Fox News spent much of the past two years openly promoting the Tea Party. They beseeched viewers to attend rallies, donated millions of dollars of valuable air time, propped up candidates, and even branded events as Fox News productions. Fox News anchors were dispatched to rallies where they served as Tea Party MCs. Tea Party Express founder, Sal Russo, said that “There would not have been a tea party without Fox.”
From its inception the Tea Party was a phony circus of right-wing propaganda that never warranted the attention it received from the press. It couldn’t muster support from the public at large that exceeded the mid-twenties. Yet Fox News provided wall-to-wall coverage on a daily basis.
Now Fox has published an article by their digital politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, arguing that the Occupy Wall Street movement ought not to be getting coverage from the media. Stirewalt warns against “the temptation to overhype Occupy events,” and offers his advice that…
“…the press should consider taking a deep breath when it comes to coverage of the current movement.”
How convenient. After two years of relentless promotion of an AstroTurf affair that the majority of Americans oppose, Fox thinks that a truly grassroots movement, whose goals are supported by an overwhelming majority, should be swept aside and denied coverage.
Stirewalt’s article was notable also for its brazen bias against the Occupy movement. He begins the piece by saying…
“The California-as-Greece meme picked up steam this week when Oakland turned into the poor man’s Athens.”
However, he provides no support whatsoever for his fabricated meme, nor any evidence of it picking up steam. He further characterizes Occupiers as a “nuisance” and resorts to juvenile pejoratives like “malodorous emanations” to describe the protesters.
Stirewalt belittled the participation of 100 veterans who came to support the Occupation saying that their presence “isn’t significant,” but that…
“It might be effective messaging for the protesters to put forward a military appearance to undercut the popular notion that they are a bunch of hippies.”
First of all, the “popular notion” Stirewalt refers to is one that he and his cohorts at Fox invented. But more importantly, his dismissal of the veterans is an unconscionable display of disrespect. What ever happened to thanking them for their service?
This is typical of the hypocrisy in play at Fox News. They only appreciate veterans when they can be exploited for political gain (or utilized as fodder in phony wars). And they only assent to covering news when it conforms to their predetermined bias. This graphically illustrates the dishonesty of a so-called “news” organization that renounces coverage of popular protests despite having been such zealots for another group of protesters whom they just happen to favor.
The top headline today on Fox Nation is a conspicuously slanderous lie (as opposed to their conventional slanderous lies): Oakland on Fire: Obama Gets Class War He Asked For.
First of all, not only has Obama never asked for a class war, he has never even expressed support for the Occupy movement that the Fox Nationalists are inferring is a class war. This has been a disappointment to progressives who want the President to go beyond acknowledging the frustration of the protesters and the 99% of the nation whom they represent.
More importantly, the class war theme has been beaten to death by right-wingers intent on blaming the American people for the obscene economic disparity that is the work of wealthy corporations and their benefactors in Congress. If the elitist One-Percenters are afraid (and they should be) of the rampaging hordes approaching their villas with torches and pitchforks, then they should stop behaving like robber barons and start acting like patriots. They should care more about their country and fellow citizens than they do about hoarding wealth, ripping people off, and destroying the economy.
As Billy Joel said (sort of), “We didn’t start the [class war] fire,” but we’ll be more than happy to finish it, and we will prevail. Revolution is in our DNA. It’s how we gained liberty from lords and monarchs a couple of hundred years ago, and we will do it again. And this time many of the lords are actually on our side. The enemy isn’t really the Upper Crusties, it’s the conservative media and politicians acting on behalf of a minority of ultra-rightist neo-fascists (and that is not a reference to Hitler, but to the actual definition of fascism, which Mussolini called “corporatism.”). With respect to the foregoing, the best thing I can do in response is to just reprise an article I wrote a few days ago on this very subject:
“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.” ~ George Carlin
The national debate triggered by the Occupy Wall Street protests has given the wealth gap a renewed focus in the public arena. And with good reason. That gap is wider today than it was just prior to the Great Depression; wider, in fact, than it has ever been. The brutality of that economic disparity has thrust our nation into a bitter and persistent recession. But it has also inspired millions of Americans to step forward and demand reforms that not only restore fairness, but readjust the balance of political power.
