DOWNLOADS: (130)

PLAYS: (655)

Embed

This week's Fox Campaign is against NBC News. They are trying to equate NBC News with MSNBC, and then go after everyone for doing what Fox does on a daily basis every single day. Today's targets were Andrea Mitchell and Martin Bashir.

For a media critic, Brent Bozell sure doesn't listen very well, does he? Or maybe it's just that Sean Hannity's dazzling delivery of utter BS distracts him for that split second it might take to actually listen to what someone said.

Hannity leads off by asking NBC News about an MSNBC anchor, then manages to misstate what Bashir asked, claiming Bashir accused ANN Romney of using her MS and cancer to close the gender gap.

Now here's the real question Martin Bashir asked:

BASHIR: We know that Ann Romney herself has had some suffering in the form of multiple sclerosis. She's also suffered with breast cancer. Do you think that he's intentionally using her to close the gender gap?

See how carefully Hannity did that? He took a question about MITT Romney and turned into one about Ann. And by the way, he's absolutely using her story to close that gender gap, like any political candidate would. We all have a story, and hers has MS and cancer in it. Of course they're going to use it, just like the Obamas use Michelle's story about her father having MS and still going to work each day. But the key here is that it's Mitt using Ann, and that was the question.

As you might imagine, the pearl clutching was magnificent in the remaining seconds of that particular segment. They're both outraged beyond all belief that anyone would do such a thing. After all, aren't spouses off-limits?

Laugh with me about that before I show you the list. Here it is:

• Hannity attacks Michelle Obama for daring to wear designer clothes. On the flip side, he also says her shopping trip to Target was all a sham, too. No double bind there, eh?
• Hannity says Michelle Obama looks angry and bitter.
• Hannity attacks Michelle Obama for appearing on David Letterman's show because Letterman said something bad about Sarah Palin that he later apologized for.
• Hannity attacks Michelle Obama's college thesis, a document he has never read.
• Hannity allows guest Jesse Lee Peterson to opine that Barack Obama "was elected by mostly racists and guilty white men" without challenge.
• Hannity attacks Michelle Obama for daring to tackle the issue of childhood obesity.
• Hannity goes after Mike Huckabee because Huckabee defended Michelle Obama's love for her country.
• Hannity joins Sarah Palin in a joint attack on Michelle Obama's remarks in a speech
• And there are the "whitey tape" rumors, which supposedly came from Michelle Obama.

Shall I continue, or do you see where I'm going with this? In order to feign outrage, Hannity and Bozell have to lie about the original question asked and ignore all of the times their channel echoed Rush Limbaugh's insults and slams on Michelle Obama, all the times they originated their own slams, and all the times Hannity sat in his seat and either said nothing or cheered right alongside them.

So, Brent Bozell? Want to write up your own media gaffe for Media Research Center now, or should I just send this over to Media Matters for archival purposes?

DOWNLOADS: (171)

PLAYS: (2331)

Embed

You know, I could almost feel sorry for these knuckleheads. If they simply can't understand the difference between a comment on someone's wacky demeanor and a racist slur, well, they're just too stupid for words. Which is why they're on Faux News in the first place! Via Media Matters:

Fox News' animosity toward President Obama, three years into his presidency, is by now well-known. This is the network that routinely calls Obama a socialist, accuses him of being involved in all sorts of conspiratorial plots, and claims that he hates America. But, as witnessed Thursday on Hannity, Fox's attacks have taken an increasingly racially charged tone: Brent Bozell, who runs the factually challenged outfit of conservative misinformation known as the Media Research Center, likened Obama to "a skinny, ghetto crackhead."

Bozell appeared on Hannity as part of the show's weekly "Media Mash" segment to talk about purported mainstream media failings. After listening to a clip of MSNBC host Chris Matthews saying that Newt Gingrich "looks like a car bomber," Bozell responded:

BOZELL: How long do you think Sean Hannity's show would last if four times in one sentence, he made a comment about, say, the President of the United States, and said that he looked like a skinny, ghetto crackhead? Which, by the way, you might want to say that Barack Obama does. Everybody on the left would come forward and demand he be fired within five minutes for being so insulting towards a leader of the United States.

This is the guy who, after spending his ENTIRE ADULT LIFE on wingnut welfare, said this about man of peace Jimmy Carter:

BOZELL: You know, first comment on President Carter. Doesn't he sound like that proverbial college freshman who spouts neo-Marxist pablum after one too many hits on the bong? I mean he... Mr. President, it's time, you know it's time to put up shutters in your houses and really shut up now because you are making a fool of yourself.

