The "liberal media" is one of the most enduring myths in political Americana. Despite all evidence to the contrary, which actually shows a mainstream media that constantly tilts right of center, conservatives have managed to say this disinformation enough times that some mistake it for truth. Taking an advantage of mock outrage from Bill O' Reilly and Glen Beck over a Law & Order SVU episode, Keith Olbermann manages to destroy the fabrication of the "liberal media" so utterly, we should never hear mention of it again.
Showing posts with label Conservatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conservatism. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The "Liberal Media" & Other Mythical Beasts
Monday, December 7, 2009
The New McCarthyism
On December 2, 1954, the U.S. Senate voted to censure Sen. Joseph McCarthy, bringing to an end four years of political intimidation and character assassination so ferocious that McCarthy’s name is still synonymous with a particularly destructive form of demagoguery....Today, Joseph McCarthy’s ideological heirs in the Republican Party and right-wing media are using the language and tactics of McCarthy to stir fears that the nation is being destroyed by enemies from within.
So begins a report by the People for the American Way titled Rise of the New McCarthyism: How Right Wing Extremists Try to Paralyze Government Through Ideological Smears and Baseless Attacks. The report not only documents the similarities in tactics used by today's demagogues, but those media outlets and elected officials that either aid or remain silent in the face of their extremism, which only serves to poison the political discourse.
You can read the report here. Excerpts below.
Excerpt from report:
McCarthy tactics then and now
From 1953 to 1955, McCarthy held 117 hearings and even more closed-door interrogations, witch hunts for subversives that thrived on guilt by association: someone had worked for a union, dates a communist, been in a book club that read a book by Marx. Author Johnson writes that reviewing the transcripts of those sessions made it clear that McCarthy, in addition to guilt by association and character assassination, was engaged in an “obsessive hunt for homosexuals,” hounded writers, artists, and composers, attacked the reputations of military leaders.
Today’s McCarthyism has many faces and voices, including the household names of right-wing cable television, a plethora of radio hosts, Religious Right leaders, right-wing organizations and the bogus “grassroots” campaigns they generate – and Members of Congress and other Republican Party officials. Together they engage in character assassination and challenge the loyalty and patriotism of their targets.
Fox's Glenn Beck, who reaches millions of Americans with his televised tirades, has become an almost cartoonish McCarthy clone, with his guilt-by-association charts supposedly detailing the communist connections of White House officials.
Dangerous “elites” subverting the national interest
McCarthy inflamed fears that the nation was being destroyed by enemies from within:
The reason we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because the enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer – the finest homes, the finest college educations, and the finest jobs in Government (and the private sector) we can give.
Sound familiar? The attack on sinister Ivy League-educated elites is one of the essential rhetorical tools of far-right pundits and Republican politicians like Sarah Palin. The most surreal example was Ivy-educated, investment banker, millionaire, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney railing against “eastern elites” at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Republican smear campaigns often make use of this “elites vs. real Americans” theme. Here’s Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice, speaking to senators about then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
Remember the values of the regular folks who sent you to Washington. Don’t vote for a Supreme Court nominee whose values are closer to those of the intellectual elite than to those of your constituents.
McCarthy routinely accused his opponents of subverting the national interest. Typical was his characterization of Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson as someone “who steadfastly serves the interests of nations other than his own.”
That’s a staple of right-wing rhetoric today.
Read more here.
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Other 100 Days
Much ado and fanfare has been made of Obama's first 100 days, with news specials and much analysis. But there's been hardly a blip about the 100 days of the so-called "opposition party." The last 100 days of the GOP have been at times more entertaining and spectacular than anything that has come out of the Obama White House. The lunacy at CPAC. Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party. The bizarre figurehead who thinks he's the self-declared "Hip Hop" leader of the party. Bobby Jindal's dismal rebuttal speech. Sarah Palin, who won't ever go away. GOP Governors who won't take federal money to help their constituents. Never-ending obstructionism. Texas governor Rick Perry threatening secession. Teabag Protests. Arlen Specter. And that's for starters! These past 100 days for the Republicans have been an interesting reality show. Get your popcorn and tune in for what the next 100 might bring.
William Rivers Pitt at Truthout examines this chaotic dance in full after the fold...
