Faux News's Greatest Hits: Anti-Protester Edition

Yeah, so you know how Faux News is suddenly all about teabaggers and opposition and secession? Remember how it used to be treason to so much as raise an eyebrow at a sitting president? Have a headache from the hypocrisy yet?

Media Matters has a few of their greatest hits:

As Media Matters for America has documented and the rest of the media have noted, despite its promise to deliver “total fair and balanced network coverage” of the April 15 tea-party protests, Fox News repeatedly promoted the protests that day and in preceding days, while hosts and guests, including those on Fox Business Network, engaged in inflammatory rhetoric during their coverage of the protests. By contrast, Media Matters‘ review of Fox News’ coverage of prior demonstrations finds that the network offered no such promotional coverage of 2003 and 2005 protests opposing the Iraq war, the 2006 immigrants’ rights protests, or other demonstrations in support of progressive positions. Instead, the network’s hosts, contributors, and guests often attacked participants in those protests. [snip]

  • On the February 17, 2003, edition of Special Report, Fox News host and Roll Call executive editor Morton Kondracke said of protesters:

KONDRACKE: And it’s curious that they would be supporting a fascist like Saddam Hussein. The only reason that they could be doing that is because they don’t like the United States and they don’t like war and they don’t like a war perpetrated by the United States of America.

Fox News host and Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes also stated:

BARNES: You know, I was struck by how uninformed and morally empty these demonstrations were.

[…]

BARNES: These demonstrators are both morally vacuous, they’re stupid, they’re disingenuous.

[…]

BARNES: They just don’t want a war and they hate the U.S., Mort’s right about that.

[snip]

  • On the March 29, 2006, edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News contributor Juan Williams stated:

WILLIAMS: These kids don’t know anything. … [A] lot of these are poor kids, struggling along in those schools and struggling to gain some sense of identity, so they’re going to wave the Mexican flag because they feel somehow they are fighting for Mexicans living in the United States. And they’re even going to get into crazy arguments about whether California should truly belong to the Mexico or the United States — all kinds of stupidity.

But those are kids, Bill. I mean, kids who are — I mean, they use kids during the civil rights era as demonstrators. The kids know nothing, but at their heart, they feel like they’re giving a voice to what their uncles, their aunties, you know, some people who are illegal in this country who may never have a voice against the Minutemen and the far right wing that wants to throw everybody out.

Yes, the Cons are all concerned about the children who know nothing themselves, but just parrot what their parents say.

Except, of course, when they’re using them themselves:


Idiots.

Faux News's Greatest Hits: Anti-Protester Edition
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Give George Will a Porch

First he makes such a jackass of himself on global warming that his Washington Post colleagues spank him for it. Now this:

The Washington Post‘s George Will tends to get into trouble writing about economics. His problems with columns about global warming are obvious. Will occasionally will write about baseball with minimal controversy, but those items tend to be rather dull.

Today, the conservative columnist branches out a bit, focusing his energies on pants. Not just any pants, mind you, but pants made of denim. Will, apparently, doesn’t care for them.

[snip]

Will proceeded to say we should all get off his lawn, unless we’re wearing slacks, in which case we can stay.

OK, I made up that last part, but Will really did write a 747-word column on a fabric he doesn’t like.

I’m at a loss.

Oh my fucking gawd. Civilization’s ending because everybody’s wearing jeans. Seriously, that’s the gist of his column. The Post needs to retire him to a porch asap. It should have a lawn in front, so he can make himself happy shouting at kids to get off it.

Give George Will a Porch

Get That Man A Straitjacket, Stat

When, oh when will the kind people in white coats come and take poor Glenn Beck away for some much-needed rest?

I hope they get around to it before he manages to strike a match:

First he pours “gasoline”on top of some guy, using his patented snotty whimper to run down all the alleged atrocities. Then he actually says this:

President Obama, why don’t you set us on fire? Do you not hear? Do you not hear the cries of people who are saying STOP! We would like some SANITY in our country for a SECOND.

We didn’t vote to lose the republic. We didn’t VOTE for any of this stuff. We voted for CHANGE. You know what that change was? The change we wanted was an end to the GAMES! We wanted the games to be ended. We want people to say what they mean and mean what they say. We want people just to be honest. We want the parties to actually STAND for something. We want the SPENDING that is out of control, you’re building bridges that lead to nowhere, you’re spending MONEY that leads only to slavery! We just want some common sense. That’s all we want.

We can disagree with each other on policies. But good lord almighty man, some of us don’t agree with all of the policies. We’d like to have a country left at the end of four years. No need to set us on fire.

That’s just one little excerpt.

It’s kind of like listening to a five year old in the backseat sing a stream of consciousness story about monsters. Except for the psychotic parts.

You can’t even unpack something coherent from this rant. He contradicts himself, babbles endless nonsense, and throws about flammable liquids with the abandon of the terminally psychotic. There’s only one thing he’s right about: we would like some sanity for a second. This is why I’d like to see Glenn Beck hauled off the air and stuffed in a padded room with a double-dose of Thorazine.

