Sarah Palin Rehired At Fox News To ‘Piss Off’ People And Other Tales Of Temper Tantrums

Posted by on January 11, 2014 at 11:29 am. 7 Comments :

What does Fox News CEO Roger Ailes have in common with New Jersey governor Chris Christie? They are both bullies who enjoy taking out revenge on their political enemies in the most childish way possible. [They are also a couple of jerks whose chunky frames are only outweighed by their inflated egos, and who have a deep and perverse mutual affection for one another] By now everyone knows how Christie sought to punish Democrats in Fort Lee by shutting down lanes on the George Washington Bridge, creating severe traffic jams, costing millions in productivity loss, and potentially endangering people’s lives. And now we learn, from Ailes himself, that his emotional maturity is similarly stunted.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter this week, Ailes was asked “Why bring back Sarah Palin just a few months after not renewing her contract?” His answer exposes him as a petulant little twerp who may be too senile to continue running a national news network.

Ailes: I’m not a defender of everything she says. I don’t hear everything she says. But I know she represents a certain group of people who rose up against their own party, which you rarely see. I probably hired her back, if you really want to get to the bottom of it, to give her a chance to say her piece and piss off the people that wanted her dead.

Indeed, Palin represents a certain group of Tea-sodden people, but they are fervently supportive of the far-right wing of their party (as is Ailes) and would never consider voting for anyone but a Republican. The fact that Ailes can’t cite as reasons for Palin’s rehire her superior intellect or insightful analysis says much about his disdain for both Palin and his audience. His management philosophy at Fox appears to include a mandate to inflict revenge on liberals who don’t even watch the network. In reality, the people who dislike Palin (this author included) couldn’t be happier that she is back on Fox News making an ass of herself and the network.

This isn’t the first time that Ailes has made a personnel decision that is rooted in childish vengeance. Last year, in a fawning biography that Ailes himself had solicited, he told the author why he had kept Glenn Beck on the air long after he had decided that Beck was a divisive figure who was costing the network advertising revenue. The reason Ailes gave for putting off Beck’s departure was that he “didn’t want to give MoveOn and Media Matters the satisfaction.” So Ailes permitted Beck to continue broadcasting his race-baiting, Nazi-inflected, conspiracy theories for several more months because he would rather poison the airwaves (and the minds of his viewers) with lies and hatred than to let his ideological adversaries think they had scored a victory.

Another example of the juvenile (and paranoid) brand of Ailes’ management style was revealed in an article this week in the Daily Beast. David Freedlander wrote in “Fox’s War Against Ailes Biographer” about the lengths to which Ailes will go to attack journalists who dare to write anything about the cable news overlord:

“Fox News has been waiting for [Gabriel] Sherman’s book [The Loudest Voice In The Room] to come out. According to interviews with a half-dozen former employees of what is known as the Fox News ‘Brain Room,’ the brain trust at the network has been following Sherman’s work for years. Although the so-called ‘Brain Room,’ located in the basement of Fox News studios, was supposed to be dedicated to research for the networks programming, two former news librarians describe an environment where they were frequently called to do opposition research about media reporters who were writing about Fox News or Ailes. Former employees described being tasked to investigate reporters from a variety of beats, including hunting down personal information such as voter registration that was used to determine how ‘Fox-friendly’ the reporter was.”

The use of a newsroom’s assets and personnel to carry out private vendettas is plainly unethical, as noted by NPR’s media reporter David Folkenflik. Folkenflik was himself a victim of Fox’s wrath and gave the Daily Beast his assessment of the toxic environment at Fox News:

“They are on a wartime footing. They approach this stuff in a very different way, in the way that a PR shop in a political campaign would. It is hard to imagine any other serious news outlet — The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN — handling negative news stories in this way.”

And that’s pretty much the gist of it. Fox is perpetually at war. It is a theme that permeates their broadcasts whether it’s about a Class War or a War on Christmas, there is a built in hostility at Fox that infects its personnel on and off the air. It is why they regard anyone who disagrees with their editorial viewpoint as a hostile adversary. And that precise language was used in an ad that Fox placed in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post:

Fox News Ad

[Update 1/11/2014] In response to Ailes claim that he rehired Palin to piss people off, Palin took to her Facebook page to say “Funny. I accepted for the same reason!” Proving that both Ailes and Palin are too stupid to grasp that her critics aren’t the least bit pissed off by her coming back to Fox and spewing her laughably ignorant drivel.