The Other 100 Days
Sunday 03 May 2009
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t Columnist
I will not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with respect of the past.- Woodrow Wilson
President Obama marked the 100th day of his term with a prime time press conference on Wednesday night, during which he highlighted a few key accomplishments while reminding the American people that he has quite a lot of crazy crap to deal with. A swine flu outbreak tickling the pandemic edge, an economy still hemorrhaging jobs and money, a ballooning deficit, bad banks, a new eruption of violence in Iraq, an ongoing war in Afghanistan, a looming war and a shaky government in Pakistan, and a bunch of very strange people waving tea bags and yelling about Lord only knows what, because they sure didn't. I got this, Obama seemed to be saying, but damn.
The "100 Days" benchmark is a relic from the first trimester of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal reform push, and is for the most part a meaningless milestone used primarily by news media types to fill air time and column inches. Still, the Obama administration can lay claim to a series of important victories, with more still to come if he keeps the wind at his back. The poll numbers are universally positive, and the American people seem willing so far to be patient and give the process time to play out.
For the Republican Party, however, the last 100 days have been something out of a Roger Corman flick: blood on the walls, body parts everywhere, lots of screaming and no plot to speak of. The last 30 months have brought a litany of disasters for the GOP - electoral wipeouts in '06 and '08, a poisoned party "brand," mass voter defections to the Democrats, the total repudiation of their whole ideological slate, and an ex-president about as popular as the mumps - culminating with a run of incidents since the inauguration so unutterably bad as to beggar likeness.
Rest of article here.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Teabagged Nation
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
After months of licking their collective wounds, and unable to accept the results of Nov. 4th, today the angry white masses took to the streets to declare their freedom from...sanity. Whipped into a furor by media hacks, a right-wing news channel, and a complicit GOP-Corporate smear machine, dozens and hundreds and in a few cases "allegedly" thousands, marched to declare their freedom from "tyranny" and "fascism"--and spew enough hate, incoherent rhetoric and babble to jump start a Palin rally. It seems, unable to win at the ballot box, they've decided to defeat the rest of America (the overwhelming majority) by inducing laughter.
But hey, it's a free country--or at least certainly more free today than it's been in the past eight years. So heck, if right-wingers want to open up the conservative loony-bins and let us gawk at the spectacle that spills out, why not.
More after the fold...
First off, these guys call themselves "teabaggers." That alone can start so much justly deserved juvenile snickering, it's a wonder some reporters can actually talk about it with a straight face.
Seeming to suffer from what some have rightly termed "grassroots envy," the GOP has decided if they can't get a popular groundswell of democratic support to emerge organically from their ranks, they'll just throw a lot of money, media resources and fake websites together to create one. Supposedly, the main concern of these teabaggers is that Obama is going to raise their taxes. Yet, every factual indication is that Obama's tax plans will provide a cut for everyone making under 250,000 a year. The only people who will see a significant increase are those in the top 10%, who will end up paying a tax rate still significantly lower than under Ronald Reagan. So either all these teabaggers are millionaires looking out for their own self-interest and greed, or they're really, really, really...DUMB.
Bernie Horn at Campaign for America's Future notes:Of course, the corporate organizers of the Tax Day Tea Party are neither ignorant nor mad. They have an agenda, but you have to dig a little to find it. Look at their Resources page. It takes you to “The Tool Kit for Tea Parties,” which is a few PDFs on a website called “American Solutions.”
And what are the principal solutions? Cut tax rates for the rich. Cut the corporate tax rate. Abolish the capital gains tax. Abolish the estate tax. Oh, and oppose the Employee Free Choice Act.
Wow! Who in the world is American Solutions? Why it’s Newt Gingrich’s organization. (Click here for a fine picture of Newt grinning like a Cheshire Cat.) The whole tea party scam is designed to push people toward the maddest, craziest, most irresponsible right-wing corporate agenda Gingrich could imagine. And—once again—the lower-income, right wing rank-and-file are just being played as suckers by the rich.
Pathetic.
Some video and photos of what this convergence of faux populism, manufactured irrational anger and ignorance has wrought.
Some background:
David Shuster on how Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, right-wing financiers and FOX News cooked up the entire "teabagging:"
Twas' the night before Teabagging, and Keith Olbermann further exposed this manufactured "movement:"
Full frontal teabagging craziness:
Media Matters highlights FOX News bringing on the crazy:
Oh that's a gem. A definite keeper:
Straight to the point nuttiness. I respect that:
Crazy with an artistic flair:
Crazy with Photoshop skills:
Please, please, please... leave Jesus out of your teabagging:
Yeah. Because you know how Obama's really murdering babies? SCHIP.
