Rupert Murdoch: Media Vulture

Posted by on December 1, 2009 at 5:51 pm. NO Comments :

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch appeared today at a conference sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission. His address touched upon many of the issues he has been peddling recently regarding journalism’s future and the Internet.

Murdoch continues to make noises about locking up his content behind pay walls. That is as unlikely now as it was when he first proposed it. Few will pay for the disinformation he calls news. He still believes that Google is stealing his product and he repeats his threat to de-list it from the search giant. We’re still waiting, Rupert. And we’re still waiting for you to stop stealing the content of others on your Fox News and Fox Nation web sites, where you do exactly what you are accusing Google and other aggregators of doing.

Among the more intriguing remarks he made today were those associated with the government’s involvement, or lack thereof, with media. In Murdoch’s view the government ought to stay away from any effort to help the struggling industry. By this he means that anything resembling a bailout ought to be avoided. Let the weaker players fail. At the same time he is anxious for government to get involved with respect to reforming regulations. Particularly those that impose limits on cross-ownership.

What Murdoch wants is for the government to refrain from any initiative that might help shaky media enterprises because he is more than happy to see them fail. They are his competition. When they go under, his market share increases, at least potentially. And while many media firms are struggling financially, Murdoch has the resources to deficit finance his own operations until the economy improves. Then he can scoop up new business and failed businesses at bargain rates. Especially if he is freed from the ownership caps he hopes to be able to eliminate.

It is a cynical and cold-hearted strategy that feeds off of the misfortune of others. And it is quintessentially Rupert.

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Glenn Beck’s Fear For Profit Paranoia Play

Posted by on November 30, 2009 at 1:59 pm. NO Comments :

Sitting through an episode of Glenn Beck’s program on Fox News, an emotional punch is delivered that is not much different in substance than a disaster movie like 2012. It is jam-packed with terror-inducing scenes of catastrophe, destruction, conspiracy, and death.

For example in Beck’s own words:

  • …there are people intentionally destroying our country.
  • It is time to prepare yourself for some tough times.
  • You’re gonna see a black and white world, man, that is nothing but destruction and ugly.
  • …creating the path to America’s destruction.
  • Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing.
  • They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered.

Beck wants you to “be afraid…be very afraid.” But this is not just a case of Apocalyptic fever. This is Glenn Beck’s marketing plan. The dramaturgy practiced by Beck is deliberately designed to manufacture fear and panic. It is not coincidental that Beck’s broadcasting company is called Mercury Radio Arts. It is a perverse homage to Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre on the Air. The Mercury Theatre, of course, was best known for causing a nationwide panic with “War of the Worlds,” a radio broadcast of a fictional invasion by martians. For Beck to name his company after a theatrical enterprise notorious for fabricating an hysterical frenzy tells you all that is necessary to know about his motives. He is virtually admitting his intention to concoct phony spectacles of dread. Beck wants you to believe that we are at war. And while the enemy may not be Martians, they are still mysterious, secretive, and deadly. And, oh yes, aliens (i.e. Mexicans, Kenyans, Socialists, etc.).

Beck’s entire program is a hoax that is comparable to recent notorious hoaxes like Balloon Boy and Sarah Palin. And it is reaching its intended market. Earlier this year Beck appeared on Fox & Friends and called President Obama a racist who has “a deep-seated hatred of white people.” In response, advertisers abandoned the program in droves. The ads that remain reflect the fear mongering tone of the show’s content. Rosland Capital and Goldline International are gold traders banking on the decline of the dollar and the economy. LifeLock and Consumer Debt Advocates peddle services aimed at people afraid of identity theft and collection agencies. The National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Fox News affiliated Wall Street Journal, are all publications that preach gloomy prospects for the administration, and therefore, the country and the world. The remainder are a mix of old-age products for insurance, retirement, or cosmetics, along with advocacy ads that promote tea parties and bash health care reform.

The category of advertiser has remained at best second rate. These are not the sort of top tier enterprises that a highly rated program would be expected to attract. Procter & Gamble, GEICO, Wal-Mart, etc., were all advertisers prior to Beck’s remarks about the President. They have not returned despite predictions by some media analysts that the ad boycott would be short-lived. And contrary to Fox PR flacks, they have lost millions of dollars due to the anti-Beck campaign that was spearheaded by Color of Change.

