Glenn Beck Wants To Make YOU Pay For His Conspiracy Broadcast Network

Posted by on February 27, 2013 at 9:54 am. 3 Comments :

“They can take my job and they can take my wealth but that’s okay… I will use American ingenuity and my ingenuity to pull myself up, and I will find another way to get my message out on a platform that will be a thousand times more powerful!”

Those are the words Glenn Beck used to console himself when he came under attack while still hosting his old program on Fox News. As a consequence of calling the President a racist (and numerous other delusional ravings), Beck saw his advertisers and audience fleeing in droves. Yet he was adamant that if he were to lose the soapbox given to him by Fox he would rise on the third day and ascend to ever greater glory.

Glenn Beck

After nearly two years in the hinterlands of the InterTubes, Beck has changed his mind about television and the imaginary “thousand times more powerful” platform he espoused. He is now begging to be readmitted to the television tabernacle. He realizes that his public profile has receded, effectively making him a non-entity on the political landscape. To be sure, he’s making plenty of money by charging his flock to watch his sermons, but that isn’t enough for someone with Beck’s pathological egocentrism.

Beck has launched a campaign to recruit his disciples into a lobbying force aimed at pressuring cable providers to add his webcast to their channel lineup. But if cable operators were to succumb to this effort it would be an unprecedented breach of trust that would force every cable customer to subsidize Beck’s right-wing conspiracy mongering. Depending on the terms of the agreement, content providers providers are generally paid a per-subscriber fee by the cable operator for the rights to their programming. That fee is due whether or not anyone watches the channel. Therefore, if your cable company carries Beck’s webcast, they pay him royalties derived from your cable bill even if you never watch him.

In his appeal to his followers Beck makes the weak argument that extracting such involuntary financial support is comparable to what is currently being done with MSNBC. However, no matter what one thinks of MSNBC’s leanings, they are a bona fide news enterprise and there are massive differences between that and Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue and Holy Huckster Sideshow. Despite Beck’s assertion that “Adding TheBlaze will ensure that you and your family have a source of news and analysis that you can trust and that doesn’t betray your values,” the obvious truth is that his programming will only contribute to the garbage heap of fear peddling that permeates rightist media. And this statement in his own promotional piece exposes the dishonesty of his intentions:

“If we succeed then we change the media. If we change the media, we control the debate. If we control the debate, we change politics. And if we change politics, we change the country.”

That is not the sort of mission statement issued by a credible news organization. Beck is forthrightly declaring his intention to proselytize his Tea-vangelism, and that makes his “channel” an inappropriate selection for a cable operator who would pass on the costs to unwilling subscribers. We should not be forced to make up for his business failures.

Amongst Beck’s defenders there will be those who will deny that Beck is having any problem generating revenue with his webcast. But here’s financial breakdown: He is presently charging between five and ten dollars per month to subscribe to his programs online. If he does secure cable carriage that programming will be available for free to all of the current cable subscribers on the system. Consequently, they would no longer need to pay for the Internet access. If the Internet subscription model was working for him, Beck wouldn’t risk cannibalizing his online customers by offering them the same content for free on cable. But he doesn’t care about his web audience because he knows that with cable penetration comparable to what MSNBC has, Beck could triple his earnings.

The bottom line for Beck is that he is upset because no one is paying any attention to him. So he wants to wedge himself back into the TV community and make you pay the bill. This would be a good time to say “NO!” And you may as well use his own web site to do so. Beck has thoughtfully compiled a directory of the Facebook pages for the cable providers he is soliciting. There is no reason why you couldn’t use those same links to let them know that if they add Beck to their lineup you will cancel the service, because you don’t want to line the pockets of someone who is so brazenly dishonest, divisive, and hateful. We successfully exiled Beck to his current island in the Internet ocean once before. Let’s not allow him to sneak back in at our expense.

