Obama Did It: Fox News Blames Cop Shooting In #Ferguson On President And Attorney General

Posted by Mark NC on March 12, 2015 at 1:48 pm. 4 Comments :

Affirming the predictability of the Fox News brand of hack journalism, the network moved quickly to make sure that their viewers were misinformed about a tragic incident in Ferguson, Missouri last night.

Fox News Ferguson

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As a gathering of protesters was winding down in Ferguson, shots rang out that resulted in injuries to two police officers. By morning the officers were released from the hospital and are expected to make full recoveries. Also by morning, Fox News aired multiple reports of the incident placing responsibility for the assaults squarely on the perpetrators whom Fox identified as President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

Setting aside all of the known facts, Fox News sought to disparage the usual objects of their animus. It didn’t matter to them that the authorities in Ferguson had not tied the shootings to the protesters at all. Fox News made the leap from the protesters to the administration in record time. Their slanders were in direct contradiction to public statements by the chief of the St. Louis County Police, Jon Belmar, who the Washington Post reported as saying that…

“[T]hree or four shots were fired from across the street from where about 75 protesters and 40 police officers were gathered. He said that the shots did not come from the group of protesters who were gathered near the police station.”

Nevertheless, Fox twisted their coverage to point the blame toward government officials hundreds of miles away. The defamation began with the all-white Kurvy Kouch Potatoes at Fox & Friends as the story was still unfolding.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: He [Holder] chose to grandstand. And now – fuel on the fire – less than a week later, we are seeing the dots connecting here.
Fox News legal analyst Bob Massi: When you say that you’re going to dismantle a police department if they don’t fix it, it incites race relations — it incites riots.

Hasselbeck’s delusional dot-connecting exercise aims to associate the shootings with the Department of Justice report finding that the Ferguson police department had engaged in a pattern and practice of discrimination against African-Americans. She, along with the rest of the right-wing media choir, would prefer that this racist and unconstitutional behavior was merely ignored and swept under the rug. But the notion that avoiding honest appraisals of police conduct would serve any positive purpose is one that only racist enablers and sympathizers could accept. In the real world, such avoidance would be recognized as a prelude to civil unrest.

Likewise, Massi utterly mangles logic by asserting that promises to take corrective action would incite riots. It is the complete opposite of reality. When officials undertake initiatives that address the complaints of the people, the people are generally satisfied and far less likely to erupt in violence. Massi’s conclusion is so absurd it defies comprehension.

Which takes us to Fox’s Outnumbered, where guest Lou Dobbs joined the program’s regulars to continue the condemnation of leaders in Washington:

Dobbs: I think that, plainly, there are so many forces at work here. So many people who deserve considerable blame for fomenting an environment like this in which this could occur. Chief among those, in my opinion, are the President of the United States and the Attorney General.
Tantaros: They intervened and they flamed the racial tensions. And Eric Holder has proven time again he is an Attorney General for the criminal, by the criminal, and of the criminals in the United States of America. […] You think it’s a coinicidence that two cops got shot last night? This was inflamed because of what this administration did. This specific incident.

Republicans used to define themselves as the party of responsibility. However, when they have the opportunity to hold wrongdoers accountable, they decline and instead shift blame to their ideological enemies, letting the real perpetrators off the hook. In the process they viciously malign people who had no role in the incident in question. It is a pathological compulsion to vilify those they perceive as their foes. That’s the only way they can justify accusing Obama and Holder of being chiefly responsible for assaults on police in Ferguson. It’s the only way that they can defend alleging that the Attorney General is collaborating with criminals and is a criminal himself.

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The conservative media effort to persuade America that racism doesn’t exist requires that they deny any evidence of it, particularly by institutional agencies such as police departments. It is a sort of self-inflicted blindness that turns the world into an Eden where there is only harmony and brotherhood in their deranged vision.