This ad slump for Beck comes at a time when the industry is bouncing back from a long recession. Yet Beck is still compelled to not only accept lower tier ads, but he is also forced to personally shill for these services. The gold dealers get plugged by Beck during his program as he warns his viewers to get out of the stock market and stockpile gold and guns instead. He also pitches another advertiser, The Villages retirement community in Florida, by appearing there to promote his book and announce the commencement of his ludicrous and paranoid “PLAN.”

The point of all of this is to leave you depressed, discouraged, and desperate. It is a persistent message that permeates Beck’s program and continues through the commercial breaks. As a marketing strategy it has the benefit of producing viewers who are addicted to the rhetoric of hopelessness and the clannish appeal of membership in a club that regards itself as the only clear-eyed community of truth seekers. At the same time it creates consumers who cannot resist the products that promise them security and salvation. There is no more motivated buyer than one who believes his life is dependent on a purchase.

The sad part is that there are way too many people who are buying Beck’s snake oil. It is making him richer and his viewers, and the country, poorer. It is a strategy that brings a whole new meaning to the phrase Caveat Emptor – Let the buyer beware.


CNN’s Howard Kurtz On Glenn Beck, Fox News And Whores

Posted by on November 29, 2009 at 4:21 pm. NO Comments :

Today on CNN’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz raised an issue of obvious hypocrisy on the part of Fox News. The segment addressed an incident a couple of weeks ago when Rep. Alan Grayson referred to an aide to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as a “K Street whore.” Fox News jumped on the comment and repeatedly criticized Grayson for making an insensitive and sexist remark. Grayson has since apologized.

A few days ago Glenn Beck used similarly offensive language when referring to Sen. Mary Landrieu. Beck said that Landrieu was “hooking” but “not cheap.” Kurtz took this opportunity to upbraid Fox News for being less than fair and balanced because they didn’t report Beck’s remarks or criticize him. Beck has not apologized.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain that Kurtz properly observed Fox’s hypocrisy. However, Kurtz left something out of the story that many people might consider relevant. You see, Mark Halperin, editor-at-large and senior political analyst for TIME, had something to say about Landrieu as well. He posted this modified photo of the senator on his TIME web site, The Page.

Why didn’t Kurtz take Halperin to task for a visual commentary that was just as offensive and perhaps more repulsive? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Kurtz’s employer, CNN, is owned by Time Warner, and so is Halperin’s employer, TIME? It is unlikely that Kurtz was not aware of the Halperin incident, as it caused such a ruckus he was forced to remove the picture.

Kurtz’s impartiality has been questioned on numerous occasions. Most frequently with regard to his role as a media analyst for both CNN and the Washington Post. Critics have complained that he cannot serve both masters and expect to be regarded as thorough and neutral, while he insists that he has always been tough on every news enterprise on which he reports. However, in this case, he blatantly lets his corporate cousin off the hook.

If Kurtz wants to be taken seriously, he needs to begin acting like an impartial observer. All that he accomplishes with this sort of hackery is to embarrass himself and the news bureaus that employ him. But on one level we can have a fair measure of confidence: When Kurtz reports on the behavior of whores, he knows what he’s talking about.

To his credit, Kurtz did challenge Jim Geraghty, the right-wing lip-servicer from the National Review, who tried to excuse Beck’s boorishness, by saying…

“Oh, I see, Grayson should be held accountable because he’s an elected official, and Glenn Beck is in the gasbag business, like many of us on television.”

That’s telling him – and yourself too.


Glenn Beck’s Sermon On Shared Sacrifice Will Make You Sick

Posted by on November 25, 2009 at 12:47 pm. 2 Comments :

There’s no doubt about it. The United States economy is still reeling from the effects of one of the worst recessions in its history. It is piling up massive debt and struggling to produce even modest growth and job creation. At the same time it is embroiled in two wars overseas that are costly on matters both fiscal and fatal.

