Smoking Gun Delirium Disorder: Or What The F**K Is Fox News Smoking?

Posted by on May 3, 2014 at 3:55 pm. 10 Comments :

Generally when someone sees things that aren’t really there they are diagnosed as having hallucinations, perhaps in conjunction with psychological disorders like schizophrenia, paranoia, dementia, or other psychoses. But what do you call it when a cable news network suffers from these symptoms?

It seems that everywhere Fox News turns they have visions of “Smoking Guns” that signal the Apocalyptic end of the Obama administration that they despise so fervently. Yet in every case their obsessive imagination dissolves into the ether leaving nothing behind but their impotent outrage.

Fox News Smoking Gun

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Just to summarize, here are a few of the trumped up “Smoking Guns” as seen on Fox News:

  • Is This Really Smoking Gun Of Obama’s Kenyan Birth?
  • Smoking Gun In The IRS Scandal?
  • Washington Times: White House – ACORN Smoking Gun.
  • Kagan’s Smoking Gun? Partial-Birth Abortion.
  • Smoking Gun Amnesty Memo Discovered.
  • Smoking Gun: Al Sharpton’s Secret Work As FBI Informant.
  • EPA’s Smoking Gun?
  • Climate Skeptic’s Smoking Gun in Researchers’ Leaked Emails.

The latest example of this syndrome has manifested in the discovery of an email that the Foxpods are convinced reveals some sort of dastardly plot by the White House to define the tragic assault on an American diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, as a response to an offensive video by an Islamophobic preacher. Their headline blares “Smoking Gun Email Shows Team Obama Misled Country About Benghazi.” It actually doesn’t show anything of the kind, but then none of Fox’s other smoking guns bore any resemblence to reality either. In fact, the whole conspiracy theory doesn’t make any sense because it wouldn’t matter whether the video incited the attack or not. And there is no doubt that if the video were the cause, Fox would be taking the opposite position and attacking President Obama for blaming the terrorists – you know, the cretins who actually slaughtered our citizens.

With regard to the email, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes wrote that among the goals of UN Ambassador Susan Rice, as she prepared for a series of Sunday morning news interviews, were “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video and not a broader failure of policy.” Note that it says “protests” (plural) making it obvious that Rhodes was not referring to Benghazi alone, but rather to numerous hostilities throughout the region. He doesn’t even mention Benghazi in the email until twelve paragraphs later, and then not in regards to this question.

The delusional mindset of Fox and their conservative allies has even constructed a conspiracy around the fact that Ben Rhodes is the brother of CBS News president, David Rhodes. Therefore, there must be a plot between them to coordinate the reporting on this issue in favor of the President. Never mind that David Rhodes came to CBS from Fox News where he was the Vice-President of News and oversaw all of the blatantly partisan, pro-Bush coverage from 9/11 to Katrina to Iraq to the Bush economic collapse. Also, it was under David that CBS broadcast the recent (and now discredited) Benghazi story on 60 minutes that was so harshly critical of Obama. It’s fair to say that David and Ben have different political views. But that didn’t stop the ultra-rightist Heritage Foundation from juicing up the sibling conspiracy, complete with a Twitter-friendly graphic.

Clearly Fox News is deeply disturbed and fixated on finding evidence of malfeasance that will bring the Obama administration crashing down. But when they see smoking guns in every direction, haunting them in their waking hours as if there were substance to them, it really is time to seek professional help. The parade of alleged smoking guns have all amounted to nothing but mirages of the feverish hopes embedded in the twisted psyches of Fox News. And this new one will suffer the same fate.

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Stephen Colbert Nails Fox Nation’s Resident Imbecile Jesse Watters (Video)

Posted by on May 2, 2014 at 12:04 pm. 4 Comments :

Finally. Media analysts and satirists have chronicled the brazenly partisan and shamelessly deceitful pseudo-news enterprise, known erroneously as Fox “News,” for several years. The disinformation and deliberate lies propagated by disreputable characters like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Steve Doocy, Megyn Kelly, etc., has all been subjected to appropriate scrutiny and ridicule. But one of Fox’s most embarrassing figures has managed to escape the criticism he so richly deserves.

