The Lord Smites Glenn Beck With Blindness

Posted by on July 19, 2010 at 5:53 pm. 6 Comments :

Glenn Beck Messiah

Glenn Beck broke down again this weekend as he revealed to his congregation of American Revivalists that he may, or may not, go blind in the next year. It was a stirring moment wherein he sobbed as he confessed that, were he to lose his sight, he would miss reading more than seeing his wife or his kids as they grow up. How touching. His family must feel so loved.

I couldn’t help but wonder how this potentially devastating hardship would fit into Beck’s evangelical perspective. While he professed to accepting his fate as the will of God, it seemed to me that he was missing some pretty ominous signs.

Beck claims to be a devout Mormon and Christian. He certainly piles on the sermonizing during his radio and television shows. So he must be familiar with Deuteronomy 28:27-29, and the punishment from God if you fail to follow his laws:

27: The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.
28: The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart.
29: And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.

Taking these one at a time, verse 27 speaks of being smited with emerods, known today as hemorrhoids. A couple of years ago Beck was not only so smited, but it nearly killed him. He posted a bizarre video of himself recuperating and railing against the private, for-profit health care system under which he suffered.

In verse 28 the Lord warns of being stricken with the blindness that Beck may now be facing. It also warns of madness and astonishment (i.e. confusion, panic). You only need need to watch a few random minutes of any episode of Glenn Beck to see that he is consumed by panic. He freely admits to being confused, and he is quite obviously mad.

Verse 29 very plainly addresses things that could be interpreted to refer to Beck’s professional misfortunes. Certainly he is still a very wealthy man, but having over a hundred advertisers abandon his noonday program surely impacts his prosperity, if not his reputation. And today his most reliable remaining advertiser, Goldline, International, was informed that they are being investigated for fraud. That’s just the tip of the criminal iceberg surrounding Beck’s advertisers.

The only reasonable conclusion is that God has had enough. He is no longer tolerating Beck’s heresy, dishonesty, and arrogance. He is probably not to thrilled with Beck portraying himself in Messianic terms either. However, God may have to be a bit more demonstrative before Beck gets the picture. A few prophecies from Deuteronomy may be sufficient to alert most people to their sinful ways, but let’s face, Beck has been “blind” for a long time. It may require locusts and pillars of salt for him to see the light. His ox may have to be slain. Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to floods, because that could hurt a lot of innocent people.

With the specificity of these Biblical prophecies, the hemorrhoids, the panic, the loss of prosperity, the madness, and now the looming blindness, it would be foolish for Beck and his disciples to dismiss these ominous signs. For it can only mean that God’s wrath is seething and that Beck’s fate is dire. Either that or he’s masturbating too much.

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Fox News Rejects Ad From Veterans Group (Again)

Posted by on July 19, 2010 at 1:52 pm. 6 Comments :

For the second time, Fox News has rejected an advertisement from VoteVets, a veterans advocacy organization. The ad featured retired Brigadier Gen. Steven Anderson explaining the importance of moving the country to cleaner energy from domestic sources.

“Our enemies know that we’re hooked on their oil…That’s why breaking our addiction must not only be a military priority, but America’s mission, and why the Senate needs to pass a clean energy climate plan. It will put Americans to work developing new energy technologies that will save lives overseas, make us less dependent and more secure.

The previous time that Fox News refused an ad from VoteVets they claimed that it would be “too confusing” for their audience. Well, they oughta know. At that time I wrote…

The confusion that Fox is worried about is that their carefully trained viewers might wind up agreeing with these vets that our security is threatened by enriching our enemies in Iran and other unfriendly oil oligarchs. This ad could undo so much of Fox’s painstakingly hypnotic propagandizing.

So Fox’s solution is to censor the ad and protect their gullible audience from hearing any argument that might conflict with the Fox News world view. Fox undoubtedly regards this as their obligation to shield their viewers from the anxiety of having to think for themselves. Heaven knows that’s often confusing and so does Fox’s standards and practices department.

