No Comment: CIA efforts to keep torture secrets suffer a key loss in British high court.
Amygdala: An epic tour of Afghanistan, part 1.
We Are Respectable Negroes: Crack, Limbaugh and Hitler.
Alicublog: Right-bloggers defend Rush with an NFL boycott.
The Hunting of the Snark: More Logic Fail by McArdle.
Guest post by Batocchio. BG takes over for Mike tomorrow; send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail
CNN's media critic, Howard Kurtz, came up with THE answer to all our complaints:
KURTZ: And if liberals or conservatives like David Brooks don't like what the high-decibel pundits say or think they're peddling misinformation, they should go after them in the media marketplace, not with boycotts or name-calling or screaming or shouting, but on the battlefield of ideas.
Wow, that's so simple. Why didn't anybody think of that? Wait a second. Just hold on there. Isn't organizing a boycott an actual idea which then takes a ton of work to be successful? Isn't leading a boycott against a Glenn Beck or a Lou Dobbs actually going into the media marketplace and hitting them right in the pocketbook?
Can Howard suggest what battlefield of ideas I should go on? Does he consider Reliable Sources one of those battlefields? Can Howard help fund a radio program for me that will air either before or right after Sean Hannity, on all the same nationwide affiliates so I can at least partially compete with Hannidate's audience and have a chance to express my ideas at his level?
The Seminal: Demint's Sedition: Flying off to fight against the U.S.
unbossed: Beef processors' dirty secrets exposed
Steve Benen: Marine General Jones pushes back against McCain
market folly: The next financial mania
The Cunning Realist: Get a life
ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Good journalism...Change?...Beck boycott goes international...Peep Creep Arrested...Branch tells the truth...Letterman, Polanski, Palin and Beck...The Sure Thing...Are search engines killing newspapers?...Ratwang-Dango...Journamalism...Conventional wisdom...Iraq Today...How can these two things both be true?...Iran fail...Is Moonie Times a real newspaper?...For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally...George Will still fulla sh*t..
Leonard Cohen played last night at Ramat Gan stadium in Tel Aviv last night, despite pleas from protesters pleas that he not play Israel in boycott of its last invasion of Gaza. Cohen, ever the class act, responded by offering to play in Ramallah and having the proceeds from both shows go to Israel-Palestine peace organizations.
From a protest in New York with a very un-subtle parody of Cohen's "Democracy":
The boycott of Glenn Beck's show,led by the group Color of Change, has resulted in some 20 advertisers dropping sponsorship of his "show" on the Fox News Channel. Fox is feeling the heat and it now appears that Beck's vacation this week wasn't voluntary:
First on TVNewser: Tipsters inside Fox News tell us Glenn Beck's vacation this week from his Fox News show was not planned. We hear Beck was told to take this week off to let some of the heat surrounding him die down. That heat began July 28 on "Fox & Friends" when Beck said he thought Pres. Obama has "a deep-seated hatred for white people," adding, "This guy is, I believe, a racist."
A Fox News spokesperson denied our accounts and simply told us, "Glenn Beck will back on Monday." But several sources inside FNC confirm that this is a forced vacation.
Fox is denying Beck was forced to take the week off to let things cool down, but TV Newser is sticking to its story:
Update: Sources close to Beck have contacted TVNewser denying that this was a forced vacation. Beck's personal publicist Matthew Hiltzik forwarded us an email dated July 14th sent by Christopher Balfe, President & COO of Mercury Radio Arts and General Manager of Beck's radio show, addressed to Mercury Radio employees reading:
Glenn will be off of radio & TV the week of August 17th, returning to air August 24th.
Contrary to that, our tipsters tell us it was Beck himself who was telling Fox staffers last week that he was "forced to take the week off." Read on...
If the powers that be at Fox think that hiding Glenn Beck for a week is going to slow down the boycott against him, they are sorely mistaken. We'll be right here when Glenn gets back on Monday.
From the aptly named Doctor Zero at Hot Air:
Radio and television host Glenn Beck finds himself confronting an advertiser boycott, organized by people who don’t watch his show anyway. The primary effect of the boycott will be denying advertisers like Best Buy, CVS, and Travelocity access to Beck’s immense and rapidly growing audience. (By the way, one of the participating advertisers is GMAC. Don’t we taxpayers own five or six billion dollars worth of GMAC? Something tells me the boycott supporters include a far larger percentage of people who don’t pay any federal income tax than Beck’s audience does. GMAC should require permission from actual taxpayers before it’s allowed to engage in a silly boycott that could damage its profitability, and devalue our five billion dollar investment.)
Oh, but Doctor Zero isn't finished frothing. Obama is just as bad as people who attended KKK rallies because he attended Jeremiah Wright's church:
Perhaps we could defuse the tension by asking the boycott organizers if they think someone who sat quietly at Klan rallies for twenty years could credibly be accused of racism. I’m sure they would say “no”… and since that’s an accurate analogy for Obama’s decades at Jeremiah Wright’s Church of Racial Hatred, Beck would doubtless be moved to offer a polite apology, and we could call the boycott off...
Oh yeah, and one more thing -- Obama has never said or written anything nice about white people, and the good Doctor challenges you to find where he has:
The rest of Beck’s comment, asserting that Obama has “deep-seated hatred for white people of the white culture,” should be easy for the President’s defenders to disprove. All they have to do is cite one positive thing Obama has said or written about white culture. Anywhere. Ever. Hopefully they can get back to us before GMAC needs another taxpayer bailout, to address the self-inflicted financial damage from its participation in the boycott. I wouldn’t recommend wasting any time going through Obama’s university compositions, assuming you can find where they’re buried, and get past the three-headed guard dog... Read on...
Get it? The boycott is nonsense because President Obama really IS a racist and Glenn Beck is just speaking the truth!
Shakesville: Facts Schmacts...but Waxman-Markey passes the House anyway
Scott Horton: Did a Bush Justice Department official obstruct the Renzi investigation?
FAIR Blog: Why I couldn't say what Dan Froomkin said reporters should do
Mondoweiss: Naomi Klein in Bil'in: Boycott Israel
Iraq Today: War News. It aint good
Alien Truth: Ayatolla tweets can't be beat
Many thanks to Batocchio for filling in so ably for the past ten days
Ed Schultz slams Hugh Hewitt for his article at the Washington Examiner: Just say no to Government Motors and Obamacars. Give 'em hell Ed!
Keith calls out Bill O'Reilly and the Fox News Channel for the part they may have played in the death of Dr. George Tiller. He notes Frank Schaeffer's apology at the Huffington Post for the part he and his father played in radicalizing the anti-abortion movement. O'Reilly of course, thinks he bears no responsibility for his actions and his words.
Keith has a recommendation for all of us who disagree with the hate speech on Fox with how to deal with it:
So, what to do? Viewer boycotts mean little. You are already here. You are not watching Fox News channel. Advertiser Boycotts are of limited value. Most make barely a dent in a company. Besides which in this economy, an advertiser who found its sales boosted by association with malaria would start breading mosquitoes.
If there is a solution, it is perhaps an indirect boycott. It is probably your experience as it has been mine that stores, bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, often show Fox News on their televisions. Don't write a letter. Don't make a threat. Just get up and explain if they will not change the channel, leave the place and say calmly why it is you are taking your business elsewhere.
If you know a viewer of that channel, show them this tape, or just the tape of the attacks on Dr. Tiller that set the stage for his assassination. Fox News channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism. Not until its profits begin to decline, when its growth stops. So, not so much a boycott here as a quarantine, because this has got to stop.
Keith pledged to retire his imitations of Bill O'Reilly as part of the boycott but not criticizing his words.