Stephen Colbert Watters World

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Jesse Watters is a producer on the O’Reilly Factor. He is regularly featured in segments that are intended to be humorous, but rarely achieve that goal for anyone whose sense of humor has evolved beyond kindergarten (in other words, Fox News viewers will love it). The “Watters’ World” bits generally show Watters interviewing “average” people – you know, the “folks” that Bill O’Reilly always claims to be watching out for. Except for when he dispatches his goons to produce heavily edited segments that only show responses from people that fail to give correct answers. That’s because the purpose of the interviews is to make them look like idiots.

It is also worth noting that Watters is the editor of the Fox News community website, Fox Nation. That fact is rarely disclosed publicly and is not credited anywhere on the website. But given the juvenile tone it sets, the horrifyingly violent and racist comments it draws, and the repeatedly false stories it promotes, Watters may have good reason to want to hide his involvement. [For a collection of more than 50 documented examples of blatant lies published by Fox Nation, get the ebook “Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.” Available at Amazon]

Now Stephen Colbert has turned his biting incite toward Watters in a hilarious segment that demonstrates the dishonesty inherent to what Watters does. Colbert rehabilitates the people that Watters attempts to demean, exposes the cheap tactics that Watters exploits, and does it all with comedic brilliance. Here is the episode for your viewing pleasure:


Where’s The NRA? GOP Rep Wants To Take Guns Away – From Law Enforcement

Posted by on May 1, 2014 at 3:54 pm. 9 Comments :

The National Rifle Association has a long record of defending the rights of every American to own firearms of any type and to carry them everywhere. It’s an agenda that enriches the NRA’s financial backers in the weapons trade, but endangers millions of citizens.

Now there is a new effort to restrict access to guns that would ordinarily get the NRA riled up in opposition. It follows the recent standoff at the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada where the Bureau of Land Management sought to hold Bundy accountable for violating the law and refusing to pay customary grazing fees for his cattle. In response to the BLM’s efforts to enforce the law, Bundy issued threats, saying that he had guns and was willing to use them. He was backed up by heavily armed militia members who stormed in to confront the BLM.

This is the backdrop for a legislative proposal by Utah Republican Chris Stewart who has analyzed the situation and concluded that there were too many guns in the mix and that steps must be taken by the federal government to disarm — the law enforcement officers.

Disarm the Cops

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That’s right, unaccountable, and likely unstable, shady characters, who dashed across the country to defend a racist criminal, must be permitted unrestricted access to guns and munitions, even when they threaten to use them against their own government. But it’s the government agents who need to be relieved of their firearms. That’s the lesson that Stewart learned from the Bundy ranch episode.

This is where the NRA would usually step in and declare that anyone who wants to take away guns will have to “pry them from my cold, dead hands.” However, it seems that that sentiment only applies to lawless posses and murderers who were standing their ground. When it comes to the first responders who uphold the law and keep America safe, at great personal risk, the NRA has no principles or sympathy.

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It is not surprising to find this sort of hypocrisy by the NRA-theists who are opposed to even the most common sense reforms that the American people favor by large majorities. But it is surprising to find that a sitting Republican representative can observe the disturbing events at the Bundy ranch and come away believing that it’s our law enforcement officers who should be disarmed.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: Insignificant New Email Reignites Benghazi Tourettes On Fox News

Posted by on May 1, 2014 at 12:16 pm. 6 Comments :

No “news” network has been more committed to promoting rumors and conspiracy theories than Fox News. And the most persistent fake scandal in the Fox News Bucket-o-Bullcrap is the allegation that the Obama administration attempted some sort of cover up following the terror attack on the United States facility in Benghazi, Libya. Still, after more than a year of congressional hearings, and independent investigations by government agencies and the press, there has not been a shred of evidence linking the White House to anything improper.