What Fox didn’t say is that Saudi oil tycoon, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, owns 7 percent of News Corp. He is the largest shareholder outside the Murdoch family. That wouldn’t have anything to do with Fox’s reluctance to air an ad proposing to reduce expenditures on Middle-East oil, would it? Or is this just confusing the matter?

I concur with me.


Fox Nationalists Oppose Tea Party/NAACP Summit

Posted by on July 19, 2010 at 12:54 pm. 4 Comments :

Over at the Fox Nation this morning they are asking their readers: Should Tea Parties Hold Racism Summit With NAACP? Here is a sampling of the response:

No, absolutely not. It would be like attending a abusive spouse seminar after someone asks you if you still beat your wife.

No. It would be a moot point,meaningless to people like that, who live to cry raceism,victumhood,it’s all about me mentality. The accusations would not stop.

No, proverbs state that if you try to reason with a fool, you only end up hurting yourself.

Why should we associate ourselves with the NAACP. We do not associate ourselves with the dark side.

The answer is NO. The Tea Party should do all it can to distance themselves from people who are openly racist. Which is more than I can say for the NAACP.

Absolutely not. Why would the Tea Party want to tarnish it’s image by associating with a known racist organization like the NAACP?

WE DON’T OWE THEM AN APOLOGY…THEY OWE US!!!
Are you f**king kidding me??? Grovel before the NAACP??? For what?

ABSOLUTELY NOT! We have nothing to defend, the NAACP does! No longer silent! They owe the nation and apology for their vile racism and black supremicist behavior!!

Meeting with the NAACP will only validate their witch hunt. The NAACP is an irrelevant, racist organization.

Why….naacp is no longer the organization it started out as. They stand for racism now. After all the minorities are more important than the whites.

Well…that clears that up.

Ironically, according to the article to which Fox Nation links, it was the leader of the Tea Party Federation who suggested the summit between themselves and the NAACP. Apparently the Tea Bagging rank and vile won’t hear of it. At the time of this writing there was not a single affirmative response to the notion of a summit. But there was quite a bit of hatred directed at the nation’s largest civil rights organization.

If these people don’t like being called racists, the best way to prevent it would be to stop acting like racists.


Tea Party Caucus Forms As Tea Party Fractures

Posted by on July 18, 2010 at 1:24 pm. 6 Comments :

Michelle Bachmann (TP-MN) has received acceptance of her request to form a Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. In a report on Fox News it was heralded as a “victory in Congress for the Tea Party.” It was further stated that the approval was acquired in record time for a new caucus.

I’m sure that Democrats around the country are sending their congratulations and best wishes to Bachmann. This may be a masterstroke of self-destruction for the Minnesota Republican. She would be wise to consider why the Committee on House Administration, with six Democrats and three Republicans, would so quickly sign off on her collective.

It will be interesting to see how many of her colleagues she recruits into her caucus. Membership will present a measure of risk as the decision to join will require a difficult political choice: Do you associate yourself with a controversial army of right-wing extremists and radicals by joining? Or do you suffer their unforgiving wrath by snubbing them? That dilemma is likely going to limit the growth of Bachmann’s Baggers.

Tea Party RacismAlliance with the Tea Party is becoming more hazardous with every day. The NAACP just passed a resolution calling on Tea Party leaders to renounce the overtly racist elements of their movement. That was met by flurry of outraged Tea Partiers who insisted that there was not even a trace of racism in their curiously mono-toned ranks. Then they switched to offense asserting that it was the NAACP that is racist.

In the course of this debate, the founder of the Tea Party Express, Mark Williams, posted a “parody” on his web site that was so offensive he was summarily booted out of the Tea Party Federation. Only right-wingers have the audacity to swear up and down that there are no racists among them even as they are kicking out a leader for being a racist. And Williams isn’t the first racist Tea Party leader to get the hook. Dale Robertson, founder of TeaParty.org was ousted earlier this year for sporting a sign with the “N” word (misspelled). We have yet to see Williams’ response to his ouster, but it may provide some more fireworks.

