Slander vs. Pander: How Fox News Exploits Bigotry Against Latinos For Political Gain

This week Hillary Clinton revealed some details of her platform on immigration. She expressed support for a pathway to citizenship and a policy that…

“…treats everyone with dignity and compassion, upholds the rule of law, protects our border and national security, and brings hard-working people out of the shadows and into the formal economy so they can pay taxes and contribute to our nation’s prosperity.”

That is a position that most recent polling shows is favored by most Americans. This puts the Republican Party in a bind of their own making due to their long-standing opposition to Latino issues and to what they falsely call amnesty. And as if to exacerbate that problem, Fox News weighs in with a dishonest and cynical approach to journalism that tries to cut both ways.

Fox News

On the the Fox News Latino website, Fox posted a report on Clinton’s policy address with a headline reading “Hillary Clinton makes deportation protection, path to citizenship central to campaign.” That’s a fairly straightforward description of the remarks Clinton made and treats the subject seriously and without prejudice.

Now lets travel over to the Fox Nation website to see how they covered the same story. Their headline reads “Hillary Clinton Vows to Expand Obama Amnesty to More Illegals.” That begins by lying about the Obama policy which contains nothing even resembling amnesty. For the record, amnesty is a “general pardon for offenses,” however, the Obama doctrine is one that contains considerable prerequisites for eligibility and takes years to satisfy.

More offensive is the use of the term “illegals” to describe undocumented residents. Most reputable news agencies have banned the use of the word as an epithet that does not properly describe the subjects it is insulting. Fox News Latino is among those who have banned the term. But Fox News and Fox Nation use it routinely.

What is happening here is something that News Corpse has documented in the past. Fox News is attempting to pander to Latinos, the fastest growing demographic group (and voter bloc) in the nation, by treating issues that affect them in a more balanced way on their Latino-themed website. At the same time, Fox is resorting to their standard stance of overt prejudice on their main outlets so as not to alienate their bigoted audience that is clamoring for an electrified border fence with a fiery moat stocked with alligators.

This is a cynical attempt to con the Latinos segregated on the Fox Latino site into believing that Fox News has their interests at heart. But a quick look at the rest of Fox News reveals that their bias is openly on display. This phony media strategy is also an effort by Fox to repair the damage that Republican candidates do to their electoral prospects by maligning a critical community of voters. The GOP cannot win a national election without a substantial percentage of the Latino vote, and if the candidates are too beholden to their Tea Party constituency to show these voters respect, Fox has taken on the responsibility of cleaning up their mess.

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Fox News must think that Latinos are pretty stupid if they believe that they will fall for this ruse. In the end Fox will not only fail to lull the Latino community into compliance, they will earn their enduring distrust. After Obama’s reelection in 2012, the Republican Party did an exhaustive study of what went so horribly wrong. One of the main conclusions was that the party failed to reach out to minorities and women, and that they would have to improve upon that in the future. Since then their outreach programs have mainly served to drive more minority voters away, except when they weren’t ignoring them completely. And the fact that Fox News still finds it necessary to engage in this sort of duplicity is proof that the party continues to fall behind in the race to represent all of America.

Wonder Why The American Right Is So Dumb? Read Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult Of Ignorance

In recent weeks there have been some depressing examples of idiotic lunacy emanating from the ranks of conservative media and punditry. They include blaming gay marriage for the fall of Western civilization, accusing Hillary Clinton of being rich (which is now a bad thing), and taking anything Ted Cruz says seriously. Right-wingers still deny that Climate Change is real, despite the affirmation of 97% of scientists, but they believe that the federal government is plotting a hostile takeover of Texas and the EPA is planning to outlaw all ammunition. This does not bode well for the future of conservative politics. But there must be an explanation.