However, they make an exception for those who try to point out that prejudice is still very much with us, and who sincerely work to eliminate it. Those are the real racists, according to Fox News and the right, for having the gall to call out bigots. If only they would keep their mouths shut no one would have any problem with racism. Certainly the white, male, Christians wouldn’t have any problems. And that’s the American way, isn’t it?

Scandal Fever Is Making Fox News Even More Demented Than Usual

Posted by Mark NC on May 30, 2013 at 3:35 pm. 16 Comments :

It must be a terrible burden to have to manage as many trumped up scandals as Fox News is currently struggling with. The sheer volume of fabricated nonsense to manufacture and inventory would be a strain on any propaganda outfit. But the pressure is showing now as Fox appears unable to function under the weight of the task. Take a look at these recent schizoid episodes they have belched out:

On the Fox Business Network, their anchor Lou Dobbs hosted a panel to discuss the state of women in the workplace and the results of a new poll that shows more American women are the primary earners in their families. In order to have a balanced debate on this subject, Fox invited only men to participate. But after you hear what one of those men said, you’ll understand why women weren’t necessary:

Erick Erickson: I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science. But liberals who defend [the increase in women earners] and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology — when you look at the natural world — the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role.

Consequently, Fox is committed to having only males weigh in on the subjects of working women, reproductive rights, domestic violence, etc. And remember, Erickson is the miscreant who once called Supreme Court Justice David Souter a “goat-fucking child molester.”

Next up is a story Fox did about the number of times Douglas Shulman, the IRS commissioner, visited the White House. Of Course, there should be nothing suspicious about a critical economic adviser spending time with other administration officials as they seek to restore the nation’s economy. But like everything else they do, Fox is only focused on turning this into a nefarious scheme of some sort. So they tally up the number of visits and imply that the frequency represents something other than devotion to duty:

Unfortunately for Fox, their own source, the notoriously disreputable Daily Caller (which is run by Fox contributor Tucker Carlson) contradicts the very premise they sought to prove. After making a federal case out of the visits attributed to Shulman, the Daily Caller correctly notes that…

“The visitor logs do not give a complete picture of White House access. Some high-level officials get cleared for access and do not have to sign in during visits […] it is probable that the vast majority of visits by major Cabinet members do not end up in the public record.”

In other words…never mind. We don’t know what the heck we’re talking about. Which is surprising because this isn’t the first time that right-wing media tried to build these logs into a conflagration and failed to ignite any sparks. Back in 2009 there was an effort to tie the President to ACORN by reporting that ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis had visited the White House a few weeks before that phony scandal erupted. As it turned out, it was a different Bertha Lewis, but nobody at Fox or their source (Breitbart News) bothered to verify the information. In fact, we still don’t know if the Douglas Shulman on the logs is the IRS commissioner.

Finally, the most disturbing evidence that Fox is suffering severe symptoms of dementia was demonstrated in this segment of Fox & Friends when the hosts interviewed John Bolton about why National Security Adviser Tom Donilon was AWOL on the night of the attacks in Benghazi. They stated flatly that Donilon was absent for the crisis, even while they showed a photo alongside Bolton of a White House meeting that clearly included Donilon.

This is pretty much what we can expect from Fox News for the duration of this scandal season. They are obviously over their heads and unable to steer a steady course. They either need some extended rest or a significant increase in the dosage of their meds. This should at least provide a lesson to them for the future: Don’t make up more scandals than you are capable of handling.

The First Refuge of Scoundrels: How Fox News Recruits From Reporting’s Worst Rejects

Posted by Mark NC on May 16, 2013 at 8:20 am. 1 Comments :

Journalism is a competitive field and the best and the brightest are highly valued assets by reputable news enterprises. And then there’s Fox News.

No other “news” organization so aggressively hires the refuse cast off from other media employers. It must be a great comfort for wayward reporters and pundits to know that if they should violate the standards of ethics and/or decency demanded of them, they will always have somewhere to turn for sympathy and a fat paycheck, not to mention an undiscriminating audience.

