How Do You Solve A Problem Like Glenn Beck?

Posted by on September 15, 2010 at 12:34 pm. 11 Comments :

Glenn Beck has managed to elevate himself to a unique position in American demagoguery. He descends from a genetic family that includes Father Charles Coughlin, Morton Downey Jr., and Rev. Jim Jones, with a little of Tammy Faye Bakker’s trademarked tearyness thrown in. He has broadened his reach by virtue of his radio and television shows, his book publishing, and his Internet sites. He aims to rival the omnipotence of the Messiah he thinks he is becoming.

Unfortunately, Beck has also assumed a position that Mark Twain once ascribed to the weather: Everyone talks about Beck, but nobody does anything about him.

The problem is that there aren’t many avenues of attack available for Beck’s opponents. He cannot be exiled from the Internet. His books will be feverishly hoarded by his devotees. Radio is already hopelessly enshrouded in Dark Ages conservatism. And on television, the most sensitive medium to market forces, Beck has found a home where he is welcome despite a successful advertiser embargo.

It’s television that poses the greatest challenge. Beck’s presence has taken root at Fox News. His invulnerability to lack of revenue, and even ratings declines, is a revealing example of the problem faced by his critics as well as his bosses at Fox and/or News Corp. Not that Fox is interested in jettisoning their deluded prophet. But moving up the ladder there may be evidence that the patience of some News Corp honchos could be wearing thin. Members of Rupert Murdoch’s family, who will inherit his media empire, have not been shy about their distaste for the wild-eyed antics of Beck and his ilk. Murdoch’s son-in-law publicly said that he was ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes.

However, there is a dilemma that any Beck foe would encounter within or without Murdochia. And that is the cult-like devotion of Beck’s disciples. If Fox made an attempt to cancel his program, or even reschedule it to a less attractive time slot, the blow back from the BeckPods would be hurricane force. It wouldn’t make any difference if there was a legitimate reason for the move related to revenue or ratings. Beck’s Brigades would assert that it was censorship, oppression, tyranny. They would, of course, blame it on President Obama and his coterie of czars. And they would make Fox pay the consequences for caving in. This puts Fox at Beck’s mercy. The consequences of firing him, even with justification, would be too severe.

Consequently, the only way to liberate us from the cesspool of maniacal scare-mongering that is Glenn Beck, is for him to deliver the fuel for his own downfall. Only if he were to bitterly betray his carefully constructed persona would his disciples accept a rejection of him by his media masters. That means some sort of financial impropriety, inexcusable hypocrisy, or best of all, a sex scandal. Seeing as how the first two have occurred with some regularity, that leaves only the third option as plausible.

A couple of weeks ago a writer at the Huffington Post published an article wherein he offered $100,000 to anyone who could produce a sex tape of Beck (who would have the intestinal fortitude to watch?) or provide other evidence of misbehavior. The article was quickly deemed to be inappropriate and was removed from the site for violating its standards.

But when it comes to inappropriate publishing, The Globe Magazine has no such standards to constrain it.


The current cover features a teaser for an article that reveals the “Glenn Beck Sex Tape Scandal and the Mystery Woman Behind It.” [Spoiler Alert: The Mystery Woman is Michelle Obama.] The Globe’s “source” alleges some sort of plot by the First Lady to defend the President by getting rid of his chief critic. Leave it to the Globe to invent a phony sex tape myth that makes Beck the victim of a panicky White House.

While the Huffington Post and the Globe have both ventured into the inane, they have also recognized the most likely path to putting Beck on the fast track to has-been obscurity. Finding the ethical chink in Beck’s celestial armor is the only way to cast him off without arousing the ire of his congregation.

Let’s face it, Beck is no saint. There is almost certainly a closet in his estate(s) that is jam-packed with skeletons. And setting them loose would be a great service to America, to democracy, and to mankind. I’m not going to announce a bounty on Beck’s head as HuffPo did. I’m merely pointing out that the bar to removing Beck from the mediasphere is pretty high, even for the folks at News Corp. And I’m predicting that, if Beck does get canned (as he deserves), it will be because of some revelation that is too embarrassing to overcome, not because of a rational decision related to business or a renewed interest in honesty and journalistic ethics.