Teabagging party or Gay Pride Parade?
No, seriously. Someone cue-up Diana Ross and get this guy a feather boa already:
Yeah. This unfortunately is where lunacy can become disturbing:
More gun violence threats with that tea:
Yes. That tactic worked well in the 08 elections. Keep pitching it:
That was almost some clever race-baiting. Almost:
Thanks to Dkos, Huffington Post and Media Matters for the material.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
A Danger to the Republic ?
Watching Glenn Beck of Fox News rant about "progressive fascism" - and muse about armed insurrection - or listening to mainstream pundits prattle on about Barack Obama as the "most polarizing President ever," it is hard to escape the conclusion that today's U.S. news media represents a danger to the Republic.
No kidding! So writes Robert Parry at Consortium News, recounting the absolutely dismal nature of current corporate media. As if the cheerleaders on FOX openly calling for rebellion over ridiculous faux populist claims wasn't bad enough, along with GOP politicians who fan those flames, the allegedly more "moderate" media networks continuously parrot this rumor mill. Over at CNN and MSNBC, figures like Lou Dobbs and Joe Scarborough use their platforms to first smear President Obama, and then (in a move of sheer audacity) claim he's "polarizing." Most perplexing, these fearmongers claim they are the victims--invoking charges of "McCarthyism" with the straight face of a Klan member claiming to be a victim of reverse racism. Valid criticism is one thing; and it's welcomed of any political figure. But the vitrol being whipped up by FOX News and pundits on other media channels does little more than expose what blogger Jill Tubman rightly calls, "the rotting racist underbelly" of white angry conservatism. With all this media-driven hate, it's little wonder that two high-profile mass shootings in a year have been linked to angry white males out to kill liberals, or who feared losing their precious guns under some Obama "dictatorship." The question remains, why, even with a Democrat in the White House, and a Democratic Congress, does the American corporate media still feel a need to give a soapbox for the farmost fringes of the right? And does the Left truly take these provocateurs as seriously as we should?
Robert Parry's article after the fold...
US News Media Fails America, Again
By Robert Parry
April 13, 2009
Watching Glenn Beck of Fox News rant about “progressive fascism” – and muse about armed insurrection – or listening to mainstream pundits prattle on about Barack Obama as the “most polarizing President ever,” it is hard to escape the conclusion that today’s U.S. news media represents a danger to the Republic.
By and large, the Washington press corps continues to function within a paradigm set in the 1980s, mostly bending to the American Right, especially to its perceived power to destroy mainstream journalistic careers and to grease the way toward lucrative jobs for those who play ball.
The parameters set by this intimidated (or bought-off) news media, in turn, influence how far Washington politicians feel they can go on issues, like health-care reform or environmental initiatives, or how risky they believe it might be to pull back from George W. Bush’s “war on terror” policies.
Democratic hesitancy on these matters then enflames the Left, which expresses its outrage through its own small media, reprising the old theme that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between Democrats and Republicans – a reaction that further weakens chances for any meaningful reform.
This vicious cycle has repeated itself again and again since the Reagan era, when the Right built up its intimidating media apparatus – a vertically integrated machine which now reaches from newspapers, magazines and books to radio, TV and the Internet. The Right accompanied its media apparatus with attack groups to go after troublesome mainstream journalists.
Meanwhile, the American Left never took media seriously, putting what money it had mostly into “organizing” or into direct humanitarian giving. Underscoring the Left’s fecklessness about media, progressives have concentrated their relatively few media outlets in San Francisco, 3,000 miles away – and three hours behind – the news centers of Washington and New York.
By contrast, the Right grasped the importance of “information warfare” in a modern media age and targeted its heaviest firepower on the frontlines of that war – mostly the political battlefields of Washington – thus magnifying the influence of right-wing ideas on policymakers.
