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It appears that Rand Paul had his little fee-fees hurt over the blowback from his attempt to whitesplain African American history to students at Howard University. Now he's suggesting that it's because...wait for it...racism against white people. No, really:

Paul acknowledged criticism for the speech he gave at Howard University Wednesday, saying, “I think some think a white person is not allowed to talk about black history ... which I think is unfair.”

Please. The students at Howard University didn't confront you because you were white, they did it because you were disingenuous and wrong.

he talked about how blacks once registered in large numbers as Republicans, how Democrats in Kentucky opposed constitutional amendments that gave African Americans expanded rights and how Henry Watterson, editor of The Courier-Journal from its creation in 1868 until 1919, opposed letting black people vote.

“Much of the public doesn’t know that anymore, and part of my reason for bringing it out was that so people know Republicans aren’t hostile to civil rights or somehow to African Americans,” he said.

Um...facts are inconvenient things, I know. But let me throw out a few chapters Paul neglected in his history lesson: Dixiecrats. The Southern Strategy. Lee Atwater. Ronald Reagan. Paul assumed because he elided through these telling chapters that these college students -- most of whom have had to deal with the effects of racism their entire lives -- would be ignorant of them. Again, that's not racist, that's just stupid and arrogant. Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Rand Paul went to Howard University, lied, and then got his ass kicked. That's not so bad. I got my ass kicked regularly at Howard. That was the reason my parents sent me there. But having gotten his ass kicked, his answer is to not to reflect but to make an allegation of racial discrimination.

One of the things I try to do in my work is -- in general -- take people at their word. It's very hard to communicate about anything without good faith. This, of course, assumes that communication is the goal. That was my assumption about Rand Paul. I was clearly wrong.

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Jon Stewart roasts Rupert Murdoch over his bid to buy the LA Times. Murdoch already had a chance at the news publishing business with his News of The World rag, which blew up in his face over criminal activities and now new arrests. So why would he be given a special waiver to buy the storied newspaper?

It appears that Murdoch's hope rest on one man's shoulders.

In weighing a bid for The Los Angeles Times, Rupert Murdoch finds himself in a familiar role: waiting for rule changes from the government. With the resignation last week of Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, he may have to wait a little longer.

Mr. Murdoch, who has never shied away from a regulatory battle, has been beefing up News Corporation’s lobbying efforts in Washington in the last few months to urge regulators to revise a media ownership rule that would prevent the company from acquiring The Los Angeles Times and other newspapers in markets in which it already owns television stations.“He wants it,” one person close to Mr. Murdoch said of The Los Angeles Times.“They’re working on getting a waiver now,” added this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks. But another person close to Mr. Murdoch said he currently considered a potential deal more trouble than it is worth given the regulatory hurdles in Washington.

The resignation of Mr. Genachowski, a Democrat, could further stall a plan favored by the departing chairman that would relax a longtime ban on consolidation between television stations and newspapers in local markets. The F.C.C. signaled on Friday that a vote on easing media ownership rules would move forward despite Mr. Genachowski’s departure.Initially expected to be presented for a vote early this year, the measure has already faced several setbacks. Last month, Mr. Genachowski said there would be no vote until the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, a Washington-based nonprofit, completed a study of the impact of cross-ownership on news gathering. That process could take several weeks, potentially pushing a vote to the summer.

(h/t Heather@VideoCafe)

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[H/t Media Matters]

I love it when Dick Morris gets on TV and begins making dire pronouncements about Democrats. Because it always means things are actually going well.

Morris, after all, is famous for making hilariously bad predictions (got to wonder how that right-wing remake of the education system is going, not to mention those Obama impeachment proceedings) and offering even worse political advice -- when he isn't also just blathering right-wing zombie lies. Most of all, he loves casting his former bosses, the Clintons, in as depraved and bleak a light as possible.

He's just always wrong -- something Jon Stewart points out with some zest. He's a perfect reverse barometer for what's happening in reality.

Last night, during Fox's coverage of the Democratic National Convention, Morris held forth on the actual corruption and depravity of the Clintons, "guaranteeing" that Bill Clinton wants to see Barack Obama defeated, but he was being held back "because his wife is a hostage," Morris told a credulous Bill O'Reilly. "They'll kill her if he loses."

He went on to predict that Clinton would heap praise on Democrats generally and then get around to saying, "And oh, by the way, we support Obama" near the end. Which worked out to be as accurate as all of his previous predictions.

I can hardly wait for Morris's black-helicopter conspiracy theory book to hit the stands.

Romney keeps on rolling gutter balls in front of the cameras: “The trees are the right height.” “I like being able to fire people.” “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” "I'm Mitt Romney—and yes Wolf, that's also my first name.”

Normally the adage “a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth” applies. On the Jay Leno show, Obama famously compared his bowling skills to those in the Special Olympics. Many, including myself, were offended by the remark (mainly because the Special Olympics athletes are far better bowlers than Mr. Obama). The President apologized profusely for the statement.