No one really pays attention to you, Brent. You kick up waves to make sure your fundraisers come up with enough cash to keep your cushy life, but you haven't influenced anyone who didn't already agree with you. That's what makes you such a loser.

DOWNLOADS: (428)

PLAYS: (1437)

Embed

Sean Hannity was busy all week flogging the torture-apologist line, claiming (falsely) that the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad produced the intel that led to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Last night he had on his buddy Brent Bozell of the wingnut Media Research Center to continue flogging this line:

HANNITY: And none of it would have happened but for George W. Bush, enhanced interrogation, rednition, black sites -- they don't touch it! They don't mention it, Brent Bozell. Why?

BOZELL: Think about this, Sean, what Barbara Walters just said. 'But it was Obama who had the courage and the guts and the coolness.' Oh, George Bush didn't have courage and guts and coolness? You know -- even Bill Clinton! He didn't have courage and guts. Only Osama bin Laden -- I mean, [giggles], Barack Obama -- had the courage and the guts and the coolness?

Look, you want to praise the man for -- the president for what he did? I'm all for that. He did a great job. But my God, where were they when George Bush won us the war in Iraq? Where were they praising him? And why can't they -- why can't they give him the most minimal praise?

It is because of this man's techniques -- that they condemned all these years -- it's because of those techniques that that man is dead today.

Ah, yes, the "Bush deserves credit" line that Fox & Friends trotted out on Monday. Actually, Bozell was quick to jump on that bandwagon, complaining earlier this week that Obama himself snubbed President Bush in his speech announcing the raid:

Unfortunately, while the president spoke for the whole country in remembering the pain of 9/11, his remarks left a gaping hole. He made no generous bow to all the efforts of his predecessor George W. Bush as well as his team. My one regret is that Bush 43 didn't get this scalp. He deserved it more than anyone.

Instead, Obama played subtle and wholly undignified games. He underlined that Osama had “avoided capture” under Bush and “continued to operate” during his tenure. But “I directed” CIA director Leon Panetta to make getting Osama the “top priority” (as opposed to?), and “I” gave the go-ahead to the final mission. Obama also avoided Bush in a Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday afternoon. Even in a Monday night “bipartisan” event at the White House, Obama honored the “military and counter-terrorism professionals” and “the members of Congress from both parties” who offered support to the mission....but no credit for Bush.

If the roles had been reversed, you know Bush would have been more generous. It’s what Bushes do.

Oh, we remember what Bushes do, all right. The last one ran the presidency like a hung-over, coked-out spoiled preppie out careering through the skies in a Texas Air National Guard F-102, half asleep at the wheel. And when he eventually had to unceremoniously bail out just as he crashed the economy, he and his conservative apologists somehow managed to blame it on minority lending practices.

[Later in this Hannity episode, Bozell adds that "the far left is not happy that Osama bin Laden is dead." Oh really, Brent? Do you have any evidence of that?]

But there's a problem: Bush really deserves very little credit at all for the success of this operation -- because the death of Bin Laden, as every serious foreign-policy person understands, is a direct result of Obama's decision to adopt a completely new strategy against Al Qaeda:

Behind Obama’s takedown of the Qaida leader this week lies a profound discontinuity between administrations—a major strategic shift in how to deal with terrorists. From his first great public moment when, as a state senator, he called Iraq a “dumb war,” Obama indicated that he thought that George W. Bush had badly misconceived the challenge of 9/11. And very quickly upon taking office as president, Obama reoriented the war back to where, in the view of many experts, it always belonged. He discarded the idea of a “global war on terror” that conflated all terror threats from al-Qaida to Hamas to Hezbollah. Obama replaced it with a covert, laserlike focus on al-Qaida and its spawn.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (526)

PLAYS: (1637)

Embed

The right-wing Media Research Center's Brent Bozell was on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night to talk about how horrible the American media have been in covering the situation in Egypt. How have they been horrible? Why, apparently because they aren't being sufficiently Becklike in fearmongering over an imminent radical Islamist takeover:

BOZELL: What happens when the government crumbles? What happens when this country is reduced to utter anarchy? What happens when the killings begin and the death begins? Are they still going to credit Barack Obama's soaring oratory for that, or are they going to separate them? What happens if an Islamic caliphate takes over? Are they going to credit his soaring oratory at that point? No they won't.

And what happens, Brent Bozell, if the government remains standing but reconstitutes itself as a democratic republic? What happens when the violence subsides? Will you and Hannity be going on the air and abjectly apologizing to your audiences and the American public and President Obama and to your media colleagues for needlessly fearmongering and spreading panic?