Two years ago News Corpse published a collection of articles that documented the deception, propaganda, and outright lies disseminated by the Fox News community website, Fox Nation. It was dubbed “Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth.” Every chapter was fully verified by reputable sources and exposed the website for its shameful dishonesty and lack of ethics. It is that sort of concerted effort by wealthy and powerful media fabulists that cripple the intelligence of the willfully dimwitted.

Now a second volume is also available with more documented examples of Fox’s devotion to disinformation. It is titled “Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.” If you purchased Volume I, you will want to add this to your library. It is a great resource for proving to your Fox-deluded friends and family what a den of deceit it is. And if you didn’t buy Volume I you can get Volume II and leap right into the fantastical world of Fox, then go back and read the first volume for additional chuckling and wincing.

Fox Nation vs. Reality

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Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

Two years ago the first volume of Fox Nation vs. Reality was published revealing an Internet operation that was dedicated to fiercely partisan, right-wing distortions of the truth. Its mission was, and remains, to construct a safe haven for the broader Fox News community to reinforce their preferred fantasies and unfounded preconceptions. The articles aggregated there were from the fringiest sources (i.e. Daily Caller, Alex Jones’ Infowars, Breitbart News, etc.) and often contained nothing but easily disproven falsehoods and rank defamation of liberals.

Since then Fox Nation has evolved into an even more sheltered environment that has taken on many characteristics of culthood. It is a pattern they adopted from their parent, Fox News, where the slogan “fair and balanced” was an implicit condemnation of all other news sources as being neither. Recognizing that the prime directive of a cult is to convince your followers that your version of reality is the only true version and that all others are agents of deception, Fox segregated their disciples to prevent them from being contaminated by impure thoughts, otherwise known as facts.

Some of the enlightening, infuriating, and entertaining chapters include:

  • Obama’s Imaginary Foreign Fundraising
  • Paranoid Gun Nuts Go Wild
  • Night Of The Living Tea Party
  • The Poor Have It Way Too Good
  • Was Benghazi A Koch Brothers Plot?
  • Zombie Reagan’s Fake Declaration Of War

Check out the reviews on Amazon for Volume I to get an idea of what previous readers have had to say. On a platform that is notorious for focused criticism it has maintained a 4-star average rating. And that 4-star average has also been maintained for the Amazon reviews for Volume II.

Purchasing either or both volumes of Fox Nation vs. Reality is a great way to support this website and the work done here to reveal the malignancy of conservative media. Plus, it makes a wonderful Mother’s/Father’s Day gift. And as always, your continued support and patronage is very much appreciated.

Racists At Fox News Whine About Being Called Racists By Obama (Which He Didn’t Do)

The repugnant race baiters of the right have made it their mission to define anyone who alleges racism as instigators of civil disorder, promoters of racial division, and, in a display of epic hypocrisy, as racists themselves. It doesn’t matter how obvious the occurrence of bias, it can’t possibly be credible to the bigot apologists who believe that racism ended when valiant white saviors freed the slaves a hundred and fifty years ago. And these racism deniers came out in force following Obama’s appearance at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

WHCD Obama/Luther

Leading the pack are the hate-mongers on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, where they recently featured a story about why “We Must Destroy ‘The Black Community'” With a headline like that it hardly matters what the substance of the article says (it argued, wrongly, that there is no need for any communities of commonality), the point is made to an audience that eats up openly hateful messages. They have abandoned their dog whistles for bullhorns.

In a continuance of this ugly messaging, Fox Nation served up another headline reading “If Only President Obama Weren’t Black.” The author is Erick Erickson, one of the most hostile promulgators of prejudice in the media, and a Fox News contributor. The opening paragraph of the article, that is ostensibly a critique of President Obama’s comedy routine at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, says…

“Over the weekend, most of the worst people in the world gathered together in Washington, D.C. as a circle of jerks to sing each other’s praises. Sadly, there was no Samson to tear down the columns and collapse the roof on the Philistines of Washington. But there was a President of the United States willing to make jokes about the ‘F-word’ and an Imperial Court to worship him.”