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Rush Limbaugh’s Dementia-Riddled Post-Oscar Blabbering

Posted by on February 25, 2013 at 5:49 pm. 4 Comments :

Rush Limbaugh entered the post-Oscar analysis circus to add to the ludicrous accusations directed at the First Lady’s perfectly harmless appearance to present the award for Best Picture. Limbaugh charged her with “hijacking the Academy Awards” because of some unintelligible conspiracy having to do with the Obamas being “snubbed” by the Academy. See if you can decipher what he’s talking about:

“They had to throw the Obamas a crumb cause I think, in truth, the Obamas got snubbed. Not only did his campaign ad, Zero Dark Thirty, not win, but his semi-autobiography lost out too. […] Lincoln? That’s about Obama. Everybody knows that.”

Rush Limbaugh

So they had to mollify the Obamas because Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln didn’t win? And they did this by inviting Michelle to present an award? But that invitation was sent two weeks before anyone other than the Academy’s outside accounting firm knew who the winners were.

What makes Limbaugh think that the Obamas care whether or not Zero Dark Thirty won is never explained. Even worse, Limbaugh thinks that President Obama wrote Lincoln – about himself! And everybody knows it? What part of that film depicts anything associated with Obama? As close as I can figure it is just Limbaugh’s fantasy that Obama will meet the same end as Lincoln.

A little later in his rant, Limbaugh totally loses his mind. He confesses that “I can’t figure Twitter out,” and elaborates on that for several minutes. He also discusses the old “1984” TV ad for Apple, about which he says “you can’t find this ad on the Internet.” He is referring to this one – that I found on the Internet:

Limbaugh manages to find similarities between the dour Big Brother character in the ad with Obama’s cheerful and positive presentation on the Oscar broadcast. And he speculates that the Oscar gig was “a giant propaganda effort by the White House to put ‘Moo-chelle’ up there,” and that “this was the opening salvo of a Michelle Obama for president effort.” Somehow, he doesn’t find any irony in the fact that he is stretching reason to cast Mrs. Obama as a would-be dictator with robotic disciples, while he forgets that he proudly refers to his own followers as “dittoheads.”

If there was any doubt before, it is now indisputable that Limbaugh is in an advanced stage of dementia, perhaps brought on by age, Oxy-Contin, and/or exposure to dangerous levels of Teabaggery. His abnormally enlarged ego couldn’t be helping matters either.


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

Posted by 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.

Fox News Michelle Obama Oscar

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.


More Racist Variations Between Fox News Latino And Fox Nation Reporting

Posted by on February 25, 2013 at 10:55 am. NO Comments :

As has been covered here previously, Fox News is engaging in a disingenuous, insulting, and brazen attempt to deceive Latino news consumers with their Fox News Latino web site. This time they are running starkly different versions of a story involving drivers licenses for undocumented residents:

Fox Nation

Notice that Fox Nation continues to use the epithet “Illegals” to describe undocumented residents. Then it characterizes them as complaining. However, over at Fox News Latino the subjects of the article are referred to as “DREAMers,” a reference to the DREAM Act that provides conditional residency to certain immigrants who came to the United States as minors. Furthermore, they note the program’s controversy, but do not portray the subjects as complaining.

This is the sort of bias that is typical of Fox News. The recipients of these licenses are not lawbreakers. They were brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were to young to make such a decision for themselves. Now they just want to be able to drive, attend school, and work, in the only country they have ever known. But bigots in states like North Carolina, and in media enterprises like Fox, just want to throw obstacles in their path and tag them with second-class status.


Gun Nuttiness Royale: Refusing To Sell Guns To Police In Pro-Safety States

Posted by on February 25, 2013 at 3:23 am. 13 Comments :

So exactly how deep is the vein of idiocy that runs through the NRA gun worship crowd? Just have a look at this item from Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze (and associated wingnut media): 44 Gun Companies Have Stopped Selling To Law Enforcement In Anti-2nd-Amendment States.