Conservatives regard this new activism as a declaration of class war. But it’s important to note that they only call it war when we fight back. The war was already in progress and, as Warren Buffett said, “We (the rich) are winning.” Now a new survey reveals that Buffett is not the only one-percenter that is fighting on our side. The Wall Street Journal (ironically) is reporting that…
“A new survey from Spectrem Group found that 68% of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more) support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income. Fully 61% of those with net worths of $5 million or more support the tax on million-plus earners.”
We can also count Bill Gates amongst the one-percenters who advocate more progressive taxes.
[Note: The same segment from ABC’s This Week was posted on Fox Nation with a headline that perverts reality beyond all recognition: “Bill Gates Knocks Down Obama’s Millionaire’s Tax.” Gates did no such thing. He continues his remarks saying that taxing millionaires by itself will not solve the debt problem, but no one is suggesting that it will. And his support for taxing the rich more is clear and unambiguous.]
When two-thirds of the people that will be affected by a tax increase support the increase, it begs the question, who are the opponents? For the answer you need look no farther than the Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives:
John Boehner: “[T]here’s nothing that’s disappointed me more over the last 8 weeks than to watch the President of the United States basically give up on the economy, give up on the American people.” […] “People are frustrated, and that’s why the House has been focused all year on trying to create a better environment for job creation in our country.”
Boehner is wrong about Obama. The President has not given up on the economy or the American people. He has given up on Boehner. And Boehner’s assertion that the House has been focused on creating jobs is laughable. He and his Republican troops have done nothing but obstruct progress on every legislative attempt to stimulate job growth. In fact, they have been working hard to recast the issue as one that is centered on those they call the “job creators.”
House Republicans have a web site at jobs.gop.gov. The funny thing about the site is that it has no content whatsoever that addresses the plight of workers or the unemployed. The site isn’t really about jobs at all, as the heading makes abundantly clear: The House Republican Plan for America’s Job Creators. That’s an admission that the Republican agenda for jobs is really just an agenda for business owners and corporations. Click through to their plan and you will see a short list of proposals that hew narrowly to tax cuts for business, deregulation, and deficit reduction. It’s the same tired parade of failed policies that Republicans put forth as their solution to everything. None of those policies will produce jobs and, more importantly, they aren’t even what small businesses, the biggest driver of jobs, say that they want.
A new Gallup poll asked small business owners“What would be a primary motivation or reason for hiring any new employees?” The top three responses, representing 63% of respondents, were all related to demand.
“Small-business owners point to increased revenues (27%), an improving economy (20%), and growth or expansion of their business (17%) as their top motivations for hiring new employees in 2012.”
This survey affirms the analysis of most economists who agree that companies do not expand hiring when their taxes are cut or regulations are relaxed. They hire when they need to satisfy increased demand or exploit an economic opportunity. The Wall Street Journal surveyed a group of economists and concluded that…
“The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists in a new Wall Street Journal survey.”
Once again, that’s the conservative Wall Street Journal reporting. It’s fair to presume that the economists the Journal surveyed were not from some sleeper cell of de-thawed Bolsheviks. In addition to this widespread agreement by experts that the GOP fixation on tax relief for the Upscalers is fiscal folly, the popular sentiment on Main Streets across the nation overwhelmingly favors making those who have benefited the most contribute more to restoring our country’s economic health. After all, the rich are the only ones who have not been called upon to share the sacrifice.