For so many fallen television personalities, Fox News has been a support system that promises them a steady career path and a future that, in the past, would have meant well-deserved humiliation and disgrace. For these folks Fox was their white knight who stepped forward to whitewash their professional sins.

Pat Buchanan: The author of notoriously bigoted books like “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America,” Buchanan was released from his contract with MSNBC after he wrote that as a result of “the rise to power of an Obama rainbow coalition of peoples of color […] whites may discover what it is like to ride in the back of the bus.” He then complained that he was a victim of blacklisting by a coalition of blacks, gays, and Jews, before being swept up by Fox.

Juan Williams: A veteran correspondent for National Public Radio, Williams went astray when he confessed that “when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” Williams failed to see the inherent racism in his commentary and refused to apologize. Shortly after NPR relieved him of his duties there, Fox signed him to a new multimillion dollar contract.

Judith Miller: In the lead-up to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, New York Times reporter Judith Miller coordinated with the administration to make the case for war. Her articles gave credibility to fabricated allegations that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. Eventually her distortions were revealed and the Times sent her packing. And where else but Fox would have welcomed her with such open arms?

Erick Erickson: Following the election in November of 2012, many news outlets resolved to reexamine their operations and staff. At CNN they concluded that there was no longer a place for an ultra-conservative blogger who once called Supreme Court Justice David Souter a “goat-fucking child-molester.” Fox was also undergoing a self-examination and decided that Erickson was just what they were looking for.

Rick Sanchez: Not satisfied with calling Jon Stewart a bigot in a radio interview, Sanchez elaborated by falling back on the well-worn anti-Semitic theme of Jews controlling the media. “[E]verybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart,” Sanchez said, “and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they – the people in this country who are Jewish – are an oppressed minority? Yeah.” Today Sanchez is a correspondent with Fox News Latino and MundoFox. Ironically, Sanchez once castigated Latinos who worked for Fox as “sell-outs,” and Fox responded by saying that “Everyone knows that Rick is an industry joke, he shows that he’s a hack everyday. And he doesn’t have to worry about working at FOX because we only hire talent who have the ability to generate ratings.”

Mark Fuhrman: A regular crime analyst on Fox, Fuhrman may be better known as the disgraced former Los Angeles police officer who upended the O.J. Simpson trial by falsely testifying that he had never used racist epithets. That sort of behavior, however, is not a problem for the editorial bosses at Fox.

Doug McKelway: A familiar face in Washington, D.C., McKelway anchored a local news broadcast until he drew complaints for having told a gay activist he was interviewing that he wanted to take him outside and punch him in the face. That episode capped a rocky tenure during which he often fought with producers over his perception that the station’s broadcasts were too liberal. He doesn’t have that problem anymore now that he is a correspondent at Fox.

Lou Dobbs: This long-time CNN anchor was ostensibly CNN’s financial expert. Somewhere along the way he assumed the role of an immigrant basher and a proponent of the racist notion that all terrorists are Muslim. And to sweeten the pot, Dobbs joined the Birther Brigade by repeatedly demanding that President Obama produce his “real” birth certificate. In retrospect, it seems like Dobbs was positioning himself for future work at Fox News.

Oliver North: Here’s an oldie but a goodie. Col. North was convicted of lying to congress about President Reagan’s arms-for-hostages affair. While the conviction was later overturned by an appellate court that ruled that North’s testimony had been immunized, the underlying facts were not in question. North’s confession to a host of illegal acts was not a hindrance to his becoming a host on Fox News.

Don Imus: What can be said about the guy who was fired for calling a group of women on a college basketball team “nappy-headed hos?” Fox calls him the anchor of the morning block on their financial network.