Blaze - Guns

This is the sort of thing you expect from lie factories like Fox Nation. But the evil genius in this meticulously plotted protest is not readily apparent at first glance. However, if you let it sink in for a minute it becomes hilariously inept. In fact, it’s rather astonishing how they could get so much wrong in one short headline. Let us count the ways:

1) No states are anti-2nd Amendment.
The gunnies are trying to portray any state that dares to seek solutions to rampant gun violence of the sort that took the lives of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, as contrary to the right to keep and bear arms as stipulated in the Constitution. However, reasonable regulations and background checks have been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court and are supported by majorities of the American public, and even by majorities of NRA members.

2) There’s no evidence that any of the listed vendors were ever state suppliers.
The article on TheBlaze lists 44 munitions vendors who are taking an oath to refuse to sell their products to law enforcement agencies. But in no cases have they provided any evidence that they are presently engaged in such sales. And in at least some cases it seems pretty unlikely. I’m not sure that Old Grouch’s Military Surplus or Controlled Chaos Arms are sacrificing much in the way of revenue from police department clients. None of the major arms manufacturers like Smith & Wesson, Sig Sauer, or Glock are participating in the boycott.

3) Other vendors will happily take up the slack.
These eager activists don’t seem to grasp the concept of boycotts. Generally they are carried out by refusing to buy certain products, thus hurting the targeted vendors by using their financial clout to affect policy changes. Instead, the gunnies are refusing to sell their own products to willing buyers, thus hurting only themselves. It’s a little like demanding that the bank teller hand over all the money and threatening to shoot yourself if they don’t.

4) If effective, the boycott would endanger the lives of citizens.
Setting aside the fact that this protest is pitifully ill-conceived, let’s imagine how it would unfold if it had any chance of succeeding. The apparent goal is to pressure states not to implement gun safety initiatives by, in effect, disarming the officers who are there to protect the people. That seems like a reckless course of action and one that the public would disapprove of in droves. Gun advocates may enjoy fondling their weapons and pretending to be superheroes, but most citizens are not anxious to confront desperate criminals on their own. Grandma is not likely to hear the call on the police scanner, start up the Rambler, and head down to the mall to foil a gang of jewelry store thieves.

5) The law enforcement agencies don’t make the laws.
Perhaps the most tunnel-blind facet of this folly is that the dimwitted gun vendors are aiming their protest at the police, despite the fact that they are only responsible for enforcing laws, not drafting them. So the gunnies are taking a stand to refuse to provide service revolvers to local police because of something that was done by governing legislatures and executives.

Like so many harebrained schemes by far-right extremists, this protest action is not very well thought out. It harms first responders who are innocent parties in this debate; it puts citizens at risk; it blows up in their own faces financially; and it makes no strategic sense whatsoever. Yet it is being heralded by the wingnut press including Breitbart News, and Fox Nation. And in addition to the article on TheBlaze, Glenn Beck addressed the subject on his webcast escalating it into pure conspiracy theory delusion. He warned that the gun dealers…

“…are not going to provide anything to a state where those weapons are going to be used against the citizens to possibly take guns and gun rights away.”

So Beck is afraid that states are plotting shooting rampages by police against residents in pursuit of their firearms and, therefore, the police must be disarmed. This is another demonstration of conservatives leaning so far out to the right that they fall overboard and make asses of themselves. And as if to underscore their dementia, note the ad on TheBlaze about “FEMA Coffins.” Those should come in handy after the cops have killed everybody.


Let’s Get Ready To CRUMBLE: Glenn Beck Ducks WWE Challenge

Posted by on February 24, 2013 at 9:41 am. 1 Comments :

Glenn Beck and professional wrestling. Who could have imagined a collision between these two disparate media phenomenons?

After all, one of them is perhaps the most notorious entertainment spectacle of the last fifty years and involves a highly choreographed production of television broadcasts that purport to be genuine, but are in fact as phony as Bigfoot’s Snake Oil Elixir. Nevertheless, it hooked a surprisingly large audience of gullible viewers starved for over-the-top melodrama and sweaty, wild-eyed brawls.

