Today on CNN, Michael Smerconish hosted former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who is more often seen pitching his doomsday fetishes on Fox News. The discussion (video below) centered around how best to respond to the threat posed by ISIS and other terrorist entities. Suffice to say that Scheuer’s methods took inhumanity to new lows.
While professing to be a non-interventionist, Scheuer complained that Americans don’t have the stomach to do what he thinks is necessary to defeat ISIS. His prescription for victory requires going “all in,” which means tolerating vast numbers of civilian casualties. He laments that American politicians are not comfortable with that saying “There’s not one person out there who’s willing to kill a civilian.” Of course, he’s wrong about that because several Republicans have publicly supported massive military campaigns that would decimate much of Syria. But that may not be enough for Scheuer who, when asked what he meant by “all in” said…
“All in to me would be to take out every piece of infrastructure: hospitals, universities, irrigation systems, that make it impossible for the Islamic State to raise money, to provide electricity, sanitation, potable water. Do exactly what we did to the Germans.”
In effect, Scheuer is advocating that the United States commit war crimes. He thinks that hospitals and universities, which are places notable for the absence of combatants, should be explicitly targeted for destruction. He’s not merely suggesting that civilian casualties should be tolerated, but that they should be deliberate and aimed at the most vulnerable people. And the other targets he proposed are also notable for having expressly civilian purposes. Irrigation systems serve farmers, not soldiers. Electricity, sanitation, and potable water are likewise services that are used mostly by peaceful families.
Scheuer could have proposed targets like command centers, training facilities, munitions storage, transportation assets, or black market oil operations, but all of his suggestions were predominantly civilian in nature. What’s more, his reference to “what we did to the Germans” ignores major differences between World War II and today. We were actually at war with Germany. We are not at war with Syria, and their civilian population is not responsible for terrorism. In fact, they are the victims of it, which accounts for the biggest refugee crisis since WWII. His plan would be more analogous to one that sought to bomb all the Jews in Germany and hope some Nazis were among the dead. And his callous disregard for human life was expressed further in this exchange:
Smerconish: Do you think that the Western world, Americans in particular, would stand by for the film footage that would be shown, on CNN and elsewhere, of the so-called innocent civilian death count? Scheuer: I don’t know if they would. They should. What’s the difference? They’re not Americans.
Well, that makes everything OK then, doesn’t it? The only deaths that matter are those of Americans. Maybe Scheuer would have approved of bombing the Bataclan concert Hall in Paris when the terrorists had taken control of it. We would have killed a few terrorists and a few hundred Parisians, but why would that matter? They’re not Americans.
Something obvious missing from Scheuer’s analysis is that what he is suggesting is not only barbarous and against international law, it is the best recruiting tool for terrorists imaginable. The more innocent civilians who die at the hands of Western infidels, the more survivors that will become radicalized and hunger for vengeance. Smerconish actually pointed out to Scheuer (with video evidence) that terrorists were already using him in their propaganda. Scheuer responded saying that they were just using his message of American military incompetence because it was “the reality.” How patriotic.
This is not the first time that Scheuer has articulated his repulsive philosophy. A few years ago he was on Glenn Beck’s Fox News program and outlined his concern that the American people were not sufficiently afraid of future terrorist attacks. He regarded that absence of fear as dangerous complacency. But he had a solution (video): “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.” That’s right – Scheuer came out in favor of Al Qaeda nuking America.
Just last year Scheuer wrote an article endorsing the assassination of President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron. After alluding to them as tyrannical, he quoted an historical figure who said that “every man might kill a tyrant; and no names are recorded in history with more honor, than of those who did it.” Wink, wink.
That is the magnitude of derangement that we’re dealing with here. Scheuer is a madman bordering on treason. And it is unconscionable that CNN would provide him a platform for his noxious views. It’s bad enough that Fox News does, but at least it’s consistent with the rest of their toxic propaganda.
Posted by Mark NC on December 31, 2014 at 4:38 pm.
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In a year that was filled to the brim with monumental idiocies, the competition for King of the Dumfux is stiffer than usual. Narrowing down the list of those deserving of special recognition was particularly difficult, but the collection below is a pretty good indication that DEVO was right and that civilization is taking huge leaps backwards. So fasten your neck bolts and let your eyes glaze over as we journey back through a year of hilarious (and frightening) intellectual vacancy.
Leading off the ceremony is a Hall of Famer dolt, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who laments that “the problem with American schools is just that kids are…learning too much.” That’s the sort of thinking that makes every other item on this list possible. It is also a recipe for growing new Fox News viewers who appreciate the stupidity of people like Carlson.
Former CIA “intelligence” officer, Michael Scheuer, is a regular guest on Fox News. He is famous for telling Glenn Beck that “the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.” But earlier this year in an interview with Neil Cavuto, Scheuer made a surprising distinction between America and the terrorist ISIS operation saying that the Islamists “are not dumb people. They may be brutal, but they are not dumb. We’re the dumb ones.”
