It's hard to imagine a greater irony than Glenn Beck whining about his critics supposedly quoting him all out of context, since they only run small sound bites and leave out the context, blah blah blah. Because, you know, Beck has quite a track record when it comes to that practice himself. Indeed, Jon Stewart recently had some fun at Beck's expense over his fondness for truncated video quotes.
Still, that was what Beck was doing yesterday. And it was all because Howard Dean said something mean about Fox News:
I would bring back the Fairness Doctrine so you couldn’t have a spectacle of a Fox Flooze, which just makes stuff up and is a propaganda outlet. You would actually have to have some sanctioned human beings talking to the other side. And MSNBC would have to do the same. They would have to have some conservatives on there too. I think that’s much better for the country. ...Americans don’t know what’s going on and therefore the media can have their way with them intellectually.
To which Beck responded:
BECK: I would ask Mr. Dean to help me out. What is it that we make up?
I would ask you to just take a moment here. Do you really believe that I could or anybody here at Fox News could just make things up and remain on the air?
Ummmm .... YEAH!!!!! How about on a 24/7/365 basis?
And it isn't just Beck, who of course has a nearly unbeatable track record when it comes to making crap up. Just this morning we got another fine example of Fox News making crap up:
Fox & Friends reported that a school in central Florida had banned the "traditional Christmas colors" red and green from classrooms. In a statement to Media Matters, the school's district spokesperson, Regina Klares, has denied this, stating, "There is not a ban on the colors red and green at Heathrow Elementary."
This is not the exception, it is the rule at Fox News. There are simply no standards for truthfulness there; otherwise Beck would be right -- he wouldn't have been able to go on air and lie day after day, week after week, unless it was his job to lie. Which tells you everything you need to know about Fox News.
