Month: June 2012

Fox News Covers Up Mitt Romney’s Lies As Exposed By PolitiFact

Posted by on June 30, 2012 at 9:16 am. 5 Comments :

Mitt Romney - Pathological LiarAnother example of the myriad means by which Fox News distorts reality on behalf of Republicans are the choices they make in what not to report as well as what to report dishonestly (which are the only two options considered by Fox reporters).

The truth detectors at PolitiFact are a favorite source of newsmaker evaluations to the folks at Fox Nation. In the past few months they have referenced the site repeatedly when seeking to defend the right and bash the left. After reading a few of the articles post by the Fox Nationalists, it would be fair to conclude that they hold PolitiFact in high regard:

  • Politifact Annihilates Harry Reid
  • Fact Check Destroys Pres. Obama’s Claim He Didn’t Raise Taxes
  • Fact Check Nails Maddow…Again
  • Pelosi Jobs Claim Skewered by Truth-o-Meter
  • PolitiFact Rates Jon Stewart’s Fox News Claims … False!
  • PolitiFact: Perry Did NOT Say Texas Wanted to Secede
  • Politifact: Perry Was NOT Al Gore’s TX Campaign Manager
  • Watchdog: Obama’s List of Kept Promises Is a Stretch
  • Politifact’s Lie of the Year 2011: ‘Republicans Voted to End Medicare’
  • Politifact Shreds MSNBC ‘Lean Forward’ Ad
  • PolitiFact: Debbie Wasserman Schultz Is a Liar

Like many things in the political realm, the conclusions reached in some of those articles were debatable. PolitiFact has made its share of tortured appraisals that miss the mark. But, if nothing else, the list above proves that they are not the sort of knee-jerk leftists that conservatives think dominate the media.

Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists are shamelessly selective in their use of material from PolitiFact. The day after the Supreme Court ruled that ObamaCare is constitutional, Mitt Romney spoke out against the decision in a litany of lies. PolitiFact posted reviews of a couple of points in Romney’s remarks and rated them both as false.

Romney's Lies

So despite a long track record of publishing PolitiFact’s findings, for some reason the Fox Nationalists declined to report on these obvious and deliberate falsehoods. It’s probably the same reason they have neglected to inform their audience of dimwits that Romney has been rated as untruthful 54 times by PolitiFact, and 13 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies. In fact, 40% of PolitiFact’s findings on statements by Romney are rated as untruthful.

If Fox actually had even a hint of aspiration to be fair and balanced, they would be reporting that Romney is as close to a pathological liar as anyone who has ever run for president. However, there is nothing stopping the rest of the media from reporting the truth about Romney’s compulsive dishonesty. But that’s another problem altogether (Liberal media my ass).

Fast And Spurious: The Phony Outrage Linking Eric Holder To Brian Terry

Posted by on June 29, 2012 at 12:37 pm. 2 Comments :

Yesterday a sharply divided House of Representatives held a politically motivated vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for allegedly refusing to cooperate with a highly partisan investigation of the Fast and Furious so-called scandal.

Eric Holder - Contempt for Congress

Never mind the fact that Holder appeared before eleven congressional panels and produced about 8,000 documents. And set aside the Fortune Magazine investigation that shatters the GOP’s justifications for the hearings in the first place. The obsession by Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is so fierce that he has forever stained the House’s reputation by orchestrating the first ever contempt charges against a member of a presidential cabinet, without a whisper of evidence of wrongdoing.

Perhaps the worst part of this, however, is the overt and distasteful manipulation of the family of a murdered border patrol agent. Brian Terry was shot by suspected drug traffickers in an Arizona desert. There is no evidence linking any gun from Fast and Furious to his killing, although there may have been a weapon found at the scene that was purchased during the botched operation. But all of this is beside the point.

Conservatives have long defended their position in opposition to almost any type of gun control by chanting the bumpersticker mantra that “guns don’t kill people. People kill people”. But in this affair they are adamant that it was not a person who pulled the trigger of the weapon that killed Terry, it was the gun itself. They seem to think that absent Fast and Furious drug cartels would have been armed with switchblades and slingshots. Of course, the truth is that these criminal enterprises have had abundant armories before Fast and Furious, and they are no less lethal now that the operation has been dormant for years.