In response, Congressman David Obey floated a proposal that a new tax on high income earners be imposed to cover the costs associated with any escalation of activities in Afghanistan. This sensible suggestion is an attempt to restore responsibility to wartime economics. If the nation is going to engage in an expensive adventure that puts its citizens lives at risk, it ought to be willing to ask those who remain at home to chip in and insure that the military and personal needs of our soldiers are met. It’s called shared sacrifice.

From Glenn Beck’s perspective, however, this is just another political maneuver by Democrats to hasten the socialistic utopia Beck imagines they are plotting. He insists that it is a continuance of President Obama’s campaign to redistribute the wealth. In a way, Beck is right. It is an initiative to redistribute wealth from chickenhawks like Beck to soldiers on the battlefield. And Beck will have none of that.

In his patented drool-dripping diction, Beck commences reasonably enough by declaring that war “should qualify as a shared sacrifice.” But then he veers into irrational demands that strain any effort to understand.

“What sacrifice are you willing to share? Shave your armpits, sign up for a tour of duty and share the sacrifice.”

Is he directing this exclusively to women? Or are all recruits expected to shave under their arms these days? It may be best to set that aside for the time being and focus, not on armpits, but on Beck’s call to arms. What is notable about Beck berating others to enlist is that he never did so. Not in his youth, nor for the current wars in which he claims to believe. Beck was 37 years old in 2001. He could have signed up after 9/11, and during any of the five years thereafter. But apparently shared sacrifice was secondary to seeking radio stardom.

Beck is not only opposed to sharing sacrifices by spreading the costs of war to all citizens, he believes that the sacrifice Americans ought to be making is in the area of their own well being. He argues that domestic initiatives like health care should be curtailed in favor of war funding. And his specific approach to this theory is particularly grotesque – and false:

“I don’t see Americans dying in the streets as they’re waiting in line to the hospital because they’ve been shot in Detroit. They get in to a hospital. You know where I do see them dying? Afghanistan. Nobody died because they didn’t have health care. Nobody!”

I’m quite certain that Beck is telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t “see Americans dying in the streets.” He certainly wouldn’t see them in the streets of his gated community in Connecticut. A media celebrity who earns tens of millions of dollars every year is not likely to encounter many shooting victims in urban Detroit. But even more egregious is his claim that nobody has died because they didn’t have health care. It would not have taken much research to discover this report published by Harvard Medical School just a little over a month ago:

Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

Glenn Beck is a wealthy, well-insured, elitist who has never served in the military. Yet he is comfortable lecturing everyone else on what it means to share sacrifice. He is content to allow thousands of Americans to die here at home – ten times the number every year than have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in eight years – so that he doesn’t have to pay a little more of his millions in taxes. And then he has the gall to belittle others for failing to show due consideration for the troops.

An equally disturbing aspect of this is that, in pursuit of his greedy selfishness, Beck will deliberately misinform his legions of deluded disciples about the facts related to health insurance deficiencies and abuses. With his proclivity for purposeful deception he joins his Fox colleague, Bill O’Reilly, who still insists that there are no homeless veterans.

The only lessons to be learned from Beck’s sermon on shared sacrifice are sadistic, shameless, self-serving, specious, and quite literally sickening.


If You’re Afraid Of Fox News…

Posted by on November 24, 2009 at 1:26 pm. 6 Comments :

Conservative blowhards on Fox News and elsewhere have made a mantra out of taunting President Obama for avoiding Fox. They have repeatedly implied that if you’re afraid of Fox News how can you stand up to Iran or Al Qaeda.

Of course the answer is that no one is “afraid” of Fox. Choosing to refrain from submitting yourself to a disreputable tabloid that is overtly hostile to you and broadcasts more lies than truth is not fear, it’s common sense. Obama hasn’t accepted any interview requests from the National Enquirer or Rush Limbaugh’s fanzine either.

Yet no one on the right seems to be the least bit critical of Sarah Palin, whose current book tour has studiously avoided almost every national TV venue except for Fox. The non-Fox appearances were with notably entertainment focused hosts. So far she has visited with…

– Oprah Winfrey.
– Barbara Walters
– Sean Hannity
– Bill O’Reilly
– Greta Van Susteren

We can add Rush Limbaugh to that list and Gretchen Carlson of Fox & Fiends and, coming soon, Glenn Beck. This pattern of dodging all but the most friendly venues mirrors Palin’s behavior during the election season last year. She did not appear on a single Sunday news program for the duration of campaign, or since for that matter. She may be the most sheltered public figure in history.