When the big picture is unfurled there are conclusions to draw that are too obvious to ignore. The American people support raising revenue via taxes. Economists agree that demand, not tax relief, drives job creation. And a majority of millionaires believe that their own tax rates are too low. Yet Republicans in Congress continue to stonewall. The intransigence of the GOP serves no constituency and has no discernible benefit politically. The only plausible return for their bullheadedness is in the form of financial support from a deep-pocketed minority of one-percenters who simply cannot abide one more cent in taxes.
That’s the naked truth that Boehner & Co. are having such a hard time defending. That’s why the Occupy movement has captured such a broad swath of public support. And that’s why it is all the more peculiar that the media still fails to present these issues honestly, and that many in the Democratic Party, including the President, have not unambiguously acknowledged the voice of the people and joined the fight for economic justice. If the wealthy have conceded that the people’s position is the one that ought to prevail, then where are the people’s representatives?
This never fails to brighten my day. Some right-wingers are so stupid they don’t even know they are refuting their own positions with some of the attempted slander they present.
Today Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment (notoriously stupid to begin with) posted an interview of an Occupy Wall Street protester. She was prodded about reports of malfeasance on the part of the Occupy movement or some of its participants. The purpose being to smear the protest movement with phony allegations and rumors. The result was an article with the headline: ACORN Front Group Pays Homeless People ‘$10 a Hour, $100 a Day’ to Protest at Occupy Wall Street.
The only problem is that the woman in the video did not say that the allegedly hired homeless persons were paid to be protesters. What she said was…
“I know some people, homeless people, are getting paid to come here and mess things up.”
So her actual charge is that they were provocateurs hired to disrupt the protest, not to support it. She seemed earnest and well-meaning, but somewhat ill-informed in that her comments appeared to conflate reports of paid instigators with unrelated reports of ACORN hiring protesters. The ACORN story itself was obvious propaganda which I debunked last week. The absurd assertions of Fox News and others painted a picture of a bankrupt and disbanded non-profit group shelling out a quarter of a million dollars for extras to populate the scene at Zucotti Park.
As further evidence of the confusion of the woman in the video, her story didn’t even make sense. Why would ACORN pay people to disrupt a protest that they presumably supported? Anyone who has watched the news the past few weeks would have readily recognized the flaws in her comments and reputable journalists would not have used them, at least not without attempting get a clarification. But that doesn’t stop the rocket scientists at BigGovernment who saw fit to post this interview anyway. Never mind that it fingered the Occupy movement’s opponents as saboteurs and dirty tricksters. What’s more, it revealed that Breitbart’s prior efforts to miscast the Occupiers as shills was a lie. If this woman is to be believed, it was Breitbart’s side that were the shills. And she very likely got her misinformation (the ACORN nonsense) from “news” reported by Breitbart.
Despite the frequency with which right-wingers make themselves look like fools, it still astonishes me when they do so. And they even manage to escalate the flamboyancy of their blockheadedness with each new incident. With all the turmoil and tribulation in the world these days, I suppose I should grateful for the little bit of cheer they bring to my life. There really is nothing I enjoy more than when my ideological opponents show up for a debate with big, red, rubber noses and clown shoes.
“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.” ~ George Carlin
The national debate triggered by the Occupy Wall Street protests has given the wealth gap a renewed focus in the public arena. And with good reason. That gap is wider today than it was just prior to the Great Depression; wider, in fact, than it has ever been. The brutality of that economic disparity has thrust our nation into a bitter and persistent recession. But it has also inspired millions of Americans to step forward and demand reforms that not only restore fairness, but readjust the balance of political power.
Conservatives regard this new activism as a declaration of class war. But it’s important to note that they only call it war when we fight back. The war was already in progress and, as Warren Buffett said, “We (the rich) are winning.” Now a new survey reveals that Buffett is not the only one-percenter that is fighting on our side. The Wall Street Journal (ironically) is reporting that…
“A new survey from Spectrem Group found that 68% of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more) support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income. Fully 61% of those with net worths of $5 million or more support the tax on million-plus earners.”