This hypocrisy has been used to incite outrage over Fast and Furious as being responsible for Terry’s death. It wasn’t. Terry was killed as a result of the inherent risks of his job, by criminals who would have been armed with or without Fast and Furious. The cry amongst Republicans that they want to get to the bottom of Terry’s murder is a cynical act of deceit and politics. There is nothing that Congress can learn about Fast and Furious that would reveal anything new about Terry’s murder. Yet somehow, Issa and Company have managed to recruit Terry’s family in this witch hunt.

The family of Brian Terry knows exactly how and why he was killed. Knowing the source of the weapon is no more important than knowing where they bought the car that they drove to the crime scene. So it is wholly inappropriate for them to castigate AG Holder, call for his resignation, or advocate the contempt charge. Whether they know it or not, they are being used by Issa for his partisan political purposes.

Ironically, if they (and the GOP) were really interested in reducing gun violence and the proliferation of illegal firearms, they would support programs that seek to identify gun traffickers who provide weapons to the sort of people who killed Terry. That means programs like Fast and Furious – except far better planned and executed.

It isn’t surprising that politicians like Issa exploit tragedies to advance their agenda. They know the media will sop it up like a blood-soaked sponge. And therein lies the problem. If the media were doing their job professionally and ethically, they would resist these tabloid manipulations and focus on what is truly newsworthy. It’s just too bad that the families in these affairs are sometimes exploited as well. In their grief they may not recognize the signs, but the crocodile tears of self-serving politicians are not a substitute for honest sympathy. And it is heartbreaking to see these families being made fools of while they are still in mourning.

Fox Nation In Feverish Panic To Digest News That Obamacare Is Constitutional

Posted by on June 28, 2012 at 3:23 pm. 10 Comments :

For the past several months, Fox News has been been struggling mightily to dismiss the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) as a blatant overreach of congressional and executive power. They have characterized it as a job-killing, deficit-raising, breach of constitutional law. They attempted to belittle President Obama, whose background as a professor of constitutional law was mocked by the hosts and guests on Fox.

Today was a nightmare come true for the right. Obama’s constitutional expertise was affirmed by the Supreme Court with a deciding vote provided by the conservative Chief Justice, John Roberts. Consequently, the weasels at Fox shifted into overdrive to fight back against this utterly devastating rebuke. By midday Fox Nation posted eighteen separate articles, all with negative appraisals of Obama and the Court’s decision.

Fox Nation on Obamacare Ruling

Some of the standouts include, “A Dark Day For Freedom,” “Obama Taunts Romney After Ruling,” “Palin: ‘Obama Lies, Freedom Dies” But without a doubt my personal favorite was the report of a tweet by the DNC’s Patrick Gaspard that said “It’s Constitutional, Bitches.” And then there was the story that Fox Nation posted with great alarm that the “Stock Market Drops After Obamacare Upheld.”

It should be noted that this story was published well before the markets had closed. At the time it was posted the market was indeed down about 160 points. The Fox Nationalists may not have considered that the drop might have something to do with economic news, including a report that the losses incurred by JPMorgan, previously said to be about $2 billion, were probably closer to $9 billion. They failed to make that observation even though the biggest losers on the DOW were banking stocks. But more importantly, by the time the markets closed they had rebounded to a trivial loss of only 24 points – a 140 point reversal.

By the logic that Fox was using, if a drop in stock prices was evidence that the business community was opposed to the Court’s decision, then the recovery minutes later is evidence that the market approves of the decision. But don’t expect to see that story on Fox. They are now fully engaged in their primary mission to destroy this presidency on behalf of the GOP and their wealthy, corporate constituency. It’s all downhill from here. Expect Fox to dial up the crazy as they encounter additional defeats, like the one today, on the road to November.

Obamacare Upheld: Will Bill O’Reilly Keep His Promise To Apologize For Being An Idiot?

Posted by on June 28, 2012 at 9:10 am. 4 Comments :

The Supreme Court today upheld the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) today and there will be abundant coverage of this historic decision for the remainder of the day, of the week, and of this election year. Partisans from across the political spectrum will be parsing the decision for ways to portray it as either a victory or an incentive to motivate their followers.