I can’t wait.

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This Is Why Glenn Beck Banned Signs On 8/28

Posted by on September 13, 2010 at 11:06 am. 18 Comments :

On Glenn Beck’s Holy Day of Miracles, August 28, 2010, when he promised that it would be a turning point for America; that it would be an awakening; that miracles would happen; that your children would be branded (and that’s a good thing?), the only miracle he was able to identify was that a flock of geese flew overhead. Quick, somebody call the Vatican!

Another notable peculiarity of the BeckFest was that he ordered his disciples to leave all signs, posters, and other expressive regalia, at home. There was speculation at the time that he wanted to avoid a recurrence of previous gatherings that devolved into a swamp of derogatory and offensive signage that ultimately embarrassed the organizers. Well, he was right.

Just two weeks later, the 9/12 Project held a rally sponsored by many of the same people who brought us Beck’s Revival Meeting on the Mall, including Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, It was also attended by the same deluded masses that genuflected before Beck, however, there was no prohibition of poster-boarded speech. The result is this representation of the sign carriers that would surely have graced Beck’s event had he permitted them:

When you leave right-wingers to express their own thoughts, this is what you get. It is an amalgam of threats and hate that they learn from their leaders (i.e. Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Pam Geller, etc.). It is encouraged by conservative institutions like FreedomWorks and the Republican Party and, of course, Fox News.

Some on the right complain that these signs are not representative of their movement. But it simply could not occur with such reliability and frequency if it were not an ingrained part of their message. This is who they are and they cannot run away from it.


On 9/11: Palin And Beck Bash America, Praise Fox News

Posted by on September 12, 2010 at 11:42 am. 4 Comments :

Glenn BeckGlenn Beck and Sarah Palin appeared together at a for-profit Arctic Circle Jerk yesterday, the ninth anniversary of the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. Although Beck said that his speaking fees would be donated to a charity, and that Palin was not being paid, no one explained where the estimated half million dollar ticket receipts would end up. (Hint: Beck’s nose and Palin’s shoe pantry).

Typical of a Palin/Beck enterprise, the profiteering on 9/11 extended into some blatant self promotion and exploitation. The pair joked about their future plans as possible presidential candidates and attacked their rivals in Washington and the press. But what was most disconcerting was their eagerness to disparage the country and dispense fear in place of providing solace on this sad anniversary. Beck was particularly gloomy, warning that complacency has set in:

Beck: We’re in trouble, the country is coming apart at the seams. […] I fear that we are forgetting what it takes. How do we not make the same mistake again?

Sarah PalinThat is vintage Beck, announcing some imagined Armageddon that is threatening to rip the nation apart any day now. Palin, of course, agreed, and pointed her bony, judgmental, finger at President Obama:

Palin: It starts from the top. Those who kind of set the tone in our country that would lead us towards a complacency that is very, very, very dangerous. I fear that is why we are seeing the patterns we’re seeing right now, especially over the last 20 months.

In speaking about those at “the top” who “kind of set the tone,” might she have been referring to former President Bush who famously declared that he didn’t care about Osama Bin Laden, then proved it by letting him get away and carpet bombing an unrelated country of other dark-skinned heathens? Palin never bothered to illuminate for us what patterns she was observing, but since there has not been any increase in domestic terrorism in the last 20 months, they must be visible only to her and those she has infected. And that was not the end of her delusional observations as she invented a new mythical history of the Statue of Liberty:

Palin: This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies.

To be fair, Palin didn’t invent that myth, she learned it from Beck whose ability to concoct reptilian conspiracies is unmatched by asylum-dwellers worldwide. The two of them have much in common philosophically, as well as financially. Both, of course, are employed by Fox News, so it should come as no surprise that they took time away from ignoring 9/11 to pimp their Network of Lies. While praising Beck for representing “why so many citizens never have to apologize for being American,” she made the point that, “It’s a brutal, left-dominated, lamestream, media world out there. What would we do without Fox News?”

