Rupert Murdoch

Fox Nation Touts Grand Theft As A Fun New Sport

Posted by on July 31, 2009 at 11:23 am. 5 Comments :

Fox Nation - Smart CarsThere is an item today on Rupert Murdoch’s The Fox Nation that links to an article in Murdoch’s English newspaper, The Sun. The Sun’s report concerns Dutch victims of criminal vandals who are stealing and destroying automobiles. What sets this apart from conventional crimes is that the perpetrators have singled out owners of Smart Cars for their felonious conduct. The Sun dismissively refers to the thieves as “pranksters,” but that is not nearly as bad as Fox Nation who ran with the headline: Fun New Sport? Flipping Smart Cars.

So the right-wing, Republican, law and order, traditional values, pretenders at Fox Nation think that it’s “fun” to steal the property of innocent people and destroy it by, amongst other things, throwing it into canals. This obviously creates a burden for the victim, but it is also impacts the insurance companies, the car dealerships, the municipalities charged with retrieving the vehicle, and the police who must allocate resources to the case.

What amuses the Fox Nation hypocrites is the fact that the targets of the criminals’ animus are people who have elected to purchase environmentally responsible vehicles. Apparently these folks deserve to be victimized. I wonder if Fox would regard it as equally humorous if vandals went around slashing the tires of SUVs? Of course, when Earth Liberation Front activists torched Hummers on dealer lots (not private owners), they were labeled “eco-terrorists.”

The article in The Sun quotes a Smart Car dealer who points out that they do not want to give these incidents too much attention for fear that it will inspire additional criminal activity. So Murdoch’s people promptly publish it in the The Sun and on Fox Nation. They are virtually promoting more crime by describing it as “fun” and a “sport.” They clearly have no regard for the victims or any sense of decency. This fact is affirmed by some of the comments posted at Fox Nation vilifying environmentally conscious consumers. But it gets even worse than that…

This blatantly racist comment should not surprise anyone familiar with Fox Nation, Fox News, or the rest of the Murdoch Korporate Klan. There are many similar examples of such hostility to be found on Fox enterprise assets. But you would think that calling President Obama “Buckwheat” and referring to his “death certificate” would raise the ire of Internet values enforcers like Bill O’Reilly who often castigates sites like Daily Kos or the Huffington Post for what he calls hate speech.

If there is still anyone who has not concluded that Fox is a hate factory disguised as a news channel, they must now be regarded as lost souls who have irretrievable succumbed to the doctrine of loathing and ignorance that is Pastor Murdoch’s domain.

Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by on July 24, 2009 at 11:56 am. 38 Comments :

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a blight on the media map. It is bad for journalism. It is bad for Democracy. It is bad for America. A so-called “news” network that repeatedly misinforms, even deliberately disinforms, its audience is failing any test of public service embodied by an ethical press.

I, personally, have made the case for an embargo of Fox News by Democrats and progressives (see Starve the Beast: Part I, Part II, Part III), documenting via studied analysis that there is no affirmative value to appearing on Fox News – a network that has established itself as overtly hostile to the Democratic message and its messengers.

However, there is another side to this that has not been addressed previously. Republicans might be well advised to avoid Fox News as well. There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But 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.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names.

Fox News has descended into depths heretofore reserved for fringe characters. They are openly promoting the wackos who believe that President Obama is ineligible to hold office because he isn’t a U.S. citizen. They feature commentaries by secessionists and even those calling for an overthrow of the government and the Constitution. This explains how folks like Ralph Peters, a retired military officer who said that the Taliban captors of a U.S. Soldier would be saving us a lot of trouble and expense if they would just kill him, earn airtime on Fox. Peters previously told Fox News that he favors military strikes against media targets. This explains how Glenn Beck can agree with a guest that it would be a good thing if America were attacked again by Osama bin Laden. And don’t even get me started on Victoria Jackson, who has joined an ever-lengthening line of psycho-Chicken Littles who compare the President to Hitler.

Good Advice:
“If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it.”
~ Bill O’Reilly, 7/16/09

The list of loonies extends to politicians like Michele Bachmann, entertainers like Ted Nugent, and of course, the talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh, whose maniacal rantings are elevated by Fox into their version of political dialogue. It’s a dialogue that is consumed with ACORN conspiracies and Manchurian presidents. The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

As a result, the Fox News audience is being dumbed down by a parade of paranoid know-nothings. This strategy appears to be successful for Fox in that it has attracted a loyal viewership that is eager to have their twisted preconceptions affirmed. The conflict-infused fare in which Fox specializes is a ratings juggernaut – just like any good fiction. However, this perceived popularity is having an inordinate impact on the GOP platform. 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.

With the Fox network unabashedly promoting the most ridiculous rumors, myths, and nightmares of the rightist fringe, moderate and independent Americans will grow ever more suspicious of the Fox/GOP agenda. Most Americans do not believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist; or that FEMA is constructing concentration camps; or that we are on a march toward socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever the right is peddling this week. Most Americans do not believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a reptilian alien, or the anti-Christ. In short, most Americans think that the loopy yarns spun by Fox News are fables told by madmen – and believed by even madder men and women who wallow in their doomsday utopia.

Fox News is fond of boasting about their ratings dominance. It is a daily occurrence and the structural core of their argument that they reflect the mood of America. The GOP has bought this argument in its entirety. So it is important to note here that success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants. That is a subset of the population at large, and not a particularly representative one. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are just those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t creeped out by that. What’s more, viewing choices are not necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.

As for what constitutes success in the television marketplace, due to the broad diversification of available programming, it doesn’t take much to be heralded as a hit. A mere 3 share (3% of people watching TV) will land you in the top 10. For cable news the bar is set even lower. In fact, the top rated show on the top rated cable news network (The O’Reilly Factor) only gets about 3 million viewers. That’s less than 1% of the American population. It’s also less than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program). By contrast, America’s Got Talent is seen by 12 million viewers – four times O’Reilly’s audience.

Numbers this low ought not to inspire much excitement from political operatives. Nevertheless, Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.

The inevitable result of this system of rewarding those farthest from reality is the creation of a constituency of crackpots. It is an endorsement of the philosophy brewed by the Tea Baggers that espouses racism, tyranny, and armed revolt. It is enabling a frightening corps of openly militant adversaries of democracy, free speech, and Constitutional rule. It is the sort of environment that produced the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns.

This is a textbook example of how the extreme rises to the top. It is also fundamentally contrary to the interests of the Republican Party. The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds. It seems like such a waste after all of the effort and expense that Fox put into building a pseudo-journalistic enterprise with the goal of confounding viewers with false news-like theatrics.

Make no mistake, Fox News is still managed by hard core party patrons. And I’m not referring just to opinion-driven commentators like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, although they are bad enough. No, I am talking about executives and editors like CEO, Roger Ailes, former Nixon and Bush media consultant. I’m talking about Washington Managing Editor and VP, Bill Sammon, an avid right-wing alum of the Washington “Moonie” Times. I’m talking about Business News Chief and VP, Neil Cavuto, antagonistic interrupter extraordinaire. And let us not forget the head hype-master, Rupert Murdoch, whose UK operations were just discovered to have been unlawfully wiretapping celebrities, politicians, and even members of the Royal Family. Augmenting that executive roster are the GOP regulars who are straight out of the just retired Republican White House: Karl Rove, Dana Perino, John Bolton, Dan Senor, and Linda Chavez. And then there are the Fox News clowns…er…“contributors” like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Goldberg, Michele Malkin, and on and on. If nothing else, Fox is a full-employment program for rightist weasels (and they also operate the Conservative Book Promotion Club).

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.

Rupert Murdoch Running Criminal News Enterprise?

Posted by on July 8, 2009 at 3:49 pm. 3 Comments :

The Guardian has a story that simply must be read:

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 and to gain 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.

Today, the Guardian reveals details of the suppressed evidence which may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes the News of the World and the Sun, as well as provoking police inquiries into reporters who were involved and the senior executives responsible for them.

The rest of the story just gets more lurid. This is a shocking look into the way that Murdoch and his accomplices operate.

[Update 7/9/09] Rupert Murdoch appeared on his own Fox Business Network today where Stuart Varney, who is notorious for aggressively challenging (i.e. interrupting) liberals, attempted to ask him a question:

Varney: The story that is really buzzing all around the country, and certainly right here in New York, is that the News of the World, a News Corporation newspaper in Britain…
Murdoch: No, I’m not talking about that issue at all today.
Varney: OK. No worries, Mr. Chairman. That’s fine with me.

That’s fine with you? Way to suck up to your boss, Stuart.

The Sarah Palin Show Set To Premiere On Fox News?

Posted by on July 3, 2009 at 1:53 pm. 13 Comments :

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has just announced that she will not seek reelection. Even more surprising, she also says that she will be resigning from the office that she has held for less than one term.

Were this merely a politician choosing not to run again, there could be several explanations including, most likely, an intention to run for higher office. But the resignation throws that theory right out the window. Either she has some serious scandal about to erupt, or she got an offer from Rupert Murdoch.

The timing is suspect as well. It seems like an odd choice to make a significant statement like this on the day before the fourth of July. Especially when competing with other sensational stories like Michael Jackson and Gov. Sanford. Why couldn’t this have waited a week? Fridays are generally considered to be news graveyards – where stories go to die. Why make an announcement that has any positive content at a time usually reserved for bad news? Could it have anything to do with the fact that many of the opinion-casters are on vacation this week? Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, even Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are not around to comment. Coincidence?

Remember, she was a sportscaster before going into politics. She studied journalism in college (but must have forgotten much of it because she couldn’t tell Katie Couric a single newspaper that she read). And her appeal in last year’s campaign was mostly connected to her alleged personality – it certainly wasn’t her experience or intelligence. Since folks like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have proven that those qualities are irrelevant to a career as a Fox pundit, Palin may believe that now is the time to cash in. Her resignation speech even included a reference to the $500,000 dollars in debt that she has accumulated defending herself against criminal and ethics complaints. So it’s fair to say that she could use the money a broadcasting job would provide.

A Palin show on Fox News has always been a good fit for both her and Fox. Neither have an interest in, or reputation for, honesty or accuracy. And both have profited from exploiting controversy and sex. Plus, she wouldn’t be the first potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate with a show on Fox, would she, Mike Huckabee?

What more could Fox ask for than a former beauty queen who cheerfully calls the President a Socialist who pals around with terrorists? And what more could Palin ask for than a network gig that allows her to spew nonsense and practice her fancy pageant walkin’?

[Update 7/4/09] Foxnews.com got around to reporting the Palin news with a story mainly cribbed from the AP. In addressing Palin’s future they wrote…

…she will have a variety of potential platforms, from writing books to hitting the public speaking circuit to working directly with the Republican Party to get candidates elected.

In the process, she’ll also have the ability to make a lot of money — far more than the $125,000 or so a year she has earned as governor. She already had a deal with publisher HarperCollins to produce her memoirs, with publication planned for next spring.

They left a couple things out of that report. First, they failed to mention the possibility of a role on Fox News. Second, they didn’t think it worthy to note that HarperCollins is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp.

Murdoch Newspapers Fall For Fake Email

Posted by on June 27, 2009 at 2:26 pm. NO Comments :

I have little to add to this example of another attempt by Rupert Murdoch’s factory of falsehoods to fabricate stories designed to either advance his interests or harm those of his adversaries.

In this case Murdoch’s newspapers in Australia hyped a suspicious email that cast Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as a corrupt politician. This was intended to benefit the conservative opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull. [Note: In Australia, Turnbull’s Liberal Party is farther to the right than Rudd’s Labor Party]

The same day [Murdoch-owned] News Limited published its story in the two thirds of newspapers it owns in Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called for an Australian Federal Police investigation to examine the authenticity of the email.

By Monday the AFP had established the email was a forgery. Turnbull came under pressure throughout this week for relying on a fake email, and promoting it. The whole matter was a hoax and even members of Turnbull’s own party criticised his naivety.

Nowhere was there any criticism of the Murdoch newspapers for not authenticating the email before engaging in a mass publication of its content. It seems News was taken in, hook, line and sinker, and did far more to promote what turned out to be a fake email than Turnbull.

This journalistic atrocity comes on the heels of a fake scandal publicized by Murdoch’s papers a couple of months ago. In that affair, a nude photo allegedly of a candidate for senate was published. The candidate, Pauline Hanson, offered ample evidence that the photo could not have been of her, but the papers would not retract the story.

Typical. Anyone who thinks that this isn’t going on here in the U.S. is terminally naive.

Did Fox News Capitulate To Scientology?

Posted by on June 14, 2009 at 1:30 pm. 6 Comments :

Last April, Fox News entertainment reporter, Roger Friedman, was fired, allegedly because he had acquired and viewed a bootleg copy of 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” At the time it appeared a rather harsh sentence considering that Fox has no problem with continuing to employ people who…

  • …joke about assassinating Barack Obama (Liz Trotta).
  • …read Republican Party press releases on the air as if they were actually news (Jon Scott).
  • …express a desire to strangle competing reporters (Bill O’Reilly).
  • …yearn to choke Michael Moore to death (Glenn Beck).