I swear if we could get this man off the teevee, the sanity quotient of our national discourse would go up by about 38 points.

Get That Man A Straitjacket, Stat

Thank You, Captain Obvious

Is there some sort of IQ test you have to fail in order to become a television “news” show host?

From Lou Dobbs, speaking about Obama (and every other president in our entire history, though he seems to think this fact is notable anyway):

DOBBS: Next year, 2010, which is, obviously, going to be a signature year because it will establish, first of all, the power of this presidency and this president, all that he is embraced by at least the national media, he still didn’t receive a majority of the votes in this country, just those cast. [emphasis incredulously added]

Wow, great catch, Lou. That’s some amazing investigative reporting, that is. Terrific powers of observation, there. Give that man a star.

Next up on Lou Dobbs: uncovering the scandalous fact that the majority of water in the world isn’t rain, but only the part that’s falling from clouds. I can hardly wait.

Thank You, Captain Obvious

Why I Don't Turn to CNN (or Any Other News Channel)

Hear, hear:

It’s nice to see somebody else asking the same question I ask nearly every day when I see some GOP has-been pontificating on my TV: why are we listening to these people?

Turn on CNN and chances are you won’t have to wait long to see the face of Stephen Hayes, who distinguished himself earlier this decade for his insistence, long after it was clear that the opposite was true, that “there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to plot against Americans.” He also penned a fawning biography of Dick Cheney.

Or pick up the Washington Post, the same paper that gave Mr. Gerson his post-Bush home, and you’ll find a regular op-ed column from William Kristol, the tireless Iraq war champion whose offerings, worse than being wrong, are usually unreadable; Or there’s Ron Christie, a little-known Bush and Cheney aide who has somehow become one of the cable networks’ go-to guys for the conservative viewpoint – which he unfailingly expresses with the language his old bosses favored when they were in power.

All of these people, of course, are entitled to their views. But, besides outdated and discredited bluster, they add nothing to the current discussion.

Thank you.

Since reclaiming dominion over my teevee, I’ve watched exactly 0 hours of CNN. I caught Rachel Maddow’s show and liked muchly, but when it comes to news, I still turn to the blogs and, sadly enough, Comedy Central. As far as the 24-hour news stations, I don’t believe I’ve lived a bad life, and thus see no reason to punish myself by watching the endless mindless blather. Calling it a “discussion” is generous.

There was a time in America when you could turn on news programs and get substantive analysis, reporting, and actual journalism. There was a snippet of time when you could actually watch CNN without wanting to beat all of the talking heads with the nearest boom mic. That, of course, was before Bill Clinton got caught with his pants down, and before the O.J. Simpson circus. Things just haven’t been the same since.

Now we seem to have an endless parade of clueless Cons and dumbfuck media personalities doing a poor imitation of news anchors. When they aren’t dead wrong on every single subject they’re discussing, they just sound like a bunch of paranoid nuts who stopped taking their meds. This is the kind of shite I expect from photocopied screeds and pirate radio stations, not major news channels. And the saddest thing is, people actually watch this shite and believe they’re becoming “informed.”

The only reason to ever turn on one of these programs is to point and laugh, and sometimes weep.

Why I Don't Turn to CNN (or Any Other News Channel)

April Fools

Yes, I rather ignored April Fool’s Day this year. I’m not much good at the pranking – I hit my pinnacle the year I attached a TVGuide pic of Richard Dean Anderson to a photo of a San Diego sidewalk using glitter nail polish and still managed to convince all my friends I’d actually met him – despite the fact he would’ve been 9 feet tall if that had been a real-life photo. And he had a little bit of glitter coming out of his head. It’s sad how easy it is to snooker folks.

Cujo359 had a rather different take on the day. Instead of fooling people, he went looking for fools. He didn’t have to search for long:

Of course, Glenn Beck is a fool any time of year, but since today is so special, why not take a look at his latest foolishness? The first comes courtesy of Think Progress:

For almost a year, Glenn Beck has been warning with increasing panic that America is headed toward socialism. Tonight, he issued a correction: “They” are are not marching the United States toward socialism, Beck explained, but actually fascism:

It all adds up to me, having to admit that I was wrong. Our government is not marching down the road towards communism or socialism. … But now I have to tell you that they’re not marching us that direction. They’re marching us to a non-violent fascism. Or to put it another way, they’re marching us to 1984. Big Brother. … Like it or not, fascism is on the rise.

Though Beck claimed he didn’t mean “Adolf Hitler kind of fascism” and that he was talking about “fascism with a happy face,” he illustrated his point with more than a minute’s worth of Nazi footage, played dramatically on the full screen behind him.

Glenn Beck: I was wrong. We’re Not Marching To Socialism, We’re Marching Toward Fascism

Of course, Beck isn’t the first damn fool to redefine fascism so he can invent new ways to insult liberals, but this strikes me as a particularly pathetic example of that pathetic rhetorical strategy. Boiled down to its gooey essence, his argument is:

That kind of socialism that I made up so I could call Democratic fiscal policy socialist? I was wrong, it’s really more like this kind of fascism I just made up.