Indeed. What would we do? What would we do without a network whose most prominent performer just admitted that it is an openly right-wing propaganda machine? I suppose we would all be apologizing for being American (which I only began doing since the advent of Beck and Palin). And we wouldn’t have Fox News personalities to tell us how much trouble the country is in. And we wouldn’t have been alerted to the unraveling of the nation and it’s separation from God. And we wouldn’t have been able to fork over $225.00 for the privilege of having a couple of ignorant fear mongers shower us with these lies on a day that the rest of the country was memorializing the victims of an historic tragedy.

Update: New video was posted at YouTube that shows a heckler rising to call Beck and Palin hypocrites. She was immediately drowned out by booing, and Palin stepped forward to say, “My son, and his soldier buddies standing over her, they’re protecting your right to say things like that tonight.” Apparently they weren’t protecting that right very well, because as Palin was saying that, the woman was being forcibly ejected from the hall by other attendees.


Fox Nation Forgets To Never Forget

Posted by on September 11, 2010 at 2:31 pm. 3 Comments :

As a remembrance on the anniversary of the 9/11 attack, Fox Nation posted the following graphic and headline:

In their rush to “Never Forget” the Fox Nationalists forgot to insert an image. It may be for the best because in the past they have managed to be thoroughly repulsive by posting images that exploit the tragedy and associate it inappropriately with unrelated people or events (as Drudge did today).

Update: The Fox Nationalists must all be at the Tea Bagger rally in DC because, 24 hours later, the website still hasn’t been corrected.


Fox News Hosts Candidate Debates After Giving $1 Million To GOP

Posted by on September 11, 2010 at 1:26 pm. 1 Comments :

This is precisely why the News Corp donation of a million dollars to the Republican Governor’s Association was such a violation of ethical standards in media and politics.

Fox News Channel Reporters To Moderate Debates For Governor And U.S. Senator

How can we expect any semblance of objectivity from Carl Cameron as he moderates the debate between the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor of Connecticut? We already know that the company that employs him is bankrolling the Republican candidate. It wouldn’t even matter if Cameron were completely above reproach and capable of being a fair moderator. The perception of bias invalidates his participation and that of his employer.

For the record, Cameron is not above reproach. His bias during the presidential campaign of 2004 was plainly apparent. His wife worked for the Bush campaign, which he never disclosed when covering it.

Similarly, Bret Baier cannot be considered an impartial moderator for the senate debate. He has repeatedly reported on the brush with controversy over statements made regarding service in Vietnam of Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate. But Baier has virtually ignored the controversial financing and the association with drug use of former employees of the Republican candidate, Linda McMahon.

During the 2008 election Democrats refused to participate in any primary debates sponsored by Fox News. That would be a good policy to reinstate with regard to this year’s general election.


In Defense Of The Pre-9/11 Mindset: Reprise II

Posted by on September 11, 2010 at 11:02 am. 3 Comments :

On September 11, 2006, I wrote an essay about how the American perception of its place in the world supposedly shifted after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I reprinted it in 2008 because it seemed that so little had changed.

I am reprinting it again today because it addresses some recent occurrences that I could not have anticipated, but apparently did. Most notable the creation of Glenn Beck’s ludicrous 9/12 Project. It’s purpose, according to Beck, was to remind us all of how we felt on the day after the World Trade Center attack. He describes his recollection as one that was full of unity and hope. Was he still on drugs?

My recollection is below. Suffice it to say that it is infused with more fear, confusion, and disgust, at what just occurred. If Beck had named his project after 9/22 or 10/3, after we had some time to compose ourselves and shape a forward vision, it might have made more sense. But on 9/12 most Americans were shocked, trembling, and seeking answers. It is not a day to which they would want to return.

And so…my defense of the Pre-9/11 mindset:

In September of 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney, in a sinister demonization of Democrats, warned that…

“if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and it will fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact, these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we’re not really at war.”