Well then, that settles it. The problem we’ve been having all along is that we’re just not as smart as our adversaries. And Cavuto, notably, did not challenge that assessment. After all, how can a bunch of hillbillies who are hypnotized by reality television, designer jeans, and flame-broiled Whoppers supposed to be able to compete intellectually with such sophisticated and sociologically advanced opponents? Why did we not see this deficiency before Scheuer brought it to our attention? Oh yeah, because we’re stupid.
The lazy-brained right-wing media pounced on a scandalous story about President Obama’s bill to give welfare recipients free cars. And except for the fact that the story was the product of a satirical website, it would have been a great scoop. What makes it worse is that they did same thing the year before and were mercilessly shamed for their idiocy, but that didn’t prevent them from doing it again this year.
After complaining about a Coca Cola ad that celebrated the diversity of the nation by singing the anthem “America the Beautiful” in several languages, the wingnuts at Breitbart News declared victory when Coke modified the ad by placing the motto “E Pluribus Unum” at the beginning. So let’s get this straight. Coke, they said, “bowed to conservative critics” who insist on English-only by inserting a short phrase in — Latin. Uhhh, OK.
No list of stupidity would be complete without the ravings of Fox’s “psycho” analyst Keith Ablow. There are numerous entries under his name for recognition, but we’ll just settle on one that is both dumb and insulting. While visiting with the women of Fox’s Outnumbered, Ablow dispensed his routine Obama-hating rhetoric, but then added a bit of spice just for this program. As a slap at First Lady Michele Obama, who has been a devoted advocate of healthy diets, Ablow questioned her sincerity by smugly barking “How well can she be eating. She needs to drop a few.” This bit of misogyny even elicited gasps from the conservative ladies of Fox.
In 2014 the Republican Party took on a public relations task that dwarfs all other efforts at opinion-making. They boldly aimed to convince the American people that Republicans are people too. And the method used to achieve this goal was to produce a video that consisted of a montage of stock photos labeled as “average” American Republicans. So the video produced in order to convince everyone that Republicans are real people is populated by fakes. Brilliant.
Once known as “Bush’s Brain,” Karl Rove has deteriorated into a mentally deficient spewer of rancid rightist partisanship. In an attempt to bash Hillary Clinton, Rove’s wild pitch beaned every senior citizen in the country when he said that “In American politics, there’s a sense you want to be new, you don’t want to be too familiar, you want to be something fresh, you don’t want to be something old and stale.” Never mind that almost every Republican Rove backed for the past thirty years was older or staler than Clinton. The real numbskullery of Rove is that he is insulting the nation’s most reliable voting bloc by implying that they are not fit for public service.
There is boomlet of commentary on the right that thinks it would be a good idea to prohibit President Obama from delivering the annual State of the Union address to members of Congress. This is a proposal that reeks of personal animosity and is wholly inconsistent with the mission of Congress. What’s more, it certainly doesn’t advance the spirit of cooperation that the GOP pretended to embrace following the midterm election. Speaker Boehner has already nixed this notion, but merely considering it hangs an “i’m a stupid baby” sign around the necks of these cretins.
Following reports of a female fighter pilot from the United Arab Emirates who led the UAE’s forces in attacks on ISIL, Fox News host Eric Bolling made what he must have thought was a hilarious joke by referring to her as “Boobs on the ground.” Bolling not only insulted the courageous pilot, but his associates at Fox News as well. He later apologized to his wife and Fox viewers, but egregiously left out the pilot and all other women in the armed services.
Allen West, a disgraced veteran and one-term Tea Party congressman, supplied Fox News with an “exclusive” report about what really happened on the ground in Benghazi. West’s source for his exclusive was an anonymous stranger that happened to be sitting next to him on a plane who said that he knew some other anonymous dude who had the real skinny on the scandal. This is what passes for an “exclusive” news report on Fox News? A third-hand tale of conspiracy theories and previously debunked allegations?
As special salute at the conclusion of a year of monumentally asinine behavior, News Corpse is presenting its first “Dumfux Award for Achievements in Stupidy.” Candidates for this honor were many and included Ben Carson, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Rush Limbaugh, and Keith Ablow. Sarah Palin was eliminated from the competition because her inclusion would have swamped the field. But emerging from the pack was a wholly deserving moron who proved himself through a year of failure and foolishness. So without further ado, here is the 2014 Dumfux Award for Achievements in Stupidity winner:
Congressman Darrell Issa of California
Rep. Issa chaired the House Oversight Committee through a maze of fake scandals, including Benghazi, the IRS/Tea Party affair, and ObamaCare. And in none of his persecutions did he manage to prove any of his preconceived allegations. But he sealed his victory for this award on the last day of the last hearing that he will attend as chairman. Having subpoenaed Jonathan Gruber, the economic advisor who inartfully described the American People as stupid, Issa must have believed that he was in a position to embarrass Gruber and, by association, all Democrats and supporters of ObamaCare. But Issa led off his inquisition with this idiotic question:
“Mr. Gruber, I’ve been accused that I’m going to berate you or something and I hope that you won’t feel that way when I get done. But the night before last I was at the Kennedy Center Honors where they honored Tom Hanks, famously ‘Forrest Gump,’ the ultimate in successful stupid man. Are you stupid?”