So as Bachmann is putting together her congregation of Tea-publicans in DC, a fissure is widening in the heartland. And they were never a particularly harmonious faction to begin with. Earlier this year there was a Tea Party convention that was roundly criticized by fellow Tea Partiers for being a for-profit event. They even committed the sacrilege of bashing keynote speaker Sarah Palin for participating. Bachmann herself was scheduled to speak, but bailed out with a lame excuse blaming the House Ethics Committee.

The followup to that convention was supposed to have been this past week in Las Vegas, but they claim to have rescheduled it for an unspecified date in October. That was a month ago and they still have no announced venue or dates.

It is notable that the Tea Party advocates responded to charges of racism by denying them, feigning ignorance (OK, maybe not feigning), and hurling back similar charges. I’m going to let Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP show them how it ought to be done. When confronted with allegations about the New Black Panther Party’s offensive and racist rhetoric, Jealous unhesitatingly replied…

“You know, bigots come in all colors. We absolutely denounce the New Black Panther Party. But they aren’t in our group. These folks are in your groups.”

What would have been so difficult for the Tea Baggers to simply respond that they don’t believe that racism is rampant in their movement and that they agree with the NAACP’s goal of stamping out racism wherever it is found? The reason they do not respond in that way is that they know that racists are a prominent and influential component of their coalition and they don’t want to alienate them. The action they are taking now is merely a consequence of the bad PR they are hoping to constrain.

As the truth about the Tea Party continues to be revealed. Bachmann’s campaign for legitimacy will flounder. And while she is getting attention from the press for her promotion of the Tea Party, I’m more interested in whether they will provide the same level of coverage a few weeks or months from now when her caucus meets and she brings her gavel down on an empty room.


Fox News Fires Up Vacation-Gate

Posted by on July 17, 2010 at 5:04 pm. 2 Comments :

Here’s the headline from Fox News:

“Seizing on Good Week, Obama Takes Another Vacation Despite GOP Criticisms”

Another vacation? For anyone keeping track, Obama has taken about 65 vacation days since assuming office. By this point in his first term George W. Bush had taken twice as much time off (120 days). And that was in the midst of our nation still responding to 9/11.

The story Fox News ran was attributed to their own Wendell Goler and the Associated Press. Goler lifted most of the details from the AP, including the Obamas’ bike rides and stops for ice cream. However, he neglected to include the information on Bush’s vacations, which was in the AP’s article. That’s a pretty egregious failure to provide relevant context for a column whose title was so deliberately biased.

This omission cannot be explained away as an editorial decision to focus on Obama and leave former presidents out of it, because Goler did include Bush in the article by way of interviewing his former deputy press secretary, Scott Stanzel. Stanzel’s contribution to the story was to criticize Obama for taking his vacation in Maine rather than in Gulf Coast (where Obama has already been at least four times). Stanzel further defended Bush’s many excursions to Crawford, Texas, as being appropriate because he still got work done there. Although there was no similar defense of Obama who, like all presidents, is working 24/7.

Bush and McCain Eating CakeGoler also went out of his way to lie about one occasion when Bush was vacationing in Crawford and a hurricane happened to nearly destroy New Orleans. Goler said that Bush cut his vacation short, but the truth is that he extended it to play guitar with a country singer and to visit John McCain in Phoenix to celebrate his birthday.

You don’t get many better examples of deliberate bias than this. Goler based his reporting on an article from the AP that was actually pretty fair and balanced. But for Fox News it had to be altered to eliminate any context that might reflect favorably on Obama, while adding fiction that whitewashed Bush’s failures.

More proof that Fox News is the enemy of fairness and the defiler of balance.


Glenn Beck: The Jews Killed Jesus

Posted by on July 16, 2010 at 2:25 pm. 5 Comments :

How many times, and in how many ways, can Glenn Beck insult and offend people of different ethnicities than himself – and get away with it?

I missed this morsel from earlier this week, but Keith Olbermann picked it up:

Beck: “Jesus conquered death. He wasn’t victimized. He chose to give his life. He did have a choice. If he was a victim and this theology was true then Jesus would have come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did, that’s an abomination.”

Olbermann correctly pointed out that it was the Romans who crucified Jesus and that most Christian doctrine, including the Catholic Church, repudiated the accusation against the Jews. Although Jesus may not have made the Jews pay, generations of his followers picked up the cause and still endeavor to extract payment to this day. And now we can count Glenn Beck amongst them.

The discussion of this subject occurred during an interview with Alexander Zaitchik, author of Common Nonsense, Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, a highly recommended read. Watch the video from Countdown:

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Tucker Carlson vs. Keith Olbermann: Master Of Your Domain

Posted by on July 15, 2010 at 1:35 pm. 3 Comments :

Tucker Carlson - Biggest LoserIf there were a contest for Most Pathetic Pundit, Tucker Carlson would get the Lifetime Achievement Award. He has been a recidivist failure on PBS, CNN, and MSNBC. After being canceled more times than a Shane MacGowan dentist appointment, Carlson was picked up as a pity play by Fox News, an organization he previously called “…a mean, sick group of people,” but for whom he now dutifully performs his organ-grinder monkey routine.

Now Carlson is proving that he is not merely an incompetent boob, but a hypocritical jerk as well. With the brashness of a child delighted at his ability to pull the wings off a fly, Carlson has announced that he, and his web site the Daily Caller, has acquired ownership of the domain name KeithOlbermann.com:

“This is part of our long-term growth strategy,” added Publisher and CEO Neil Patel. “Our future acquisition targets include several other annoying cable news commentators.”

Daily Caller - CrybabyThat seems like a brilliant business plan, and in keeping with their mission, having been founded by one of the all-time annoying cable news commentators, Carlson himself. On today’s front page of the the Daily Caller is a big, close up photo of Olbermann beneath an all-caps headline shouting, “CRYBABY.” The sub-head says, “Keith Olbermann threatens legal action against TheDC.”

This is a typical case of cybersquatting, wherein someone takes possession of an Internet asset that belongs to someone else. Domain names are subject to laws that protect intellectual property, trademarks, and copyrights. The hypocrisy comes into play when you learn that just two years ago. Carlson pursued a complaint against someone squatting on his domain name. He filed his complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization and won a decision to reclaim his name. The complaint said in part…

Complainant states that he is “an internationally famous television news anchor and author, most famous for his role as anchor of the eponymous televised newsmagazines Tucker (MSNBC) and Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered (PBS), as well as for his role as co-host of Crossfire (CNN).” Complainant states that his television debut came in 2000 as co-host of The Spin Room (PBS) and that he has also appeared on television as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars (ABC), the Tonight Show With Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Complainant states that his writings “are regularly featured” in Esquire, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic and The New York Times Magazine. And, Complainant states that he has appeared as an actor in various television shows and movies.

Apparently Carlson is “internationally famous” for getting canned repeatedly. It is also notable that just a couple of years ago it was Carlson who was the crybaby. His complaint conveniently outlines the very same arguments that Olbermann could make to retrieve ownership of his domain name. He even damages his own case by confessing that he intends to use the name for a commercial purpose.

As an added bonus, Carlson implied that Olbermann would be infringing on his First Amendment rights if he were to sue Carlson for the name. Of course, having to turn over the name does not in any way restrict Carlson from speaking. Especially since the name is only being used presently to pull up the Daily Caller home page. And accusing Olbermann of violating his rights would also be admitting that he violated the rights of the party he sued to get his name back.

So go ahead and cry about it, Tucker. You are only affirming your place in history as a miserable louse with no talent, intellect, or ethics. But most of us already knew that.


Fox News: The Republican Fundraising Network

Posted by on July 15, 2010 at 9:52 am. 1 Comments :

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Nevada Republican senate candidate, Sharron Angle, revealed how the right works hand-in-hand with conservative media to advance, not just their agenda, but their candidates. Answering a question about whether she has been dodging the press, Angle explained her media strategy and what she believes is the purpose of campaign interviews:

“The whole point of an interview is to use it – like they say “earned media” – to earn something with it. And I’m not going to earn anything from people who are there to badger me and batter, you know, use my words to batter me with.”

