Supplemental: Ghosts, goblins and uncles are out there tonight!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014

Rachel does it again:
Last Friday evening’s Maddow Show was a gruesome hour.

As Maddow started this 14-minute segment, she introduced a scary demographic from “an alternate universe.”

We refer, of course, to “your older male relative”—your scary, crazy old uncle. Warning! These demons were destined to play a major role in another in Maddow’s string of large factual groaners:
MADDOW (10/24/14): OK. Time to visit an alternate universe. Time to visit the email inbox of your older male relative.

Let’s call him your uncle who watches Fox News all day, the one who makes you half-love Thanksgiving dinner with your extended family and half-dread it all year long because he’s going to be there.

In the alternate universe of your Fox News-watching conservative uncle’s email inbox, in that world of aggrieved conservative, all-capital-letters paranoia, this is the biggest deal in the world right now. This is official surveillance camera footage shot inside the board of elections in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Now, it’s surveillance video, so it’s a little herky-jerky. But you can clearly see people entering the facility, coming through the doors. And they’re coming in there to drop off their ballots for the election.

This county has a collection box set up. You see person after person coming through the doors and dropping off their ballots.

But, then, in this video—Dun, dun, dunnnnnn!—there’s this guy. And your Fox News-watching uncle is very upset by this guy right now.

As you can see, the guy is wearing shorts and flip-flops and a t-shirt. The t-shirt is from a group called Citizens for a Better Arizona.
Maddow was having some fun with another group of Those People. In this case, she was talking about your “older male relative,” who lives in the world of “all-capital-letters paranoia.”

Because your uncle watches Fox all day, Maddow says he is very upset about something in Arizona. Before we see where the ginormous groaner comes in, let’s spend a bit more time on the unpleasant portrait she drew.

Maddow has superb manners—when people are physically present. At the same time, she often displays terrible judgment concerning various groups of Those People out in the rube-y red states. Let’s say she isn’t obsessively loving toward the large groups of people she loathes.

As she continued, she kept discussing your older uncle. Along with his paranoia, it seems he’s a smidge racist too:
MADDOW: The frenzy started spread at Arizona right wing blog. It spread from there and all the national right-wing blogs. And now, I guarantee you, your aforementioned conservative uncle is painting his Facebook wall with this story, and with this damning surveillance camera footage, as we speak. Did I mention that the guy in the video is clearly Hispanic?
Rachel guaranteed it! Your paranoid uncle is upset because the guy in Arizona is Hispanic!

As she continued the segment, Maddow kept sprinkling in additional insults about your older male relative. Apparently, women no longer watch Fox:
MADDOW: The crime of legally participating in the normal voting process while appearing to be Hispanic has blown up on the right this week like a dirty bomb. And your uncle is not going to pass you the marshmallow yams at Thanksgiving this year until he gets a straight answer from you about what really happened in Maricopa County because he saw the tape.

So from the alternate universe of America’s right-wing media, you should know that that is part one of what they rolled out this week. But it is a week and a half before the national election, and your paranoid conservative uncle’s inbox does really need filling at this point in time.

[...]

The election is a week and a half away and your uncle needs reading material.

[...]

To be fair, the Republican Party proper is not responsible for fringy right-wing blogs and the stuff that they make up on the Fox News Channel and your uncle and his “Where’s the birth?” t-shirt, right? I mean, that is what’s going on in the right, but you can’t expect the Republican Party to answer for all of that, just as you don’t expect the Democratic Party to answer for the whole left.
She closed with a screed about the way Fox has been making up facts. “This is nuts this year,” she said. “Tell your uncle I said so.”

To her credit, Rachel didn’t engage in a week and a half of dick jokes this time—while pretending she’s deeply embarrassed by all the dick jokes, of course. That said, this is a very dumb, unpleasant way for an alleged progressive to behave toward a large demographic—toward a very large group of people, toward people who are people pretty much like she is.

Maddow displays very strange judgment about matters of this type. That said, let’s get to the gigantic groaner which lay at the heart of this segment.