But Romney’s greatest gaffes are less accidental nuggets of candor (like, “I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners.”) and more what you’d call disquieting sound bites of misfired pandering. Moments that can be summed up by the phrase “cheesy grits.”

Yes, he told a crowd in Mississippi during the primary, he had “cheesy grits” (as opposed to cheese grits) for breakfast and he was learning how to say, “ya’ll.” He would have been better off saying sweet tea (a diabetic coma-inducing regional syrup served over ice) is best with Splenda and he was learning how to talk … real … slow.

(Rick Santorum won Mississippi, by the way.)

Yes, when Romney attempts to show how in touch he is with Americans…he ends up displaying exactly how in touch he is with Americans. Meaning: Not at all.

This week, minutes after marveling at the 10-year-old touch screen technology at a Wawa in Quakertown, Romney was still stuck on regional sandwiches when he got to Cornwall, Pennsylvania. “By the way, where do you get your hoagies here?” he asked the crowd of supporters. “Do you get them at Wawas? Is that where you get them? No? Do you get them at Sheetz? Where do you get them?” According to reports the crowd booed until Governor Tom Corbett offered that the locals got their sandwiches at “delis.”

Here’s the thing: For a man whose book is titled “No Apology,” Mitt’s awkward Rand McNally riffing looks like he’s apologizing for not being from there. And in the case of Michigan (where he actually is from) not being enough like those who are from there. “Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.” He’s telling us who he is by making it clear what he’s not: A man of the people … unless those “people” are corporations, my friends.

According to Moody’s Analytics, the unemployment rate would actually be a percentage point lower if the government employed as many people as we did in 2009. It’s a time when government IS shrinking—teachers and cops are being laid off and Mitt’s hoagie haven Pennsylvania lost 5,400 government jobs just this year. Mitt also does his best to seem obtuse. “[Obama] says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

Who could have guessed a rich man running for a government job would have the chutzpah (pronounced choots-paw if your last name is Bachmann) to stand up against more firefighters and teachers?

One minute Romney is touting his business experience and wealth as a qualification to be president—the next minute he’s trying to appear like he’s not (as Jon Stewart observed) the guy who just fired your dad.

President Obama should not bowl. Ever. And Romney, well, he should stop trying to relate to blue-collar living and just be the stuffy, privileged, Ivy League, over-educated, French-speaking, affluent Republican he is.

Mitt, if that is your real name (it isn’t), just be yourself.

Crossposted at tinadupuy.com

You may have seen David Barton on Jon Stewart the other night, or on several other shows, plugging his new book, "The Jefferson Lies." Barton is a right-wing fundie who's rewritten history to make Thomas Jefferson a religious man who never wanted religion out of public life. (You may also know him as a "professor" at the famous Beck University.) Slacktivist's Fred Clark, famous for calling out the charlatans in his faith, has a bone to pick with how the mainstream media depicts David Barton:

“Who is David Barton?” CNN’s Dan Gilgoff asks.

And then Gilgoff refuses to answer his own question.

Instead, Gilgoff retreats into a wretched, flaccid display of false-equivalence, view-from-nowhere, opinions-on-the-shape-of-earth-differ non-journalism.

“Barton’s work has drawn many critics,” Gilgoff writes, in lieu of actual journalism.

That’s a remarkable sentence. It’s like saying, “Bernie Madoff’s investment skills have drawn many critics.” Or, “Ty Cobb’s sportsmanship has drawn many critics.” Or, “Leroy Jenkins’ teamwork has drawn many critics.”

Who is David Barton? David Barton is a man who says things that are not true.

David Barton makes stuff up. He surgically alters quotations deliberately in order to deceive others.

David Barton says things that are not true. He is not merely “controversial.” He is not merely “a lightning rod for critics.” His many, many false assertions are not merely “disputed” or “questioned” or “challenged.”

David Barton says things that are not true. After being repeatedly, publicly corrected, he repeats those very same untrue statements. This is what he does. This is how he makes his living.

David Barton has not attracted “critics.” David Barton says things that are not true, and those Gilgoff mislabels as his “critics” are simply those many, many people who have pointed out the many, many untrue things that David Barton has said. His false statements are obvious. His false statements are extravagant. His false statements are hard to miss.

David Barton says things that are not true. That is the primary, pre-eminent, pervasive fact about David Barton.

To say anything else about David Barton without also saying that is to be inaccurate, misleading and dishonest.

But Paul Harvey, a real history professor, says of course it won't matter:

I don't question the necessity of pointing out Barton's history of outright falsehoods, explaining the fallacies of his presentism (as in using a 1765 sermon or a 1792 congressional vote to show that the original intent of the founders was to oppose bailout and stimulus plans), and introducing to non-experts the abundant evidence calling his historical worldview of the Christian Founders into question. Yet while these kinds of refutations are necessary, they are not sufficient. That's because Barton's project is not fundamentally an historical one.

