Benghazi A Mini Iran/Contra? Fox News Should Ask Their Own In-House Felon

Posted by Mark NC on September 17, 2014 at 4:33 pm. 3 Comments :

Earlier this week Fox News helped to promote a shoddily constructed story by a discredited reporter about an alleged effort by the State Department to dispose of documents that might be harmful to then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The story, that they laughably called a “bombshell,” did not provide a single bit of evidence and relied entirely on allegations by a former State Department official who had been reprimanded for being “grossly inadequate” and who clearly had an ax to grind.

Today Fox News upped the ante by adding new scenarios with even less connection to reality. On Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade introduced a segment with retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer saying that…

“Anything that could have got them into trouble, Colonel, was grinded up, was shredded, and the review board never got all the documents.”

Of course, none of that was ever verified, and the allegations were merely speculation by someone who the reporter admits never witnessed any such thing. So in order to take the focus off of how thin this whole fictional account is, Kilmeade allowed his guest to offer up a complete fantasy that neither of them bothered to support with any facts.

Shaffer: Some of these documents we’re talking about were probably the direct link to some of the bad incidents, to include the holy grail here that nobody wants to talk about, is the obtaining of weapons from the Libyan rebels, moving them out of the country, to the Turks, through Turkey to the Syrian rebels. Some of those rebels ended up being the ISIS threat we’re now facing.

Kilmeade: So you mean this is almost like a mini Iran/Contra thing?

Shaffer responded “Absolutely,” to this question, apparently ignorant of what the Iran/Contra scandal was all about. Shaffer’s invention of a plot to transfer weapons that were lawfully provided to Qaddafi foes in Libya, to dubious characters in Syria, is nothing like Iran/Contra, and there is no evidence that it even happened. In the Reagan era scandal weapons were illegally sold to Iran while the nation was under an international arms embargo. The proceeds were then used to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras, which was explicitly prohibited by federal law.

The funny thing about this is that Fox News could have gotten all of this straight if they had instead interviewed their own employee, Oliver North. It was North who ran the Iran/Contra affair and was convicted by a jury for his felonious behavior. However, he is now a Fox News anchor and military commentator for the network. You have to wonder whether it was his violations of federal and international arms trading laws, or his perjury conviction for lying under oath to Congress, that made him such an attractive candidate for employment at Fox.

Actually, it may be overly optimistic to suggest that North would have straightened anybody out, since he has been lying about the scandal for more than two decades. But it’s interesting that Fox is now using Iran/Contra as an example of grossly unlawful practices with their comparison to the fiction they are hyping about the Clinton State Department purging documents. If this “holy grail” that they are now trying to smear Clinton with is so bad that they are calling it a “mini Iran/Contra,” then how can they ethically employ the leader of the actual, full-sized Iran/Contra?

Of course, the answer to that question is that Fox News has never considered it within their charter to act ethically. That makes their job of lying and distorting the news a lot easier.

IMPEACH! Fox News Reports That “Obama Danced to Avoid Clintons At Party”

Posted by Mark NC on August 16, 2014 at 12:00 pm. 3 Comments :

Adding more fuel to the Republican obsession with removing President Obama from office, Fox News invited disgraced author and unrepentant birther, Edward Klein, to reveal the results of his fantasy investigation of the alleged friction between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Klein’s latest news flash, and Fox News headline, is that “Obama Danced to Avoid Clintons at Party.”

Klein appeared on Fox & Friends with the brown haired dude who is not Steve Doocy (Brian Kilmeade) to recount his tale of presidential acrimony. The discord supposedly began after Clinton expressed her opinion that more should have been done to clamp down on ISIS when they emerged in Syria. That’s a perfectly reasonable position, although one fraught with controversy. At that time there were few Syrian rebel groups that could be trusted to pursue the interests of the United States. Indeed, many of Syrian President Assad’s opponents were associated with what became ISIS.