However, that record of abject failure isn’t enough to dissuade Fox News from continuing its crusade against President Obama and his staff. The latest spark that is firing up Fox & Co. is an email that was released by the conservative activists at JudicialWatch. The email itself reveals nothing new. In fact, it reiterates information that has been publicly available for months and has been affirmed by the intelligence community. Nevertheless, Fox is unleashing a flood of phony stories that serve no purpose other than to distort the facts and enrage their pitifully ill-informed audience.

Fox Nation Benghazi Tourettes

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What Fox News and other Obama antagonists regard as the smoking gun is a single sentence (out of 112 pages) that they falsely connect to events in Benghazi. In that sentence Deputy National Security Adviser David Rhodes writes that among the goals of UN Ambassador Susan Rice, as she prepared for a series of Sunday morning news interviews, were “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video and not a broader failure of policy.”

However, what is left out by Fox, JudicialWatch, and virtually every right-wing pundit to comment on this, is that the email was not referring exclusively to events in Benghazi at all. It was a response to the much broader set of events in the Middle East including those in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, etc. This was expressed explicitly in another section of the documents that read “Clearly there are protests that are taking place in different countries around the world that are responding to the movie that was circulated on the Internet.”

It is unambiguously true that most of the unrest that was occurring contemporaneous to the attack in Benghazi was incited by the anti-Muslim video posted online by a raving American Islamaphobe preacher. No one, not even the deliberately deceitful folks at Fox News, dispute that.

So what we have now is Fox News pretending that the Rhodes email was related only to Benghazi when all the evidence shows that this is not the case. They have relaunched their 24/7 Grand Benghazi-thon wherein virtually their entire broadcast consists of nothing but Benghazi, and specifically their purposeful misrepresentation of this newly released email.

Over at their Fox Nation website they are suffering another seizure of Benghazi Tourettes. As of this writing there are nine separate articles posted on this one story. For reference, there are no stories posted about the GOP blocking the minimum wage bill, or the crisis in the Ukraine, or the devastating tornadoes in the Mid-West. On Fox Nation the only story of any significance is the trumped up Benghazi scandal. And the only thing that brings it back to prominence is an email whose contents Fox is lying about.


The REAL Death Panel: Man Nearly Dies From Watching Fox News

Posted by on April 30, 2014 at 11:14 am. 8 Comments :

For four years Fox News has been furiously trying to frighten people away from the benefits of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). They have shamelessly manufactured horror stories, disseminated lies, and advanced the most ludicrous conspiracy theories about the health insurance law that has made access to medical care available to millions, some for the first time in their lives.

Fox News Nearly Killed Me

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One of the most notorious myths promoted by Fox News was the assertion that ObamaCare contained provisions for a “Death Panel” that would have the power to decide who lives and who dies. It was invented by radical anti-healthcare activist Betsy McCaughey and popularized by radical dimwit Sarah Palin. There was never any truth to the charge, but that didn’t stop Fox News from devoting thousands of hours of airtime to planting false information into the minds of their gullible audience.

Sadly, there are consequences for this sort of brazen deception that a Pennsylvania man discovered just before it was too late, thankfully. Dean Angstadt was aware that he had a serious health problem when it became too difficult for him to continue his work as a logger. However, he was uninsured and refused to sign up for ObamaCare because, as he told the Washington Post, he…

“…listened to what the GOP had to say about Obamacare, and not so much to what the Democrats had to say. As for his media diet, Anstadt says he goes online for some of his news, but when it comes to television, ‘Fox News, of course, and that’s basically what I watch on TV.'”

As his condition worsened, his friend eventually persuaded him to check out his options on the ACA exchange. He found an insurance plan with a monthly premium of $26.11, and signed up. Within a month he had life-saving surgery to replace a failing heart valve. And what does he think about ObamaCare now?

