Sarah Palin Rehired At Fox News To ‘Piss Off’ People And Other Tales Of Temper Tantrums

Posted by Mark NC on January 11, 2014 at 11:29 am. 7 Comments :

What does Fox News CEO Roger Ailes have in common with New Jersey governor Chris Christie? They are both bullies who enjoy taking out revenge on their political enemies in the most childish way possible. [They are also a couple of jerks whose chunky frames are only outweighed by their inflated egos, and who have a deep and perverse mutual affection for one another] By now everyone knows how Christie sought to punish Democrats in Fort Lee by shutting down lanes on the George Washington Bridge, creating severe traffic jams, costing millions in productivity loss, and potentially endangering people’s lives. And now we learn, from Ailes himself, that his emotional maturity is similarly stunted.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter this week, Ailes was asked “Why bring back Sarah Palin just a few months after not renewing her contract?” His answer exposes him as a petulant little twerp who may be too senile to continue running a national news network.

Ailes: I’m not a defender of everything she says. I don’t hear everything she says. But I know she represents a certain group of people who rose up against their own party, which you rarely see. I probably hired her back, if you really want to get to the bottom of it, to give her a chance to say her piece and piss off the people that wanted her dead.

Indeed, Palin represents a certain group of Tea-sodden people, but they are fervently supportive of the far-right wing of their party (as is Ailes) and would never consider voting for anyone but a Republican. The fact that Ailes can’t cite as reasons for Palin’s rehire her superior intellect or insightful analysis says much about his disdain for both Palin and his audience. His management philosophy at Fox appears to include a mandate to inflict revenge on liberals who don’t even watch the network. In reality, the people who dislike Palin (this author included) couldn’t be happier that she is back on Fox News making an ass of herself and the network.

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This isn’t the first time that Ailes has made a personnel decision that is rooted in childish vengeance. Last year, in a fawning biography that Ailes himself had solicited, he told the author why he had kept Glenn Beck on the air long after he had decided that Beck was a divisive figure who was costing the network advertising revenue. The reason Ailes gave for putting off Beck’s departure was that he “didn’t want to give MoveOn and Media Matters the satisfaction.” So Ailes permitted Beck to continue broadcasting his race-baiting, Nazi-inflected, conspiracy theories for several more months because he would rather poison the airwaves (and the minds of his viewers) with lies and hatred than to let his ideological adversaries think they had scored a victory.

Another example of the juvenile (and paranoid) brand of Ailes’ management style was revealed in an article this week in the Daily Beast. David Freedlander wrote in “Fox’s War Against Ailes Biographer” about the lengths to which Ailes will go to attack journalists who dare to write anything about the cable news overlord:

“Fox News has been waiting for [Gabriel] Sherman’s book [The Loudest Voice In The Room] to come out. According to interviews with a half-dozen former employees of what is known as the Fox News ‘Brain Room,’ the brain trust at the network has been following Sherman’s work for years. Although the so-called ‘Brain Room,’ located in the basement of Fox News studios, was supposed to be dedicated to research for the networks programming, two former news librarians describe an environment where they were frequently called to do opposition research about media reporters who were writing about Fox News or Ailes. Former employees described being tasked to investigate reporters from a variety of beats, including hunting down personal information such as voter registration that was used to determine how ‘Fox-friendly’ the reporter was.”

The use of a newsroom’s assets and personnel to carry out private vendettas is plainly unethical, as noted by NPR’s media reporter David Folkenflik. Folkenflik was himself a victim of Fox’s wrath and gave the Daily Beast his assessment of the toxic environment at Fox News:

“They are on a wartime footing. They approach this stuff in a very different way, in the way that a PR shop in a political campaign would. It is hard to imagine any other serious news outlet — The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN — handling negative news stories in this way.”

And that’s pretty much the gist of it. Fox is perpetually at war. It is a theme that permeates their broadcasts whether it’s about a Class War or a War on Christmas, there is a built in hostility at Fox that infects its personnel on and off the air. It is why they regard anyone who disagrees with their editorial viewpoint as a hostile adversary. And that precise language was used in an ad that Fox placed in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post:

[Update 1/11/2014] In response to Ailes claim that he rehired Palin to piss people off, Palin took to her Facebook page to say “Funny. I accepted for the same reason!” Proving that both Ailes and Palin are too stupid to grasp that her critics aren’t the least bit pissed off by her coming back to Fox and spewing her laughably ignorant drivel.