According to Maddow, your paranoid, racist, Fox-watching uncle is very upset about that tape from Arizona. Because he “watches Fox News all day,” he isn’t going to pass you the yams until you explain that videotape from Maricopa County.

Did we mention that the guy in the tape is clearly Hispanic?

Here’s the problem:

When we watched this segment last Friday, we didn’t think we’d ever seen anything on Fox about the stupid, manufactured non-issue in Arizona.

That said, we don’t watch Fox in a systematic way. So we decided to do a very strange thing—we decided to check.

We used a simple search term: “Arizona.” Searching on Nexis back through October 1, we found no sign that the issue in question had ever been mentioned on Fox.

We found no mentions by Bill O’Reilly or by Megyn Kelly. We found no mentions by Sean or Greta.

Unless Nexis is crazily wrong, the topic hasn’t been mentioned on The Five or on Special Report. Neil Cavuto hadn’t mentioned it either. (He airs daily at 4.)

Let’s be fair! Nexis only covers Fox programs which air between the hours of 4 PM and 5 AM. But in the 13 hours per day that Nexis does cover, we found no sign that the topic in question had been mentioned on Fox at all.

Maddow did catch one error by Fox in this insult-laden segment. Megyn Kelly had made an error about a voting procedure in Colorado.

For once in her recent life, Maddow got something right!

That said, Maddow led the segment with the Arizona hubbub. She guaranteed that your crazy older uncle will hassle you about it this year—because he watches Fox.

We can’t say that no one has ever played this card on the daytime side of Fox. That said, Maddow offered no examples. We were expected to take her guarantees as a matter of trust.

We’ve long since stopped expecting Maddow to get her basic facts right. In our view, her political insights are about as useful as those from a Ouija board.

That said, her programs since last Friday night have been a blunderbuss of embarrassing errors, even as she keeps warning her viewera about all the errors on Fox.

Fox does make a ton of errors; increasingly, so does Maddow. The more troubling part of last Friday’s segment was her unpleasant mocking of your older male relative, the one who is racist and paranoid.

(This Thanksgiving, tell him what Rachel did! At long last, he’ll have something to be paranoid about!)

Maddow’s incessant clowning and self-involvement are now being matched by an almost pathological disregard for facts. By the way:

This Wednesday night, she made another groaning error about the things they're supposedly saying on Fox. As she grinningly staged that embarrassing mess, she sat beneath a large billboard:

“WHAT YOUR UNCLE WHO WATCHES FOX ALL DAY IS UPSET ABOUT NOW”

Truly, this is a bad idea. Both parts of this bullshit should stop.

86 comments:

  1. To be fair to Rachel Bob, at no point in the posted excerpts does Maddow claim that the video was shown or discussed on FOX news. She may be intentionally hoping that the viewer will come away with that impression, but she never actually states that directly. Instead, she repeatedly states that your racist uncle is getting this information from his email inbox.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And Somerby may be intentionally hoping that by writing the way he does, the reader will come away with the impression he wants. If so that makes him what he claims Maddow to be. If not it makes him a prime example of why "We The People Are...." what he claims them to be.

      Delete
    2. False equivalence.

      Delete
    3. True. Bob doesn't make 77 cents for every dollar Maddow gets paid. But of course she has a better education and didn't take time off for a comedy tour.

      Delete
    4. Hahahaha. Women's problems in the workforce are so funny.

      What better way to avoid failure than to pretend you aren't really trying to be a political comedian like Jon Stewart while engaging in schtick that is neither journalism nor humor? She thinks she is on a comedy tour but she doesn't know how to be funny -- and she pretends to be a journalist but doesn't know how to do that either. Very sad and painful to watch.

