In a stunning demonstration of clarity, another right-winger has had an epiphany with regard to the influence of Fox News on the public at large and on the Republican Party in particular. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn is joining David Frum in questioning the primacy of Fox News. This is an enlightened stance for the arch-conservative senator because it recognizes the reality that for the past few years, as Fox’s ratings have increased, Republican support has fallen off a cliff. Last year I wrote a fairly detailed analysis of how Fox News is Killing the Republican Party where I noted that…
Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). […and that…] By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders.That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is not your ordinary Republican. He is amongst the most extreme faction of the fundamentalist wing of the party. He is a member of the secretive politico-Christian cabal known as “The Family,” and a resident of its scandal-plagued C-Street House. He is a fierce opponent of abortion. He endorsed Alan Keyes for president in the 2000 Republican primary. He is a prolific abuser of the senatorial “hold” that allows members to anonymously block legislation. And now this icon of rightist orthodoxy is committing the ultimate sacrilege. It began with a response to a constituent at a town hall gathering who complained that the health care bill would result in people going to jail for not purchasing insurance. Coburn corrected her her saying that…
“The intention is not to put anybody in jail. That makes for good TV news on Fox, but that aint the intention.”
Coburn also defended the conservatives’ favorite target for demonization, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, against the knee-jerk hecklers in the crowd. He insisted that she was a “nice person” and then again called out Fox News for cultivating a culture of incivility:
“What we have to have is make sure we have a debate in this country so that you can see what’s going on and make a determination yourself. So don’t catch yourself being biased by FOX News that somebody is no good. The people in Washington are good. They just don’t know what they don’t know.”
But Coburn didn’t stop there. He went on to encourage his audience to seek out diverse sources of news and information and not to be locked in to the narrow perspective of a single, agenda-driven enterprise. He appealed to them to…
“…stay informed on the issues. Don’t just watch Fox News or CNN. Watch ’em both. […] I do a lot of reading every day and I’m disturbed that we get things like what this lady said, and others have said on other issues that are so disconnected to what I know to be the facts. And that comes from somebody that has an agenda that’s other than the best interests of our country.”
Coburn has just asserted that Fox’s agenda is unpatriotic. He may face some pushback from Sean Hannity on that. Glenn Beck may brand him a communist. But what we are witnessing here is not a political reversal by Coburn. He is still the ideological Dark-agist he has always been. What’s happening is that he has recognized the fact that Fox News has been demonstrably harmful – not to the interests of the country (which it has) – but to the interests of his Party. He is afraid that the fringe brigade will overtake the mainstream conservatism that he espouses and drive voters to the Democrats, the Tea Baggers, or discourage them from voting at all.
When someone as far right as Coburn sees this light, then the truth has floated up close enough to the surface that it will be hard for others to ignore. Including Fox News. If the mini-trend of Frum and Coburn (and Andrew Sullivan and Charles Johnson and …) continues we may see some programming changes at Fox. The question is which direction? If Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes want to advance their conservative interests, and those of the Republican Party, they had better tack hard to the center. Their current course is headed straight into a perfect storm of tea bags, birthers, McCartheyites, militias, and secessionists. But if they want to sustain their ratings dominance, they have to keep feeding the fanatics that make up their base.
Fox has been the king of the ratings hill for several years, yet that has not helped them electorally. It was in those years when Fox’s audience was expanding that Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. It was in those years that Barack Obama was elected president and Democratic congressional majorities increased. And most recently, Fox was unable to hold back passage of the health care bill despite incessant promotion of the anti-reform troops (pundits, politicians, and protesters) and a barrage of false reporting on the substance of the legislation. This couldn’t be clearer evidence of the conflict between Fox’s success as a television network and its success as a partisan public relations agency.
This is going to be interesting. The folks at Fox are as devoted to their wealth as they are to their agenda. In fact, the two are nearly inseparable. They use their wealth to advance their agenda, and they push their agenda to increase their wealth. But they are going to have a hard time threading this needle. It’s a choice between market position or issue advocacy. Or, put another way, it’s a choice between Glenn Beck or electoral victories. They can’t have both. The decision may tear them apart. There have already been sharp division between factions at Fox, most notably when Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law announced that he was “ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard…” for journalistic standards.
Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.
Update: Sen. Coburn sought Bill O’Reilly’s absolution on Monday. His appearance on the program was a mixed bag in that Coburn tried to maintain his critical stance on Fox, but also kiss up to O’Reilly. O’Reilly, on the other hand was his idiotic self. He declared with absolute certainty that no one on Fox ever said that someone could go to jail for not having health care under the Obama plan. Of course, that was easily disproved. In fact, Glenn Beck said it on O’Reilly’s show. It don’t come funnier than this, folks.