Gee…I wonder where Issa might have gotten the impression that people thought he would berate Gruber? This may be the single stupidest question Issa has ever asked anyone. What did he expect Gruber to say? And how did he think this line of questioning would benefit whatever investigation he was pretending to conduct? As usual, Issa’s motives were purely hostile and aimed at creating political theater. But by the end he once again demonstrated his impotence as even conservative colleagues and pundits criticized him for scheduling the pointless hearing in the first place. So congratulations Mr. Issa, and best wishes for a new year as a flunky who no one respects.
Fox News, and other right-wing media, sometimes make it very difficult to assess where they are coming from. Every now and then you have to sit back and try to figure out the answer to one simple question: Whose side they are on?
Case in point: Friday’s episode of Your World with Neil Cavuto featured a segment with former CIA “intelligence” officer, Michael Scheuer, a regular guest on the network. Scheuer is famous for telling Glenn Beck that “the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.” Isn’t that a charming display of patriotism?
Now Scheuer is providing his opinion of the intelligence of Americans as compared to our terrorist enemies. In his discussion with Cavotu, Scheuer complimented ISIS by saying that they were not “silly” enough to forgo the opportunity to infiltrate the United States by sneaking across the southern border. In fact, he elaborated on that praise saying that…
“The Islamists “are not dumb people. They may be brutal, but they are not dumb. We’re the dumb ones.”
Well then, that settles it. The problem we’ve been having all along is that we’re just not as smart as our adversaries. And Cavuto, notably, did not challenge that assessment. After all, how can a bunch of hillbillies who are hypnotized by reality television, designer jeans, and flame-broiled Whoppers supposed to be able to compete intellectually with such sophisticated and sociologically advanced opponents? Why did we not see this deficiency before Scheuer brought it to our attention? Oh yeah, because we’re stupid.
It’s unclear who Scheuer is referring to specifically. Does he mean that all Americans are dumb, or maybe our military commanders, or just our leaders? It’s hard to place the blame on the military since they have accomplished nearly every task assigned to them. In the past couple of weeks they have achieved repeated victories pushing ISIS back from cities they claimed to have captured. As for our leaders, the only one who permitted a catastrophic attack on U.S. soil was George W. Bush, and he’s been out of office for six years now. So that leaves just the American people to absorb the brunt of Scheuer’s insult.
In addition to Scheuer’s anti-patriotic stance, another right-wing hack has also contributed to the welfare of ISIS. James O’Keefe pulled off an idiotic stunt last month wherein he filmed himself crossing the Rio Grande in an Osama Bin Laden mask. That story is almost painfully funny, and can be read here. The news emanating from that buffoonery is that his antics are now being cited by ISIS to motivate wannabe terrorists to attempt similar crossings.
Fox News reported that a document obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety warned that “militants are expressing an increased interest in the notion that they could clandestinely infiltrate the southwest border of US,” and that social media messages “alluded to a recent video by U.S. activist James O’Keefe, who was recorded coming across the Rio Grande valley in an Usama bin Laden costume.”
O’Keefe must be so proud that his little film project has become a source of inspiration to bloodthirsty terrorists. Of course if we needed an argument to refute Scheuer’s characterization of ISIS as being smarter than we are, there couldn’t be better proof of the fallacy of that notion than the fact that they are taking O’Keefe seriously. That’s evidence of a pretty severe intellectual shortfall. Do they really regard O’Keefe’s video as documentation of the state of U.S. border security? Is that really the best source they could scrape up? And if they are relying on that, then we don’t have much to worry about.
This is just further evidence that conservatives are itching for some sort of violent disaster to occur so they can blame it on our secretly Muslim president. They have been haranguing Obama about divulging our strategy to deal with ISIS, which would simultaneously reveal the strategy to ISIS themselves. And when they aren’t advocating tipping our hand, they are disparaging Obama and telling the world, and our enemies, that he is weak and incompetent. Which brings us back to the question that opened this article: Whose side are they on?
Every media organization has had to, at one time or another, discipline staff who crossed an ethical line. If a reporter loses his or her cool and becomes offensive in the course of their work, they must be held accountable to some set of professional standards. Ideally the standards would be a set of objective criteria that focused on verifiable breaches of honesty or civility. A credible news organization must never tolerate a reporter lying or engaging in personal attacks. I repeat, a “credible” news organization…
Unfortunately, there is a disturbing lack of oversight in this regard. Often offenders are excused without consequence or, conversely, punishment is meted out to an innocent party. For example, NPR terminated their relationship with a couple of executives who were victims of false allegations in a video produced by James O’Keefe, the criminally convicted, right-wing activist best known for deceptively edited videos.
This past week presented a revealing lesson in contrast as to how different media enterprises deal differently with anchors and other editorial personnel who fail the test of principles that ought to govern all journalists.
CNN was put to the test this week when Roland Martin posted a Tweet that appeared to advocate violence against gays. Martin pointed out that it was not meant seriously and wasn’t even directed at gays, but at the sport of soccer. Nevertheless, CNN acted quickly to suspend Martin indefinitely.
By contrast, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta delivered a commentary on Sunday berating women in the military for complaining that they get raped too much (Trotta did not define what an “acceptable” amount of rape is). The news that triggered this revolting commentary was a Pentagon report that rape and sexual assault had increased 64%, a statistic that Trotta cavalierly dismissed. She further asserted that servicewomen should “expect” to be raped because they work closely with men. Fox News has had no comment on this matter despite fierce criticism from women’s groups and veterans offended by the assertion that male soldiers are innately animals and female soldiers should quietly accept assault as a part of military life.
These two examples illustrate the differences between a news enterprise that attempts to act responsibly and one that disregards such restraints in order to forge ahead with a sensationalistic approach and to pander to the scandal-lust of their viewers. CNN has faced this dilemma in the past by meting out punishments for ethical infractions to Lou Dobbs, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr, Susan Roesgen, Peter Arnett, and Eason Jordan. MSNBC has done the same to Keith Olbermann, David Shuster, Mark Halperin, Markos Moulitsas, and Pat Buchanan. Some of these chastisements were warranted (Dobbs, Buchanan), and some were executions of petulant grudges (Markos), and CNN still inexplicably employs miscreants like Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch. So CNN and MSNBC should not necessarily be held up as models of morality. But at least there is some evidence of an internal criteria for ethical behavior of some sort.
Fox News, however, has yet to make any news staffer pay a price for professional indiscretions, despite the fact that things got so bad at Fox they had to distribute a memo asserting a “Zero Tolerance Policy” that warned of “letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination.” The memo was issued after numerous, embarrassing on-air blunders by Fox reporters and producers. But rather than undergoing discipline, Fox News bent over backwards to reward reporters who behaved badly. In fact, while other networks were firing such violators, Fox seems to be on a mission to recruit them. For instance: Juan Williams, Don Imus, Doug McKelway, and Lou Dobbs were all put on the Fox payroll after having been terminated for cause at other networks. Even Glenn Beck who, while no longer hosting his own program, appears regularly with Bill O’Reilly and others.
Fox maintains a clubby environment for recalcitrant reporters, and there remains a full stable of them on the air. Here is a selection of some of the more obviously repulsive people that Fox News should have fired for their absence of morality and professionalism, but to date have not even had their wrists slapped. And make no mistake, the job security enjoyed by these weasels is not due to carelessness on the part of Fox News. Controversy, hostility, and rabid right-wing advocacy are the hallmarks of Fox’s business model. It’s how they cultivate and reward the loyalty of their audience. What other explanation could justify this:
Todd Starnes: Unsurprisingly, Fox News has smeared the Occupy Movement from its inception. They have disparaged them as everything from unfocused to unclean to un-American. But it took Starnes, the host of Fox News & Commentary on Fox Radio, to equate them to mass murderers by asking, “What should be done with the domestic terrorists who are occupying our cities and college campuses?” By comparing Occupiers to the likes of Timothy McVeigh, Starnes is engaging in rhetorical terrorism and insulting hundreds of thousands of concerned Americans.
Cody Willard: This Fox Business reporter brazenly exposed his bias when he attended a Tea Party rally and feverishly barked at the camera this call to arms against the U.S. government, “Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?”
Andrew Napolitano: The “Judge” is a notorious 9/11 Truther who believes that the attack on the World Trade Center towers was an inside job, orchestrated by agents of the United States government. That’s a position considered so crazy by Fox Newsers that it was instrumental in their campaign to get Van Jones fired from his post as a green jobs adviser to President Obama. But, in typical Foxian hypocrisy, it has no impact on the employment of Napolitano. [Note: The entire primetime schedule of the Fox Business Network, including Napolitano, Eric Bolling and David Asman, was recently canceled. But it was due to poor ratings, not content. And all remain active Fox News contributors.]
Bill Sammon: The Fox News Washington managing editor was recorded admitting to a friendly audience on a conservative cruise that he would go on air and “mischievously” cast Obama as a socialist even though he didn’t believe it himself. In other words, he lied to defame the President and rile up his gullible viewers. That would be cause for termination at most news networks, but probably earned Sammon a bonus at Fox.