Um, no. You won't.

But Bozell reserved his special reservoir of venom for Chris Matthews, who dared compare the Muslim Brotherhood to the Tea Party. This, of course, made Hannity's an Bozell's collective pea-sized brains explode:

BOZELL: Look, I listen to Chris Matthews and I have two reactions to that. My first reaction is, 'Let's put aside civility for just a minute and to say, I'm just so sick and tired of these disgusting, horrible, despicable attacks, I'm going to slug you and deck you one of these days.'

But that's wrong. That's the wrong reaction. The right reaction is to listen to him, and to listen to him clearly, and just start laughing at the guy.

Look, if a meteor came out of the heavens and hit New York City, he would blame the Tea Party for it. He would blame Michele Bachmann for it.

HANNITY: No. He would probably blame George W. Bush or Sarah Palin. Let's be honest.

BOZELL: Yeah, but if it hit Fox News, he would say it's OK.

Yeah, and if it his NBC News instead, Bozell and Hannity would say it was OK.

Especially because we know that "first reaction" is, for right-wing clowns like these two, the one we're going to get most of the time. Especially when it's being encouraged by top-tier pundits on a cable network with an audience of millions.

Oh, but if a liberal protester is overheard saying nasty things, why, that's proof positive that it's the "left" that cannot be civil.

DOWNLOADS: (384)

PLAYS: (968)

Embed

Watching Fox News is always a bit of a funhouse mirror, like going down Alice's rabbit hole and sitting down for a sip at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

Last night, Sean Hannity and Brent Bozell of the right-wing propaganda outfit Media Research Center were all aghast at a boneheaded segment on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show featuring Ted Rall talking about the value of armed revolution to bring about change in America:

Hannity: They're unhinged. The Anointed One is elected, and the anchors would thrill up and down their legs and up every part of their body. Now all of a sudden conservatives win, because there's a repudiation of Obama and his liberal agenda, and now the suggestion of a revolution.

Bozell: Sean, now remember, we're the haters. Just hold that thought for a second. This is what his guest actually said on the show. He said, "The government, the corporations and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an axis of evil. Are we going to fight back. Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?" This is a man who is a guest on this MSNBC show -- and utter silence from the hypocritical left, that they have that kind of person on there, but yet we are the haters.

Sean, I've asked this question a million times: Would you last -- if you had that kind of a guest on, that your show wouldn't be over before Roger Ailes fired you?

Hannity: Probably.

Bozell: Correct?

Hannity: There's a double standard. We all know this. I mean, it's transparent.

Bozell: The double standard is, Fox doesn't do that. You all would never allow on your show as your guest someone advocating violence in America.

Well, I dunno about guests, but what about Sean Hannity himself?

You may recall, as John and I explained in Over the Cliff, that it was Hannity who came unhinged immediately after the 2008 election of "the Anointed One" and began making suggestions of a revolution:

Hannity had made plain his intentions even before the inauguration. At his Web site, he began organizing in December what he called “the conservative underground” and asking people to “join the resistance” to the Obama administration. At the site’s discussion forum, one of his regulars posted an online poll asking respondents to answer: “What kind of revolution appeals most to you?” The possible answers: "A. Military Coup. B. Armed Rebellion. C. War for Secession."

Here's a screen grab:

enlarge

[Via Political Carnival.]

Then, shortly after the inauguration of Obama, we got this:

The whole segment, as you'll see, almost explicitly urges an armed revolution to preserve "the tree of liberty". As Ellen at NewsHounds noted:

Hannity concluded by saying, “This administration has plucked the tree of liberty bare. It took more than 200 years but it now looks like we are headed back to where we started.” Meaning revolution? Hannity never said one way or the other.

He didn't need to; his meaning was clear enough.

More recently, he practically encouraged violence against liberals with some classic eliminationist humor:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (236)

PLAYS: (1539)

Embed

Brent Bozell of the right-wing "watchdog" Media Research Center was a guest on Hannity last night, whining about how the mean librul media keep painting those poor innocent wholesome upstanding realamerican Tea Partiers as extremists -- it's just so unfair!

Bozell, like Miss Anne Elk, has his theory:

Bozell: Yeah, let's understand what's going on here, Sean. If you were a Democrat running for re-election, and you wanted to run on your record, on the record of the Democrats, are you going to run on an agenda that calls for the nationalization of the banks, the socialization of health care, massive new tax increases, out-of-control deficit spending? If you want to look at an extreme agenda, it is the Democrats' agenda.

