Month: April 2012

Rachel Maddow Seeks Dismissal Of Lawsuit By Homophobic Rocker/Preacher

Posted by on April 20, 2012 at 2:12 pm. 10 Comments :

In a court action this week, attorneys for MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked a federal judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by Bradlee Dean, a former Christian rocker turned anti-gay preacher, on the grounds that it was a deliberate attempt to censor and/or intimidate Maddow by subjecting her to the burdens of defending against a meritless claim. The legal vehicle for this petition is known as SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation).

In Dean’s complaint he alleged that Maddow had defamed him when she broadcast a segment on his commentary on Islam and homosexuality. It’s not surprising that he should consider his own words to be tantamount to defamation. Here is the whole statement by Dean with the parts Maddow quoted in bold:

“Muslims are calling for the execution for homosexuals in America, this was just released yesterday and it shows you that they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible, the Judeo Christian God. They seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do. Because these people are livid about enforcing their laws, they know homosexuality is an abomination. And I continually reach out to the homosexual communities on this radio show, and I warn them, which ones love? Here you have Obama condemning it behind the backs of the homosexuals but to their faces he’s promoting it. I say this to my gay friends out there the ones that continuously nitpick everything I say. Hollywood is promoting immorality and the God of the Heavens in Jesus names is warning you to flee from the wrath to come, yet you have Muslims calling for your execution. If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that’s what you’re seeing in America today. Read Leviticus 26 America.”


There is little leeway for any interpretation other than that Dean was praising the moral superiority of extremist Muslims who advocated executing homosexuals. He even went further to offer his Biblical analysis that radical Islamists were fulfilling the will of God by attacking the United States. While Dean made a disclaimer that he was not calling for the execution of gays, it was an irrelevant gesture. No one had accused him of calling for executions, just for saying that Muslims were doing so and that they were “more moral” as a result.

Maddow’s response to the suit was that she had not defamed Dean because she had reported factually and that her comments were constitutionally protected speech. The facts appear to support her position. It would be surprising if this suit were permitted to go forward. But even Dean should hope that the judges dismisses the suit. Could he really want to generate more publicity for his views that he is now characterizing as harmful to his reputation?

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Romney’s Phony Lead Over Obama

Posted by on April 20, 2012 at 12:36 pm. 2 Comments :

Sometimes the brazen disrespect Fox News has for honest analysis is breathtaking. They seem to have such a fierce determination to deceive their audience that no limits are drawn for their blatant biases. Take, for example, the article posted this morning reporting on the results of an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll:

Fox Nation

The Fox Nationalists analyzed this poll (which was co-produced by a fellow Murdoch entity, the WSJ) and concluded that the headline news that it contained was that “Romney Opens Up Lead Over Obama.” Just to give you an idea of how far they had to stretch in order to make this an anti-Obama article, here are some of the actual results from the poll:

  • Obama leads Romney among all registered voters 49% to 43%.
  • Obama leads Romney among African Americans 90% to 4%.
  • Obama leads Romney among Latinos 69% to 22%
  • Obama leads Romney among young voters (18-34) 60% to 34%.
  • Obama leads Romney among women 53% to 41%.
  • Obama leads Romney among Independents 44% to 34%.
  • Obama leads Romney as most likable 54% to 18%.
  • Obama leads Romney as caring about average people 52% to 22%.
  • Obama leads Romney on looking out for the middle class 48% to 22%.
  • Obama leads Romney on being knowledgeable and experienced 45% to 30%.
  • Obama leads Romney on being a good commander-in-chief 43% to 33%.
  • Obama leads Romney on standing up for his beliefs 41% to 30%.
  • Obama leads Romney on being honest and straightforward 37% to 30%.

The poll also found that respondents favored Obama’s approach to the economy by fighting for fairness and strengthening the middle class; that 45% approve of his handling of the economy (a five point gain over last fall’s poll); and that a plurality (36%) believes the president’s policies have helped U.S. economic conditions. In fact, the only economic question in the poll where Romney beat Obama was on who would have better ideas for improving the economy, where Romney led 40% to 34%. And on the basis of that single statistic Fox trumpeted a headline that played up Romney lead in the poll.