Tucker Carlson: Perhaps the poster child for Fox’s Disgraced Reporter Rescue Program is Tucker Carlson, who has managed to fail on CNN, PBS, and MSNBC before receiving salvation from Fox. And like Sanchez, Carlson once held Fox in low esteem calling them “a mean, sick group of people,” after they published his home phone number on the Fox web site. But when Carlson was jettisoned from MSNBC he worked his way back into the good graces of Fox as the editor of The Daily Caller blog, then as a Fox contributor, and now the co-host of the weekend edition of Fox & Friends.

This pattern of staff development by Fox relies heavily on applicants (or, in the case of Sanchez and Carlson, supplicants) with proven histories of impropriety. They seem to regard the discards of other networks as their richest vein of new talent. And if the prospect has any lingering felonies on their rap sheet, all the better. The frequency with which Fox acquires ethically-challenged employees belies any suggestion that it is mere coincidence. They are clearly drawn to the reportorial riffraff and regard moral defects as badges of honor.

Consequently, if anyone is interested in handicapping the next batch of Fox contributors, just check to see who has been recently terminated at some other news outlet or paroled from prison. And if their offense involved an injury to a liberal policy or person, double down, you’ve got a sure thing.

Pure Idiocy From Fox News On The Stock Market

Posted by Mark NC on October 5, 2012 at 4:12 am. 5 Comments :

OK, just about anyone with a functioning brain already knows that Fox News is a biased player working on behalf of the GOP. But their analysis of financial matters and stock market activity is not just biased, but astonishingly stupid. Yesterday on Fox Nation they posted this “news” item: Romney Rally? Stocks Close Higher One Day After Debate.

Any time someone makes projections based on a single day of activity it is regarded by professionals as naivete and/or ignorance. So it goes without saying that Fox did just that. On the Fox Business Network, Stuart Varney dropped this mind-numbing stupidity: “Some will say this is a Romney Rally.” And Fox’s Lou Dobbs said “This is the beginning of what will be an even bigger Romney rally as the days unfold.”

Of course, any credible economist knows that market activity is based on a variety of financial data. Yesterday there was an abundance of factors to which the market’s movement could be attributed, including better than expected economic data and the European Central Bank’s freeze on interest rates at 0.75 percent.

Fox has a long history of making idiotic assessments of the stock market. In May of 2009, Brenda Buttner gushed, “Call it a tea party rally. Wall Street’s sure partying, up six weeks in a row.” In September of 2011, Fox Nation reported “Stocks Tumble Worldwide After Obama Speech.” Then in June of 2012, they fantasized that “Stock Market Drops After Obamacare Upheld.”

This tendency of the right to misinterpret all market activity as being the result of Obama (if stocks go down) or some conservative (if stocks go up), extends all the way back to Rush Limbaugh’s nutty commentary on February 8,2009, a mere two weeks after Obama’s inauguration, when he said “The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen. Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come.” Since then stocks have died to the tune of doubling from about 6,600 to over 13,500. Nice call, Rush.

Even Mitt Romney got into it a few days ago saying that “If it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. […] Without actually doing anything, we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.” Romney, who considers himself an expert in finance, thinks the markets will advance by doing nothing. His magical name alone will rescue the economy.

What they commonly miss at Fox is that markets traditionally perform better under Democratic administrations than Republicans. And note that that link is to an article on the Fox Business Channel’s web site.

The one lesson that people can take away from this display of ignorance, is that anyone who relies on Fox News for economic advice deserves the economic ruin they suffer.

Fox News And Conservatives Have Totally Lost Their Friggin Minds

Posted by Mark NC on May 1, 2012 at 11:33 am. 30 Comments :

Obama Derangement Syndrome has spread to infect every cell of the conservative brain. The depth of their sickness has finally become so severe that it negates any hope of recovery.

The “Moonie” Washington Times published an article with the headline: “New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism.” There is nothing new about the rabid right’s delusional assertions that President Obama is a Marxist, socialist, Kenyan, Muslim, Anti-Christ, who is conspiring with communists, Al Qaeda, the New Black Panthers (all four of them), and Sesame Street to subvert democracy, indoctrinate our children, and deflower our women. But this particular incident is rooted so firmly in dementia that it deserves closer attention and merciless ridicule.