That’s one of the most apt shorters I’ve ever seen. And don’t forget to visit that last link – you’ll be glad you did.

Glenn Beck is one of those people I used to believe only existed on pirate radio stations and street corners near mental institutions. Yet this buffoon has a show on Fox.

I think that’s all we’ll ever need to know about the quality of the Faux News Channel.

Continuing a tradition I began last year, here’s a couple of the clever April Fools posts I came across:

Evolving Thoughts managed to punk a few folks by cleverly posting his prank on March 31st.

Panda’s Thumb explored the merger of AIG with AIG. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Alas, I didn’t have much time to really dig for clever gems. If you unearthed some, let me know in the comments, por favor.

April Fools

When Numbnuts Advise Novices

Digby has a great point here:

I just heard CNN’s week-end money team giving stock tips to their viewers to “recession proof” their lives. Now, I don’t doubt that there are great buys to be had in the market and that some people may be in a position to invest right now and make some big bucks over the long haul. But if the hosts of the show also feel it’s necessary to first explain what a stock is and tell them that the odd letters on the screen stands for the company’s ticker symbol, I think maybe stock picking may be over the heads of their audience.

Is it just me, or does it seem like the teevee “news” has become one long series of infomercials? I know there’s a sucker born every minute, but at the rate these fuckwits are going, they’re going to bankrupt their supply before the next generation of suckers come of age.

When Numbnuts Advise Novices

Turning the Tables

More accurately, turning Faux News’s own tables over so we can rip off a leg and spank them soundly with it:

In response to a post about how Fox News falsely claimed the Dow dropped 56 points during a speech by President Obama, an e-mailer offers up a snarky question (subject line Fauxviating):

So what has the DOW done since Faux came into existence?

Obviously, the question mocks Fox’s favorite sport, highlighting (or inventing) drops in the Dow while a Democrat speaks.

Just for the record, Fox Business News had its first broadcast on October 15, 2007. The previous close was 14,093.08.

In other words, since Fox Business News came into existence, the Dow has dropped nearly 50%.

This is fun. I may have to start watching Faux News just so I can find further opportunities to paddle them with their own faulty logic.

Turning the Tables

Distractions for the Easily Distracted

Some people really need therapy:

I just heard some jerk on the radio making fun of the Obamas for growing a kitchen garden at the White House and complaining that doing it is a “distraction” from fixing the financial crisis. I’m not kidding. Charlie Cook on Hardball explained today that it is some kind of cynical, political outreach “to the gardeners.” Still not kidding.

It’s a fucking garden. Criminy. And who the fuck assumes that, because Michelle Obama’s planting a garden with the help of a lot of kids and folks who keep the White House in good repair, President Obama’s somehow neglecting his duties? What sane person thinks a fucking vegetable garden is that much of a distraction?

I think “distraction” is their way of saying, “We hate everything any Democrat’s doing.” These shallow, pathetic little fuckwits want things to stay exactly the same as before, so they’re reaching for a bludgeon that might force the President to stop changing things. If his wife buys a new set of pillows next week, we shall surely be hearing about how that’s “distracting” them from fixing the financial crisis. And I’m sure it’ll be seen as icky political outreach to Bed, Bath and Beyond. Who knows what’ll happen if they decide on linens created from bamboo. That will probably prove a scandal on the order of getting blown by interns.

I’m pretty sure all of the people currently screaming about various and sundry distractions are deficient in the self-awareness department. If they weren’t, they’d surely notice that the only ones getting distracted are themselves.

Distractions for the Easily Distracted

Dictionaries, Like Reality, Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias

We’re neck-deep in absurdity and getting deeper (h/t):

On the March 17th edition of The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly and author Bernard Goldberg ventured a discussion of whether or not the Yiddish word “schvartzer,” which comedian Jackie Mason used to describe President Barack Obama, was a derogatory term or not. It was, in Goldberg’s opinion “absolutely not a bad word.”

[snip]

But this, via News Hounds, is the funny part:

O’Reilly, playing the voice of balance, pointed out that his dictionary referred to it as, “often disparaging and offensive.”

Goldberg’s answer? “Forgive my arrogance. The dictionary is written by some liberal person.”

[snip]

So there you have it! The definitions of the words commonly used in the English language have a known liberal bias. Which explains why most of Goldberg’s books seem like they’re written in Esperanto.

One day. Just for one fucking day, a single eensy-weensy day, I’d like it if finding Con dumbfuckery to laugh at were actually difficult. I’d like to go through a day when my head didn’t hurt from hitting the desk. I mean, for fuck’s sake, if I were writing a fiction novel and put an exchange like that in there, the editors would be asking me if I realized my parody’s a little too extreme, and would I maybe like to tone it down a bit for the sake of believability.

They make parody impossible. Seriously. They’re like creationists: it doesn’t matter how wildly unrealistic you make it, they’ll turn right around and say something so fucked up it makes your parody look like a transcription of one of their saner moments.

Is it any wonder I’m sitting here asking myself, “Are these people real? Or are we dealing with malfunctioning androids?”

Dictionaries, Like Reality, Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias