Yesterday marked the end of a bad week on Wall Street. The market declined all of 2.3% for the week. So if you haven’t already escaped to your bunker in Idaho you may want to pack up the kids, the rations, and the gold coins, and hit the road.
As usual, the prophet of the financial End Times is Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. He is to business what Glenn Beck is to…well, everything else. Cavuto spent the opening minutes of his program on Fox News insisting that America was in a state of deep decline and that no recovery has occurred, or will occur. He later shuttled over to his program on Fox Business Network to announce that the economy had “flatlined.”
Does he mean this economy?
A truly fair and balanced analysis of the situation would recognize that there has been a substantial move to the upside since President Obama was inaugurated. Over the past two years there has been a 43% increase. Compare that to the two years prior, during the Bush administration, that saw a 36% falloff.
The primary argument Cavuto is making for the catastrophe he perceives is that the market has been negative for 5 straight weeks. Of course, knowledgeable analysts never draw conclusions from such short periods of time. The chart above demonstrates why that is not considered wise practice. What Cavuto is spinning as a catastrophe is really a mere 5% drop over a long trend of gains.
This is nothing new for Cavuto or Fox News. They consistently hammer on any negative market activity while ignoring the positive. If the market goes down it is because of the looming Obama depression. If it goes up Fox labels it a bear market rally. Fox is so determined to deny Obama credit for anything positive that they once went so far as to claim that the Tea Party was responsible for market a rally – and that was a rally that began weeks before the Tea Party existed.
Later in the program Cavuto engaged in what he regards as a debate, but is really just him interrupting his guest after every four words. Democratic congressman Chaka Fattah put up a valiant fight to present the facts about the employment statistics that show significant increases over the past couple of years despite recent weakness. But Cavuto would have none of it, cutting off Fattah repeatedly to spin the data as negatively as possible while treating his guest with overt rudeness. Seriously…no Democrat should ever go on that show or that network.
The Fox News financial reporting has been nothing but atrocious, They have been predicting disaster since January of 2009. Anyone who took their analysis seriously missed one of the strongest periods of growth in this nation’s history. I sure hope nobody is taking them seriously now.
Ben Shapiro’s “Primetime Propaganda” is a book that perfectly epitomizes the rightist paranoia about liberal bogeymen under our beds, in our closets, and, most of all, on our TV sets. The book is promoted as…
“The inside story of how the most powerful medium of mass communication in human history has become a propaganda tool for the Left.”
In the book published by Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins, Shapiro claims to have interviewed Hollywood’s most important power players and gotten them to admit that they have been secretly inserting their subversive messages into popular programs for decades. But his work is decidedly one-sided and he takes great pride in the obvious. For instance. the revelation that MASH had an anti-war theme is not exactly earth-shattering and it hardly exposes a liberal conspiracy. However, he presents it as a triumph of investigative journalism.
In a defensive posting on Andrew Breitbart’s BigJournalism, Shapiro complains about the criticism his book has received. He is dismayed that critics allegedly focused on the parts referencing Sesame Street, but then proceeds to bash Sesame Street for the remainder of the posting.
According to his own defense, Sesame Street is awash in propaganda. For instance, they broadcast segments teaching kids about divorce. He apparently thinks that subject has no relevance to kids today. The program also aired segments after 9/11 about peaceful conflict resolution. Shapiro asserts that these were designed to steer kids away from retaliating against terrorists, when the more likely purpose was to illustrate how wrong the actions of the terrorists were. Then Shapiro whines about everything from teaching kids not to beat up other kids of different cultures, to using gender-neutral language like firefighter or flight attendant. If that is evidence of leftist indoctrination, then Shapiro is implying that rightists support cross-cultural fights amongst children.
What doesn’t seem to be acknowledged in Shapiro’s book is that the vast majority of television programs in the period of time his research encompasses were far from being dogmatically left-wing. There were more police dramas and westerns than any other genre of program. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and The Waltons, or Dragnet, Magnum P.I., and 24, were not exactly peddling liberal doctrine. Nor were the iconic sitcoms from Andy Griffith, The Golden Girls, or Frasier. Why didn’t Shapiro interview people from those shows to ascertain whether they were planting conservative opinions in their programs?
