Tag: FOXnews

Conservative Radio Hosts Called by Scripted Actors

Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service,” read the service’s website, which disappeared as this story was being reported (for a cached version of the site click here). “We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we’ll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won’t hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners.

The report notes that the “service” is part of the overall operation that syndicates Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity among many others. I keep thinking that one day one of these “shocking revelations about the conservative message machine” will stick, but then we’ve long known that W. Bush and his administration planted editorials, basically employed journalists to run preferred stories, and openly bragged about controlling various “mainstream” media outlets and programs (notably Meet the Press, but also obvious ones like Hannity and etc…). None of those seemed to register with people and the MSM has an obvious vested interest in letting such stories drop. Quickly . This one probably won’t register either, though it does get at their precious, precious two hours hate…and we certainly can’t have that.

Anyway and once again: they are lying to you with malice aforethought. Your entire media construct is bought and paid for with the express intent of fucking you out of what is yours so that the folks at the top can extract an additional fractional percent at your expense this quarter. They call that “shared sacrifice.” There are more of you; one would think the center could not hold. Not forever, anyway. Thanks for consistently proving me wrong on this. It’s really made my day. Over and over and over again. That is all.

(via militantagnostic)

Conservative Radio Hosts Called by Scripted Actors

As I’ve said before, lots of Glenn Beck listeners aren’t in on the joke. Unlike Roger Ailes, Jonah Goldberg, and every staffer at the Heritage Foundation happy hour, they don’t realize that the Fox News Channel puts this man on the air fully understanding that large parts of his program are uninformed nonsense mixed with brazen bullshit. When a Fox News host tells these viewers, “I’m not going to treat you like you’re a moron,” playing on their insecurity about other media outlets talking down to or lying to them, they take it at face value. What sort of callous, immoral person allows these viewers to be played for fools?

Conor Friedersdorf getting to a one-sentence sketch of Roger Ailes. Until the broader sphere progressive politicians and media in general deals with that “I’m not going to treat you like you’re a moron” part, we’ll get nowhere.
As Friedersdorf says, Ailes et al. “ought to be objects of disgrace, akin to any other manipulative huckster who preys on the elderly.” That they aren’t is why we fail.

Next up: American Mexceptionalism

Only one sitting president in the last 82 years has publicly uttered the magical phrase “American exceptionalism” – care to guess who it is? Ronald Reagan, he of the “shining city on a hill?” George W. Bush, who closed his speeches by asking that “God continue to bless” America? Nope. The only president to publicly discuss (and for that matter embrace) “American exceptionalism” is Barack Obama.

I would have been surprised were it otherwise. It’s just how FOXmemes work.

Next up: American Mexceptionalism

Recap and Trade

Mike Huckabee, 2007: I also support cap and trade of carbon emissions. And I was disappointed that the Senate rejected a carbon counting system to measure the sources of emissions, because that would have been the first and the most important step toward implementing true cap and trade.
Mike Huckabee, 2010: In a recent internet post, a contributor makes the claim that I supported cap-and-trade in late 2007 while running for President. To put it simply, that’s just not true.
McCain|Palin 2008 platform: …will establish … a cap-and-trade system that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A cap-and-trade system harnesses human ingenuity in the pursuit of alternatives to carbon-based fuels.
Palin, in VP debate: [Ifill asks “Do you support capping carbon emissions?”] I do. I do.
Palin, 2010: I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
Lemkin: What’s remarkable is that she didn’t call it “Cap and Tax.” They think you have the memory of a goldfish. And, it seems, they are mostly right. We shall never speak of any of this again.

Fair and Balanced

Leaked emails tell us what we’ve known all along:

Fox executives regularly defend the network by claiming that the right-wing propaganda on Hannity and its other opinion shows is entirely separate from its news programming, which they insist is objective. But Sammon’s email gives credence to allegations that news from Fox’s Washington bureau is being deliberately distorted to benefit conservatives and the Republican Party.

I’m sure that the ABC, NBC, CNN, and CBS news operations will now reassure us that this is “old news” that’s well known and just the way things ought to work in America. Anything else would threaten the sanctity of the fourth estate, after all. And if one party holds and actively uses the most watched news network in the US for its own benefit, well, that must be what the people want and more power to them. After all, where else are you going to see the slate of GOP Presidential candidates every hour on the hour?

Fair and Balanced

Glenn Beck is the moderate center of Fox News; Bill O’Reilly is its liberal wing.

Adam Serwer in response to Roger Ailes latest maundering about NPR and Nazism. I mean, you knew they both started with an “N” didn’t you? How clear do they have to make it?
I’d say that about sums it up.

What Can’t Be Allowed

Today’s installment of What Greenwald Said:

The double standard in our political discourse – which tolerates and even encourages anti-Muslim bigotry while stigmatizing other forms – has been as beneficial as it has been glaring. NPR’s firing of Juan Williams threatened to change that by rendering this bigotry as toxic and stigmatized as other types. That could not be allowed, which is why the backlash against NPR was so rapid, intense and widespread.

Read the whole thing.

What Can’t Be Allowed

It’s not about race. It’s also not about free speech, as some have charged. Nor is it about an alleged attempt by NPR to stifle conservative views.

NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard on firing Juan Williams. FOXnews supporters seem to have forgotten that his role was as the token liberal over there; how in the hell could his viewpoint be legitimately considered one of stifled conservatism? And NPR seems to have no idea whatsoever re: his position within their organization. Was he a conservative analyst? Apparently not. He was supposed to be a leading voice of the view from nowhere. This “explanation” only serves to make me wonder if anybody ever listened to what he said. Unbelievable.
Likewise, can we clarify for once and for all that freedom of speech applies to your freedom to state an opinion, and not freedom from the implications and outcomes of stating that opinion? One would think this goes without saying, but I have yet to see a MSM outlet reporting anything approaching a baseline understanding of this.
But, by all means, no reason to point at the Rodeo Clown.

Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

Juan Williams, getting himself fired from NPR. You’d think by now that anyone leading a sentence with “I’m not a bigot, but…” would have the sense to pause and reflect.
The sad part is that he’s said worse things than this on NPR. That they have enabled him, for years, to parrot right wing talking points in the guise of “analysis” on NPR, and then to turn around an paint a patina of “the reasonable liberal” on any bit of trash that FOXnews wants to peddle, more or less borders on an unforgivable act for what claims to be a serious news organization. All they did was make him quit identifying himself as an NPR analyst while on FOXnews; instead, they should have fired his ass years ago.
Never fear, though, we’ll always have Cokie “It’s out there” Roberts to fill in the void in our “this is bad for the Democrats” lives.

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.

Sam Adams, clearly winning the “founding father most ahead of his time” award…
Edited in case you don’t click through:

The quotation is not only inaccurate, but it misrepresents Adams’s political situation. He usually led the majority in Boston’s town meeting and in the Massachusetts legislature. He rarely needed to win the majority over to his principles; rather, his challenge was convincing people to follow his plans for action. Therefore, he called over and over for unity, resolve, and mutual sacrifice from the majority, not “an irate, tireless minority" keen to set fires.