Eric Bolling: Hoping to sustain Fox’s leadership in inappropriate Nazi references, Bolling accused President Obama of engaging in class warfare that was “forged in Marxist Germany.” And if that wasn’t asinine enough, he sided with Iran against the U.S. by accusing the American hikers who were held in an Iranian prison of being spies and said that Iran should have kept them.
Bill O’Reilly: Dr. George Tiller, a family physician in Kansas, was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist who may have been incited to violence by rhetoric like this from O’Reilly: “Now, we have bad news to report that Tiller the baby killer out in Kansas, acquitted. Acquitted today of murdering babies.” O’Reilly regards the acquittal of a doctor for performing legal medical services “bad news,” and the services themselves “murder.” But he never took any responsibility for fanning the flames of violent incivility that led to the actual murder of Dr. Tiller.
Col. Ralph Peters (Ret): In a rant that argued that the United States should fight back against our enemies with the same tactics they use against us, Peters turned the media into military targets: “Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. And like Bolling, Peters also took the side of our foes by suggesting, without evidence, that a missing American soldier was a deserter and that “the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills,” presumably by killing him.
Michael Scheuer: This former CIA analyst was concerned that the American people were not sufficiently afraid of future terrorist attacks. He regards that absence of fear as dangerous complacency. But he has a solution: “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”
Roger Ailes: The CEO of Fox News proves that a fish stinks from its head. In response to NPR’s firing of Juan Willimas for bigoted remarks about Muslims, Ailes let loose a tirade wherein he viciously attacked the NPR executives saying that… “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.”
Liz Trotta: Ending up where we began, this abhorrent attempt at comedy simply could not be left off of this list. What started out as a verbal stumble became a call for assassination when Trotta said, “Now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, umm, Obama. Well, both if we could.”
It’s difficult to believe that anyone could retain a job in the media after making statements like those above. These were not mistakes or misunderstandings. They are not out of context. They were considered, deliberate expressions of opinion that represented the reporter’s views at the time. Yet all of these people are still employed and active at Fox News.
To be fair, there is an example of Fox News firing reporters who crossed a line that even Fox could not abide. Steve Wilson and Jane Akre investigated a story that detailed the health risks posed by the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a milk additive manufactured by chemical giant Monsanto. Fox objected to the story’s negative portrayal of a major advertiser and ordered the reporters to make modifications that they knew were false. When the reporters refused they were fired. In the subsequent litigation Fox argued in court that the network had a right to determine the content of their stories, and even to lie, and that employees who declined to comply could be terminated as insubordinate.
So while Fox News has no problem with their analysts advocating terrorism against Americans, they draw the line when it comes to suppressing their Constitutional right to lie. Fox has taken great care to set their priorities and to draw their ethical lines in sand that is always under the prevailing tide.
[Update] This week racist Pat Buchanan was sacked by MSNBC and radio schlock jocks John & Ken were suspended for calling Whitney Houston a “crack ho”. But Liz Trotta, Eric Bolling, et al are still happily working at Fox.
Last night’s episode of the O’Reilly Factor featured a debate between Bill O’Reilly and Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent whom O’Reilly described as knowing more about Osama Bin Laden than anyone the planet. Scheuer took the position that celebrities like George Clooney and Angelina Jolie are helping Bin Laden by bringing attention to the travesties being committed in the Sudan.
Scheuer never really explained how either celebrity involvement, or that of the United States, actually aided Bin Laden. In fact, his argument mostly pointed out that the actions on behalf of the persecuted Christians in the region would only annoy and frustrate Bin Laden. Perhaps Scheuer believes that antagonizing Bin Laden is helpful to him in some way.
Further more, Scheuer had a tough time staying on the subject. He repeatedly conflated celebrity efforts to publicize the atrocities and human suffering with official U.S. government activities, even going so far as to imply that if the Hollywood stars had any success in efforts to establish a safe haven for refugees in a new southern nation, that the U.S. would be obligated to defend it from Islamic adversaries. I’m pretty sure the State Department doesn’t have any treaty obligations with the Screen Actor’s Guild.
Scheuer also inexplicably diverted the discussion to abortion when asked by O’Reilly about whether the world should “stand on the sidelines when hundreds of thousands of people are murdered and raped?” Scheuer’s response:
“We absolutely stand on the sidelines, Bill. We live in a country where 50 million unborn Americans have been killed since 1973 with the support of Mr. Clooney and the rest of the Hollywood community and somehow we’re supposed to now risk our becoming involved in a place in the world where most Americans are not even familiar with the geography, including me.”