Even worse, Shapiro is attempting to position this book as a scholarly investigation into historical television practices and philosophies. But he provides no historical context whatsoever to support his obviously predetermined conclusions. He lumps shows like The Partridge Family, Happy Days, and Family Ties, into the liberal cabal that “took over your TV,” but fails to note that those years were mostly dominated by Republican presidents and conservative culture. It was the heart of the era that saw the rise of the Reagan Revolution, the Moral Majority, and the Christian Coalition. If the purpose of these pinko TV executives was to reshape America in their leftist image, they failed miserably. Yet Shapiro insists that this was their purpose and that they succeeded in turning America into a socialist state.
For the record, Shapiro is the Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, an ultra-conservative organization whose mission is to “combat the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this country.” Shapiro was interviewed about the book by Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine who called him “a courageous defender of our civilization – and such a brave soldier on the frontlines in our culture war.”
Shapiro’s previous books were Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, and Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future. He recently penned an article for CNSNews, a division of the rabidly right-wing Media Research Center, wherein he castigated Jews who support President Obama as…
“Jews in name only. They eat bagels and lox; they watch ‘Schindler’s List’; they visit temple on Yom Kippur – sometimes. But they do not care about Israel. Or if they do, they care about it less than abortion, gay marriage and global warming.”
That exclusionary and insulting diatribe suggests that the Jews are such a shallow people that they are incapable of caring about more than one thing at a time, particularly if it’s about the rights and well being of others. And Shapiro neglects to disclose who designated him as the Jewish certification authority.
Shapiro is a part of the conservative campaign to assault the media and popular culture, and he is tightly integrated with the leaders of that campaign. David Horowitz’s Freedom Center began as the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in 1988 to “establish a conservative presence in Hollywood.” Andrew Breitbart, who runs both the BigJournalism and BigHollywood blogs, wrote in his recent autobiographical book, “Righteous Indignation,” that…
“The biggest point I wanted to make was one I’m still making: Hollywood is more important than Washington. It can’t be overstated how important this message is: the pop culture matters.”
This is a coordinated attack on the creative community that has long been a target of the right-wing martinets of virtue. They demonstrated their hostility for the arts when they orchestrated congressional hearings and blacklists against Hollywood in the 1940’s and 1950s. And they are demonstrating it today as they seek to defund public radio and television, as well as arts institutions like the National Endowment for the Arts. Their censorious mission is reflected in attacks on movies like Avatar and rappers like Common. It is ingrained in the works of the secret society of Hollywood conservatives, the Friends of Abe. They recognize the power in creative expression and they are determined to either hijack it or shut it down. That’s why Shapiro et al are so adamant about silencing overt propaganda like this alarming segment from Sesame Street that he explicitly rebuked for advancing a gay/liberal agenda:
Do you feel gayer or more liberal yet? Shapiro’s new book appears to be the literary equivalent of James O’Keefe’s dishonest video ambushes. Shapiro taped conversations with his subjects and is releasing them without having obtained permission to do so. Of course, he certainly won’t release any tapes that exhibit ideological fairness or otherwise don’t fit his agenda. And, as noted above, we won’t be seeing any comments from producers of the far more numerous conservative-themed programs that reveal their own biases. There is no way of knowing whether the tapes were edited in misleading ways, as the right is prone to doing – particularly the Breitbart right. And notice to whom Shapiro ran first to whine about being criticized.
Expect to see Shapiro making the Fox News rounds with an already announced appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. Watch as he shamelessly bashes the broader media even as he exploits it. And sadly, like a victim of spousal abuse, the media will forgive him and beg him not to go. His Murdoch-published book will get plenty of play from Fox News, the rightist blogosphere, and conservative talk radio as he laments the imagined prevalence of left-wing media. How ironic.
These are the indeed the End Times for evanga-pundit Glenn Beck. Mediaite has learned that the last broadcast of the Glenn Beck Program on Fox News will be June 30, 2011. Fox News confirmed the report. So get ready for some extend sobbing and hysteria. Not from disappointed fans – from Beck himself.