      Delete
  2. Cranky Old Bob, with his deranged Maddow obsession, fucks up again. Nowhere in the passages he quotes does she say this appeared on Fox News. I'd watch the link he provides, but I will admit I find her unwatchable for reasons of my own. I will, though, trust Bob this far, and no farther: if she had said it was on Fox News, he'd have quoted the passage, instead of playing slick little games, as he does here. At any rate, a search for "Citizens for a Better Arizona" shows this exact event is all over the conservative media, as an example of "voter fraud." It's being mentioned on many liberal sites, as well, as an example of conservative paranoia that feeds vote suppression. "Your Fox News watching uncle" is a type. Is there any doubt that the kind of person who reads those websites, and gets those e-mails, also watches Fox News? Is it Maddow, or cranky old Bob who is way, waaay off base here? Do Bob's endless anti-Maddow screeds do anything but make Bob happy? Do they advance progressive interests? Enlighten anyone? Liberals are DEFENDING VOTER RIGHTS, and it, like everything else liberals do, just pisses Bob off, and is a sign of the coming apocalypse. Better to let conservatives fuck over minority voting rights than attack cranky old white people -- people in many ways like like Bob -- for actively trying to disenfranchise those brown-skinned folk. Because in the world of Bob, the votes of brown-skinned folk are taken for granted. The only votes worth pandering over are those of white people.

    Bob is a type all his own: A liberal-hating, MSNBC watcher. He should drop the pretense of being a liberal, and start posting on WorldNetDaily or whatever that site is -- where, I might add, this event is being discussed as I type this. They might even pay him. And he'd be surrounded by a lot of other cranky old white men, who presumably hate Maddow nearly as much as he does.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You write:

      ""Your Fox News watching uncle" is a type."

      Then you write:

      "Liberals are DEFENDING VOTER RIGHTS"

      Nonsense. We liberals are famous for staging jihads which alienate average voters.

      Please, go awry.

      Delete
    2. You cannot further alienate Fox News watching uncles. They already know everything, and one of the things they know is that liberals are stupid and evil. Bob, too, knows this.

      To put it another way, Fox News watchers are NOT average voters, unless you're Cranky Old Bob, looking for something to screech about.

      Delete
    3. Name calling never convinced anyone of anything.

      Delete
  3. OMB (Doubling Down on Things Rachel Didn't Say With the OTB)

    Did we mention in the last post on Maddow that Bob attributed things to her she didn't say? We seem to think we did. Apparently we think
    we suggested Maddow never mentioned Stuart Varney of FOX but BOB invoked his name 18 times in a post designed to prove he never said things Maddow never said he said.

    In this post BOB goes to great lengths to demonstrate that FOX news never covered the guy who apparently is the one Hispanic Maddow did not eliminate back on September 30 when BOB headlined "Rachel Maddow Elimninates All Hispanics!

    BOB has repeated his Varney error. Maddow never claimed FOX covered it. She showed the conservative blogs which did cover it. In fact, when she segued to coverage of FOX, she clearly reiterated the Arizona story was coming from conservative blogs. Then she covered a story run by Megyn Kelly on FOX, which BOB gave Maddow a half a line of props for being right about. BOB of course never mentioned why your Howler never covered this FOX mistake to begin with. He then moved back to Maddow and skipped her coverage of Governor Christie altogether, which was another third of the segment.

    Truly this is BOB's idea of what is wrong with Maddow; Putting words in the mouths of others. Except he is the one who is doing it. Twice.
    Both parts of this bullshit can't be stopped. So we just pointed them out.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like my uncle the child molester a lot better than my uncle who watches FOX. But he can't come to Thanksgiving because of the ankle bracelet. He watches his computer. The uncle who is a child molester that is. The uncle who watches FOX watches FOX. And the NFL. But only on FOX.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dude, get a grip. You don't seem to grasp the difference between a Fox-viewer type and an actual report on Fox. You also don't understand the "just asking the question" game Fox plays with lower thirds, which was what the Varney gas prices segment was about. And while you're busy ranting at a liberal host, you finally got around to noting she caught a self-proclaimed "straight news anchor" making up a law about voting, then "asking" if it could lead to fraud. For a liberal, you're awfully focused on freaking out about an MSNBC opinion host while habitually ignoring news anchors on Fox propagandizing for their GOP masters.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Could you link to examples where FNC news anchor Shepherd Smith "propagandizing" for the GOP?

      FNC routinely has on the usual liberal pundits, liberal politician, liberal Hollywood types for their pov. MSNBC is merely an echo chamber for the benighted liberal ideology.

