Janeane Garofalo Gets The Last Laugh On Sean Hannity And The Tea Baggers

Posted by on May 9, 2009 at 10:47 am. 2 Comments :

Last month, Janeane Garofalo appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. In the course of the interview, she made some rather controversial comments about the those attending the Fox News sponsored Tea Parties:

“…let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”

Subsequent to that appearance, Sean Hannity, and a phalanx of other feverish right-wingers, immediately went on the attack. They criticized Garofalo for expressing her views, and Olbermann for allowing her to do so. Mind you, these are the same defenders of the First Amendment that are now complaining that the noted racist schlock jock, Michael Savage, has been banned from the U.K. To them, in other words, speech by a racist is fine, but speech about racists is foul.

In an attempt to further chastise Garofalo, and even harm her professionally, Hannity promoted this story which he prefaced by saying that “Revenge is sweet…”

Hannity (4/29/09): “The Boston Herald reports that supporters of the Boston tea party protests earlier this month. well they’re planning to attend one of her upcoming stand up performances. And they plan to give her a piece of their mind […] tickets, by the way, are reportedly going fast. Unfortunately for the left-wing actress, many of the tickets are being sold to the same tea partiers that she labeled racist […] It looks like Janeane isn’t going to get the last laugh this time around. By the way, good luck in Boston.”

Hannity and the tea baggers had better exercise some restraint in doling out pieces of their minds. They seem to have little to spare. First of all, the clown who came up with idea to scoop up tickets to Garofalo’s show in order to hurt her by making her richer is truly hilarious. Secondly, Hannity offers no evidence whatsoever that any tickets were sold to tea baggers, much less “many” as Hannity claimed. Lastly, the threat to which Hannity is referring from the article in the Herald really comes down to a single anonymous e-mailer with anger management issues:

“This (bleep) is gonna hear it from Boston,” the anonymous e-mailer said. “All us bigots and racists are buying up tix to let this piece of excrement hear it from us. shame on her.”

Despite the cantankerous warning from the mad e-mailer, and Hannity’s free publicity for it, the turnout of angry tea baggers was decidedly underwhelming. In fact, according to an update in the Herald, Garofalo performed her entire, nearly sold-out set without interruption from inside or outside the theater. She even had a bit of fun with them on stage saying…

“If there are any tea baggers here, welcome, and white power.”

As it turns out, Hannity’s contention that “many of the tickets” were sold to tea baggers was, not surprisingly, a lie. And it looks like Garafalo did end up getting the last laugh. But Hannity was right about one thing: Revenge is sweet.

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ACORN And Burger King And Glenn Beck, Oh My

Posted by on May 7, 2009 at 1:53 am. 8 Comments :

Glenn Beck - BleckoGlenn Beck’s program on Fox News is a daily cavalcade of crazy and yesterday was no exception. Beck’s guest was Scott Levenson, the national spokesman for ACORN. As ACORN is a perennial target of Fox News paranoiacs like Beck, there was bound to be a major train wreck looming. And Beck didn’t disappoint (video).

The occasion for the visit was a recent report that ACORN employees in Nevada had been charged with violations related to voter registration. This is where panicky right wingers rush to mischaracterize such charges as voter fraud, when in fact, none occurred. So Beck was true to form as he asserted the same old tired lies in his signature juvenile style – substituting funny faces and noises for rational debate.

The real comedy came when Beck attempted to offer an analogy that was ludicrous on its face. Levenson defended ACORN as a victim of employees who failed to comply with the organization’s standards. Beck sought to argue that ACORN was responsible for the misbehavior of their employees and ran a tape of the infamous Burger King bather (who had his buddies shoot a video of him bathing in the restaurant’s sink) to make a point that must have made sense somewhere in his cartoon brain.

Actually, Beck’s point had something to do with ACORN’s management being deficient because fourteen or so ACORN employees, out of some 13,000, were alleged to have submitted fake registration forms. Beck contended that this proves it was not a case of a rogue employee, but an unacceptable pattern of malfeasance. And after telling Levenson to “pipe down” and cutting off his mic, Beck said:

“If you had that many employees at Burger King bathing in the sink, would you ever eat a burger there? Ever? No. This is unreasonable to believe he had that many bad employees.”

Well, I did a quick Google search looking for criminally wayward Burger King employees and found this:

  • Burger King employee arrested in homicide
  • Burger King employee arrested for giving away free meals, stealing
  • Burger King Employee Arrested After Jumping Through Drive-Up Window to Attack a Customer
  • Burger King employee arrested for serving pot
  • Burger King employee arrested for alleged identity theft
  • Ex-Employee, Pal Arrested in Burger King Kidnap Case
  • Burger King employees arrested for faking robbery
  • Coke Being Sold At Burger King
  • Burger King Franchise Pays $400,000 for Alleged Sexual Harassment of teens
  • 27 illegal aliens working at seven Delaware Burger Kings

Granted murder, drugs, robbery, etc., are not exactly in the same league as unlawful bathing, but some people might consider those to be serious offenses too. It should also be noted that the Burger King violators represent only those with the sort of criminal profile likely to be written up in the news. There are surely corporate personnel who have engaged in more mundane activities ranging from pilfering office supplies to extortion or other financial improprieties.

Returning from a commercial, Beck announced that Levenson said that Beck was afraid of black people. So Beck, says he, threw Levenson out of the studio. That’s a bit difficult to believe and, conveniently, there was no video (in a television studio?). But considering the facts enumerated above, Beck may want to reassess the situation. Compared to Burger King, ACORN actually looks pretty good. So I presume that Beck will either apologize to Mr. Levenson or do a show about the BK gang for balance.

There is, however, a much bigger picture within which to view this affair. While Beck and his ilk get so worked up about an organization working to help low income communities – even though the things they allege produce no harm except to ACORN itself – these same guardians of virtue don’t seem to care much about the criminal behavior of defense contractors who have been responsible for outfitting our soldiers with faulty gear, electrocuting them in their showers, and bilking American taxpayers for billions of dollars. In a congressional hearing in 2007 it was reported that…

“…a panel of senior defense acquisition and investigative officials attributed the rampant errors and abuse in contracting — which have resulted in 10 convictions, 78 criminal indictments and audits into $88 billion in questionable contracts — on lack of controls, poor leadership and an undermanned and untrained work force operating in a combat zone.”

That far exceeds anything ACORN has been accused of. And yet, I have not heard Beck take Halliburton to task for a record of gross mismanagement. I haven’t heard him declare that we should never buy anything from KBR again. And we aren’t talking about about a few forms filled out in the name of Mickey Mouse (who has yet to turn up at the polls to vote). These legal breaches cost lives and drain our nation of scarce resources. The perpetrators are generally punished with a severe slap on the wrist and a spanking new contract for more inferior products and services.

While it is unlikely that Beck will turn his attention to these serious matters with such dire consequences, we can at least count on him to spend another few hours railing against ACORN and guys who bathe at Burger King – two stories that have about the same impact on the problems of ordinary Americans.


Joe The Plumber Joins Arlen Specter

Posted by on May 7, 2009 at 1:50 am. NO Comments :

The Republicans favorite symbol for what they imagine ordinary Americans to be, Joe the Plumber, has turned his back on the GOP. And while he has not taken the additional step of registering as a Democrat, the blow will surely come as a shock to Sarah Palin and the rest of the right’s lunatic fringe. From Time:

Big Government is never popular in theory, but the disaster aid, school lunches and prescription drugs that make up Big Government have become wildly popular in practice, especially now that so many people are hurting. Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he’s so outraged by GOP overspending, he’s quitting the party – and he’s the bull’s-eye of its target audience. But he also said he wouldn’t support any cuts in defense, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid – which, along with debt payments, would put more than two-thirds of the budget off limits.

As the defections accelerate, the GOP will soon be left with only Carrie Prejean, Ted Nugent, and an ocean of dittoheads, to lead their trek back to relevancy. Of course, this could all be unfolding exactly as planned by Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele.


The Pre-Obituary Hate Thread

Posted by on May 5, 2009 at 4:31 pm. 15 Comments :

George W. Bush: “History? We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

This past weekend, Jack Kemp, a giant of Reagan-era conservatism passed away. The news has been covered with an almost uniformly reverential tone, no matter the venue. Even from the most avowedly partisan Democratic sources, there was abundant praise and sympathy from all but a few insensitive weasels. And that’s as it should be, whether regarding Kemp, or William F. Buckley, or Tony Snow, etc.

Death is without a doubt the single most non-partisan issue that any of us will ever face. No amount of devotion to the second amendment or global warming will be sufficient to filibuster the grim reaper. And while mortality observes the purest form of equality, it is not in the remotest sense democratic. We must all comply with its laws, but no one gets to vote. Nature is such a Fascist.

So as time collects its due from amongst life’s loitering souls, those of us still queued up react to the passing of our earthly cousins. For the most part we are respectful and reserved. We follow the dictum that prohibits us from “speaking ill of the dead.” Whether the deceased is someone with whom we have affinity or hostility, we share the knowledge of our common fate and withhold judgment.

But no such forbiddance precludes us from ripping the living to shreds.

I can’t help but wonder what our reaction would be to the passing of certain individuals whom we regard as patently evil. Would we be as generous with our sympathy upon hearing that Donald Rumsfeld kicked the bucket? Would we exhibit the same tolerance for those responsible for lying us into a war that snuffed out the lives of hundreds of thousands? Would there be an R.I.P. thread for Karl Rove or Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney? And what about George W. Bush himself?

Would we struggle to find redeeming qualities in folks who so resolutely brought pain and tragedy to so many? Would we be considerate of their mourning families? How would our demeanor change from what we would say about them today, compared to what we would say about them in hindsight?

I, for one, believe that there is a special place in Hell (if I believed in Hell) reserved for the mass murderers of BushCo. I could care less about their eternal souls, other than to hope that they suffer. The only sympathy I have for their families is due to their having been cursed with such despicable relatives.

This is not to say that I presently wish death upon anyone. And, despite the tone, it is not even vengeance that I seek. It is more something like justice (which, by the way, is something that we can still achieve while the perpetrators live). The question is, if I can articulate the harsh thoughts that I have above, while the subjects are still enjoying the fruit of their atrocities, could I still do so upon their demise? The answer is, probably not.

The impropriety of disparaging those who have shuffled off is so ingrained into our culture that anyone who engaged in it would be immediately ostracized. It is nearly irrelevant if someone practiced Satanism yesterday. If they die tomorrow society expects you to reassess your judgment and say something nice about the devil.

Well, it isn’t tomorrow yet. So we are still free to wail on the dastardly denizens of doom that torment us. And we should avail ourselves of the opportunity to bitch at the fiends who drove our nation into an unnecessary and illegal war; who tainted and trivialized our Constitution; who sanctioned torture; who continue to befoul our planet; who value wealth over human dignity and compassion. We should get it off our chests now, loudly and with conviction. We should pound them into pulp and show them no mercy.

Why? Because tomorrow they may be dead and we’ll have to bite our tongues.


Top 10 Crazy Political Commentators

Posted by on May 4, 2009 at 2:43 pm. NO Comments :

According to AskMen.com, the Top 10 Crazy Political Commentators are:

  1. Bill O’Reilly
  2. Keith Olbermann
  3. Ann Coulter
  4. Michael Savage
  5. Rush Limbaugh
  6. Sean Hannity
  7. Chris Matthews
  8. Geraldo Rivera
  9. Dennis Miller
  10. Glenn Beck

Somehow I missed this list when it was published back in February. On the surface it doesn’t seem particularly groundbreaking. After all, the personalities enumerated are mostly deserving, although the order could inspire much debate.