But there is something that occurred in the months preceding this decision that deserves renewed attention. On March 26, 2012, Bill O’Reilly debated the healthcare act with Caroline Fredrickson, President of the American Constitution Society. After a tumultuous exchange that mainly exhibited O’Reilly’s arrogantly thuggish personality (transcript below), O’Reilly concluded by saying this:

“Ms. Frederickson, you’re going to lose, and your argument is specious. We appreciate you coming on. But this is absolutely a mandate. It’s absolutely a force. It’s absolutely police powers from the federal government, and it’s going to be 5 to 4. And if I’m wrong I will come on, and I will play — I will play your clip. And I will apologize for being an idiot. But I think you’re desperately wrong.”

Bill O'Reilly on ObamacareWill O’Reilly keep that promise? Although there are incidents far too numerous to mention wherein O’Reilly proves that he’s an idiot, there are few times that he’s committed to admitting it himself. In addition to his debate with Fredrickson, O’Reilly also did a Talking Points Memo segment asserting with absolute certainty that the mandate would be ruled unconstitutional. He should not be allowed to forget his mistakes and his promises. Email him here to ask him to keep his word.

On a side note: After the long awaited decision was announced, Fox News cut away from their coverage to air an interview of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch by his sycophantic lackey, Neil Cavuto. There was nothing particularly newsworthy disclosed in the segment. It appeared to be simply a distraction from the Supreme Court’s far more consequential news. That will likely be the tactical approach that Fox takes for the remainder of the day. They will attempt to downplay an event that they previously trumpeted as the most important Supreme Court decision in decades. They will dodge and weave and misconstrue as they plaster the air with dissenting views from Republican politicians and pundits. The headline, for the time being, will be “Obama’s health care tax increase survives.” And as soon as the House vote on holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of congress occurs, that will become the headline.

Here is the transcript of the O’Reilly Factor interview with Caroline Frederickson. Note how precisely she predicted the Court’s decision that the act would be upheld under the taxing authority of the Congress. Note also O’Reilly’s brutish incivility as he threatens to cut off the interview if she didn’t comply with his demands to answer questions the way he wanted her to.

O’REILLY: Name one thing, one thing that the federal government forces you to buy. One.

FREDRICKSON: Well, let me first correct that —

O’REILLY: Ms. Frederickson.

FREDRICKSON: No, no. I want to correct you.

O’REILLY: Look, my — my opinion is my opinion. Your opinion is yours. I don’t want to be corrected. Ms. Frederickson please answer the simple question. We don’t have all night.

FREDRICKSON: The legislation — you have to let me answer.

O’REILLY: Are you going to answer this question or not? If you’re not going to answer, I’ll abort the segment right now.

FREDRICKSON: The legislation does not require people to buy health insurance.

O’REILLY: Of course it does.

FREDRICKSON: It imposes a penalty for those who don’t.

O’REILLY: You want to play the semantic game?

FREDRICKSON: Forces people to buy in the form of a tax.

O’REILLY: That’s a police power, OK? To impose any penalty is a police power.

FREDRICKSON: Tax power. And it’s designed completely within the rational scope of the legislation —

O’REILLY: No. Ms. Frederickson. This is not —

FREDRICKSON: — to encourage people to buy health insurance.

O’REILLY: This is becoming absurd. It’s police power if you punish someone for not doing anything. Sounds absurd.

FREDRICKSON: Now, you’ve got to let me talk if you’re going to invite me on your show.

O’REILLY: No, I don’t have to let you talk if you’re not answering the question. Because you’re dodging the question. I’ll go back.

FREDRICKSON: No. It’s actually —

O’REILLY: Name one thing the federal government compels you to buy. One thing.

FREDRICKSON: Well, let me say that under the Militia Act of 1792, people were compelled to buy muskets and powder.

O’REILLY: What act was that?

FREDRICKSON: This doesn’t require — The Militia Act. This doesn’t actually require people to buy health insurance. And I think it would be good if you read the legislation.

O’REILLY: I did read the legislation.

FREDRICKSON: It imposes a penalty. And a penalty is different from – –

O’REILLY: That’s compelling something to do something if you’re going to punish them for not doing it.

FREDRICKSON: No. It’s a tax. Essentially, people have to pay a very modest amount — it’s about $95 a year — if they choose not to buy health insurance.

