Fox News Hypocrisy Raises Its Ugly Head At Church

Posted by Mark NC on April 1, 2013 at 2:42 pm. 8 Comments :

At some point you would think that the mind-control mavens at Fox News would stop and ask themselves if their overtly contradictory messages were going too far. You would, however, be wrong to have such a naive thought.

President Obama and his family spent Easter Sunday this year at their neighborhood St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. By most accounts it was a pleasant outing that celebrated the holiday in a conventional manner. So leave it to Fox News to abandon convention and find something nefarious with which to attack the President.

It seems that Rev. Luis Leon offended the Fox martinets of virtue by including in his sermon a message that just happens to comply with the church’s beliefs:

Leon: “I hear all the time the expression ‘the good old days’. Well, the good old days, we forget they have been good for some, but they weren’t good for everybody. You can’t go back, you can’t live in the past. It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back. For Blacks to be back in the back of the bus; for women to be back in the kitchen; for gays to be in the closet; and for immigrants to be on their side of the border.”

Standing up for the oppressed in society is something that many churches regard as obedience to the teachings of their Savior. But to Fox News it is an affront to their Teabaggery and they simply will not have it. Consequently, they set out to disparage Rev. Leon, his church, and even the President (who had nothing to do with the sermon). On Fox’s America Live, Megyn Kelly hosted a panel that deemed the affair a “Controversial Easter Sermon,” and criticized the Rev. Leon for “blasting conservative Christians.” Over at the lie-riddled Fox Nation, it was characterized as “Another Obama Pastor Problem,” a stale reference reaching back to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Oddly enough, Fox had no problem when a conservative doctor named Ben Carson took to the podium at the National Prayer Breakfast and abandoned the spiritual theme of the event to rattle off a right-wing diatribe about taxes and debt. To the contrary, Fox glorified him as a hero of liberty and began laying the groundwork for his presidential campaign, and/or canonization. Fox described him as “Stealing the Show,” while Fox Nation gushed “Amazing Conservative Speech Upstages Obama At Prayer Breakfast.”

The divergence in presentation of these two events is more than hypocritical. The comments by Dr. Carson were totally inappropriate at a public religious event that for decades was respected as a gathering of harmony where partisanship was set aside. Carson breached that tradition to foist his views on the audience and was exalted for it by Fox News and other conservative outlets.

On the other hand, Rev. Leon was speaking in his own church to his own congregation whom he knows well. The Episcopal Church is regarded as a comparatively liberal denomination that advocates for gay rights and has ordained women and gays as ministers. Leon’s sermon was in keeping with the values of his church and parishioners.

Nevertheless, Fox News chose to exploit this private service to advance their political agenda. And by complaining about the content of the sermon they are effectively conceding that Leon was correct in criticizing “the captains of the religious right [who] are always calling people back.”

Well, as Jesus told Mary “You can’t go back.” And as much as Tea-publicans may pray for it, African-Americans are not going back to the back of the bus; women are not going back to the kitchen; and gays are not going back into the closets. As for immigrants, if they were all to go back there would be no one left here but Native Americans – a scenario that some may regard as preferable.

Media Matters Enters The Liars Den At CPAC – Gets Ambushed By Breitbart

Posted by Mark NC on March 17, 2013 at 3:47 am. 4 Comments :

Yesterday a panel at CPAC (which I believe stands for Conniving Propagandists And Crooks) was held following the screening of “Hating Breitbart,” a crockumentary glorifying the late Andrew Breitbart. The topic of the event was “The Uninvited,” a reference to fringe conservatives who are allegedly kept from appearing in the mainstream media. Participating on the panel were several Breitbart-affiliated folks, including the disgraced video mangler, James O’Keefe, and a lone representative of Media Matters, Ari Rabin-Havt.

