Fox Fux Up (Again)

On Saturday's Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade attempted to dismiss the importance of Planned Parenthood funding by claiming that services like pap smears are available "at Walgreens." In response to an email about the segment, a Walgreens spokesperson told Media Matters that they do not offer such services.

Memo to Fox News monkeys Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, compliments of Media Matters:

"Neither Walgreens, nor its in-store healthcare clinics, Take Care Clinics, offer pap smears or breast exams," Take Care Clinic spokeswoman Lauren Nestler told Media Matters after being emailed the segment.

Fox News does offer smears, though of a different kind.


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Mother Jones: What's Inside Glenn Beck's Brain?

"Transition," already, will ya?

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Donald Trump Passed His Audition

Self-important birther asshole Donald Trump has been running his mouth on every media outlet available in recent weeks, and his cognitive dissonance has gotten him a gig on that bastion of cognitive dissonance, Fox News:

Need to add some spice to your Monday morning? Fox & Friends has announced just the thing for the media nerd that simply can’t get enough of the most attention-grabbing potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates yet: “Mondays with Trump,” a brand new segment where “The Donald now makes his voice loud and clear on Fox” on the news of the day.

Change the channel.

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Not Necessarily The News

H/T: HuffPo

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Ann Coulter Says Radiation Is 'Good For You'

No, really; she says that...


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Evan Bayh Is The New Spokesmodel At Fox News

Thanks to Vanity Fair for the imagination to picture ersatz Democrat and former Indiana Senator Evan Bayh in fictional Fox News hair. Now I hope I can get the image out of my head.
Fox News has hired the squishy, bland Bayh, and he was characteristically as ecstatic as oatmeal, saying “I’m pleased to offer analysis of public policy and politics to the millions of Americans who get their news from Fox.” That part about millions of Americans getting their "news" from Fox was apparently meant to be taken seriously, too!

I know this will shock you, but since leaving the Senate, Bayh became a lobbyist. As ThinkProgress points out:

Note that there’s considerable synergy between Bayh’s job at McGuireWoods LLP and his Fox gig. This way business enterprises hoping for regulatory favors or subsidies from the federal government can hire McGuireWoods not only to take advantage of Bayh’s influence and knowledge on the Hill, they’ll also be gaining on on-air television spokesman, presumably one whose client affiliations won’t be disclosed to the viewing public. And since as best we can tell Fox has no journalistic standards, it’ll be an ideal venue for peddling whatever nonsense he likes.

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O Canada!

The True North strong and free...

From Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on HuffPo:

As America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades -- against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News -- fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.

Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast....any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North."

The post is here.

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Bill O'Reilly Blows Another Gasket

Have you ever sat on a barstool next to a loudmouthed, ignorant bully? Kind of like watching Bill O'Reilly's schtick, isn't it? I don't tune in to Fox News; I catch their lowlights on the Web. I came across an item this morning on HuffPo, but I'll spare you the video, as it's a waste of bandwidth:

A furious Bill O'Reilly got into a shouting match with Alan Colmes about Al Jazeera on O'Reilly's Tuesday show.

O'Reilly started by showing footage of guests on Al-Jazeera making what he said were anti-Semitic and anti-American statements. He then brought on Colmes and his right-wing counterpart Monica Crowley to discuss the channel.

Colmes said that the distinction between a channel and its guests was an important one, and that Al Jazeera has been a thorn in the side of Arab governments across the Middle East.

"I would think a populist like you would support Al Jazeera," Colmes said to O'Reilly.

"Are you crazy? Are you nuts?" O'Reilly said. "I'm not taking the side of an anti-Semitic, anti-American network!" He noted that Colmes was Jewish. "The people who run that network would do violence to you," he told him.

Crowley said that "the far left" supports Al Jazeera because it is "essentially anti-American." This outraged Colmes. "That's disgusting," he said. "That's sickening!"

O'Reilly and Colmes then started shouting at each other, with O'Reilly saying that there was no balance to what was, in his view, a constant stream of objectionable statements on Al Jazeera.

When I spent the summer of 2007 in Russia, I got my TV news from the international broadcasts of the BBC and, yes, Al Jazeera. Of the latter, I saw and heard nothing approaching the "anti-American" sentiments that spew regularly from O'Reilly's own network--home to a stable of the unstable who openly call the American president anti-American and worse, and who seem to hate the significant swath of Americans who don't buy into their brand of Talk TV or right-wing politics and whom they deem to be "far left." And as imperfect as it may be, Al Jazeera has actual reporters and journalists who file real news stories, as opposed to the galaxy of GOP flacks and failed rodeo clowns on Fox who claim they do the same.

If you find yourself on a barstool next to a loudmouthed, ignorant bully, maybe it's time to find another bar.

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Fox News Rewrites The Middle East Map

Egypt's geography, according to Fox News:


Egypt's geography, according to reality:

That's a helluva "news" operation they're running over there...

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Repeat After Me...

Here's a leaked e-mail from Fox News managing editor Bill Sammon that mimics Frank Luntz's talking points...I know; you're shocked:

Funny--I didn't hear of any Fox talking head going rogue...

All The Shit Unfit To Print

Excerpted from Patrick Goldstein's The Big Picture in the Los Angeles Times:

Only in the nutty world of Fox News is there anything possibly controversial about celebrating a renowned chief. But apparently the Fox News crew hadn't managed to fill the daily quota of anti-Obama screeds, so the Fox's website got hold of a typically bland USA Today story about (President) Obama's new book, zeroed in on the one potentially controversial angle and came up with this headline: "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General." Fox even managed to get that wrong, since there is zero evidence that Sitting Bull actually killed George Armstrong Custer at the famous Battle of the Little Big Horn. If you go to the post, you'll see the headline now reads: "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Defeated U.S. General."