To be fair, Romney did lead on some other questions (i.e. white and suburban voters), but that hardly compensates for the devastating beating he took on almost everything else. Sometimes, when you witness such gross misrepresentation, you have to stop and say “Wow.” Just “Wow.” These people have no scruples whatsoever.

Glenn Beck’s Radio Show Plummets – Progressives Soar

Posted by on April 19, 2012 at 11:26 am. 24 Comments :

The influential Talkers Magazine has released its annual “Heavy Hundred” ranking of radio talk show programs for 2012. This list is commonly dominated by conservative shows due mainly to the fact that right-wing radio syndicators and station groups refuse to schedule liberal programming on their networks. Nevertheless, a few liberal programs manage to break through and prove that the radio audience is not a Great Wall of Tea Party rightists.

Glenn Beck

The most significant shift in the rankings is the precipitous drop of Glenn Beck. In 2011 Beck came in at #3, but with this year’s list he nose-dived to #9. That decline is surely the result of the cancellation of his Fox News program last summer. By denying him that platform he has been unable to sustain his position. Either that or it was George Soros dispatching his socialist goons to pressure editors at Talkers Magazine to fudge the list.

During the same time frame, Ed Schultz rose from #9 to #4 on the list. Stephanie Miller rocketed from #21 to #11. And Thom Hartmann (#8), Joe Madison (#10), and Alan Colmes (#15) all held steady.

Conservatives have been arguing for years that the reason liberals are not more successful on talk radio was because the market rejected them. That is demonstrably untrue and this new ranking is evidence that progressive talk is in demand. Whether that has any impact on the commercial operations of the conservative-run radio companies remains to be seen. But if they were to be honest they would have to start employing more liberal talent because that is what the marketplace is demanding.

As for Beck, he is currently begging his supporters to buy tickets to his upcoming “Restoring Love” event in Texas on July 28. It is being held in the 100,000 seat Cowboys Stadium which Beck is desperate to sell out. Tickets go on sale to the public tomorrow and Beck warned his listeners that they will probably be gone the same day. Somehow, I doubt it. With his popularity plummeting, his audience crumbling, and his credibility in tatters, I would expect that Beck will be preaching to an abundance of empty seats.

Remember, Beck couldn’t get 100,000 people to show up for his Washington, D.C. event when he still had Fox News to promote it. These are the End Times for Beck, and the darkness he so often predicts for the world is closing in around him now. Look for his next project to be a new communal survivalist colony in Guyana.

Why Is Fox News Recycling Old, Anti-Liberal Articles As Breaking News?

Posted by on April 18, 2012 at 8:55 pm. NO Comments :

Much of what is seen on Fox News is either false or twisted beyond all recognition to anything resembling reality. That is well known and extensively documented. But recently I have noticed some journalistic peculiarities that are curious editorially and affirm Fox’s reputation for incredulous and unethical reporting.

Fox NewsThe first example of this odd behavior that I observed occurred last week when perusing the Fox News home page where I saw an article headlined “White House ‘Birther’ Strategy Backfires.” Since I couldn’t recall any current strategy concerning the Birther controversy emanating from the White House, I clicked the link to find out what it was about. What I found was an article that seemed dated and irrelevant. After poking around I eventually discovered that the article was actually dated April 27, 2011. At the time I just wrote it off as a clumsy attempt by Fox to inject some additional negative news about President Obama, as if all the other negative stories adjacent to it were not enough.

Fox NewsToday, however, I came across another incident of the same type. This article on Fox’s home page, where they post breaking news, was headlined “Hollywood Finally Admits It Discriminates Against Conservatives.” Once again, I had not seen any other news that addressed this topic so I clicked through to the article and discovered that it was originally written and posted on July 13, 2011. This item was an opinion piece by Breitbart protege Ben Shapiro and prominently promoted a book that had been published at about the same time that the article was first posted.

