DOWNLOADS: (327)

PLAYS: (3442)

Embed

I love me some Sally Kohn. She's one of the few who can go on Fox News as a liberal and actually talk like a liberal, as opposed to the faux types they usually put on. Sally is also probably the only person I know who can write something like this on the Fox News website:

In other words, every single idea and initiative that President Obama outlined in his State of the Union Address will not only strengthen our economic standing as a nation but also falls squarely within the values and priorities of the majority of American voters. Those trying to argue otherwise are obviously intoxicated by the recycled air of their own ideological bubble. A bubble that, by any realistic measure of popular opinion or electoral power, is clearly shrinking.

Who recycles that air? Wouldn't be Fox News, now would it?

Megyn Kelly doesn't seem to mind that Sally takes on the wildest of the wild corporate self-promoting Young Gun types, and anyone else they throw at her with equal parts snark and ferocity. Sally wins,, too, just like she did in this segment. Sally faced off with Ben Ferguson, the "America's youngest nationally syndicated talk radio host" and legend in his own mind.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (328)

PLAYS: (5897)

Embed

I have to admire Sally Kohn's fortitude in agreeing to be a Fox News contributor and also in sticking to her guns in her debut segment. By the end of it, I realized why this Congress will never get anything done and why Harry Reid's "ditch the tea party" remark on yesterday's Meet the Press has become so controversial in so many circles.

Before I launch into the segment itself, I want to note that I found it interesting that Fox News has brought on someone who isn't a liberal in name only as a contributor. Kohn's background is not the usual Fox News centrist Conservadem fare: she's got ties to the OWS movement, she has strong organizing credentials, and she's decidedly liberal. Does this mean Fox News is responding to their tanking ratings, or trying to bring someone on they think the conservatives can score points on? If the latter, they may be surprised. Kohn definitely held her own in the segment and gently, but firmly, made her points.

This segment was intended to be a 'debate' between Kohn and the tea party representative, David Webb, about Congress and whether compromise is even possible. As Kohn notes mid-segment, most liberals think Democrats are too willing to compromise in the face of rock-solid obstruction from the tea party and Republicans.

But beyond stating the obvious, this segment stands as tribute to the underlying argument about who it is that's willing to compromise and who isn't. I hope every Fox viewer got a clue as a result of their little discussion. Here's the key to the whole thing, at about 5:30 or so:

KOHN: I hate to trouble you with those pesky facts, but we have the lowest percentage of corporate tax -- real corporate tax rates -- in the developed world already. In addition to that, Republicans want to lower that further. In addition to that, corporations are sitting on two trillion in unspent money and they're not creating jobs. So your big corporate --

[crosstalk]]

-- your big business job fairy hasn't appeared and meanwhile, businesses are staying --

[crosstalk]

-- you've got to create demand, put money in the hands of working people.

Continue reading »