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is much maligned as mindsets go. Disdain is heaped upon it as if it were a discarded hypothesis. There is now a stigma associated with a worldview that was perfectly acceptable 24 hours prior. And a cadre of power hungry fear merchants is restlessly hawking the notion that everything we thought we knew has withered into irrelevance. The Post-9/11ers propose that an imaginary line has been drawn that illuminates the moral and intellectual differences between those who stand on one side or the other. So what exactly does it mean to be 9/10ish?

I remember clearly what was on my mind. I was still upset that a pretend cowboy, whose intellectual marbles rattled around vacantly in his 2 gallon hat, had gotten away with stealing an election. I was recalling, with renewed appreciation, an era of domestic surplus and international cooperation. Or as The Onion headline put it when Bush was first elected, “Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.”

9/11 was undoubtedly an unwelcome milestone in American history. But the idea that everything changed on that day is shallow and puerile. The history of human civilization reveals that we simply do not change that much from one century to the next. And the events that actually do precipitate change are rarely the ones we presume them to be. There was terrorism before 9/11. There were birthdays and funerals and parking tickets and snow cones and life’s everyday extraordinary spectrum of pleasure no matter how painful.

What changed was that a nation that was once perceived to be inviolable and courageous was now seen as vulnerable and afraid. Like a child lost in a crowd, America was searching for a guardian, but what we got was no angel. As President Bush took to the mound of rubble for his megaphone moment, he was not alone. He was accompanied by a media that sought to construct a hero where none stood. I must admit that it was an ambitious undertaking considering the weakness of the raw material. They took an inarticulate, persistently mediocre, dynastic runt, who on September tenth was considered by many to be Crawford’s lost idiot, and transformed him into a statesman overnight. The enormity of this achievement underscores the power of the media.

My Pre-9/11 Mindset was thrust into fear on that transitory day because I knew that the imbecile we were stuck with in the White House was incapable of reacting appropriately to the threat. I remember vainly trying to persuade previously reasonable people that if they thought Bush was a moron the day before, there was nothing in his breakfast that infused him with wisdom on that sad morning.

What transpired since has, regrettably, proven me right. We toppled the Taliban but let the 9/11 commander escape. Now the remnants of the Taliban are rising again and creating havoc in an unprepared and unstable Afghanistan. We were misled into an unrelated conflagration in Iraq via fear and deception. Now tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been liberated – liberated from the confines of their physical bodies. It’s too bad that these liberated corpses will be unable to march in the parades celebrating their liberation. A world that had nothing but sympathy for us after 9/11, is now repulsed by our arrogance. At home we are paying for our adventures by burdening the next few generations with a record debt. And we pay a much greater price in the cost of lost liberties, courtesy of a despotic cabal in Washington that has more trust in fear than it does in our Constitution.

The historical revisionists that cast the Pre-9/11 Mindset as a pejorative are blind to its inherent virtue. The Pre-9/11 Mindset honors civil liberties and human rights. It recognizes real threats and inspires the courage to face them. It demands responsibility and accountability from those who manage our public affairs. It condemns preemptive warfare and torture. The Pre-9/11 Mindset is not consumed with fear, division, and domination. It is rooted in reality with its branches facing the sunrise.

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is superior in every aspect to the Post-9/11 apocalyptic nightmare that has been thrust upon us. Its adoption is, in fact, our best hope for crawling out from under the shroud that drapes our national psyche. Vice President Cheney also said that…

“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness.”

If that’s true, then the terrorists must have perceived the weakness of the Bush administration and considered it an invitation to launch their attack. How do you suppose they perceive us now? They’ve seen the passage of the Patriot Act that limits long-held freedoms. They’ve seen our government listening in on our phone calls and monitoring our financial transactions. They see us lining up at airport terminals shoeless and forced to surrender our shampoo and Evian water. They see us mourning the loss of our sons and daughters who are not even engaged in battle with the 9/11 perpetrators. They see us as fearful and submissive. Is this not emboldening the terrorists for whom this perception of weakness will be seen as yet another invitation to attack?