By raising abortion in this context, Scheuer reveals himself to be just another twisted right-wing extremist, obsessed with a psycho-biblical agenda. What does abortion have to do with the near genocidal civil war taking place in Sudan? And Scheuer’s phony compassion for the unborn is exposed by his stance that it is acceptable to stand on the sidelines when already born people are being slaughtered because of their religion. And, finally, if Scheuer’s criteria for involvement in foreign affairs is that the American people be “familiar with the geography” then how could he have been such an ardent backer of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where many more tens of thousands of people died despite the general lack of geographical knowledge on the part of U.S. citizens?
For the record, Scheuer himself expressed a sort of perverse support for Bin Laden when he appeared on Glenn Beck’s program and said that…
“…the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. […] Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.”
Scheuer was openly rooting for another terrorist attack as a means to motivating Americans to protest terrorist attacks. Glenn Beck, by the way, concurred with that strategy. For his part, O’Reilly disagreed with Scheuer’s disjointed lunacy with respect to the celebrity involvement. But it is still difficult to give O’Reilly any credit for moderating the discussion because it’s O’Reilly’s fault that this jerkwad was on the air to begin with.
What’s more, O’Reilly was overtly hypocritical in his tepid support for Clooney and Jolie when he so frequently takes positions against artists expressing their views in public. He is a major proponent of the “Shut and Sing” idiocy that asserts that artists should be prohibited from contributing to a civic dialog in which all other citizens are permitted to engage. And specifically with regard to these two stars, O’Reilly has falsely accused Clooney of diverting funds from charity telethons away from the intended recipients, and he baselessly alleged that Jolie, in her role as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, coordinated her trips to coincide with her movie openings.
Scheuer’s notion that Clooney et al were in any way supporting Bin Laden or Al Qaeda is 180 degrees backwards. It is Scheuer’s position that would most benefit Bin Laden by permitting the Islamic terrorists in Sudan to commit atrocities with impunity. Scheuer is actually arguing that Bin Laden’s allies in the region should be given a free hand to torture and murder innocent people in a quest to dominate a country that Bin Laden has used to launch his terror campaigns.
Why Fox News continues to give this demented sociopath a platform for his treasonous views is beyond comprehension. His extremism is so far removed from decency (or reality) that the only foreseeable result of helping to promote him is to incite additional lunacy from the already ill-informed and gullible Fox audience. O’Reilly’s disagreement notwithstanding, he also praised Scheuer and validated him as an expert whose opinion is worthy of consideration. In effect, O’Reilly gave permission to his viewers to adopt Scheuer’s dangerous ideas, and in that manner they are both helping Bin Laden.
Looking back on 2009 can be a harrowing experience. There has been much that many people would rather not recollect. It was a year that began with dreadful economic suffering. From there it went on to unprecedented political division, animosity, and disappointment from virtually every perspective. And it ended with a reminder of our vulnerability to violent extremists at home and abroad. For that reason, like the mythical Medusa, it may be best not to look back on 2009 directly.
Nevertheless, News Corpse has compiled some moments that, for our own good, ought not to be forgotten.
Media Malfeasance of the Year: SPINCOM. In 2008, David Barstow wrote an article for the New York Times detailing how television news programs were employing Pentagon-trained military analysts to promote the Bush administration’s agenda for an unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq. In 2009, that article won a Pulitzer prize, a Golden Keyboard from the New York Press Association, and an Emmy nomination. Yet the article and its author never once appeared on television to discuss it. Despite Barstow’s many accolades and awards, the story was blackballed by the same TV producers who hired the phony pundits (who were also enriching themselves as consultants for the military contractors who benefited from the war). And by refusing to report on one of the most egregious examples of propaganda ever directed at the American people by their government, they also covered up their own complicity in cheerleading for the war.
2010 Prediction:
Someone famous will die while fleeing from police in a high-speed TV chase after being caught cheating on a spouse for a new reality show.
The Pimp & The Prostitute
What passes for journalism took a huge hit in 2009 when a couple of rightist activists dressed up for a Halloween expose on what they regarded as America’s most feared enemy: community organizers. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles played the roles they were made for, a pimp and a whore, as they visited offices of ACORN. The results were dishonestly edited videos that were played incessantly on Fox News despite having zero news value. The pair never appeared on any other television news network as they were closely guarded by their mentor Andrew Breitbart, and their patrons at Fox. Sadly, the other networks acquiesced by reporting the story despite having no access to the pseudo-news team.
2010 Prediction: Osama Bin Laden will buy Philip Morris, thus taking responsibility for killing 197,000 more Americans EVERY YEAR than he did that one time on 9/11.
Color of Change We Can Believe In:
After Glenn Beck called the President a racist, a previously little-known group embarked on a boycott campaign directed at Beck’s advertisers. By last accounting Color of Change had persuaded over 80 advertisers to pull or withhold their ads from Becks show. What’s more, they compelled a retraction from the DefendGlenn web site (whose proprietor, Gary Kreep, is a story unto himself) that had been falsely disparaging the boycott efforts.