It is no longer surprising to find Fox misrepresenting the facts about news items they publish or broadcast. That is, after all, their mission. But this tactic of reprising stale articles that have no current news value is entirely unique in journalism. To be sure, some news entities will republish an older item when it has some relevance to current events. But they always identify it as a flashback or otherwise reveal its origins. What Fox is doing is posting old stories without any indication that they are old. A reader not paying close attention would never know that what they were reading was not breaking news like the other stories on the Fox home page. And while I have only stumbled across a couple examples of this, there are likely more that have gone unnoticed.

So why would Fox News do this? The easy answer is that they are just piling on the disparaging content they prefer in order to smear the President. But they have plenty of new articles they can (and do) distort for that purpose. The only other explanation is that they want to make certain that the old phony controversies they disseminated in the past are not forgotten by their disinformed audience of dimwits. Maybe Fox is just so proud of their prior lies that they hate to see them fade into obscurity. Or maybe they just like to see how far they can drift from ethical reporting before anyone notices.

The Faux Conservative Outrage Over Jon Stewart’s Vagina Manger Routine

Posted by on April 18, 2012 at 3:00 pm. 2 Comments :

Once again the selective fury of the right has conservatives aghast over a comedy bit by Jon Stewart, despite their silence, and even defense of, far more revolting remarks by Ted Nugent that were made in all seriousness.

Last night Stewart performed a routine (video below) mocking Fox News for both their neglect of the GOP “War on Women” and their abundance of wars on just about everything else. Fox declares war whenever there is an topical story that they believe they can twist into a harangue aimed at Democrats or President Obama. Here are just a few of the actual “wars” Fox has declared:

  • A war on Christmas.
  • A war on Hanukkah.
  • A war on Easter.
  • A war on fall holidays.
  • A war on Halloween.
  • A war on fossil fuels.
  • A war on the constitution.
  • A war on ladies’ night.
  • A war on Fisherman.
  • A war on salt.
  • A war on chocolate milk.
  • A war on sugary drinks.
  • A war on food.
  • A nanny state war on spuds.
  • A war on conservative women.

Today Newsbusters has come out swinging with a critique that illustrates how desperately poor their comprehension skills are. They seem to have missed the obvious fact that this was a satire directed at Fox News and jumped straight to a conniption fit over Christians who must now be sorely offended. The more obvious explanation is that the Newsbusters couldn’t really find any fault with Stewart’s hilarious analysis of Fox News so they had to find another avenue for their umbrage. They latched onto the Christian angle for which they got support from the uber-rightist, political operation (disguised as a religious civil rights group), the Catholic League. The League’s leader, Bill Donohue, is taking the war on Jon Stewart to another level:

“We are asking Stewart to apologize. If he does not, we will mobilize Protestants, Jews, Mormons and Muslims to join us in a boycott of his sponsors. Moreover, we will not stop with a boycott; there are other things that can be done to register our outrage. We are prepared to spend the money it takes to make this a nationwide issue, and we are prepared to stay the course..

I must admit that I’m curious as to what other things Donohue has in mind in addition to his boycott threat. Perhaps he is plotting a nationwide prayer vigil to beseech God to smite all comic apostates. And Donohue’s willingness to throw cash at the controversy can only be creating anxiety over at Comedy Central. I’m sure that Jon Stewart is shaking in his clown shoes at the thought of the wrath that is about to come down on him.

Mitt Romney Surrogate Ted Nugent’s Anti-American Meltdown At The NRA Conference

Posted by on April 16, 2012 at 8:57 pm. 10 Comments :

This past weekend there was a media feasting on a few poorly chosen words by CNN commentator Hilary Rosen. Although Rosen is not a representative of President Obama’s administration or campaign, the President and his staff was hounded for reactions and responses to her comments. Republican operatives and media flacks spent countless hours falsely asserting that Obama was in some way responsible for Rosen’s opinions.

OK then, let’s have some fairness and balance. This weekend another political partisan had a few things to say about the upcoming election. Washed-up, geriatric rocker, Ted Nugent appeared at the NRA conference in St. Louis and what he had to say ought to have similar repercussions for Romney. His unhinged rant was an onslaught of invective wherein he called the President and others in the administration “evil” and “vile,” and he spoke of his desire to oust “the enemies in the White House.” Here are a few more choice moments from his psychotic spewing:

  • “If you don’t know that our government is wiping its ass with the constitution, you’re living under a rock someplace.”
  • “We’ve got four Supreme Court justices who don’t believe in the constitution.”
  • “If Barack Obama becomes the President in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”
  • “Our President, Attorney General, our Vice-President, Hillary Clinton – they’re criminals.”
  • “We need to ride into the battlefield and chop their heads off in November.”
  • “It’s as Nazi Germany as it gets.”
  • “We need to become warriors on the streets of America.”