In the course of the discussion (video below) O’Keefe protested that he felt he was “held to a higher standard than any Pulitzer Prize winner.” Whereupon, BreitBrat editor Larry O’Conner defended O’Keefe by rejecting the notion that just because O’Keefe’s videos were found to have been deceptively edited that “everything O’Keefe does should be considered a fraud.” Actually, that’s precisely what should be done when someone has proven he’s a fraud on multiple occasions.

The discussion eventually veered off into an attack on Media Matters with O’Conner questioning the veracity of their content. When Rabin-Havt began to defend himself, in what seemed to be a transparently staged tossing of the baton, O’Conner recognized Breitbart’s Editor in Chief Joel Pollak in the audience and asked him to weigh in on the subject.

Pollak was visibly upset at what he characterized as a smear directed at him by Media Matters. He cited an article that he claimed accused him of being a birther. Standing in the audience he pointed his finger at Rabin-Havt and arrogantly insisted that “The next word out of your mouth should be ‘Sorry.'” But that was just a small portion of the generalized indictment he made of Media Matters:

Pollak: There’s a Media Matters method, it’s this: You make a statement in the headline that is not proven in the article. The lefties to whom you sell your material, or distribute your material, don’t care about the proof, they care about the headline. So you put in that headline that I’m a birther even though you admit I’m not a birther.

Alright, let’s break this down. First of all, Pollak’s assertion that Media Matters makes unproven statements in their headlines is itself unproven. Media Matters is meticulous about documenting what they publish, and the “lefties” and others who read it care very much that thoroughness. As for the article Pollak referenced, it was posted on Media Matters on March 13, with the title “What The Media Need To Know About CPAC 2013.” Notice that there is nothing in the headline about anyone being birther and that Pollak isn’t in it at all. So much for his thesis that Media Matters composes false headlines and fails to back them up.

Ironically, Pollak’s complaint applies perfectly to his own article on Breitbart News that Media Matters was writing about in the first place. That article’s headline was “The Vetting – Exclusive – Obama’s Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: ‘Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii'”

From the wording of that headline it would not be much of a stretch to conclude that the article was advancing birtherism by questioning Obama’s birthplace. Pollak said that he only intended to make a point that Obama, or his representatives, altered his biography when it suited him. However, that was not the inference in his headline. And it could be said of Breitbart what they said of Media Matters – that they “don’t care about the proof, they care about the headline.” What’s more, the first paragraph of the article began by affirming the birtherism in the headline:

“Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as ‘born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.'”

To be fair, there was a “Note from Senior Management” appended to the top of Pollak’s article that asserted that “Andrew Breitbart was never a ‘Birther,’ and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of ‘Birtherism.'” The fact that that note was necessary is telling in itself. But it’s a rather hollow disclaimer when the headline and the opening paragraph seemingly contradict it. Pollak also wrote that “The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not contradict the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate.” That’s true, but as Rabin-Havt pointed out, he had not called Pollak a birther. He had simply asserted that Pollak and Breitbart were still responsible for advancing the birther theme even if they themselves did not subscribe to it. And they did that by publishing articles with misleading headlines and expecting to absolve themselves of the birther taint by rejecting it several paragraphs later.

This bit of theatrics staged by the BreitBrats fits nicely into their modus operandi. It is the sort of ambush that Breitbart himself would have enjoyed pulling off. And it even starred Breitbart’s budding video propagandist, little Jimmy O’Keefe. But once again, when the facts are revealed in full, their deceit is all too apparent. The Media Matters article did not call Pollak a birther in the headline. Although Breitbart’s article did question Obama’s birthplace in their headline.

So the BreitBrats got together and conspired to ambush Rabin-Havt with a false accusation that he had done what the BreitBrats actually did do. And then they complain when nobody will take them seriously, and they wonder why they are “The Uninvited” and why everyone hates Breitbart.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Obama’s Budget The Balancing Of

Posted by Mark NC on March 13, 2013 at 11:04 am. 1 Comments :

It’s not bad enough that Fox News operates a community web site that is riddled with lies, but they also frequently demonstrate a level of incompetence that would embarrass a remedial high school newspaper.