If there’s one topic of study for which Rush Limbaugh can be regarded as an expert it’s character assassination. He has spent his career contriving dishonest assaults on his enemies that take the most vile form.
With regard to Barack Obama, Limbaugh started early by hoping that he would fail. Limbaugh expanded on that to accuse the President of being a socialist, a Marxist, and worse. He repeatedly asserts that Obama has an explicit desire to destroy America, the Constitution, and the values of faith and family that the nation embodies. If that isn’t character assassination, then I don’t know what is. Yet it is Limbaugh who is now whining to Politico about being the victim of the President’s wrath. In a CBS interview, Obama told Harry Smith that the vitriol of opponents like Limbaugh was troublesome. That seems to be a rather restrained description, but Limbaugh took great offense to what he portrayed as “constant attempts at character assassination.”
The funny thing is that Limbaugh should regard being considered troublesome by the President as a compliment. Isn’t it his intent to cause trouble for this administration? But he somehow has turned it into an insult. Even funnier is this bit of self-denial:
“I think the president is trying to distract me, to get me talking about ME on my show instead of talking about him and the regime’s agenda. But it won’t work. I’m wise to their tactics.”
But it did work. Limbaugh IS talking about himself. And if Obama wants to get Limbaugh to talk about himself he only needs to remember this one thing: The secret to getting Limbaugh to talk about himself is to just let him talk (preferably with a microphone nearby). Limbaugh spends a majority of his airtime talking about himself. He even continued doing it in his comments to Politico, describing himself as being “on the top of the mountain” of opposition to the administration. He can’t stop talking about himself, and the last thing he needs is provocation from the President.
Limbaugh’s pathological unawareness of his self-obsession is manifested in much of his hypocritical rhetoric. He simply cannot correlate his commentary with his own actions. Amidst the widespread reports of escalating hostilities within the fringe conservative community, Limbaugh had a warning for Tea Partiers from whom he says the country is being stolen:
“So you tea party people, I’m sure you know this, but they are trying to get you provoked so that you act in ways similar to the way they’re accusing you. […] They have a morally superior view of their agenda and of themselves. They look at anything that opposes them as evil, and with evil you must do whatever it takes, ends justify the means to wipe it out.”
Isn’t this precisely the view that Limbaugh has toward the administration (which he has lately begun referring to as “the regime”)? Doesn’t he consider his positions to be morally superior and his opponents to be evil? He certainly has expressed an intention to do whatever it takes to defeat the left he hates so fiercely. During the Democratic National Convention in he 2008 he literally said “Screw the World: Riot in Denver!”
“I’m dreaming of riots in Denver. Remember 1968?”
“Riots in Denver at the Democrat convention would see to it we don’t elect Democrats – and that’s the best damn thing could happen for this country as far as anything I can think.”
“I mean, if people say what’s your exit strategery, the dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and that we have a replay of Chicago 1968, with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that. That’s the objective here.”
These are unambiguous directives to his listeners, who are not called “dittoheads” for nothing. These are every bit as bad as the Tea Bagger who recently advised his followers to go out and throw bricks through the windows of the offices or homes of Democratic lawmakers, and to engage in other sorts of vandalism and violence. These are the irresponsible edicts of a man who professes to obey the law, but asserts that his opponents do not:
“Something else about the Democrats, deep in their hearts they know that we are law-abiding people. They know that we don’t make messes. That’s why they’re trying to stoke lawbreaking behavior from the tea party people because they know that we obey the law. They don’t.”
Oh really? And inciting people to riot, to burn cars and throw bricks, is lawful behavior? Limbaugh is a despicable provocateur and he knows it. He is using a fabricated argument to project his perverse philosophy onto his perceived enemies. And, as usual, he is encouraging his feeble-minded followers to engage in activities that he himself is too cowardly to consider.
Limbaugh’s hypocrisy is classic, but his depraved licentiousness is completely off the scale of social decency and civility. And this attitude is by no means restricted to Limbaugh. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the Fox News thugs, plus a variety of rabidly right-wing members of congress, are equally as culpable for the rancorous environment in the political atmosphere. No wonder there is so much vitriol wafting up in the steam from those tea cups.
If Fox News thought they had the next big thing locked up when they signed Sarah Palin, they may be having second thoughts today.
The broadcast of Sarah Palin’s Real American Fluff Pieces, a collection of old clips that were supposed to be inspirational, probably did not inspire much excitement in the Fox News executive suites. The audience, while besting the competition, was not particularly impressive for Fox. In fact, Palin had fewer viewers than Greta Van Susteren’s On the Record, the program she preempted. There were only about 2 million real Americans tuning into Palin’s show (472K adults 25-54). That compares to Van Susteren’s 2.3 million viewers (654K 25-54) last Thursday and 2.1 million (559K 25-54) average for the first quarter of 2010.