Unbelievable: How Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Distorted A Middle School Election

Posted by Mark NC on January 9, 2014 at 11:16 am. 1 Comments :

By now anyone who is paying attention knows that Fox News is a disreputable purveyor of heavily biased propaganda on behalf of the Republican Party and conservative politics. The network openly favors GOP/Tea Party pundits and politicians and has even been caught reporting Republican press releases verbatim as if they were independently sourced news stories.

Now an excerpt from an upcoming biography of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes provides an outstanding illustration of the mindset that runs Fox News. The book, “The Loudest Voice In The Room” by Gabriel Sherman, was excerpted in New York Magazine and includes a passage about how Ailes intervened with the reporting in a local newspaper he owns in Putnam County, New York, where he lives in a mountaintop estate. The entire excerpt offers a revealing look into the thought processes of Ailes as he seeks to dominate any environment in which he resides – even a small upstate New York hamlet and its local news, schools, and government.

Another drama erupted after a reporter named Michael Turton was assigned to cover Haldane Middle School’s mock presidential election. After the event, Turton filed a report headlined “Mock Election Generated Excitement at Haldane; Obama Defeats McCain by 2–1 Margin.” He went on, “The 2008 U.S. presidential election is now history. And when the votes were tallied, Barack Obama had defeated John McCain by more than a two to one margin. The final vote count was 128 to 53.” Reading the published version a few days later, Turton was shocked. The headline had been changed: “Mock Presidential Election Held at Haldane; Middle School Students Vote to Learn Civic Responsibility.” So had the opening paragraph: “Haldane students in grades 6 through 8 were entitled to vote for president and they did so with great enthusiasm.” Obama’s margin of victory was struck from the article. His win was buried in the last paragraph.

Turton was upset, and wrote a questioning e-mail to [editor Maureen] Hunt, but never heard back. Instead, he received a series of accusatory e-mails from the Aileses. Turton had disregarded “specific instructions” for the piece, Beth wrote. “Do you anticipate this becoming an ongoing problem for you?” A short while later, Roger weighed in. Maureen Hunt’s instructions to focus on the school’s process for teaching about elections had been “very clear,” he wrote, and Turton’s “desire to change the story into a big Obama win” should have taken a backseat. Ailes described himself as “disappointed” by Turton’s failure “to follow the agreed upon direction.”

The unfolding of events in this deliberate act of interference with a journalist’s role in reporting the news mirrors perfectly the sort of heavy-handed control that Ailes wields over Fox News. It is easy to see the parallels between this microcosm of journalism and the obvious distortions of reality that occur on Fox News every day.

This excerpt is a tantalizing morsel of what the book promises to deliver when it is released later this month. It is written in a compelling way, with credible sources, profound revelations, and dramatic flair. Consequently, we can expect Fox News to mount a fierce smear campaign against the book and its author as its release nears and in the weeks that follow. Indeed, it has already begun.

How Fox News Links ObamaCare To Falling Into An Orchestra Pit

Posted by Mark NC on November 14, 2013 at 1:17 pm. 8 Comments :

“If you have two guys on stage and one guy says ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls into the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?” ~ Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes

The “Orchestra Pit” theory of news programming by Roger Ailes perfectly describes the way much of the mainstream media, and particularly Fox News, responds to current events. Whatever angle they can wrench themselves into that results in producing more superfluous melodrama is the one they choose, regardless of how far that diverts from real substance or even reality (see Fox Nation vs. Reality for some flagrant assaults on truth).

Yesterday the administration released data on the number of people who enrolled in new health insurance plans made available by ObamaCare. In the first month there were 106,000 people who got new plans via Heathcare.gov and the state-based exchanges. Almost immediately that number was decried as a catastrophic failure by the media. However, very few reporters actually provided the necessary context within which to view this data. They leaped at the opportunity to bellow ignorantly about what they characterized as an insurmountable defeat. Bill O’Reilly and Charles Krauthammer even discussed the possibility that this would herald the end of liberalism.

A more thorough analysis of the data shows that the magnitude of the fiasco was not nearly as pronounced as the media declared. First of all, everyone knew that there were functional problems with the website that would hamper enrollments. So to register surprise when numbers were released that fell below estimates made a year ago is plainly dishonest. The lower figures were expected by everyone involved and the feigned shock illustrates the devotion that media has for hysterical theatricality.

Furthermore, the numbers are not even all that bad despite the botched technology. Comparing this rollout to the rollout of RomneyCare in Massachusetts shows a similar pattern wherein enrollments started out slowly and rapidly increased as it got closer to the deadline. The Washington Post reported last month that…

“Just 123 people signed up during the Bay State’s first month of open enrollment. By contrast, 20 percent of the first year’s 36,000 enrollees purchased coverage in the last month before an individual mandate penalty kicked in.”