We can also count Bill Gates amongst the one-percenters who advocate more progressive taxes.
[Note: The same segment from ABC’s This Week was posted on Fox Nation with a headline that perverts reality beyond all recognition: “Bill Gates Knocks Down Obama’s Millionaire’s Tax.” Gates did no such thing. He continues his remarks saying that taxing millionaires by itself will not solve the debt problem, but no one is suggesting that it will. And his support for taxing the rich more is clear and unambiguous.]
When two-thirds of the people that will be affected by a tax increase support the increase, it begs the question, who are the opponents? For the answer you need look no farther than the Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives:
John Boehner: “[T]here’s nothing that’s disappointed me more over the last 8 weeks than to watch the President of the United States basically give up on the economy, give up on the American people.” […] “People are frustrated, and that’s why the House has been focused all year on trying to create a better environment for job creation in our country.”
Boehner is wrong about Obama. The President has not given up on the economy or the American people. He has given up on Boehner. And Boehner’s assertion that the House has been focused on creating jobs is laughable. He and his Republican troops have done nothing but obstruct progress on every legislative attempt to stimulate job growth. In fact, they have been working hard to recast the issue as one that is centered on those they call the “job creators.”
House Republicans have a web site at jobs.gop.gov. The funny thing about the site is that it has no content whatsoever that addresses the plight of workers or the unemployed. The site isn’t really about jobs at all, as the heading makes abundantly clear: The House Republican Plan for America’s Job Creators. That’s an admission that the Republican agenda for jobs is really just an agenda for business owners and corporations. Click through to their plan and you will see a short list of proposals that hew narrowly to tax cuts for business, deregulation, and deficit reduction. It’s the same tired parade of failed policies that Republicans put forth as their solution to everything. None of those policies will produce jobs and, more importantly, they aren’t even what small businesses, the biggest driver of jobs, say that they want.
A new Gallup poll asked small business owners“What would be a primary motivation or reason for hiring any new employees?” The top three responses, representing 63% of respondents, were all related to demand.
“Small-business owners point to increased revenues (27%), an improving economy (20%), and growth or expansion of their business (17%) as their top motivations for hiring new employees in 2012.”
This survey affirms the analysis of most economists who agree that companies do not expand hiring when their taxes are cut or regulations are relaxed. They hire when they need to satisfy increased demand or exploit an economic opportunity. The Wall Street Journal surveyed a group of economists and concluded that…
“The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists in a new Wall Street Journal survey.”
Once again, that’s the conservative Wall Street Journal reporting. It’s fair to presume that the economists the Journal surveyed were not from some sleeper cell of de-thawed Bolsheviks. In addition to this widespread agreement by experts that the GOP fixation on tax relief for the Upscalers is fiscal folly, the popular sentiment on Main Streets across the nation overwhelmingly favors making those who have benefited the most contribute more to restoring our country’s economic health. After all, the rich are the only ones who have not been called upon to share the sacrifice.
When the big picture is unfurled there are conclusions to draw that are too obvious to ignore. The American people support raising revenue via taxes. Economists agree that demand, not tax relief, drives job creation. And a majority of millionaires believe that their own tax rates are too low. Yet Republicans in Congress continue to stonewall. The intransigence of the GOP serves no constituency and has no discernible benefit politically. The only plausible return for their bullheadedness is in the form of financial support from a deep-pocketed minority of one-percenters who simply cannot abide one more cent in taxes.
That’s the naked truth that Boehner & Co. are having such a hard time defending. That’s why the Occupy movement has captured such a broad swath of public support. And that’s why it is all the more peculiar that the media still fails to present these issues honestly, and that many in the Democratic Party, including the President, have not unambiguously acknowledged the voice of the people and joined the fight for economic justice. If the wealthy have conceded that the people’s position is the one that ought to prevail, then where are the people’s representatives?