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Ted Cruz Predicts ‘Lawlessness On A Breathtaking Scale’ By The Next Republican President

Posted by on January 10, 2014 at 2:31 pm. 7 Comments :

Ted Cruz has distinguished himself as the GOP’s answer to conspiracy theory superstars like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck. His wild imagination and fantastical declarations stretch the boundaries of absurdity. Consequently, it is fitting that his latest attack on President Obama contains a hidden warning about future Republican presidents. It’s a concession to the unprincipled nature of the conservative movement and particularly the Tea Party faction.

Ted Cruz

Cruz spoke at a policy orientation conference for the Texas legislature held by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). The TPPF has a conservative pedigree that includes the State Policy Network, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and numerous Koch brothers affiliated entities. Their agenda focuses on cutting government programs and taxes (i.e.Social Security, education, etc.), opposing health care reform, climate change denial, and generally advancing the interests of big business and energy enterprises.

In his keynote address, Cruz attacked Obama as “dangerous and terrifying” due to what Cruz alleged was “lawlessness on a breathtaking scale.” The Statesman reported Cruz as saying that…

“…from giving relief from deportation to some young unauthorized immigrants to enforcement of drug laws to waiving rules for Obamacare, the president has acted by executive fiat in defiance of the rule of law.”

Of course, there has been no legal finding that the President has violated any law with respect to the issues Cruz enumerated, or any other issue. These are nothing more than the typical ravings of a Tea Party extremist who wants very badly to denigrate a president he despises.

However, in the course of his rhetorical assault, Cruz reveals something about his own party’s unethical aspirations when he says…

“My message to all the Democrats and all the liberals is, what do you think about the next president, maybe a Republican, having the power Barack Obama has as a president who is not bound by the law?”

Setting aside for the moment that, as president, Obama has not exercised any executive authority not exercised by his predecessors, the upshot of Cruz’s warning is that, whatever you think of the legality of Obama’s actions, you cannot depend on Republicans to behave any differently. Cruz is confessing that the GOP will resort to lawlessness once they obtain power. That’s not a particularly compelling campaign platform. Just imagine the bumper sticker: Vote Republican if You Like Criminal Tyranny!

The bottom line is that Cruz doesn’t have any evidence, other than his conspiratorial hallucinations, that Obama has broken any laws, but if he has, Republicans will follow suit if given the opportunity. It’s similar to the GOP’s response to Sen. Harry Reid modifying filibuster rules in the senate. They claimed that it was an unprecedented assault on democracy – and that they do the very same thing if they assumed control of the chamber. So much for integrity.

In the end, America is better off with leaders who aspire to uphold the law and the Constitution, even if they sometimes fall short of their goals. At least they have ethical goals and they will be held to a standard of honor that can be measured. That’s far better than the admitted lawlessness that Cruz is proposing because, once you have declared your intention to ignore the law, as Cruz has done, you can dismiss those who criticize you for it. After all, you told them what to expect if they vote for you.


No Kidding, Snerdley: It’s Safe To Say That Fox News Is ‘In The Christie Camp’

Posted by on January 10, 2014 at 10:01 am. 3 Comments :

Everyone has something to say about the revelation that Chris Christie’s office was intimately involved in the closing of the George Washington Bridge despite their prior denials. This includes Rush Limbaugh who made what might be the understatement of the decade:

“The media, with the exception of Fox, which is probably – it is safe to say – in the Christie camp, the media is salivating now at the prospect that Christie’s career is over.”

Ailes/Christie

Never mind Limbaugh’s ridiculous notion that the media that created Christie and made him a household name is suddenly anxious for him to fade into oblivion. If there is one thing we know about the media it’s that they crave the sort of ratings-rich melodrama that would almost certainly envelope a Christie vs. Clinton campaign in 2016. So no knowledgeable person would accuse the media of yearning for an election season without Christie [Note: No knowledgeable person – so that rules Limbaugh out].

However, Limbaugh’s observation that Fox News is “in the Christie camp” is as startling as the discovery of Mexican Viagra in Limbaugh’s medicine cabinet. And it isn’t just because Fox News is the cable subsidiary of the Republican Party (or is the GOP a subsidiary of Fox?), there is also the fact that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had actively solicited Christie to run for president in 2012. What’s more, the relationship between the two went even deeper than that as Gabriel Sherman reported two years ago:

“Chris Christie had dinner with Fox News chief Roger Ailes last summer, and the two had a phone conversation a few months ago in which Ailes encouraged Christie to run for president. When Gawker requested access to any official records of such interactions under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, they were blocked by a claim of executive privilege, meaning the New Jersey government considers Ailes an adviser to Christie.”

Sherman’s unauthorized biography of Ailes, “The Loudest Voice In The Room,” will be released next week and may contain more details of this relationship. In the meantime, there is ample evidence that Fox News is already running interference on behalf of Ailes’ crush. As Media Matters noted, Fox spent less than fifteen minutes reporting the breaking news about Bridge-gate, far less than other news outlets. When Fox did commit to cover the story they framed it as a demonstration of Christie’s “lesson in leadership.”

This obvious bias in favor of Christie should not surprise anyone. When the CEO of a cable news network has personally pursued you to become a candidate for president, it is indeed “safe” to assume that they are in your camp. Expect the love affair between Fox and Christie to continue until it becomes untenable to prop up a blatantly corrupt political bully. But don’t worry, Fox will survive the break-up and rebound quickly to former crushes like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.


Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Case Of ObamaCare’s Uncooked Books

Posted by on January 9, 2014 at 1:50 pm. NO Comments :

The burden of coming up with ever newer and more hair-raising scandals against the Obama administration must be wearing heavily on the Fox News flunkies assigned to that task. What else could explain the article posted to Fox Nation that alleged that Mark Udall, the Democratic senator from Colorado, had “Asked State to Cook Books on ObamaCare Numbers.”

Fox Nation

For more documented examples of Fox Nation’s dishonesty,
read the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality, available at Amazon.

The article alleged that “Udall’s office pressured the Colorado Division of Insurance to downplay the number of insurance cancellations caused by the rollout of ObamaCare.” However, the evidence of that claim was not provided. The Fox Nationalists linked their article to a column on the uber-rightist Breitbart News, where a concerted effort was made to spin the story in the most negative manner possible. At issue were the number of Colorado residents who had policies canceled by their insurance companies, and were not given an opportunity to renew them or switch to a similar policy.

Only by following a trail back several more steps to the original source in the Denver Post was the truth revealed.

“Many of the cancellation notices, however, also contain language allowing customers to renew their existing policies.

“One consumer advocacy group said that while the impact on the small number facing an absolute cancellation is real, ‘there’s been a lot of hype and not a lot of drilling down into the facts.'”

So, in fact, many of the alleged cancellations were not really cancellations at all because the customer was permitted to renew the policy. Sen. Udall simply wanted the number of cancellations reported to reflect that fact. But in pursuit of another phony controversy, the Fox Nationalists, in conjunction with the BreitBrats, manufactured a marauding senator putting pressure on a beleaguered bureaucrat.

As usual, there was no controversy, there were no cooked books, and the only departure from the truth was by the fabulists at Fox News.


Unbelievable: How Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Distorted A Middle School Election

Posted by on January 9, 2014 at 11:16 am. 1 Comments :

By now anyone who is paying attention knows that Fox News is a disreputable purveyor of heavily biased propaganda on behalf of the Republican Party and conservative politics. The network openly favors GOP/Tea Party pundits and politicians and has even been caught reporting Republican press releases verbatim as if they were independently sourced news stories.

Roger Ailes

Now an excerpt from an upcoming biography of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes provides an outstanding illustration of the mindset that runs Fox News. The book, “The Loudest Voice In The Room” by Gabriel Sherman, was excerpted in New York Magazine and includes a passage about how Ailes intervened with the reporting in a local newspaper he owns in Putnam County, New York, where he lives in a mountaintop estate. The entire excerpt offers a revealing look into the thought processes of Ailes as he seeks to dominate any environment in which he resides – even a small upstate New York hamlet and its local news, schools, and government.