One consequence of this media imbalance is that Republicans feel they can pretty much say whatever they want – no matter how provocative or even crazy – while Democrats must be far more circumspect, knowing that any comment might be twisted into an effective attack point against them.
full article here.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Pulling the Curtain on the Conservative Freak Show
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
This week Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck got schooled. But if you're expecting they were taken to the whipping shed by their mainstream media news cohorts, think again. Instead, the prime-time and late-night comedians did the work journalists should have. MSNBC's David Shuster, sitting in for Keith Olbermann, provides the highlights of the conservative "blowhard lunatics" very bad week, as they are taken to task by David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
CPAC Looney Fest
While the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has often been a gathering of delusion and right-wing quackery, this year's will probably go down as the looniest of them all. From a bouncing Rush Limbaugh mocking Vietnam veterans and once again calling for the failure of an American President, to former UN ambassador (appointed) John Bolton joking (to much audience laughter) about the nuking of an American city, it was a bizarre sight that can only be termed "a hot mess." Oh, let's not forget Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann's attempt at urban black face in her declaration to the first "black" RNC chair Michael Steele, "You be da man!"--as part of the GOP's declared "Hip Hop makeover." And I haven't even mentioned the presence of the unstable and deranged Ann Coulter! Perhaps the Young Turks had the acronym for CPAC right- Crazy People Are Coming. Oh yeah, speaking of which, Joe the Plumber was there...speaking...seriously.
I was going to blog longer on this, but thankfully Jon Stewart does it in a more succinct and funnier fashion than I ever could.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Right-Wing Shill Gets Surrrved!
While I missed alot of posts in May, this one I most regret...
Someone call Hell and check the temp. Because today I have to give Chris Matthews--he of MSNBC Hardball who usually annoys me to no end with his ceaseless prattling about *nothing*--his just deserved props. As one of my least favorite media pundits, Matthews admittedly became my hero for about *a few minutes* as he completely eviscerates right wing radio talking head Kevin James who in his screaming about Obama, appeasement and Hitler, doesn't even know who Neville Chamberlain is. Keep in mind, this headcase used to be a federal prosecutor!
There's nothing down here! What you looking for? Go back up there and watch that ass-whoopin' again!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Christian Zionists?- Scarier Than You Think!
And you were scared about Jeremiah Wright? Here's something to really keep you up at night- Pastor John Hagee and CUFI (Christians United for Israel). Unlike Wright, who was preaching a social gospel of defending the poor and defenseless, Hagee and CUFI call for pre-emptive strikes on Iran and global war on Islam that will draw in Israel and bring on Armageddon. And here's the kicker, they have the ear of the powerful, with not only Presidential candidate John McCain but numerous other GOP members (war hawks, neoconservatives, Israel hawks) running to kow-tow to them at every turn. Forget Jeremiah Wright, CUFI and Hagee are the REAL DEAL type of scary, and the ones you ought to be worried about.
Don’t know how many of you watch Bill Moyers, but you should--as it is one of the last bastions of journalistic integrity left in the media. In case you didn’t catch last week’s episode, please stop by and watch the whole expose on Pastor John Hagee, leader of CUFI (Christians United For Israel). A few weeks back, Hagee endorsed GOP Presidential candidate John McCain.
In the midst of media attention on Sen. Barack Obama’s ties (real and nebulous) to figures like Minister Louis Farrakhan or Pastor Jeremiah Wright, the link of much of the GOP to Pastor John Hagee is getting remarkably short thrift. While Hagee was described as an anti-Catholic bigot, whom McCain was later forced to distance himself from (partly), the news media wholly neglected to delve into his beliefs, and that of CUFI, in full. Hagee and his organization are at the forefront of what is known as the Christian Zionist Movement--who preach a mixture of political and spiritual support for Israel that is based on extremism, anti-Arabism, Islamaphobia, neo-conservative ideals of pre-emptive war and unbridled militarism. There is even a strong strain of anti-Semitism in their ideology, as part of their support for Israel is their idea of the role Jews must play in End Times prophecy--which will "allegedly" result in the mass death of most Jews, except for the ones who accept Jesus in the end.
Whoa! And the media is obsessed with a bunch of brothers in suits and bowties slanging bean pies? And of a preacher of a small congregation in Chi-town?
Forget anything you might hear about the "dangers" of Farrakhan for comments he made some 24 years ago, and has since recanted for (in his own way), or the "radical" view points of Jeremiah Wright---Pastor John Hagee and his Christian Zionist crew are the REAL DEAL type of scary, on a level that is beyond disturbing. Hagee and CUFI have the ear of the powerful, with not only John McCain but numerous other GOP members (war hawks, neoconservatives, Israel hawks) running to kow-tow to them at every turn, while their leader continually calls for pre-emptive strikes on Iran and the destruction of the entire Muslim world.
Watching Bill Moyers I half expected Hagee and his congregants to start "worshipping the bomb" like the radiation-disfigured mutants on the Planet of the Apes saga. One of them, a Lebanese Christian, sounded like a self-hating Arabic Ann Coulter--calling the Muslim world barbaric and without souls, words that are dangerously "exterminationist" in their rhetoric. But these guys don’t look like monsters. Instead, like the Cylons, they look just like us (they even got black folks!)--and more important still, they have a plan!
Peep the video and/or transcript in the link below. Or watch part 1 (of 5) from Youtube above. You can find the remaining video at: Hagee: Strike Iran 'for Israel' on Moyers - part 1 of 5
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL reports on the politically powerful group Christians United for Israel, whose leader, Pastor John Hagee recently endorsed John McCain for the presidency.
Bill Moyers: Christians United For Israel
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Clarence Thomas- The Anti-Black
I was young in my political years when the drama erupted over Clarence Thomas. Back then I was scrambling to figure out what was meant by terms like "high tech lynching" and why anyone would so wantonly abuse a coca cola can. Years later I would see Thomas depicted on the cover of the now defunct Emerge magazine, in one instance wearing an Aunt Jemima "hanker-chief" on his head, and on another refashioned as a modern-day Lawn Jockey. Clarence Thomas was and remains what one writer called "the most despised black man in black America." After years of watching Thomas in action as a Supreme Court Justice, I am no longer remotely confused by the resentment he garners in the black community.
Not only does Thomas seem to find a contrarian view to everything that hints at black progressive thought, but his voting record shows him to be antithetical to *any* form of progressive politics. Sadly, the days of Emerge are gone now (the sham-mockery that destroyed one of the best political black magazines is for another blog), but there are enough independent e-zines that have risen to the challenge in the virtual world. Probably one of the most outspoken is the Black Agenda Report, edited by Glen Ford. Described as the "Journal of African-American Political Thought and Action," the Black Agenda--and Glen Ford in particular--pulls no punches in their analysis. The following is a partial repost of Ford's review of Clarence Thomas' recently released autobiography/political polemic, My Grandfather's Son. Click the link provided to access BAR and the full article.
Clarence Thomas, the 'Anti-Black'
October 10, 2007
By BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
The most blatant and unashamed African American-hater on the U.S. Supreme Court - and probably on the national scene - is Clarence Thomas, a psychologically damaged ally of the worst sections of the white ruling class. Thomas is often described as a "complicated" personality, but that's just a euphemism for a crazy self-loathing that he projects on the rest of Black America. Dirt-poor Pin Point, Georgia, the peers of his youth who called him "America's Blackest Child," and an overbearing grandfather who wanted more than young Clarence was willing to give, made Thomas useful to no one but Black people's most implacable foes, for whom he has become a deranged pit bull. Viewers of 60 Minutes were permitted to learn none of that, as CBS circled its protective wagons around the Most Despised Black Man in Black America.
Clarence Thomas is a deeply troubled man - a grotesquely twisted, "Down Home"-grown Black personality at war with the demons of his dark-skinned, dirt poor youth. Although Thomas has accumulated many "enemies" - earned and imagined - since his entrance to the white world in the 10th grade in Savannah, Georgia, his core pathology is Black-directed - a trait so obvious it was immediately perceived by a succession of white Republican racists who rocketed him to the U.S. Supreme Court with obscene haste to become a hit-man against his own people.
Thomas is a perverse right-wing joke played on Blacks and, being of above average intelligence despite his mental illness, he knows it. But it is a knowledge he cannot endure, a burden that has made him a pathological liar, who blurts out contradictions so antithetical to each other that they cannot possibly coexist in the same brain without a constant roiling and crashing that puts him at flight from himself and all those who remind him of his now hopelessly entangled torments and tormentors.
If African Americans had our own insane asylum, Thomas would be welcomed in and cared for, with proper compassion for the sorely afflicted. But there are no such facilities available to treat a man who forgives whites for Jim Crow and every other aspect of past and present discrimination - indeed, embraces the most racist among them - but can never forgive Blacks for the way they treated him in Savannah, Georgia and the outlying shanty town of Pin Point.
for full article:
Clarence Thomas- The Anti-Black
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