The problem cited by the Washington Times, and picked up by Fox Nation and Breitbart among others, is that the word “Forward,” used prominently in a new Obama campaign video (posted below), is inherently wicked and representative of dastardly evildoers seeking to establish a tyrannical, Islamic, atheist, caliphate throughout the world – or something. The article states that…

“The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, ‘Forward’ — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism. Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name ‘Forward!'”

So there you have it. By using a word in the English dictionary that means “ahead, onward,” the Obama camp has revealed their commitment to worldwide socialist rebellion. Never mind that the associations cited in the conservative press are a hundred years old, or that the word has been used in innumerable other contexts before and after those associations. For instance, the pinko Ronald Reagan Society at his alma mater, Eureka College, uses the phrase “Reagan Forward.” Even Fox News used it in their on-air promos:

Initially, when the Obama video was released, the cry from the right was that the campaign had lifted the slogan from MSNBC which uses the phrase “Lean Forward.” That allegation was carried by conservatives from Fox News contributor Michele Malkin to the New York Post to Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, and others. Apparently that didn’t stir up enough bile among the right-wing faithful, so they had to escalate the attack to suggest this affiliation with ancient enemies.

Ironically, it was Fox News who took great offense to an allegation by John Aravosis of AmericaBlog late last year, that Mitt Romney’s campaign had adopted a slogan previously used by the Ku Klux Klan:

On several occasions Romney included a phrase in his stump speech that closely resembled one that the KKK used frequently in the 1920s: “Keep America American.” Subsequently there was some debate as to whether Romney actually said “Keep America America,” a small difference of the single letter “n” at the end. The outrage from the right was immediate and fierce. How could those awful liberals insinuate that Romney was a Klan member? Fox News was all over the story with even their top program, The O’Reilly Factor, devoting segments to it.

Of course, nobody ever implied that Romney was a Klan member. They merely noted that his campaign had not sufficiently researched the language that they were making such a prominent part of their strategy. And they made the additional point that, if it were a Democrat whose slogan could be tied to some past perceived ignominy, Republicans would have feasted on the gaffe. Aravosis seems prescient in retrospect for having facetiously said…

“In an era in which it’s apparently okay for Republicans to accuse President Obama of being a socialist, I guess we now need to ask if Mitt Romney is a Ku Klux Klansman. Not whether Romney inadvertently is using the KKK’s number one slogan from the 1920s on the stump, no, the Republicans would say, if this were a Democrat, that clearly the candidate was a closet member of the KKK.”

Now that speculation has been made real by a conservative effort to advance their smear campaign against Obama. And their is nothing facetious about the right’s belief that the President is a socialist. When an anchor on MSNBC reported the story about Romney’s slogan, the right swung back hard in retaliation. MSNBC then issued a quick and thorough apology on the air. And that’s where the comparison ends. The right proudly and obstinately clings to their abhorrent missteps – probably because they aren’t missteps, but deliberate slander.

Conservatives have been making unfounded claims that the President is a socialist since before his inauguration. These were not merely observations about similarities in rhetoric, but outright accusations that they assert as fact. And now they are engaging in the exact same tactic that just last December they condemned as character assassination.

This is about as good an example of the ethical vacancy of the modern right as there will ever be. Their fixation on inventing new methods of tarnishing the President has devolved to condemning him for using the English language. So today the word “forward” is off-limits. Tomorrow will it be “progress” or “justice” or “the” or [fill in the blank].

Seriously…these people have totally lost their friggin minds.

[Update] Fox Business Network joins the club castigating forwardness. Tonight Lou Dobbs jumped in with the added attraction of one of Glenn Beck’s surplus blackboards.