Obviously she is afraid to encounter any questioner that has not been previously vetted and approved. Her handlers will not permit her to venture outside of her safety zone. This is all the more unusual considering that authors on book tours ordinarily crave attention and maximum exposure for the sake of book sales. But in Palin’s case, a decision has clearly been made to keep her cloistered amongst her congregation at Fox and well managed book signings.

One look at the photos on Palin’s Facebook page tell you something about her congregation. First of all, they are conspicuously white. I could not find a single face of color in the crowds. But one picture, more than all the others, truly illustrates Palin’s fan base:

The concerted effort to keep Palin circulating amongst devotees like this is paying off so far. She is selling boatloads of books and avoiding any unnecessary controversy. And despite shunning most of the media, they are still giving her plenty of press. That seems like a rather unfairly distributed arrangement. Perhaps it would be a better idea if they were to ignore her for as long as she ignores them. Why should the media serve as her PR agency when she treats them as if they don’t exist?

Sarah Palin may not be afraid of Fox News, but she is plainly afraid of everything else.


CNN Contributor Is New RNC Communications Director

Posted by on November 24, 2009 at 9:57 am. 1 Comments :

The Republican National Committee just hired Alex Castellanos to head their communications efforts. Castellanos replaces Trevor Francis who was fired because he wasn’t getting RNC chair, Michael Steele, enough publicity.

This appears to a move toward a more aggressive posture by the RNC. Steele has been wildly ineffective in his role as chairman, generating more ridicule than anything else. His response to that is to bring in a media enforcer to harden the GOP message machine.

Castellanos is best known for his scorched earth and racially charged themes in his political campaigns, including those of former Sen. Jesse Helms. For several years Castellanos has been another talking head on CNN’s political panels even though he has remained a paid advisor to Republican candidates and causes. This has always been a clear violation of journalistic ethics, yet CNN has compounded their ethical blindness with this announcement:

“Castellanos is a CNN contributor, but the network learned independently of his new role at the RNC.”

So even though Castellanos is a CNN employee, he did not inform his bosses that he was assuming new duties on behalf of a political party. CNN had to learn this from someone else. And still, there was no indication in the announcement that CNN would cut Castellanos loose from his role as a commentator. Apparently having partisan conflicts of interest is not a problem for CNN, even when they are deliberately withheld.

Well, that’s the “liberal” media for ya.

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Fox News Calls It Quits And Will Cease Broadcasting

Posted by on November 23, 2009 at 12:47 pm. 2 Comments :

In a major announcement that will rattle the foundation of cable news, Fox News has announced that they are closing up shop and will end all broadcasting activities in the near future. The memo from Fox management that went out today was somewhat ambiguous as to timing, but the message was clear:

The specific language in the internal memo referenced the recent spate of “errors” made by presenters and production staff. These errors, which many believe were intentional, include airing videos of rallies with Tea Baggers and Sarah Palin that gave false impressions of attendance. Therefore, Fox announced a new “zero tolerance” policy for mistakes. The practical effect of such a policy, however, is to go dark. Given the voluminous quantity of mistakes and misstatements that are part and parcel of the culture of Fox News, it would be too costly and time consuming to keep up with the corrections.

Here is an example of the sloppy production work by Fox employees. It features a discussion of Sarah Palin’s new book, “Going Rogue” but displays a picture of a book critical of Palin called “Going Rouge.”

It’s too bad they didn’t use this version of Palin’s book:
“Going Reggae.”

Sarah Palin Going Reggae

The plan, according to the memo, is for Fox to scale down prior to signing off: And employees who fall short in the interim face serious repurcussions:

“[E]ffective immediately, Newsroom is going to “zero base” our newscast production. That means we will start by going to air with only the most essential, basic, and manageable elements.”

“Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the “mistake chain,” and those who supervise them. That may include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination.”