Stay tuned; Glenn Beck is surely on the case.

Drawing My Own Conclusion...

From Salon.com:

When "The Simpsons" stunned viewers Sunday night with an opening titles sequence created by the elusive, infamous Bansky, it was the unlikeliest pairing of pop culture, art and cultural criticism until the Kim Kardashian-Barbara Kruger cover of W magazine hit newsstands two days later.
The clip, easily one of the darkest, most despairing piece of animation to come down the pike since "Grave of the Fireflies," kicks off with a bird carrying a dead rodent through the Springfield skies – and then it turns grim. Sure, the theme music and the sequence of events stays true to the show's familiar themes – Bart cheekily writes "I must not write all over the walls" on the chalkboard, a Krusty billboard gets a little Banksied – but as the family takes its place on the couch, the action pulls away to an Asian animation sweatshop. How hellish is Banksy's vision of how "The Simpsons" gets made? It makes a real sweatshop look like Club Med. Children dip animation cels in toxic waste while rats carry off human bones. Birds are wood-chippered into Bart Simpson dolls, hauled off by tragic pandas. And do you even want to know how they put the holes in your DVDs? Chained up unicorns.
It's a stunning indictment of harsh international working conditions and animal cruelty, a provocative statement on the show's reputed practice of outsourcing its animation to South Korea, and the most effective ad for Klonopin ever created. That the sequence would go viral faster than a case of mono on a Flava Flav-themed reality show was never in doubt. And sure enough, by Monday, if you didn't have a friend who had forwarded you the clip, you likely just didn't have a friend.

The Simpsons, of course, airs on Fox--the broadcast network. And I'm fairly certain this opening sequence was a better piece of reporting on the realities of offshore, sweatshop labor than anything the corporate shills at sister cable network Fox News Channel have ever produced.

Still, though, if you want to make a real statement, Mr. Groening, stop outsourcing your animation and do the damn job here.

Pay To Play

Paul Krugman in Monday's New York Times:

A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in “The Birth of a Nation,” but you’re actually just extras in a remake of “Citizen Kane.”

True, there have been some changes in the plot. In the original, Kane tried to buy high political office for himself. In the new version, he just puts politicians on his payroll.

I mean that literally. As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy.

Krugman continues:

As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox” — literally, in the case of all those non-Mitt-Romney presidential hopefuls. It was days later, by the way, that Mr. Frum was fired by the American Enterprise Institute. Conservatives criticize Fox at their peril.

So the Ministry of Propaganda has, in effect, seized control of the Politburo. What are the implications?

Read the column here.

From "The 45 Dumbest Signs At The 9/12 Tea Party Rally."

Really? Only 45?

See them all here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-45-dumbest-signs-at-the-912-teabagger-rally

How To Program Cable News 101

"Restoring Honor": There's A Sucker Born Every Minute.

Fox fool Glenn Beck is holding his CrazyFest 2010 in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC today, 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. New York Times columnists Charles M. Blow and Bob Herbert agree that the race-baiting Beck is besmirching King's legacy. Here's Blow:

Glenn Beck is the anti-King.
(I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.)
But Beck seems bent on appropriating the civil rights movement. In April, he read his audience the civil rights movement’s commitment card and then said, “Looks to me like the next phase of the 9/12 Project.” (9/12 is a “nonpolitical movement” started by Beck last year to “protect the greatest nation ever created.”) And Beck has said of this rally, “This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement.” Reclaim? From whom?

Herbert agrees:


America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?

Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric.
Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”
Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”

Stephen Colbert summed up Beck thusly: ‎"Who's gonna follow a guy who describes himself as a 'rodeo clown,' I guess, because Glenn Beck and a rodeo clown are so used to working with bullshit?" 

Rachel Maddow Hands Bill O'Reilly His Sorry Ass (Again)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Newt Gingrich Yells "Fire!" (Again.)

I saw this today on HuffPo:

In an interview with Newsmax, Gingrich said that the "secular elites" haven't taken seriously "threats to America," and that Elena Kagan has "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia," because she "welcomed Saudi money" while serving as the Dean of Harvard University Law School.
"Radical Islamists are people who want to impose on the rest of us Sharia, which is a form of medieval law which would fundamentally end America as we've known it," Gingrich said. "There are disturbing signs that some places ... you see judges succumb to this line of reasoning." He called on "isolating and defeating radicals," while "modernizing" moderates.

Then I remembered something I read a few months ago on ThinkProgress:

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp — the parent company of Fox News — making him the largest shareholder outside the family of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Alwaleed has grown close with the Murdoch enterprise, recently endorsing James Murdoch to succeed his father and creating a content-sharing agreement with Fox News for his own media conglomerate, Rotana.

So...using Newt's twisted logic, his home network--Fox News--must have "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia."

Glenn Beck's gonna freak!

Rachel Maddow Knows Exactly How To Deal With Fox News.

Goebbels' Spawn.

You've heard about the gutless shenanigans emanating from the wretched right that resulted in the abhorrent treatment of former USDA official Shirley Sherrod. You know that the Obama White House, the NAACP, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and some--not all--of what's left of America's media were taken for a ride by Internet scumbag Andrew Breitbart. (If Breitbart is somehow unfamiliar to you, click here for more background on a schmuck.)

Breitbart, of course, is but one in a long (long) line of right-wing propagandists masquerading as truth-tellers. Too bad the Adults in Charge of Knowing Better don't.

Memo to Barack Obama: drop the bipartisan facade and fight the fuck back! And to the rest of you--the Cabinet Secretaries and civil rights organizations and actual newspeople: do your jobs and please--please--begin to actually be the Adults in Charge of Knowing Better...