Perhaps I’m being too hard them. Maybe their syntax here was meant to compliment Obama by portraying him as having the wisdom of Yoda. Or maybe they hired Sarah Palin to write their headlines. Or, of course, they may just be emulating their racist perception of Ebonics. In any case, the gist of their article is incontestably false.

The Fox Nationalists are characterizing Obama’s remarks as a rejection of the goal of balancing the federal budget. Now, that would be a perfectly reasonable position to take because in a recession many economists argue that economic growth has a higher priority than balanced budgets. However, it is not the position that Obama is taking,. In the interview Obama gave to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos he very clearly articulated his interest in balancing the budget:

“Balancing the budget in part depends on how fast you grow. You remember– you were in the Clinton administration. The reason that you guys balanced it was a combination of some tax hikes, some spending cuts, and the economy grew.

“And, so– you know, my goal is not to chase– a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we’re gonna be bringing in more revenue. If we’ve controlled spending and we’ve got a smart entitlement package, then potentially what you have is balance. But it’s not balance on the backs of, you know, the poor, the elderly, students who need student loans, families who’ve got disabled kids. That’s not the right way to balance our budget.”

Any fair reading of that statement would recognize that the President is focusing on balancing the budget, but doing it in a way that is compassionate, intelligent, and doesn’t make America’s less fortunate shoulder the burden for the wealthy. It most definitely is not Obama saying that his budget won’t be balanced (or be won’t balanced either). This is just another example of Fox misrepresenting the facts in order to whip their ill-informed audience into a frenzy over a fabricated controversy.

Bill O’Reilly And John Boehner: Brotherhood Of The Traveling Pants On Fire

Posted by Mark NC on March 6, 2013 at 4:49 am. 2 Comments :

In recent days, the resounding cry from the right-wing pundits and politicians regarding sequestration has been a demonstrably false yammering that President Obama has neglected to put forth a plan to cut spending. And it’s a pretty good talking point except for the fact that there isn’t a bit of truth to it.

This plaintive squeal was heard last Sunday when John Boehner appeared on Meet the Press to peddle his party line fiction. He told host David Gregory that “even today, there’s no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester.” For that mangling of the truth, Boehner earned a “Pants On Fire” designation from PolitiFact who posted a detailed debunking of Boehner’s…well, bunk. Boehner went on to blame senate Democrats for not passing a bill that only failed due to senate Republicans filibustering it.

The howling further escalated last night when Bill O’Reilly nearly had an aneurism while debating the same subject with Alan Colmes (video below). O’Reilly almost immediately began shouting red-faced at Colmes for his having correctly stated that the President does have a plan. O’Reilly viciously called his fellow Fox News employee a liar seven times in rapid succession as Colmes calmly objected and tried to settle him down. But O’Reilly could not be assuaged. Here is a partial transcript of the exchange:

O’Reilly: The President’s willing to have Americans suffer for the greater good of trying to have Nancy Pelosi be the new Speaker of the House. […] Give me one program he said he would cut.
Colmes: He would cut Medicare and Medicaid.
O’Reilly: That’s not a specific program.
Colmes: You asked me for a program – those are programs.
O’Reilly: You’re not telling me anything. It’s jack____ what you’re saying.
Colmes: There would be less money going to the states. There would be less money being reimbursed to doctors.
O’Reilly: You don’t know where. You don’t know how much. You don’t know to whom. And the reason you don’t know it is because the guy you revere refuses to say anything specific about anything.

O’Reilly’s high-pitched histrionics did nothing to make the substance of his ranting more truthful. Just as Boehner’s demurring failed to refute the factual evidence that the President’s plan does exist. It is available on the White House web site for anyone who is interested and honest – which obviously exempts Boehner and O’Reilly.