Fox News has been feverishly trying to dampen the viral growth of OWS ever since it sprouted in a park in Lower Manhattan about a month ago. Their overt hostility is in sharp contrast to the love affair they had with the early Tea Party. Now they are slandering decent and passionate protesters as communists, whining about class war, comparing them to hippies, accusing them of violence, and associating them with Nazis. All of these attacks have collapsed from the weight of their own dishonesty, and support continues to grow for the movement. But does that stop Fox News?
Of course not. Their determination to crush this populist uprising is fueled by a cabal of bitter elitists with deep pockets. Rupert Murdoch’s pals on Wall Street have no intention of sitting still while they are asked to be accountable for their chicanery. So yesterday Fox’s Megyn Kelly featured a story based on an article at FoxNews.com with a provocative headline: EXCLUSIVE: Ex-ACORN Operatives Behind the Scene of ‘Occupy’ Protests.
Run for the hills, Helga. A defunct organization of community organizers who helped low-income citizens to vote, find housing, get an education, and navigate the complexities of government agencies, has risen from the dead to take control of a leaderless rabble of park squatters demanding an end to financial and political corruption. It’s Armageddon!
The FoxNews.com article was based on is a collection of unattributed sources making unsubstantiated allegations about New York Communities for Change (NYCC), the group Fox says is the ACORN spinoff. Most of the claims are so far-fetched as to be beyond believability. For example, one source flatly claims as a matter of fact that “there is a still a national ACORN.” The Fox reporter never bothers to confirm the demonstrably false assertion, nor to challenge the source. And then there’s this…
“Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities – paying some of them $100 a day – to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.”
Doing the math, that comes to $10,000 a day for the staffers and another $8,000 (approx) a day for the homeless recruits. The Wall Street Occupation has just entered its sixth week, but if we assume that these folks worked for just three of those weeks, that’s $270,000 (with weekends off).
Remember, ACORN is an organization that disbanded when their funding dried up as a result of the negative publicity generated by the thoroughly discredited smear campaign of video-dissembler James O’Keefe. Every investigation of ACORN subsequent to their dissolution failed to find any wrongdoing except on the part of O’Keefe, whose videos were deemed to have been deliberately and unethically deceptive.
Nevertheless, Fox is now reporting that the spawn of this bankrupt non-profit “raked in about $5,000” via fundraising efforts by hired canvassers. And with that puny take they managed to pay over a quarter of a million dollars to 150 people. That sort of magical fiscal management hasn’t been seen since Jesus fed the multitudes with five loaves of bread and a couple of fish. And all of this was supposedly orchestrated in order to make a crowd of thousands look marginally bigger. This doesn’t even take into consideration any of NYCC’s other expenses like rent, utilities, office equipment, etc., despite a specific assertion in the article that the money raised was used “to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses.”
“Fox News is trying to discredit Occupy Wall Street. New York Communities for Change is a new organization that fights for low- and moderate-income families. We don’t pay protesters and any monies raised by NYCC’s canvass are used in support of our ongoing issue campaigns. Period.
“The reality is that Occupy Wall Street is an organic movement of the 99% outraged at the ability of the 1% to corrupt America’s political and financial systems for personal gain while middle class families lose their jobs, their homes, and see their economic future devastated. We call on Fox News to stop its unseemly attacks and to respect the views of the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that our nation needs a more equitable distribution of wealth.”
The Fox News article’s author, Jana Winter, claims to have interviewed insiders with specific knowledge of private details. Winter cites her interview subjects twenty times in the article but only once puts a name to a comment. Her negligence to identify anyone even includes a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers and a Fox News producer – two people who presumably are not averse to attribution.
The one identified source is Harrison Schultz, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, whom Winter quotes as saying that “he knew nothing about NYCC’s involvement in the Occupy movement. ‘Haven’t seen them, couldn’t tell you,’ he said.” So the only on-the-record quote in the whole article was an unambiguous denial of any OWS coordination with NYCC. That’s what Fox News considers an “exclusive” expose of ACORN’s clandestine domination of the movement.