From a critical perspective, the reviews are in, and they aren’t lighting up the Fox Towers. Most of the comments employ adjectives like “tame,” “canned,” “stiffness,” “innocuous,” and “disconnected.” If this is her out-of-town tryout, she isn’t going on to Broadway.
It’s fair to assume that Palin is well compensated for her efforts on behalf of Fox News. I haven’t seen any disclosures of her salary but she gets a minimum of $100,000 for speaking engagements, so you can bet she got a gold-plated contract from her pal Rupert Murdoch. Nevertheless, her numbers would have put her in seventh place in the cable news rankings following Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Special Report w/Bret Baier, Van Susteren, and Fox Report w/Shepard Smith. She did manage to beat Neil Cavuto and an O’Reilly rerun.
Somehow, I don’t think this is what Roger Ailes had in mind when he dropped a pile of cash on her. Of course, this is not her only duties at Fox. She also provides commentary to programs like Van Susteren’s and O’Reilly’s. Well, commentary may be too generous a description. It’s more like a litany of platitudes and cliches that she probably wrote on her palm. Even her colleague Chris Wallace dressed her down on the air – to her face – saying, “Well, you’re not a very good analyst.” Palin responded by inviting Ailes to fire her. That notion might have entered his mind this morning when he saw the overnights.
Yesterday’s program got off to a rocky start when one of the featured guests, LL Cool J, revealed that he had never spoken to Fox or Palin and that the interview was a two year old clip that he had not given permission to rebroadcast for this purpose. Fox responded by insulting him and cutting him out of the show. Shortly after, Toby Keith, another featured guest, made the same complaint as LL Cool J. Oddly enough, the white country singer was neither insulted nor edited out, as the black rapper/actor was.
Fox News is the most profitable division of Murdoch’s News Corp. Over the past few years their ratings have grown and they’ve renegotiated richer contracts with cable operators. But business decisions like the Palin signing are not going to add to the company’s future prospects. They are already suffering the embarrassment of having their second highest rated program, Glenn Beck, going to air with advertising for diet pills and gold recyclers because Ford and Wal-Mart don’t want to be associated with him.
Under the circumstances, I’m not sure that Murdoch and Ailes can possibly think that they are getting their money’s worth from Beck or Palin. But that doesn’t mean they won’t continue to carry them. Murdoch has sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into the New York Post and it has never been profitable for as long as he’s owned it. He purchased the Wall Street Journal for $5 billion and last year wrote off $2 billion of that. He has been deficit financing the Fox Business Network for over two years with still no sign of it going into the black. In short, he’s made of money and doesn’t care how much of it he loses in pursuit of his political agenda.
That ought to come as a great relief to Sarah Palin after this disastrous debut as an anchor.
Update 4/2/2010: A major development occurred overnight.
It is now April 2, 2010! (no foolin). Update 5/10/2010: See this new analysis and addendum.
This week saw the release of the quarterly ratings performance data for television programming. Much of the reporting on this story focused on the dominant position Fox News retains in the cable news sector. As has been the case for several years, Fox News smothered the competition and experienced rapid growth while other news programmers stagnated or declined.
While most industry insiders accept the routine pronouncements from the sole ratings provider, Nielsen Media Research, without question, some observers could not help but notice a certain incongruity in the results. How is it, they wonder, that Fox News can be so consistently in the lead despite their obvious niche programming focus on a narrow segment of the viewing audience. The decidedly right-of-center bias of Fox News corresponds to a rather small portion of the national electorate. Republican favorability has been hovering in the mid-twenties for years. So how does this negligible slice of the market translate into such a disproportionate ratings advantage?
The answer may be evident in new disclosures of business relationships that call into question the integrity of Nielsen’s data. With the rollout of its People Meter methodology in the early 2000’s, Nielsen entered the high-tech era of TV market research. It was heralded as a major advancement of data collection that would vastly improve the ability of producers, programmers and advertisers to evaluate the marketplace. But as with any upheaval in the status quo, there were skeptics and dissenters. Chief amongst them was Fox Broadcasting, who argued that the new system significantly under-counted African-Americans, a key component of their audience at the time. There was also a question as to the security of the new set-top boxes that would be recording viewer choices. With the introduction of technology comes the risk of miscalculations and tampering. But eventually the complaints receded or were resolved and the new service took its place as the signature survey product for television marketing.