These remarks run the gamut from merely disrespectful to hostile to treasonous. And this is not coming from an unassociated cable news talking head, Nugent is a Romney advocate whose endorsement Romney purposefully solicited. Last month Nugent Tweeted his support after a personal call from Romney:

“after a long heart&soul conversation with MittRomney today I concluded this goodman will properly represent we the people & I endorsed him”


At the time I wondered whether the media would hold Romney accountable for actively seeking the endorsement of a psychopath who has threatened the President and others with assassination. Apparently the media wasn’t interested. However, after the press’ mobbing of Rosen you might think that they would expect similar responses from Romney for what his campaign surrogate says.

The differences in the way that the press handle these situations should put an end to any talk of the so-called liberal media. Nugent’s violent and revolting rhetoric (which he means sincerely) far exceeds the comparatively tame opinions of Rosen (which were misconstrued). And Romney ought not to be allowed to evade questions on the matter.

[Update] New York Magazine contacted the Secret Service with regard to Nugent’s threats and they confirm that “We are aware of it, and we’ll conduct an appropriate follow up.”

Here is a highlight reel of Nugent’s remarks (and if you have the stomach for it, here is the whole thing [Note: The NRA has removed this video]).

James O’Keefe Posts More Evidence Of His Criminal Stupidity

Posted by on April 16, 2012 at 3:22 pm. 3 Comments :

This is getting to be ridiculous. James O’Keefe has demonstrated that he is a recidivist lawbreaker, but what’s truly astonishing is that he continues to post video proof of his crimes.

In his latest YouTube folly, O’Keefe’s lackey performs precisely the same stunt as his previous performance. Namely, going into a polling place and asking for a ballot in the name of someone else. This time he targeted Bill Maher, Ben Jealous, and David Brock. As I noted previously, all this proves is that someone intent on committing a crime can do so. Of course that’s true for any crime, but you don’t see O’Keefe sending his trained seals into McDonalds and videotaping while they shoot all the customers. The crime that O’Keefe’s pal is demonstrating is one that rarely occurs in the real world, yet O’Keefe and his Conservative Disinformation Society would have you believe that it happens with such frequency that it is necessary to enact laws that could prevent more than 20 million legitimate citizens from voting. The last time O’Keefe embarrassed himself with a similarly dimwitted video I posited this analogy:

This phony exercise by the O’Keefee is something like walking into a convenience store, pulling out a banana and demanding all the cash from the register, then posting the video of the “robbery” online along with a conclusion that holdups at banana-point are a serious national problem and that laws must be enacted to prevent them. Of course, to the best of my knowledge, there are very few banana-related crimes, and the act of pretending to commit one is not an argument for stricter law enforcement to protect innocent citizens from felonious fruit.

After the prior incident when the O’Keefee attempted to acquire the ballot of Attorney General Eric Holder, the District of Columbia Board of Elections correctly responded to news of O’Keefe’s antics by announcing that they would investigate O’Keefe:

Deborah Nichols, Board Chairwoman: The District of Columbia Board of Elections today condemned a video circulating on the Internet that shows a person misrepresenting his identity at District polling places on Election Day. […] I have directed our attorneys to conduct a thorough investigation and refer all evidence to law enforcement authorities for appropriate action. Our polling places are open to the media and observers who want to legally document our procedures for checking in voters. There is never any justification for disrupting the voting process with fraudulent activity.

Stephen Danzansky, Board Member: In our democracy, the voting booth and its immediate surrounds are sacrosanct and to be kept free from politics and electioneering. […] We will protect the integrity of that space from political pranksters and advocates who attempt to usurp that ground for their own political positions or causes.

Devarieste Curry, Board Member: What is troubling is that someone who purports to be concerned about the integrity of the voting system would in fact perpetrate a fraud. […] We want every voter to know that no vote was cast in any of the incidents depicted in this video, that we condemn this stunt, and that we will thoroughly investigate it.

Clearly the actions of O’Keefe’s henchman went far beyond observation into potentially unlawful interference and disruption. It is high time that he be held accountable for his actions, just as he was in Louisiana where he was convicted for crimes in the office of a United States Senator, a crime for which he is still on probation.

One new wrinkle in O’Keefe’s M.O. in this video, is that he sent his flunky to a polling place in New Jersey where they have recently enacted strict voter ID laws. When he was turned away for not presenting an ID O’Keefe concluded that it was evidence that such laws are effective. That, of course, is nonsense. Why didn’t the O’Keefee simply show a fake ID as any actual voter fraud offender would do? All he would have to have shown was something like this:

Voter IDs

Easily obtainable membership cards to retail stores and easily fabricated student IDs are sufficient identification to receive a ballot in New Jersey. Anyone with an intent to commit the sort of voter fraud depicted in O’Keefe’s video would have had no trouble producing an acceptable ID.

Therein lies the fallacy of this entire issue. First of all, there is no crisis of fraudulent voting occurring. Secondly, if there were, these laws would have no effect on that crime whatsoever. And finally, the only people for whom these laws would be an impediment to voting are legitimate citizens. And that is, in fact, the purpose sought by conservatives who push these laws. They know they can’t win honestly, so they plot to steal elections by preventing people from voting. And some of these rightists are candid enough to admit it:

John Stossel (Fox News): “Let’s stop saying everyone should vote.”

Matthew Vadum: Registering [the poor] to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country.

Rush Limbaugh: “If people cannot even feed and clothe themselves, should they be allowed to vote?”

Judson Phillips (Tea Party Nation): “If you’re not a property owner, I’m sorry, but property owners have a little bit more of a vested stake in the community than not property owners do.”

Steve Doocy (Fox News): “With 47% of Americans not paying taxes – 47% – should those who don’t pay be allowed to vote?”

Get the picture? There is a concerted effort on the part of Republicans to disenfranchise politically those who are already disenfranchised economically. These laws are specifically crafted to impact Democratic constituencies (i.e. the poor, minorities, seniors, and students). And the sooner we can expose this, the sooner we can repair our democracy.

Breitbart’s Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, And Penis Envy

Posted by on April 15, 2012 at 1:57 pm. 5 Comments :

A few days ago I posted an article in response to a moronic ratings analysis by Breitbart’s editor-in-chief John Nolte. I noted that Nolte’s glee over the Daily Show having lower ratings than some other cable programs was a vacant and desperate stab at relevance, particularly considering that the ratings of his right-wing darlings at Fox News were even lower.

Breitbart - Daily Show

What I hadn’t noticed at the time was that Nolte is virtually fixated on what any coherent observer would agree is the unparalleled success of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The late night Comedy Central pair have created a Renaissance of political satire and much of their humorous insight has entered the popular culture. In addition to their broad-based popularity, they have both been the recipients of numerous broadcasting awards – and not just Emmys, but journalism honors. The Colbert Report just won its second Peabody this month.

That must be why the Breitbrats are so feverishly hammering away at these stars of satire. Nolte is either consumed with jealousy or merely suffering from a paranoid psychosis triggered by his Olympian lameness. In the past month Nolte has published four articles all making the same insipid and easily rebutted claim that Stewart and Colbert are failures. Four articles restating the same misinformation. But worse, Nolte imagines some Grand Design being orchestrated by Comedy Central and the White House to subvert – oh, I don’t know – motherhood? The NRA? Democracy? God’s will? In his dementia Nolte describes Stewart and Colbert as…

“…elite millionaire, speech-policing leftists,” and…
“…the dynamic duo of left-wing free speech oppressors…” and…
“…left-wing, speech policing, Obama Palace Guards…”

Talk about delusional. And he hasn’t even gotten warmed up. He also declared that…

“It’s all a mainstream media scam used to protect Obama and to get leftist talking points out there using a Trojan horse marked ‘satire.’ and…
“The corrupt entertainment media creates a phony reality around television shows they like.”

Nolte takes particular offense at Colbert about whom he rants…

“There’s a HUGE left-wing agenda behind what Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert is doing, and it’s a serious agenda that has nothing to do with satire.” And that Colbert is…

“…attacking constitutional free speech by attempting to make a mockery of a new Supreme Court ruling that finally allows private citizens and corporations to have as much say in the political process as Stephen Colbert and corporations like, say, Comedy Central.” [Editor’s note: Comedy Central is not a corporation]

Who knew? The Stewart/Colbert cabal to undermine America’s foundations, in concert with a Marxist Manchurian in the White House, is conspiring to silence “private citizens and corporations” like the Koch brothers, and China’s biggest trading partner, Wal-Mart. Indeed, Colbert’s mockery of the Citizen’s United decision is brutal in that it exposes the blatant excess of corporate billions corrupting the democratic process. Thank goodness for the Breitbrats who single-handedly come to the defense of otherwise defenseless waifs like ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, and AstroTurf Tea Party sugar-daddies at Americans for Prosperity.

I’m not sure why Nolte is so obsessed that he feels it’s necessary to repeatedly pound on a couple of comedy programs, especially when those programs are often as tough on liberals as they are on conservatives as I documented here. Perhaps he doesn’t like the abundance of dick jokes. Or maybe it’s just a part of his moral character that compels him to speak out when he sees injustice, such as this recent outpouring of outrage over an HBO program that crossed the lines of decency.

Breitbart HBO Penis Cup

Apparently the outrageousness of the program was not enough to keep Nolte from republishing the object of his disgust. And he further demonstrated his moral fiber and family values by advocating the murder of the child-actress’ mother (Nolte later scrubbed that remark and replaced it with one saying that the mother should lose custody of her children). And somewhere in the process Nolte hallucinates that the left is supportive of this sort of televised gross-out.

I can’t say that I was ever a fan of Andrew Breitbart. In fact, I considered him to be a deliberately dishonest purveyor of propaganda who reveled in rancor and divisiveness. But still, I have to wonder if he would be proud of his successors who are driving his media empire into ever more juvenile territory. I would imagine that he would at least be dismayed at what a hopelessly ineffective operation they have turned his web site into by slathering it up with such puerile trash. On the other hand, Breitbart’s biggest claim to fame was posting a TwitPic of a congressman’s wiener. So respectability was never really a part of his mission, but the wiener obsession survives.

Roger Ailes Talks To Students About News Nazis And The Infallibility Of Fox News

Posted by on April 13, 2012 at 1:11 pm. 3 Comments :

Roger Ailes - Fox News

The first bit of advice that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had for journalism students at the University of North Carolina was “Change your major.” It isn’t difficult to surmise why Ailes would counsel students planning careers in the press to stop studying journalism. The last thing that Ailes wants is more people in the business who understand its fundamentals and ethics.

Ailes spoke at the UNC School of Journalism’s Roy H. Park Distinguished Lecture Series – a series that is now a little less distinguished. He refused to allow the lecture to be videotaped for Internet broadcast. Perhaps that was because he didn’t want his latest Nazi-baiting to be documented. In remarks about his competitors at CNN and MSNBC Ailes said…

Ailes: Remember, the last time all of us got lined up together, we were lined up by two guys – Hitler and Stalin. If there’s an alternative point of view, don’t wet your pants.

Ailes also took swipes Newt Gingrich (“He isn’t going to get to come back to Fox News.”), Jon Stewart (“I don’t think he could make a living without us.”), and CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien (“The girl named after a prison.”).

But perhaps the most unhinged segment of his speech was his assertion that “in 15 years we have never taken a story down because it was wrong.” Notice that he’s not saying that there were never any stories that were wrong, only that they were not taken down. If you leave up all of your false reporting then you can honestly say that you’ve never taken one down. So technically, Ailes is telling the absolute truth. Except that there were stories taken down. And even for those stories, Ailes can claim that Fox News didn’t take them down because they were wrong. When they have had to admit factual errors, they only took them down because they were embarrassing to the network or harmful to their right-wing mission – not because they were wrong.