That's why historians' takedown of his ahistorical approach ultimately won't matter that much. Nor will historians' explanations of his presentism, and his obvious and unapologetic ideological agenda (albeit considerably muted for his appearance on The Daily Show). While all the historians' refutations are good and necessary, ultimately they won't matter for the audience which exists in his alternate intellectual universe, one described in much greater detail in my colleague Randall Stephens' forthcoming book The Anointed: Evangelical Experts in a Secular Age...

After all the refutations and belittling of pedigree, Barton still appears in a New York Times "puff piece," argues with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and fields calls from congressmen and presidential candidates. In short, if this were a basketball game between Barton and professional historians, in some ways it's already a rout, with Barton far ahead and the scrubs in to play out the garbage time.

Some of that is because of the skill of Barton and his organization WallBuilders at ideological entrepreneurialism. Barton's intent is not to produce "scholarship," but to influence public policy. He simply is playing a different game than worrying about scholarly credibility, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. His game is to inundate public policy makers (including local and state education boards as well as Congress) with ideas packaged as products that will move policy.

And once again, our librul media is easily outplayed.

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From June of 2011 -- Stewart tells Chris Wallace that Fox News is like 'ideological regimes'.

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From October 31, 2011 -- Jon Stewart Explains What Happened to Rick Perry During His Bizarre Speech in New Hampshire:

After the opening part of his segment where Jon Stewart gave us an overview of Herman Cain's recent campaign meltdown and how that means, in his words, that Mitt Romney is “the luckiest Motherfudger on Earth”, Stewart explained just what he thinks happened to Rick Perry during his bizarre speech in New Hampshire this past weekend.

I've made my feelings on PolitiFact clear previously. For a group that claims to be non-partisan and interested in the fact-based reporting, there's precious little of that in the larger editorial choices of whom to fact check and how they rate the lie. They will let some rather large and disgusting lies go unchallenged when it comes from a Republican but focus on a small rhetorical flourish when it comes from a Democrat to pounce on them and declare their statement false.

And so it was with Jon Stewart's interview on Fox News Sunday. Politifact seized on the word "every" in Stewart's confrontation of Chris Wallace's bizarre rationalization that Fox is simply offering the other side of the story": Do you know who consistently is misinformed in every poll?" and rated Stewart's statement as false. Now, one of the things my parents drummed in my head during my petulant teen years is that qualifiers like that are useless. No one is ever "always" wrong, and "every" event doesn't necessarily have the same result and saying that someone "never" listens is manifestly untrue. But they are rhetorical flourishes that people use to round up a larger truth. And while it's true that not every poll shows Fox News viewers as the most uninformed, the unqualified truth is that they are *consistently* the least informed and Politifact is being disingenuous to claim otherwise.

in an environment in which conservatives are more inaccurate and more misinformed about science and basic policy facts, the “fact checkers” nevertheless feel unduly compelled to correct “liberal” errors too—which is fine, as long as they are really errors. But sometimes they aren’t. A case in point is Politifact’s recent and deeply misguided attempt to correct Jon Stewart on the topic of…misinformation and Fox News. This is a subject on which we’ve developed some expertise here…my recent post on studies showing that Fox News viewers are more misinformed, on an array of issues, is the most comprehensive such collection that I’m aware of, at least when it comes to public opinion surveys detecting statistical correlations between being misinformed about contested facts and Fox News viewership. I’ve repeatedly asked whether anyone knows of additional studies—including contradictory studies—but none have yet been cited. Stewart, very much in the vein of my prior post, went on the air with Fox’s Chris Wallace and stated, "Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll." My research, and my recent post, most emphatically supports this statement. Indeed, I cited five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) separate public opinion studies in support of it—although I carefully noted that these studies do not prove causation (e.g., that watching Fox News causes one to be more misinformed). The causal arrow could very well run the other way—believing wrong things could make one more likely to watch Fox News in the first place. But the fundamental point is, when it comes to believing political misinformation and watching Fox News, I know of no other studies than these five--though I’d be glad to see additional studies produced. Until then, these five all point in one obvious direction.

The specific, on point surveys that validate what Stewart said were conveniently ignored. Hmmmmm....

What Stewart obviously meant—and what I mean—is that when it comes to politicized, contested issues where the facts have been made murky due to political biases, it is Fox viewers who are the most likely to believe incorrect things—to fall prey to misinformation. A quintessential example of such an issue is global warming, or whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or was collaborating with Al Qaeda. There are many, many others.

To rebut Stewart’s claim, Politifact relied upon irrelevant and off-point studies. Thus, the site cited a number of Pew surveys that examine basic political literacy and relate it to what kind of media citizens consume. E.g., questions like whether people know “who the vice president is, who the president of Russia is, whether the Chief Justice is conservative, which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives and whether the U.S. has a trade deficit.”

Too few citizens know the answers to such basic questions—which is lamentable, but also irrelevant in the current context. These are not contested issues, nor are they skewed by an active misinformation campaign. As a result, on such issues, many Americans may be ill-informed but liberals and conservatives are nevertheless able to agree.

Politifact has semi-acknowledged this criticism, but is still attempting to spin this as a fundamentally correct take.