Following the tragic shootings that occurred at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night, a Democratic lawmaker from the South Carolina House pointed fingers at the hateful rhetoric of Fox News. Filling in for Megyn Kelly, Martha MacCallum attempted to repudiate this claim of fear-mongering and hate-mongering along with Howie Kurtz of Media Buzz. They were stunned, stunned I tell you, that ANYONE could ever accuse Fox News of what Todd Rutherford, House Minority Leader in South Carolina said.

RUTHERFORD: "(regarding the shooter)...he did so based on some ill-gotten, wrong belief, that it's okay to do that. He hears that because he watches things like Fox News, where they talk about things that they call news, but they're really not. They use coded language, they use hate speech, They talk about the president as if he's not the president, they talk about church-goers like they're not really church-goers...He didn't just generate this out of the sky.

Martha said that there's no way he could have been watching Fox News, 'I can promise you that.' Howie Kurtz brings more manufactured outrage to the table.

"For Todd Rutherford to make this fictional attempt to link Fox to this HORRIBLE tragedy is just reprehensible. I recognize he was just emotional, he lost a friend in that church... This, Martha, is the worst kind of generalization. When people on Fox criticize President Obama, they're not acting as if he's not president"

...except for the scores of times when they went full birther on President Obama, those don't count I suppose. It's not as if Fox ever accused the president of spending $2 million to prevent the release of his birth certificate, did they? Puhleeeze Fox News, there's a thing called the internet where information is very accessible and it takes a millisecond to disavow any of your claims.

Kurtz is just perplexed. He asks,

'where does this come from, this rush to judgement that we see across the board?..There is a history of this on 'both sides'

It pains me that the people in the punditry profession have this urge to assign blame as you say, before the bodies have even been buried. There's a history of this. On both sides! President Clinton faulted Rush Limbaugh for creating what he called the climate of hate that helped lead to the Oklahoma City bombing. Liberals blame Sarah Palin for the shooting of Gabby Giffords and the killing of six others because she had produced a political map with crosshairs on it for Democratic members of the House. It's taking a tragedy and exploiting it and politicizing it...ultimately you're not paying respect to the victims, you're just trying to score points for your side.

Funny how he mentioned tragedies that were clearly linked to the rhetoric of Fox News and hateful AM talk radio, totally ignoring the reality. He said something about both sides being guilty of this, yet he only named liberal incidents. Kurtz could never say that his network is number one in stoking hate.

The reality is that Fox 'News' has been 'thrashing hysteria' for almost two decades and have poisoned the minds of a significant segment of the population. The network is banned in Canada for being irresponsible and misleading (by the CRTC: Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission, like our FCC) as they have a law that prohibits lying in the news, or

“prohibited programming content” that includes “broadcasting false or misleading news.”

MacCallum contrasts the people of Charleston who have been accepting and forgiving with people who, justifiably, accuse the people at Fox 'News' of the transgressions of which Fox 'News' is most assuredly guilty. Martha's asks,

'What do you do as members of the media, how do you avoid this?'

Kurtz replied,

'I would like to see a little bit of self-restraint on the part of people in our profession.'

That was hilarious given that just a few hours after the massacre, Doocy and E.W. Jackson were blaming the fictional War on Christianity as the motive, when we knew that was not the case. The denial of Howie and Martha was simply stunning. Obviously, it's not just the viewers who are willfully ignorant.