And the other one is professional wrestling.

Indeed, Glenn Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue and Holy Huckster Sideshow seems like the perfect match up with pro wrestling. They are both so divinely cartoonish and dripping with cheap theatrics that it’s a wonder someone hadn’t thought of it sooner. But Sadly, it’s not to be.

Glenn Beck Wimped Out

After the WWE debuted a couple of characters modeled after Tea Party wackos, Beck bounded into the proverbial ring to slam the sham Teabaggers and the horse they rode in on. That horse, by the way, was the property of two-time Teapublican senate loser, and WWE’s owner, Linda McMahon. Clearly this is not an organization run by Obama functionaries or progressive rabble.

Dimwitted wrestler Jack Swagger and his hillbilly manager Zeb Colter were a pretty accurate representation of the rednecks who mindlessly spew patriotic jargon and blame all their failures on minorities. But Beck wasn’t having it. He declared that he was sick and tired of being miscast and wasn’t about to allow these twits to besmirch the image of his precious Tea Party. With classic WWE bravado Beck taunted his nemeses saying…

“I can take it from a lot of people. I really can. I can’t take it from the stupid wrestling people.”

You can almost imagine him center-ring, yelling that into a microphone hanging from the ceiling. This is the Beck who has called himself a rodeo clown and just last month said that he considers what he does to be “like circus performer art.” Having thrown down the gauntlet, the ball was now in the court of the wrestling duo. So Swagger and Colter struck back inviting Beck to appear on their show and defend the honor (such as it is) of “We the Teaple.” In a video challenge they said…

“You know, Glenn, many of your followers are WWE fans and they understand the difference between reality and entertainment. Are you so out of touch with your own audience, Glenn, or are you just a ‘stupid’ political commentator.”

They were obviously giving Beck’s fans more credit than they deserved with regard to their alleged understanding of reality. But they were also giving Beck a sterling opportunity to address the millions of WWE viewers (10 times more than any audience Beck ever had), and explain why Swagger’s character offended him. But rather than meet his opponents in the ring, Beck pulled the covers up over his head and tweeted that he is “currently booked doing anything else.”

It’s inevitable that big-mouths like Beck reveal themselves to be cowards. But this exceeds all boundaries of wimposity. Beck is trembling before fictional foes. It would be one thing if Beck was afraid to debate Rachel Maddow or Bill Maher, experienced communicators who have obvious intelligence and wit. But to shrink from facing off with a fake adversary on a scripted television farce demonstrates just how paper thin Beck’s veneer of bombast really is.

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

Posted by 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.

Dinesh D'Souza

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.


Rush Limbaugh Is Ashamed Of America. The Feeling Is Mutual.

Posted by on February 22, 2013 at 11:05 am. 6 Comments :

In yet another example of crybaby Republicans bugging out when they don’t get their way, Rush Limbaugh is whining about how he is “ashamed” of his country.

Rush Limbaugh

This isn’t really anything new. Limbaugh has been in fits of hysteric embarrassment ever since America elected its first African-American president. And having done it twice hasn’t helped soothe his frayed nerves. So now he is ranting about how the country is sliding down a path to a hellish fiscal doom (also not new for Rushbo) even though the deficit has declined every year of Obama’s presidency. And this imagined impending apocalypse has so disturbed Rush that he has become racked with shame, poor thing.

Limbaugh’s pride deficiency has spread to infect his pals at Fox News.

Limbaugh - Fox

Over at Fox Nation they think that his tantrum is just the thing to revive the Tea Party that Americans have come to hate in droves. How appropriate that they believe that shame for America will re-energize the Tea-publicans. And at the Hannity show, the rash of embarrassment is epidemic. Hannity goes off on an extended rant about how he, too, is embarrassed. Ironically, he makes a couple of good points:

“It’s embarrassing with our wealth and all that we have, that 50 million Americans are on food stamps, one in six Americans are in poverty, it’s embarrassing we import oil.”