I also wondered whether Fox might have been itching for an excuse to cast Friedman overboard due to his blasphemous praise of Fox nemesis Michael Moore:

On Fahrenheit 9/11: “It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail.” He continued, “…a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty – and at the same time an indictment of stupidity and avarice.”

On Sicko: “Filmmaker Michael Moore’s brilliant and uplifting new documentary, ‘Sicko,’ deals with the failings of the U.S. healthcare system, both real and perceived. But this time around, the controversial documentarian seems to be letting the subject matter do the talking, and in the process shows a new maturity.”

Now the New York Daily News is reporting that Friedman is suing Fox News for wrongful termination, and the reason is something I had not anticipated. He is claiming that Rupert Murdoch and News Corp bowed to pressure from Kelly Preston and Tom Cruise who wanted Friedman fired because he had written critically of Scientology. At first, that seems to be a frivolous assertion, but upon further examination it becomes more plausible.

The Scientology organization has a reputation for being fiercely aggressive when it believes that it has been disparaged. And Friedman did indeed write multiple columns that were less than complimentary to Scientology. For example: Television Star Exits Scientology and Will Scientology Celebs Sign ‘Spiritual’ Contract? and Isaac Hayes’ History With Scientology. And there were others that touched on big stars like Will Smith and Tom Cruise.

I can’t pretend to know the truth about Friedman’s claim. Fox may have already had it in for him due to the Wolverine episode or his acclaim for Moore’s movies. All I can say is that, if Scientology really has Fox cowering before it, I wish Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck would say something to piss them off. Now that’s entertainment.

Krauthammer: Fox News Created An Alternate Reality

Posted by on June 10, 2009 at 1:28 pm. 3 Comments :

The Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism is a creation of Rupert Murdoch, who endowed the foundation that administers it. How convenient then, that this year’s honoree is Fox News favorite, Charles Krauthammer.

Krauthammer is an unrepentant defender of torture, war, and the conservative economic model dedicated to excusing the rich and fleecing the poor. Thus, he is an obvious choice for an award bestowed by News Corporation to one of their own. I wonder what Sean Hannity would have to say about an award created by General Electric that was presented to Keith Olbermann.

In his acceptance speech, Krauthammer graciously praised the heads of News Corp. and Fox News who are, of course, also his bosses:

“I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people.”

There is little doubt that Murdoch and Ailes are adept at marketing (i.e. propaganda) and that their enterprise serves a niche market (i.e. dittoheads). However, to say that it is half of the American people is evidence that Krauthammer must have failed remedial math. There are about 360 million Americans and Fox’s audience rarely exceeds 3 or 4 million. Krauthammer seems to regard 1% and 50% as essentially the same. But that isn’t even the point at which he truly sails over the edge of his flat earth. For that he had to exhibit a bit more honesty:

“What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.”

Can’t argue with that. Fox News creates an alternate reality on a daily basis. They misrepresent the statements of Democrats and progressives. They edit videos to produce false and negative impressions. Studies show that Fox viewers rank lower with regard to knowledge of current events and, even worse, are far more likely to believe things that are demonstrably false.

It’s a good thing that Fox invents their own awards because they aren’t going to be winning any from reputable institutions.

Rupert Murdoch Defends The Fairness Of Fox News

Posted by on June 9, 2009 at 1:14 pm. 2 Comments :

Neil Cavuto went out on limb to interview his boss, Rupert Murdoch, again. I don’t know of any other network that conducts this type of incestuous self-promotion with such frequency. But we are talking about Fox News, so…..

In this clip Murdoch defends the notoriously false slogan that Fox News is “fair and balanced.” Murdoch says:

“If we weren’t fair and balanced, we wouldn’t have the number one network in news – by a very wide margin. People believe we’re fair and balanced, and they love us.”

However, people do not watch Fox News because they believe it’s fair and balanced. They watch to have their right-wing preconceptions validated. What’s more, many more people hate Fox News than love it. Twenty-three percent of the public report being regular Fox viewers. That means that 75% are not. And being the number one network is no measure of quality. As I have said before:

“McDonald’s is the #1 restaurant in America. I don’t think that anyone interprets that to mean that they have the best food. What they have is the cheapest crap that is loaded with filler and seasoning to appeal to the largest number of consumers with the least sophisticated taste.”