Another drama erupted after a reporter named Michael Turton was assigned to cover Haldane Middle School’s mock presidential election. After the event, Turton filed a report headlined “Mock Election Generated Excitement at Haldane; Obama Defeats McCain by 2–1 Margin.” He went on, “The 2008 U.S. presidential election is now history. And when the votes were tallied, Barack Obama had defeated John McCain by more than a two to one margin. The final vote count was 128 to 53.” Reading the published version a few days later, Turton was shocked. The headline had been changed: “Mock Presidential Election Held at Haldane; Middle School Students Vote to Learn Civic Responsibility.” So had the opening paragraph: “Haldane students in grades 6 through 8 were entitled to vote for president and they did so with great enthusiasm.” Obama’s margin of victory was struck from the article. His win was buried in the last paragraph.

Turton was upset, and wrote a questioning e-mail to [editor Maureen] Hunt, but never heard back. Instead, he received a series of accusatory e-mails from the Aileses. Turton had disregarded “specific instructions” for the piece, Beth wrote. “Do you anticipate this becoming an ongoing problem for you?” A short while later, Roger weighed in. Maureen Hunt’s instructions to focus on the school’s process for teaching about elections had been “very clear,” he wrote, and Turton’s “desire to change the story into a big Obama win” should have taken a backseat. Ailes described himself as “disappointed” by Turton’s failure “to follow the agreed upon direction.”

The unfolding of events in this deliberate act of interference with a journalist’s role in reporting the news mirrors perfectly the sort of heavy-handed control that Ailes wields over Fox News. It is easy to see the parallels between this microcosm of journalism and the obvious distortions of reality that occur on Fox News every day.

This excerpt is a tantalizing morsel of what the book promises to deliver when it is released later this month. It is written in a compelling way, with credible sources, profound revelations, and dramatic flair. Consequently, we can expect Fox News to mount a fierce smear campaign against the book and its author as its release nears and in the weeks that follow. Indeed, it has already begun.


Fun With Rush: Limbaugh Explains How The Dreaded Polar Vortex Was Created By Liberals

Posted by on January 8, 2014 at 1:15 pm. 8 Comments :

The ignorance that infects much of the rightist punditry has been an inexhaustible source of both frustration and humor. And no one exemplifies the pitiful state of conservatism better than the de facto head of the Tea-publican Party, Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh

Now that much of the midwest and northeast regions of the United States have been inundated with historically frigid weather, El Rushbo has dusted off his fake degree in meteorology to explain it all to his dittohead audience. The resulting rant is so hilariously absurd that it needs little commentary to fully appreciate the depths of its dementia. So without further ado, here are some choice excerpts from Limbaugh’s Monday broadcast about the “Dreaded Polar Vortex” that he says was created by the left to “make you think winter is caused by global warming.”

“So, ladies and gentlemen, we are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country. And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented. Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have. It’s called the ‘polar vortex.’ The dreaded polar vortex.”

“Do you know what the polar vortex is? Have you ever heard of it? Well, they just created it for this week.”

“Now, in their attempt, the left, the media, everybody, to come up with a way to make this sound like it’s something new and completely unprecedented, they’ve come up with this phrase called the ‘polar vortex.'”

Exactly. They just came up with it like seventy years ago. The truth is that scientists have been studying it for decades. Here is a brief primer on the Polar Vortex that Limbaugh should have read before making an ass of himself.

“They’re in the middle of a hoax, they’re perpetrating a hoax, but they’re relying on their total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warming. So they created the polar vortex, and the polar vortex.”

“Whatever it is that keeps the polar vortex vortexed in the Arctic Circle is vanishing, and that cold air is coming to us. Normally it stays up there. But now it’s down here. How did it get here? That’s the deepening mystery. That is the crisis. That is what is man-made. Man is destroying the invisible boundaries that keeps that air up there.”

Actually, it isn’t a mystery at all. Unless you are struggling to find new ways to make your dimwitted listeners even more stupid than when they first tuned you in.

“You take a 30-year-old. To him, history began the day he was born. He doesn’t know how cold it was 70 years ago unless he’s told. He doesn’t care. He thinks what’s happening now is either the best or the worst, whatever it is, ever. Everybody thinks that. Everybody’s historical perspective begins with the day they were born,.”

Where does Limbaugh get this stuff? And how brain damaged do you need to be to actually believe it?

“If man is responsible for this cold snap, then how’s it gonna end up back in the forties and thirties in places it’s below zero today? Who’s gonna change whatever it is their doing and keep the cold air at the North Pole? Well, to me it’s a logical question. If man’s causing this cold snap, then who is the man behind the curtain that’s gonna end the cold snap, and why? Why doesn’t he keep it cold? Why doesn’t the polar vortex stay vortexed?”