There you have it. According to Angle, candidates do not engage the media in order to disseminate their message or to inform voters. They do not subject themselves to inquiry in order to connect with people and make a case for support. The whole point is to make money. Therefore, there is no reason to take questions from anyone other than friendly reporters and sympathetic talk show hosts.

When pressed as to whether restricting her appearances to places like Fox News creates the impression that she is avoiding neutral or potentially adversarial outlets, Angle explained her reluctance to grace the “mainstream media” with her presence:

“Well, in that audience will they let me say I need $25 dollars from a million people – go to Sharron Angle.com – send money?”

So if you want to interview Sharron Angle you first have to agree to permit her to pitch her candidacy. If she can’t exploit your newspaper or TV station to raise money, you are useless to her. And the interests of the voters, who simply want the information they need to make an informed decision, are irrelevant.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the goto network for people like Angle is Fox News. She has made numerous appearances there where she did peddle her web site and beg for donations. And it isn’t just Angle. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida have pretty much set up campaign desks at Fox. It is a relationship that has proven to be quite fruitful. Even when the candidates are not on the air, their Fox representatives like Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Laura Ingraham, etc., will carry the ball for them.

Last year, former White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn, called Fox News “the communications arm of the Republican Party.” Now we have evidence that it is also their fundraising arm as well.


Is Megyn Kelly Worse Than Glenn Beck?

Posted by on July 14, 2010 at 2:36 pm. 13 Comments :

It goes without saying that Fox News is a seething cauldron of sensationalistic propaganda. There have been innumerable examples of bias so egregious it would be more accurate to call it fiction. Still, the degree of separation from reality, or the Fox Fake Factor (3F) is not uniform across the Fox schedule. It can be segmented into three general categories that I define as…

  • Blatant Dishonesty (i.e. Sean Hannity)
  • Acute Idiocy (i.e. Steve Doocy)
  • Hysterical Dementia (i.e. Glenn Beck)

Defenders of Fox News argue that the network functions like a newspaper with clearly delineated sections containing straight news or editorial opinion. This includes Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who went so far as to say that…

“…it’s a mistake to look at Fox News Channel’s primetime opinion shows and say they represent the channel’s journalism.”

In support of Ailes’ admission that his primetime lineup should not be mistaken for journalism, Fox’s Sr. VP Michael Clemente drew distinct boundaries in order to identify the channel’s actual “news” content. He said that it is just the hours of 9am to 4pm, and 6pm to 8pm, that air straight news. Of course that would include such thoroughly opinionated programs as Fox & Friends, Your World With Neil Cavuto, and Glenn Beck. It would also include Megyn Kelly.

For the past week or so, Kelly has been rabidly attached to a bogus two year old story about members of the New Black Panther Party who have been accused of voter intimidation. She has hosted numerous interviews with W. Christian Adams, a notoriously partisan activist who claims that Obama’s Department of Justice has adopted a policy of not pursuing cases involving white victims. Never mind the fact that it was the Bush Justice Department that degraded the case against the NBPP and concluded that the evidence did not merit criminal prosecution. Kelly would not let up and continued, day after day, to present the story with an overt expression of shock and judgmental disgust.

Kelly’s demeanor was hardly what one could call objective. In yesterday’s program she nearly bit the head off of Fox News Democrat, Kirsten Powers, who soldiered on despite Kelly’s insulting declarations that Powers didn’t know what she was talking about. And in a bid for total domination, Kelly even threatened to cut Powers’ mic.

This is not an isolated incident for Kelly. A few weeks ago she displayed the same sort of wild-eyed obsession over speculation of whether Pennsylvania senate candidate Joe Sestak had received improper incentives from the White House to drop out of the race. Sestak didn’t drop out, and there was never any evidence of wrongdoing on his part or that of the White House. But that didn’t stop Kelly from pushing the story incessantly. On one occasion she devoted fully 75% of her two hour program to just the Sestak matter, never once reporting on the gulf oil spill, Afghanistan or the economy.