      Delete
  6. The jihad against old white men continues (hopefully they'll go easier on me when I become one -- though I am an uncle .... Gulp! ...)

    ReplyDelete
  7. If you were a monkey's uncle you could pack them in for Grampa Rufus Choates Somerby's show.

    Grampa Rufus. Another old white man. And the perfect personal segue to Ben Bradlee breaks in the War Against Maddow.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The anti-Bob brigade has two themes: (1) Somerby is a hypocrite and does all the stuff he criticizes; (2) Somerby is obsessed with whoever he happens to be criticizing and biased against whatever demographic they belong to. How do any of these complaints refute or rehabilitate the wrongdoing of various semi-competent journalists? Ridiculing Somerby doesn't make Maddow more watchable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In two cases this week Somerby has misrepresented the premise of Maddow segments, then called her a liar. If he wants to be The Great Liberal Who Fact-Checks Liberals, he needs to try harder. While he's at it, he might want to keep an eye on supposed straight news anchors who are peddling propaganda barely worthy of a cheesy attack ad.

      Delete
    2. Tell me, in this post of Bob's, what did Maddow do that needs refutation or rehabilitation?

      Delete
    3. Somerby has a few ongoing points that are in no way affected by whether he has misjudged Maddow this time, or said something churlish about a Yale grad or someone's house. I am asking why people here latch onto that like pit bulls while ignoring his important points.

      I dislike Maddow pretty intensely but I've never thought that was what this blog is about. It isn't about baiting Cicero or DavidinCA either. This is all distraction.

      Delete
    4. I couldn't care less about "ongoing points". If you're going to claim a TV host has misrepresented something, you better have a claim. Rachel used the stock character "Fox-watching uncle" as a vehicle for crazy voter fraud crap said character would be seeing in Red Blog World lately. She never stated the story appeared on Fox, and it's stupid to imply she did. An important component of media criticism is to have a basic understanding of the media you're watching. Somerby did not understand the segment, then reviewed a version of it he created himself.

      Delete
    5. You are quibbling over whether something was stated or implied. Weasel words don't get someone off the hook if the implication is plain. There is even a Supreme Court decision to that effect. But why is anybody arguing about that and ignoring the point, which is the offensive characterization of family -- who can be persuaded if accorded respect instead of treated like an ugly stereotype.

      Delete
    6. I'm quite content to address the central premise of this post, which is that Rachel said something was on Fox that wasn't. She didn't do that, and you can tell because the video she used isn't from Fox. She most certainly would have gone with the Fox version, replete with idiot anchors expressing patented outrage, if it existed. The man misunderstood the bit.

      Delete
    7. Her comments brought out a lot of ageist attitude in this comment section. A poor strategy to win people over.

      Delete
    8. I'm not trying to win people over, the presumption is that one liberal is talking to another one. The plan is to correct the record. There's a red blog out there which takes great joy in linking to this site to prove things against liberal commentators, and I would prefer that he not have inaccurate information to cackle about to his gleeful conservative minions. This post about Rachel claiming a story was on Fox is inaccurate. She did not make that claim.

      Delete
    9. Perhaps we need better commentators. Her stemwinder storyteller segments are unwatchable.

      Delete
    10. You don't like segments of her show, so the whole thing must suck. This is Bobism: focus on the part, and pretend it's the whole. Or, as happened here, make shit up, and pretend it's the whole.

      For the record, I've never seen any more than bits and pieces of her show, and intensely dislike her manner, to the point where I won't watch anything she does. And I also find Bob's obsession with her to be disturbing, and pointless. Like her or not, she's a minor figure (Certainly compared to "Mr O"), and to pretend, as Bob does more days than not, that she is singlehandedly destroying liberalism, is insane. "Mr O" does more, on his worst day, to roadblock liberalism than Maddow does in her best (or worst, depending on your perspective) week. Or year. Pretending that you want to help progressivism by endlessly battering away at Maddow, while giving a pass to people who are devoted to and actively going about tearing progressivism down, is the action of a kook.