It was during this time, subsequent to the implementation of People Meters, that Fox News began its rapid ascent to ratings dominance. A prudent observer might wonder how this new system came to report so much more favorably for a network that had fiercely opposed its adoption. What transpired that caused Fox News to withdraw their objections and become the biggest beneficiary of the change?
It has recently been discovered that the Wegener Corporation, the manufacturer of the set-top devices that Nielsen uses, has a long association with Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation, the parent of Fox News. Wegener was founded by the former management of Scientific-Atlanta, a producer of set-top boxes for cable access and other purposes. One of the other products in Scientific-Atlanta’s line was a device used by Gemstar to provide television program listings to cable operators and their subscribers. Gemstar was an affiliate of TV Guide, which in turn was owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. So the executives who were responsible for developing and manufacturing Murdoch’s equipment for Gemstar became the principles of the company providing Nielsen with their ratings collection devices. And around that same time Fox News dropped their objections to the new People Meter service.
It would not be difficult to encode an electronic device so that it would purposefully miscalculate survey data. A simple algorithm to multiply a target by a fixed percentage could produce a result that would artificially inflate one set of figures while keeping it in proportion to a larger set, making it virtually impossible to detect. At present, their is no confirmation that such a deception has been contrived. It would require a thorough examination of Nielsen’s hardware and the ability to reverse engineer the chips inside of it. But for those who presume that it would be an outlandish notion, they would be well advised to study recent news events that uncovered similarly scandalous conduct on the part of News Corp.
One situation involves a digital recorder and satellite receiver made by NDS Group for Murdoch’s Sky network in Europe. Unlike TiVo, the Sky+ system records “personal viewing information,” which is information about your viewing practices that is tied to your contact information (i.e., it’s not kept anonymous, like TiVo’s).
In addition to that, NDS was also charged with using spies and hackers to steal Sky competitor Dish Network’s programming and make it available to viewers for free, thus undercutting Dish’s financial viability. As reported in Wired Magazine:
“The case involves a colorful cast of characters that includes former intelligence agents, Canadian TV pirates, Bulgarian and German hackers, stolen e-mails and the mysterious suicide of a Berlin hacker who had been courted by the Murdoch company not long before his death.
On the hot spot is NDS Group, a UK-Israeli firm that makes smartcards for pay-TV systems like DirecTV. The company is a majority-owned subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corporation. The charges stem from 1997 when NDS is accused of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes access cards and systems for EchoStar’s Dish Network and other pay-TV services. Further, it’s alleged NDS then hired hackers to manufacture and distribute counterfeit NagraStar cards to pirates to steal Dish Network’s programming for free.”
On yet another occasion Murdoch’s news group engaged in some sleazy and illegal behavior to get stories about celebrities and politicians. The Guardian reported that Murdoch paid substantial sums of money to keep this scandal under wraps:
“Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.
The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures as well as gaining unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.”
And if that’s not enough, check into the incestuous and disturbing web of connections Murdoch has to the communists in China. Glenn Beck tried to pull the veil off of this one but was censored by his own employer.
Given the history of sleazy conduct and nefarious associations, is it really that far-fetched to conclude that something similar has taken place with regard to Murdoch’s relationship to Nielsen and the firm that manufactures their ratings collection devices? It would explain how Fox News could wind up with such a dominate lead in the ratings despite catering to a relatively small potential audience. It would explain why Fox suddenly halted their objections to a new process that they previously considered inaccurate and biased against them.
It would also explain a deep discrepancy between the allegedly broad viewing of Fox News and their nearly invisible impact on the political landscape. If Fox were as ubiquitous as they (and the ratings) claim, then why, during the years of their strongest growth, did they fail to move the country to their positions. With a sustained 24/7 propaganda effort, Fox failed to stop the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress. They failed to stop the 2008 election of Barack Obama despite incessant and false allegations of him being a Muslim, a radical leftist, and a pal of terrorists. They failed to stop the 2010 passage of a health care bill despite charges of socialism, death panels, and national bankruptcy. Does this sound like a network that holds a commanding majority of America’s television viewers under its sway?
To be sure, I am not the first to question the legitimacy of Nielsen’s numbers. Many people in the industry quietly accept what they regard as a flawed methodology simply because there is no alternative – or because proposed alternatives are even less acceptable. When it suits their purpose, even Fox News complains about the ratings. And I’m not talking about simple complaints concerning minor numerical inconsistencies, but allegations of rampant fraud that warrant federal investigation. After basking in the glow of Nielsen’s data, Bill O’Reilly turns around and castigates them as having “major problems…that have benefited MSNBC,” and asserts that…
O’Reilly: “The bottom line on this is there may be some big-time cheating going on in the ratings system, and we hope the feds will investigate. Any fraud in the television rating system affects all Americans.”
Of course the “feds” don’t have any jurisdiction over private market research firms. And it’s rather hypocritical for O’Reilly to suddenly advocate for big government intruding on the free market. But conservatives like O’Reilly are not averse to hypocrisy when it furthers their agenda. And in this case the agenda is to work the refs at Nielsen and suppress any notion that Fox is not the king of the television hill.
In conclusion, if we are to have any certainty as to who the real king of the hill is, we will need to get to the bottom of this lingering controversy surrounding Nielsen’s systems and procedures. The connection to Murdoch’s covert operations and his history of unlawful corporate espionage cannot be dismissed. Nielsen must investigate their equipment providers and perform intensive examinations of the devices they place in viewers’ homes. Anything short of this would leave them open to charges of complicity and render their survey data useless.
As might be expected, Sarah Palin is leading off her new series of programs on Fox News with her strongest asset: lying.
In press reports describing the debut, rapper/actor LL Cool J is listed as part of the exclusive lineup that Palin will be featuring. As it turns out, the interview is actually a retread taped in 2008 and had nothing to do with Palin.
“Real American Stories features uplifting tales about overcoming adversity and we believe Mr. Smith’s interview fit that criteria. However, as it appears that Mr. Smith does not want to be associated with a program that could serve as an inspiration to others, we are cutting his interview from the special and wish him the best with his fledgling acting career.”
This is clearly the work of Fox News PR Priestess, Irena Briganti (or someone following in her footsteps). The pissy little comment at the close of the response is not only childish, but laughably untrue. Cool J is a veteran of film and TV and currently stars in one of the hottest shows on television, NCIS.
The Fox News PR department is notorious for this kind of unprofessionalism. A couple of years ago, David Bauder documented what came to be known as the “wishing well.” where Fox snidely wishes someone they don’t like well with the back of their hand. Take this for example:
“Because of his personal demons, Keith [Olbermann] has imploded everywhere he’s worked. From lashing out at co-workers to personally attacking Bill O’Reilly and all things Fox, it’s obvious Keith is a train wreck waiting to happen. And like all train wrecks, people might tune in out of morbid curiosity, but they eventually tune out, as evidenced by Keith’s recent ratings decline. In the meantime, we hope he enjoys his paranoid view from the bottom of the ratings ladder and wish him well on his inevitable trip to oblivion.“
Oblivion for Olbermann must a long ways off. Two years later he is still the number two show on cable news. And Cool J’s career is far from fledgling. I would wager that the only train wreck in the foreseeable future is going to involve Palin who still has no discernible talent for anything but dishonesty and quitting.
Update: As my reader, Fed UP, noted, Toby Keith was also not particularly pleased with Palin dredging up a two year old interview and presenting it as new. Now that Keith has joined Cool J in complaining about this sleazy clip show Palin is hosting, will Fox News cut him out of the show as well? Will they insult him as a fledgling country singer? And when will Jack Welch issue a press release revealing that Palin and Fox had not contacted him either? This whole show appears to be a scam that is just a bunch of old clips edited together with some intros by Palin. And worst of all, LL Cool J, a black entertainer, is cut from the program for expressing his objection to being exploited by Fox, but Toby Keith, a white entertainer, does the same thing with no repercussions. Why am I not surprised?
Once again, Andrew Breitbart has dispatched his henchman, Jason Mattera, to annoy a member of congress. This time it’s Sen. Al Franken and, just as happened when he ambushed Rep. Alan Grayson with a false assertion that the health care bill provided funds for child molesters, Mattera is made to look the fool.
In this episode of Mattera’s Morons, Jason stalks Sen. Franken to ask about an alleged provision in the health care bill that allocates $7 billion for jungle gyms. The only problem for Mattera is that nothing of the sort is in the bill. Franken is acutely aware of this and engages Mattera in this exchange:
Franken: You came up to me and said “You know the part of the bill where they give $7 billion dollars to fund the jungle gyms?” And I said “Show me that.” It doesn’t say that in the bill. Mattera: Oh, it says infrastructure for healthy living in playgrounds for schools. What is that an army of monkey bars?
Sorry Jason. The bill doesn’t say anything about playgrounds or jungle gyms or monkey bars. And when you approach someone who is much more knowledgeable than yourself about legislation, you ought not try to lie about what’s in the bill. What the bill says is that funds in this section can be used for…
(i) creating healthier school environments, including increasing healthy food options, physical activity opportunities, promotion of healthy lifestyle, emotional wellness, and prevention curricula, and activities to prevent chronic diseases;
(ii) creating the infrastructure to support active living and access to nutritious foods in a safe environment;
So now we see that Breitbart and his ward are just as opposed to safe schools and nutritious foods as they are to preventing child abuse. But I have to admire his tenacity. After making an ass of himself over the non-existent jungle gyms, Mattera plowed ahead with a complaint about language in the bill that provides new mothers with reasonable breaks for breast feeding. I thought Republicans were supposed to be the “family values” party. Not that they ever actually supported family values, but they have long sought to pretend that they did. But here the truth is revealed as Mattera berates Franken for supporting a bill that permits new mothers to care for their infant children.