Notice how Erickson begins the paragraph by making a sexual reference to “circle jerks” (slang for group masturbation), and ending with his sudden, and oh-so moral, offense to Obama making jokes about the “f-word.” Erickson is the cretin who once called retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter a goat-fucking child molester,” so we know his objections to profanity are sincere.

The thrust of this article is Erickson’s contention that Obama “assume[s] the opposition to him is because of his race.” But nowhere in the article does Erickson provide evidence that Obama holds that view. The entire premise stems from the part of Obama’s address where Keegan-Michael Key portrays Luther, Obama’s anger translator. It is important to note here that the character is NOT Obama’s “black” anger translator. However, that adjective was inserted by Erickson to color his tirade against the President. It is his attempt to fuel the racist stereotype of the angry black man.

For the rest of the article Erickson rattles off a list of political issues that he asserts are unpopular, and then he infers that Obama regards them as such because of his race. Everything about that is flat out wrong. Many of the issues (e.g. a nuclear deal with Iran, ObamaCare) are not unpopular at all. And to the extent that a minority of Americans may oppose them, Obama has never suggested that their opposition was racially based. That is an invention of the right and of Erickson’s own bigotry. Erickson goes on to declare that…

“If only President Obama weren’t black, maybe he would realize that people don’t dislike him because he is black, they dislike him because he is a self-absorbed ass.”

There’s some more proof of Erickson’s moral superiority and objection to profane incivility. But more to the point, by suggesting that Obama’s perspective would be different if he were not black, Erickson is contradicting his whole premise. He is, in fact, asserting that being black is inherently significant and has a critical impact on the affairs at hand. So his argument that race shouldn’t enter into it is in tatters by his own admission. And, by the way, Erickson’s theory is that Obama would have a much better assessment of the matter if he were white, because, you know…

While Obama himself has not blamed racism for the opposition he has faced for the last six years, it has always been a primary motivator of many of his critics. The birther controversies, the allegations of Muslim faith, the false associations with Black Panthers and other radicals, the talk of reparations, the accusations of treason and complicity with our enemies, and the depictions by Tea Party signs of Obama as an ape or tribal witch doctor, are just a few of the representations that have flooded the anti-Obama mediasphere.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
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The Fox News racists are so obsessed with the notion of being called out for their racism that they are now inventing occurrences of it. No, the President did not inject racism into this discussion. But yes, his critics, like Erickson are profoundly racist. And the advice that I keep giving them (though they never seem to listen) is: If you don’t like being called a racist, stop being racist. It really is that simple.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Paranoid CREEPY Rules For Anti-Clinton Propaganda

Every presidential candidate has their own way of launching a campaign that seeks to highlight what they regard as their virtues. Ted Cruz did it at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University with an audience of students that were required to attend or pay fines. Rand Paul did it at a hall named for Ayn Rand’s one-percenter hero, John Galt. Marco Rubio chose a location that is known as Miami’s Ellis Island, in case there were some voters who didn’t know that he is Cuban. All three of them made Sean Hannity of Fox News their first stop for an interview after their highly staged announcement speech.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton decided to take a more low key approach that centered on her theme of listening to the voters and becoming the champion of the middle-class. So she posted an introductory video on YouTube and set off on a road trip to Iowa.

Since Fox News regards anything that any Democrat does as not merely wrong, but fundamentally evil, they struggled mightily to come up with a derogatory take on Clinton’s campaign rollout and came up with this:

“Here Are The Paranoid CREEPY Rules Hillary Had For ‘Every Day Americans’ To Meet With Her”

Fox Nation

Oh my, that sounds disturbing. And it would be if any of it were true. What Fox News did on their home page for crotchety thumbsuckers, Fox Nation, is wildly distort an article published by Business Insider (BI) that merely described some of the procedures Clinton’s staff employed to maintain her privacy and that of those with whom she met. The Fox Nation version of events began with a fair and balanced declaration that…

“The results are in, and pretty much everyone agrees that the rollout of Hillary’s presidential campaign has been a disaster.”

Obviously the only people polled for that consensus were Tea Party dimwits and Rush Limbaugh’s dittoheads. The Fox Nationalists went on to claim that the BI article was revealing that “the rules have come out for being an ‘every day American’ that got to meet Hillary on the campaign.” However, BI’s reporting was confined to a single meeting that included only Democratic operatives in Iowa. It never mentioned every day Americans, despite the fact that Fox put those words in quotes. So Fox’s characterization was a complete lie.

As for the alleged creepiness of the affair, all of the attendees were not only comfortable with the prerequisites, they wholly approved of them. The rules that Fox disparaged included common precautions to keep the meeting’s details secure, such as not revealing the location until necessary and prohibiting cell phones. None of this bothered anybody. One guest said that “it was a smart thing to do [and] because they did it that way, she was able to sit and have a regular conversation.” Another said that he “appreciated that fact that I could just talk to her and, no offense, not have any of the news media there.”

In addition to the positive response of the meeting’s participants, the restaurant where it took place was likewise pleased and noted that Clinton and her staff were “very pleasant” and “very generous with the tip.” The owner told BI that…

“Clinton’s visit was also a ‘pleasure’ for the restaurant’s staff. Despite the secrecy surrounding Clinton’s stop, the restaurant was not closed to customers while she was there, Bauer said Clinton spent a good deal of time greeting diners and staff.”

Sounds real creepy, doesn’t it? Fox just happened to leave all of that out of their mucked-up version of the story. For the record, the owner was not merely being solicitous to a frontrunner for the presidency in 2016. She also told BI about a previous presidential aspirant who held an event at her restaurant:

“Clinton isn’t the first presidential candidate to visit the Main Street Café. Republican Mitt Romney held a roundtable there in 2012, and Bauer subsequently said she felt he and his entourage treated the staff poorly.”

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Can anything be more creepy than the way that Fox Nation falsifies news stories in order to manipulate their famously ill-informed readers? It truly is cult-like the way they brainwash people in order to insure that nobody wanders off from the approved doctrine. It is also a sad commentary on the state of conservative media that they would resort to this and that their audience is so easily and willingly deceived.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: You Have To Read This (Irrelevant) Email

For most of the past week the news cycle has been decidedly unfavorable to conservatives. Bill O’Reilly’s reputation is in tatters after several examples of his lying to stroke his own ego were revealed. The congressional failure to pass a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security has exposed the GOP as inept at governing. And the annual CPAC circus has given right-wing Republicans more airtime than usual to embarrass themselves.

Consequently, Fox News is fishing for a scandal to get frantic over to fill the void, and they think they found one.

Fox Nation

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Actually, they are just warming over an old scandal that they hope has enough pus left in it to ooze out some more wingnut bile. Featured on the Fox News community website Fox Nation is an item with the tantalizing title “You Have To Read This Recovered Email From Lois Lerner” Lerner, you may recall, is the whipping gal of the GOP’s House Committee on Heckling Obama. The budding scandalette revolves around the Treasury Department’s disclosure that 32,000 emails were found on backup tapes. Not mentioned by Republicans on the committee is that the emails may all be duplicates that the committee already has.

What the Fox Nationalists chose to highlight was a tweet by the committee, that is filled with gleeful anticipation. It said “If you can believe it, here’s an actual email sent by Lois Lerner:” The content of the “unbelievable” email reads “No one will ever believe that both your hard drive and mine crashed within a week of each other. Life is strange.”

The implication is that Lerner was communicating with a colleague about their covert conspiracy to conceal an alleged plot to subject conservative organizations seeking non-profit status to greater scrutiny. After endless hearings and hyperbolic exclamations of unveiled “bombshells,” they never found any evidence of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the Republican smear machine rattled on. And now, once again, they are crowing about some investigative victory. The problem is that they haven’t got the brains to put together a coherent case of misconduct.