Um, excuse the brief interruption here, but, WTF? Who exactly is calling for nationalizing the banks or imposing massive new tax increases? And "socializing health care"? It's true that liberal Democrats called for a public option, but that is a plan that would preserve private health care as well. Bozell is just making crap up -- which, in fact, he has a long history of doing.

Bozell: They have only one option, which is to say, 'You may not like us, but those Republicans, they're even worse.' And that's what these attacks on the Tea Parties are all about.

Now, if Democrats want to do that, that's fine, it's politics. But what's reprehensible is that the liberal media are carrying their water for them every single night with these attacks on the Tea Parties.

This was followed by an amusing exchange with Hannity in which they whined about how poor Carl Paladino and his 10-year-old daughter have been treated unethically by the New York Post. Oh, is that that the liberal New York Post, fellas? Hahahahahahaha.

Bozell summed it all up with his theory, and what it is too:

Bozell: Sean, we watched this happen all year long, where the media will wade into a Tea Party even with hundreds of thousands of people, looking for that one brain-dead Lyndon LaRouche follower who isn't even a member of the Tea Party, who will say some crackjob, whacko thing, they'll put it all over the news.

Actually, you don't have to dive far into the Tea Parties to find them saying crackjob whacko things. After all, the "Birther" theory that President Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim is believed by a majority of Tea Partiers. They continue to believe that Obama is going to institute "death panels," that he's going to take their guns, or any of the other top 10 provably untrue things Tea Partiers believe.

Which includes, by the way, the claim that Obama is raising their taxes (he actually passed the largest middle-class tax cut in history) or that he's going to nationalize the banks. Things that people like Brent Bozell and Sean Hannity glibly repeat as truth on national television.

But really, the media didn't have to wade into the crowds to find the nutcases spewing extremism at Tea Party events: They only needed to go listen to the events' official speakers.

After all, who can forget Joseph Farah of World Net Daily at the National Tea Party Convention, assuring everyone that that Birther theories were all perfectly true:

DOWNLOADS: (1037)

PLAYS: (2414)

Embed

Continue reading »

T

The Simpsons/There's Something About Marrying

Video

There's something that's been kind of weird since the airing of the Simpsons last Sunday. The relative silence. With all the hullabaloo surrounding SpongeBob, Buster the Bunny, and even Shrek 2, The lack of complaining about a primetime show that depicts gay marriage in any form from the likes of the PTC. Pat Robertson, and the TVC has been quite unusual. I haven't heard the trumpets of doom and gloom really that's usually associated to this kind of display. The only negative mention that I found after googling the episode came from the NYTimes(maybe you can find a few more):

"L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Parents Television Council, criticized “The Simpsons” for addressing the issue of gay marriage, though he said that he had not seen the episode.

“At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood,” he said."

That's an erroneous statement of course, and I find it disingenuous when he said he hasn't seen it when I'm sure his denizens have watched it many times. Why the silence? Are the Simpsons too powerful a show to try and demonize? A reader sugests that because it's on FOX, the evangelicals have backed off. Silence on the Jeff/Jim senario as well.

PTC has nothing on their homepage. Focus on the Family has nothing either.

After reading this, I have to conclude that Conservatives really can't tell reality from fantasy and are easily manipulated by movies and TV. I'm starting to understand why the Brent Bozells are always trying to sue some TV show or other. They think it's real; I mean, why would anyone sue a Buffy TVS episode, right?

Anyway, Digby's post covers the Jack Bauer influence on the right wing party.

It's very creepy and disturbing.

The Wapo also reports that the thing was just about to be operational before the plug was pulled last month. The plot thickens.

The LA Times says that the "CIA Was A Long Way From Jason Bourne" but when I read that description of a secret hit squad with no limits, I was reminded of something else, which I wrote a year ago:

Fanboy Interrogations

Dahlia Lithwick has a great column in this week's Newsweek about the biggest influence on the thinking of members of the Bush administration in regards to its "interrogation" policies: Jack Bauer.

I've written a ton about this shocking phenomenon over the years, but even I didn't know that John Yoo actually cited the show in his book:

"What if, as the Fox television program '24' recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon?"...read on

Read her full article because she ends with this.

Rush was actually asking the right question. I laughed at him at the time,thinking he was an embarrassing torture fanboy. But it turns out that the military really was getting ideas from the show:

According to British lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early "brainstorming meetings" of military officials at Guantanamo in September of 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial new interrogation techniques including water-boarding, sexual humiliation, and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas."