I wonder… Would Mattera prefer it if the woman had an abortion so that she wouldn’t have to miss any work time? Should she quit her job and reduce her income and her family’s ability to provide for themselves? Maybe she should just leave the kid at home and let it fend for itself in a Randian adventure of survival. Mattera’s idiocy is illustrative of something we’ve known all along: Conservatives care very deeply about fetuses but once you leave the womb they don’t give a flying frak.
This hysterical video was, once again, featured on Breitbart’s BigGovernment web site as well as the Fox Nation. And it still amazes me that Mattera thinks he comes off looking good in it. He clearly has a perverse sense of pride. Also Jason, it only makes you look like more of an immature jerk when call Franken “Senator Smalley.” It just drives home how obvious it is that you are NOT good enough, NOT smart enough, and, doggone it, no one likes you.
[Update, 3/31/2010:] Had this been announced a day later, I would have been certain that it was an April fools joke, but no…..Jason Mattera has actually been named editor-in-chief of the uber-conservative Human Events Magazine. Human Events sees some potential in this 26 year old moron whose chief quality appears to be making himself look like an idiot. Now he will oversee the magazine as well as their Internet properties like RedState, home of the new CNN contributor, Erick Erickson.
This past Saturday Glenn Beck held the first of his American Revival Traveling Salvation Shows in Florida. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News was there and reported that it was pretty much the evangelical, Apocalyptic fright fest one might have imagined from Beck. Along with his customary factless exhortations on the imminent demise of the nation, Beck beseeched his congregation to “Get God on your side.” But he was especially pessimistic on Saturday:
“If we don’t face the truth right now, we’ll be dead in five years; this country can’t survive.”
Five years? That’s barely enough time to schedule an appointment with the ObamaCare Death Panel. Beck’s audience heartily embraces his pessimism. Eighty percent said so in a survey conducted by texting in the auditorium. Who knew there were so many Americans who believe this nation is such a fragile thing that its prognosis for survival is hopelessly bleak? Nevertheless, the Beck pods were so moved that they expressed their enthusiasm for his vision as something of a spiritual awakening. Here are some retweets posted on Beck’s Twitter stream:
“the American Revival today was absolutely one of the best experiences of my life.”
“Thank you for one of the most amazing experiences in my life!!”
“I was blind but now I see!!.”
“Today’s American Revival inspired me more than any other day in my life so far….THANK YOU!”
“Thank you @glennbeck for an incredibly memorible day! Today I have heard the call in more ways than one!”
“I cry as I write: my life is forever change. TY”
These revival meetings are building up to an event in Washington, DC, that Beck calls Restoring Honor. Apparently Beck’s method of doing that is to hold a rally to launch his next book, “The Plan” – a 100 year strategy for … I don’t know … manifesting the dementia that infects his brain. This book launch masquerading as political event (and dishonestly exploiting a veterans charity) is being held on the anniversary of Martin Luther’s King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, and at the same location. That is a stinging insult to man that Beck doesn’t think deserves a holiday honoring him.
Beck has another book coming out in June. That one is reportedly a work of fiction, although that doesn’t really distinguish from everything else he does. It is called “The Overton Window” and incorporates much of the Apocalyptic fantasies that Beck dispenses on his radio and TV shows. The plot chronicles a nation in “a civil war, and life is upside-down planetwide.” And there is a group of heroes Beck calls the “Founders Keepers,” which I’m sure is how he sees himself, with all his talk of Re-Founding America and his beatification of Sam Adams, George Washington, et al.
But I think there is a more appropriate name for the group to which Beck belongs than Founders Keepers. I would call them the “Losers Weepers.” What else would call a bunch of ignorant hypocrites who can’t stop sobbing over imaginary villains lurking in every shadow? These are people who rail against big government when they go to pick up their unemployment checks. They are the ones who shout “Keep government’s hands off of my Social Security.” They profess to support the troops, unless those troops come back from the battlefield scarred and in need of physical and emotional rehabilitation. And these are the people who believe Beck’s lies and horror stories and would follow Beck anywhere. Perhaps even to Becktown where they could enjoy complimentary Kool-Aid.