Watching trained circus clowns like O’Reilly and Boehner distort reality is bad enough, but what’s really troubling is the tendency of so much of the media to fail to set the record straight when there is no credible case to support the lies of these charlatans. And they will certainly not set the record straight themselves. O’Reilly in particular is notorious for digging in his heels even after he has been proven to be wrong. It’s a character trait common among egomaniacal sociopaths who regard themselves as infallible defenders of humanity’s virtue.

Right-Wingers Think Obama Donor Is Buying Up Gun-Related Media To Shut It Down

Posted by Mark NC on March 1, 2013 at 2:22 pm. 1 Comments :

FERCHRISSAKES!!! I just can’t take it anymore.

There have been a plethora of utterly insane notions floated by cretins on the right that make no rational sense whatsoever. They range from non-existent “death panels,” to FEMA concentration camps, to Kenyan-born presidents, and those are the least deranged among them. Recently the Tea-publicans were aghast at a ridiculous claim that the Department of Homeland Security was stockpiling munitions in preparation to wipe out large swaths of the American population. Seriously, they really believe that.

But now they are venturing further afield into territory that is unexplored by even the most severely hallucinatory meth freaks. An article published on Fox Nation cries “Obama Donor Buying Up and ‘Destroying’ America’s Top Pro-gun Media Outlets.”

The article is a re-posting from the Daily Caller web site which is run by Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson. It was written by Patrick Howley, someone they identify as an “Investigative Reporter,” despite his history as a violent right-wing activist who admitted to infiltrating OccupyDC for the purpose of undermining it. Howley asserts in his opening paragraph that…

“Employees of Obama donor Leo Hindery Jr.’s media conglomerate Intermedia Partners, which now owns most of the top gun-culture media outlets in the country, believe that Hindery plans to gut and destroy all of them.”

What a perfectly devious plot. Hindery is an investor with more than thirty years in the media business. He has been a significant figure in sports programming, cable television, telecommunications, and other properties that have made him one of America’s wealthiest businessmen. Yet the paranoia-racked brains of conservative dimwits think that he is plotting to “consolidate all of the major pro-Second Amendment media titles in this country, strip them down, and destroy them.” For some reason they think that Hindery has suddenly cast off his mantle of capitalist media baron and is willing to lose millions of dollars in a scheme to deprive magazine readers of titles like “Shooting Times” and “Gun Dog.” That’ll show the NRA. And he and Obama will have a good laugh.

The evidence presented by Howley consists mainly of testimony from anonymous employees who are afraid they are about to be laid off. Imagine that – there are magazines and media companies that are struggling in these digital times and may have to downsize or close. Who knew? Howley also cites the reduction in work at a Minnesota studio that he describes as a “beautiful” facility that had “60 employees, a massive studio, at least nine editing bays and fully-wired machine rooms and was conducting about four studio shoots per year.” Pardon me but, it doesn’t seem like four shoots a year is enough to sustain the studio he just described.

The weakness of the arguments in the article are almost irrelevant when considering that the premise is so bonkers to begin with. This is nothing more than an investment company pulling together assets and then seeking ways to mitigate expenses through operational mergers. There may be a case to be made that such consolidation negatively impacts employees and public choice, but that’s not a case that Republicans ever seem to be concerned about. In fact, they generally defend and celebrate such monopolistic corporate behavior as the workings of the glorious free market. There is nothing here, however, that any sane observer could claim is a plot to deliberately destroy these businesses in league with the Obama administration as an assault on the Second Amendment.

It is just astonishing that people will put stories like this out and expect to have any credibility. They are cognitively numb and running on the fumes of conspiracy theories and delusional psychoses. Their audience must be on feeding tubes waiting for someone to declare them legally brain-dead and pull the plug. And when their businesses fail I’m sure they will have an explanation at hand that blames it all on Obama, George Soros, and eco-terrorists.

Sequestering The Truth: Fox News Misreports Their Own Polling Results

Posted by Mark NC on March 1, 2013 at 4:09 am. NO Comments :

Unhappy with the data, Fox makes up their own.

It’s bad enough that Fox News is compulsively disposed to lying about President Obama and anyone else who challenges their hyper-conservative dogma, but when they resort to lying about the product of their own reporting it’s an indication of something gone terribly askew. This is the sort of brazen deceit that Fox usually reserves for their notorious Fib Factory, Fox Nation.

Fox News just published the results of their polling wherein they asked respondents whether they would prefer a budget deal that reduced the deficit with spending cuts or with tax increases. The question itself was grossly biased in that it implies that there are proposals to avert sequestration by raising taxes. However, neither party is proposing any tax increases in the current negotiations, only the closing of loopholes to which both sides had previously agreed. Setting that aside, Fox posted its account of the poll results with a headline reading “Voters Say Cuts Are ‘Only Way’ to Control Deficit.”

That’s an interesting (i.e. thoroughly dishonest) interpretation of the poll’s actual results which found that respondents preferred deficit reduction by focusing…

Only on cutting government spending: 33%
Mostly on cutting spending, and a small number of tax increases: 19%
On an equal mix of spending cuts and tax increases: 36%
Only on adding further tax increases 7%

It doesn’t take a master statistician to recognize that the choice of most respondents was the “equal mix.” How Fox concluded that they preferred cutting spending as the “only way” is mysterious and unexplained. Furthermore, if you total all the choices that included at least some tax increases there is a clear majority (67%) in favor of adding revenue rather than spending cuts alone. In other words, it’s the exact opposite of what Fox is reporting. If Fox doesn’t like what their own poll says, maybe they shouldn’t publish the results. Apparently, flagrantly lying in order to misrepresent the truth is more their style.

Some additional results from the survey include: Obama’s favorability is at 51%. His job approval is at 46%, compared to congress which is at 16%, with a jaw-dropping 77% disapproving. Digging deeper into those numbers reveals that the disapproval of congress cuts across party lines with Democrats registering a negative 72%. Republicans like congress even less with 79% disapproving. And at 82%, Independents really hate them.

Fox also measured the favorability of several other notable figures, all of whom scored lower than the President. Obama: 51%; Pope Benedict: 45%; John Kerry: 43%; Marco Rubio: 31%; John Boehner: 23%; And Chuck Hagel: 17%. Note that all of the Republicans in Fox’s poll sit at the bottom of the list.

Finally, for some reason Fox included a curious question not asked by many other pollsters:

“Former President George W. Bush stopped golfing after the start of the Iraq war. Do you think President Barack Obama should stop golfing until the unemployment rate improves and the economy is doing better?”

First of all, it’s somewhat grotesque to juxtapose a lackluster economy with the deadly consequences of war. That said, respondents apparently don’t care much whether Obama goes golfing or not. Forty-three percent answered that he should stow his clubs, but 45% say he should go ahead and play. And for the record, Bush did not stop golfing after the Iraq war began in March of 2003, so the question is misleading from the outset. But more to the point, reports documented that Bush continued to hit the links well into October. And even after he did quit golfing, he engaged in other leisurely pastimes like biking and his personal passion for clearing brush.

Conservatives Struck By Epidemic Of Sequester Pychosis Syndrome

Posted by Mark NC on February 27, 2013 at 12:29 pm. 7 Comments :

As the deadline approaches for congress to take action on the indiscriminate budget cuts they themselves voted for, the wailing on the part of conservative politicians and pundits is reaching ear-shattering decibel levels. While there are credible arguments on both sides of this issue that could be put forward, it seems the right-wing Tea-publican faction has chosen instead to offer only the most deranged excuses for their negligence and absolution.

The conservative blame game is frantically pointing fingers at the Obama administration for the sequestration ordeal. But what they, and their accomplices in the press, are deliberately obscuring is the fact that majorities of Republicans voted for the bill in both chambers of congress. And even more significant is the context under which the plan was agreed to. It was intended to be something so severe that neither side could stomach the notion of its implementation and would be motivated to draft an alternative – any alternative – to avoid it. So the authorship of the original idea is entirely irrelevant because it was not proposed as something that anyone would support. To say that it was the President’s idea as something he advocated is simply a lie. It was gimmick to get a bunch of lazy, gutless politicians to do their damn jobs. And it didn’t even work.

So now Republicans who voted for the gimmick are pitifully trying to run away from the monster they helped to create. In the process they are trampling all over themselves and their own messages.

First of all, the GOP is supposed to be the party of small government and identifies strongly with budget cutting and deficit reduction. So it goes against the grain when they now bitch about the cuts that will be made due to sequestration. Logic tells us that they cannot argue for budget cutting and against sequestration simultaneously, but that is exactly what they are doing. Only in a mind ravaged by disease could that occur.

Secondly, Republicans are scrambling to shift blame from themselves to the President. They want any negative repercussions of the sequester to fall solely on his back. But since they believe that deficit reduction through shrinking federal budgets is a good thing, then shouldn’t the benefits they have been insisting would transpire be credited to Obama?

Republicans have decided that it is no longer necessary for them to make any sense. They say they want profound budget cuts, but at the same time they say it would be disastrous and all the fault of Obama. They say that sequestration is good because it will reduce the deficit, but at the same time they say Obama should be excoriated for daring to propose it.

How they can maintain their balance while their heads are spinning so furiously is a mystery. But the saddest part is that media has been so negligent in reporting the most basic facts about this situation, what led up to it, and where the GOP is trying to take it now that they got what they insist they have wanted for decades. Yet somehow, when Republicans get what they want, and it has a bad outcome, they blame Obama for giving it to them. And they do so in the most repugnant manner.

Fox’s Andrew Napolitano has suggested that Obama could be impeached for implementing the budget cuts mandated by congress. Even worse, in an op-ed in today’s “Moonie” Washington Times (republished by Fox Nation), Charles Hurt makes numerous references to the President as a terrorist. He said that Obama “began shooting hostages,” when the Department of Homeland Security announced some of the measures they would be forced to take if sequestration is implemented. Then, with regard to potentially delayed Social Security payments, he said that last year, in a “drunken stupor” “Mr. Obama threatened to start shooting seniors.”

This is the hostile (and infantile) level to which the right has sunk in their battle to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the bill they overwhelmingly backed. Their obsession with tarring the President by blaming him for their own mistakes has resulted in an acute case of mental decay. And unfortunately, the media could administer a remedy by simply reporting truthfully what is going on, but they appear to be as sickened by Sequester Psychosis as the GOP regulars.

So F**king What? Michelle Obama’s Controversial Oscar Outing

Posted by Mark NC on February 25, 2013 at 2:24 pm. 1 Comments :

Here is more evidence that Fox News is congenitally incapable of reporting anything about the First Family without attaching some derogatory spin to the whole matter. Last night Michelle Obama participated in an entertainment program that awarded faux golden trophies to entertainers. Her appearance on the Oscar broadcast has rankled conservatives who are jealous that they are too lacking in talent to be honored by their peers. So they have risen up to spew condemnation for the First Lady having the audacity to present an award.

So F**king What?

This couldn’t possibly be a more petty attack on a more trivial event. The Fox reporter covering the affair wrote that “instead of inspiring, the surprising presenter instantly drew a few head shakes and loud groans from journalists backstage.” The article went to cite derisive, unattributed quotes that ranged from “makes no sense” to “suck job” to “stupid and pointless” to “tacky and tasteless.” Ironically, all of those opinions would apply equally as well to Fox News for choosing to focus on this vapid criticism instead of just reporting what took place. What’s more, if their sources are genuine, they have inadvertently refuted their long-held belief that journalists are “in the tank” for Obama.

Breitbart News chimed in calling Obama’s presentation “obscene, and rather frightening.” Of course, Fox Nation also jumped in to headline their item “Michelle Obama Crashes the Oscars,” as if she were not invited to participate. Certainly the Teabagger press would have preferred that Ann Romney had announced the Best Picture winner. They never complained when she “crashed” the Olympics with her fancy-dancin’ horse.

D’Souza’s America: Conservative Crybaby Whines About Oscar Snub

Posted by Mark NC on February 22, 2013 at 3:01 pm. 3 Comments :

Finally, Oscar Sunday is right around the corner. And what better time for a right-wing loser to whine to the press about how the Academy failed to recognize his brilliance and shower him with undeserved praise?

Dinesh D’Souza turned his critically reviled book of falsehoods about President Obama into a crockumentary called “2016: Obama’s America.” While the film found an audience of gullible Teabaggers anxious to consume anything derogatory about the President, more sensible viewers found the film to be riddled with lies and fabricated mythology.

Not surprisingly, a so-called documentary that failed to adhere to the most basic tenets of truth, also failed to garner much support for recognition by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Thinly veiled propaganda screeds that have no factual basis rarely win Oscars.

Rather than exhibiting some measure of dignity and enjoying the financial rewards of making a film popular with conspiracy nuts, D’Souza has chosen to blast the Academy and its members as hopelessly biased for not seeing what a humongous slab of talent he is. Even worse, D’Souza slammed the filmmakers who actually did produce works of quality that earned them Oscar nominations.

D’Souza: I join most Americans in leaving them in deserved obscurity. I haven’t heard of any of them, and like most people, I haven’t seen them.

What class. And what a demonstration of intellectual integrity he shows by disparaging films he admits he has not even seen. Then again, what more should we expect from a man who was forced to resign as the head of King’s College (a Christian institution) for having an affair, which he denied even as he admitted that he was engaged to a woman who was not his wife.

In the hypocritical world of sanctimonious piety peddlers, preachers embroiled in sex scandals, like Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard are forgiven. Politicians like Larry Craig, Mark Sanford, and David Vitter, who have had to explain their own adulteries and whore mongering, know that Fox News will always be there to defend them. Every conservative sinner is granted a “Get Out of Hell Free” card. Too bad they don’t have their own Oscars (yet) to award themselves statuettes for Best Smear Job by a Dishonest Hack.

Fox News Freak-Outs: How The Big Bully Of Cable News Fizzles Under Fire

Posted by Mark NC on February 20, 2013 at 2:55 am. 3 Comments :

In the cable news business there is one network that relentlessly boasts about its prominence and formidable presence above all others. Fox News is clearly taken with itself and is even promoted in their own ads as “The Most Powerful Name In News.” That makes it all the more curious that Fox seems to shudder when confronted with opposing arguments.

This article was also published on Alternet.

Fox News is often the subject of well-deserved criticism due to their aversion to facts and a long record of strident bias. However, their first reaction to reasonable rebuttals is to go on the attack against their perceived enemies. It is behavior reminiscent of schoolyard bullies with marshmallow centers who struggle to mask their hurt feelings with forced bluster. What follows are seven examples of just how thin-skinned this allegedly powerful network really is, and how prone they are to whining when they get smacked down.

At a press conference President Obama astutely noted that the penchant Fox News has for punishing Republicans who dare to work cooperatively with Democrats has the effect of discouraging Republicans from such cooperation. That rather modest observation sent Fox News into a tizzy. Jumping immediately to the most absurd stretches of hyperbole, Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends fired up the outrage machine to accuse the President of attacking, not merely Fox News, but the First Amendment. Meanwhile the determinedly dishonest Fox Nation web site declared the President’s remarks to be a threat. How Obama was infringing on freedom of the press or threatening anyone was never explained.

In an interview Al Gore commented on Fox News and right-wing talk radio saying “The fact that we have 24/7 propaganda masquerading as news, it does have an impact.” Rather than try to dispute the obvious truth of Gore’s comment, Fox’s Peter Johnson, Jr launched into a harangue about Gore permitting a news enterprise based in the oil-producing nation of Qatar to buy his network, Current TV. Yes, that had nothing to do with Gore’s remarks, but it did serve Johnson’s purpose of blindly lashing out at Gore for daring to besmirch Fox.

Author and military foreign policy expert Tom Ricks was invited on to discuss his new book, The Generals. Fox host Jon Scott thought he could get Ricks to join Fox’s crusade to blame Obama for the tragedy in Benghazi, but Ricks wasn’t cooperating and told Scott that “I think that the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party.” That was apparently too much for Scott who abruptly ended the interview less than 90 seconds after it began. After taking criticism from other media for that self-serving censorship, Fox VP Michael Clemente doubled down and disparaged Ricks for not having “the strength of character to apologize.”

Greta Van Susteren saw an opportunity to whimper about how mistreated Fox is when she complained that the State Department had left them off the mailing list for a couple of news briefings. She called it “a coordinated effort” to punish Fox by “denying Fox access to information.” What she failed to disclose was that the State Department had previously explained that they had only notified news organizations that had reporters assigned to cover the department and that, having none, Fox didn’t get on the list. But that explanation didn’t stop Van Susteren and others at Fox from assailing the administration for an imagined snubbing.

In a debate over whether or not NBC had ever criticized President Obama on the use of drones, Bill O’Reilly falsely claimed that the drone story never appeared on NBC. In fact, it was NBC who broke the story. The following night, after much ridicule for his egregious mistake, rather than apologize and set the record straight, O’Reilly lashed at the “loons” who were engaging in “more deceit from the far left.” As usual, any critical analysis of O’Reilly or Fox News is viewed as liberal Fox-bashing and is met with name-calling and vilification.

Fox’s Juan Williams is one of the network’s alleged lefties. When he made a disturbingly racist comment about his fear of flying with Muslim passengers, he was let go by his other employer NPR. The reaction from Fox News was swift and utterly repulsive. Fox’s CEO Roger Ailes lashed out in defense of his pet liberal saying of NPR that “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.” Most people would regard that as something of an overreaction, but for Fox it is consistent with their characteristic vengefulness when they consider themselves under siege.

Perhaps the most frequent target of Fox’s vitriol is the watchdog group, Media Matters for America. By defining its mission as a monitor of conservative bias in the news, Media Matters has earned the undying enmity of Fox News. In the course of their persistent barrage of slander aimed at Media Matters, Fox has called the founder, David Brock, (without substantiation) a dangerous, self-loathing, mentally ill, drug user. Fox was so frightened by Media Matters that, in the week prior to publication of their book The Fox Effect, Fox News broadcast no fewer than a dozen derogatory pieces in a preemptive strike with segments on their most popular programs, including The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, Fox & Friends, etc. It was the sort of blanket coverage they usually reserved for a natural disaster, a declaration of war, or a lewd TwitPic of a politician. Fox’s anti-Media Matters campaign even included solicitations on the air (more than 30 times) by Fox anchors beseeching their viewers to file complaints with the IRS challenging Media Matters’ tax-exempt, non-profit status.

These are just a few of the more notable instances when Fox has engaged in pronounced public wailing after taking flack from a critic. But it’s an almost daily occurrence for Fox to slap back at a politician, pundit, or even a celebrity, who utters something that Fox regards as unflattering. Just ask Bill Maher or Nas or Sean Penn. For a network that touts its powerfulness, Fox News behaves with the sort of tender sensitivity that is generally associated with sniveling weakness. They wildly lash out at critics and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge mistakes or accept responsibility when errors are pointed out. It is, to say the least, undignified, unprofessional, and immature, but it is the Fox way.

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So F**king What?

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