In the event that Fox executives reconsider this decision, they will have their work cut out for them. Media Matters has documented many more Fox flubs. On the upside, without Fox promoting fringe characters like Palin and Glenn Beck, the Republican Party may recover from their association with the asylum crowd and the extremists who populate the rightist network.


THE PLAN: Glenn Beck’s Ticking Time Bomb For America

Posted by on November 22, 2009 at 3:42 pm. 6 Comments :

The walking Messiah Complex that we know as Glenn Beck has something in store for America. He is not content with having a daily television program, radio broadcast, books, web site, magazine, movies, and live performances. That’s not nearly enough for a megalomaniacal doomsday prophet of Beck’s caliber. He must have more. He must have the attention of every self-deluding dullard that he can herd into his parish. He must have unambiguous devotion. He must have it all. He must have the future.

And that’s why he is developing what he calls “The Plan,” a one hundred year blueprint for the restoration of an America that exists only in his mangled mentality. He longs to return to an era when our founding fathers consumed and polluted our young nation’s natural resources at will. When they slaughtered savage natives and confined them to reservations. When they enriched themselves with the blood and sweat of imported slaves. When voting was the privilege of male landowners. Ah, those were the days.

This is not to say that America’s founders were inherently evil. They had many admirable qualities and ambitions. They drafted a governing document that is still the model for free, democratic societies. But they were not perfect and ought not to be beatified. It is fair to say that a couple of centuries of progress has contributed to our store of wisdom and purpose. It would be foolish to fail to recognize the advances we’ve made and to build on them. Yet that is precisely the path that Beck would have us follow. He has a plan to move us a hundred years – backwards.

Beck’s obsession with plotting out a hundred years of his philosophy was laid out in a speech to his disciples yesterday. To be clear, it was a speech laying out his obsession, not any real philosophy. There doesn’t actually appear to be one. And as is his practice, he focused primarily on the tribulations of our grievous destiny.

Beck: “I’ve done a lot of reading on history the last few years. And I was amazed to find that what we’re experiencing now is really a ticking time bomb that they designed about a hundred years ago at the beginning of the progressive movement.”

A ticking time bomb? Beck’s reading of history has found some sort of Da Vinci coded scheme by a cabal of early twentieth century super-villains determined to destroy an America they would never live to see. These ragtime conspirators lit the fuse a hundred years ago, and today the threat they set in motion serves as Beck’s Apocalyptic siren. It is the trumpeting of the end of days, and in Beck’s ears it is as sure as Gabriel’s horn. Yet it is a fate that is invisible to everyone but Beck. Thank God we have access to his dementia. Otherwise we would never see the bubbling cauldron of calamities right before our eyes. We would be blind to the signs of doom all around us, like the pernicious paintings and sculptures littering Manhattan courtesy of the socialist clan of Rockefeller.

In his speech yesterday, Beck even found hidden clues to the secrets of the Statue of Liberty. She is not what she seems. Beck recited the words carved at her base:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

On the first reading he delivered it hushed tones, almost a whisper, saying that that was the way we had been taught to perceive it. Now I never knew there was a “correct” intonation, but no matter, Beck quickly declares it was wrong. He then commenced a second recitation, this time a cacophony of anger and judgment and spittle running down his chin. This represented the true meaning of the words to him, to which he added, still shouting, “The message is clear…”

“You send the worst of the worst to America.
The people you’ve rejected. The ideas you don’t like.
And freedom will free them. Free their minds.
Liberty will change everything.
My friends, we are in troubled, troubled times.”

That is Beck’s vision of America’s welcome at Ellis Island. It is not an embrace of the world’s downtrodden that they may find peace and fellowship. It is a condemnation of inferiors that they may seek repair. That these diseased and broken souls may be healed. He literally describes Liberty’s poem as “an insult” to foreign tyrants, rather than the appeal to hope that the rest of us heard. It is a vision that perfectly fits Beck’s fixation on creating idols and demons and saviors.

And after excoriating the progressives of yore for their conniving villainy, Beck triumphantly proclaims that “two can play that game.” This is his way of announcing that he too can shape evil plots. He too can form cabals intent on destroying the country. He is openly alerting us that he too can plant a ticking time bomb in America’s foundation.