“A lot of people I talk to are so misinformed about the ACA,” Angstadt said. “I was, before Bob went through all this for me. I would recommend it to anybody.”

“I probably would have ended up falling over dead” without the surgery, Angstadt said. “Not only did it save my life, it’s going to give me a better quality of life.”

“For me, this isn’t about politics,” he added. “I’m trying to help other people who are like me, stubborn and bullheaded, who refused to even look. From my own experience, the ACA is everything it’s supposed to be and, in fact, better than it’s made out to be.”

This is the new opinion of a man who previously was so adamantly opposed to ObamaCare that he wouldn’t even look at the website. And his opinion was shaped by exclusive viewing of Fox News and the dishonest smear job they conducted on ObamaCare. Were it not for his friend insisting that he give it a try, Angstadt would not be here today to tell his story.

You can’t help wondering how many other people are in the same position as Angstadt. How many others were deceived by Fox, and the Republican liars, into delaying critical medical care? And how many have actually died because they never found out that Fox was lying to them?

The truth is out there, as Florida’s Republican governor Rick Scott learned when he visited a senior center to “warn of the dangers of Obamacare and hear horror stories about the law.” Instead, he was pummeled with positive impressions by folks who were grateful for the benefits the ACA provided.

So if you are still looking for death panels, you have found them. They are the Republican committees in Congress that have repeatedly tried to denigrate and repeal ObamaCare. And they are in the editorial suites and studios of Fox News, where the wealthy executives and pundits never have to worry about how to pay for their medical care.


Yes, Fox Nation Is A Haven For Violent Racists – And Here’s The Proof

Posted by on April 29, 2014 at 9:40 pm. NO Comments :

Someone asked me to prove that commenters on Fox Nation were openly hostile and racist. So I compiled the evidence I’ve collected into one page. Feel free to bookmark it for future reference.

The Collected Hate Speech Of The Fox Nation Community
This page is a collection of the vile and contemptible expressions of hatred found on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation. It is a window into the dark soul of unrepentant bigots who proudly put their shameful ignorance on display. It also speaks to the character of Fox News that permits these comments to remain on their website that they claim is moderated to insure civil discourse.

Here is a little preview of what you’ll find:

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IDIOCRACY: Fox News Is Aghast That Media Watchdog Does What Media Watchdogs Do

Posted by on April 28, 2014 at 3:52 pm. NO Comments :

On CNN’s Reliable Sources this weekend, host Brian Stelter interviewed David Brock, the founder of Media Matters, to respond to an accusation made by disgraced former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson on last week’s program. Attkisson alleged that Media Matters might have been paid to target her for criticism. It was an irresponsible and paranoid allegation for which she offered no evidence or any details on who would have offered the payment or to whom. In effect, Attkisson demonstrated why her reporting is regarded as hackery.

In the segment on Reliable Sources (video below), Brock was asked about the nature of his business and his relationship with other media enterprises. He candidly replied that “We do work with reporters. We’re a media watchdog group.” That seems pretty obvious. It is precisely what media watchdogs are designed to do. They monitor various journalism outlets, analyze their content, and communicate their findings to the public and other members of the press. It’s a valuable service that helps to keep the media honest and accurate. But that’s not the way Fox News sees it.

Fox Nation

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In a desperate attempt to further smear an organization with which Fox is obsessed, Fox News posted an article on their Fox Nation website with the shocking disclosure that Brock “Admits to Working with Media Outlets on Stories.” That’s more of a definition than an admission. It’s perfectly acceptable for Brock to provide his reports to the media, just as it’s acceptable for the media to receive and evaluate them.

Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists portrayed this activity as if it were criminal, saying that he “did not deny the allegations today.” Again, that’s more of a job description than an allegation. And it’s a job that is done by many organizations including some with conservative views. One of the most notable is the Media Research Center and its NewsBusters website. Run by ultra-rightist Brent Bozell, the MRC is a major source of information for the conservative media circus including Fox News. Former Fox anchor Brit Hume even lauded the MRC saying…

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

Given the close relationship between the MRC and Fox News, it is blatantly hypocritical for them to assert some sort of malfeasance on the part of Media Matters. When Fox’s primary anchor and managing editor confesses to making “tremendous use” of the MRC’s data, and not knowing what he would have done without them, it seems somewhat overblown and self-serving to criticize Media Matters for simply documenting the flagrant bias and inept inaccuracies of the conservative media.

It would not be too much of a stretch to observe the jealousy of the right who have a much harder time fabricating their fake outrages and phony controversies like the one presented here. Whereas Media Matters, sadly, has an abundance of right-wing distortions and lies to catalog. Brock may have said it best on Reliable Sources when he noted that conservative watchdogs…

“…seem to be particularly incensed about Media Matters’ relationship with the media. Maybe we’re just doing a better job than they are.”


STFU: Fox News Shuts Down Comments On Article About Gay Republican

Posted by on April 28, 2014 at 12:42 pm. 5 Comments :

As the PR division of the Republican Party, Fox News has the massive burden of improving the public impression of a party that is widely viewed as being intolerant of minorities, dismissive of women, advocates for the rich, and proselytizers for a distinctly right-wing flavor of Christianity. While the GOP claims to want to broaden the appeal of the party, their policies work to do just the opposite. This makes the job much more difficult for Fox News who are trying to solicit favor from Latinos while opposing immigration; from women while opposing equal pay; from African-Americans while opposing affirmative action; and from workers while opposing unions, unemployment benefits, and raising the minimum wage.

Add to these groups the LGBT community. This is a particularly tough needle to thread for Fox and the GOP. They want to appear to be open-minded, but their positions are fervently anti-gay. They oppose marriage equality, non-discrimination in the workplace, hospital and survivor benefits, etc. And they are not particularly welcoming to gay Republican groups like GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans.

Fox News

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Somehow, Fox News needs to advance its mission of electing more Republicans without alienating their conservative, Tea Party base. In pursuit of that end, Fox ran a story by Dana Perino, former press Secretary for George W. Bush and a Fox News contributor, that sought to expose what she regards as hypocrisy on the part of Democrats. The article was titled “Straight Talk About Gay Republican Congressional Candidate Carl DeMaio,” and questioned why Democrats were withholding their support from a gay San Diego congressional candidate that she thought Democrats should back automatically.

The notion that Democrats have some inherent responsibility to back any candidate on the basis of their sexual orientation is absurd. Democrats will not support gays (or women or African-Americans or Latinos, etc.) who work against the interests of their constituents. To suggest that they should is a remarkably ignorant and narrow-minded view of civic duty. It is also not the course that ethical gays would take. For example, Stampp Corbin, publisher of the San Diego LGBT Weekly, addressed DeMaio’s candidacy saying that…

“The Republican Party platform says Republicans ‘reaffirm our support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.’ The Democratic platform says ‘Gay rights are human rights.’ Could there be more of a contrast? […] Why would LGBT people elect someone who is part of a party that wants to deny LGBT people basic rights?”

Exactly. DeMaio is running against Democratic incumbant Scott Peters, who has been an outspoken advocate of LGBT rights, despite being straight. This is a concept that Perino and Fox News obviously don’t grasp.

However, they do know their audience. Which is why Fox News is not permitting any of them to comment on this story. Even though Fox News allows comments on all of their other news articles, they have closed off comments for this one. Why would they treat this article differently than all of the others? Perhaps because they are aware that the Fox News audience is likely to post derogatory and obscene insults directed at the candidate they are trying to promote. Fox doesn’t want to see the torrent of anti-gay sentiment that they know would occur if they allowed people to post comments.

The same censorship has been enacted at the lie-riddled Fox Nation website. They posted the same story and also prohibited those readers from commenting. Which is even more egregious since Fox Nation is supposed to be the community site where discussion is encouraged. Their mission statement says that…

“The Fox Nation is committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news.”

We already knew that, contrary to their claim, Fox has no commitment to tolerance, civil discourse, or fair and balanced coverage of the news. And now we know that they also do not tolerate open debate. Have you ever heard of a community forum website that prohibited the community from engaging in a forum discussion? That’s “straight talk” Fox News style.


So F**KING What? Racist Clippers Owner Donated To Democrats 20 Years Ago

Posted by on April 27, 2014 at 3:29 pm. 10 Comments :

[UPDATE 4/28/2014] A search of voter records show that Donald Sterling is a registered Republican. So to the extent that conservatives believe this is significant, it is totally their problem. And it’s another one they made for themselves. Now let’s see them back-peddle, if they even bother to correct their mistakes. As of this update, the story still sits atop the Fox Nation website]

The controversy over racially charged comments that are being attributed to Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has produced a torrent of condemnation from a broad swath of those offended, including President Obama. However, Fox News, the network that tried to make slavery advocate Cliven Bundy a national hero, had other plans.

On the Fox Nation website, an article was featured whose only purpose was to politicize the sordid affair. Fox re-posted a story from the uber-rightist Daily Caller titled “Race Hate Spewing Clippers Owner Is Democratic Donor.” So rather than taking a stand against an abhorrent rant by a despicable bigot, Fox chose to attempt to link the scoundrel to the Democratic Party. [Note: The day following its publication, Fox Nation elevated this article to the top spot on their website]

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As usual, the Fox Nationalists, and their comrades at the Daily Caller, deliberately distorted the story in order to create a phony political controversy. As it turns out, Sterling did make a total of three donations to Democrats – over twenty years ago. Of the three donations made back in the early 1990’s, the largest was to Sen. Bill Bradley, who just happened to be a former professional basketball player. And there is no record of this billionaire making a single political contribution in the past two decades to anyone. It’s pretty clear that Sterling had little interest in politics or parties.

To suggest that Sterling is a Democrat based on this twenty year old data is absurd in the extreme. Were it a rational argument then it could also be said that Andrew Breitbart, David Horowitz, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann are all Democrats. Because they actually were at around the same time that Sterling made the donations referenced above.

Furthermore, the article reported some of the reactions to Sterling’s remarks. Those quoted were Magic Johnson, Keith Olbermann, Snoop Dogg, and Al Sharpton. Apparently this right-wing rag couldn’t find a single conservative who articulated any objection to Sterling’s alleged bigotry. Although other conservative media (i.e. the Drudge Report, the National Review, WorldNetDaily) happily exploited the phony political angle to distract from the larger story of the racist cretin at the helm of an NBA franchise. Fox News correspondent Todd Starnes made numerous tweets intended to detour the dialogue to something more to his liking. For instance:

See? It’s just a lover’s spat. Nothing to do with overt racial hatred. Never mind that Obama has been addressing the situation in Ukraine frequently, including today’s remarks about increasing sanctions against the Russians. The purpose of this coordinated effort to shift the discussion from racism to Sterling’s ancient and trivial campaign contributions is just another part of the conservative agenda to pretend that racism doesn’t actually exist anymore. That’s why they cheered the recent Supreme Court rulings that gutted the Voting Rights Act and upheld the ban on affirmative action in Michigan.

The whole “post-racial” meme that is advanced by Republicans is proven to be a lie by statements like those by the wealthy elitist Donald Sterling and the desert hick Cliven Bundy. While progress has been made over the years on reducing discrimination, there is clearly much more work to be done. But rather than face that fact, Republicans and conservatives prefer to further divide the American people with manufactured political disputes. That way they can continue to be racist while pretending that the only victims of racism are white folks who can’t be openly racist anymore.


Uh-Oh: Bill O’Reilly Equates Cliven Bundy With Chris Christie

Posted by on April 26, 2014 at 3:12 pm. 5 Comments :

The pathetic conservative media stampede in support of the deadbeat welfare rancher, Cliven Bundy, has produced a tsunami of crocodile tears and back-peddling by anxious right-wingers who prematurely hitched themselves to Bundy’s racist wagon. Despite the fact that many Republicans expressed almost identical views way before Bundy came on the scene, they now are rushing to distance themselves from the would-be hero that they created.

Bill O'Reilly

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Not surprisingly, Bill O’Reilly is leading the retreat with another of his hackneyed “Talking Points Memo” segments. On Friday he began his program by attempting to downplay the extent to which Fox News lavished praise and valuable airtime on Bundy. He characterized the participation of Fox News as merely “a handful” of commentators who “rallied to Bundy’s side,” while declining to mention any names. However, some of the most prominent voices on the network, including Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Steve Doocy, Bret Baier, Eric Bolling, etc., played significant roles in pumping up the controversial story.

After providing absolution for the sins of Fox News, O’Reilly proceeded to condemn the rest of the media, presumably for not balancing their coverage of a tax-evading racist with more positive impressions. He focused on CNN’s Brian Stelter, whom O’Reilly called a “committed left-wing zealot.” Stelter’s offense was to correctly point out that Fox News had been caught in a unique dilemma wherein their pundits championed an unknown crackpot who wound up embarrassing them. Here is the soundbite that O’Reilly cherry-picked from Stelter’s remarks:

“I can’t think of any parallel to this case. I can’t think of MSNBC taking an equivalent story on the left and spending weeks covering it the way Fox News has.”

Well, that was all it took to fire up O’Reilly’s ire. He let loose with a biting, personal attack on Stelter:

“Unbelieveable. So Mr. Stelter, did you miss the months of coverage about New Jersey governor Chris Christie on MSNBC? Did you miss that? Are you that dense? That uninformed that you make an outrageous assertion that MSNBC would not overdo a story for ideological reasons?”

Where to begin? First of all, if O’Reilly is looking for a story that is equivalent to the Bundy saga, it’s interesting that he would choose Christie’s BridgeGate scandal. Is O’Reilly equating the New Jersey Governor to a lawless bigot who doesn’t recognize the United States as existing?

Secondly, O’Reilly seems to think that covering an old cattle rancher in Bunkerville, Nevada, who thinks he’s entitled to free grazing rights on property that he doesn’t own, is a national story on the same level as a state governor who may have unlawfully abused his office and who, at the time, was a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president. Furthermore, none of MSNBC’s reporting on Christie has turned out to be wrong and/or embarrassing.

Finally, O’Reilly’s assertion that MSNBC’s coverage of Christie was overdone for ideological reasons is an admission of the same about Fox’s coverage of Bundy, since he is making the argument that they are equivalent. Even though he just spent three minutes denying that Fox overdid anything. Apparently, O’Reilly’s outrage is warping his capacity for logic. And since there is abundant evidence that Christie engaged in the behavior attributed to him, if any news organization is to be faulted, it is Fox for soft-peddling the story.

O’Reilly went on to criticize MSNBC for seeking to boost their ratings (which O’Reilly would never do), and to further disparage Stelter as being “far worse than some Fox News commentators sympathizing” with Bundy. To O’Reilly, not being able to recall a story similar to Bundy’s is far worse than turning a despicable desert hick into a hero. Then O’Reilly closed by saying that “You throw away any legitimacy when you jump to conclusions.” That would seem to be a direct assault on his colleague Sean Hannity and the rest of the right-wing media who did just that.

So in one commentary, O’Reilly insulted his fellow Fox News anchor(s) While equating Gov. Christie with a racist, anti-American freeloader. That’s a pretty productive accomplishment for a night’s work. I can’t wait to hear what Hannity and Christie have to say about it. However, it was thoughtful of O’Reilly to candidly admit that “there are many charlatans peddling garbage that hurts people.” Thanks for the warning, Billo, but we’ve known about you for some time.