For the past few weeks Fox News and the broader right-wing media has relentlessly hammered at OWS. They have tried in vain to drive down support for the movement by associating it with a different villain on an almost daily basis. Bill O’Reilly and his guest, Glenn Beck, discussed how George Soros was funding the protesters and their newspaper, The Occupied Wall Street Journal. In fact, there is no verifiable tie to Soros and the newspaper was produced by notorious pranksters, The Yes Men, and funded by donations. Glenn Beck took pleasure in a report that former KKK leader David Duke had “endorsed” OWS. What Beck failed to mention is that Duke, a pathological self-promoter, had also endorsed the Tea Party. But Andrew Breitbart took the top dishonors by speculating that OWS might be affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Despite this barrage of hogwash, the Occupy movement continues to gain popularity. A CBS/New York Times poll shows that 43% of the country agree with the Occupiers. An Associated Press poll shows that 37% of Americans view the protesters favorably. That compares to only 28% who have a favorable view of the Tea Party. Even more significant is the support expressed for the movement’s economic justice agenda, particularly raising taxes on the wealthy. A Bloomberg poll shows overwhelming support by 68% of the American people, including a majority of both independents and Republicans. And poll after poll affirms those results.
Is it any wonder then that Fox News is so frantically flinging fistfuls of mud in the hopes that something will stick? And since the usual name-calling they employ (socialists, thugs, deviants) has failed to make a mark, they are pulling out oldies like ACORN. Even if the association with ACORN were true, what would be the harm? We know now that ACORN was fully exonerated, while their critics were repudiated. There is certainly no shame in being associated with an organization that fought for decades on behalf of the disenfranchised members of our society.
This is a desperation move on the part of Fox News that reveals the weakness of their position. If this is the best that Fox can come up with, expect the Occupy movement to continue gaining strength. But also expect Fox to escalate their attacks into even more bizarre territory. Before long they will find a way to associate the Occupiers with an underground civilization of Molemen seeking to overthrow the surface-dwellers. Occupy Overground!
Posted by Mark NC on October 27, 2011 at 12:33 pm.
NOComments :
It seems that every day Fox Nation is widening the gap between their reporting and reality. Today they featured this article about an Iraq War veteran who was seriously injured at the Occupy Oakland demonstration:
Notice that the entire article consists of a single line that says only that Scott Olsen, a “24 year-old former Marine suffers fractured skull after struck with projectile during protest.”
What did the Fox Nationalists leave out? Well, just that the projectile that fractured Olsen’s skull was fired by Oakland Police. And after other protesters came to Olsen’s aid, the police lobbed a tear gas canister into the middle of the crowd who were trying to help him.
This is Fox Nation’s way of attempting to malign the protesters as violent by publishing misleading and incomplete stories. They are relying on their audience being dimwitted sheep in order to get away with this sort of deception. Obviously they know their audience very well.
Glenn Beck spent a good chunk of his morning radio program today lambasting the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s a pastime that he has become obsessed with, and his obsession grows every day as OWS gets stronger and garners more support from the American people. Today’s tirade centered on the news that former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke said something nice about OWS.
Duke: “I cheer the men and women on the streets condemning international banks that hold America hostage. […] Finally Americans are rising up and it feels great.”
Duke’s remarks were focused on the movement’s opposition to giant, multinational banks and the power that they wield. While the protesters are concerned that a small minority of wealthy individuals and corporations have an inordinate amount of influence over our society and government, in Duke’s acutely bigoted brain that means Jewish domination of world finance. The two parties could not be further apart. OWS wants fairness for all and democratic rule. Duke wants all Jews stripped of their status and deported – or worse.
Beck made much of Duke’s commentary and concluded that the unsolicited and unwelcome “endorsement” proved that the Occupiers were anti-Semites aligned with Duke’s repulsive agenda. What then would Beck have to say about Duke’s endorsement of the Tea Party?
Duke: “The Tea Party movement is a great sign that the people are finally waking up.”
Obviously Duke seeks to latch onto any convenient movement in order to promote himself. Self-promotion is an endeavor with which Beck should be well acquainted and it’s something he has in common with Duke.
Furthermore, if anyone has a commonality of purpose with Duke, it’s Beck. They both hate New York and all it represents. Last February Beck said that Reform Jews are “almost like…radicalized Islam.” In January he produced a program in which he listed the nine people whom he said most contributed to the 20th century being the Era of the Big Lie. Eight of them just happened to be Jewish. His attacks on George Soros as a tyrannical “Puppet Master,” (another common derogatory insult aimed at Jews), are infamous. And Beck has even perpetuated the intentionally incendiary allegation that Jews killed Jesus. He has been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for his “bigoted ignorance.” And who can forget his complaint that President Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.”
The fact that Beck didn’t know about Duke’s easily discoverable affinity for the Tea Party is typical of his lazy, fact-free practice of character assassination. But what’s worse is that the Duke video that Beck posted on his own web site, TheBlaze, featured this picture of a Tea Partier while Duke was praising those who protested Wall Street:
Did Beck even bother to watch the video he posted? Or is he just so fixated on slandering his enemies that he doesn’t care that he looks like an idiot? He certainly doesn’t have much respect for the intelligence of his audience, but at least so far as that’s concerned, he has good reason.
This afternoon Glenn Beck posted a video promo for his GBTV presentation of who is behind the Occupy Wall Street movement. The promo featured Beck disclosing that he has been asked by presidential candidates, members of Congress, the business community, and faith leaders, for confidential briefings on his unique insights into the movement. He responded by saying that he would not provide the briefings, but that he would lay the case out tonight on his television show.
That’s so sad. Glenn Beck thinks that he still has a television show. He thinks that by calling his web site GBTV it actually makes it TV. It’s a pathetic little utopia that he inhabits.
I intended to review Beck’s presentation on the Occupy movement, but after watching it I was struck by how redundant it was. The entire thing was a rehash of his sermons from the past two years of his Fox News soap opera. It was immediately apparent that Beck has a grab bag of rogues that he repurposes for any crisis. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Global Warming, or the Arab Spring, or social justice, or terrorism. The same band of clandestine plotters are responsible for every horror that invades his psyche. Here is the abridged list:
Unions
60’s Radicals
Anti-Semites
Anti-Capitalists
George Soros
The Obama Administration
The Tides Foundation
Center for American Progress
To this first-level manifest, Beck adds personalities that include Van Jones, Francis Fox Piven, Cass Sunstein, and Saul Alinsky.
And now that Beck has been cast out of the mainstream media that enriched him so abundantly, he is escalating his attack on his former keepers. He now charges that “the media knows and supports the destruction of capitalism.” Of course they do. Obviously the media has no interest in the formation of wealth or the consumerism that drives the billions of dollars spent on advertising and entertainment. It’s an irony that only Beck can see.
Beyond that twisted vengefulness, there was absolutely nothing new in his dissertation on Occupy Wall Street. And whether he is inciting fears about radicals from 50 years ago or Soros connections that never actually connect to anything, he delivers his delusional assertions with a sarcastic smirk that he inserts in place of evidence. He just needs to curl his lip and utter a mocking “Oh really?” and he has satisfied the standard of proof required by the dimwits who pay the tuition for his Internet seminary.
In some respects this is a brilliant gambit on Beck’s part. For someone so intellectually lazy, he doesn’t have to do any actual research to construct a new thesis of evil. He just picks a handful of those on his list of prefab villains, throws them up on the blackboard and waits for the chalk dust to settle. Then he sells the same leftovers to his flock in new wrappings over and over again.