And that’s a pretty good description of Fox News too.

The Hateful Slander Of The New York Post

Posted by on June 6, 2009 at 2:35 pm. NO Comments :

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post has a long history of shameless bias and insensitivity. This is, after all, the paper that published a cartoon portraying President Obama as a monkey being shot to death.

Now the post has moved their repulsive imagery onto the front page.

What first drew my attention to this was the utterly disgusting reference to the death of David Carradine. What Post editors must have thought was a cutesy play off of “Kung Fu,” the TV series in which Carradine starred, was entirely inappropriate and shockingly lacking in sympathy for the deceased’s family and friends.

But upon further examination, I noticed that the image at the top was no less repulsive. It depicts a couple of quasi-terrorists lounging on the sofa, caressing their assault weapons, waiting for a TV dinner, and watching Obama deliver an address to students at Cairo University in Egypt. They are wrapped up all snugly in their fatigues and wool caps and, if we could see their eyes better, I’m sure they would be glassy with admiration for what the Post describes as their “friend” who wants to “woo” them.

The obvious intention of the Post is to cast Obama as one of “them” – as a fellow Muslim speaking directly to his extremist comrades in the warmth of their secret lairs. Notice the rapt attention they give to their Manchurian leader. The juxtaposition of these hooded barbarians, serenely embracing Obama’s electronically glowing presence, with the superimposed text that speaks of friendship and wooing, can have only one purpose: To insinuate that the televised Obama in the background is just as much a threat to America as the fearsome subjects in the foreground.

This is propaganda in its most advanced and destructive form. It is a deliberate attempt by Murdoch and Co. to exploit his media megaphone and smear the image of the President. The Post, and everyone affiliated with it, should be embarrassed by this forsaking of journalistic principles. Of course, the Post, being what it is, probably feels only pride for its lack of ethics.

And what is it with the repeated use of the nickname “Bam” for the president? Is that supposed to create an association with an explosive device (by removing the beginning “O” and the concluding “a” from Obama’s name, the phonetic remainder would be pronounced “bomb”)? The Post has been using this label for some time. At least as far back as January 2008, in a hilariously stupid article suggesting that Obama could be the first woman president because he is slim, attractive, and well-dressed. By that measure, the Jonas brothers would be next Supremes.

It is time to let the Post know that their readers will not tolerate this sort of manipulation and dishonesty. This is a paper that loses about $50 million a year, but is kept afloat by Murdoch’s deep pockets and sustained evil. But that doesn’t mean that our complaints will go unheeded. After the controversy regarding the monkey cartoon, Murdoch personally apologized – sort of. So for anyone who is outraged at this demonstration of hate and slander…..

Letters to the Editor

News Blights: Re-Branding Edition

Posted by on May 13, 2009 at 3:06 pm. NO Comments :

Item #1: The Republican National Committee is planning to meet in a special session next week. One of the items on their agenda will be a resolution to re-brand the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party.” I’d like to go on record as saying that I have no problem with this as long as I can re-brand Republicans as the “National Socialist Party.”

Item #2: Has Sarah Palin signed a deal to write her memoirs? You betcha! And she’s signed with HarperCollins, the publishing arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. The book will be co-marketed by Harper’s Christian imprint, Zondervan.The publisher says that Palin will work with a collaborator, but Palin’s agent says that every word in the book will be hers. Which begs the question: What’s the collaborator for? Perhaps she’ll need someone to keep an eye on Russia while she’s hammering out her tales of hunting Moose on the tundra – also.

Item #3: Tea Bagger Redux. The Republican Governors Association, led by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Texas Secessionist Rick Perry, are attempting to launch Tea Party 2.0. However, this one will be strictly phoned in as it is being arranged as a conference call. The organizational role of the GOP should serve to affirm that the Tea Partiers are indeed a partisan operation, but we may want to wait until Fox News comes aboard before final certification.

Item #4: Louisiana Senator David Vitter is also jumping on the Tea Party bandwagon. He is calling for teabaggers to come together again to “Stand up and fight this July 4th, and make Washington, DC listen to you.” Vitter is redirecting considerable resources from his patronage of prostitutes so that he can promote a Tea Party that is sponsored by his reelection committee (Seriously. The website for this project was “Paid for by David Vitter for U.S. Senate”). We’ll see how many people give up their barbecues and fireworks in exchange for an afternoon of teabaggery. It’s brews vs. brewed.