Yes, I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset and it is not a yearning for a simpler bygone era of harmony. You could hardly call the maiden year of this century simple or harmonious. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I’ve had it all along; all through the Post-9/11 defeatism and scare-mongering; through the war posturing and false bravado; through the sordid attempts to divide Americans and vilify dissenters; through the bigotry and arrogance of those who believe that their way is the right way and the world will concur as soon as we’re done beating it into them. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have not let the Post-9/11 Mindset infect my spirit with its yearning for a bygone era that more closely resembles the Dark Ages than the Renaissance.

Pre-9/11 Mindset Post-9/11 Mindset
Enduring Peace Perpetual War
Prosperity Poverty and Debt
Civil Rights The Patriot Act
Human rights Torture
Accountability Corruption
Reality Fear

I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have a mind, and I use it.

Nine years later there is still a scar on our nation – both literally in the form of a vacant lot where the World Trade Center towers used to stand, and figuratively in the still smoldering biases of those who seek to divide.

The sad fact that there is a deranged preacher in Florida who can command the attention of the media and the government with an idiotic prank involving burning Qur’ans ought to make us think long and hard about whether those institutions are serving us. And the protracted debate over whether a non-mosque can be built two blocks from ground zero is just another reminder of how deeply some of our citizens are consumed by prejudice and hate. Not to mention how little regard they have for our traditional values and our Constitution.

Nine years later there is still a scar on our nation. And we still have a long way to go.

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RIGHTNETWORK: All That’s Right With The Media

Posted by on September 9, 2010 at 4:03 pm. 5 Comments :

Yesterday marked the launch of an avowedly conservative media platform for all the Tea Baggers, Birchers, Oathkeepers, and fans of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Ayn Rand. Now you may have thought that there was already such a network in Fox News. You may have noticed that most of the rest of the media is already catering to the right-wing as well.


Featured programming on RIGHTNETWORK includes the comedy show Right2Laugh with guest Jon Lovitz. Lovitz is best known for his pathological liar, a character that should feel right at home amongst the conservative set.

Nevertheless, founders of RIGHTNETWORK have determined that there is a burning need for another right-wing network and they are providing one that went live yesterday. The network is financed by a group including Ed Snider, the CEO of Comcast Spectacor, and actor Kelsey Grammer. As it is a private enterprise, the remaining investors have not been disclosed.

The significance of someone like Snider participating in this network is that he will have some influence over the network’s carriage on the nation’s biggest cable system operator, Comcast. Comcast is presently in the process of acquiring NBC which, of course, includes NBC News and MSNBC. What impact that would have on NBC’s content remains to be seen. But it is a legitimate matter of concern with regard to the possibility that Comcast has an interest in shifting its other news outlets farther to the right.

Grammer has been busy promoting the network, including an appearance today on Fox News with Neil Cavuto. I wonder why the right is so accommodating to Grammer when they ordinarily lambaste any celebrity who deigns to venture into politics or social commentary. And Grammer, a well known conservative, is doing far more than offering his opinion, an act that, by itself, would stir an avalanche of disdain were he Sean Penn or Jennifer Aniston.

Whether or not there is an audience for the network is debatable. Fox News previously tried to produced a comedy newscast that was laughed off the air. In a statement from the new network’s president, Kevin McFeeley, the network is seeking to corral the same conservative couch-potatoes as Fox News:

“Investors hope that the support of a conservative audience that has made Fox News Channel and radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh successful could also work for entertainment programming.”

At least McFeeley acknowledges that Fox News is a right-wing network with a conservative audience. Cavuto didn’t have any problem with that characterization either when he interviewed Grammer. Maybe they are getting closer to abandoning the “fair and balanced” slogan that was never a realistic description of their reporting.


Fox News Reporter Charles Leaf’s History of Abuse, Violence

Posted by on September 8, 2010 at 4:12 pm. 15 Comments :

Yesterday I profiled Charles Leaf, a reporter for the New York Fox affiliate WNYW, whose investigation of figures related to the non-mosque that is not at ground zero (Cordoba House) was the subject of controversy.