This just in: Some of Beck’s fans left his revival to discover that their cars had been towed away. Actually 53 of them. It appears that they were misled by signs directing them to a parking lot for the Kappa Sigma fraternity. This may have been a mistake or a prank, no one seems to know for sure. But I have uncovered some evidence that it might be a plot devised by Barack Obama himself.
Please note this symbol for Kappa Sigma. It’s a crescent and star, which is also a symbol of ….. the Muslim faith. And since Obama is a secret Muslim. the connection is pretty obvious. The president planned this whole thing to attack Glenn Beck and his disciples. The Kappa Sigma are working clandestinely on behalf of the White House. After a enough of these operations, none of Beck’s viewers will have any transportation at all. They’ll be stuck at home and will miss all of the Tea Parties. It’s downright insidious.
This site’s mission has always been to focus on the media and its impact on society and culture. But this morning I was just thinking about how dysfunctional some of our political institutions are, and I thought I’d wander off the reservation for a while.
Friday President Obama had to make recess appointments for 15 nominees to federal posts because Senate Republicans refuse to permit a vote on them. And there are still dozens more in the same state of partisan limbo. In addition to that, Republicans have conducted a record breaking number of filibusters in their attempt to supersede the will of the Senate and the voters.
All of this leads me to question whether the Senate is an anachronism that no longer serves the best interests of democracy. States do not have the sort of parochial concerns that were once a part of the independent and geographically distinct colonies that made up the early confederation. Citizens migrate throughout the nation with little regard to loyalty based on home state affiliation. But the most striking illustration of the Senate having outgrown its usefulness is this chart I drew up:
[Detail breakdown in comments]
What I’d like to know is why do 31.4 million Americans in the twenty smallest states command a 40% share of the votes in the Senate, while 36.9 million Americans in California alone have only 2%? Is that democratic? Have those small-staters done something to deserve so much more influence over the country? Not so far as I can tell. Yet they have a theoretical veto power over the other 276 million citizens in the rest of the nation. That’s just not right.
What this amounts to is that a bunch of states that are mostly inhabited by brush and rodents have an inordinate sway over the laws that govern the vast majority of the country. And it’s often the senators from those small states who are the most obstructionist members of the body.
Maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe senators should represent districts whose lines are determined by population rather than by state boundaries. That would seem to be a much more fair and democratic way of handling this. Personally, I’m pretty tired of watching 10% of the country dictate how the other 90% are going to live.
I know this is not a new question, and there are barriers to any substantive change (mainly because the same small-staters would oppose it in the Senate). But it doesn’t hurt to bring it up from time to time and to hold out some hope that positive, democratic reform might still be possible. Because, in the end, no one should be allowed to be more equal than anyone else in America. No, seriously.
This morning on Fox News, Shannon Bream interviewed Fox News contributor Liz Trotta. The segment dealt with what Bream characterized as the over-reporting of incidents of violence directed at Democrats in the days following the passage of the health care bill. Those incidents included death threats, smashed windows, mail with suspicious white powder, severed gas lines, etc.
On Fox News, however, such examples of domestic terrorism are irrelevant trivialities. Trotta began her spiel by asserting that the left invented violent dissent back in the 1960’s. You know, the peacenik, free love, flower children, who marched to end discrimination and war. They were a frightening bunch, weren’t they? And because of them, the overt hostility being played out by extremist conservatives today is, in Trotta’s words, “laughable.”
It’s funny, my recollection of the sixties is very different. It wasn’t the followers of the Gandhi-inspired Martin Luther King who were stirring up trouble. It was the right-wingers who were beating up (or worse) anyone with long hair or dark skin. And the rightward proclivity for violence exists today with armed patriot and militia groups, and NRA-sponsored tea partiers who show up with signs that say “We came unarmed – this time.”
But Trotta doesn’t stop there. She goes on to discuss particular acts of violence that she thinks are unworthy of attention. She told Bream that “a brick through a window is pretty low on the violence scale.” I wonder how she would react if it were her window? I imagine she would casually get up from the sofa, pick up the brick with a chuckle, and tell her kids to turn off the TV and go play outside. After all, it’s only a brick. Don’t be a wuss.
Trotta’s exhibition of bravado is nothing new. During the presidential campaign she came out in favor of assassination:
“…and now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama … uh … Obama … well, both if we could.”
Trotta further disparaged the victims and critics of violence by portraying their complaints as “whining.” In Trotta’s view, if someone leaves you a profanity-laced message saying snipers are going to kill your children (as happened to Rep. Louise Slaughter), you are just a sniveling bellyacher if you bring it up on TV or report it to the police.
