Roy Moore

Roy Moore’s Alabama Trainwreck Was a Disaster for Fox News and a Big Win for MSNBC

Posted by on December 14, 2017 at 9:25 am. 1 Comments :

Alabama’s senate race became a national event due the the unique circumstances that marked the election. Roy Moore’s campaign was emblematic of a new movement to hold sexual predators accountable. And his anachronistic racial and religious rigor was reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition. Donald Trump also figured into the southern soap opera. Despite his sudden amnesia with regard to Moore, the outcome would be a referendum on the President whether Fox News liked it or not. And they really didn’t like it.

Fox News Sad

You’ll never guess who else didn’t like it. Fox News viewers voted with their remotes Tuesday. As the election returns came in, the ratings for Fox News fell off a cliff. And by the time the race was called for Doug Jones they had lost more than half their audience. In the 9:00 hour Fox’s coverage of the race was pretty strong with about 3.8 million people watching (831K in the 25-54 demo). For much of that time Moore was still leading. Rachel Maddow wasn’t far behind with 3.1 million viewers (760K in the demo).

However, the race was called (first by Fox News, oddly enough) at about 10:30. And that saw a drop off for Fox to about 3.5 million (889K demo). But, Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC took off scoring 3.745 million (1.0M demo). And CNN also spiked with 3.5 million (1.5M demo). And by the 11:00 hour, when it was clear that Jones was victorious, Fox News was pitifully defeated. They ended primetime with just 1.8 million viewers (470K demo). That’s less than half the total audience they had before the returns were in That compared to MSNBC’s 3.7 million (947 demo), about twice Fox’s numbers, and CNN’s 3.2 million (1.4M demo).

Clearly Fox News viewers were too upset to continue watching television. Seeing the pedophile they supported lose to an honorable Democrat was just too painful. Never mind that by the next morning most of them were insisting that Moore was never a viable candidate, they never really liked him, and that they are better off without him in the senate making the GOP look bad. That’s pretty much the view taken by Fox News and, not coincidentally, many Republicans and Donald Trump. Not to worry. They still have sexual predator and Russian collaborator (allegedly) Trump and his devoted Deplorables to make them look bad.

On the other hand, Doug Jones’ victory inspired viewers to tune into MSNBC and CNN en masse at the conclusion of the race. This isn’t because the Democrat won. Americans tuned in to the networks where they thought they would get truthful reporting of the results, without the desperate spin of losers trying to make excuses. That’s why the numbers didn’t increase for Fox News even when there was actual news to report. And the Fox cultists who had tuned in early weren’t going to subject themselves to what they considered bad news. A few more nights like this and Fox News will have to cease broadcasting.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Watch Fox News Freak Out Over Doug Jones Victory, Pretend They Never Wanted Roy Moore Anyway

Posted by on December 13, 2017 at 10:42 am. 7 Comments :

The good people of Alabama came through on Tuesday and elected the decent senate candidate (Doug Jones) rather than the racist, crackpot, pedophile (Roy Moore). That doesn’t absolve the a-holes in Alabama who voted for Moore, but it’s an encouraging sign that positive changes are coming. The only way to characterize this outcome is as a monumental transformation for a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator for a quarter of century.

Fox News

But leave it to Fox News to find other ways to characterize such an obviously anti-Trump, anti-Republican event. And it only took a matter of seconds for Fox to try to recast the Jones win as something positive for the GOP. Anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum were plainly unhappy with the call. Less than a minute after announcing that Jones would win the senate seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Fox went into hyper-spin mode saying this (video below):

MacCallum: “You know there was a lot of discussion about whether a Roy Moore win would be a win, really, for the GOP. And there’s some questions tonight about whether or not there’s some silver lining, perhaps, for Republicans tonight. A victory by Moore, who was embroiled in a sex scandal, might have made it more difficult for the GOP to have gained control of the Senate in next year’s midterm elections.”