It already started today. Beck whimpered through much of his radio broadcast, and he could barely complete a sentence in the opening minutes of his TV show. The source of his tearful meltdown was a discussion of his new-found interest in the plight of Nazi-era Jews. Beck described himself as unable to walk after watching the movie “Schindler’s List.” I’m Jewish and my grandparents emigrated from Northern Europe. When I saw Schindler’s List I certainly thought it was an outstanding film, but I was fully capable of leaving the theater and driving home.
It is difficult to accept such deep despondency and theatrics from a man who recently said that Reform Jews, the largest denomination of Jews in America, were “almost like Islam – radicalized Islam.”. Earlier this year he made a list of the nine people whom he said most contributed to the 20th century being the Era of the Big Lie. Eight of them just happened to be Jewish. His attacks on George Soros as a tyrannical “Puppet Master,” another common derogatory insult aimed at Jews, are infamous. And Beck has even perpetuated the intentionally incendiary allegation that Jews killed Jesus. Just this morning Beck hosted Ben Shapiro on his radio show. Shapiro recently wrote an article that accused Jews who support President Obama of being “Jews In Name Only.”
Beck’s departure date is significant because it comes just about three weeks before his pilgrimage to Israel to help them Restore Courage, or something. This is a trip that will cost his followers over $5,000 a head for an experience about which he says “This may be it for our generation or for all mankind.” He even speculated that he may die over there. So he’ll need a few weeks to prepare for the trip. And he can use the remainder of this month to peddle it to his congregation.
The mood of despair and foreboding that has enveloped Beck was apparent today. He delivered some his his darkest sermons ever. And for him, that’s saying something.
“God Bless Fox. If Fox goes down…if Fox goes down the tubes, we’re done. We’re done. They’re the only bastion of truth out there. Now let me ask you…when I leave, who will play those videos? Who will play those videos?”
Don’t worry, Glenn. I’m sure Andrew Breitbart, Judge Napolitano, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Eric Bolling, Steve Doocy, etc., will pick up the slack.
“I don’t know why I have been given the the gift, the blessing, or the curse, of being able to see slightly over the horizon, but I am telling you I can. And it is not something that I take lightly. It is not something that I…I have to be careful.“
Do you wish that this cup would pass from you? Has your father (Roger Ailes) forsaken you? Will Sarah Palin deny you three times before dawn?
“The left is making a push for the West along with the Islamic extremists. They do not have the same goal to be ruled under Sharia Law. They will sort that out when we are all dead. They will sort that out when the United States of America and her Constitution no longer stand. They will sort that out after they have destroyed the state of Israel. Right now they’re united to destroy the West. And they have all the artists. They have the movies. They every piece of propaganda. They have the news media. They have the singing artists. [screaming]They have all of it. We have something more powerful – the truth.”
First of all, why is he so worried if he is convinced that he has the greater power? Seems like he could just take it easy for a while.
Secondly, Beck again asserts that the left, whom he regards as Godless heathens, are going to conspire with religious extremists to bring down their own society. He really believes that liberals, who shun alliances between church and state, are prepared to happily work with fundamentalists for whom church and state are inseparable. And then what? They will negotiate with their unlikely partners for control of the ruins of western civilization? Makes perfect sense.
Finally, what’s all this about the artists? So now all the artists and filmmakers and singers are aligned with terrorists? I knew Beck didn’t like artists and, particularly, the Hollywood variety. I knew he wanted to defund the National Endowment for the Arts. I knew that he sees subversive Marxist messages in many of the art installations around Manhattan. But now he’s implicated ALL artists as accomplices to the destruction of western civilization.
As an artist I find that absurd generally. However, I see some degree of plausibility when I think about people like Ted Nugent and Victoria Jackson. If they aren’t signs of the end of civilization I don’t know what is.
