracy mongers like Alex Jones and the fruitcakes at WorldNetDaily and Newsmax. Reports that agencies of the federal government had purchased large caches of ammunition set the rumor peddlers tongues to wagging as they imagined brigades of Obama’s stormtroopers marching into the corn fields and trailer parks of rural America gunning down everything in their path.

This sickness infected much of the right-wing crackpot community and spread via chain letters and the blogs of Psycho Chicken Littles who were convinced by Glenn Beck that the End of Days was upon us. At the time, these ludicrous delusions were smacked down by more rational thinkers including those at PolitiFact. But the acutely deranged conservative mind is not an easy thing to assuage. And as a result the tales of doom persisted and are even now being retold by Fox News and its heralds.

Fox Nation

The latest incarnation of this horror story is a rehashing of the news that the Department of Homeland Security had purchased more than a billion bullets. In the minds of the nutcases on the right, that is evidence that the DHS is plotting a response to some impending disaster scenario wherein they will be forced to kill every person in America five times. That is precisely what Mark Levin, Sean Hannity’s replacement for Sarah Palin, is terrorizing his radio listeners with:

“I’m going to tell you what I think is going on. I don’t think insurrection. Law enforcement and national security agencies — they play out multiple scenarios. They simulate multiple scenarios. I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating: the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses.”

Repent sinners – the end is near. Never mind that in the past four years, since George W. Bush actually did come within a hair’s breadth of collapsing the economy, America’s financial state has recovered nearly everything it had lost. The stock market is higher today than it was before the crash. Housing markets are heating up. Unemployment, though still uncomfortably high, is three points lower than its recessionary peak. None of that, however, has any impact on the FoxPods who are stubbornly certain that we are on the brink of disaster.

What makes this particularly idiotic is that the DHS has fully explained the ammunition purchases and that explanation was even reported by Fox News in a wire story from the Associated Press:

“Federal solicitations to buy the bullets are known as ‘strategic sourcing contracts,’ which help the government get a low price for a big purchase, says Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga . The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.”

The story goes on to note that these munitions were to be used by “more than 90 federal agencies and 70,000 agents.” In addition they are also used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government’s second largest criminal investigative agency. But this exceedingly reasonable explanation didn’t deter Fox from advancing an utterly insane conspiracy theory. It’s what they do and, dammit, they do it pretty well.

[And for good measure…] Sarah Palin couldn’t resist the urge to make an ass of herself:

Sarah Palin

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News Corpse eBook ‘Fox Nation vs. Reality’ Reviewed By Wonkette

Posted by on February 18, 2013 at 9:59 am. 1 Comments :

* * * EXCITING UPDATE BELOW! * * *

Fox Nation vs. RealityFox Nation vs. Reality, the international best-seller that has blown the lid off of the corruption and dishonesty that runs rampant on the the Fox News community web site, has been reviewed by Wonkette.com. It’s a comprehensive and candid analysis of the book that compiles more than fifty examples of documented falsehoods published by the editors at Fox who appear to be fourteen year old interns from the remedial class at “I’m More Immature Than U.”

Wonkette astutely recognizes the merits of owning this digital tome for its convenience and technical features. They go on to laud the author (me) for “address[ing this inequity” regarding the scarcity of reporting and analysis of Fox’s Internet outpost. While much is written about the Fox News mothership, Fox Nation has been left largely untouched by rational examination. That omission is articulated well in the review’s opening paragraph:

“When Americans think of ‘lying Rupert Murdoch-owned filthyweasels spewing rightwing talking points,’ they of course think of Fox News. But There’s a whole ‘nother arm of the Murdoch Bullshit Machine that operates semi-independently of the Fox News domain, and that’s their terrible stinky community website, Fox Nation.”

It would be difficult to sum it up much better than that. The review continues by providing some of their favorite excerpts from the book and even pointing out a couple of criticisms. For instance, they complain that the book doesn’t provide links to the Fox Nation articles it criticizes. But that was a deliberate choice to avoid awarding Fox’s smarmy news-spoofery by sending them traffic they do not deserve.