Subsequent to the initial media frenzy over Clinton’s alleged attempt to distance herself from Obama, Clinton denied that there was any rift between her and the President. As evidence she called Obama to assure him that she had not meant to criticize his overall foreign policy. In addition, she was already scheduled to attend a birthday party for a mutual friend that the Obamas would also be attending. The media falsely turned this into some kind of a peace summit between the once, and possibly future, presidents. Of course in the real world it was a birthday party.

This is where Klein steps in to unveil his long-squawked theory that Clinton and Obama are mortal enemies. He told Kilmeade that…

“My sources tell me that what happened there at the party is that instead of it being a hug-a-thon, it became a freeze-a-thon, and the Clintons essentially ignored the Obamas, and the Obamas got up from the table and danced almost the entire night in order to avoid having to talk to the Clintons.”

OMG! The President and the First Lady were dancing as means of politically oppressing a perceived foe. It’s a tyrannical tactic that even Hitler never tried to use against his enemies. As for Klein, one has to wonder if these are the same sources that told him that Hillary was dropping out of the presidential race; or that Obama was secretly planning on endorsing Elizabeth Warren to succeed him; or that Chelsea Clinton was the spawn of Bill Clinton raping his lesbian wife, Hillary.

Klein’s sources appear to be imaginary trolls inhabiting his otherwise vacant cranial cavity. He never authenticates his allegations or conducts even the most basic principles of journalism ethics. But what he said immediately after his shocking revelation about Obama’s dance of distraction is more informative than anything that appears in any of his lie-riddled books:

“What I’m trying to say is, in a sense, what happened there in the Vineyard was ripped from the pages of my book “Blood Feud” because the blood feud continues.”

And there you have it. This is nothing more than an advertisement for his cheesy book. And Fox News is gleefully participating in the ad campaign by hosting an author who has nothing substantive to say. Although from Fox’s perspective it is another opportunity to bash both Obama and Clinton that they couldn’t pass up.

The problem that Fox, and their Republican cohorts, have is that while they have been feverishly condemning Obama’s policies, they were thrown into a cognitive mind warp when Clinton appeared to do the same. After all, what were they to do? Embrace the position of Clinton who they are expecting to face in the presidential election in 2016? Or renounce her and effectively endorse the Obama doctrine?

In the end they are awkwardly trying to do both. Obama is wrong because, in their fetid brains, he’s always wrong. But Clinton isn’t right, she is merely being looked up to for disagreeing with Obama, but even that is only for political reasons. It’s a typical right-wing illogic-loop that can spin for eternity – or at least until the hypnotic trance that Fox has imposed on their cult members (aka viewers) has faded.

Darrell Issa Discovers More Emails He Can Brazenly Lie About On Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on July 10, 2014 at 12:14 pm. 1 Comments :

In an entirely unsurprising development, rabidly partisan congressman, and recidivist criminal, Darrell Issa, has popped up again on Fox News to peddle his dishonest allegations concerning the trumped up IRS controversy.

The latest wrinkle in Issa’s permanently furrowed brow is an email exchange that he selectively leaked that he alleges is the long-lost smoking gun that proves – well, whatever it is that has his panties in a twist that day. The emails are a discussion between the former IRS Tax-Exempt Organizations division director, Lois Lerner, and Maria Hooke from the IT department, wherein Lerner seeks information regarding document storage. Here are excerpts from the emails:

Lerner: I had a question today about OCS [instant messages]. I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails–so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.
Hooke: OCS messages are not set to automatically save as the standard; however the functionality exits within the software. […] My general recommendation is to treat the conversation as if it could/is being saved somewhere, as it is possible for either party of the conversation to retain the information and have it turn up as part of an electronic search. Make sense?
Lerner: Perfect.