Trotta didn’t say whether she thought Republican Rep. Eric Cantor was whining when he held a press conference to disclose that he was a victim of violence. His allegations were broadcast on Fox News with a screen graphic that read “Gunman Shoots Up Office Of Number Two House Republican. Cantor whined that…
“I have been directly threatened. A bullet was shot through the window of my campaign office in Richmond this week.”
Perhaps it doesn’t qualify as whining if it is lying. Because police later revealed that the bullet did not directly threaten Cantor at all. It was not shot at his office (it was random gunfire into the air). It was not even his office that was hit (it was a different unit on a different floor). And no one even knew there was a campaign office in the building (the office was unmarked and wasn’t in his district). In short, everything Cantor alleged about the incident was utterly false. Yet Trotta never mentioned Cantor as one of the whiners for whom she has such scorn.
This is yet another example of Fox News embracing the most repulsively hostile rhetoric. Trotta, who has her own record of violent fantasy, is quite at home on the network that features folks like Ralph Peters who advocates military attacks on the press. And Michael Scheuer who told Glenn Beck that “[T]he only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”
These sort of sentiments are a routine part of Fox’s editorial position. It isn’t whining, and it isn’t concealed. But It is an apologia for domestic terrorism and a justification, and invitation, for continued and escalating violence. The people at Fox News, from the administrative staff, to the presenters like Trotta and Glenn Beck, to the executives like Roger Ailes, and all the way up to Rupert Murdoch, should consider themselves culpable for any and all of the ugly events that their vulgar and irresponsible actions might predictably encourage. They are sitting on a powder keg and playing with matches. If something blows up they cannot pretend that they had nothing to do with it.
Posted by Mark NC on March 26, 2010 at 6:22 pm.
NOComments :
The Associated Press is reporting that James O’Keefe, the ersatz pimp made famous in his fraudulently edited videotapes of ACORN, is likely to plead guilty to reduced charges stemming from his misadventures in the offices of Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu.
Federal prosecutors filed reduced charges Friday against conservative activist James O’Keefe and three others who were accused of trying to tamper with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office. […] The new charges carry maximum sentences of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.
When this plea bargain is concluded it will represent the only conviction of anyone involved in the ACORN sting. ACORN itself was found to be innocent of any wrongdoing by three separate, independent investigations. Additionally, poorly considered legislation from Congress prohibiting federal funds from going to ACORN was ruled to be unconstitutional in federal court.
Nevertheless, before the ink was even dry on the deal, O’Keefe’s Sugardaddy, Andrew Breitbart (who supports child molesters), was trumpeting it as some sort of victory. He tweeted:
“BWAAAH: Conservative activist, 3 others have charges reduced in phone caper at La. senator’s office. Developing…”
I’m not sure what he’s so happy about. His apprentice propagandist is still facing jail time and will have a criminal record. No matter how Breitbart downplays the significance of this, the facts reveal that O’Keefe was engaged in some pretty shady activities. He maintains that he was only there to find out if Landrieu’s office was avoiding the phone calls of constituents. He claims he never intended to tamper with the lines. That’s an obvious lie. If it were true, then why did he and his cohorts leave Landrieu’s office to go to a separate facility that housed the telephone wiring and equipment?
While it is disappointing that O’Keefe et al won’t be held to fully account for their felonious behavior, the reality is that this is the way many criminal cases are resolved by prosecutors and courts who have an interest in reducing caseloads and acquiring convictions. And while there is some likelihood that these delinquents will end up getting little more than a slap on the wrist, being caught and convicted for malfeasance in a senator’s office is certainly nothing to be proud of.
As might be expected, Sarah Palin is leading off her new series of programs on Fox News with her strongest asset: lying.
But I think there is a more appropriate name for the group to which Beck belongs than Founders Keepers. I would call them the “Losers Weepers.” What else would call a bunch of ignorant hypocrites who can’t stop sobbing over imaginary villains lurking in every shadow? These are people who rail against big government when they go to pick up their unemployment checks. They are the ones who shout “Keep government’s hands off of my Social Security.” They profess to support the troops, unless those troops come back from the battlefield scarred and in need of physical and emotional rehabilitation. And these are the people who believe Beck’s lies and horror stories and would follow Beck anywhere. Perhaps even to Becktown where they could enjoy complimentary Kool-Aid.
Please note this symbol for Kappa Sigma. It’s a crescent and star, which is also a symbol of ….. the Muslim faith. And since Obama is a secret Muslim. the connection is pretty obvious. The president planned this whole thing to attack Glenn Beck and his disciples. The Kappa Sigma are working clandestinely on behalf of the White House. After a enough of these operations, none of Beck’s viewers will have any transportation at all. They’ll be stuck at home and will miss all of the Tea Parties. It’s downright insidious.
The Associated Press is