2010 Prediction: Twitter will fold when its enfeebled users decide that 140 characters is too many to comprehend. It will be replaced by Blather, where messages are restricted to 26 characters and you can only use each letter of the alphabet once. The media will herald it as a phenomenon.
The Tea Party Delusion
What can be said about the year’s most overblown non-story: The Tea Party Movement? Never has there been a less significant amalgamation of disruptive whiners that received more attention from a controversy-challenged media. The Tea Baggers were always just a noisy minority who were fully sponsored by right-wing lobbyists and Fox News. But near the end of the year a poll was released that revealed the truth, even though the true part was ignored. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll hit the airwaves proclaiming that Tea Baggers (at 41%) were more popular that Democrats (35%) or Republicans (28%). What they didn’t report, although it was in the same poll, was that 48% of respondents knew very little or nothing at all about the Tea Baggers. When almost half of the country doesn’t know who you are, you are not much of a movement.
2010 Prediction: Fox News will lie. (I know. That one was too easy, but it’s New Year’s Eve and I have a party to go to).
Undisputed Scumbag Pundit Hall of Shame
This award is a tie due to the presence of two so thoroughly deserving Scumbag Pundits. These despicable cretins earned their awards by claiming a couple of the most repulsive utterings ever contemplated in the press:
Retired Lieutenant Colonel, Ralph Peters: “Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.”
Former CIA employee Michael Scheuer: “[T]he only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”
And just for fun, I now present the Comedy Colonoscopy Award for 2009. So far as I know, there was only one entry. But it’s a doozy:
Rupert Murdoch’s pet paranoidal pea-brain, Glenn Beck, has been a persistent purveyor of fear for years. He has predicted the most dire catastrophes for America, its economy, its values, and its people. The stench of doom that surrounds him is debilitating even in small doses.
On his program yesterday, Beck leveled an accusation that President Obama, or someone on his staff, had threatened Sen. Ben Nelson with the closing of a military base in Benson’s state, Nebraska. The only evidence of such a threat was a posting by a former McCain spokesman with an anonymous source on the conservative Weekly Standard web site. But Beck has blown this unreliable, unverified, rumor up into a serious allegation that crossed over into territory into which even he can’t believe he is going:
“The Obama administration is possibly – and I can’t bring myself to say these words because it is abhorrent if it is true but it sure fits the pattern. They’re playing politics with the national security of the United States.”
Despite insisting that he couldn’t say the abhorrent words, he managed to summon up the resolve to say them in the very next sentence. And with those words he came within a hair’s breadth of declaring President Obama a traitor – several times.
“There’s a story at the bottom of the hour that if it is true, and we have three sources on it now, if it is true. I mean how much closer do you get to treason?“
“But his party reportedly very angry and allegedly making threats. This one borders treason, I believe.”
“Threatening to weaken our national security defenses to fulfill your Utopian social justice agenda. To me that borders on treason.“
Beck has a lot of nerve accusing other people of treason. There are numerous examples of him making statements that are hard to interpret as anything less than treasonous. He agreed with his guest Michael Scheuer, that…
“… the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”
“And don’t get me wrong. I am against the government, and I think that they have just been horrible, and I do think they are betraying the principles of our founders every day they’re in office.”
During yesterday’s program, Beck dispensed his usual legal disclaimer that he may not have all the information necessary to draw a conclusion. He conceded that all parties involved, the White House and Sen. Nelson, have denied the allegation, which they did emphatically. Yet, just as he did with his floating of the FEMA prison camp nonsense, Beck went just far enough to introduce the heinous charges, then allowed them to simmer while his conspiracy-addled audience sucked in the fumes of malicious hearsay. But even that wasn’t enough as Beck explicitly characterized these rumors as fact:
“It doesn’t matter if it’s credible or not that they could do it. The fact that they threatened it – it is our national security.”
The truth is that the whole scenario is not credible and they couldn’t do it. The procedure for base closings takes years and was designed specifically to disallow political influence. Both the White House and Sen. Nelson would be aware of this. Therefore, the only purpose for advancing a vile and improbable lie like this one is to slander the President. Beck is deliberately seeking to cast the nation’s leader as a traitor, which could lead to removing him from office and imprisoning or even executing him. And since these charges are wholly unsupported, Beck’s intentions would be tantamount to assassination. This, if true, would make Beck a traitor. Is Glenn Beck guilty of treason? Well, to paraphrase him…
“No one wants to believe that the president of the United States host of a TV program or any of his advisors would stoop to these kinds of tactics. But what are we supposed to believe here?”
Exactly! What are we supposed to believe? I’m not accusing Beck of anything. I’m just asking questions. Beck knows that he can reach me here at this web site to respond to or correct any misinformation. To date he has not done so. That leads me to conclude that all of this is true. Why else wouldn’t he contact me?