From this rather innocuous exchange, Issa managed to extract something nefarious. His interpretation points to a deliberate attempt to conceal information from congressional investigators. Here is his analysis as adoringly received by Brian Kilmeade on Fox News:

Kilmeade: What do you get from this correspondence?
Issa: What we get is, perhaps what CNN was asking me for a couple weeks ago – a smoking gun. This is Lois Lerner clearly cautioning people not to say things on email. […] Why? She didn’t want an audit trail for what they were doing, and they were targeting conservatives for their views. No question at all.
Kilmeade: As so many others are choosing not to follow you, we will.

If Issa gets a smoking gun from this, you have to ask what he’s smoking. First of all, Lerner is merely articulating a common business instruction to keep all communications professional. Cautioning her staff about what they say in emails that might later be made public is prudent advice. Not because they are engaging in a cover up, but because people often lapse into inappropriately casual conversations in routine work life. They certainly would not want to have accounts of last night’s party, or off-color jokes, turning up in official investigations.

Issa’s laughably absurd assertion that Lerner is ordering a cover up of emails requires one to accept that she would do such a thing in an email. That would be like calling a criminal accomplice on the phone to tell him not to talk about the crime they just committed because the phone might be tapped. And Issa went further to answer his own question as to why Lerner would issue her cautionary advice. He said it was because she “didn’t want an audit trail for what they were doing.” Of course, the only evidence he has of that is his supernatural ability to read minds.

Perhaps the most blatant distortion Issa whips up refers to Lerner’s response to the IT rep’s explanation of instant message storage. Lerner said simply “Perfect.” Issa contorted that into her being “delighted” that instant messaging wasn’t being tracked. However, that isn’t what the IT rep said. In fact, she said quite the opposite, advising that the messages be treated as if they were saved because either party could do so.

But the worst mangling of this portion of the exchange is that Lerner’s response came immediately following the IT rep signing off her last email by asking “Make sense?” That is what Lerner was responding to when she said “Perfect,” as in “it makes perfect sense.” She was simply acknowledging that she understood the explanation.

This is typical of Issa’s unethical practice of cherry-picking documents from his committee’s hearings that he can spin negatively. It is something that he gets away with because far too many so-called journalists allow themselves to be manipulated by his intentionally deceptive leaks. And, of course, Fox News is all to happy to cooperate with the charade. Already Bill O’Reilly has featured a segment on this subject wherein he referred to these new emails as “hard evidence” of a cover up. Someone needs to give these cretins a remedial course on the meaning of “evidence.”

Banned In Fresno: Veterans Demand Fox News Be Turned Off – Fox News Whines

Posted by Mark NC on June 16, 2014 at 4:14 pm. 17 Comments :

A local TV station in Fresno, California did a rather trivial story about a waiting room at a Veterans Administration pharmacy. The story concerned an allegation that Fox News had been banned from the televisions at the facility. So the reporter sent one of his veteran buddies into the pharmacy to pretend to want to view Fox News. Whereupon they discovered that the channel was not accessible.

That set off a flurry of outrage over at the Fox News mothership. They aired panicky segments on this massive censorship plot on multiple programs, including America’s News Headquarters, The O’Reilly Factor, and Fox & Friends. In each case they characterized the situation as a blatant attempt to silence Fox News due to their reporting on the scandalous backlogs and corrupt management at some V.A. hospitals. The only thing wrong with these reports was – well – everything.

First of all, there was no attempt to censor Fox News. A spokesperson for the facility made it clear that that the channel was removed because of patient concerns. At least some of the patients explicitly objected to Fox News and the resultant controversy created an uncomfortable environment.

“It was just a misunderstanding. We’ve had a lot of veterans with diverse personalities. A lot of veterans complaining about one news station or the other, so the intent was really to be fair and equitable and take all stations off. […] We’ve had several incidents of veterans actually arguing, fighting over the different news stations. Some wanted to watch news, some did not. Others wanted to watch specific stations.”

In addition, while Fox News did air reports on the V.A. scandal, so did every other news network. Fox had no more coverage of the affair than their cable news peers. Although they certainly had more spittle-inflected animosity directed at President Obama than some of the others. However, It was CNN that originally broke the story, so if there was an intent to censor the source of bad news about their operations, the pharmacy would more likely have banned CNN. Here is how Politico reported the evolution of the story:

“The slow-burn story at the Phoenix VA went from a largely ignored congressional hearing and a local news report before it landed on CNN and then exploded in the national media and seized the White House.”

Particularly disturbing was the framing of this phony whining about censorship by the Fox & Friends crew, where co-host Brian Kilmeade packaged the segment as “Abandoned Brothers.” They actually employed language generally reserved for prisoners of war or fallen soldiers on the battlefield to describe people waiting to get their prescriptions filled in a downtown Fresno drug store who weren’t able to watch a gaggle of Fox News blondes in short skirts mutilate journalism.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

It’s pretty nauseating that Fox regards not being able to watch their network for a few minutes as comparable to being abandoned in wartime. Especially so soon after their repulsive coverage of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, whom they defamed as a deserter, a traitor, and a jihadist, before any hearing or even getting his version of events.

Some Fox commentators literally advocated for Bergdahl to be abandoned to his Taliban captors. So Fox hardly has the moral authority to use rhetoric about “abandoned brothers” in their programming. But you can always expect them to make themselves a part of every story with an emphasis on how victimized they are by the rest of the media. That’s the sort of behavior generally exhibited by crybabies who can’t accept not getting their way.

Where Are The Anti-Tyranny Teabaggers When Fox News Proposes Bugging Churches?

Posted by Mark NC on April 22, 2013 at 5:35 pm. 9 Comments :

The Tea Party, and their Republican handlers, have created a cottage industry of fabricated fear mongering over imaginary plots to thrust the American people into slavery. Their incessant wailing over non-existent attempts by President Obama to designate himself a dictator and force his socialist, Sharia law down the throats of patrio-pathic Christicans has reached eardrum-busting decibel levels.

So it sort of makes you wonder why they aren’t aiming their NRA-approved assault weapons at their TV sets that are perpetually stuck on Fox News. Because this morning, Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends proposed that the government place listening devices in houses of worship.

Whatever happened to the right-wing advocacy of small government? Where are the zealots who are convinced that Washington is a cesspool of would-be tyrants? How can those defenders of the Founding Fathers be silent when Fox News promotes such brazen violations of privacy and religious liberty?

The truth is that the righteous wing of the Republican Party was never opposed to big government. They have always favored a brand of oppression that focused on the private lives of the people. When they say that they want government “off their backs” what they mean is off the backs of big business. Regulation is a mortal sin to them. But they reserve the right to dictate how law-abiding individuals practice their faith, not to mention who they marry and what they are permitted to do in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Clearly hypocrisy is not foreign to their way of thinking. And that’s how they can sit back and be silent when their spokesmodels say things that are seemingly contrary to what they pretend to believe. Besides, when you violate the rights of minorities it doesn’t really count, does it?

Fox News Hosts Join The ‘Blame America’ Firsters

Posted by Mark NC on April 20, 2013 at 11:41 am. 6 Comments :

Shortly after the attacks on 9/11, a stunned nation struggled to explain how such noxious hatred could have formed and congealed into the heinous plot that took the lives of so many innocent people. In a statement that still ranks amongst the most feeble-minded insults to America’s intelligence, George W. Bush proclaimed that “they hate us for our freedom.”

As observers who were less dim-witted than the inarticulate, persistently mediocre, dynastic runt who occupied the White House began to weigh in on the post-9/11 analysis, there were reasoned commentaries that outlined how the foreign policy of the United States could have contributed to the response taken by the Al Qaeda extremists. Many nationalistic Arabs and Islamic zealots resented our meddling in their affairs. However, when the thoughtful experts who offered these insights came forward, they were quickly castigated for what daft conservatives called “blaming America.” Any suggestion that our own actions might have set off the radical fringe groups in the Middle East was tantamount to treason.