Bill O’Reilly Is A Nazi Who Secretly Adores Adolf Hitler

Posted by Mark NC on April 21, 2012 at 11:44 am. 4 Comments :

Grab yourself a large, economy size bottle of Pepto-Bismal and listen to this:

If O’Reilly can say that Robert Reich is a communist who adores Marx, then I can say that O’Reilly is a Nazi (or a racist, or a pedophile) who adores Hitler (or Manson, or Satan). The funny (or sad) part of this is that there is more evidence to affirm my sarcastic statement than O’Reilly’s earnest one.

The truth is that O’Reilly is a disgusting, hyperbolic, dishonest purveyor of lies and slander (or a scumbag fuckwad). And Lou Dobbs aint much better.

Fox News Psycho Analyst Keith Ablow Delivers Another Demented Diagnosis Of Obama

Posted by Mark NC on April 7, 2012 at 12:11 pm. 1 Comments :

This is rapidly devolving into surreal comedy. Keith Ablow, a member of the Fox News Medical “A” Team, keeps showing up on Fox properties dispensing the most absurd opinions about President Obama’s psychiatric profile.

Remember, Ablow is the same “doctor” who wrote an editorial for Fox News praising Newt Gingrich’s infidelity and serial matrimony as proof that he would make America stronger were he president. And no one should be surprised that Ablow has separated from the American Psychiatric Association due to “ethical differences.” His opinions are devoid of any professional substance or reason. They are merely excuses to vent his political biases couched in cliche jargon and twisted logic.

Ablow has never examined (or even met) the President, so his opinions are about as credible as my evaluation of quantum physics. But that doesn’t stop him from continuing to embarrass himself on television by spreading puerile nonsense. His latest excursion into idiocy took place yesterday on Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs Show in a discussion of the President’s remarks about the Supreme Court. Here is the exchange that Ablow thinks passes for psychoanalysis:

Dobbs: Joining us now to talk about the psychology behind this confrontation between the administration and the judiciary, Dr. Keith Ablow. […] What would possibly be motivating the president to get into this mess, and seemingly he’s unable to let go of it.

Ablow: Well, he’s seemingly unable to let go of it because I think we finally have to start taking him at his word. And you know this is a favorite theme of mine, that people want to try to find some other explanation than the obvious. The obvious explanation is that the President has contempt for that branch of government, is egocentric, and believes that any form of authority, perhaps other than that vested in himself, is untrustworthy. Particularly the longstanding authority associated with branches of government of the United States. That’s literally the most obvious explanation.

The one part of that statement that’s true is that this is one of Ablow’s favorite themes. He has been relentlessly pushing his delusional theory that the President is acting out some sort of suppressed rage as a result of a deprived upbringing. It’s a good thing that more children are not crushed by such childhood traumas or the country would be overrun with kids who excel academically, graduate with honors from Ivy League law schools, and enter careers in public service that lead to the White House. It must have been awful for young Barack.

Ablow’s “obvious explanation” is fraught with fantastical apparitions. There is simply no way that he can justify the assertion that Obama has contempt for the judiciary or that he rejects its authority. Why on earth would Obama have dedicated his adult life to law and constitutional scholarship if he did not have a profound respect for it? The entirety of Ablow’s theory is that the alleged contempt grew out of Obama having been raised by a single mother with help from her parents. But Ablow never connects the dots to show how that could have resulted in animosity toward authority. Is Ablow suggesting that every kid from a broken home is averse to authority? And what about all the young rebels from intact families (like mine)?

Simply said, Ablow’s analysis is bullshit. He is incapable of forming a coherent argument to support his wild notions, and he never even bothers to try. The “obvious explanation” for Ablow’s frighteningly comedic bluster is that he is petulant and partisan right-wing schizoid whose impersonation of a doctor has failed miserably.