There is one problem, as he discovered with his old Fox show. Even sheep get bored and wander off the ranch. That’s why his ratings were cut in half by the time he was canceled. And that’s why he must be feeling so unappreciated now as he garners less attention than than that woman…oh what’s her name? You know, Bristol Palin’s mother.
Offered without comment because…well, because it says it all:
Geraldo Rivera to Occupier: “So what’s your goal?”
Occupier: “My goal here is to occupy everywhere possible. I think what you’re seeing here, Geraldo, is a large amount of people that have been deeply and profoundly fucked by the system.”
Geraldo felt compelled to apologize for this honest and accurate analysis.
You would think that one thing Fox News would regard as exempt from their routine campaign of smears and lies is motherhood. You would be wrong.
On Fox & Friends this weekend (video below), the curvy couch potatoes played a video of Stacey Hessler, a mother of four from Florida who is participating in the Occupy Wall Street protest. Co-host Clayton Morris declared that Hessler had abandoned her children, a lie that was repeated on screen with a graphic that said “Mom Abandons Family to Join Occupy Wall Street.”
The truth is that Hessler made a principled decision with the support of her family to take action on a matter of great importance to her family and the nation. She did not abandon her family. They agreed with her desire to take a stand and assured her that they would take up the slack in her absence, along with sympathetic neighbors and friends. Fox could have simply reported that Hessler traveled to New York while her family remained in Florida, but to repeatedly use the loaded term “abandoned” is an obvious attempt to smear Hessler and deceive viewers.
But the abuse didn’t stop there. The on-screen graphic changed intermittently to say ‘From Mom To Mob.’” Morris made a repulsive, and utterly false, insinuation that Hessler was “living with a waiter” while in New York. Co-host Alisyn Camerota, in her role as an unqualified TV psychoanalyst, said that Hessler was “having a mid-life crisis,” and that she may be subconsciously protesting her husband who happens to be banker (and supports the movement). And co-host Dave Briggs was furious about a statement that Hessler made that he read on-air:
Hessler: “Military people leave their families all the time, so why should I feel bad? I’m fighting for a better world.”
Briggs complained about Hessler “equating what she’s doing with military service.” He charged that that was “more disgusting than any of the filth down there on Wall Street.” What Briggs fails to grasp is that there is more than one way to fight for your country. And there is more than one enemy. The damage to our nation caused by Wall Street is unprecedented. It is precisely the sort of damage intended by Al Qaeda when they selected the World Trade Center as a target. The difference is that Wall Street’s assault was far more harmful on a financial basis. Al Qaeda was probably ecstatic as they watched what our financial elite had done to this country.
The Fox gang went on to discuss an Associated Press poll that showed that 37% of Americans viewed the Occupy movement favorably. Instead of recognizing that more than a third of the country was supportive, a remarkable statistic considering that the movement is only a month old, they chose to focus on the 56% who had an unfavorable opinion. What they never addressed at all was that the same poll showed that the Tea Party fared much worse with only 28% viewing it favorably and 68% unfavorably, and that’s after two years. Another poll by CNN reports that 32% view the Occupiers favorably and only 29% unfavorably. Further noting that…
“…opinions are clear about Wall Street itself. Eight in ten say Wall Street bankers are greedy, 77% say they’re overpaid, and two-thirds say Wall Street bankers are dishonest.” […] “54 percent say they absolutely do not trust Wall Street bankers and brokers to do what is best of the economy.”
The American people are smarter than Fox News thinks they are. And all of the propaganda and smears has not helped Fox to undermine the will of the people. Nevertheless, Fox will continue to engage in the malicious fraud they call “news.” But their desperation is becoming ever more apparent as they sink to maligning patriotic mothers fighting for a better life for their children.
[Update:] Another new poll by the Pew Center for the People and the Press shows support for the Occupiers (39%) greater than opposition (35%). However the Tea Party is more opposed (44%) than supported (32%). Even independents are positive about the Occupiers (43% for/35% opposed), while they shun the Tea Partiers (49% opposed/30% for).