Cut to April 2013. The aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing predictably inflamed the same small-minded wingnuts who fell for Bush’s tripe and they are now resorting to a “blame America” pose of their own. With a president whom they regard as illegitimate, unqualified, and unfamiliar with their brand of white, Christian pseudo-patriotism, it is suddenly acceptable to assign responsibility for a terrorist act to the government they simultaneously love and hate.

Yesterday on his radio program, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade explicitly laid the blame for the the Boston tragedy on the steps of the White House:

“[Y]ou talk to these radicals in the Middle East and they say, ‘America, don’t get involved, leave us alone.’ So like it or not, this president has left them alone. And guess what happens? Now the IEDs are blowing up in our streets. So what are we supposed to learn from that?”

Setting aside the fact that Kilmeade offered no evidence of Obama having “left alone” any Middle East nation, or otherwise abandoning our interests in the region, his remarks plainly assert that the events of the past week in Boston were the fault of America’s behavior, rather than that of the perpetrators. In late 2001, that would have been considered blasphemy. In addition, Kilmeade is presuming that there is a jihadist component to the marathon bombing for which there is currently no proof.

Not to be left out, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly penned an op-ed that espoused the familiar and disturbing notion that “Freedom puts all of us at risk.” This might have been a perfectly reasonable articulation of the view that a free people are necessarily exposed to risks due to limitations on the part of government to interfere with their private lives. But that is not what O’Reilly meant. At the end of the same paragraph he disparagingly referred to the “security be damned” “zealots” who protest privacy invasions like warrantless wiretapping, “stop and frisk,” and deadly drone missions that too often result in the loss of innocent lives. So O’Reilly clearly does regard freedom as a dispensable impediment to security.

The rest of O’Reilly’s article is a laughable defense of his absurd statement that the Boston marathon bombing was not a tragedy by some imaginary definition he concocted. He doubles down on that theme by asserting that the desire of fanatics who want to kill us “is not tragic; it is real.” And he concludes by demanding that Obama “bring a sense of urgency to terrorism.” How Obama should behave differently, and where the lack of urgency is, O’Reilly never bothers to explain.

Both of these Fox News mouthpieces are advancing the notion that the harm done to America is of its own making. And unlike the rational perspectives put forth by informed analysts after 9/11, O’Reilly and Kilmeade are unable to support their positions which are nothing more than diatribes aimed at an administration they detest. What is certain is that their conservative brethren will fail to condemn them for blaming America, as they did when others were accused of the same offense. Apparently blaming America is just fine if it’s done by right-wingers who can’t form a coherent argument, and it’s aimed at a Democratic president they blame for everything else anyway.

Fox And Friends Exploits Children To Advance Their GOP Agenda

Posted by Mark NC on July 24, 2012 at 11:45 am. 11 Comments :

This morning on Fox And Friends, host Brian Kilmeade conducted an interview that demonstrated the lengths to which Fox will go to distort reality and pander to the ignorance of their audience. The segment featured two adorable girls, aged 7 and 4, who Kilmeade exploited in a most disturbing manner.

The subject of the interview was the sidewalk enterprise the girls had set up selling lemonade. But Kilmeade perverted that classic American endeavor into a political attack on President Obama. His creepy inquisition of the kids furthered the Fox-generated lie that the President had insulted small business owners by recognizing correctly that they benefit from the collective contributions of society. And Kilmeade recruited these children to advance his dishonest political smear.

Kilmeade: These two girls built their lemonade business not only without government help, but without any help. […] How do you feel about the president saying that you needed help to start this business?
Clara Sutton: I would say that’s rude because we worked very hard to build this business. But we did have help. Our help came from our investors, our dad and step-mom, along with other friends and family.

When an alleged “news” network asks a 7 year old about the political implications of a presidential speech, you know they are either reaching in desperation for a new angle from which to attack a political foe, or they are conceding that their audience isn’t capable of understanding anything above the level of child.

Even so, Clara’s answer affirmed that she required help to build her business, contradicting the premise of Kilmeade’s question. The only parties whom she credited were her family, but, as a 7 year old, she can be forgiven for having neglected to give credit to the government entities that provided the sidewalk where she located her business, the water she used in her product, the streets her customers used to drive to her stand, the safety provided by law enforcement, and the deduction she represented on her parents tax returns.

Expecting a child to grasp the complexities of a political argument may be a little much to ask. That’s particularly true when the adult asking the question has deliberately lied in his presentation. No doubt the case being made by Fox was eagerly assimilated by their audience who probably can’t comprehend at a level much beyond that of young Clara, but the attempt to corral a child into a partisan debate is disgusting and exploitative. But what’s really sad is that it is not surprising that Fox News would sink to such despicable depths.

Update: Added video.

Fox News On Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns: Who Cares?

Posted by Mark NC on January 17, 2012 at 4:10 pm. 3 Comments :

The Fox News morning program, Fox & Friends, has a unique quality that differentiates it from the rest of the Fox News schedule. In addition to the lies, propaganda, and GOP PR that fills the network’s fare, Fox & Friends features a trio of hosts who are called anchors only because of how much they weigh down the network’s IQ.

On today’s episode, the three squawking heads entered into a discussion of Mitt Romney and the question of whether he would, or should, release his tax returns as just about every other candidate has done in modern times. [Video below] It went a little something like this:

Brian Kilmeade: One thing about Mitt Romney: He’s rich! And most people know it. And I guess that’s one of the reasons that he does not want to release his tax returns, because there seems to be a war on success in this country.

Gretchen Carlson: And I want to know from the viewers: Do you care about this topic? Tax returns?

Eric Bolling: Who cares if he made a lot of money. Frankly, we should all be thrilled he made a lot of money. He’s a capitalist. Don’t we want that?

Indeed, Mitt Romney is rich and most people know it. But that is not the reason that he doesn’t want to release his tax returns, and it’s not the reason that voters want him to. The practice of releasing tax returns was begun in order to establish whether the candidate is complying with the law and not receiving special treatment due to his connections in business or politics. It is also done to disclose any impropriety or relationship to special interests that might pose a conflict for a public servant.

Fox News is exploiting the controversy surrounding Romney to invent another so-called war on something they consider sacred (i.e. Christmas, junk food, religion, light bulbs, etc.) In this case it’s success. The segment was chock full of the usual complaints about “villainizing the wealthy,” “job creators,” and “class warfare.” But the ultimate goal was to trivialize those who call for accountability on the part of our representatives, and to give people like Romney (or R*Money, as his Highlife Homies call him) cover to suppress any information that they want to hide from voters.

I’ve seen a lot of tactics used by right-wingers to obfuscate and evade true transparency, but this is a new low. People have a right to know whether their leaders are honest and trustworthy. I have to wonder whether Fox’s Tea Party viewers, who purport to be fed up with government deceit, would actually approve of this effort to free candidates from the responsibility of demonstrating their fitness to serve in this simple manner.

Does Romney have something to hide? Is he embarrassed by how little he paid in taxes due to loopholes that the rest of us don’t get? Does he have investments in enterprises that might affect his judgment or independence? These are important questions, but equally important is why is Fox News running interference for Romney and any other politician who might have skeletons he wants to keep in the closet until after the election?

WTF: Fox News Is Now Psychoanalyzing Media Matters Execs

Posted by Mark NC on July 5, 2011 at 3:58 pm. 6 Comments :

To anyone who thought that Fox News would become a more responsible and sane journalistic enterprise after the departure of Glenn Beck, your expectations have been dashed against the jagged rocks of reality (I told you so).

For the past couple of weeks Fox News has been engaging in a dogged effort to discredit the media watchdog group, Media Matters. They have sicced their most vicious attack poodles on them and openly beseeched their viewers to file complaints with the IRS to challenge Media Matters’ tax-exempt status. Every day they bump this two week old story to the top of their rabidly partisan web site, Fox Nation, above other more recent news. Their Saturday “News Watch” program devoted fully half the show to this one subject. But today they have taken a running leap off a cliff that leads to a Grand Canyon of stupidity, hilarity, and jaw-dropping shame.

Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy, perhaps the stupidest man on TV, brought in Glenn Beck’s co-author and “doctor” Keith Ablow for an interview that careened off into the surreal. Ablow pretended that he could psychoanalyze someone whom he has never examined or even met. That is a sign of certain quackery reminiscent of “doctor” Bill Frist’s pathetic attempt to diagnose the terminally ill and vegetative Terri Schiavo. Here is a portion of the exchange:

Steve Doocy: I understand you’ve done a psychological profile of [Media Matters founder] David Brock. What did you find?

Keith Ablow: Well, look, I looked at him from a distance, but you don’t have to look very hard to see into the man’s mind apparently. This is somebody who seemingly has such low self-esteem, Steve, that he’s lurching from one group to another. Whoever will embrace him and reassure him that he’s a decent guy and be his cheerleader in a dramatic way, that’s who he’s gonna be with. […] You can’t believe this guy because he’s full of self-hatred which he then projects on the world around him in order to get love. So he’s gotta have somebody to hate because he thinks that’s the way, the best way to galvanize the love in his direction. So yes, it’s always about being a hit man, you know, exposing someone. There’s very sexual connotations here too.

That is about as idiotic an appraisal as has ever been articulated aloud. I pity anyone who actually has this fraud as an analyst. Ablow has no basis whatsoever to arrive at his conclusions. He is merely taking obviously hostile swipes at someone he is being paid to disparage. He should have his license revoked. And with all of his brazen, personal animosity he fails to provide a single example of anything that Brock has done that is incorrect or unsubstantiated.

This attack is purely personal. Ablow’s notation of “lurching from one group to another” references the fact that Brock was once a conservative, but is now a liberal. However, Brock was a conservative for many years and, after evolving more to the left, he has remained liberal for the past decade. That behavior is hardly what any rational person would describe as “lurching.” In fact, it’s rather stable. Would Ablow also regard Andrew Breitbart, David Horowitz, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann as lurching, self-haters? They are all former Democrats or liberals.

Ablow neglects to explain what the “sexual connotations” are. He probably only raised that issue to remind his audience that Brock is openly gay, a factor that the Fox audience will regard as negative. At one point Ablow tried to inject that Brock’s having been adopted had some part in this absurd analysis, as if adoption is a precursor to the alleged self-hatred Ablow is inventing. And he signed off the segment by telling Doocy, in a declarative tone, that Brock is “A very dangerous man, my friend.”

Ablow is a very disturbed and unprofessional little weasel (I can’t bring myself to call him a man). His medical credibility is identical to the journalistic credibility of Fox News – Zero. No wonder he is their resident psychiatric expert. The prerequisite to becoming an expert on Fox News is to demonstrate that you have little knowledge of your professed field, and that you’re willing to use your ignorance to advance the Republican agenda.

In addition to this psycho-circus, Fox News also called upon faux-liberal Juan Williams to pile on Media Matters. In an interview with Doocy’s co-host, Brian Kilmeade, Williams said that Media Matters is “about ruining people and trying to take a company down – to destroy a company.” There was not even a hint of irony as he said this while he was trying to ruin people and destroy a company. Then Kilmeade closed the interview with this verbal and graphic appeal to viewers:

“If you want to file a complaint about Media Matters I want you to do this. Go to FoxNation.com and click on the “Justice”>/em> tab. We’ll take it from there.”