The new email that they are so excited about is not a confession of any sort. If anything it exonerates Lerner and her ePenPals. With language like “life is strange” she is plainly expressing genuine surprise that the hard drives failed at around the same time. That proves that it wasn’t a planned scheme to destroy evidence. Lerner certainly would not write something incriminating in an email right after supposedly trashing hard drives to eliminate incriminating emails. And if further proof is needed, the email in question is dated June 29, 2011, two years before there was any investigation of the department’s activities. So there wouldn’t be any reason for Lerner to be tampering with correspondence that no one was looking for, and wasn’t considered to be evidence of anything.

That’s how lame this new “discovery” that “you have to read” is. It’s pathetic that the Oversight Committee would furiously tweet this utterly pointless message. And it is similarly ludicrous that Fox News would regurgitate it as if it had some significance other than to manufacture suspicion. But that’s really all they have, so they’re going with it.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
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Untrue Grit: Fox News Thinks America Needs Fake Cowboys To Defeat The Terrorists

An editorial on the Fox Nation website takes on the profound question of what sort of hats our presidents should wear. But this isn’t an allegory for the duties assumed while governing the world’s greatest superpower (i.e. economist’s hat, general’s hat, etc.). No, it is far more shallow and childish than that. The headline alludes to the “Musings Of An Average Joe: We Need A Cowboy, Not A Community Organizer.” Accompanying this simplistic nonsense is a collage of some American presidents including Ronald Reagan and George Bush wearing cowboy hats, while Obama sports a safety helmet for bicycling.

There is so much wrong with this before even getting to the substance of the article. First of all, Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois and spent the whole of his adult life in big cities, primarily Hollywood. His association with cowboys is mostly due to having played them in movies. What could be more artificial? Well, perhaps the notion of Bush, a Connecticut native, Yale/Harvard grad (barely), as a western hero. And finally, it isn’t difficult to find photos of these same presidents in different hats, if all Fox is interested in is playing dress-up.

Fox Nation

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The article is an homage to uncontrolled rage. The premise revolves around the opinion of Fox’s alleged “average” Joe Billelo that Obama did not go sufficiently bonkers upon learning about the death of Kayla Mueller at the hands of ISIL terrorists. He wondered…

“Why didn’t Obama address the nation and the world that very day with genuine anger and rage? A rage that can’t be expressed with a teleprompter. Why didn’t he assure the American people that this brutality will not stand on his watch?”

In other words. why didn’t Obama rip out his hair and run around the room screaming banshee-style while throwing lamps at his aides and ordering the Pentagon bomb something – anything. Essentially, Joe wants to know why the President didn’t react in precisely the manner that the terrorists hope when they commit their murderous acts. It’s called “terror” -ism because it’s the intention of the perpetrators to instill the fear that terror produces into the hearts of their enemies. And every time anyone capitulates to that tactic they are advancing the goals of the terrorist.

President Obama is absolutely right to respond in a calm but assertive manner by issuing strong condemnations and promising justice. The notion that Obama has not given assurances that he will not tolerate such brutality is only plausible to the most vacant, tea-soaked brains. While professional Obama-haters like this Average Joe call for pointless, physical manifestations of drooling fury, Obama has efficiently disposed of more than 6,000 actual terrorist fighters, including more than half of their top commanders. While rightist pundits and politicians whine impotently about symbolic trivialities like the President not appending the word “Islamic” to every mention of terror, Obama forges alliances with the true representatives of the Muslim world who are offended by those who would allow terrorists to falsely appropriate the mantle of their faith.

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In light of the ludicrous arguments made in this editorial, it isn’t surprising that it would use the image of a cowboy to make a point about international diplomacy. Calling someone a cowboy generally means that they are dangerously impulsive and untrustworthy. They are the sort that shoots first and asks questions later. They are, therefore, exactly what the images of Reagan and Bush project. They are phonies who mistake movie bravado for real-world courage and wisdom. And they believe that slapping a cowboy hat on an urban faker makes him a gunslinging champion of freedom. That’s how superficial and dimwitted these cretins are. And what’s even worse, they appear to be proud of it.

Fox News Fail: Comparing The Threat Of Climate Change To Terrorism

During the State of the Union address last month, President Obama made note of a particularly perilous situation that requires an immediate response in order to prevent certain catastrophe. Warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than Climate Change,” Obama said that…

“The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that Climate Change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.”

Those remarks stirred up a bit of the usual knee-jerk opposition from wingnut science-deniers at the time, but they failed to endure through subsequent news cycles that shifted gears to more critical matters like the American Sniper movie, the end of Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations, and measles. But the anti-science crowd was not to be ignored. So they are now ratcheting up the hoax-talk in order to reclaim the nation’s attention.

Not surprisingly, it is Fox News pushing the issue back into the slimelight by posting an article on their community website, Fox Nation, about the administration making Climate Change a national security priority. While there is nothing in the article itself (from the Huffington Post) that is especially newsworthy, the Fox Nationalists purpose is to trumpet a headline that they know will stimulate their dimwitted readers. After all, what could be more horrifying than Obama giving Climate Change the attention it actually deserves?

Fox Nation

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Shortly after this national security policy was released, Obama was interviewed by Matthew Yglesias of Vox Media. He told Vox that the media is responsible for over-hyping terrorism to the detriment of other threats that impact more people. That comment was later seized upon by Jonathan Karl of ABC News (and the rest of the Right-wing Media Circus) who asked Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, if the President actually meant to say that “the threat of climate change is greater than the threat of terrorism?”

Why is this such a difficult concept for conservative pundits and politicians? Climate Change is a global phenomenon that has the capacity to cause devastating environmental trauma impacting the entire population of the planet. In the United States alone there are already regions that are suffering more severe natural disasters like hurricanes and drought. And around the globe these problems, along with multiplying refugee populations and temperature extremes, are both costly and deadly. It could not be more obvious that the billions of potential victims of Climate Change make it a greater threat than terrorism. Note: To date ISIL has killed four Americans.

More to the point, the current debate revolves around the threat that Climate Change poses to national security. On that level the military has been crystal clear for years about the very real consequences of a world where water and arable land become scarce, and nations erupt into chaos and war.

The Rolling Stone just published an extensive examination of The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk. Among its many documented examples of a very real threat certified by numerous military experts is one that ought to be persuasive to the conservative Republican deniers:

“In 2003, under Donald Rumsfeld, former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, the Pentagon published a report titled ‘An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.’ Commissioned by Andrew Marshall, who is sometimes jokingly referred to within the Pentagon as Yoda — and who was a favorite of Rumsfeld’s — the report warned that threats to global stability posed by rapid warming vastly eclipse that of terrorism.”

OK? So now the climate-hoaxers cannot simply blame Obama and his socialist cabal of Sharia lawyers for inventing the crisis. Sources as deeply ingrained in the rightist dregs of warhawk free-marketism as Rumsfeld and Bush warned of the very same threat. In fact, four of the past Secretaries of Defense (Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, and Rumsfeld) all subscribed to the policy that Climate Change is one of America’s top strategic risks. And three of the four are Republicans.

Nevertheless, Fox News is still trying to raise a ruckus about Obama properly prioritizing Climate Change as a serious concern for national security, just as the Pentagon has done for years. What’s plain is that Fox could not care less about the welfare of the nation. They are solely devoted to disparaging this president and any policy with which he comes into contact. And they will pursue that mission despite the absence of reason or ideological consistency.

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Whose Top Corporate Donors Are Among The Most Hated Companies In America?

The headline of a current Fox Nation article just begs to be mocked. Accompanying a photo of a cackling Hillary Clinton, the headline blares “Hillary Clinton’s Top Corporate Donors Are Among The Most Hated Companies In America.”