The funny thing about this list is that AskMen is owned by Fox Interactive, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. So it’s interesting to note that five of the top 10 crazies, including number one, are actually employees of Fox News. Three more (Coulter, Savage, and Limbaugh) are Fox-aligned right-wingers. That’s eight out of ten Foxies, with the remaining two from MSNBC.

What we have here is one Fox affiliate acknowledging that another Fox affiliate is dominated by pundits who are patently insane. Will the editors of AskMen be punished for this eruption of honesty? Will they be admonished for insulting their corporate cousins? Of course not. This is exactly what Fox intended when they hired these lunatics. They were pursuing a programming strategy that leaned heavily on exploiting madness for its entertainment value. They were convinced that nothing excited the American viewing public as much as a live, on-air, mental train wreck.

Well, they are sure getting their money’s worth.


Republicans Look To Bush Losers For Advice On Winning

Posted by on May 4, 2009 at 12:58 pm. NO Comments :

Republicans are already struggling to maintain some measure of relevance since the American people have banished them to the minority in both the House and the Senate, and evicted them from the White House. It is certainly understandable that, in their desperation, they would cast about plaintively, with arms outstretched, to grasp onto whomever might offer them aide in these dire days (weeks? years?). But in a move that can only compound their troubles, they are calling upon fellow castaways to lead them off of the island of the politically damned.

Politico is reporting that former Bush media staffers have been drafted to show House Republicans the way back into the hearts of American voters. The team consists of Bush press office alums, Dana Perino, Tony Fratto, and past RNC chief and Bush counselor, Ed Gillespie. Presumably they were deemed up to the task by virtue of how masterfully they molded Bush into the beloved figure he is today.

The Politico column reveals that House Republicans, on the advice of Conference Chair Mike Pence, are beefing up their media staffs. The stated goal of this strategy is to place more emphasis on press relations than on legislation. GOP flack Matt Lloyd is in full agreement with Pence, and hails this new initiative by saying that:

“The press secretary workshop is one more tool in our belt that we are using to ensure press secretaries continue to get their members the most coverage possible, which in turn drives the Republican message across the country.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. From the perspective of someone who is anxious to see the Republican minority shrink even further, nothing could more effectively produce that end than to “drive the Republican message across the country.” If the House PR machine wants to help “get their members the most coverage possible,” I would heartily encourage them. And they should start with getting more coverage for Michele Bachmann. Minority Leader John Boehner could use a little more exposure of his dynamic personality and spray-on tan, as well. And since we’re resurrecting Republicans of yore, throw in Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.

You have to hand it to the GOP – they sure know how to cling to the anchors that have hastened their descent to the depths of political triviality.

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David Shuster Tells The Truth About Fox News – Again

Posted by on May 2, 2009 at 12:49 am. 1 Comments :

With Fox News dispensing falsehoods and vitriol on a daily (hourly) basis, I have long thought that it is well past time for responsible media figures to respond by honestly portraying Fox as a partisan enterprise that has little to do with actual news.

By this I do not mean that partisans from the other end of the political spectrum should take on Fox’s disinformation machine. Folks like Keith Olbermann are already doing that. What I mean is that bona fide journalists should stop pretending that Fox is in the same business as they are. There needs to be a realistic appraisal of the state of the media and Fox’s role in it.

To that end, it is great to see MSNBC’s David Shuster coming forward and saying what all ethical reporters ought to be saying. In an interview with Stephanie Miller, Shuster provided an excellent example of how to tell the truth when it comes to Fox News:

[I]f Fox wants to consider themselves the GOP house organ, that’s fine. They completely backed it up. When Fox starts describing themselves as journalists or a news organization, that’s where I think it’s appropriate to describe Fox as disgraceful […] The stuff that comes out of Sean Hannity’s mouth has been infuriating. The stuff that Bill O’Reilly says has been illogical. You go up and down the schedule and it’s insanity over there.

This isn’t the first time Shuster has stepped up in this regard. Not long after he left Fox News (that’s right, he used to work there, so he knows of what he speaks), Shuster disclosed what it was like to try to practice journalism in a shop that had no respect for it:

…there wasn’t a tradition or track record of honoring journalistic integrity. I found some reporters at Fox would cut corners or steal information from other sources or in some cases, just make things up. Management would either look the other way or just wouldn’t care to take a closer look.

Seeing as how presenters on Fox are constantly bashing the rest of the media, you would think that they would stand up for themselves, particularly when they have the facts on their side. Fox is the only news organization that regularly insults the professionalism of their competitors in advertising and on the air. That is the whole point of their “fair and balanced” pretense.

Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, and others in TV and print, have the right and the duty to defend their presentation of the news and to reveal the deceit that is part and parcel of Fox. David Shuster is showing them the way. Nice job, David.


BREAKING: Fox News Switches Parties

Posted by on April 28, 2009 at 4:39 pm. 2 Comments :

In a stunning and unexpected development, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and the CEO of its parent corporation News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, appeared at a hastily assembled news conference this afternoon to announce that they are abandoning their long-time affiliation with the Republican Party in favor of a political organization that more closely reflects their conservative values.

“We are not leaving the Republican Party,” Ailes told the press. “The Republican Party left us. After more than a decade of dedicated service to right-wing propaganda, the Republicans, and their supporters have drifted away to the point that there are hardly enough of them left to justify their own network anymore.”

Murdoch elaborated that…

“Recent polling shows that a mere 21% of the nation identify themselves as Republican. I’ve got a bloody network and newspapers to run, mate. I can’t be bothered with struggling to gain a bit of market share from that measly bunch.”

Murdoch is already trying to recover from news that his New York Post lost more than 20% of its readers in the past year. Consequently he has been broadening his rhetoric to be more inclusive. For instance, as reported in his own Wall Street Journal this week…

“[Murdoch] said complete nationalization of the biggest banks might have been a good thing; it would have allowed the government to break up the banks’ businesses and sell them as smaller entities. That way, ‘there would be no more too big to fail firms,’ he said.”

That is quite a departure from the sermonizing of Glenn Beck who would likely argue that that way there would be Socialism. Apparently they still have some kinks to work out.

The switch comes on the heels of Sen. Arlen Specter’s surprise jump to the Democratic Party after serving five terms as a Republican senator from Pennsylvania. Some view Specter’s move as an embarrassment to Republicans as they seek to regain their footing after losing badly in the last two election cycles. Others view it as an inevitable result of of the shrinking ideological spectrum within the Republican Party. Still others regard it as the hysterical act of radical Socialist who has been masquerading as a Republican for 30 years while leading a sleeper cell of covert Marxist revolutionaries bent on the submission of free people throughout the world.

But while some say some stuff and others say other things, associates inside the Specter camp, who have asked for anonymity to keep from being pointed and laughed at by strangers on the street, are saying that the Senator is merely hoping to hang on to his senate seat regardless of any consideration for politics or principles. An independent analyst was quoted as saying, “Duh!”

As for News Corp and Fox News, the new relationship, that they are still in the process of finalizing, will serve their interests better than those they have cultivated in the past. First on the agenda is the acquisition by News Corp of the Christian Broadcasting Network. CBN’s chief, Pat Robertson will be brought along in the newly created post of Senior VP of Editorial and Evangilism. The remaining News Corp enterprises will be re-branded as Fox Christian Ministries.

Although Specter’s jolt may have expedited the move by Murdoch and company, the move might have been predicted by many observers. Fox News has been drifting to what might be called a sort of Tele-Conservangilism™. Its message has increasingly been disseminated as if from a pulpit, complete with saints (Bush, Palin, Gingrich, and Pope Reagan) and a long list of demons (ACORN, Soros, Gun regs, Abortion, Muslims, Communism, FEMA camps, Fairness Doctrine, Taxes, Global Warming, Evolution, and, of course, the “mainstream” media). The anointed preachers for the movement were, and will continue to be, familiar names like Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, and Beck.

Look for Ailes to unveil the new party insignia in the next few weeks. Reports are presently leaking out that suggest that the top contenders all have something to do with tea.