This is just the latest attempt to drive viewers to a web page where they can file their own complaint to the IRS. As I’ve noted previously, there is no merit to the argument that Media Matters is in violation of their tax-exempt status. To be in violation they would have to be engaging in substantial political (i.e. campaign) or lobbying (i.e. legislative) activities. Media Matters does neither. However, the instructions as presented in the graphic above advise Fox viewers to lie in their complaint. Let me repeat that: Fox is advising their viewers to LIE to the IRS! This is because the instruction to check the boxes for political campaigning and lobbying activities amounts to falsifying the form.

I defy anyone to supply an example of Media Matters either engaging in a political campaign or lobbying any member of any legislative body. Since no such examples have been supplied, the form would be a false representation. The only way that Media Matters can be construed as being in violation of their tax-exempt status by virtue of their attacking Fox, is if Fox is itself a political operation. Of course, Fox denies that. Were they to admit it we might have a different story. In the meantime, if these complaint forms required the complainant to sign under oath, then Fox would be guilty of suborning perjury. As it is they are merely guilty of attempting to flood the IRS with frivolous and phony paperwork. Which for conservatives seeking to reduce the cost and oversight of government is pretty hypocritical.

At the risk of being accused of psychoanalyzing Fox, I must observe that they are obviously scared. They are so afraid of Media Matters that they have become obsessed with destroying it. While most Americans have probably never heard of Media Matters, Fox is elevating them to the top of the news pile, even above Casey Anthony. They know that any organization that shines the light of truth on Fox News is going to make things difficult for an enterprise like Fox whose mission is to disseminate disinformation and keep viewers ignorant.

If you haven’t done so already, this would be a good time to join Media Matters.

Zero Tolerance? Fox News Foxed Up Again

Posted by Mark NC on February 23, 2011 at 10:25 am. 3 Comments :

Fox News Faux Pas Is there a more incompetent news network on the air than Fox News? This is an operation that has screwed up so often that the management had to issue a memo warning employees to stop screwing up. Apparently it didn’t do much good because the “errors” are still rampant.

This morning on Fox and Friends, Brian Kilmeade sought to slam down a Democratic guest who asserted that the public was standing with the unions against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

In rebuttal Kilmeade referenced a poll in USA Today that showed that 61% of respondents favored legislation that would strip unions of their collective bargaining rights. He also presented the graphic to the left to illustrate his point.

There’s just one problem with that. The numbers are the reverse of what was shown and said. In reality, 61% oppose stripping unions of their collective bargaining rights. Forty-four minutes later, in the final minute of the program, Kilmeade apologized for the error and displayed a corrected version of the poll graphic. However, this was not a typo. During the debate Kilmeade was ready to rebut the Democrat with what he said were the poll results. So he had the same numbers as the botched graphic in his program notes. Kilmeade was able to falsely argue that the public was behind the governor during the debate segment, but the correction came at the end of the show with no further discussion.

Isn’t it odd how every time Fox News makes a mistake like this it favors their right-wing slant? Numbers are reversed; criminal Republicans are identified as Democrats; maps are mislabeled. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

The brass at Fox News, however, is not amused. After a spate of embarrassing errors over the past couple of years, a memo was issued to all employees warning that there would be a “Zero Tolerance” policy for such shoddy performance:

“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.”

So who is going to get the axe over this one? If I were a Fox News employee I wouldn’t be too nervous. There have been numerous foul ups like this since the memo went out and no known repercussions for any of them. Apparently the memo was just window dressing to make it appear as if Fox was taking steps to forestall these mistakes. But with no follow through it can only be assumed that they weren’t mistakes to begin with.

This is policy at Fox News. They deliberately disinform viewers during lengthy “news” segments, then issue brief corrections later in the day, far removed from the original discussion. And sadly, their peers at other networks continue to defend them as a news enterprise.

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