It is also notable that the states that provided their own exchanges signed up many more people than those that failed to do so. For instance, Kentucky’s exchange signed up five times more citizens than its exchange-less neighbor, Tennessee. Of the “Four Corners” states (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah), only Colorado has its own exchange. But it signed up three times the number of citizens as the other three combined. In fact, California’s exchange enrolled more citizens than all 36 exchange-less states combined. What’s more, many in the media are conveniently forgetting that the expansion of Medicaid is also a part of ObamaCare. And 400,000 Americans now have health insurance through Medicaid as a result. That brings the total to half a million.

By this measure, with four months left in the open enrollment period, ObamaCare is on track to meet or exceed its estimates so long as the website problems are resolved, or people have adequate access to alternatives. But another factor that comes into play is the relentless attacks on ObamaCare by Fox News and other right-wing media. The consequences of this coordinated effort to frighten the American people include both dissuading new enrollments and prodding Congress to push for crippling legislation to delay and/or defund the program. It’s a self-fulling prophecy of doom wherein critics blast ObamaCare as failing to meet expectations, act to disparage and dismantle it, and then complain when it falls short of inflated expectations. Extremist right-wingers have been working furiously to sabotage ObamaCare, and it is no coincidence that almost every state without an exchange has a Republican governor and legislature.

The downside of this unfolding of ObamaCare news is the allegedly poor rate of enrollment. And on that matter, Fox obsessively focuses on negative reports that characterize the program as having tripped and fallen into a bottomless (orchestra) pit. But the other newsmaker on the stage is Obama’s plan that has provided 48 million Americans with access to health care that they had been denied previously. This solves a problem that prior administrations, going back FDR, have tried and failed to solve.

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It is a historic achievement, but the media is fixated on the website that fell into the Orchestra Pit, while ignoring the far greater achievement of making health care accessible to millions. So thanks, Roger Ailes, for helping the press to neglect what is truly important in order to promote relative trivialities and misrepresentations, and thereby advancing your personal agenda of Tea Party extremism and callous insensitivity toward those less fortunate than you. Despite your campaign to destroy a program that will bring life-saving relief to millions of Americans, the people are going to discover the benefits of this innovation and reward those who delivered it – and punish those who tried to kill it.

Fox News Hypes Roger Ailes’ Asinine Syria Strategy

Posted by Mark NC on September 11, 2013 at 11:05 am. 2 Comments :

The ever-shifting attitudes on the crisis in Syria by Fox News have already seen the network condemn President Obama for proposing that the White House take unilateral action against Syria, then complaining when the President brought Congress into the decision-making. They blasted Russian president Vladimir Putin for his alliance with Assad, then hailed him as deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize.

The only distinction between any of their positions and their subsequent contrary positions was where they thought Obama stood at the time. It’s as predictable as night following day. If Obama is for it, Fox fires on all cylinders to convince their gullible audience that there is something terribly wrong with it.

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But Fox doesn’t always take an entirely negative approach. Sometimes they see a positive path to promote their kneejerk anti-Obamaism. Eric Bolling, co-host of Fox’s The Five, saw just such a path yesterday to advance a truly harebrained idea that was floated by Fox’s CEO, Roger Ailes. Bolling pretended that he just happened to be reading a sycophantic Ailes biography that was published a year ago (what took him so long), and discovered a passage that pertained to the current state of affairs in Syria. In a couple of rather vacant paragraphs, Bolling saw something so profound that he proclaimed that he was “about to blow your mind.” He then recited from the hallowed text of the book…

“Putin is angry. He thinks the United States doesn’t take him seriously or treat Russia as a major player. Okay, fine, that’s how he feels. If I were president, I’d get in a room with him and say, ‘Look at the slaughter going on in Syria. You can stop it. Do it, and I’ll see to it that you can get all the credit. I’ll tell the world it was you who saved the innocent children of Syria from slaughter. You’ll be an international hero. You’ll go down in history.’ Hell, Putin would go to bed thinking, ‘That’s not a bad offer.’

There will still be plenty of other issues I’d have with Russia. But instead of looking for one huge deal that settles everything, you take a piece of the problem and solve it. Give an incentive for good behavior. Show the other guy his self-interest. Everybody has an ego. Everybody needs dignity. And what does it cost? You get what you want you give up nothing.”

