Category: Media

Texas Representative Lamar Smith has announced the formation of the Media Fairness Caucus in the House of Representatives. This would be a pretty funny venture if only because he asserts that the mission of his caucus is for…

“…the American people to get the facts and then be allowed to make up their own minds, not be told what to think. When you have network news programs and front pages of national newspapers reading like an editorial page or sounding like an oral editorial, then the American people aren’t getting the facts, they’re not getting the objective news. They’re getting opinion. And if all they do is hear is one side, that does have an impact over time.”

It sounds like Smith is launching a war against Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. But that can’t be, can it?

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) once again showed America, and his home state of South Carolina, the face of a corrupt politician.

GRAHAM: The reason I don’t want to go back any more than we have already done is because I know what happened. Out of fear, we overreacted. … They took a view of the law that I think was aggressive, and I would not have approached it that way. Right after 9/11, we all thought we were going to be hit again. So as we go back and try to hold people criminally liable. I think we’re doing a lot of damage to the country, because their mistakes were not criminal mistakes. They were mistakes made out of fear.

The rest, as they say, is history…  

Throughout much of last year’s presidential campaign, and right on through the first weeks of Barack Obama’s administration, the media has persistently peddled the falsehood that America is a center-right nation, politically and socially. Now Media Matters has published a study (full pdf here) that thoroughly debunks this notion, and they do it by using surveys and facts that realistically portray the ideological character of the country – something the media may want to check in to.

The Media Matters study is a comprehensive look at the American electorate. It covers virtually every one of the most debated subjects of public discourse: Size of government; health care; taxes; abortion; gay rights. It also examines the demographics of age, ethnicity, gender, and geography. And every case the evidence shows that America is a progressive, and yes, a center-left nation.

And nowhere is this more misunderstood than in the media…

I usually really like Bill Maher, but today I think he is confused.  Tonight on the “New Rules” feature of Real Time, he started off his final new rule by saying that we can’t solve our problems by electing superheroes.  Spiderman, he said, punches bank robbers in the balls, while Obama just writes them a check.  And he went on to give a really terrible rant about governmental reform that was just dead wrong.

Crossposted at Dailykos.com

Oh the defiling of that most glorious and blessed day in New American history! The pissy pants, red faced outrage is careening throughout the reich wing blogosphere and their multi-million dollar a year facist house pundits today. The audacity of that evil black woman Wanda Sykes to compare the head of the Republican Party Lardass Limbaugh to Osama bin Laden, and to do so at GASP…the White House Correspondent’s Dinner was blasphemy of the hightest form. Sykes had a ball in firing up the conservative BBQ pit for a pig roast:

“Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you’re saying, ‘I hope America fails,’ you’re like, ‘I don’t care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq.’ He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason,”

“He’s not saying anything differently than what Usama bin Laden is saying,” “You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight.”

“Rush Limbaugh, ‘I hope the country fails’ — I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? … He needs a good waterboarding, that’s what he needs.”

Glenn Beck’s program on Fox News is a daily cavalcade of crazy and yesterday was no exception. Beck’s guest was Scott Levenson, the national spokesman for ACORN. As ACORN is a perennial target of Fox News paranoiacs like Beck, there was bound to be a major train wreck looming. And Beck didn’t disappoint (video).

The occasion for the visit was a recent report that ACORN employees in Nevada had been charged with violations related to voter registration. This is where panicky right wingers rush to mischaracterize such charges as voter fraud, when in fact, none occurred. So Beck was true to form as he asserted the same old tired lies in his signature juvenile style – substituting funny faces and noises for rational debate.

The real comedy came when Beck attempted to offer an analogy that was ludicrous on its face. Levenson defended ACORN as a victim of employees who failed to comply with the organization’s standards. Beck sought to argue that ACORN was responsible for the misbehavior of their employees and ran a tape of the infamous Burger King bather (who had his buddies shoot a video of him bathing in the restaurant’s sink) to make a point that must have made sense somewhere in his cartoon brain.

Actually, Beck’s point had something to do with ACORN’s management being deficient because fourteen or so ACORN employees, out of some 13,000, were alleged to have submitted fake registration forms. Beck contended that this proves it was not a case of a rogue employee, but an unacceptable pattern of malfeasance. And after telling Levenson to “pipe down” and cutting off his mic, Beck said:

“If you had that many employees at Burger King bathing in the sink, would you ever eat a burger there? Ever? No. This is unreasonable to believe he had that many bad employees.”

Well, I did a quick Google search looking for criminally wayward Burger King employees and found this:

• Burger King employee arrested in homicide
• Burger King employee arrested for giving away free meals, stealing
• Burger King Employee Arrested After Jumping Through Drive-Up Window to Attack a Customer
• Burger King employee arrested for serving pot
• Burger King employee arrested for alleged identity theft
• Ex-Employee, Pal Arrested in Burger King Kidnap Case
• Burger King employees arrested for faking robbery
• Coke Being Sold At Burger King
• Burger King Franchise Pays $400,000 for Alleged Sexual Harassment of teens
• 27 illegal aliens working at seven Delaware Burger Kings

Granted murder, drugs, robbery, etc., are not exactly in the same league as unlawful bathing, but some people might consider those to be serious offenses too. It should also be noted that the Burger King violators represent only those with the sort of criminal profile likely to be written up in the news. There are surely corporate personnel who have engaged in more mundane activities ranging from pilfering office supplies to extortion or other financial improprieties.