On the whole, however, the review is a positive portrayal of this epic work that should be a part of everyone’s library. And just to rub it in, here are few choice quotes from the review:

“Solid, fact-checky blogging that systematically takes apart the exaggerations, cherry-picking of facts, and outright lies that regularly crop up in Fox Nation articles.”

“A valuable contribution to the effort to chip away at Bullshit Mountain.”

“Fox Nation vs. Reality is definitely not hastily written Furry porn.”

That last quote may be the most flattering part of the review. It is gratifying that they noticed that this Furry porn was written slowly and methodically. And if that isn’t enough to get you to click on this link and consider buying the book, I don’t know what is. Except to say that your purchase helps to sustain this web site and its dogged pursuit of the deceitful fabulists at Fox News and other right-wing media dissemblers and propagandists. Your welcome.

[Update 12/15/2014] Volume II of Fox Nation vs. Reality is now available. The new ebook, “Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance” is chock full of more eye-opening, documented examples of why Fox has zero credibility. It’s enlightening, infuriating, and entertaining. Followers of News Corpse will love it, and haters’ heads will explode. So you might want to get a copy for yourself and some more for the wingnuts in your life.

Buy it today at Amazon.
Fox Nation vs. Reality


Fox News Runs Smoke Screen For The Tea-bacco Party

Posted by on February 17, 2013 at 10:00 am. 1 Comments :

A recent study was conducted by the University of California at San Francisco that uncovered a connection between the astroturf Tea Party movement and wealthy lobbyists for Big Tobacco. The study documented how tobacco interests formed an organization called Citizens for a Sound Economy in 2002 and later split it into the Tea Party organizers FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.

Tea-baccoUnable to dispute the facts exposed by the study, Fox News published an article attacking the funding which came from the National Cancer Institute, a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health. The Fox headline blared “Taxpayer dollars used to fund study attempting to link Tea Party to tobacco lobby.”

The entire premise of the article was a transparent defense of the Tea Party, which Fox also helped to create. In fact, without their relentless promotion and free airtime there would have been no Tea Party at all. But having no case to make against the findings of the study, Fox went after a peripheral issue in an attempt to change the subject to the funding source. What they failed to realize is that university studies frequently receive grants from government agencies, particularly those that research public health.

The UCSF study was in no way designed to attack the Tea Party. It was looking into the manner in which the tobacco industry advanced their mission to market their deadly products. It just so happened that the Tea Party connection was unveiled during the course of the study. That connection should not surprise anyone considering that the Tea Party’s first major protest activity was centered on blocking public health care, something the tobacco lobby has opposed for decades because it educated consumers about the dangers of smoking.

The faux outrage now being expressed by Fox does nothing to counter the findings in the study. What it does is chastise institutions who engage in research that benefits the public. By attacking the funding sources Fox is advocating a form of academic censorship and trampling on the free expression of the researchers. It’s rather ironic in that the Tea Party rightists often rail about the interference of big government, but in this incident they are eager to allow the government to dictate to independent institutions what they are, and are not, permitted to study.

If Fox were a legitimate news enterprise they might have chosen to run a story about the merits and/or flaws of the study rather than try to discredit it with snide insinuations that raise phony suspicions about the funding. But since they are Fox they typically chose to trash whatever it is that they regard as contrary to their conservative prejudices, even if their argument makes no sense and contradicts their own principles.


So F**king What? Obama Aint No Emperor

Posted by on February 16, 2013 at 3:05 am. 3 Comments :

The weasels at Fox News must be working overtime to find new ways to demonize President Obama as a tyrannical defiler of freedom. They seem to love nothing more than inventing paranoid conspiracies wherein the President is plotting to crown himself king and drag patriotic teabaggers off to reeducation camps. Of course the first flaw in that theory is that you would have to be educated in order to be reeducated.

Earlier this week Obama participated in a Google Hangout event and was asked about his immigration policy. Specifically, the questioner wanted to know what he would do to prevent deportations that resulted in the break up of families. Obama responded…

“This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed. And congress right now has not changed what I consider to be a broken immigration system. And what that means is that we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think that in many cases the results may be tragic.”

So the President’s thoughtful response was that his administration was required to act in accordance with existing law and would do so until such time as those laws were changed. But the wingnut brain instinctively edits Obama’s utterances to conform with their twisted preconceptions. Consequently, all they heard was “The problem is…I’m not the emperor of the United States.”

Fox Nation

So F**king What?

The obvious point the President was making was that the American system of government requires some measure of cooperation between equal branches of government. He wasn’t knocking it or proposing that he be elevated to Supreme Leader. He was merely explaining why he could not unilaterally revoke existing laws with which he has objections and impose his version.

Rather than accurately report the exchange, Fox Nation posted the most wildly distorted misrepresentation of what the President said and left it to their dimwitted audience to wallow in a fear-soaked nightmare of an impending dictatorship ruled by a freedom-hating, devil worshiper who wasn’t even born here. And, as usual, their outrage is reserved for Obama despite the fact that the previous Republican president made similar remarks with not so much as a whimper from the right:

The Fox Nationalists didn’t bother to publish the complete quote or to link to an article that reported the event in greater detail. And heaven forbid they would provide the sort of context that included Bush’s remarks. Their purpose was clearly to portray Obama as power-mad in order to induce a state of frothing hysteria amongst the FoxPods. And judging by the comments attached to the Fox Nation item, it worked spectacularly well. They are nothing if not predictably and pitifully gullible.


Fox News Hires Herman Cain To Fill Network’s Wingnut, Philandering, Birther Role

Posted by on February 15, 2013 at 10:33 am. 7 Comments :

In Keeping with their mission to elevate the most ignorant, delusional, dishonest, self-serving, partisan extremists of the far-right Tea-publican Party, Fox News has just announced that they have added former pizza chain magnate Herman Cain to their payroll.

You may remember that Cain boasted that he didn’t know the names of foreign leaders and dismissed inquiries about them to be “gotcha” questions about Uzbecki-becki-stan-stan. He declared that under ObamaCare he would be dead, despite the fact that it would not have altered the course of treatment for his cancer at all, but it does provide care for other cancer patients who would have no care without it. His 999 tax plan was widely ridiculed by economists. He was an avowed birther who insisted that Obama “should prove he was born in the United States of America.” And with serial philanderer Newt Gingrich absent from Fox, they needed to fill the void by hiring another misogynist. Cain fit the bill due to multiple allegations of sexual harassment that derailed his short-lived campaign for president.

And who could forget Cain’s astute foreign policy observations as represented by this analysis of the Libyan uprising:

No wonder Fox snapped him up. That’s the sort of wisdom that sets the Fox editors, programmers, and audience to drooling. It’s the reason why Fox has buttressed their roster since the election with dimwitted losers like Mark Levin, Erick Erickson, Karl Rove, and Scott Brown. With the addition of Cain they continue to demonstrate that they have no interest in either fairness or balance – or honesty or intelligence for that matter. Congratulations Fox. You are nothing if not consistent.


Bill O’Reilly Can’t Stop Embarrassing Himself: The Drone Edition

Posted by on February 14, 2013 at 11:41 am. 2 Comments :

Last week Bill O’Reilly demonstrated how utterly inept he and his staff were when he asked “You heard anything on NBC about the drones?” Then he answered his own question saying “Neither have I. Neither has my staff.” As it turns out it was actually NBC who broke the story that had spurred the media dialogue on the subject.

Bill O'Reilly

However, O’Reilly stiffened his back and insisted that he was still right with a tortured explanation that talking about drones was not talking about drones. On last night’s program he wandered further into delusional territory during an interview with Howard Kurtz, who had previously criticized O’Reilly about his not noticing NBC’s role in the coverage of drones. O’Reilly charged Kurtz with hypocrisy and accused him of…

“…confusing hard news reporting about drones with the New York Times editorial page, which hasn’t condemned, as far as I know, in any great measure as they did with waterboarding, the use of it. What we were clearly talking about here was why the left doesn’t condemn killing terrorists with drones.”

As you might expect, O’Reilly stuck his massive foot into his even bigger mouth yet again. Nearly a year ago, well before this current dust up, the Times published an editorial titled “Too Much Power for a President.” The very first paragraph reads…

“It has been clear for years that the Obama administration believes the shadow war on terrorism gives it the power to choose targets for assassination, including Americans, without any oversight. On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed who was actually making the final decision on the biggest killings and drone strikes: President Obama himself. And that is very troubling.”

The Times goes on to say…

“No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield — depriving Americans of their due-process rights.”

So much for the Times not condemning drones. Even worse, O’Reilly actually contradicted his own premise that liberals have not been critical of Obama’s drone policy despite their criticism of Bush’s waterboarding and torture tactics. In the opening of this segment O’Reilly explicitly acknowledged that liberals were openly opposing Obama’s CIA director nominee over this very issue.

“Will counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan become the head of the CIA? He testifies on Capitol Hill tomorrow, but some liberals don’t like him because he is the director of the drone program that kills terrorists from the sky.”

O’Reilly needs to explain how liberals can be hypocrites for not speaking out against drones when they are, in fact, speaking out and O’Reilly himself has heard it and used it to introduce his story. He may also want to explain how he missed the New York Times editorial hammering the President on drones, but still went on the air to say the Times never criticized Obama. His loathing for depraved lefties was palpable as he piled on his rage:

“This is about one thing. Hypocrisy. You leftists screaming about waterboarding yet they’re muted about killing with drones because they’re in the tank for Barack Obama.”

Right! Leftists like the New York Times, Rachel Maddow, Glenn Greenwald, etc. are all in the tank for Obama even while they harshly slam him for deploying drones. It should also be noted that another news organization actually did mute the drone story – Fox News. Therefore they must also be in the tank for Obama.

How many times does O’Reilly have to get virtually everything wrong before people will take notice that he is just blabbering old fool who can’t form a coherent argument on any subject? If he had the capacity to feel shame he might hole himself up in a cabin in Idaho for the remainder of the decade. Unfortunately, his prodigious ego will ensure that he will continue to misinform his audience and whine pitifully when someone tries to point out his mistakes. And somehow this gets ratings for Fox. Well, I guess if people will watch Honey Boo Boo, they will watch anything.

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The Making Of A Fox News Headline: State Of The Union Edition

Posted by on February 13, 2013 at 9:33 pm. 4 Comments :

President Obama’s State of the Union address was generally well received by a majority of Americans with polling showing high approval for the speech (CNN, PPP). But oddly enough, Fox News managed to put a negative spin on the public reaction.

What makes this particularly odd is that the article that Fox posted on their web site had mostly positive things to say about the speech. However, the headline could not have been more downcast: “Obama’s State of the Union speech a well-crafted, hollow recitation of nothing more than words.”

Fox News

A hollow recitation of words? As opposed to a recitation of shoes, or bees? How about a recitation of pie? It is pretty much a given that, by definition, all recitations are of words. This may be a detail that escapes the linguistic geniuses at Fox who can’t seem to even get through the second paragraph of the article with making numerous grammatical errors.

Fox News Grammer

More to the point, the headline Fox composed was utterly detached from the content of the article. At no point did the author, fake Democrat Doug Schoen, write that the speech was “a hollow recitation of nothing more than words.” That was an invention of the headline writer. Schoen did, however, write that the speech was “well-written, well-crafted” and “hit all the right notes.” He also said that it “was a great speech.” None of that made it into the headline.

Had Fox wanted to disparage Obama without resorting to fiction, there was plenty in Schoen’s screed from which to choose. Schoen used much of his space to blame Obama for the obstructionism on the part of congressional Republicans. But the headline writer must have thought that angle would be too steep for the Fox audience. All things considered, that was probably the right call.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Fox Nation

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

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

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


Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Thinks Latinos Are Idiots

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

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

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

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

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

Fox News Latino

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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