Indeed, that is embarrassing. Too bad Hannity and his right-wing cohorts are opposed to every initiative that would address those issues. Apparently they enjoy being mired in embarrassment.

But it was Hannity’s guest, Herman Cain that totally went off the deep end by latching on to the argument that almost single-handedly sunk the Romney campaign:

“Look, 51 percent of the voters elected Barack Obama. Forty nine percent of us are not that stupid. That’s what [Rush] was saying.”

Oh, I see. Rush was saying that the majority of the nation is stupid. What a great way to invigorate Tea Partiers and win voters over. If this is a preview of their campaign strategy for 2014-16, then get ready for Speaker Pelosi and President Clinton. They can recycle leftover Romney posters that said “Believe in America” by simply editing them to read “Ashamed of America.” That’s the new GOP slogan for the foreseeable future.


MSNBC Hires David Axelrod – Fox Nation Comes Unglued

Posted by on February 21, 2013 at 11:52 am. 17 Comments :

It simply never ceases to amaze how Fox News can clutch to such fantastical versions of reality and attempt to pass them off as reasonable analyses of current events. Witness this item wherein they grouse about MSNBC’s hiring of a former Obama campaign aide:

Fox Nation

First of all, do they really think that the addition of David Axelrod to the MSNBC roster of contributors is going to substantively alter the network’s programming? Considering the fact that they already regarded MSNBC as “in the tank” for Obama, how would Axelrod change that?

Secondly, The Fox Nationalists conveniently forget that MSNBC also has on its payroll the former head of John McCain’s campaign (Steve Schmidt) and the former chairman of the Republican Party (Michael Steele). Does that mean the the GOP is controlling the message at NBC News?

Finally, Fox News has been notorious for employing Republican operatives and candidates. These are people far more instrumental to the messaging of the Republican Party than Axelrod ever was for the Democrats. They include much of George W. Bush’s “brain” trust (i.e. Karl Rove, John Bolton, Liz Cheney), and party leaders like former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and their just past nominee for VP Sarah Palin.

Fox is, without a doubt, the PR arm of the Republican Party. Their anchors are as much responsible for GOP propaganda as their well-connected contributors. No one at MSNBC has anywhere near the tight relationships that Fox has with the GOP. And Fox doesn’t have any Democrats on staff that balance their reporting in an equivalent way (sorry, Kirsten Powers and Juan Williams don’t cut it). When Fox gives a former chair of the Democratic Party the air time that MSNBC gives to Steele, or when they give a three hour morning block to a liberal Democratic host (i.e. MSNBC’s conservative Joe Scarborough), then maybe Fox can talk about messaging without being so desperately hypocritical.


The Fox News Community Reveals Their Racist Vulgarity – Again

Posted by on February 21, 2013 at 3:11 am. 6 Comments :

Those who have been paying attention are already aware of the blatantly dishonest practices of Fox News, particularly on their community web site (see Fox Nation vs. Reality) The only thing more repulsive than their disregard for the truth is the disgraceful conduct of their audience. So for anyone out there who hasn’t had the displeasure of meeting an actual Fox News viewer (a truly endangered species whose numbers are dwindling), here is a sampling of how they express themselves when informed about something as incidental and non-controversial as a new official portrait for the First Lady, Michelle Obama.

Fox Nation

There isn’t much to add to that except to note that it isn’t a new or isolated occurrence. It is, however, important to acknowledge that there is an abundance of crude behavior and overt hatred on the Internet emanating from across the political spectrum. Most of it occurs on fringy outposts run by anonymous extremists with tiny followings. But for this sort of dialogue to be hosted by a major so-called “news” organization that seeks to present itself as reputable – even fair – tells us a great deal about the type of audience they cultivate.