Add to these the following journalistic indiscretions that seem to characterize Kelly’s absence of standards.

  • The false assertion that the Department of Health and Human Services had authored a report that showed the costs of health care rising as a result of the new legislation, and the allegation that the report was suppressed by HHS and/or the White House prior to the vote in Congress. This story was debunked later by Fox’s own Bret Baier.
  • The suppression of a letter revealing the marital infidelity of Senator John Ensign. Kelly kept the letter, from the husband of Ensign’s mistress, secret for five days, thus protecting the Senator from scandal. The story broke anyway and there is a possibility that it was Kelly who tipped off Ensign about the imminently breaking news.
  • The promotion of a non-scientific survey on the military’s support of Obama as if it were a real poll. Kelly misrepresented the survey to disparage the President shortly after he received an endorsement from Gen. Colin Powell.

The behavior of Kelly in these examples is squarely in alignment with the mission of Fox News. However, it is directly contrary to what they claim. It is the antithesis of fairness or balance. And it puts Kelly in the running to surpass Glenn Beck on the scale of reportorial incompetence and deceit.

I know that’s a harsh assessment, but look at the facts. Beck is a purveyor of paranoid conspiracies. People expect him to be a hyperbolic nutcase. Kelly is on from 1:00pm to 3:00pm ET, smack in the middle of the news day. She is supposed to be, according to Ailes and others, a straight news reporter. Yet while Beck (who is also in the news daypart) can be placed into only one of the 3F categories above, Kelly may qualify for all three.

Sure, she’s not as bombastic as Beck, but Beck doesn’t have a law degree or the implied credibility that comes with it. And she’s not as inclined to present herself as a cult or spiritual leader, but she does impose her views on an audience that has been made gullible by fear and repetition. Her imputed authority, and the force of her argumentativeness, has the potential to sway people from realistic appraisals of current events. And she has the added benefit of not appearing to be as obviously disturbed as Beck, which helps her to advance her opinions.

The manner in which Kelly presents her reporting is every bit as phony as Beck’s hallucinatory drivel. But the only people who will believe Beck are those who are already inclined to accept delusion as truth. Kelly, on the other hand, manages to come off as a serious newscaster whose reports contain some semblance of substance. And that’s what makes Kelly worse, or potentially more dangerous, than Beck. While Beck casts himself as a rodeo clown, Kelly is portrayed as a wise and sober analyst.

In the larger picture, Kelly is merely following the Fox format which also has so-called “news” casters like Neil Cavuto, Jon Scott, Bill Hemmer, and Bret Baier engaging in observably biased broadcasts. It’s a deliberate and articulated strategy by Ailes, Murdoch, et al. It’s the Fox Way.


Fox Alert! The Taliban Is Recruiting Monkey Mercenaries

Posted by on July 13, 2010 at 2:29 pm. 1 Comments :

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has been giving the World Weekly News some pretty stiff competition. With Fox News making up stories about ClimateGate and the New Black Panther Party, and Fox Nation trying to spark fears of Boob Bombs and armed IRS ObamaCare enforcers, the Murdoch empire is not much more than a right-wing fantasy factory.

Today they have upped the lunacy by passing along a ridiculous story about the Taliban training monkeys to do battle with American soldiers. The story, sourced to the People’s Daily in China, was published by at least two Murdoch properties, Fox Nation and the New York Post. And if you weren’t frightened by the prospect of terrorists sneaking into the country with explosive breast implants, then maybe the thought of radical Islamic macaques and baboons armed “with AK-47 rifles, machine guns and trench mortars in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan” will set you to squirming. And both the Post and the Fox Nationalists featured an obviously doctored “photo” of a menacing Monkey Mercenary, along with this foreboding video:

Ordinarily I would dismiss this sort of rightist horror story without much consideration. After all, even the video supplied doesn’t show a single rhesus recruit, just some suspicious still photos. But upon reflection, I couldn’t entirely cast off the theory after observing the quality of Murdoch’s “news” operations. I mean, if the monkeys working for Murdoch can be reporters and publishers, then why couldn’t they be soldiers?