As I noted in the profile, Leaf’s reporting was saturated with innuendo and unsupported allegations. He engaged in almost comical ambush escapades that produced nothing newsworthy, yet he still surmised that the reluctance of his targets to talk to him was evidence of some fantasy wrongdoing. His behavior demonstrated that he has a complete absence of journalistic ethics.

Today Leaf was featured again on Fox News’ America Live with Megyn Kelly. Kelly is no stranger to sleazy, dishonest practices herself. But now a News Corpse commenter has provided information about Leaf’s past that sheds light on his despicable and unprofessional tactics. Here is what Denver’s Westword reported about Leaf back in 2005:

“During a stint at a station in Mobile, Alabama, he was the focus of a 1999 lawsuit that impugned him for a ‘willful physical attack’ against a local councilwoman; the case was eventually settled. Two years later, while working in Detroit, a man told police that Leaf spewed homophobic obscenities and tried to attack him after the reporter was pelted with eggs while covering a story. And Bobbi Barrow, spokeswoman for Denver Health Medical Center, believes Leaf misrepresented himself to get an interview with her boss, Dr. Patricia Gabow, at an event last November. ‘What he did was unprofessional,’ Barrow says.”

The behavior described above seems consistent with the obnoxious bullying Leaf resorted to in his confrontation with the Cordoba House developers. While Leaf aggressively slanders the targets of his investigations without any substantive basis for doing so, it turns out that he is the one who ought to be under investigation. Most reputable news organizations would never have anything to do with someone that had Leaf’s history of malfeasance. That’s why he works for Fox.


Dishonoring 9/11: Fox Nation’s Calendar For Obama, Palin And Beck

Posted by on September 7, 2010 at 7:39 pm. 4 Comments :

Over at the Fox Nation, where every news item is a right-wing attack piece, they have been alerted to the fact that President Obama will be spending September 11 at the Pentagon, one of the sites targeted by the terrorists ten years ago. But rather than publishing a story with the headline, “Obama to Mark September 11 at the Pentagon,” the Fox Nationalists posted this:

Pres. Obama Not Attending 9/11 Ceremony at Ground Zero

As might be expected, Fox clearly went out of their way to come up with that negative slant on the story They could easily have used the more neutral headline I proposed above, which happens to be the actual headline of the article to which Fox Nation linked.

What Fox News did not report is that Obama is not the only prominent public person who isn’t going to ground zero on 9/11. In fact, the two most prominent employees of Fox News, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, aren’t going to ground zero either. They also won’t be at the Pentagon. And they aren’t going to be at the Pennsylvania crash site with Michelle Obama and Laura Bush either. (For the record, Vice-President Joe Biden will be at ground zero).

Palin and Beck care so much about this memorial that they have scheduled an appearance together more than 3,000 miles away from any of these sites, in Anchorage, Alaska, at an event that will cost the public between $73.00 and $130.00 each to attend. Oh yeah, there is also a $225.00 ticket that includes a meet-and-greet with Beck. What a wonderful way to honor the memory of the citizens and responders whose lives were lost on 9/11.

Perhaps Beck decided to visit Palin in Alaska on this anniversary so that the two of them could keep an eye on Russia. More likely, Beck is repaying Palin for her appearance at his Washington BeckFest last week. And it is quite a rich repayment that could bring in half a million dollars. That oughta restore some honor.

So while Obama is honoring the fallen, the Fox all-stars, Palin and Beck, will be hustling their followers. And the only news that Fox sees in all of this is that Obama won’t be at ground zero. Fair and balanced.

Update, 9/10/10: It only took three days for Glenn Beck to buckle under pressure and claim that he “had always intended to donate the speaking fee from the event on Saturday.” Even so, his statement just raises further questions. Since the event stands to raise about half a million dollars, and Palin reportedly is not getting any fee at all, then how much is Beck’s fee? And if it isn’t half a million dollars, where is the rest of the money going? Beck and Palin have received in the area of a hundred thousand dollars for such events. After expenses this would still leave more than a quarter of a million dollars that is unaccounted for. It’s hard to believe that that money isn’t going to end up in the pockets of Beck and/or Palin.


