Why Fox News Haters Can ‘Teabag’ Themselves

I didn’t even know what “teabagging” was in the nasty sense until CNN’s Anderson Cooper (“It’s hard to talk when you’re tea-bagging“), MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann (“the teabaggers are full-throated about their goals“) – and numerous others just like them – used the term as a rhetorical propaganda polemic to attack and ridicule hundreds of thousands of Tea Party demonstrators simply because something about tea parties sounded similar to something that warped liberals did to one another.

But now that I know what it is, lefties can go teabag themselves.  It’s pretty much who they are anyway.

CNN’s Susan Roesgen, who handpicked protesters at the Tea Parties and attempted to argue with their political views rather than simply report on the event like a legitimate journalist would have done, is a classic piece of agenda-driven propaganda masqeurading as news these days.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who put failed radio host Janeane Garofalo on his “Countdown” program so he could join with her in agreeing that everyone who attended a Tea Party was a racist who couldn’t stand a black man being president; and put on Michael Musto so he could agree with Musto’s rabid description of Miss California Carrie Prejean as a homophobic female transsexual for honestly answering a simple question about gay marriage.  This, of course, isn’t “news.”  It’s not even “propaganda.”  It’s simply naked hate.

We now can confirm that Walter Cronkite was a tin-foil hat wearing liberal throughout his broadcast career, but does anybody seriously consider him using crude sexual innuendo to attack Republicans or share in the rabid views of hate-spewing guests?  At some point, the mainstream media went from doctrinaire liberal elitism to full rabid hatred.

I’ve written about the fact that study after study has demonstrated that the media is dominated by liberalism.  I’ve written about this in numerous articles, but one paragraph from a previous article should suffice to demonstrate that fact:

The media has been so blatantly biased throughout its election coverage that it is completely accurate to say that we are now in a propaganda state.  There is no possible way that Republicans can win in this media climate: whether you look at the Media Research Center, or at the Project for Excellence in Journalism (or again at their brand new study), or at the University of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Advertising Project, there is widespread agreement with one longtime ABC journalist that the media is dangerously biased.  Pew Research discovered that Americans believe by a 70% to 9% margin that the media is biased in favor of Obama and against McCain.  The media now represents a fifth column of government – a propaganda wing – that attacks conservatives and celebrates and defends Democrats and their ideology.  Democracy is going extinct in the country that founded democracy, because no free society can survive such a climate of propaganda.

The bias, the ideology masquerading as news, the dishonesty and corruption of the media, is rampant.  And more and more Americans simply no longer trust them.

In spite of all this, we are supposed to believe that it is Fox News – and not the likes of CNN and MSNBC – which is “biased.”

So let us go to Johnny Dollar’s Place in examining “Fox Haters Week in Review“:

Fox Haters Week in Review

Green footballs, fallacious flea bags, and fact-check follies. Slanders, stupidity, and skulduggery are on display in the latest edition of Fox Haters Week in Review.

Fact-Check Follies
Sometimes it seems the primary qualification for attacking Fox News Channel is not knowing what you’re talking about. That notion was reinforced this week with the decision by Fox broadcast (the American Idol channel) not to carry the latest press conference from President Obama. Leave it to the haters to erupt in a fit of gallopping ignorance. One site bellowed:

Fox News Decides Not to Carry Presidential Press Conference…What do you think? Should a national news station carry every president’s news conference?

Apparently at some point they got a clue, and rewrote the piece (though that non-sequitur question remains). But other sites remain clueless, four days after FNC covered the presser in its entirety:

Apparently Fox News is fine with Censorship…Rupert has decided that the Fox audience doesn’t need to actually hear and see the POTUS talk to *them* and the *press.* They’ll get the Cliff’s Notes from Hannity, O’Reilly, and Beck.

The confusion grows deeper here. Those guys are on the news channel. How would anyone watching Fox broadcast get any “notes” at all from them? The next line is classic:

Way to encourage critical thinking skills, Fox.

Meanwhile another critical thinker has a different spin on it:

Fox News Won’t Be Airing Obama’s Primetime Address…The network states they will impose a graphic at the bottom of the screen telling viewers where they can watch the Address. Brilliant… send people to the competition. That always increases earnings, right?