There’s so much to unpack here. Let’s start with the eagerness of Fox News to abandon Moore, the candidate they have been pimping for months. They are pretending that his loss is actually what they wanted all along. If they think this will be taken this seriously, it is a bitter insult to their dimwitted viewers. However, they know their viewers best, and they are probably right. The Fox audience would need a “silver lining” or a security blanket and a binky after what happened last night.

What’s more, by virtually conceding that Moore’s “sex scandal” would have been a major obstacle to the GOP’s electoral prospects next year, they are validating the very same case against Donald Trump. Actually, not quite the same. Trump has been accused by more women of more repulsive acts of harassment and abuse. If Fox News thinks that Moore’s loss will make those crimes go away they are deeply delusional. They will surely work hard to bury Trump’s reprehensible behavior, but in the comment above they have recognized that it cannot, and will not, be dismissed.

Finally, MacCallum’s phrasing is curious. The GOP does not have to “gain control” of the Senate next year. They currently have control. What she might be worried about is the growing possibility of Democrats assuming control of both houses of Congress. And once again, whatever difficulty she thinks the GOP would have had with Moore in the Senate isn’t going to be resolved as long Trump is in the White House.

Speaking of Trump, he also made an effort to distance himself from Moore after the loss. He tweeted that:

There is no record of Trump ever saying that Moore would “not be able to win.” What record there is of Trump’s endorsement was deleted from his Twitter feed (here and here and here). He also deleted a tweet congratulating Moore and cheering him on to victory. Ever since Moore won the GOP primary, Trump has been behind him. He even recorded a robo-call and staged a rally just across the Alabama border in Florida to whip up support. But following Moore’s loss, Trump has unceremoniously kicked him to the curb and proclaimed the he was right all along (as he always is in his sociopathic, narcissistic imagination).

These weren’t the only kicks Moore suffered. Other Fox News hosts were equally as dismissive. Ainsley Earhardt on Trump’s favorite show, Fox and Friends, said that “This was not a referendum on Trump. I feel like it was a referendum on Harvey Weinstein.” Her fellow “Curvy Couch” potato, Todd Piro, added that he didn’t want to be a “Pollyanna,” noting that the Republicans still have a one seat majority in the senate. Isn’t that a little too obvious an expression of Republican bias, even for Fox News? And Laura Ingraham giddily opined that “Jones is a lame duck from day one. He has zero chance of winning in 2020. This state loves Trump. This is not an anti-Trump result.”

For the record, Trump’s approval rating in Alabama, according to exit polls, was a 48-48 percent split, with “strongly approve” at 32 percent and “strongly disapprove” at 41 percent. Those are catastrophic numbers for Trump and Republicans in Alabama. And Trump’s approval nationwide is even worse. But don’t expect Fox News to acknowledge that. They are on a mission to implant happy-talk in the minds of their glassy-eyed viewers who need some cheering up. That, however, won’t last long. Fox has already segued to renewed outrage over Hillary Clinton’s emails and denigrating special counsel Robert Mueller as treasonous abomination of justice. Just another day of shrill propaganda for Fox News.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News = The Astrology of Journalism: Cries ‘Fake News’ While Burying Their Own Fakery

Posted by on December 10, 2017 at 12:15 pm. 2 Comments :

On Sunday morning Fox News has a program that ostensibly covers what’s happened in the media during the prior week. MediaBuzz is hosted by Howard Kurtz, a reliably right-wing shill who spins almost every story in favor of Donald Trump and conservative Republicans. The latest episode had plenty of red meat to chew on, but Kurtz predictably managed to shift the focus to the so-called “liberal” news outlets while letting his own network off the hook.

Fox News Howard Kurtz

The program began by dedicating the whole A-block to Trump flunkies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. They spent several minutes bashing Democrats with provably dishonest statements. Kurtz never once challenged them or questioned the phony basis for their remarks. And when he eventually wrapped up this Trump Lovefest, Kurtz moved on to devote much of the rest of the program to comparatively minor media mix-ups.

In the first instance Kurtz pressed his panel to discuss a CNN story that misstated the date of an email (September 14 rather than 4). The main point of the story was to reveal a communication with the Trump campaign about Wikileaks and Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails. That was little changed by the differences in the date. It’s still significant that Trump and his associates were alerted to the Wikileaks data almost immediately after it was posted. Nevertheless, several minutes were spent discussing the story that CNN had quickly corrected.

Kurtz also featured a tweet of a photo that showed low attendance at Trump’s Pensacola rally for Roy Moore. Dave Weigel, a Washington Post reporter retweeted the photo on his personal account, not as a WaPo item. He later apologized saying that the photo was taken before Trump’s arrival (although other photos seem to confirm that the venue was not “filled to the rafters”. as Trump said). Trump also addressed this tweet and, in a tweet of his own that breaches the constitutional protections of a free press, he called for Weigel to be fired.

A date mix-up and a reference to Trump’s crowd size are typical of the trivia that Fox News seems to be perpetually obsessed with. They blow up stories like these into major catastrophes because they haven’t got any legitimate criticisms to report. And they conclude from these trite examples that the media is hopelessly biased and infested with fakery. Trump himself lied about these mishaps being “vicious and purposeful,” when there is no basis whatsoever for that hyperbolic and delusional reaction.

What makes the focus of Kurtz’s program all the more troubling is that Fox News also had a problem this week with a report that they had to correct. Of course, they have lots of problems every week that they never bother to correct. But this story resulted in Fox News editing their story and headline because it was too dishonest even for them.

The story was about Roy Moore, the GOP senate candidate in Alabama who has been accused of sexual assault on a minor (among other atrocities). Fox’s headline falsely asserted that “Roy Moore accuser admits she forged part of yearbook inscription attributed to Alabama Senate candidate.” There was just one little problem with that. The accuser, Beverly Young Nelson, never admitted any such thing. All she did was reveal that she made a notation, next to Moore’s yearbook message and signature, to recall the date and location it was signed. Nothing was forged, and there was no attempt to deceive anyone into thinking the notation was Moore’s handwriting.

Fox News changed the headline (although not the URL) to read “Roy Moore accuser admits she wrote part of yearbook inscription attributed to Alabama Senate candidate.” But that’s also untrue. She did not write Moore’s inscription and she did not attribute the notation to Moore. Fox’s correction fell beneath ethical standards expected of professional journalists. And the magnitude of the mistake was far more serious than those of CNN and the Weigel. In fact, Fox News literally accused Ms. Nelson of the crime of forgery, something she could sue them for.

That seems like it would be an excellent story for a program that reports on the media to cover. But Kurtz gave the Fox News story a whopping three seconds. He mentioned it in passing as he immediately segued back to other alleged media faux pas. He didn’t criticize Fox for the error or allow his panel to discuss it. He quite obviously and deliberately buried the story. And that’s pretty much his mandate for the program he hosts. It’s a regularly scheduled propaganda machine to make all other media look bad, while sweeping Fox’s far more blatant problems under the rug.

Most intelligent media consumers are aware that mistakes happen. Reporters are human. And the presence of errors does not translate into “fake news.” To the contrary, when a mistake is made an ethical news operation will acknowledge and correct it. That’s actually evidence of their honesty and dedication to the truth. Conservative David Frum put it perfectly Sunday morning on CNN’s Reliable sources when he said:

“These mistakes are precisely why people should trust the media. Astronomers make mistakes all the time because science is the process of the discovery of truth. Astrologers never make mistakes, or at least they never own up to them. Because what they are offering is a closed system of ideology and propaganda.”

And that could not be a better description of the difference between Fox News and responsible journalism. Fox is the astrology of news. They report what they believe their audience wants to hear. And it doesn’t matter if they have to make it up or bend it to fit a preconceived viewpoint. It’s purpose is not to inform, but to make the audience feel better about themselves and to affirm what they already believe (or hope) is true. And the way Fox News reads the stars somehow always divines good news for Trumpians and bad news for Democrats and liberals. Funny how that happens, isn’t it?

And this just in: Leland Vittert of Fox News was having a discussion this morning about fake news when he interjected that Dave Weigel had been fired from the Washington Post. That is fake news.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

James O’Keefe Succeeds in Stinging Himself in Pathetic Attempt to Smear the Washington Post

Posted by on November 27, 2017 at 5:36 pm. 3 Comments :

Lying schmuckraker James O’Keefe continues on a downward spiral of lameness. With every new video from his ludicrously named Project Veritas, he manages to fail worse than the one before. His latest epic backfire involves an effort to prop up the pedophile senate candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore, while simultaneously smearing the Washington Post. The results are almost too painful to watch.

James O'Keefe

The Washington Post documented the whole affair from their first encounter with O’Keefe’s stooge, Jaime Phillips. She contacted the Post to report that she was an underage lover of Moore who got pregnant and had an abortion at his urging. The Post was suspicious from the start and declined to publish her story after finding inconsistencies. Their account noted that:

“In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15. During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.”

This is typical of O’Keefe’s operation. They try to get their subjects to say something that can later be deceitfully edited to put them in a bad light. It hardly matters to O’Keefe if anything untoward was actually said so long as he can get enough material to shred in the editing room. But in this case he never got his fraudulent scheme off the ground:

“The Post did not publish an article based on her unsubstantiated account. When Post reporters confronted her with inconsistencies in her story and an Internet posting that raised doubts about her motivations, she insisted that she was not working with any organization that targets journalists. But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an organization that targets the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups.”

O’Keefe’s stooge actually led the Post reporters straight back to his lair where he was busted. While there they tried to interview him but he ran away without answering any questions. Although he did try to claim that the Post was using his methods of getting an interview. That, of course, is laughable since they identified themselves immediately and asked him straight forward questions. O’Keefe’s methods typically involve lying and misrepresenting himself and his purpose.

For those unfamiliar with James O’Keefe, he is an ultra-right wing propagandist who produces deliberately falsified videos. He was convicted of improperly trespassing in a senator’s office where he allegedly hoped to tamper with the phone lines. He was ordered to pay $100,000 to a former attorney for ACORN after his dishonest portrayal of the organization. One of his “stings” involved setting up a “love boat” where he tried (and failed) to seduce a CNN reporter. His work was dubbed “little more than a canard and political disinformation,” by prosecutors in Texas (I repeat, Texas!). And his despicable lack of character has even caused his friends and colleagues to turn on him.

What’s worse is that in this skeezy affair O’Keefe paid a deluded woman to pretend to be a victim of a pedophile in order to discredit the painful confessions of actual victims. He wasn’t just trying to smear the Post. He was smearing Moore’s accusers as well. Consequently, his lame attempt to prove that WaPo is a purveyor of fake news actually affirmed that it is a responsible journalistic enterprise that vets its stories thoroughly. O’Keefe actually made the allegations against Moore even more credible.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The Post’s adherence to the tenets of professional journalism has proven again what a slimy weasel O’Keefe is. They were not fooled by his pitiful tactics. In fact, they got much of it on video. Mediate has several clips that show the Post’s interview of O’Keefe’s stooge, the attempt to interview O’Keefe, and a sad clip of O’Keefe pretending he still has some damning footage of something. You really have to wonder when this slimeball will tire of falling on his face.

POLL: More Republicans Are Totally Cool With Candidates Who Are Sexual Predators

Posted by on November 22, 2017 at 2:05 pm. 1 Comments :

The sudden rash of revelations about men who harass or abuse women is a positive step forward for equality and decency. It doesn’t matter which side of the political aisle the perpetrator is on. Anyone who uses their position or power to commit sexual assaults needs to be called out and suffer appropriate consequences.

Donald Trump

At least that’s the view of Democrats in a new poll by Quinnipiac. When asked whether they would still consider voting for a candidate who has been accused of sexual harassment by multiple women, a plurality of Republican respondents (43%) said they would. In other words, they don’t think that it’s a disqualifying factor for a public servant to have committed sexual assaults.

The same survey broke out results for Democrats who have a completely different perspective. Eighty-one percent said that they would not consider voting for a candidate with such a dirty background. So this should put to rest the fallacy that there is no difference between the political parties. The difference, at least so far as this question is concerned, is that one side isn’t bothered by perverts, and the other side is. Which side are you on?

Donald Trump took sides this week when he told reporters that he still backs the pedophile candidate for senate in Alabama, Roy Moore. Like many of his fellow Republicans, Trump cited as a reason for supporting Moore his concern about passing a tax bill that gives corporations and the wealthy a huge break. So having a pervert in the senate is acceptable if he’s a right-wing pervert who will advance the interests of the one percent. Trump’s objection to Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, is that he’s a liberal. Which in the view of the President is worse than being a child molester.

Hopefully most Americans don’t share that demented opinion. Particularly those in Alabama who will be voting in three weeks. But we already know that we can’t count on Fox News to exhibit any sense of decency. The network that has ingrained sexual abuse into their corporate culture is predictably behind Moore and praises Trump’s endorsement.

The problem for Trump is that he can’t make a principled condemnation of Moore without it leaking into his own history of sexually predatory behavior. There are at least sixteen women who have made credible accusations against him. Yet even after all of the sleazeballs who have been taken down in recent weeks, Trump is still skating away untouched. If anyone should be driven from office it’s Trump. And if his collusion with Russia, financial corruption, undermining the free press, or being a pathological liar and malignant narcissist aren’t sufficient reasons, then his sexual depravity and criminality should be.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

SRSLY? Breaking on Fox News: ‘Hillary Clinton is Toast’

Posted by on November 20, 2017 at 2:26 pm. 4 Comments :

For the past couple of years Fox News has refocused their standard Republican propaganda machine to more narrowly serve as Donald Trump’s personal PR and defense team. They have worked furiously to spin his innumerable gaffes and blunders as examples of some perverse brilliance. While at the same manufacturing distractions and phony news items intended to draw attention away from Trump’s idiocy, incompetence, and failure.

Hillary Clinton

One of the most frequently used tactics by Fox News is to toss out spurious allegations against Trump’s critics and political foes. At the top of the list for that ploy is, of course, Hillary Clinton. Trump can’t seem to suppress his fetish for the woman who got three million more votes than he did. And Fox News is just as obsessed by her refusal to crawl into a cave for her remaining days.

The latest manifestation of Fox’s fixation on Clinton came in the form of an opinion by contributor Liz Peek. Her story was headlined “Hillary is Toast: Scandals Finally Catch Up with Clintons.” Coming more than a year after the presidential election, it is quite a scoop for Fox News to herald the end of Clinton’s political career. They must be proud to have broken this news after only – everybody else on Planet Earth. And the profound insights in the story begin with this keen observation:

“Hillary Clinton is done, finished, kaput. Dogged by scandals old and new, out of step politically, her excess baggage has morphed into an entire baggage train, dragging her towards political oblivion.”

You have to wonder why both Trump and Fox News relentlessly harp on the question of Clinton’s relevance if they are truly convinced that she has none. The article, however, answers that question by noting that “While it is refreshing to consider the landscape unadorned by Clintons, Republicans will miss her.” And that’s precisely why Fox won’t stop blabbering about her whenever they need to shift attention away from another patented Trump Fuckup. In this case it has something to do with the President’s cowardly silence on the GOP’s pedophile candidate for the senate in Alabama, Roy Moore. Unable to conjure up a suitable response, they go deploy the Clinton deflection:

“As charges of sexual aggression swirl around prominent figures on the left and right, Bill Clinton’s gross and possibly criminal behavior is getting a second look. […] It is high time Bill Clinton’s misdeeds and Hillary’s defense of them received bipartisan condemnation.”

Getting a second look? You mean the first time around, when it was investigated for months and ended in an impeachment, wasn’t sufficient? And it’s fair to say that the condemnation was totally bipartisan when even Al Gore declined to embrace Clinton during his campaign to succeed him. These are just lame and baseless arguments intended to divert the American people from the harsh realities of Trump’s own sexual perversions and crimes. And if Republicans think that Trump is being treated unfairly because Bill Clinton got away with his misconduct, then let’s be sure Trump receives only the punishment that Clinton did and no more. That would, of course, be impeachment.

Trump Clinton

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The rest of the article wound aimlessly between debunked GOP myths like the Uranium One deal and whining that Hillary has the audacity to embark on a book tour. It’s funny, you never hear any similar complaints when John McCain, Bernie Sanders, Mitt Romney, or any other defeated male candidate writes and promotes a post-campaign book. The truth is that Fox News and Trump and the rest of the Republican Party are addicted to the Clintons and are largely responsible for their continued prominence in the press. In fact, they may just be what Hillary is most thankful for during this Thanksgiving holiday.

Trump-Fluffing Fox News Host Actually Says ‘There Are No Allegations Against the President’

Posted by on November 18, 2017 at 11:27 am. 2 Comments :

The Age of Alternative Facts is in full swing. Donald Trump’s administration has ushered in era that unabashedly traffics in verifiably false information and deliberate deceit. They are literally proud of their ability to disseminate lies and they do so even after the lie has been revealed.

Maria Bartiromo Fox

However, they could not do it alone. Fortunately for Trump et al, they have an alleged “news” network that is just as brazen in its embrace of falsehoods as Trump. Fox News recently fortified its already ultra-biased lineup with known Friends of Don who are happy to distort reality on his behalf. The network appears to be digging in as a response to the clouds of doom hovering over the White House in the shape of Russia.

Fox also has another propaganda spewing channel that serves the interests of the President. The Fox Business Network pretends to be a financial news outlet, but its programs are just as politically slanted as anything you’d see on the Fox News mothership. A crystal clear example of that came on Friday during a segment on Mornings with Maria featuring the “Money Honey” (her own promotional tag that she sought to trademark), Maria Bartiromo (video below). In this exchange with former Deputy Secretary of Labor, Christopher Lu, Bartiromo gives Trump absolution for his past sexual crimes and misdemeanors:

Lu: As your own network has reported there are now, I think, eight or nine women who have made allegations against Roy Moore. There is probably an equal number who have made allegations against the President. […]
Bartiromo: Just to be clear, there are no allegations against the President.
Lu: There are allegations against Donald Trump from an earlier time.
Bartiromo: He said during the campaign that wasn’t true. In fact, didn’t he say also that, you know, all of this will come to light and there will be a lawsuit? I mean… we’re talking about a situation where we have a picture with the guy’s hands on her breasts.

No allegations against the President? Has she been in a coma? There are at least sixteen women who have come forward with credible allegations of Trump’s sexual harassment and/or abuse. See this video that features many of them describing his misconduct in their own words. Even Trump’s press secretary acknowledged the allegations. Although she bizarrely claimed that they should not be investigated because he denied them. That’s a peculiar legal position that implies that once a suspect denies the charges, the matter should be dropped.

Bartiromo seems to be taking the same position with her remarks about Trump’s denials. And what point she is trying to make with her reference to Trump’s threatened lawsuits is a complete mystery. It certainly doesn’t prove innocence. Especially since Trump chickened out and never followed through on the threat. Also notable is Bartiromo’s assertion that there is a picture showing Sen. Al Franken’s hands on a woman’s breasts. However, the picture clearly shows that he is not touching her, but pretending to and mugging for the camera.

Bartiromo then literally stutters through an attempted justification of her ludicrous denial of documented events. She ends up awkwardly complaining that it’s an apples to oranges comparison. And she’s right. There is a single accuser against Franken, who has been a frequent guest on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, and whose charges mainly describe bad attempts at humor. While there are at least sixteen accusers against Trump who all describe behavior that is abusive and probably illegal. Apples and oranges.

Bartiromo was once considered a credible financial journalist. But since her move from CNBC to the Fox family she has transformed into just another right-wing shill. Her recent interview of Trump was widely ridiculed as an embarrassing exercise in sucking up. And now she has taken her hackery to the next level with comments that totally contradict reality.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

And What About Trump, the Sexual-Predator-in-Chief: This Must-See Video Needs to Go Viral

Posted by on November 16, 2017 at 12:02 pm. 1 Comments :

For several weeks the issue of harassment and abuse of women has taken center stage. It is something that is long overdue. Women have had to suffer in silence and fear as more powerful associates took advantage of them. It’s a big step forward that they are being paid attention to now and that there are consequences for the perpetrators. Well, some of them.

Donald Trump

Harvey Weinstein has lost his job and his company. Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K. are now pariahs in their industry. GOP senate candidate Roy Moore, is still hanging on, but is being abandoned by more of his own supporters everyday. However, there is a notable omission among the ranks of sleazeballs who have grossly abused women who trusted them. Donald Trump appears to be getting away with his despicable and criminal behavior.

Trump’s abusive acts have been well known for some time. He even admitted to criminal sexual assault in the video from Access Hollywood. But he was elected president anyway by so-called “family values” voters who dismissed his contemptible conduct in favor of rank party politics. And he has the full support of Fox News, a network whose corporate culture virtually encourages sexual harassment. Now Brave New Films has produced a video that compiles sixteen of Trump’s accusers describing the acts committed against them. It’s a moving presentation that needs to be seen by as many people as possible:

Brave New Films has a website that hosts this video and makes the point that no one should be excused for such heinous behavior. It occurs by aberrant men in every walk of life, every industry, and every political party. And justice must be served on an equal basis without favoritism. As is pointed out on the website: “[O]ur current president isn’t immune to being held accountable.” That ought to mean that if other perpetrators lose their status and position, so too should Donald Trump.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Allowing Trump to remain in the White House sends a terrible message to all Americans, particularly women and girls. If Trump isn’t impeached for obstruction of justice, collusion with Russia, financial corruption, undermining the free press, or being a pathological liar and malignant narcissist, then his sexual depravity and criminality should be more than reason enough.

Fox News Flack Donald Trump Tries to Save Sean Hannity’s Fast Sinking Program

Posted by on November 15, 2017 at 12:07 pm. 2 Comments :

Following an embarrassing “Make America Gag Again” tour of Asia, Donald Trump slinked back into the White House and immediately took up his Twitter machine to regale in his own wonderfulness. Having achieved nothing of significance, while kowtowing to foreign adversaries, the President needed to sing his own praises because no one else with any credibility was going to do it.

Trump Hannity

However, he has not neglected his primary role in public service since pretending to engage in it. As a candidate and an alleged president, Trump has spent more time promoting his PR department (aka Fox News) than any other “official” duty. Fox News has benefited greatly from this arrangement, scoring millions of dollars worth of free advertising. For example, for just one program, Fox and Friends, Trump has tweeted or retweeted 142 times since the beginning of his campaign. And the “Curvy Couch” potatoes were among his first tweets upon returning to the U.S. Note that most of Trump’s Twitter activity is to promote something he recently saw on Fox. This one is promoting something that has yet to air. Apparently they are sharing their programming schedule with him in advance of broadcast:

Trump also wanted his Twitter followers to know how much he suffered while travelling the world. The itinerary that he pitifully regarded as “almost physically impossible” had the added torture of having to watch something other than relentlessly fawning Fox News coverage (i.e. real news):

What’s more, Trump gave a bigly shout out to his most devoted cheerleader on Fox, Sean Hannity. He retweeted this celebration of Hannity’s ratings:

This is the clearest sign that Hannity is big trouble. He has been losing advertisers at a rapid clip since coming out in support of the pedophile Republican running for the senate in Alabama, Roy Moore. The seventeen percent ad revenue slump at Fox News is evidence of the disastrous impact Hannity is having on the network. Consequently, Trump was called in to help plug the leak. But there are some serious problems with the help he’s providing.

First of all, the positive ratings tweet that Trump retweeted is two weeks old. It doesn’t represent the whole picture of Hannity’s ratings performance. He has been frequently beaten by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. The most recent ratings for this past Monday show Maddow trouncing Hannity. No wonder Trump didn’t post something more timely.

Furthermore, the Twitter user Trump retweeted identifies himself as a media analyst, but his account was created less than three months ago and has only sixty-nine tweets. He follows only two Twitter accounts: Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow. He’s also a writer for the ultra-rightist web rag, American Thinker. And somehow Trump found a rotting two week old tweet from this nobody and saw fit to relay it to his glassy-eyed disciples.

Hannity must be hanging by a thread. When Fox News fired Bill O’Reilly it wasn’t because of the tens of millions of dollars that they had to pay out to multiple women who O’Reilly harassed and/or abused. Fox was cool with that. It was because his advertisers had ditched the program and it was no longer financially viable. That’s what Hannity is facing now. That’s why Trump is contributing, in his lame way, to Hannity’s rescue. Even Hannity recognizes that he’s sinking fast. Tuesday night he did a double back flip to throw Roy Moore under the bus:

Trump’s post-Asia tweetstorm was typical self-promotion and lies. It conveyed nothing of value to the American people. As usual he is just consumed with himself and fails to do any of the hard work of governing. He complains about being forced (by whom?) to watch CNN and spews endless praises for his pals at Fox. Yet he insists that he doesn’t have time to watch TV (which he also did five months ago). And in all of that Tweeting he left out any updates to this tweet from two days ago:

He must have forgotten what his “major statement” was. Maybe he’s picked up whatever virus caused Jeff Sessions to forget so much of his recent past with Russians. Or Maybe Trump’s aging and distorted memory is just incapable of functioning anymore.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Does Fox News Defense of a Pedophile Surprise You? It Shouldn’t, and Here’s Why

Posted by on November 13, 2017 at 2:50 pm. 5 Comments :

Under ordinary circumstance, the senate campaign in Alabama would never have been elevated into a national news story. But almost everything that has happened in the era of Donald Trump has been strikingly abnormal. That makes Alabama’s election to replace Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, an unlikely media phenomenon.

Donald Trump

Republican candidate Roy Moore is engulfed in a sex scandal involving multiple women, including a girl just fourteen years old. He is denying all the charges, but his denials don’t come close to assuaging the graphic claims of his accusers. A generation ago this campaign would have been shut down in a hot minute. But what Moore has going for him is a well-heeled propaganda machine that masquerades as a news network: Fox News.

On first blush, it may seem beyond the pale that even a devoted practitioner of media bias would hesitate to defend a sexual predator and pedophile. However, we are talking about Fox News here. They have a history with sexual deviants who were shielded, and even promoted, within their own dysfunctional corporate family. With that record of toxic behavior, it’s no wonder that Fox News can so fiercely support someone like Moore. Take a look at who they built their reputation supporting:

  • CEO Roger Ailes
  • Star host Bill O’Reilly
  • President Bill Shine
  • Host Eric Bolling
  • Fox Business host Charles Payne
  • Fox Sports President Jamie Horowitz
  • Vice-President of Fox News Latino, Francisco Cortes

All of these people were powerful and prominent Fox News big shots who were touched by scandals involving sexual harassment and/or abuse. Most of them were terminated in disgrace, although even then some were rewarded by Fox with rich severance packages. And in addition to the loss of those sleazeballs, Fox News also said farewell to some of the female talent who resigned after being victimized. They include Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Laurie Dhue, Andrea Tantaros, Rudi Bakhtiar, and Julie Roginsky.

And let’s not forget the most notorious Fox News pervert: Donald Trump. The President was himself a Fox News attraction before joining with Vladimir Putin to steal an election. Trump was featured in a regular segment of Fox and Friends called “Mondays with Trump.” Now he is the White House affiliate of the Fox News propaganda factory. And his past is fraught with credible allegations of sexual abuse that is equal to, or worse than, any of that committed by the offenders above. He should be driven from office on those grounds alone, never mind the evidence of treason. Yet he’s getting a free pass from Fox News as well as all the other news organizations.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

As for Fox, with its abundant experience it is the perfect place to go for reputation rehabilitation if you’re caught soliciting minor girls. And shills like Sean Hannity have already had plenty of practice in this nauseating field of public relations. So it’s no surprise that Moore has burrowed into the protective arms of his Fox News protectors. And there he will reside until his sleazy past becomes impossible to escape. But even then Fox will be be frantically proclaiming his innocence and victimhood while blaming it all on Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. It’s what they do.