For Ailes to imply that Fox News has never been wrong is absurd in the extreme. If that were true then why did his management have to issue a memo threatening a “Zero Tolerance” policy after numerous on-air flubs?

“Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the ‘mistake chain,’ and those who supervise them. That may include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination.”

The dismal record of Fox News is available to all who care to study it. They have falsified poll data, misquoted speakers, deceptively edited video, and even aired phony stories (hoaxes, satires, propaganda, etc.) as if they were verified news reports. Some of these stories were taken down and some of them were not, but Fox rarely, if ever, acknowledges that they made a mistake.

That’s the arrogance and dishonesty that Ailes expressed in his remarks at UNC. I hope he hasn’t done too much damage to the students’ aspirations to pursue careers in journalism. Roger Ailes can only be an example for these students in a negative sense – i.e. as what to avoid if you value your integrity and want to make a positive contribution to your profession and your country.

Fox News Escalates The War On Women Out Of All Proportion

Posted by on April 12, 2012 at 2:21 pm. 4 Comments :

Leave it to Fox News to leap on a political molehill and start shoveling feverishly in the hopes of building a mountain.

Yesterday Hilary Rosen, who works for a democratic public relations firm, appeared on CNN and made the mistake of not parsing every single word she said before opening her mouth. The result was a firestorm of criticism aimed a short immaterial phrase that is hardly representative of her full statement. Here is what Rosen said with the part conservatives have latched onto in bold:

“With respect to economic issues, I think actually that Mitt Romney is right that ultimately women care more about the economic well-being of their family and the like. But he doesn’t connect on that issue, either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing. Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why we worry about their future.”

Clearly Rosen was addressing the absurdity of a wealthy housewife assuming the role of Home Economics expert and pretending that she relates to people who have to struggle to make ends meet. Nothing in her comments suggests that she was talking about the difficulty or the satisfaction of raising children. But that’s how the right is spinning this matter, and they are spinning it as hard as their little gerbil feet can spin.

Take a look at the coverage on Fox News where it was the headline story. And their wingnut affiliate, Fox Nation, has posted at least seven articles on the subject – more than any other topic including the presidential election, the Trayvon Martin shooting (and Zimmerman’s arrest), the economy, etc.

Fox News - War on Women

Fox News, the Republican PR Agency, has launched a full-blown campaign to help dig Mitt Romney out the hole he has dug for himself with his anti-woman rhetoric and policies. The 19 point deficit Romney suffers in polling for women’s votes was seen properly as an electoral red flag and the flacks at Fox jumped in to rescue the floundering candidate.

Much of the criticism has expanded from jabs at Rosen to swings at President Obama. Never mind that Rosen is not attached to the President or the campaign in any capacity, and those who are have repudiated her remarks.

Jim Messina, Obama campaign manager: I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize.

David Axelrod, Obama campaign strategist: Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.

What’s more, Rosen herself has apologized:

“I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen. In response to Mitt Romney on the campaign trail referring to his wife as a better person to answer questions about women than he is, I was discussing his poor record on the plight of women’s financial struggles. […] I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended. Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.”

None of that has prevented Fox News from slathering their unique brand of propaganda and hyperbole over this affair in an effort to keep it bubbling up in the news cycle. Megyn Kelly spent a good portion of her program on this issue alone, interviewing several guests including former First Lady Barbara Bush (In a moment of ironic overflow, Kelly raised the issue of women who were fortunate not to have had to struggle financially, to which Mrs. Bush said “It wasn’t always that way for us.” Remember, this is the wife of the wealthy son of an oil baron and former president. Nah, they aren’t out of touch at all, are they?).

Also on Fox, they brought in their resident “Psycho” Analyst, Keith Ablow, who opined that “Hilary Rosen provided a clear psychological window on women who despise other women.” That’s the patented Ablow remote diagnosis of people he’s never met. He then projected this flaw onto Obama, who had nothing to do with any of this.

The whole point of this manufactured controversy is to lay into Obama for having the temerity to be popular with America’s women voters. And if they have to lie and distort reality to pull him down, well, that’s why Fox News exists in the first place.