Beck regards this as his sacred mission. He preaches it to his flock. And over the next year he plans to hold seminars to further indoctrinate his disciples with disinformation and fables that he will convince them are true. And as foreboding as this seems, in the end, Beck cannot prevail. His brand of gloom has never been strong enough to overcome the indomitable optimism of the American people. But sadly, while America will survive Glenn Beck, not all Americans will. And that is why we have an obligation to confront and to counter him. On behalf of those he misleads, and the victims they produce, we must not leave the field to his cult of ignorance.


Glenn Beck’s 100 Year Plan: A Century Of Idiocy

Posted by on November 21, 2009 at 5:37 pm. 3 Comments :

After spending most of this year denigrating ACORN and the general notion of community organizers, Glenn Beck is now forming his own FAKE-ORN (FAKE Organization of Right-wing Nuts). The big announcement that Beck has been teasing all week is apparently an effort to corral his disciples into an electoral movement that will endure for a hundred years. Does that mean we will have to have him around for that long? {{{shudder}}}

“Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. He says he will promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of conventions across the country featuring conservative speakers, all leading up to a rally in Washington in August to coincide with the release of his book on conservative proposals for the country.”

The nature of Beck’s new enterprise is precisely what community organizers have always done and Beck has long disparaged: bring people together, educate them, and promote their participation in civic affairs. It will be interesting to see what sort of voter registration plans he has in store. Will he seek to serve disenfranchised communities that have been ignored by the political class? Or will he venture into the suburbs to sign up as many Joe the Plumbers as he can find?

Beck told a local Florida Fox affiliate that his conventions will be educational gatherings where he will teach “ethics, history, finance, community organizing and everything American’s need to know about how the government works.” These classes will be something on the order of Hannibal Lechter’s courses on vegetarian cuisine. We can rest assured that anyone graduating from Beck’s seminars will be less informed, or more ill-informed, than when they went in. As for the event in August, it is planned for August 28, 2010, which is the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. That’s an interesting bit of scheduling for a guy who called the nation’s first African-America president a “racist,” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

What do you suppose triggered this fundamental transformation in Beck’s thinking? Why is he suddenly an avid community organizer? I wonder if it has anything to do with the whole affair coinciding with the release of his next book. Beck’s utter lack of expertise in the areas enumerated will prove useful for the building of his army of imbeciles, and will surely achieve his goal of selling more books and expanding the congregation of his TV church.

The run-up to this announcement was repeatedly plugged on his program last week. It was sold as a game-changer for him and his show:

“This show is changing next year. We are moving forward. Cause I’m tired of it. We are going to unveil a plan this Friday…uh…this Saturday in Florida. I am going to be at The Villages in Florida. I’m gonna bring it to you on television if you can’t be there. But I wanted to be able to look people in the eye. I want to see your commitment back. Coming this January, my whole approach changes on this program. There is a problem here, America. And I’m gonna have the…I don’t care what people say about me. Personal responsibility is dead in this country. It is time that we get the little paddles – poof – and bring the body back.”

As it turns out, Beck’s concept of personal responsibility is just another campaign to get conservatives to the polls. The appalling thing about this is that Beck is using his platform on Fox to conduct this campaign. It is not particularly surprising with respect to the role Fox has long played in the media. If anyone doubted Anita Dunn’s assertion that Fox is a wing of the Republican Party, this should allay those doubts once and for all. But the brazen openness with which Fox is now asserting itself as a partisan enterprise should disturb every American and certainly every journalist.

This is not the only example of Fox’s bias. Sean Hannity has a long record of promoting Republican politics. As has Fox contributor and fill-in host, Laura Ingraham. Fox is even the television home to two potential Republican presidential candidates: Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Beck’s web site for his 9/12 project is hosted by Foxnews.com. And the Fox Nation is an unabashed Democrat bashing web venue.

The relationship between Fox and the Republican Party is iron clad. There is no way they can plausibly deny it any longer. The participation of Fox presenters in clearly partisan activities cannot be ignored. Undoubtedly, Fox will broadcast Beck’s rally in August next year. The rally is characterized by Beck as…

“…the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.”