      Delete
    11. She is not a minor figure. She is a representative of the liberal viewpoint, both on her own shown and in the regular appearances she makes on other people's shows. The things she is criticized for doing, I also see people like Digby, Kevin Drum, and other progressives doing on their blogs. Somerby is trying to change broader, more representative behaviors, not just aiming at Maddow.

      No "pass" is given to those attacking progressivism. They are well-defended by sites like Media Matters. Somerby's ongoing message is that progressives (liberals) need to better appeal to the mass of people who don't already strongly identify with that label and they cannot do so without examining how they are currently pushing away such voters.

      In CA, there is a close race for Supt of Public Instruction, between Torlakson and Tuck (the reform movement candidate). There are 44% undecided voters in that race with the declared voters tied. I'm sure there are others in a similar situation across the country. Every person alienated by the nonsense of the left will be a vote against our candidate, who must be laboriously won back by local efforts. Maddow and other highly visible liberals need to get their act together. Every time Bill Maher takes one of his self-promoting controversial stands, he pushes away voters that we need to win elections -- to the extent that the public sees him as liberal (I think he is not). What Maddow says and does matters and it will matter more in 2016.

      Delete
    12. Going back to the opening comment in this thread, ridiculing Somerby doesn't make Maddow more watchable. Ridiculing Somerby making a mistake while ridiculing Maddow makes the commenter very much like Somerby.

      Delete
    13. @ 10:37

      Please explain for all of us how making erroneous charges, as Mr. Somerby does repeatedly, makes liberals hone their arguments in a way which appeals to anyone.

      Delete
    14. These tiny "gotcha"s you guys have been describing do not rise to the level of erroneous charges or even mistakes.

      Delete
    15. Denial is another characteristic of your Uncle who watches FOX.

      Delete
    16. "These tiny gotchas" are part of a pattern that points to a behavior --itself the product of a mindset-- that doesn't help anyone.

      Once upon a time, Bob was one of the few bloggers who mattered. You could come here and know he was going to talk about something useful, and from a perspective no one else had. Even then, he criticized the left. And they were good criticisms. Sometimes, he criticized the media. And they, too, were good criticisms. Rarely, he criticized the right, and those criticisms, too, made sense. Now, all he does is criticize the left -- particularly Maddow -- and complain about Al Gore. When he tries to do more mainstream stuff, it's obvious his heart isn't in it, and as he types it out, he has one eye on MSNBC, looking for something else to enrage him so he can make a new post venting his spleen on the latest folly from the left -- his true passion these days. That's not the approach someone who matters would take. He really should go to WorldNetDaily or one of those kinds of sites, or stop pretending here to approach things from a left wing perspective. The trolls he has here would multiply, his critics would disappear, and he could spend all day getting tongue baths from people who actually share his outlook. Oh, he'd have to drop his Al Gore obsession, because they wouldn't tolerate it in the slightest, but that seems to me a small price to pay.

      Delete
    17. I have a better idea. Why don't you just go somewhere else and leave this blog to those of us who still value it?

      Delete
    18. I imagine for the same reasons Bob doesn't leave Maddow to those who value her. Try to think that one through. Challenging, I know.

      Delete
    19. How many times must people point out that Maddow is a public cable network talk show host whereas Somerby runs a special-interest blog?

      Delete
    20. Both express opinions about politics in an open forum. Once again, it's challenging, I know.

      Delete
  9. Atrios has been describing the problems with the Philadelphia schools, starting with a report on how the test scores have been declining over three years of underfunding and charter schools.

    Today he says:

    "As I said before, I do think a lot of eventheliberals who used to be pretty positive about the whole "school reform" thing have just gone chasing other new shiny balls. Philadelphia is a "school reformers" paradise. They got - and keep getting - what they wanted. All of the predictable things have come to pass. Much corruption in the charter schools. Money siphoned off from the actual public schools. Constant turmoil for students as schools (both charter and public) close, either by fiat or because they collapse. No evidence that educational performance has improved (the opposite). "

    The stuff Somerby talks about here on a regular basis matters. To real people. So, when KZ focuses on some specious triviality in an attempt to undermine Somerby's overall credibility, remember that this game is being played in ways that hurt actual children.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Somerby has done nothing to help children except, perhaps, when he left teaching.