The graphic directed viewers to FNC and Fox Business Network.

Another subject, but the same command of the facts:

Why did Fox News not cover the live town hall speech that President Obama gave at Arnold, MO’s town hall for his 100th day in office? Now Fox being the un-biast [sic] news channel that they are, I assumed they would have played at least 5 minutes of the speech on live national television.

Sorry pal, all of the cable news channels carried portions of the event, including FNC. But don’t take our word for it, see for yourself.

For frothing at the mouth over stuff that isn’t true, this is hard to top:

Fox News Disrespect Against President Obama Continues. Fox News by no means should be classified as a news channel. Fox News has been the single, most disrespectful alliance against President Obama since he’s been in office. It’s almost shocking to see a so-called news channel disrespect the President of the United States on a daily basis and actually be allowed to function as a “news” channel in the United States of America. From Bill O’Reily to Sean Hannity, these disrespectful, bitter, “true” Americans simply refuse to refer to President Obama as President Obama by constantly dropping off the president in front of his name….

• BILL O’REILLY, HOST: In the “Impact” segment tonight, two topics: Is President Obama promoting a nanny state?… But President Obama today on television… But the trend now with President Obama is, we’ll do it for you….
• GLENN BECK, HOST: What was President Obama’s carbon footprint on Earth Day?

O’REILLY: If President Obama were to award the contracts for cap-and-trade…

• BECK: Some people were a little upset yesterday seeing President Obama…
• BECK: He gave President Obama several unique and priceless historical gifts…Brown gave President Obama a couple of things….In exchange, President Obama gave Prime Minister Brown…it’s remarkable to me that President Obama just kind of like went to the video store…
• SEAN HANNITY, HOST: we are tracking President Obama’s campaign promises….
• HANNITY: It is day number 79 of President Obama’s administration…and President Obama isn’t making it any better…

We could go on, but you get the point.

Stop the Paul Bearers!
It seems like some at the right end of the spectrum are a bit uncomfortable with certain points of view. One of the most prominent red blogs, Little Green Footballs, seems to be objecting to FNC because they permit libertarians (gasp!) to be heard. The footballers took early aim at Glenn Beck, rushing to recycle a video popularized by the Huffington Post (and we know how carefully they screen their videos). It documented a 912 meeting with some intemperate language about burning books. When evidence surfaced that the speaker in question may not have been what she seemed, the footballers did not include it their article. Just this weekend they took another shot at Mr Beck, because of the dozens of people in the audience for his Friday special, “several” were Ron Paul supporters. Oh no, how dare Fox News permit even a handful of the gallery to hold such verboten views!

But if you want to knock Fox, at least do so without using doctored links. LGF is outraged because:

Fox News Pimping Judge Andrew Napolitano, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Alex Jones…Judge Andrew Napolitano, who uses his Fox News online show “Freedom Watch” to promote racists and nutjobs like Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul, and Alex Jones, is now being pimped on the official Fox News video page.

Before we get to the trickery used here, a disclaimer. We have no love for Alex Jones, whose 9/11 conspiracies are legend. On the other hand, 9/11 never comes up in this discussion. We assume the Judge invited Jones on his webcast because Jones had the Judge on his. Which would be a good thing: exposing the Jones audience to a voice of sanity. But Jones aside, why does it seem to bother the footballers so much that one particular member of Congress gets interviewed? Is Ron Paul suddenly off limits? Have the footballers blasted other channels for all their Paul interviews? Are there other lawmakers that news organizations should shun? Just which opinions are impermissible? Perhaps they will publish a list. Would Peter Schiff (economist who predicted the current downturn) and TV’s Andy Levy also be on that list, since they also appeared on this webcast?

Back to the slippery sleight-of-hand used to create a phony issue. LGF claims FNC was “pimping” the show on its “official video page”. Take a look at the link LGF offered as proof:

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH
&referralObject=4728294&referralPlaylistId=
62f160c4ad50103a40c63f3bef45da415ef95101

Now compare that with the actual link to the foxnews video page:

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html

Why is the first one so much longer? It’s all that extra code in there (like “Playlist Id”) that takes you not to the video front page but rather to a specific video–in this case, the one LGF is complaining about. In other words, the footballers used a link that intentionally highlighted that video to make it look like Fox was “pimping” it, when in fact the default fox news video page always highlights the last-uploaded video (unless you ask it to do something else). This bit of trickery isn’t difficult to do, by the way; you just play a video and click on the ‘share’ button to get the direct link. We could link to this, or this, and claim–aha!–Fox News is “pimping” these stories. But we wouldn’t do that, because we tell the truth about Fox.

Ellen’s Embarrassments
Can there be anything more humiliating than getting up on a high horse and pompously telling someone they’re wrong–only to find out they weren’t wrong at all? It happens so often with Fox haters that we coined a word for it: the Incorrection. And this week’s master is none other than Ellen “Queen Bee” Brodsky, doyenne of the newshounds. She seems to share with the footballers a desire to discredit Glenn Beck at any cost, even if it means making idiotic and patently false claims:

Beck said, “Something is wrong when we don’t take proper precautions on the border when there’s a fear of a swine flu pandemic.” In other words, viewers should worry that we’ll be overrun with contagious Mexicans. Never mind that more than half the cases in the U.S. to date come from non-border states and the state with the most number of cases, New York, is the one furthest from the border.

Say what? Distance from the border may have been a valid argument in the days of the Conestoga wagons, but we have these things called trains, planes, and automobiles now, and it really doesn’t matter how far you go, or where you end up. The outbreak in New York began at a school where students had recently returned from Mexico. Ellen had further insights to impart:

Beck’s voice rose with hammy outrage as he lied to inflame emotion against the Obama administration – by accusing them of “choosing to panic New Yorkers” with the low-flying plane “photo op” that scared so many. It was undoubtedly a bone-headed, insensitive mistake. But there’s no evidence that the Obama administration chose to panic New Yorkers. Why say such a thing unless you’re trying to scare your viewers again…

Ms Brodsky rushes to call Beck a liar, but she offers zero documentation other than her say so; we prefer a more reliable authority:

Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and a 747 from the presidential fleet to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.

So who lied: Mr Beck or Ms Brodsky?

We have one more Ellen embarrassment to detail, starting with a trademark hound HeadLie:

Arlen Specter Switches Parties, Fox Immediately Brands Him As A Traitor

Ms Brodsky has no quote of “Fox” branding Specter a “traitor”, only asking commenters if the switch makes him one:

Fox Nation “asks,” “Is He Benedict Arlen?” Foxnews.com similarly suggested he’s a traitor, with a home page headline saying Specter “turns back on GOP” and that he “jump(ed) Republican ship.” The actual article is less inflammatory but paints Specter’s decision as one designed to get him re-elected. That’s probably accurate but they somehow omitted Specter’s criticisms of the GOP, that it moved to the far right away from the Reagan Big Tent and that 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats last year.

The duplicity here is extraordinary. The “article” that “paints Specter’s decision” in a way that’s “probably” true but Ellen doesn’t like? It wasn’t written by Fox News. It’s Specter’s own words: the Senator’s official statement on why he made the switch. Ellen insists that it “somehow omitted Specter’s criticisms of the GOP”. It did? Follow the link yourself and read the full article. You’ll find this, precisely what Ms Brodsky says isn’t there:

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

If you wonder how Fox haters can lie with impunity and not get called on it, consider the fact that this particular Ellen entry has accumulated over 90 comments. Not one bothered to follow the links to see what the article really said–they just took the word of a discredited deceiver. Or maybe they did do their homework and tried to stand up for the truth, but their comments were made to disappear in the time-honored fashion of the flea bag fabulists.

5/3/09 4:44 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink)

The final paragraph captures the zeitgeist of the age well: ignorant people unquestioningly buying in to an era of propaganda.

The one thing Fox News haters can legitimately hate: Fox News is absolutely murdering their cable news competition in every single time slot.  Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity routinely have more viewers than CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and HLN combined. Fox News Haters can hate Fox for that.

Tags: Anderson Cooper, CNN, Fox News, Fox News haters, homophobic, Janeane Garofalo, Keith Olbermann, media bias, MSNBC, Musto, Prejean, propaganda, racist, ratings, Susan Roesgen, Tea Party