Charles Leaf: The New Most Repulsive Fox News Reporter

Posted by on September 7, 2010 at 3:19 pm. 22 Comments :

Fox News has launched the careers of some of the most ignorant, unethical, anti-journalists, ever to fondle a microphone. Some have had great success like Glenn Beck. Others have disappeared into media black holes likes Jesse Watters.

Following in the footsteps of Watters is a reporter for the Fox affiliate in New York (WNYW), Charles Leaf. With an obnoxious bearing and a devotion to dishonesty, Leaf has been falling all over himself to fabricate a story where none exists. It’s no wonder that he has found himself promoted to numerous segments on the Fox News Channel. He has been featured with Fox & Friends and Greta Van Susteren. And Megyn Kelly has virtually adopted him and moved him into her den.

The story Leaf has been investigating is related to the controversial non-mosque that is not at ground zero. His premise is that persons associated with the project are either corrupt or connected to terrorists. However, his reports haven’t even provided enough evidence to start a rumor.

First Leaf conducted an ambush interview on real estate developer, Sharif El-Gamal, that yielded nothing to support his contention that El-Gamal was corrupt. Leaf merely insinuated that something must be wrong because El-Gamal was a waiter eight years prior to investing in the Park51 project. The implication being that anyone who starts a small business, works hard for nearly a decade, and achieves success, is deserving of suspicion.

Then Leaf turned his focus to investor Hisham Elzanaty. Again, Leaf ambushed Elzanaty without acquiring any usable information. The only purpose for Leaf’s ambushes is to suggest something sinister when the target declines to talk to him. To that end Leaf made wild accusations about Elzanaty’s contribution to a Muslim charity. As it turns out, the charity, the Holy Land Foundation, was later investigated for ties to Hamas. But that wasn’t until two years after Elzanaty’s donation, and the feds acknowledged that contributors would not have known about the organization’s relationship with Hamas as it was deliberately concealed.

Both of these reports failed completely to produce evidence of any wrongdoing. They were exercises in insipidness and their only purpose was to insinuate and intimidate. They were utterly unprofessional and potentially libelous. Yet Leaf exalted himself as if he had exposed Watergate. And Fox News (particularly Megyn Kelly) went along by broadcasting Leaf’s empty innuendos and affirming the unsupported conclusions.

The most recent edition of this phony story shows Leaf continuing to ambush unsuspecting figures with highly-charged questions that have no basis in fact. In a new segment broadcast on Fox News by Megyn Kelly, Leaf approached both New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand at separate events and asked a loaded question to the effect of: Do you still support the right to build the mosque now that you know it’s developer contributed to a terrorist organization?

What a dishonest piece of tabloid excrement Leaf is. First of all, neither Bloomberg nor Gillibrand “knew” of the allegations prior to Leaf making them. And there was certainly no reason to take his word for it based on his shoddy reputation. Secondly, Leaf outright lied by asserting that Elzanaty contributed to a terrorist organization. The HLF was a credentialed charity at the time of the donation and there is no evidence that he had any knowledge of any untoward activities. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary.

Charles Leaf is on the fast track to Fox News stardom. He is demonstrating the skill set so admired by Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, its executive masters: dishonesty, partisanship, sensationalism, and aggression. He has a gift for innuendo and for advancing false premises. He expertly exploits the ignorance of his audience who are not likely to research the subject matter themselves. And he will barge into any affair and assert his bogus inquisitions without embarrassment.

Yes, Charles Leaf will go far in that environment. And we need to be aware of him as he climbs the Fox ladder of propaganda. We need to watch as this slimeball advances to the mothership and spreads his brand of sophistry and deceit. He is the embodiment of the Fox ethic and the quintessential Fox blowhard. Remember his name.

Update: Megyn Kelly hosted Charles Leaf again today, even though he had nothing new to add. He just repeated his slanderous accusation that Elzanaty had contributed to a terrorist organization. Leaf is an irredeemable liar, and Kelly is his enabler.