Fox Nation

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Oh really? So which companies is the article, sourced to the ultra-rightist Washington Free Beacon, referring? They are indeed a collection of mostly financial institutions that have deservedly earned the enmity of the American people. Companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers. All of these enterprises played a role in plunging the nation into the Great Bush Recession of 2008.

Also on the list is 21st Century Fox. It’s kinda fun to see Fox pointing out that their own corporate parent is so hated by the American people.

However, when the substance of this story is examined, there are some serious flaws to the premise. First of all, the survey (pdf) that was cited in the article was conducted by Harris Interactive. It was never intended to identify “the most hated companies in America.” What Harris was studying were 100 of the most visible companies and ranking them by what Harris called their “Reputation Quotient (RQ).” Of course there are thousands of other companies in the country that may be hated much more but were not a part of the survey. The RQ is an amalgamation of several factors including the firm’s emotional appeal, social responsibility, workplace environment, and financial performance. Not all of the criteria reflect on merely the public like or dislike of the company.

What’s more, every company in the survey scored above 50, which suggests that none of them are hated with much passion. In prior years there were some, like Halliburton, BP, AIG, and Bank of America, that did fall below the 50 threshold. Nevertheless, no company wants to be on the low end of this list even if it isn’t that low.

The big problem with the story is that it singles out Hillary Clinton as the recipient of donations from these allegedly despised outfits. But in truth, just about every candidate for political office receives donations from these corporate ogres. And for the most part, Republicans are generally the beneficiaries in much higher amounts.

So what is the point of the article. Is it to criticize Clinton for taking money from the same dirty corporate entities that Republicans take money from? If so, there is a group of Americans who would wholeheartedly agree and share in the criticism. They are called Democrats. The passion that is driving the campaign to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren as a challenger to Clinton is fueled by this very criticism.

Furthermore, while many in the Democratic Party have been working for years to remove this sort of tainted funding from the political process, Republicans have fought tooth and nail to continue and even expand it. A bright, flaming red, festering example of this is the pledge made recently by the Koch brothers to raise and spend nearly a billion dollars in the 2016 election cycle to buy power for their political puppets. Meanwhile, there are two Super PACS founded by well known liberals aimed at eliminating Super PACS: MIT’s Lawrence Lessig’s Mayday.US and George Soros’ son Jonathan’s Friends of Democracy.

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So if Fox News and the Free Beacon and the GOP want to get on board with the bashing of greedy, power-hungry corporations (who are not people, no matter what Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court say), and prohibiting them from corrupting American elections, they are most welcome. Unfortunately, it is more likely that the these right-wingers are just taking wild swings at Clinton and only hope to slander her, rather than to make a principled statement about the influence of corporate money.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Billions In Tax Hikes Are Actually Cuts For Most Americans

In the upcoming State Of the Union speech, President Obama is expected to call for a variety of tax reforms aimed at helping the middle-class to finally participate in the nation’s historic economic recovery. The proposals comprise a common sense approach that recognizes the harm caused by income equality and are supported by a majority of the American people. They include…

  • Closing the “Trust Fund” loophole that allows billions of dollars of the ultra wealthy to go untaxed.
  • Raising the capital-gains tax rate from 23.8% to 28% (the rate in effect during the Reagan administration) for couples with annual incomes above $500,000.
  • Imposing a new fee on financial firms that engage in high volume trading. Not only will this raise significant revenue, it will discourage the sort of trading that makes the stock market unnecessarily volatile.

The funds raised from these measures would be used to provide enhanced benefits for middle-class taxpayers. For instance, there would be a new $500 credit for working families, improved retirement savings plans, an increase of the tax credit for childcare to $3,000 per child, and free tuition at community colleges.