Fox News Psycho Analyst Keith Ablow: Obama Has It In For America

Posted by Mark NC on March 28, 2012 at 2:24 pm. 4 Comments :

Fox News’ resident psychiatrist, a member of the Fox News “A” Team, visited Lou Dobbs yesterday on the failing Fox Business Network. The two of them discussed the Trayvon Martin shooting in the unique manner that is typical of the leader in dishonest, uninformed, hyperbolic, right-wing media.

Much of the conversation focused on President Obama’s comments on the subject a few days ago in response to a question from a reporter. The crux of their criticism centered Obama’s personal reflection that “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Both Dobbs and Ablow were incensed that Obama expressed that personal reflection and accused him of turning the incident into a racial matter. They complained that the President should have sought to unite the country and address the shock that all Americans must feel after hearing about this tragedy. And, oddly enough, that’s exactly what Obama did. Preceding the personal part of his comments, Obama said…

Obama: I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.

Nevertheless, Dobbs and Ablow only heard the part of the remarks that they could misconstrue as racial. It is still mind-boggling how rightists can so cavalierly assert that Obama is hell-bent on disparaging white people – like his mother. And it’s rather disingenuous for conservatives like Dobbs and Ablow to portray the Martin incident as a tragedy that ought not to be limited by race, when the other half of the time they are discussing it, they don’t regard it as tragic at all, but simply a case of self defense from an aggressive black teenager.

As usual, Ablow distinguishes himself by making an absurdly remote diagnosis of the President, a man he’s never examined or even met. That is an explicit violation of the standards of ethics of the American Psychiatric Association, which Ablow need not worry about since he was forced to separate himself from the APA due to “ethical differences.” Ablow’s conclusion, on the basis of information he gleaned from a paranoid hallucination, is that Obama is an anti-American zealot on a mission to bring the empire to ruin.

Ablow: As a psychiatrist, there is a certain point, when you get a diagnosis, you say, OK look, absent something that refutes this, this is the diagnosis. A president who hangs around with Rev. Wright – whose wife said that she was never proud of this country – has an edge. He’s got it in for this country. And at moments when there’s an opportunity to fracture the unity, he does.

Setting aside the fact that Ablow is lying about Obama’s relationship with Wright and Michelle’s comments on pride, his assertion that Obama has “got it in for this country” is just plain lunacy. Does he really think that Obama raised himself up from a struggling single-parent home, worked through schooling to achieve honors from one the nation’s most demanding universities, applied his skills to both public and private enterprises, and put himself before a grueling campaign that resulted in his being elected president of the United States, all because he has a hankering to tear it all down?

Where do these nutjobs get these unfathomably ludicrous theories? Do all Fox analysts have to have lobotomies prior to going on the air? Any reputable news enterprise would be embarrassed by having someone like Ablow on their payroll. So it’s a good thing for Ablow that Fox News exists.

Media Matters: A Tale Of Two Networks

Posted by Mark NC on November 12, 2009 at 5:59 pm. NO Comments :

I was going to write a piece similar to this one that I found at Media Matters. However, Simon Maloy has so perfectly articulated everything I had to say on this subject that I just copied and pasted his article. I hope he doesn’t sue me.

Consider for a moment the circumstances surrounding Lou Dobbs’ abrupt departure from CNN, announced last night and effective immediately. Dobbs had been going increasingly far afield in
his programming, from spinning North American Union conspiracy theories, to indulging the Birther nonsense, to claiming that his opponents had taken to shooting at his house (the police said it was likely an errant bullet from a hunter’s rifle). Notably, CNN itself debunked each of these stories. According to the New York Times write-up of Dobbs’ exit, Dobbs’ on-air behavior was apparently too much for the network to bear: “Months ago the president of CNN/U.S., Jonathan Klein, offered a choice to Lou Dobbs, the channel’s most outspoken anchor. Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN.”