But it’s part of a scheme in which Congress rationally chose to build a national market for health insurance and cover the uninsured.

O’REILLY: Ms. Frederickson, you’re going to lose, and your argument is specious. We appreciate you coming on. But this is absolutely a mandate. It’s absolutely a force. It’s absolutely police powers from the federal government, and it’s going to be 5 to 4.

And if I’m wrong I will come on, and I will play — I will play your clip. And I will apologize for being an idiot. But I think you’re desperately wrong.

FREDRICKSON: All right. Well, I look forward to it.

She was right, Billo. What say you?

{Update] This evening on the O’Reilly Factor, Laura Ingraham was in at the anchor desk because Bill O’Reilly was on vacation. Well, that would have been the perfect dodge for O’Reilly to avoid keeping his word and hoping that by Monday everybody would have forgotten.

However, Ingraham immediately announced that O’Reilly was on the phone from North Carolina to comment on this momentous news event. He spent ten minutes of his precious vacation time bashing the decision, the President and, on another subject, Attorney General Eric Holder. But he never mentioned that he is an idiot. Somehow, the fact that he is an idiot slipped his idiotic mind. I’m shocked!

The Difference Between Fox News And Actual News

Posted by on June 27, 2012 at 4:19 pm. 6 Comments :

It has been well documented that Fox News is a partisan agent of the Republican Party. They brazenly promote the interests of the GOP and employ “analysts” who split their time between appearances on Fox and guiding multimillion dollar campaigns against President Obama and other Democrats (i.e. Karl Rove). But now Fox News has demonstrated perfectly why they are not in any reasonable sense a news enterprise.

In a segment of Fox’s signature “news” program, Special Report with Bret Baier, chief Washington correspondent James Rosen gave an account of a memo circulated by Mitt Romney’s campaign that alleged that the Obama campaign had contracted with companies to employ foreign-based call centers. Rosen regurgitated the information provided by Romney’s camp as if it were irrefutably true. The impression left by the report was that Obama is a hypocrite for criticizing Romney’s business record of outsourcing American jobs to other countries, while he was allegedly doing the same thing with his campaign.

There’s only one problem with this irrefutably true allegation – it has been refuted by a real news organization. ABC reporter Devin Dwyer did what reporters do. He investigated the claims made in Romney’s memo and discovered that they originated from a four month old right-wing blog, the Washington Free Beacon, whose web site describes it as being “Dedicated to uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day.”

The Beacon reported that Obama’s campaign paid several thousand dollars to two foreign firms for telemarketing services. One of the firms was Pacific East, whose headquarters is in British Columbia, Canada. However, as ABC’s Dwyer learned after inquiring, the company also has offices in Oregon. The other firm is Donor Services Group, and it is based in Los Angeles, California, with no current ties to foreign operations. The Beacon apparently found data from 2009 that referenced services provided to a specific client from a facility in the Philippines. But there was no indication that there was any ongoing business there. And in neither case was there any evidence that the work performed by either of these companies for the Obama campaign was done by anyone outside of the United States.

Fox News has once again embarrassed itself as a haven for shoddy journalism. Their chief Washington correspondent took an unsubstantiated blog posting and broadcast it, without any fact-checking, to a Fox audience already dreadfully misinformed and pitifully ignorant. And Baier, the anchor of the program, never bothered to exercise any of the due diligence that a credible journalist would do. The story went straight from an avowedly conservative blog to Romney headquarters to Fox News, without any effort to certify the allegations.

It took a reporter from ABC to make a couple of calls, get the real story, and reveal that Romney, the Beacon, and Fox News were all accomplices in disseminating a lie. This is what happens when you have pseudo-news organizations that don’t actually do any news gathering. The broadcast news networks and CNN have bureaus staffed with reporters all over the world. But Fox News only has presenters who read copy off of TelePrompters and don’t do any original reporting. You can’t expect them to actually verify things they read on blogs, can you? Especially when it’s so much easier to just go with the talking points you get from the Republican National Committee. That’s the difference between Fox News and actual news.

Tough Guy Chuck Norris Is Afraid Of Obama’s Gay Boy Scouts

Posted by on June 27, 2012 at 1:47 pm. 12 Comments :

Conservatives have made bashing Hollywood a cornerstone of their strategy to defeat the evils of Liberalism. They jump at every opportunity to criticize celebrities who dare to exercise their right to free speech unless, of course, they speak ill of liberals. Then, suddenly, celebrities are brilliant observers of the human condition.

One of the reasons that conservatives hate Hollywood in general is that there are so many respected, productive, and successful actors who recognize the benefits of a progressive agenda. Compare that to the washed-up losers who slobber over right-wing dogma – people like Ted Nugent, Victoria Jackson, and today’s special, Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris - Gay Boy Scouts

Yep, you read that right. Obama is turning Boy Scouts gay. Who knew? He must be building an army of polite, well-prepared children to wage his war on marriage. Norris made this charge in an article for AmmoLand (where else?) and it is based on his delusional claim that Obama manipulated Ernst & Young CEO James Turley, who sits on the board of the BSA, into becoming an opponent of rules that ban gays from joining the Scouts. The devious method employed by Obama to force Turley’s hand was to invite him to parties. The scoundrel. They must have been fabulous parties.

However, Norris doesn’t bother to speculate as to how Obama manipulated Mitt Romney into having the very same position as Obama and Turley. In 1994, Romney responded to a question on the subject during a debate for the Senate saying…

“I believe that the Boy Scouts of America does a wonderful service for this country. I support the right of the Boy Scouts of America to decide what it wants to do on that issue. I feel that all people should be able to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.”

Since Obama was a young lawyer in Chicago in 1994, who had never run for office, it appears that Romney may be the one who is responsible for turning the Boy Scouts gay. Norris ought to do a little more research and get back to us on that. And, just for the record, Romney was also pro-choice in 1994, whereas today he is for overturning Roe v. Wade. So the fact that he once supported gays in the scouts does not mean that he does so now. Once you shake that Romney Etch-a-Sketch all bets are off.

Allen West On The Conspiracy To Sap And Impurify Our Precious Bodily Fluids

Posted by on June 27, 2012 at 10:50 am. 1 Comments :

Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant cinematic satire, Dr. Strangelove, produced one of the most enduring characterizations of the dangers posed by paranoid crackpots in positions of power. His profoundly disturbed Gen. Jack D. Ripper is an object lesson in the risks we face when lunatics are granted authority.

Allen WestNow, the Congressman most likely to be committed to a mental institution has spoken up again. Allen West appeared on Fox & Friends (Ignoramusi Televiso) this morning to pontificate on the deadly and clandestine “stealth jihad” that is percolating through our nation. West has already distinguished himself as a commie-phobic, Nazi-baiting extremist who engaged in mock executions against innocent Iraqis before leaving the Army and running for congress. He proudly serves on the board of a known hate group. And now he has come to Fox News to express some eerily familiar comments in response to an NPR report that the FBI has investigated cases of alleged radical Islamists in the military:

Col. Allen “Ripper” West: You are witnessing an infiltration of not just the defense systems, but our financial systems, our cultural, religious, political, systems. So this is a whole-hearted stealth jihad type of attack.

First of all…what attack? The FBI’s report has not confirmed a single case of an Islamic extremist infiltrating the Army. Yet West is already speaking in terms of current attacks on a vast array of our national institutions, even though the FBI is not even investigating anything relating to finance, politics or religion. That’s a paranoid escalation of the story hatched in West’s demented imagination. The story by NPR speculates that the FBI’s action may just be an over-cautious response to the deadly shootings at Ft. Hood that caught the Army and law enforcement by surprise. However, Fox portrays it with graphics that state as a matter of fact that there are presently “100 Muslim extremists in the U.S. military.”

Fox News on Muslims in the Military

Leave it up to Allen West (who thinks the Congress has been infiltrated by communists) and Fox News (who hype phony scandals 24/7) to push the panic button and raise the level of hysteria to its limits. They are shamelessly hyping threats that do not exist in order to stir up fear in the hearts of their dimwitted audience. They might as well bring back Gen. Ripper. He’d make a good host to follow the O’Reilly (Fear) Factor.

Fox News Says: Jesus’ Real Father Was A Rapist, Claims Hollywood

Posted by on June 26, 2012 at 5:31 pm. 7 Comments :

Dateline: Hollywood, CA, 6/26/2012: Jesus’ Real Father Was A Rapist!

