Remember when Karoli wrote about this story last week? Poor dumb Dick! He confused Media Matters with the wingnut Media Research Center. I guess he's so used to wingnuts tidying up after each other, he assumed old Brent would know to censor his remarks:

There's been a remarkable amount of drama surrounding Dick Armey's departure from FreedomWorks, culminating Friday with a stunning report from Media Matters, who interviewed the former House Majority Leader directly. Armey had all kinds of interesting insights to share with the progressive group, including tidbits on pay-for-play agreements with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and the FreedomWorks' practice of charging activists to attend free events.

Though many of Armey's revelations should probably be taken with a grain of salt -- the former GOP leader seemed confused about some of the details he shared -- there was a larger question that puzzled nearly everyone: why in the world was Dick Armey dishing dirt to Media Matters?

The Daily Caller, a conservative outlet, tracked down the answer.

Dick Armey had no idea he was speaking to the left-wing Media Matters organization during an interview last week, he told The Daily Caller Tuesday. Instead, Armey thought he was chatting with the conservative Media Research Center. [...]

[I]n a Tuesday phone interview with TheDC, Armey insisted that even though properly identified himself, it wasn't until "somebody busted my chops on Facebook" that he realized spoke to a left-wing group.... "That was a major, big screw up on my part. I thought they were somebody else."

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Much of Sean Hannity's Friday show was devoted to complaining that the left-wing is loaded with haters who do things right-wingers would never, ever do, like organize boycotts to do harm to those who say right-wing things. He was, of course, continuing the ongoing smear campaign against Media Matters, who must just be driving them all crazy over at Fox News now that there's a book out exposing their strategies.

But really, Sean Hannity should try the Google before he lays down challenges like this one. While I'm unimpressed with "Democratic strategist" Julie Roginsky's response, it's his challenge I really want to look at more carefully. After asking why it is the left "always goes after conservatives" without going after their own, Roginsky tosses off a rather careless response, saying, "that's the left. The right does the same thing."

And that begins the Sean Hannity pissing contest challenge.

HANNITY: Have they [Newsbusters] ever gone after people and started boycott campaigns?

ROGINSKY: I have no idea what Newsbusters does --

HANNITY: But Media Matters has, haven't they?

Some back and forth about first amendment rights, etc, and then the Hannity Challenge:

HANNITY: But here's the difference. I don't know any conservative, and you can't name one, that's hiring private investigators, that's organizing with the White House and collaborating with them, and attempting to get advertisers to pull out of shows in an attempt to silence voices. Can you name a conservative equivalent?

ROGINSKY: I don't follow conservative media, so I don't, but I can say this --

HANNITY: I can tell you, I can't name one, and I know conservative media.

Let's leave aside Hannity's lies about collaboration with the White House, which is just nonsense. He cannot seem to name one conservative organization that organizes boycotts? Really?

Let me take that challenge, because Sean Hannity doesn't seem to know conservative media or conservative infrastructure as well as he thinks he does.

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Lock the doors. Pull down the shades. Bring in the exorcist, stat.

As I write this, my humble abode is being transformed into a puppet-occupied den of anti-democratic sin. Yes, my kids are watching the Muppets, with some newly-discovered zeal since the theatrical release of the film by the same name.

That is only part of the agenda, of course. Upon finishing and chowing down on some premium Borscht and Beluga, the plan is a mixture of Marxian performance art, Che Guevara hat fitting & then the coupe de grace (that's right, I used the language of the land of non-freedom fries!), finger painting images of Fidel Castro throughout the house in cigar-ash.

I know, I exaggerate. Slightly. But as the supremely hypocritical again begin what seems like a yearly ritual of complaining that kids' movies or tv shows are detrimental to their emotional or physical health (think of the children!), it is hard to respond with much other than contempt.

This time it is the right-wing Media Research Center going for the gold, with their Vice President For Business And Culture (redundant, judging by his belief system) Dan Gainor, making television appearances just freaking out about how "Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry. They hate corporate America."

Gainor also throws Cars 2 (released recently) into the witch's brew of corporate-hating cacophony endangering our children, and then somehow moves onto railing about Syriana and There Will Be Blood--which presumably he screens for his kids just before the good stuff starts on Cinemax after midnight.

What is rather unfortunate about Mr. Gainor's argument--besides almost everything--is that Cars II and The Muppets were both released by The Disney Company.

See that word company, as in corporation, or in The Media Research Center's world, "an organization that enjoys all the benefits of being a person but none of the liabilities?" Yup, that kind of makes it hard for them to "hate corporate America." But, hey, let's not let facts get in the way of a good story.

This sentiment is consistent, however, with a long line of cultural and political hypocrisy served up by those on the Right. Whether it was the Late Reverend Jerry Falwell's cruelly criticizing that innocent and lovable Teletubby, Tinky Winky. Or Dr. James Dobson's crusade against that yellow sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea, for not openly and loudly declaring his lust for Sandy Cheeks or another of her gender.

The key thing to keep in mind, however, is that its the very same people who constantly bellyache about how kids might be brainwashed by making an oil baron not so cuddly in a movie, who through vocal support or their vote, deprive children of health care. It is these same pearl-clutchers who deny financial aid to the 15 million children living in poverty, or just keep the environment in which they live buried in a Miss-Piggy-sized stew of toxins.

Because, you know, while your kid is gasping for air and looking for a sawdust snack, it's definitely the Swedish Chef you want to watch out for. My God, that Scandinavian culinary maestro must be a Socialist!

This is not to say our culture hasn't become a mess--it sure has. And that parents such as myself are not concerned about some of the things we see on television. We are.

But it is not movies like The Muppets that those of us in the reason-based community fear, but the values of selfish, rampant consumerism and corporatism pushed by organizations, like say, the Media Research Center. Groups that try and teach our children that there is no value in respect and virtue for its own sake. That everything is to be judged by its dollar value, and not its contribution to society.

This is what endangers our children, as it has increasingly, since the economic counterrevolution back in the 1980s. Ironically enough, conservatives used to get this. It might be why none other than Herbert Hoover once said "The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists - they are too damn greedy."

While even I wouldn't go that far, too-big-to-fail corporations and their hand maidens in Congress (and the conservative echo chamber) most certainly pose a far greater danger to our children than a green frog-like puppet.

This column was originally published at Al Jazeera English

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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.

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Brent Bozell and Sean Hannity, human pretzels. They have to be human pretzels to twist this conversation into what they did. It begins with the Paul Ryan budget and moves from there into the birther issue, one that Hannity has flogged mercilessly on every opportunity he possibly can.

In a moment of faux media criticism, Hannity spreads the deck of recent birther stories spawned by his buddy Donald Trump, aided by Bachmann, Palin, and the rest of the wingnutosphere, then asks Bozell why, oh why it is that the media is so obsessed with the whole birther thing?

Bozell's response is worthy of the Most Intellectually Dishonest Twister Award of 2011. Maybe the entire decade.

HANNITY: Media's obsessed with it. Donald Trump kept saying in an interview with Stephanopoulis "I don't want to talk about it, my campaign's bigger than this, ask me about this, this and this" and seven times he interrupted him about the birth certificate issue.

BOZELL: Sean, if you think conspiracy stories are important, let me give you one that's even a hundred times more important.

How about the suggestion that the President of the United States was complicit on the attack on 9-11? Remember all those attacks on George Bush?

"Bush lied; thousands died?" That he deliberately got us into a war to profit from it from Halliburton? How about that as a conspiracy theory? Now this is a conspiracy theory that has been promoted by people like Rosie O'Donnell from ABC, and President Obama's own green jobs czar Van Jones, who he himself has promoted this.

Where are the media talking about those lugnuts? Where are the media exposing those whackjobs? They're silent on it. But if a conservative says something, they're all over it.

So many twisters, so little time. Well, let's begin at the beginning.

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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.

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You can tell that all these reporters for right-wing propaganda organs like the Media Research Center spend waaaay too much time watching Fox News and their army of would-be ambush journalists. Because they often try to imitate their betters only to discover that it can seriously backfire on them.

Especially when the intended victim is a seriously smart person like Barney Frank.

This happened yesterday to a young reporter for CNS (an MRC outlet), as Terry Krepel at Media Matters reports:

Apparently feeling confident (and sufficiently homophobic), CNS decided to target Rep. Barney Frank with a question about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – specifically, whether he thought gay and straight soldiers should shower together. This was based on a statement calling for a ban on separate showers from the Pentagon’s report on the impact of repealing DADT that CNS had previously singled out.

Frank saw this coming from a mile away. As CNS reporter Nicholas Ballasy slowly got out the words “shower with homosexuals,” Frank let out an exaggerated gasp and responded, “What do you think happens in gyms all over America?” After calling it a “silly issue,” Frank added, “What do you think goes wrong with people showering with homosexuals? Do you think it’s the spray makes it catching? ... We don’t get ourselves dry-cleaned.”

Frank then turned the tables on his interviewer by quizzing Ballasy: “I know you’re looking for some way to kind of discredit the policy. Do you think that gyms should have separate showers for gay and straight people? I’m asking you the question because that’s the logic of what you’re telling me. You seem to think that there’s something extraordinary about gay men showering together. Do you think gyms should have separate showers for gay people and straight people?” Ballasy wouldn’t answer, insisting that he was “just quoting the recommendation.” Frank responded: “Don’t be disingenuous. You’re quoting those you think may cause us some problems. You’re entitled to do that, but you shouldn’t hide behind your views.” Frank again asked the question of Ballasy, who again wouldn’t answer, trying to change the subject: “So that’s the question you would pose to people who have an issue with that part of the report, the recommendation?” Frank made his point one more time, and that’s where the CNS ends the video.

As is often the case with Barney Frank, it is a delightfully thorough humiliation.

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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:

[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:

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Did I tell you Some fool would distort Franken's humor

This was a very easy prediction to make. Media Research Center, you know Brent Bozell's group has started a new website aimed at exposing liberal bias. All comedians beware or NewsBusters will get you. The "Eggman" Drudge, links to them as if Franken made the the remark in a serious debate. I should have figured Drudge and Bozell would be the culprits. The headline says: AL FRANKEN SAYS ROVE, LIBBY, BUSH FACE EXECUTION... Drudge should have learned how futile he was when he tried to smear Chris Rock.

Emailer: SSquirrel: Rush took the transcript off his site and that wing-nut Brent Bozell (Media Research Center) and Rush both attacked Olbermann for taking him out of context. So Bozell got worser and Rush got worst again. (and video)

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