      Delete
    2. And you know this how?

      Good lord you trolls are mean, empty people!

      Delete
    3. SOME of the stuff matters. Bob tried focusing on education, and got ignored. One of his points, about liberals not really caring about the education of poor kids, is correct. Actually, most liberals don't care about all that much, because they don't have to: most elite liberals are fighting for OTHER peoples' interests, and as such, don't tend to fight all that hard. Anyway, when he covers the topic of education, he does it better than anyone I've seen, but it's a skill with a very small market.

      Delete
    4. Yes. The market for those who care to read repetitive posts suggesting that progress made on test scores from the 1970's to the late 1980's equals steady progress for the last forty years is indeed small.

      Delete
    5. Few phenomena are truly linear. That doesn't mean there isn't progress over the last forty years. KZ likes to point out that the progress in math is not equaled by the progress in reading. Reading is more difficult to improve because it depends on literacy efforts of parents in the first two years of life, and the absence of such efforts is difficult to remediate. Add that to an increase in non-native speakers and you have a reasonable explanation of why reading scores don't increase at the same rate as math. Somerby once took the time to show that progress wasn't limited to the 70s-80s, but addressing KZs concerns doesn't prevent him from repeating them ad nauseum. Nor is he expressing his concerns out of any interest in education. His sole purpose for being here is to attack Somerby because he hates him, for some reason known only to himself. This was demonstrated by the fact that KZ was the only troll whose comments were inhibited when $1 was being contributed to Somerby for every troll post.

      There is no market here for the hate mail KZ and others like to send to Somerby each day yet they continue to annoy people here. They have proven they are not bots, but clearly some other form of moderation is needed. This isn't discussion and there is no reason to tolerate this endless harassment -- of both Somerby and those who wish to discuss issues here.

      Delete
    6. A smaller market than Maddow-bashing, or else even Bob would probably stop, and find something else to obsess over. Which is an interesting fact in its own right.

      Delete
    7. Sorry I caught your comment so late @ 12:24.

      "KZ was the only troll whose comments were inhibited when $1 was being contributed to Somerby for every troll post."

      What makes you think KZ wasn't the one making those silly comments to begin with?

      Delete
  10. What's the upside for the media owners to have smart, honest, persuasive liberals working in their industry?

    Follow the money.

    Berto

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Smart, honest, persuasive, liberals" is an oxymoron.

      Delete
    2. I think I hear your mother calling you. Don't you have some other place to be?

      Delete
    3. My gnomic comment certainly struck a nerve. I'll get you at recess.....

      Delete
  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Strange how when you replace FNC with MSNBC the parable works the same. Only this uncle would undoubtedly be a vegan requiring a tofu turkey.

    Let’s call him your uncle who watches MSNBC all day, the one who makes you half-love Thanksgiving dinner with your extended family and half-dread it all year long because he’s going to be there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This has to be an uncle because if it were your father you'd hold the same political views. If you disliked your family enough to describe them in these derogatory ways, you'd be spending Thanksgiving alone or with friends who you pretend are family, assuming you're not 12.

      Delete
  13. This blog exists for conservatives to link to so they can pretend liberals hate Rachel Maddow, too. I'm sure Somerby is aware of this, and he doesn't seem to mind. If he were honest he would have focused on Rachel's exposing a Fox anchor for making up a story about voter fraud to pander to conservatives. Instead he completely missed it during his first attack on last Friday's show - calling the whole thing terrible - then barely mentioned it here as "for once Rachel was right". Nice work, Bringer Of Truth. Next time, try harder.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This blog isn't about Rachel Maddow. If you think it is, you probably spend so much time looking at the end of your own nose that you miss seeing the mountains.

      Delete
    2. Please. This blog is about Rachel Maddow and Al Gore. Together, they make the turkey in Bob's Thanksgiving dinner, if you will. The rest of his posts are trimmings, and they're pretty meagre trimmings, at that.

      Delete
    3. For you maybe. Others here can read a bit deeper.

      Delete
    4. A bit deeper into what? A bunch of psychobabble about 'tribes' while Fox propaganda is ignored in exchange for ludicrous attacks on a liberal opinion show. It's a bizarre approach.

      Delete
    5. So, why aren't you spreading your sunshine in Fox-type comment boxes?

      Delete
    6. @Joseph:
      As your post illustrates, ludicrous liberal attacks on liberal opinion shows still trump ludicrous liberal attacks on conservative opinion shows.

      Delete
    7. cicero, knowing you to be a stickler for accuracy I am surprised you did not correct Somerby on the tea-bagger joke front.

      Delete
  14. My criticism of Megyn Kelly is valid, and she does not claim to do opinion. She states she is a straight news anchor whole propagandizing for the Republican Party. Rachel caught her making stuff up, and Kelly had to retract it. Of course our straight news anchor never explained why she lied in the first place.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megyn Kelly didn't get the GOP memo during the 2012 elections because while on air live she exposed Karl Rove's election predictions as bullocks.

      Would you have preferred if Megyn didn't correct the error? Maddow had to correct her erroneous story about a conservative politician , but dismissed it as an editing error..

      http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/21/rachel-maddow-apologizes-for-editing-error-mocks-those-who-kept-her-honest/

      Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the news divisions of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN and MSNBC have been propagandizing for liberals far longer than FNC has been in existence. Why do liberals feel threatened by one news outlet that has a conservative tilt?

      Delete
    2. Your sweeping generalizations ignore the principle point: Somerby blew off a blatant lie from a news anchor in favor of accusing an opinion host of something she didn't do. The dude's got an axe to grind with Rachel Maddow, and it affects his priorities and reasoning ability.

      Delete
    3. Is it your contention that Maddow is above reproach because she is a pundit and not a real news anchor? Or because she is a darling of the liberal contingent?

      You believe the priority of a liberal blogger is to ignore the benighted comments of liberals and only target conservatives for ridicule? That job is already being down by the lame stream media. B.S. dares to wander off the reservation and you consider it a departure from reason. That is the height of absurdity.

      Delete
    4. The mainstream media rah-rahed the Iraq War, while ridiculing and marginalizing those who protested against it.

      Two groups,1) the mainstream media, and 2) those who protested against the Iraq War.
      Which group is liberal?

      Delete
    5. Cicero, you had me at "lamestream media". This is no longer a serious conversation.

      Delete
    6. I assumed you were not serious when you referred to B.S. as "dude."

      Delete
    7. I am completely serious. You are a partisan hack.

      Delete
    8. But not a professional partisan hack like Maddow, Matthews, Sharpton, O'Donnell, Wagner, Hayes, Mitchell, Shultz, Crowley, Costello, DWS, etc

      Delete
  15. "...the news divisions of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN and MSNBC have been propagandizing for liberals far longer than FNC has been in existence. Why do liberals feel threatened by one news outlet that has a conservative tilt?"

    All those corporate-owned national news organizations are liberal, says cicero. Have corporations (National motto, "Slow on the uptake") finally figured out modern conservatism is a failed ideology?
    I'd like to think so, but before I agree, can cicero (or anyone else) explain why these liberal news organizations keep making believe the Tea Party is in any way anything more than the Republican Party (despite the fact it's the same people with the same funding with the same rhetoric and same failed ideology) with a name change?

    Berto

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Tea Party (which has only been in existence since 2009) is not the GOP anymore than Libertarians are the GOP.

      "PRINCETON, NJ -- About four in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents classify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party, while 11% are opponents and 48% are neither. This continues to be a significant drop from the Tea Party's high-water mark in November 2010, when 61% of Republicans were supporters of the Tea Party."

      http://www.gallup.com/poll/168917/four-years-gop-support-tea-party-down.aspx

      Modern conservatism? You mean as defined by you and the lame stream media, which you claim does not endorse the liberal political ideology. When does the lame stream media cover stories that champion the following:

      ◾Limited federal government
      ◾Individual freedoms
      ◾Personal responsibility
      ◾Free markets
      ◾Returning political power to the states and the people

      Now can you answer my question why libs feel threatened by FNC?

      Delete
    2. You can answer my question about why you haven't corrected Somerby on the tea bagger joke front.

      Delete
    3. What are the ideology differences between the Tea Party and post-Reagan modern conservatism? Specifics, please.
      -------------------
      Now can you answer my question why libs feel threatened by FNC?

      I can't speak for all liberals, but for me, it's mostly the lying in support of the elites. It's the same threat I feel from all of the corporate-owned lame stream media, but FNC is a good example to use because theirs is the most extreme and easiest to point out. Let's face it, the mainstream media are nothing more than the propaganda arm of the corporations they are.

      Berto

      Delete
    4. @ Anonymous 1:33 PM

      B.S. used the inane term "tea bagger" instead of Tea Party. Now what?

      Delete
    5. When does the lame stream media cover stories that champion the following:
      ◾Limited federal government
      -------------------------
      I got this one. Everyday from January 20,2009 to the moment the march to war with ISIS started, and they could no longer scaremonger about deficits.

      Berto

      Delete
    6. @Anonymous 1:40 PM

      FNC supports the elites? Whom might they be exactly? And what stories reported on FNC indicates they are "the most extreme" offenders of "lying" to advance conservatism? Do you not take notice the unabashed "lying" to advance liberalism because it is spread out among the rest of TV/cable and print media?

      If you were really interested in following the elites influencing the dialogue in the media look no further than those who support the Democratic Party. Examples:

      Hollywood celebs

      University presidents

      Newspaper editors and publishers such as NYT Pinch Sulzberger, who has made it his mission to advance liberal ideology on the front page.

      Broadcast media producers

      On air news anchors

      Liberal billionaires:

      Tom Steyer,
      Michael Bloomberg,
      Fred Eychaner
      George Soros,
      Jonathan Soros (George’s son),
      James Simons,
      Jon Stryker,
      Anne Earhart,
      Donald Sussman,
      Amy Goldman
      Herbert Sandler
      David Boies

      Delete
    7. cicero,
      Agreed, there are no ideological differences between the Tea Party and post-Reagan modern conservatism.
      Dick Army puts on a tri-cornered hat, and the media thinks he's something different. What a joke.

      Berto

      Delete
    8. The only difference between Obama, Hillary and Warren is Obama looks better in mom jeans.

      Delete
  16. GOP and the Tea Party: The same exact thing since 2009.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Democratic Party and far left ideology. The same exact thing since 2008.

      Delete
    2. Please. At a minimum, a slightly left Democratic Party would have nationalized the banks after their fraud crashed the world's economy. Single-payer healthcare? Not at all.
      No one could have predicted* cicero is fact-free.

      * Popular right-wing saying, which means "anyone with two working brain cells could have foreseen".

      Delete
    3. What? The home loans of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that started the economic downfall were the darlings of Democratic Party congressman Barney Frank.

      The goal of liberals is to insure Americans are sugar free, HFC free, free from charter schools, free from 2nd Amendment, free from producing photo I.D. to vote, free from having boarders. And you deny these Democratic Party pursuits are the hallmarks of far left ideology? Ok.

      "How Obamacare Actually Paves the Way Toward Single Payer"

      http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116105/obamacare-will-lead-single-payer-michael-moore

      Delete
    4. Fannie and Freddie were private businesses, run by greedy bankers. Yes. They should be in prison along with the rest of the fraudsters.

      Which party thinks putting those who crashed the world's economy through fraud in prison is tantamount to "criminalizing success"?

      Delete
  17. Tough break for you, cicero. I'm not part of the mainstream media, so I'm not paid to make believe there's a difference between the GOP and the Tea Party.

    Berto

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But you are part of the liberal group think. It is in your interest for some undisclosed reason to perpetuate the myth that the GOP and Tea Party are the same. That you do this pro bono is laudable, but could realize profit. DWS would pay you to post your propaganda on social media.

      Delete
    2. And their ideological differences are?

      Berto

      Delete
    3. Is wearing a tri-corner hat an ideological difference?

      Delete