The faux patriots at Fox Nation are continuing to make a habit of exploiting the image of 9/11 and contriving false and negative associations with Democrats. This time Rupert Murdoch and Co. have outdone themselves by accusing President Obama of politicizing the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and other targets.
It takes a pretty hefty portion of chutzpah for the Fox Nationalists to sell this falsehood. Particularly in light of how brazenly they themselves have been politicizing 9/11:
In this latest episode, Fox Nation links to an article at RedState, the blog of the uber-rightist magazine, Human Events. The RedState column credits the equally right-wing Heritage Foundation for discovering what they characterize as a despicable act of political exploitation.
What these stalwart detectives found was a notice on the website of Organizing for America (OFA), the Democratic National Committee’s social networking site for Democratic activists. Note: This is NOT a site that is affiliated with the White House or the President.
The offending notice was posted by a user seeking participants for a health care reform event. The notice itself could reasonably be regarded as offensive and inappropriate, but no more so than what Fox Nation has published itself.
“Sep 11, is Patriot Day, designated in memory of the nearly three thousand who died in the 9/11 attacks.
“All 50 States are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders.”
I can’t say that I disagree with the assessment of Fox News, but the reference to right-wing domestic terrorists was unnecessarily contentious. However, the response by Heritage/RedState/Fox Nation is ludicrous beyond imagination.
First of all, the OFA web site is a user driven site. That means that anyone can post comments, blogs and even announcements of upcoming events, as is the case here. So those responsible for the site’s administration (the DNC) cannot be blamed for inappropriate material that they did not produce or authorize. The site’s administrator did become aware of the posting and promptly removed it. Now you would think that the martinets of manners at RedState would be assuaged, even encouraged, by this behavior, but no. They quickly leaped to a new accusation that the web site had “scrubbed” the embarrassing content. How can OFA win? If they leave the posting up, they are guilty of denigrating the memory of 9/11. If they take it down, they are alleged to be hiding something.
Remember, this is the same organization that permitted Michael Scheuer to appear with Glenn Beck and openly root for another terrorist attack on America:
“…the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”
So, does Murdoch’s organization want another 9/11? That sounds much more plausible than the assertion that Obama’s organization is politicizing 9/11. This is nothing more than the routine disingenuous outrage from people who only know how to stir up mischief, even when none occurs. And for the Fox Nationalists to raise the ante by publishing gut wrenching photos of the 9/11 attack, with a completely dishonest headline, is the height of cynical and grotesque politicization. Especially after all of the examples above of obvious and intentional politicization on the part of Fox.
But don’t get comfortable yet. Fox News has been running promos today for tonight’s O’Reilly Factor that promise to blow the lid off of this fake scandal. So this nonsense is going from a bunch of ignorant think tankers and bloggers, to the number one cable news program in America.
It’s come to this…Glenn Beck and his guest Michael Scheuer have finally admitted their deepest yearnings. The ticking clock at the beginning of Beck’s show takes on a whole new meaning. It is a suggestion for a remedy for our diseased nation that is so far gone now that there is only one solution: Another 9/11.
BECK: Yes, sir. OK. So you have seen this. Do you really, honestly believe that we have come to a place to where those very senior people in the highest offices of the land, Congress and the White House, really will not do the right thing in the end, that they won’t see the error of their ways?
SCHEUER: No, sir, they will not. Not — the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it’s going to take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. Only — it’s an absurd situation. Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.
BECK: Which is why I was thinking this weekend if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.
I’m sure Bin Laden appreciates Beck’s advice. But isn’t it a bit shocking that Beck’s counsel to Bin Laden is to refrain from attacking the U.S. because it would benefit the country by motivating Americans to demand protection against such an attack? So he is saying that, while it is contrary to Bin Laden’s interests to attack us, it is in accord with America’s (and Beck’s) interests. He actually believes that the slaughter of untold thousands of innocent Americans is not only beneficial, but is “the only chance we have.”
Beck is now adding his voice to those of The Republican Advance Team For Terrorism. This is a group led by Dick Cheney who has been busily promoting the notion that America is “less safe” under the Obama administration so it would be a good time to attack. With Beck’s participation, it is now not only a good time to attack, it is also good policy.
And this guy is still on the air because…..???
[Update] The professional journalists of television news, whose contributions to the public store of knowledge are so indispensable, failed to cover this story. A former CIA terrorism specialist and a prominent cable news host agree that the U.S. needs to be attacked, and not one TV newsroom finds this newsworthy. The only place a television viewer would have seen this story is on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I don’t ever want to hear anyone complain again about The Daily Show being regarded as superior to the conventional media.
Media Malfeasance of the Year:
The Pimp & The Prostitute
Color of Change We Can Believe In:
The Tea Party Delusion