Apparently Limbaugh thinks that in order for Climate Change to be plausible, there must be some guy sitting in an office behind a console with buttons and levers that control the Earth’s weather. My guess is that it’s either Lex Luthor or Montgomery Burns.

“The Democrat agenda is: ‘We’ve got to get people’s attention distracted from Obamacare.'”

Here is a brief primer on the previous issues that served as distractions from ObamaCare.

“I’m constantly searching for ways to be more persuasive, to be taken seriously, ’cause I don’t make things up. I mean, I’m not into that. I don’t want to advance myself through falsehoods. I have an agenda, too, and I don’t want to be advance it falsely. I don’t want people believing what I say if I’m lying to ’em — and, consequently, I don’t lie.”

Ummm…..Well then, explain the next comment.

“Global warming is a great example. It’s a full-fledged, now documented hoax.”

Near the end of Limbaugh’s dissertation he quotes Lauren Friedman of Business Insider saying that “Polar vortexes, though, are nothing new.” That would seem to contradict his insistence that the whole thing was invented last week by liberals plotting to advance the Climate Change hoax. It certainly reveals that he was aware that the phenomenon existed long before this week’s weather crisis. Nevertheless, Limbaugh continues to pretend that he doesn’t lie, and he wants you to know that he is your only source for the unvarnished truth.

“Now, I’m here to assure you this is a crock, but this is how the left works, and you don’t have anybody in the media questioning this.”

Thank goodness Limbaugh is here to point out all the crocks that might otherwise overwhelm us with devious crockery. Notably, among the media that is not questioning this Polar Vortex is Fox News. They have been blanketing their network with frantic reports of “Extreme Weather” throughout this ordeal. They have correspondents bundled up like Eskimos across the affected areas corroborating the intensity of the arctic cold. So it would seem that Fox News is an accomplice of the left-wing cabal manufacturing the Polar Vortex hysteria. With a conspiracy rooted this deeply into the very center of the conservatives main media outlet, the future may prove to be very cold indeed for Limbaugh and his disciples.

[Update 1/8/2014] PolitiFact evaluated Limbaugh’s Polar Vortex rant and, contrary to his assertion that he doesn’t lie, designated it a lie of the “Pants On Fire” variety.

PolitiFact: “Limbaugh claimed the media made up the ‘polar vortex’ to bolster global warming. What the cold snap does prove, he says, is Arctic sea ice is not melting — that global warming is a hoax.

“Climate scientists told us his rant is wildly misinformed.

“The polar vortex has been a part of science for decades, and it certainly does not prove that sea ice is not melting.”

PolitiFact did not address the potentially catastrophic environmental hazard that would occur if Limbaugh’s super-sized trousers were actually ablaze. Goodbye ozone.

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Sarah Palin’s Alien Love Child Is A Distraction From ObamaCare By The White House

Posted by on January 7, 2014 at 11:08 am. 4 Comments :

The troubled rollout of the website for the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) has been a persistent irritation for the Obama administration. This despite the fact that many of the metrics used to measure the program’s success have been drifting into positive territory. For instance, millions of previously uninsured Americans now have coverage for the first time. About 2.2 million have enrolled via the state and federal exchanges, which is about two-thirds of the number that was set as a benchmark by the Congressional Budget Office. Millions more have qualified for Medicaid or have been added to their parent’s plans, both opportunities made available by the ACA.

While the media maintains a relentlessly negative tone when reporting on the issue, the American people still have a favorable view of ObamaCare. Consequently, Fox News and other conservative players are pressing a strategy that alleges that anything the White House says or does that is not about ObamaCare is a deliberate attempt to distract from the issue. Should the President have the audacity to perform the duties of his office, his critics accuse him of obfuscating for political purposes. This means that he cannot move forward on his previously stated agenda on the economy, on the minimum wage and unemployment, on immigration reform, on the environment, or on foreign affairs and diplomacy, without being accused of orchestrating a distraction from ObamaCare.