Justice Scalia Knows Foul-Mouthed Glitteratae

Posted by on April 28, 2009 at 11:32 am. 1 Comments :

The Supreme Court ruled today on a case pitting Fox Entertainment against the FCC and involving the use of naughty language on TV. The crux of the debate centered on “fleeting expletives” like when Bono of U2 appeared at an awards ceremony and used the phrase “fucking brilliant” in his acceptance speech.

The court’s ruling actually shied away from taking a position on the Constitutional question of free speech, preferring to decide narrowly on whether the FCC rules were “arbitrary and capricious.” In the end, with six justices writing separate opinions, the court overruled by 5 to 4 a 2nd Circuit decision in favor of Fox. The decision affirmed the FCC’s regulations regarding profanity, but sent the issue of free speech back to the 2nd Circuit for a reasoned analysis.

In this matter I would actually line up with Fox inasmuch I don’t like the FCC setting moral boundaries for expression. But Justice Antonin Scalia had to go and make such an asinine statement in his opinion that I just can’t let it stand:

“We doubt, to begin with, that small-town broadcasters run a heightened risk of liability for indecent utterances. In programming that they originate, their down-home local guests probably employ vulgarity less than big-city folks; and small-town stations generally cannot afford or cannot attract foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood.”

What a complete and utterly idiotic remark. Brooklyn-bred Scalia obviously doesn’t know a fucking thing about down-home folks or small towns. He is a big-city, elitist asshole whose only acquaintance with Hollywood glitteratae is via his perverse imagination and insulting stereotypes.

It is embarrassing beyond description that someone this stupid remains a sitting Justice on America’s highest court.


News Blights: The SPINCOM Edition

Posted by on April 27, 2009 at 6:20 pm. NO Comments :

Item 1: The Fox Network has announced that it will not carry President Obama’s press conference on Wednesday, the 100th day of his presidency. ABC, CBS, and NBC have all committed to carrying it. Note that this is the Fox broadcast entertainment network, not the cable news channel, which has declined to air the presser. Still, there is some irony in that Fox has chosen to air an episode of the series “Lie To Me” instead. That’s something with which Fox should be familiar. Note also that the Fox News network has previously declined to air several Obama press affairs, even when the other cable news nets carried them.

Item 2: Newspaper circulation data for the six months ending March 2009, shows that Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post suffered the worst decline (-20.55%) of all of the top 25 papers measured by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. That does not compare well to the New York Times that declined only 3.55%. The New York Daily News fared worse (-14.26), but still not as bad as the Post. The Wall Street Journal was up a fraction.

Item 3: A study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found the nightly newscasts devoting nearly 28 hours to Obama’s presidency in the first 50 days, about twice as much as Bush and Clinton. Of course, they weren’t facing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression when they entered office. The study went on to report that 58% of the Obama stories on ABC, CBS and NBC, contained some positive elements. That’s a little more than half, so it could be regarded as fair and balanced. But the network that turned that phrase into a logo had only 13% positive analysis. Slanted much?

Item 4: Speaking at the Milken Global Institute Conference, Rupert Murdoch articulated a position that may come as a surprise to many, including the clowns on his news network. As reported in his own Wall Street Journal: “He said complete nationalization of the biggest banks might have been a good thing; it would have allowed the government to break up the banks’ businesses and sell them as smaller entities. That way, ‘there would be no more too big to fail firms,’ he said.” But Glenn Beck said that that way there would be Socialism!?! Rupert’s in big trouble now.

Item 5: Last year the New York Times published a story about the media using retired military analysts that were provided and trained by the Pentagon to speak approvingly about the war in Iraq and other war on terror operations. In addition, some of these allegedly neutral analysts were also on the payroll of defense contractors with vested interests in the war effort. None of these associations were disclosed by the media. Subsequent to the story in the Times, the same media virtually blacked out any reporting on the controversy. Last week the author, David Barstow, won a Pulitzer prize for the article. Guess what? The media somehow failed to report on Barstow’s award, even when reporting on the Pulitzer’s announcement of other winners.