Let’s break this down. Ailes essentially proposed that Obama suggest to Putin that he should do something that he already knows he can do, and that he can do without any help from Obama. Then Obama is supposed to magnanimously offer to let Putin take credit what he (Putin) actually did. It’s a little like saying “Hey Roger. Why don’t you donate $10,000 to the Red Cross and, if you do, I’ll let you have all the credit.”

The proposal by Ailes is so devoid of substance that it can hardly be construed as a proposal at all. What’s more, it is ludicrous to think that Putin would have been interested in taking credit for leaning on Assad when Putin was allied with Assad’s efforts to defeat the rebels trying to depose him. Had Obama suggested that Putin tell Assad to retreat in the battle to preserve his rule, Putin would have gone to bed thinking “What a putz.”

Ailes seems to have no conception that “good behavior” is a subjective term and that it means something very different to Putin and Assad than it does to Ailes or Obama. It was the use of chemical weapons that upended the playing field and jolted Putin’s perspective to one that might find common ground with Obama and the rest of the civilized world. But that happened last month, not last year, and absent that, Putin would have laughed off any attempt to come between him and his pal Assad.

Eric Bolling has demonstrated that he is just as clueless as Ailes. His recitation of this dimwitted plan is nothing more than brown-nosing his boss and wasting air time to engage in rank self-congratulatory blather. Bolling has never distinguished himself as much of thinker, but this transparent act of vanity really drives home the point that he is incapable of original thought or coherent analysis. And that’s probably a good sign that he has a fair degree of job security at Fox News.

The Plot Thickens: Fired Fox News Exec Fires Back

Posted by Mark NC on August 27, 2013 at 4:48 pm. 5 Comments :

Roger Ailes Last week news broke that Fox News Executive VP of Communications, Brian Lewis, was terminated and escorted from the building by security. Vague charges of “financial irregularities” were asserted, but without specifics.

The termination was quickly followed by what appeared to be a coordinated smear campaign by Fox personnel, both in the office suites and on the air. It was suspiciously hostile treatment for a top aide to Fox CEO Roger Ailes, who had been with the network since it’s inception. This lead to speculation that the reasons for Lewis’ departure were likely different than those the company was offering.

[Read our previous story detailing the circumstances of Lewis’ departure and an alternative explanation for the separation]

Now Gawker is reporting that Lewis has retained a high-powered attorney, Judd Burstein, and the tone of his public introduction suggests that some fireworks will be part of the battle between Lewis and Fox:

Burstein: I have just been retained and am still plotting our course of action. But two things are very clear to me. First, Brian Lewis no longer has any confidentiality obligation to Newscorp or Roger Ailes because of the false and malicious statements made by Fox to date. Second, Roger Ailes and Newscorp have a lot more to fear from Brian Lewis telling the truth about them than Brian Lewis has to fear from Roger Ailes and his toadies telling lies about Brian Lewis.

Yee-friggen-Haw! This sounds like it’s gonna be fun. The statement that any obligation of confidentiality is now moot is a blow across the bow of Fox News. It means that they know stuff and they’re willing to talk. It means that they are disputing the allegations of financial malfeasance, which means that there is another reason for the unceremonious sacking. And the frank language that casts Ailes and his henchmen as “toadies” is a clear indication that they mean business.

Fasten your seat belts. It’s gonna be bumpy ride.

Cloak And Dagger: Why Did Fox News Fire Roger Ailes’ Right-Hand Man?

Posted by Mark NC on August 22, 2013 at 11:19 am. 5 Comments :

Last month Brian Lewis was quietly escorted from the Fox News offices by security personnel. It is only now becoming known that this long-time employee was terminated under suspicious circumstances. The statement from Fox News said that Lewis, Fox’s Executive VP of Communications, was…

“…terminated for cause, specifically for issues relating to financial irregularities, as well as for multiple, material and significant breaches of his employment contract.”

No further statement from Fox was issued, and insiders are being characteristically silent as to the nature of the “financial irregularities.” However, there are good reasons to suspect that there is more to this than meets the eye.

Lewis has long been identified as one of the closest associates of Fox CEO Roger Ailes. He was brought along to Fox with Ailes from their previous positions at CNBC. Having been with Fox since its inception, Lewis rose to a position of trust wherein his responsibilities covered everything from Fox News, to Fox Business, to the Fox television stations, and more. In addition, he was listed as a senior adviser to Ailes. His authority was broad and comprehensive. For Ailes to jettison him so abruptly he must have done something unforgivably terrible.