The Plan is the title of the book he will be releasing in conjunction with the rally. In the book he will outline his “100 year plan” to bring the country back from the brink of…whatever it is Beck imagines we’re on the brink of. The fact that Beck is embarking on a 100 year plan says something about his Messianic ambitions. Perhaps the August rally is his attempt to gather the flock for the boarding of the Ark.

Late summer of 2010 promises to be a season of protest. In addition to the August rally for The Plan, Beck is still promoting his second annual 9/12 Project rally that next year will take place on 9/11. The thought of Beck exploiting that day with an event that is known for hostile protests of a decidedly political nature is flat out disgusting. That, along with his August rally date really makes you wonder what this guy is thinking (a futile exercise in the best of circumstances).

Finally, there is a possibility that this isn’t partisan at all with regard to Republicans and Democrats. Beck may be aiming for third party status and an assault on the Washington establishment. In that event he might actually be doing the Democrats a favor, because very few of them would migrate to his camp. Consequently, he would peel off disaffected Republicans and clear a path for more Democratic victories. However, it is possible that his voters, having no actual third party candidates for whom to vote, would either have to console themselves with Republicans or stay home. But if he succeeds in registering enough people who ultimately vote with the GOP, that could sway some contests. So in the end it is still a operation that could favorably impact one party over another.

With evidence like that, and all of the other overtly biased behavior of Fox News, it would be fair to wonder when the Federal Elections Commission might get involved. It seems that they would have an interest in a network that is so shamelessly contributing to a political cause via its expensive airtime and commentary. If they are going to be giving away such valuable assets, some regulatory agency ought to be paying attention.


Sarah Palin: Quitting Rogue, Hardly An American Life

Posted by on November 20, 2009 at 1:59 pm. 2 Comments :

Sarah Palin’s book tour is sweeping across the nation. Thousands of Tea Baggers are enduring long lines and inclement weather for a chance to see their new heroine and get her signature on the book that was ghost written for her. However, not all of these appearances are going as planned. In Indiana, Palin left her supporters in the lurch. People who had purchased books and were issued wristbands assuring them a signature, ended up booing her and protesting as she departed. They should not have been surprised. One thing Palin is known for is quitting before her job is done.
—
This just in: Palin apologizes to Indiana fans:

I’ve been told that yesterday there were supporters in Noblesville who stood in long lines for hours in the cold and rain, and the book signing event ended without a chance to say hello to everyone who showed up. I am so sorry. We are working on a solution for those who were left behind. I apologize.

A solution for those left behind? I thought they were doomed.
—
The cover of Palin’s book says more about her than the 400 pages inside. The decision to title it “Going Rogue” could not be more revealing. First of all, let’s take a look at what “rogue” means:

  1. A dishonest, knavish person; scoundrel.
  2. A playfully mischievous person; scamp: The youngest boys are little rogues.
  3. A tramp or vagabond.

Furthermore, the colloquially meaning of “going rogue” usually refers to an animal (elephant; GOP?) with an abnormally savage or unpredictable disposition. It may also refer to a person who is uncontrollable or out of the mainstream. Are these really the sort of positive representations that Palin intended?

It is also notable that the subtitle of her book is no more original on her part than the ghost written talking points and fabrications in the interior. I found fifteen other books subtitled “An American Life.”

This is an interesting congregation: Ben Franklin, Oral Roberts, Ronald Reagan, D.W. Griffith, Burt Lancaster, Martha Washington, Joe Papp, Andrew Mellon, Jeb Magruder, Condoleezza Rice, Sinclair Lewis, Jesse Owens, Ben Hogan, Daniel Boone, and (Friend Of The Devil) Jerry Garcia.

In that company, Palin seems a slight bit diminished. How exactly does serving half a term as governor and deep-sixing a presidential campaign translate into American icon status? For good or ill, everyone else listed above has undertaken something for which they will be remembered. I still can’t think of anything Palin has done that would be worth recalling – except for her contribution to the career of Tina Fey and other comedians. For that reason alone I am fervently hoping she runs in 2012, and taps Glenn Beck or Michael Steele as her number two.