This startling proclamation has been reported by Fox News on their Fox Nation web site. The source for this shocking revelation was identified as “Hollywood.”

Fox Nation on Jesus of Hollywood

I wasn’t aware that Hollywood took official positions on spiritual matters. Was this the result of a vote by the Hollywood City Council (which doesn’t exist because Hollywood is not a city. It is a neighborhood within the city of Los Angeles)? Is there an official spokesperson for Hollywood who decides what Hollywood’s positions are? Is everyone in Hollywood now required to hold this position? And what about the people in Burbank where most of the business described as “Hollywood” actually takes place?


The inspiration for this story was the news that Dutch filmmaker, Paul Verhoeven (not from Hollywood), has succeeded after many years in getting a green light for his production, “Jesus of Nazareth.” It is an adaptation of his own book that reportedly includes speculation that Mary’s pregnancy might have been the result of her having been raped by a Roman soldier. The publisher describes the book saying…

“Paul Verhoeven disrobes the mythical Jesus to reveal a man who is, after all, startlingly familiar to us, a man who has much in common with other great political leaders throughout history, human beings who believed that change was coming in their lifetimes.

Gone is the Jesus of the miracles, gone the son of God, gone the weaver of arcane parables whose meanings are obscure. In their place Verhoeven gives us his vision of Jesus as a complete man, someone who was changed by events, the leader of a political movement, and, perhaps most importantly, someone who, in his speeches and sayings, introduced a new ethics in which enlightened behavior and the embrace of human contradictions transcend the mechanics of value and worth that had defined the material world before Jesus.”

Fox Nation credits the uber-rightist media-bashing site, NewsBusters, with bringing the story to Fox. NewsBusters credits Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze. So you know by that trail of bread crumbs that the story is legit. And who could argue with the assertion that Hollywood is unashamedly anti-Jesus? After all, they have only made thousands of films that venerate Christ from “The Greatest Story Ever Told” to “The Passion of the Christ,” and many more about revered figures in Christianity. Not to mention all the movies about Christmas, Easter, and other events deemed holy by church.

Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists have deemed that, because a movie is being made about an alternative version of Christ’s life, and all movies represent the official view of Hollywood even though those movies have a broad diversity of differing opinions, that this is proof that it is Hollywood making the claim that Jesus’ father was a rapist. It makes perfect sense – if you’re a lobotomized crackhead – or a Fox News viewer.

Idiocracy: The Fox News War On Intelligence

Posted by on June 26, 2012 at 12:25 pm. 4 Comments :

There’s one thing you can say about Fox News, and that is that they know their audience. They know that they are serving an intellectually lazy group of rightist zealots who, more than anything else, just want their prejudices to be affirmed. And Fox News is more than happy to accommodate them.

This morning on Fox & Friends, home of the most prideful ignoramusi in television, Brian Kilmeade interviewed David Gelernter, the author of “America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In the Obamacrats)” The discussion centered on the assertion that those darn kids today just aren’t as super-spectacular as previous generations. Gelernter, a Yale professor, castigated universities and disparaged American students as “learning nothing, apart from how to play with their iPhones.”

The dialogue continued with both Kilmeade and Gelernter insulting President Obama, and liberals in general, as airheads. He even questioned the President’s patriotism saying, “I think he has no sense of obligation to the country. I think he has a vivid sense of what the country owes him.” That’s a veiled reference to the racially incendiary subject of reparations, which Obama has never supported. Talk about dog whistles. The segment also featured a couple of definitions that exist nowhere but in the minds of devoted right-wing demagogues:

Obamacrat: A new generation of politicians who don’t think very much and aren’t concerned about their country.
Airhead Liberal: Accepts liberal political ideas religiously, but never questions them.

And Fox News is not coy about their aversion to being smart. The graphic below explicitly belittles knowledge and Americans who “rely on IQ instead of common sense.” Heaven forbid anyone with actual, demonstrated intelligence be given a role in the affairs of state.

Fox News on Knowledge

The notion that knowledge is a toxic virus that infects elitist liberals and must be exterminated, is a recurring theme on the right. They are overtly hostile to education and regard people who have excelled academically as out-of-touch and even threatening to the their conception of American society. And while there is, of course, a place for common sense, the thing about it is that it is “common.” What ever happened to American exceptionalism and the idea that we can aspire to greatness? Such talk is now considered to be an abandonment of the common man.

Conservatives, through their Fox News mouthpiece, are openly advocating for ignorance. And the reason for that is that they know they can manipulate an incurious, ill-informed population far easier than one that is educated. That is why they denigrate Obama’s achievements at Harvard Law (even though they ignore Romney’s two Harvard degrees). It’s why they oppose legislation that makes higher education available to more Americans. It’s why they even advocate eliminating the Department of Education.

It is no surprise that several studies have shown that Fox News viewers are significantly less informed than consumers of other sources of news. And while pseudo-patriots chant “We’re number one,” the international rankings put the U.S. at 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. That is not a foundation from which viable competitiveness is likely to emerge. And bashing education is not a path to resolving these problems.

President Homer SimpsonThe GOP is practicing something I call Elitistism: the practice of discriminating against those who are perceived to be elite. The goal of Elitistism is to drive from public life anyone who diverges from the sacred visage of American Averagism. Because everyone knows that the guy you’d rather have a beer with is the best qualified to be president. Although the cold brew may have been replaced by the tea bag, and the barfly by the Tea Hag™ (i.e. Sarah Palin). And whatever you do, don’t exhibit any qualities of excellence or intelligence. As I have previously written, in today’s politics those are flaws that separate you from the masses:

“Education is a key component in this new paradigm. It is absolutely critical that you not have too much of it. And never, ever use the word paradigm. Once the American people get the impression that you know more than they do about issues like economics or foreign policy, you’re disqualified from service. Achievement and expertise only spotlight how different you are from ordinary Americans.”

Today’s segment is further evidence that Fox News not only promotes ignorance, they actually celebrate it, as they pander to their audience that wallows in it. Pretty soon we can expect to have parades of idiots inspired by Fox proudly marching down Main Street chanting “We’re dumb. We’ve come. Get used to it.”

Fox Nation Asks About Obama’s White Girlfriends – Again

Posted by on June 25, 2012 at 2:39 pm. 2 Comments :

Why is Fox Nation so obsessed with President Obama’s college girlfriends, and particularly their race?

Fox Nation on Obama's White Girlfriends

The article referenced above links to an item in the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. It discusses excerpts from a biography of Obama by David Marannis. And while it never answers the question in the headline, it does assert unsupported allegations of racial motivations in his love life.

“The U.S. president and his First Lady sometimes seem so well-suited to each other that it’s hard to imagine there ever having been any woman in his life other than the formidable Michelle, whom he met while working for a Chicago law firm in 1989. Obama has reinforced this notion by making only fleeting mention of ex-girlfriends in his carefully calibrated memoirs.” […]

“Time and again, Obama, who has had to fight hard to convince other African Americans of his ‘black credibility’, appears to have burnished his radical credentials, not least by playing up the roles of black people in his life and playing down the roles of the white. And nowhere is this more apparent than in his romantic life.”

Suggestive phrases like “fleeting mention” are designed to insinuate that there is something sinister and secretive in Obama’s past. But how many of George Bush’s old flames can you recall? And were any of them black? More importantly, when have you ever heard anyone even ask about the former girlfriends of any president prior to Obama? It seems that only Obama’s romantic history is of interest to these folks. Just like Obama is the only president ever asked to produce a birth certificate.

Why are these matters of significance with regard to Obama and no one else? Isn’t anyone curious about who Romney courted before hooking up with Ann? Surely he had a fling or two while he lived in Paris proselytizing for the Mormon Church and avoiding military service in Vietnam.

There is very little in the Daily Mail article that is new, and much of it was revealed by Obama himself in his own autobiography, Dreams From My Father. However, this fixation on the youthful romances of Obama is a recurring theme with right-wing racists. The fetish extends to authors on Breitbart News and NewsBusters, along with numerous other conservative bile dispensers. Last year Fox Nation posted this thinly disguised racial attack on Obama.

Fox Nation White Women

There seems to be a recurring theme that involves the old fear that white racists have of virile African men defiling their pure Caucasian virgins. And the Fox Nationalists never seem to get tired of invoking it. Similarly, I never get tired of posting this: