{"id":10259,"date":"2013-07-29T23:13:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T06:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10259"},"modified":"2013-07-30T10:01:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T17:01:35","slug":"fox-news-inadvertantly-proves-phoniness-of-phony-scandals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10259","title":{"rendered":"Fox News Inadvertently Proves Phoniness Of Phony Scandals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When President Obama correctly noted that Republicans have spent an inordinate amount of time obsessing over so-called <em>&#8220;scandals,&#8221;<\/em> rather than addressing the real issues that matter most to Americans, it touched off a spate of pundits spending an inordinate amount of time obsessing over Obama&#8217;s remarks, rather than addressing real news.<\/p>\n<p>Fox News, of course, created a bunch of fancy new graphics with scary fonts alerting their perpetually frightened viewers that the President had called a bunch of phony scandals phony. Which makes it all the more delicious that a Fox News contributor pulled the veil aside this morning and exposed the fallacy at the center of one of the alleged scandals.<\/p>\n<p>Radio loudmouth Lars Larson squared off with Democratic strategist Mark Hannah over the question of whether the IRS targeting of Tea Partiers was a legitimate scandal. The answer is obvious in that the GOP, despite a concerted witch hunt, has never found the least bit of evidence that the White House was connected to any of it.<\/p>\n<p>The real scandal in all of this is that most of the groups seeking tax-exempt status, whether from the left or the right, should never have received it. They are overtly political operations disguising their activities as educational or charitable. They deserve to be scrutinized and rejected. They are the detritus of the Citizens United decision that effectively legalized special interest and corporate influence peddling. But this larger question always seemed to get lost in the skirmish over trivialities. Until today.<\/p>\n<p>Near the end of what was otherwise a typical cable news spitting match, Larson let his guard down and expectorated some truth:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XHVUSDvPk5E?start=380&#038;end=413\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Did you catch that? Larson admitted that the activities of the Tea Partiers are political. And as Hannah astutely noted, that is not permitted under the law that governs tax exempt organizations. Here is the transcript:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Larson:<\/strong> The fact is that those groups were delayed. The law says that they are supposed to get an answer within 180 days. Some of them were delayed up to 27 months. And they described in detail to congress what those delays do in an election year to <strong>the ability of political groups to engage in politics<\/strong>, which is protected by the Constitution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah:<\/strong> You mean social welfare organizations, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larson:<\/strong> No. I&#8217;m telling you that when they go out to educate people about the issues.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah:<\/strong> They&#8217;re not allowed to be political.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To be clear, this was not a gaffe. This was an accidental articulation of the truth. Larson even brushed back Hannah&#8217;s polite (and somewhat snarky) correction before stumbling toward a step-back. The IRS is entirely justified in denying preferential tax treatment to these sort of groups, and they should be even more aggressive in doing so. And now we have a conservative on Fox News making the need for enforcement and reform abundantly clear.<\/p>\n<p>This is precisely why Citizens United is so dangerous. It allows Super PACs to game the system, collect unlimited donations from conflicted parties, and keep their identities secret. And while pretending to be non-partisan, social welfare organizations, they brazenly engage in political activities. Everyone in politics knows it and, on occasion, when they aren&#8217;t carefully watching their words, it slips out.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/News-Corpse\/117899091558228?v=wall\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Like me on Facebook\">Be Sure To \u201cLIKE\u201d News Corpse On Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When President Obama correctly noted that Republicans have spent an inordinate amount of time obsessing over so-called &#8220;scandals,&#8221; rather than addressing the real issues that matter most to Americans, it touched off a spate of pundits spending an inordinate amount of time obsessing over Obama&#8217;s remarks, rather than addressing real news. Fox News, of course, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"#FoxNews Inadvertantly Proves Phoniness Of Phony Scandals\r\n#CitizensUnited #TeaParty","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[706,33],"class_list":["post-10259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-citizens-united","tag-fox-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-2Ft","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10238,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10238","url_meta":{"origin":10259,"position":0},"title":"Phony Scandals? Sarah Palin Brings Her &#8220;Redneck Whiteboard&#8221; To Fox News","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/27\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"As they are wont to do, Fox News is again ginning up outrage over a sentence fragment uttered by President Obama. And as usual, Fox not only misrepresents what the President said, they completely fail to grasp the meaning of his larger point. The fragment in question was... \"With this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10271,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10271","url_meta":{"origin":10259,"position":1},"title":"The &#8220;Phony Scandal&#8221; Division At Fox News Has Lost Its Mind","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/30\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Deep in the basement of Fox News headquarters in New York, there is windowless suite of offices staffed with social misfits who shun sunlight and reason. They have been trained by specialists in disinformation and propaganda to manipulate stories and statements in a manner that reflects badly on President Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11257,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=11257","url_meta":{"origin":10259,"position":2},"title":"Christie&#8217;s Bridge-Gate Scandal Boosts Rachel Maddow To Ratings Victory Over Fox News","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/13\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The dominance of Fox News in the Nielsen ratings for cable networks has not been seriously challenged for most of the past several years. There have been periods that looked promising for the competition, particularly the months between the Democratic National Convention and the presidential election in 2012. During that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/maddow-3x1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9893,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9893","url_meta":{"origin":10259,"position":3},"title":"Fox Nation vs. Reality: Impeach Obama Rally Causes 10 Mile Yawn","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/12\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The folks at Fox Nation must be getting pretty desperate for any slime to fling Obama's way. Clearly the parade of phony scandals has failed to convince the President to resign and join a Muslim monastery, so they are grasping for ever shorter straws in an effort to break Obama's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37018,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=37018","url_meta":{"origin":10259,"position":4},"title":"Fox News Blames Obama (?) for Trump&#8217;s Wife-Beating Aide &#8211; And Joy Reid Aint Havin&#8217; It","author":"Mark NC","date":"2\/11\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"There's nothing Fox News likes better than to invent phony scandals about Democrats, particularly Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But second on their list of not-so-secret pleasures is blaming Donald Trump's scandals on those same innocent Democrats. There doesn't even need to be any plausible relationship between Fox's victims and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Donald Trump","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-sexual-predator-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-sexual-predator-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/trump-sexual-predator-sm.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1483,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1483","url_meta":{"origin":10259,"position":5},"title":"Fox Nation Finger Bangs Obama","author":"Mark NC","date":"12\/7\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Alas, technology has not yet developed a measuring device strong enough to gauge the stupidity of the Fox Nation, its partners, and the community it hosts. Featured today on Fox Nation is a story asking whether President Obama gave the finger to a guest in the audience. This controversy was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10259"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10263,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259\/revisions\/10263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}