So how does Fox News present this plan to the readers of their Fox Nation website? They shamelessly spin it to portray the measure as exclusively tax hikes and ignore the tax cuts and other benefits that most citizens will receive: “Still Not Paying Your ‘Fair Share’? Obama To Seek Billions In New Tax Hikes”

Fox Nation

Fox fails to point out that those who would pay more under this proposal are the few one-percenters who have benefited most for the last six years as the stock market has soared to record levels and corporate profits exceeded all previous highs. They can certainly afford these modest increases and they owe it to the country to let the other 99% enjoy some of the success for which we are partly (mostly) responsible.

Throughout most of the 2012 election season, Republicans, along with their PR allies at Fox, were quick to point to the one economic metric that has failed to keep pace with the rest of the recovery: middle-class wage growth. They tried to use this as as evidence that Obama’s policies were not working, despite all of the other evidence of unparalleled progress. And even as they made this disingenuous argument, they opposed any solutions that would actually address the problem. They obsessed over Benghazi and Ebola and gay marriage and repealing ObamaCare, rather than getting behind infrastructure funding to create jobs or raising the minimum wage, two obvious initiatives that would directly improve the lot of the middle-class.

Now Republicans are already declaring Obama’s tax reforms to be “dead on arrival” in the newly fortified GOP Congress. They are just as obstructionist as ever when it comes to helping working Americans. And they are just as obstinate as ever when it comes to protecting the wealth of the corporations and individuals who shower them with campaign cash. Consequently, it is unlikely that these measures will pass any time soon, but they will become fodder for debate during the 2016 presidential election cycle.

For More FoxBS Get the ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So which side do you think the people will be on? Especially if the GOP nominee is the Original Bankster, Mitt Romney, or the next in line in the Bush Dynasty, Jeb Bush (whom the overlord of Fox News has already endorsed)? The remainder of the field aren’t any better on matters of economic fairness. They are a cabal of extremist Ayn Rand disciples who regard the less fortunate members of society as scum who deserve their lowly place. And with the way that the Fox Nationalists are characterizing the President’s proposals it’s clear that they mean to actively assist the GOP/Tea Party in misleading their flock and advancing the interests of the super-rich.

#FoxNewsFacts? New Hashtag Addresses Old Problem Of Fox News Aversion To The Truth

This weekend Jeanine Pirro of Fox News invited the in-house Fox “terrorism expert” Steven Emerson to explain the impending apocalypse that is looming over the planet due to radical Islamic terrorism spreading to every nook and cranny of the globe. Emerson warned that the crisis is so severe that murderous Muslims have already taken over some Western cities.

Emerson: In Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.

It didn’t take long for that morsel of fear mongering to be shot down as utterly false. Later in the day Emerson himself apologized profusely for his “terrible error,” however, neither Pirro nor Fox News has issued a retraction. Consequently, Fox News viewers will remain profoundly misinformed, as usual.

The Internet, though, has a certain self-healing capability that tends to just this sort of dishonesty. Before long the hashtag “#FoxNewsFacts” was trending on Twitter with a barrage of both serious and satirical posts asserting a sort of cyber karma.

While it is gratifying to see people taking it upon themselves to set the record straight, the credibility of the facts on Fox News has been non-existent for years. There have so many examples of the network’s outright disregard for the truth that I wrote a book (Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault on Truth) compiling some of the worst episodes. In fact, Fox’s fib factory was so productive that I have just released the second volume of the book:

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Fox Nation vs. Reality

The book contains more than 50 examples of deliberate falsehoods and blatant propaganda. It’s available now on Amazon and every purchase helps to support the work we do at News Corpse.

The pathological liars at Fox have been particularly busy disseminating disinformation in this aborning new year. In addition to providing a platform for bona fide Islamophobes like Emerson, they have launched an assault on President Obama for not jetting off to Paris to march in a photo op with some other world leaders who Fox usually hate. And today they waxed panicky about what they called a hack into Pentagon computers that was really just a hack into Twitter and YouTube. No government network was accessed, but Fox spent most of the day ruminating on it. It’s what they do.

Fox News Pentagon Hack