This probably worries me as much as anything I've heard about the antics of the Bush administration. These people are so fundamentally unserious that they found inspiration in a television show when the stakes were about as high as they could possibly be. It's horrifying to think these powerful people were this daft. But they were.

It seems it was actually worse than I thought.

For weeks the dying Conservatives attacked Obama as being a Socialist when it came to his economic philosophy, but once it became apparent that he was going to win, suddenly he became a Reaganite.

There is a reason why Brent Bozell made it onto my "Irrelevant" list. With Obama we have a chance for some much needed change, with Bozell it's more of the same. The man talks out both sides of his neck constantly.

Check this clip out.

On America's Newsroom, Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III claimed that President-elect Barack Obama "ran as a Reaganite" and "won over ... the public as a fiscal conservative." But less than two weeks earlier, Bozell accused Obama of espousing "socialism" throughout the "entirety of the campaign."

Wow, in just two weeks:

BOZELL: But when you go through the entirety of the campaign saying the kind of things that you're saying in the debates, where on, for every question, you've got a redistribution of wealth answer, where you've got socialism, where you've got the government controlling every aspect of life. You don't expect a reporter to ask you, "Is this socialism?" Because the media don't ask that question. Well, some uppity reporter did -- and look what happened, they cancelled her. And, by the way, she won't be going to the ball, either.

BOZELL: No, it hasn't. Look at the exit polling. The number one issue was the economy, nothing came close. The American people are fiscally conservative, and the fascinating thing, Bill, is that Barack Obama ran as a Reaganite and won over the fiscal -- the public as a fiscal conservative. That's what the polling data shows.

BOZELL: Well, number one is that the public is conservative; number two, Barack Obama won as a conservative. That means that Barack Obama does not have the mandate to enact the left-wing agenda he wants to enact. He didn't run on it, he ran from it. So, this is not necessarily bad news for conservatives.

Every time I see this happen I flash on the incredible scene in "Chinatown."

Evelyn Mulwray: She's my daughter.

[Gittes slaps Evelyn]

Jake Gittes: I said I want the truth!

Evelyn Mulwray: She's my sister...

[slap]

Evelyn Mulwray: She's my daughter...

[slap]

Evelyn Mulwray: My sister, my daughter.

[More slaps]

Jake Gittes: I said I want the truth!

Evelyn Mulwray: She's my sister AND my daughter!

His neck has got to be aching right about now. Did he use heat or ice to ease the pain?

The Bozell crowd chirp in on our pals at Media Matters while discussing their anti-Clinton book. Yea, another untold story about ---wait for it---are you waiting?--- “Whitewash: What the Media Won't Tell You About Hillary Clinton, But Conservatives Will.

OMG, get over it already. Millions of dollars wasted for nothing....

It sure sounds like the little red beard certainly is jealous of MM, wouldn't you agree? Anyway...MM, like C&L takes a look at "conservative misinformation — news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda — every day, in real time" in the mainstream media. Bozell whines a good game but really has nothing to say when it comes to smearing MM. Let's ask Brent about the role Rush Limbaugh plays in his MRC organization? Wow, and he just happens to defend him in the clip. Eric has a great piece up called: "Poetic Justice: Limbaugh tries to tear GOP apart"

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather 1-10-08)

Brent Bozell: Uh, one more question.

Male Speaker: what role do you think Media Matters plays in the whitewash process as it relates to the Clinton machine?

Tim Graham (Co-author): Well, it's too new to be - you know. Most of this book is pre-2004. Uh, they're obviously now playing a really important role. We kind of giggle when we read some of their reports, where Media Matters...we're not in tight with the Clintons but they write articles about how people are criticizing her colored pant suits, you know? Or somebody finds her screechy. How dare somebody find her screechy? Well, don't they listen to her on television? Uh, so they are so exquisitely sensitive that - there's a Princess and the Pea level of sensitivity on Hillary Clinton. Uh, you know, frankly we find it amusing. We just enjoy reading it.

Bozell: Well, and add to that Hillary Clinton goes to Daily Kos' convention taking credit for the creation of of Media Matters, so there's just that little itty bitty bit of information to pass on. Are they playing a role in this campaign? I don't know if they've played a major role so far in the presidential campaign. Don Imus will say they have a role to play; they cost him his job. They tried going after Rush Limbaugh unsuccessfully and unfairly, and they're still being dishonest about it. Unequivocally I say that. Um, so they haven't been successful there. I haven't seen a real impact that they've had on this campaign so far.