Fox News, as usual, is taking the lead on this tactic by reporting that Obama’s recent talk about income inequality is just such a distraction, even though he has been talking about that throughout his presidency. Fox raised the distraction allegation on the air with an interview of former Bush crony, and current GOP SuperPAC-Man, Karl Rove. They also made it the headline feature on their website, adding the angle of class warfare to the charge of distraction. For the record, class warfare has been raging for years in this country. It was started by the rich and any objective appraisal of the situation would have to conclude that the rich are still winning.

Fox News

The recent talk of income inequality being a ploy to shift focus from ObamaCare is hardly the first issue that has been exploited for that purpose. The media has made the same stale accusation for a variety of issues that are generally considered to be a part of any president’s responsibility. For instance:

It doesn’t seem to matter what this White House does. If it doesn’t involve ObamaCare then it is a distraction from it. Of course, if they were to focus exclusively on health care, their critics would then accuse them of neglecting all the other critical duties of the presidency. This is the sort of shallow and partisan politicking that is engaged in by people who don’t have substantive points to make. Because Republicans have no agenda for the nation other than repealing ObamaCare, subjugating women, minorities, and gays, expanding the proliferation of guns, and cutting taxes for the rich, they are forced to resort to these lowbrow methods of attacking the President for doing his job.

Be prepared for more of this in the coming election year. Already we have a GOP congressman predicting that Obama will start a war in an effort to deflect from ObamaCare. It’s only a matter of time until reports about Sarah Palin’s alien love child are making headlines at Fox News as just another attempt by Obama to distract Americans from the health care reform that they presently view favorably.

Sarah Palin


Does Fox News Have A Culture That Encourages Personal Attacks?

Posted by on January 6, 2014 at 3:28 pm. 13 Comments :

Much of the cable News circus was preoccupied this weekend with remarks made by MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry about Mitt Romney’s family. It was a relatively trivial incident that sought to highlight the blinding whiteness of the Romney clan and, by extension, the Republican Party for which he was was briefly the de facto head. Harris-Perry apologized for the comments and her apology was accepted by Romney and it seemed as if life on Earth would endure.

Enter Howard Kurtz, the media analyst for Fox News. On Friday he published an op-ed, which was followed by a segment on his Sunday Fox News program MediaBuzz, wherein he proposed his theory that MSNBC suffers from a “culture in which harsh personal attacks are encouraged, or at least tolerated.” His evidence for this was a series of recent controversies involving personalities at MSNBC, which he claimed not to be biased against.

Kurtz: I’m not designing this to bash MSNBC, but you had Martin Bashir with the vile attack on Sarah Palin, apologizing and then losing his job. You had Alec Baldwin losing his job at MSNBC over an alleged anti-gay slur hurled at a photographer. Now Melissa Harris-Perry. Is there something in the culture there that tolerates this unacceptable language?

One has to wonder why, if Kurtz did not intend to bash MSNBC, did he focus solely on “unacceptable language” by people on MSNBC. It’s not as if he didn’t have plenty of examples of Fox News anchors and pundits who did much the same thing. Just within the past week Fox’s Mike Huckabee compared doctors at a hospital, that had been caring for a girl who was pronounced brain dead, to the Nazi regime that was responsible for the murder of millions. Fox also hosted a former CIA agent who recently wrote an article that advocated the assassination of President Obama and British Prime Minister Cameron. Neither of these commentaries entered into Kurtz’s examination of the culture of cable news. The only observation that Kurtz deemed notable was his severly skewed impression of how conservatives are viewed by liberals.

Kurtz: If there is a theme to these episodes, it is a view of Republicans and conservatives as so mean-spirited, hard-hearted and clueless that just about any rhetoric against them can be justified.

Thus we had the spectacle of Martin Bashir so reviling Sarah Palin that he not only called her a “dunce” and an “idiot” but prescribed for her an old slave treatment in which he said someone should defecate in her mouth.

Oh my. Bashir called Palin a “dunce” and an “idiot.” Apparently Kurtz has never seen Bill O’Reilly’s program where for years he has had a regular segment in which he called his liberal adversaries “pinheads.” Not that he needed a dedicated segment to disparage his foes. He was found by Indiana University to have called people derogatory names every 6.8 seconds. Recently O’Reilly even expressed his hostile intentions toward the Democratic Majority Leader of the senate, saying…

“Harry Reid, I think you’ll have to kidnap. Tie him to a tree up in Idaho somewhere, leave him there for a few weeks.”

Surely O’Reilly will insist that the was joking about kidnapping and torturing Sen. Reid, but the Harris-Perry segment was premised that it was all in humor. The same cannot be said for Glenn Beck’s declaration that Obama was a racist who hated white people. Neither Beck nor his superiors ever apologized for that. In fact, Rupert Murdoch agreed with it. Perhaps the most glaring example of repulsive rhetoric was that displayed by Fox News contributor Erick Erickson upon the retirement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter when Erickson said…

“The nation loses the only goat fucking child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter’s retirement.”

Fox News

Let’s not forget the Fox News community website, Fox Nation. It’s culture is so riddled with hostility that they won’t even refer to some people by their actual names. The Fox Nationalists refer to Sen. Al Franken as Stuart Smalley, after a character he played on Saturday Night Live twenty years ago. They also call comedian Bill Maher “Pig” Maher for reasons no one seems to know. [For more on Fox Nation, read Fox Nation vs. Reality, a book that documents the website’s steady stream of lies]

There are, however, some notable differences between the incidents of verbal abuse as articulated by MSNBC and Fox News. At MSNBC the lapses in judgment were followed by apologies and sometimes suspensions or terminations. The lapses at Fox were either celebrated or ignored by management and often repeated with more emphasis by the abuser.

So Howard Kurtz has the gall to wonder if there is culture of harsh personal attacks at MSNBC where such incidents are routinely punished, but he has no concerns about his own network where they are a point of pride. That’s a distinct difference that would enter into the analysis of an honest media critic. Luckily, Kurtz works for Fox so he doesn’t have to worry about being honest.


Father Bill O’Reilly’s Execrable Exhortation On The Pope, Capitalism, And The Far Left

Posted by on January 4, 2014 at 8:17 pm. 10 Comments :

A couple of months ago, Pope Francis delivered an exhortation on the state of global poverty and society’s response to it. It was a rather profound critique of the conservative economic principles that have been the central political focus of the Tea Party and its Republican benefactors. Ever since, right-wingers from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh have walked the tightrope of respecting the Pontiff while blasting his guidance as extreme liberalism and pure Marxism.

Pope Francis
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Now Bill O’Reilly has joined the fray with another of his Talking Points Memos that articulate his notoriously vapid opinions on whatever is irking him that day. He titles this one “The Pope, Capitalism, And The Far Left.” It started out as a rebuke of lefty pundits who have embraced the Pope’s call for income equality. O’Reilly accuses the left of distorting the words of the Pope, but he doesn’t provide a single example of any such distortion. Not one. He does, however, leave out numerous excerpts from the Pope’s writings that explicitly condemn conservative economics like the “trickle-down theory” and advocate on behalf of the poor. For instance:

“[S]ome people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.” […and…] “It is vital that government leaders and financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare.”

O’Reilly further declares that “I can tell you with certainty that the Pope opposes” economic justice, which O’Reilly recasts as socialism. From whence he gets his certainty is unexplained. It certainly is not from the Pope’s own words that include…

“[N]one of us can think we are exempt from concern for the poor and for social justice.” […and…] “We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market. Growth in justice requires more than economic growth,” he said, adding that it requires “processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income.”

The Pope is using very specific and carefully chosen language that demolishes any hope of right-wingers dismissing his meaning. “Social justice” and “distribution of income,” phrases the right has tried feverishly to demonize, are not accidental rhetorical flourishes on the part of the Pope. Nor is it accidental when O’Reilly, nevertheless, dismisses the Pope with hollow posturing by saying that the left “want to impose a nanny-state that redistributes income,” or that “The left doesn’t care about the facts. It’s all about hating America.”

When it comes to hate, O’Reilly has a distinct advantage. Aside from having an academic study prove that he uses derogatory names on his program once every 6.8 seconds, he took this latest opportunity to harshly disparage the people about whom the Pope was talking. O’Reilly assigned blame for the tribulations of the poor only on their own alleged shortcomings, asserting that they refuse to “work hard, be honest, stay sober, and get educated.” He would never acknowledge the responsibility of the government’s institutional bias in favor of wealthy elites for the economic imbalance that clamps down on society’s less fortunate. It’s far easier for those in O’Reilly’s social strata to insult the poor as lazy, lying, drunken, illiterates.