Adding to the curious nature of Lewis’ departure is the treatment he has received from official Fox spokespersons and even their on-air personnel. Lewis is now being portrayed as a nearly insignificant cog in the Fox family. They dispute the descriptions of him as an Ailes confidant. Apparently, at Fox you can be an executive VP from the network’s launch and still not be very important. Many Foxies piled on in the belittling of Lewis, including Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, and more.

This is the sort of coordinated smear campaign that Fox generally embarks upon when they regard themselves as under attack. Ironically, it was Lewis who spearheaded these campaigns prior to his falling out.

In one example, Fox went after Media Matters in advance of their publication of the book “The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine” They devoted hours of airtime to slandering Media Matters and its founder, David Brock, whom they called a mentally unstable drug abuser. Fox also aired innumerable segments challenging Media Matters’ tax exempt status in an effort to financially harm the organization. Funny, isn’t it, that Fox tried to get the IRS to punish what they falsely claimed was a political entity, and now they are condemning the IRS for allegedly doing just that to Tea party groups.

Another example is the campaign Fox ran against author Gabriel Sherman, who is writing a book about Ailes. This effort began with Ailes soliciting his own biography that was written by his hand-picked, sycophantic fluffer, Zev Chafets, in an attempt to beat Sherman to market. Then the war was escalated with personal attacks on Sherman, calling him a “phony journalist,” a “stalker,” a “harasser,” and “a [George] Soros puppet.” It is this Sherman angle that raises questions about the termination of Lewis.

Speculation is already surfacing that Ailes suspected Lewis of providing information to Sherman for his book. Ailes, of course, is notoriously paranoid and believes that Al Qaeda and the gays are out to get him too. However, if Lewis is a source for Sherman’s book he would surely have an abundance of juicy tidbits to unveil. Sherman himself wrote of Lewis’ departure from Fox and his account is both informative and provocative.

The likelihood that Lewis was engaged in something other than financial improprieties is pretty high. It is hard to believe that an Ailes loyalist for nearly two decades would suddenly become a common embezzler. Much more plausible is the theory that Lewis was persuaded to consort with an author with the intention of putting honest accounts into the record. That alone would mark Lewis as a traitor in the eyes of Ailes, and justify his expulsion from the Fox family.

Moreover, the familiar pattern that Fox follows by staging all-out war against anyone who dares to challenge their omnipotence is evident in the way they are hammering Lewis. If this were actually a routine dismissal of an errant employee there would be no need for the merciless bashing that Lewis is enduring. However, if Lewis was consorting with the enemy, this is precisely how Fox would respond.

This is a textbook example of a Fox News preemptive attack of the sort they launched on Media Matters and, previously, Sherman. It is something they believe would serve them later on should they need to discredit Lewis if his contributions show up in Sherman’s book. Most of all, it is not how a company ordinarily handles a sensitive personnel matter. But it is characteristic of the scorched-earth strategy that Fox employs when cornered.

[Update] See Brian Lewis’ response here.

Fox News Rewards Megyn Kelly’s Bootlicking Conservative Bias With A Promotion To Primetime

Posted by Mark NC on July 2, 2013 at 2:14 pm. 13 Comments :

This just in: “Megyn Kelly will move to FOX News Channel’s (FNC) primetime lineup upon her return from maternity leave, announced Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO, FOX News.”

Megyn Kelly GQ This was just a matter of time as Fox News has pretty obviously been grooming Kelly for a prominent role at the network from the day she was hired. Both Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes had taken a profound (and somewhat creepy) interest in her due to her pinup girl good looks, her background as a lawyer, and her eagerness to fulfill the Fox mission of slandering anyone and everything liberal without regard to honesty or ethics. (See Fox Nation vs. Reality)

Kelly fits the Fox mold to a tee, as a busty blonde presenter who would appeal to the Cialis-chomping, scooter-riding, gold-hoarding, geezers who make up such a large part of Fox’s audience and advertiser base. And Kelly is not shy about marketing her sex appeal as demonstrated by her pictorial in GQ Magazine.

As an anchor, Kelly has fashioned a more palatable version of Glenn Beck’s conspiracy-riddled wingnuttery. The stories she features are a collection of partisan tripe and manufactured outrages that have little basis in fact. From her near-obsession with the irrelevant New Black Panther Party, to her false accusations against then-Pennsylvania senate candidate Joe Sestak, Kelly has been a non-stop, gushing flow of disinformation and gossip. For more examples:

Kelly defended an anti-Islam filmmaker as a “patsy” of the Obama administration.
Kelly asserted that Americans have “gotta get a little squeamish” about the prospect of being killed by drones.
Kelly told her colleague Bill O’Reilly that pepper spray used against student protesters was just “a food product, essentially.”
Kelly moderated a discussion that was based on a series of “Fox Facts” that were cribbed directly from a Republican National Committee press release.
Kelly featured a disreputable reporter with a history of violence (who was later arrested for sexually assaulting a four year old girl) in her frequent attacks on the funders of the Islamic Center that Fox derisively referred to as the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
Kelly misrepresented the results of a Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll to argue that Democrats are defying the will of the people.
Kelly helped to cover up the extra-marital affair of GOP senator John Ensign and failed to disclose her personal involvement in the story.

It’s easy to see why Fox would want to advance Kelly to their primetime lineup. The musty presences of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren could surely use an injection of new blood. The problem is that one of them will have to be booted from their perch. The most obvious loser would be Van Susteren, whose show is the weakest performer of the lot. However, Hannity’s position is hardly safe considering that he is despised by most of his colleagues. Even O’Reilly cannot be dismissed since he has floated suggestions that he might be ready to retire.

So we will have to wait until Fox announces their new schedule to see who comes up short. But in the end it will make no difference in the content that Fox offers. It will continue to be rabidly right-wing, with a clearly denoted bias for Republican Party dogma. Kelly’s entry into the club will not change that. In fact, it will congeal the conservative hackery into a younger, more alluring package. But the brain-dead zombies who watch Fox won’t have to worry a bit about whether they will continue to get a daily dose of propaganda devoid of those pesky and annoying facts that make understanding current events so difficult. For them, Kelly will be a comforting and reassuring breath of fresh lies.

[Update: 7/10/2003] There is still no word on where Kelly will land in primetime, but one of the replacements for her daytime gig will be Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson, whose experience as a former Miss America certainly prepared her for a role as a Fox News anchor. Media Matters has prepared an exhaustive look back at Carlson’s credentials.

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Honored By Ultra-Rightist Bradley Foundation

Posted by Mark NC on June 13, 2013 at 9:30 am. 6 Comments :

Confirming what everyone with a pulse already knows, Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News, is a revered figure in the realm of wealthy, right-wing, evangelical, political manipulators. The latest evidence is the tribute to Ailes from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, an organization that rivals the Koch brothers for their advocacy of extremist conservative issues. Huffington Post reports that…

“Over the past decade, the Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation has given away more than $400 million to fund conservative causes, including school voucher campaigns, anti-union ‘right to work’ laws, pro-marriage initiatives, global warming denial groups and efforts to combat voter fraud.”

The Bradley has also been one of the biggest funders of AstroTurf Tea Party groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, as well as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a secretive assembly of corporations and politicians who draft custom legislation to enrich themselves.

In his acceptance speech, Ailes spewed typically jingoistic rhetoric that reeked of American supremacism. His words betray a repulsive bigotry that seeps into the reporting on Fox News every day.

Ailes: “We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by others, many who of whom want to impose their culture and laws under the manufactured utopian idea that all cultures are equal and most are better than America’s.”

Ailes doesn’t say who the “others” are who have been manipulating us. However, his use of the term is just the sort of divisive alarmism that bigots generally employ. Ailes also doesn’t bother to describe what the American culture is. Considering that the United States has grown out of a wildly diverse population of immigrants, it would be difficult to define a specific set of cultural elements that compose an American identity, unless it is one of wild diversity. In which case, it is the imposition of other cultures that has specifically shaped what is unique about us.

Nevertheless, Ailes goes on to state that…

“Traditional American culture influenced me greatly as I created the Fox News Channel for Rupert Murdoch. We knew that a fair and balanced news channel could succeed, as long as no views were rejected and conservative views were allowed to be heard.”

It’s interesting that he claims to reject no views, but only stipulates that conservative views be heard. That subtle prejudice is affirmed in the following paragraph where Ailes praises his network for reporting stories that others do not. He cites as examples the Dr. Gosnell story, the trumped up Benghazi hysteria, and the IRS/Tea Party affair – all conservative leaning news items. And with regard to the IRS, Ailes ventures off into conspiracy theory lunacy by advancing nutty allegations about the hiring of some 16,000 armed IRS agents enforcing ObamaCare (when is he going to give Alex Jones a show on Fox?).

As if to tie up his speech with a demonstration of the ignorance and shallow thinking that is so rampant on Fox News, Ailes makes the absurd (and factually erroneous) statement that…

“You know how I know this is a great country? Because everybody is trying to get in, and nobody is trying to get out.”

First of all, it is ridiculous to try to establish America’s greatness by what those on the outside think. There are at least as many foreigners who hate, or disapprove of, America, as admire it. What’s more, there are millions of people who want to get out of America. Three million leave every year. As for the people trying to get in, they are not doing so because America is great. They are coming because America is rich. Contrary to the worshipers of wealth with whom Ailes associates, that is not the same thing.

It is entirely appropriate that Ailes would receive this tribute from an organization that celebrates Randian-style greed and selfishness. And his acceptance speech perfectly illustrates his devotion to that philosophy. It’s just too bad that the $250,000 award is going to someone who is already a multimillionaire, and whose life has been dedicated to hiring other rich people to tell middle-class people to blame the poor for all of their problems.

Breitbart Execs Furiously Fluffing Fox News And Roger Ailes

Posted by Mark NC on June 8, 2013 at 10:18 am. 4 Comments :

Breitbart News has suffered a dramatic decline in the “quality” (if you can call it that) of their yellow journalism since the sudden demise of their guiding blight, Andrew Breitbart. They embarrassed themselves by falling for a hoax from the same satirical site they previously blasted the Washington Post for believing. They published a “scoop” claiming that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel took donations from a group that, as it turns out, didn’t exist. Their practice of “vetting” President Obama yielded dud after dud. And their attempt to cinematically canonize their namesake bellyflopped at the box office. The magnitude of their collapse is almost too painful to watch.

Consequently, they seem to have grabbed a life line from Fox News to prevent any further shrinkage. Their web site now features a section where they post headlines from their “partners,” but the only partner listed is Fox News. They have posted adoring homages to Fox personalities like Kirsten Powers who pretend to be liberals while bashing everything to the left of Attila the Hun. And for their sycophancy, they now get regular promotions of their articles on Fox News.

Have you got your copy of “Fox Nation vs. Reality” yet?

But this week revealed the most blatant Fox fluffing yet between the two conservative lie factories. On June 5, Breitbart published an article defending Fox News CEO Roger Ailes from disclosures contained in a new book by reporter Jonathan Alter: The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies. For some reason it took the the three biggest cheeses at Breitbart News to compose this syrupy ode to Ailes: Stephen Bannon, Executive Chairman; Larry Solov, President; and Alexander Marlow, Managing Editor. And just last week the same three stooges penned a fawning tribute to Ailes titled “The Ailes Manifesto: America Rallies Around Roger Ailes and Fox News.” Of course, America did no such thing, but the Breitbart executive sweets sure exposed their deep infatuation.

This week, Breitbart’s sensationalistic headline called Alter an “MSM Tool in the War Against Roger Ailes and Fox News,” and dismissed him for being employed by a news enterprise owned by a partisan billionaire (Michael Bloomberg). Amazingly, the BreitBrats displayed no sense of irony considering they themselves are busy licking the boots of their own partisan billionaire (Rupert Murdoch).

After several paragraphs of self-righteous and predictable carping over their delusional perception of the media as hopelessly liberal, the BreitBrats think they have nailed Alter with this assertion: “Breitbart News did some checking, and according to authoritative Fox and News Corporation sources, Ailes never talked to Alter for this book.” Well, they didn’t have to check with Fox for that because Alter never claimed to have talked to Ailes for the book. Then, after that criticism that failed to cite any Fox Newser by name, the BreitBrats complained that Alter failed to cite “any inside Fox or News Corp. sources” by name.” Then they followed that up with another quote from “one Fox source.” In fact, the rebuttal to nearly every criticism the BreitBrats made of Alter’s book was based on either an unnamed source, or had no attribution at all. There were thirteen itemized passages from Alter’s book with which Breitbart took exception. They were all summarily dismissed with ambiguous notations like…

“…declared a high-placed figure…”
“…security sources at Fox…”
“…according to a longtime hand at News Corp…”
“…According to our reporting…”
“…Says a News Corp. building source…”
“…according to Fox sources…”
“…Sources tell Fox that…”

So after castigating Alter for deigning to employ unnamed sources, the BreitBrats rely almost entirely on unnamed sources for their rebuttal. But even worse, they tally up the results of their own missive and report that six of Alter’s thirteen allegations were false. That means, of course, that 7 were true or partly true.

Someone may need to inform the BreitBrats that if you’re trying to refute a list of assertions in a critical book, you are not making much headway if a majority of them, by your own reckoning, are true. And that doesn’t even take into account the likelihood that the ones Breitbart tagged as false may still be true, despite their objections. After all, as Alter said in response to an article in Politico where Ailes rebuffed his book, “The question is, do you believe me or Roger Ailes?”

Setting aside for the moment that Ailes is a professional liar, for the BreitBrats the answer to alter’s question is obvious. They believe their corrupt and corpulent sweetheart, Roger Ailes. And they would follow him anywhere, as long as he continues to plug their pitiful blog. Romantic, aint it?

Fox News Breaks Out Nazi Smear To Attack Obama’s UN Pick

Posted by Mark NC on June 5, 2013 at 9:11 pm. 7 Comments :

This didn’t take long. Just a few hours after President Obama announced his selection of Samantha Power to succeed Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Fox News has already hauled out the Nazi references that they just can’t seem to hold in.

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As comedian Lewis Black once said of Glenn Beck, another Nazi talk junkie, they have Nazi Tourettes Syndrome – a malady that manifests itself with the uncontrollable compulsion to shout “Nazi” at everyone associated with Obama or any other Democrat or liberal. And shortly after the President’s morning announcement Fox had another seizure:

“The former White House adviser and longtime Obama friend nominated Wednesday as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has a history of controversial comments that could haunt her in confirmation — including likening U.S. foreign policies to those of the Nazis.”

That was the very first paragraph of the Fox News article about Power’s appointment. There was no introductory information, no biography, nothing setting up the circumstances of her nomination. Fox went straight to the Nazi talk so as not to waste any time disparaging Power or confusing people with her exemplary resume.

Of course, Fox’s allegation is entirely false. It is pure fiction that they never even bother to support with any facts. At no time does Fox cite a U.S. foreign policy that Power allegedly likened to those of the Nazis. Fox doesn’t even offer some vague reference that they attribute to Power that might be misconstrued as likening U.S. policies in general to Nazi policies. This is a smear invented wholly in the diseased mind of Fox News.

The sole, and very tenuous, link that Fox cites is from a magazine article Power wrote in 2003, where she mentioned the famous incident in 1970 when then-German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising who were slaughtered by Nazi troops. In her article Power described the moment as expressing the remorse of contemporary Germans who “do not endorse the sins of their predecessors.” She further wrote that “his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany.” Power was merely relating a very positive historical precedent when the Germany of 1970 affirmed its sorrow for the atrocities committed a quarter of a century prior.

That is the source for Fox’s repulsive attack on Power. And you can be certain that having introduced this insult, Fox and a bevy of right-wing slanderers will attempt to spread it throughout the conservative mediasphere. It matters not to them that there is no truth to it. The only thing that matters is that they have a rhetorical club with which to beat their enemies.

It also doesn’t matter that Power is an eminently qualified and capable nominee to represent the U.S. at the U.N. She is a Harvard law graduate, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a fierce defender of human rights. She also has the honor of being called the “most dangerous woman in America” by Glenn Beck. That charge was one Beck repeated frequently when he was still on Fox News. Like much of his conspiracy-related dementia, it is difficult to unravel. But it had something to do with her being married to a long-time Beck foe, Cass Sunstein, as well as her support for a U.N. policy against genocide known as “Responsibility to Protect.” I wrote about this back in 2011:

The thrust of Beck’s squabbling is his contention that Power is the source of the administration’s policy in Libya. In his pseudo-professorial style Beck mis-educates his gullible viewers as to the roots of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) initiative endorsed by the United Nations. R2P sprung from the post-WWII determination that the community of nations are morally obligated to act in opposition to genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.

In short, Beck falsely asserts that the UN got the idea from George Soros who got it from Power’s book, “A Problem from Hell.” The only flaw in that theory is that Power’s book (which, by the way, won the Pulitzer Prize) came out the year following the publication of a UN commissioned report on the subject, so it could not possibly have been the inspiration for it. And the UN’s report was based on the 1948 “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” when Soros was a poor, eighteen year old Holocaust refugee and student in London, and well before Power was even born. Also notable is the fact that R2P was adopted when John Bolton was the ambassador to the UN and both Israel and the Bush administration supported it.

The fact that Fox was able to manufacture a phony Nazi smear so rapidly is evidence of how seriously disturbed they are. Only a sick mind(s) could find so many paranoid examples of shadowy enemies lurking virtually everywhere. And as I have noted before, the Nazi talk on Fox News starts at the top with Roger Ailes. It is clearly a critical part of their business model. And despite having received numerous condemnations from Jewish organizations and other groups that fight anti-Semitism, Fox persists with their disgraceful behavior.

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