Now, contrast CNN’s Dobbs situation to Fox News and its handling of Glenn Beck. In terms of delusional conspiracy-mongering and spittle-flecked invective, Dobbs is a stripling compared to Beck. Fox News’ steady transition from untrustworthy cable news network to conservative political action committee can largely be attributed to Beck, whose 9-12 Project is wrapped up with the Tea Party movement. Except for those that buy into his fevered shtick, Beck is an embarrassment, an embodiment of everything that is wrong with cable news, and there is no greater example of this than when he called the President of the United States a “racist” who has “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” The network lost scores of advertisers over that remark, and, as NBC’s First Read pointed out, “[t]here was a time when outrageous rants like this would actually cost the ranters their jobs.”

But what happened to Beck? He got a pat on the head from NewsCorp president Rupert Murdoch, who said Beck “was right” to call the president a “racist.”

CNN’s movement on Dobbs was long overdue, but they eventually decided that their credibility as a news network outweighed Dobbs’ (rapidly dwindling) ratings. Fox News, on the other hand, shows no such concern with Beck, maybe because they didn’t have a whole lot of credibility to sacrifice in the first place.

Well said, Simon.

Lou Dobbs Runs For The Border: Yo Quiero Zorro Noticias

Posted by Mark NC on November 11, 2009 at 10:50 pm. 9 Comments :

CNN’s resident immigrant basher and birther booster, Lou Dobbs, has announced that he is leaving the network effective immediately.

This comes as somewhat of surprise, as Dobbs was considered to be secure in his position despite significant protest from civil rights groups. But it is hardly out of the blue. There has been frequent speculation about Dobbs’ future with CNN. His opponents have mounted well publicized campaigns to persuade CNN to drop the anchor. And many observers have thought that he would be a better fit for a right-wing network like Fox, particularly its struggling business channel. A Fox News spokesman (not a notoriously credible source) said that there have been no discussions with Dobbs. However that would contradict reports a month ago that Dobbs was seen dining with Fox CEO Roger Ailes in September.

However plausible a Fox/Dobbs partnership may appear, Dobbs’ on-air farewell struck a tone that suggested another possibility entirely:

“Over the past six months it’s become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us, and some leaders in media, politics, and business have been urging me to go beyond the role at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day.”

Dobbs went on to lament what he called “the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C.” There was an unmistakable ring of political aspiration in his remarks. Does this mean he might seek political office? Dobbs lives in New Jersey where they just elected a new governor. The next available senate seat doesn’t come up until 2012. It seems unlikely that Dobbs would give up a multimillion dollar TV gig for anything lower.

If I had to guess, I would venture that he may want to mount an independent campaign for President in 2012. While there would be no realistic scenario in which he could prevail, it would be just the sort of thing to stroke his immense ego. And there is a vocal and motivated minority that is primed to get behind a third party protest candidate. He would sweep up the Beck/Palin malcontents and, in all likelihood, smooth the way for Obama’s reelection.

Closer to home, CNN now has a hole to fill at 4:00pm. Judging by their past timidity, it is unlikely that CNN will replace Dobbs with a partisan from either side of the aisle. The last opening they had was given to Campbell Brown, who is notable for…um…..

If CNN is serious about establishing itself as a straight up news provider in contrast to the modestly left-leaning MSNBC and the raving histrionics of Fox, they will need to find an anchor with journalistic bona fides. They will need to avoid the trap of personality-driven spokesmodels. It would be wise for them to build an investigative news group as the central point of their programming. Adding more news readers like Blitzer or Cooper simply won’t lift them from their cellar dwelling. They need to demonstrate that there is a place for reporting that is probing and informative. And that passion for journalism is not twisted into rancorous blathering.

That’s a tall order, but getting rid of Dobbs is a step in the right direction. Now they have to show that they can embrace this opportunity and aim for something higher. Yeah, I know…I’m not holding my breath.

Update: CNN has announced that their own John King will replace Lou Dobbs. King is an old-school, straight news reporter. This means that CNN is properly moving away from the Fox model of news screeching, but it also means that they are probably not planning on innovating and advancing the state of media. Oh well.

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