Bill O'Reilly

If O’Reilly actually believed that the left was distorting the Pope’s words, he would have provided an example. Instead he made a blind allegation that he never bothered to support, all the while ignoring the fact that the Pope’s words were not ambiguous in their contempt for compassionless elitists like O’Reilly. It’s an indication of just how desperate the right is to pretend they have a moral alliance with the Pope when, in reality, they are scrambling to avoid any remotely honest discourse about the income inequality that Pope Francis spoke about so eloquently.


Fox News Doctor Opposes Legalizing Marijuana Because … Hedonism

Posted by on January 3, 2014 at 1:13 pm. 10 Comments :

Fox News has distinguished itself as as purveyor of extraordinarily bad advice. Just last week they offered “Eight Tips To Opt Out of ObamaCare” that would likely result in serious medical harm and/or bankruptcy were you to suffer illness or injury. Earlier this year they demonstrated that they are the nation’s premiere source for truly dreadful financial advice. And last night Fox hosted a discussion on the legalization of marijuana that was riddled with similar ignorance.

Fox News

On Greta Van Susteren’s “On The Record,” Fox’s newest wingnut crush, Dr. Ben Carson, was invited on to bash ObamaCare, which he did with relish, as expected. But as the segment came to close, Van Susteren threw in a question about Colorado’s recent legislation legalizing marijuana. This gave Dr. Carson an opportunity to reveal just how wingnutty he can be.

Carson: Marijuana is what’s known as a gateway drug. It tends to be a starter drug for people who move onto heavier duty drugs – sometimes legal, sometimes illegal – and I don’t think this is something that we really want for our society.

First of all, to argue that smoking Marijuana leads to heavier drug use is not supported by scientific study. It makes no more sense than the argument that milk leads to heavier drug use simply because everyone who uses heroin had previously been a milk drinker. Secondly, Carson fails to divulge where he got the impression that legalizing marijuana is not something society wants. A recent Gallup poll shows a large majority (58% to 39%) favoring legalization.

But Carson wasn’t finished embarrassing himself. He moved from misrepresenting the facts to dispensing pedantic philosophy by lamenting that “We’re gradually just removing all the barriers to hedonistic activity.” For the record, hedonism is the belief that life should have more pleasure than pain. It’s easy to see why the Morality Centurions at Fox would be against such a radical concept.

Van Susteren then sought to have Carson address the question from the angle of personal responsibility, free choice, and the position that government should not have the power to mandate private behavior. This is a subject that Fox’s conservatives beat to death on a daily basis. But for Carson there is an exemption allowing nanny-state regulations for things that he doesn’t like. And to make matters worse, he supports that hypocrisy with an utterly absurd analogy.

Carson: Well, do those same people argue for freedom of choice when someone says “I want to buy a gun, I want to buy an UZI, I want to buy” – you know, let’s be consistent with this thing.

Exactly. Because it is entirely consistent to compare the unregulated proliferation of deadly, military-style weapons that have produced horrific tragedies with smoking an occasional doobie while zoning out to some Pink Floyd. But what sends this completely over the logical cliff is that while Carson blasts what he regards as liberal hypocrisy, he is himself neck deep in a hypocritical bog for advocating free choice for gun fetishists but not for potheads.

Finally, Carson demonstrates that he is living in an alternate universe by asserting that the marijuana issue has not been sufficiently debated by society.

Carson: We’re changing so rapidly to a different type of society and nobody is getting a chance to discuss it because, you know, it’s taboo. It’s politically incorrect. You’re not supposed to talk about these things. […] Why can’t we talk about these things? That’s what I want to know.

Really? We haven’t talked enough about legalizing marijuana? So the decades spent debating it in state and federal legislatures, in academic research, by law enforcement professionals, in the media, and by citizens throughout the country, does not assuage Carson’s phobia of a rapidly changing society? To say the least, Carson has some pretty stiff deliberative prerequisites for untethering America from an anachronistic prohibition. And where he gets the notion that discussing marijuana is “taboo,” is a mystery only his dementia can unravel.

However, it is not surprising that Fox is presenting opposition to marijuana legalization. And it has nothing to do with the substance of the issue. Anything that happens on Obama’s watch is automatically bad and subject to vilification by the robo-critics at Fox News, whether he had anything to do with it or not. So despite public support and medical research, Carson and the Fox irregulars will stand strong against common sense and liberty and blame everything on the black guy in the White House.