There has not been a more obvious case of penile obsession than that exhibited by Andrew Breitbart and the pervs at Fox Nation. Since the non-story about Anthony Weiner’s alleged Twitter escapade, these alleged “news” sources have maintained a frenzied focus on it. Despite the utter lack of verifiable evidence, the Fox Nationalists have posted FOURTEEN articles on the subject:
That’s fourteen separate articles on this one issue that hardly compares to the urgency of other matters currently in the news cycle. The second most reported story on Fox Nation, with two whole articles, was the Palin/Trump pizza summit. They sure know their priorities.
As for Andrew Breitbart, he puts Fox Nation to shame. It has now been four days since the story broke and Breitbart’s BigGovernment blog still features it in a big way. In fact, EVERY SINGLE HEADLINE on the site is Weiner-related. There is no other story (with the exception of Breitbart’s lame book) that warrants a headline on that pseudo-news site.
I know these weasels live to smear their liberal adversaries, but this ridiculous. When Americans are desperate for information about pressing issues concerning jobs, the economy, health and Medicare, and national security, the rightist media is glued to titillating irrelevancies. Weiner is one Congressman from New York who is not even a member of the Democratic leadership. He is in a heavily Democratic district that would likely elect another Democrat if the worst case scenario were to occur and he left office. The GOP has little to gain from hyping this other than to remind people of the verifiable incidents of Republican malfeasance in office.
So why are they doing it? Because they are being hurt so badly by their own news that they are desperate for a distraction. Their presidential candidates are a laughing stock, even amongst Republicans. And their budget plan that kills Medicare is unpopular with every sector of the electorate, including conservatives and Tea Partiers. They are in a rapid meltdown and they think that this will save them. Thus the fixation that blots out every other news story for these losers. Pathetic.
Ratings for cable news for the month of May 2011, bring bad news for Fox News. In the key demographic group of 25-54 year-olds, Fox was alone in declining during the primetime hours.
This was a really bad month for Fox News which lost viewers in the demo for every primetime show. Bill O’Reilly dropped 9%, Sean Hannity dropped 6%, and Greta Van Susteren dropped 12%. These declines occurred while almost every primetime program for both CNN and MSNBC gained by double digits. The only good news for Fox is that Glenn Beck, which sunk 17% in the demo, has already been canceled so he can’t do too much more harm.
An interesting wrinkle in this book is that MSNBC was also the number one cable news network among 18-34 year-olds in primetime, with a 7% advantage over CNN and a 14% lead over Fox News. That is not a demo that gets much attention from an advertising point of view, but it signals an opportunity for future growth that the network can exploit. It also affirms the weakness of Fox among young viewers. That explains why Beck is so openly hostile to young people.
Committed news junkies this morning are following a ludicrous story about New York Congressman Anthony Weiner. I’m not getting into it now because at this point there is nothing substantive to report. There are only salacious accusations with no proof whatsoever.
What I will get into is the fact that Andrew Breitbart, the notoriously dishonest purveyor of right-wing lies and propaganda who has been caught disseminating slanderous videos that were proven to be faked, has now expanded his field into porn and the yellowest of journalism. Here is a screen capture of the top of his BigGovernment web site:
Note that every single story is on one subject – the alleged Weiner controversy that Breitbart himself invented. (Well, there is one exception – an ad for Breitbart’s thoroughly dishonest book). Apparently Breitbart considers this non-story more important than any other news story on the planet. There is literally no other story worthy of covering than this one. Not the presidential campaign. Not the congressional vote on raising the debt ceiling. Not the tornadoes in the Mid-West. Not the War on Terror. Nothing.
Breitbart’s desperation to hoist a fake scandal on his dimwitted readers is palpable. Seriously – EVERY SINGLE HEADLINE! It exposes Breitbart as obsessed with advancing his slander. And to make matters worse, Breitbart went on CNN this morning (shame on CNN) and talked about “relationships that Congressman Weiner has been having with women, young women…” That despicable quote was wholly unsupported by even the flimsiest of facts. Breitbart even tried to qualify it later, after he had already set it loose into the mediasphere. He knows very well that that’s all it takes to set ignorant tongues wagging, and that was his intention. His whole existence is reliant on the slobbering imbeciles who live for dirt on their liberal adversaries and don’t care if it’s real or manufactured.
The press has to recognize that Breitbart has zero credibility. How many incidents have to arise where he is proven to have fabricated videos, documents, and testimony, before the media stops treating him as if he were their peer? It’s just embarrassing to see them sully themselves by cozying up to this dirtbag. It has got to stop.
The Fox News Party candidate for president and former half-term governor, Sarah Palin, did what she does best this Memorial Day weekend: Exploit others to promote herself.
Palin and Fox are playing an unethical and dishonest game to fatten their wallets. When will Fox News either admit that they know she isn’t running for president, or take her off the air until she comes clean? And more importantly, when will the brain-dead media stop salivating every time the Palin bell rings? The press has no more business hyping substanceless photo-ops for Sarah Palin than they would for Ronald McDonald.
By the way, what’s the difference between Fox News and McDonald’s? One sells cheap crap with lots of filler & seasoning to masses with no taste. The other is a fast food restaurant.
[Update] Palin spoke to Greta Van Susteren of Fox News (of course) and complained about the media saying “this isn’t a campaign tour.” and that “it’s not about me, it’s not a publicity-seeking tour.” Of course not. She is only traveling around in a massive custom bus with full exterior graphics of herself and her non-campaign logo, One Nation (stolen from the union rally last year in Washington, D.C.). Clearly she just wants to be left alone.
Palin also said “I’m like A) I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media.” First of all, I want to point out that there was no B or C, etc. She keeps her lists short as befits her attention span. Secondly, I agree with her. she doesn’t owe anything to the mainstream media, and they owe nothing to her. Stop following her, dumbasses!
When Glenn Beck announced that he was launching a new discount service similar to the popular Groupon, it was widely dismissed as just another obvious vehicle for Beck to squeeze more money from his glassy-eyed congregation. He is rapidly developing a new brand of consumerism that merges the Home Shopping Channel with the Christian Broadcasting Network were it all presented by the John Birch Society.
The first offering at Beck’s Markdown.com was innocent enough – a chocolate retailer that aggregated unique sweets that almost anyone could enjoy. The second offering, however, is a different story.
That’s right – LifeLock. One of Beck’s biggest and most reliable advertisers on both radio and television. I’m sure the decision to feature LifeLock on his new web site had nothing to do with the fact that they have been paying him handsomely to sponsor his broadcasts for years. It was a totally objective choice with no ulterior motives or backroom profiteering. Uh huh.
Beck didn’t wait long to reveal the true intent of this knockoff site. He could have promoted a half dozen innocuous businesses before shilling for one of his sponsors. The fact that he didn’t wait tells us just how confident he is that his followers won’t object to being scammed so openly. They are so securely under his spell that no effort to disguise his self-serving intent is required. And they undoubtedly believe the mission statement Beck posted for his service:
“Markdown.com is a different kind of e-commerce site. Sure, we care about revenue and profit, but we care about honesty and integrity just as much. We believe in value, but we also believe in values—the idea that we should be guided by a set of principles that transcends money.”
Apparently disclosing that the product you are supposedly promoting impartially is actually your long-time sponsor is not amongst the set of principles that guide Beck. What’s more, Beck presents LifeLock as a company that adheres to high standards of integrity and says that…
“…the idea that you should always do what’s right, no matter the situation – can be found in everything the company does.”
That, however, is not the view of investigators at the Federal Trade Commission who charged Lifelock with “operating a scam and con operation.” The FTC, along with 35 state attorneys general, levied a fine of $12 million against the company for “deceptive business practices and for failing to secure sensitive customer data.” In short, investigators found that LifeLock failed to provide any of the services they promised.
LifeLock is just one of Beck’s advertisers with dubious histories. Goldline, TaxMasters, and FreeScore, have all been under legal scrutiny and drawn rebukes from consumer advocates. But that hasn’t stopped Beck from shilling for these firms and now hoisting LifeLock to a position of honor at his phony coupon shop. It just makes you wonder what’s next: Glenn Beck’s Patriot Tears?
What we do know is that she recently hired a chief of staff. She stars in a new bio-pic that will premiere next month in the early primary state of Iowa. She told Fox News that she has the “fire in the belly.” And now she has announced that she is embarking on a nationwide bus tour to “educate and energize Americans.”
Earlier this year Fox News suspended Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum pending their decisions on whether they were running for president. There was far less activity on their part indicating a candidacy, yet they were suspended and given a deadline for making their intentions known. When the deadline expired their contracts were terminated even though they still had not declared a candidacy.
Why isn’t Palin being held to the same standard? There is more than enough evidence that she is contemplating being a candidate seriously enough to warrant her suspension from Fox News. She can be reinstated later if she decides not to run.
How can Fox cover the campaign with her on their payroll? Her commentary with regard to the other candidates is tainted by the fact that she may be competing against them soon. One has to wonder if Fox already knows her decision and is keeping it under wraps to permit her, and Fox, to earn more money and promote her campaign.
Will Fox cover the premiere of her movie? Will they cover her bus tour? If she then announces that she’s running, didn’t she then get suspect contributions to her campaign from Fox? More broadly, no one in the press should cover her movie or her bus tour. She refuses to engage the press or the people in any open forum. Her only methods of communication are through Fox News, Facebook, and Twitter. Last week Palin told Sean Hannity that
“Candidates need to get their message out through the new social media. Don’t even participate in that goofy game that’s been played for too many years with the leftist lame-stream media.”
Fine. Let her have it her way. Until Palin is willing to stand before the people, or the people’s representatives in the press, she should be ignored. The press has no obligation to participate in the marketing of her brand.
Fox entered this year with five potential GOP presidential candidates in their employ. They still have two remaining. It is time for Fox to insist that Palin either declare for office or step aside. If she doesn’t, Fox should pull her off the air immediately. That’s what a responsible media enterprise would do. Which is why Fox will probably not do it.
“”We are not changing Sarah Palin’s status,” Bill Shine, Fox News executive vice president of programming, told The Cutline.”
If anything, I think this indicates that Palin is NOT running. It seems unlikely that Fox would go to the trouble of affirming her status if they thought they would have to reverse themselves in a few weeks. I think they already know she isn’t running and are keeping it secret because once she is out of the contest her relevance (and value) crumbles. It’s a shame because I was hoping she would run. I even made a campaign bumper sticker for her and a possible Tea Party running mate that would save a lot of money and recycle some old campaign materials that were never used:
James O’Keefe And Hannah Giles are being tried for violations of California’s privacy laws. The plaintiff, ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera, contends that O’Keefe and Giles unlawfully recorded conversations with him that were later edited to misrepresent his remarks.
O’Keefe and Giles filed separate motions to dismiss the case and the court ruled against (pdf) both of them.
O’Keefe claimed that, the California law not withstanding, he had a First Amendment right to surreptitiously record and publish private conversations with anyone he felt like. The court disagreed saying that the law prohibiting recordings to which both parties have not agreed, and for which there was a reasonable expectation of privacy, did not have an exception for the media. The court cited precedent that said:
“…the state may not intrude into the proper sphere of the news media to dictate what they should publish and broadcast, but neither may the media play tyrant to the people by unlawfully spying on them in the name of newsgathering.”
Giles motion contended that she was not liable because O’Keefe was the one doing the recording. This laughable defense misunderstood the law to argue that only the person holding the recording device was liable. But it also demonstrated the shallowness of her loyalty as she quickly heaped all the blame on her partner to save her own skin.
Having ruled against both motions, the pair will go to trial for their offenses. If justice is served this won’t be the only time, and they won’t be the only ones. Ya hear that Andrew Breitbart?
In a defensive posting on Andrew Breitbart’s BigJournalism, Shapiro complains about the criticism his book has received. He is dismayed that critics allegedly focused on the parts referencing Sesame Street, but then proceeds to bash Sesame Street for the remainder of the posting.
Is Sarah Palin running for president? Who knows.
James O’Keefe And Hannah Giles are being tried for violations of California’s privacy laws. The plaintiff, ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera, contends that O’Keefe and Giles unlawfully recorded conversations with him that were later edited to misrepresent his remarks.