Media Matters put together a must-see compilation of the right-wing media’s fearmongering about swine flu. Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Neil Boortz, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage and the Fox News crew are always eager to manipulate the news to support their hate-filled xenophobia, so the swine flu epidemic has really kicked their anti-immigrant rhetoric into overdrive. The winner for the most absurd (and dispicable) attack I’ve heard so far has come from Savage, who claimed this was a terrorist attack planted in Mexico by Islamic fundamentalists.

At AlterNet, Joshua Holland gets into the dangers of the right-wing media using this crisis to peddle their hateful rhetoric.

Read the rest of this entry →

This might win the award for the best video I saw from yesterday’s teabagging coverage. Good for CNN reporter Susan Roesgen for confronting these idiotic protesters and calling out Fox News for shamelessly promoting them (H/T Jesse).

Want to know just how “fair and balanced” Fox’s protest coverage was? Media Matters has the full story.

Fox can try to deny the fact that they aggressively pushed yesterday’s tea parties, but Media Matters has the proof. They found Fox aired 23 separate segments promoting the protests between April 6-13, along with 73 in-show and commercial promotions. Hannity and Neil Cavuto were the biggest offenders, as you can see from the Media Matters table. With so much Tea Party coverage, when does Fox Find time for real news?

Here are some highlights from yesterday’s teabaggery.

Like many progressives, I’ve been laughing a lot about the GOP’s tea-bagging antitaxation demonstrations planned for tomorrow. But childish jokes aside, here’s why these protests are so insidious. They will provide a staged, corporate lobbyist-sponsored moment for Republicans and Fox News personalities to amplify their specious objections to President Obama’s tax increase for the rich, while furthering their own right-wing conspiratorial claims about liberal values. By usurping and bastardizing an iconic event from the American Revolution, they offer an ersatz grassroots movement from the right–complete and utter AstroTurf–in an attempt to reclaim the national spotlight.

As Think Progress’s Faiz Shakir exclaimed last night on Fox Business as he ripped the network a new one:

These tea parties are a sham. The reason they’re a sham is because they’re directed by lobbyists here in D.C. … And on top of that, you’ve got this network, Fox News, which is advocacy — pushing this, promoting this with all of its heart. And it is not a grassroots movement when you have Jonathan Hoenig, Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren promoting this up the wazoo. That is not a grassroots movement.

Faiz, of course, was dead on because corporate lobbyists like Dick Armey’s Freedom Works are orchestrating tomorrow’s protests, and Fox has been relentlessly pushing them too. As for the GOP’s ludicrous cries of Obama turning our country socialist, Paul Krugman notes that while Obama will raise taxes on high-income Americans, that tax rate will still be ten percent lower than it was under Reagan.

When I was a kid in Philly, Veterans Stadium was known as a “career-killer” because the cement-like AstroTurf wrecked the knees and ankles of so many promising baseball and football players. Let’s hope tomorrow’s AstroTurf movement turns out to be a career-killer for all the lunatic Republicans and hedge fund directors and Fox shock jocks who make the wild accusations that Obama isn’t from our country, or that evolution is a lie.

We need Glenn Beck kicked off the air before he hurts someone. If the lunatic Fox personality could have motivated Pittsburgh cop killer Richard Poplawski by erroneously claiming President Obama is comin’ to get yer guns, I can only imagine the harm all of Beck’s fearmongering will cause. In the past few weeks alone, Beck has spewed the apocalyptic ideas that Chinese and Russian spies have hacked into the United States, Iran and Russia are swapping nuclear secrets, and FEMA is setting up concentration camps. Oh, and then there’s Beck’s run-of-the-mill fearmongering about our country heading toward a socialist totalitarian state.

With Beck on board, Fox’s right-wing agenda and whatever-it-takes mentality to boost ratings are clearer than ever. I mean, who needs accurate reporting when Beck can pretend to douse someone in gasoline and light a match while he rants about Obama’s budget and new immigration plan? The thing is though, this is akin to yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. The tragic irony is that Beck and his War Room have the potential to do some serious damage.

Looks like Rush Limbaugh got a dose of his own OxyContin yesterday, when he got a call on his radio show from a Republican veteran who lashed out at Limbaugh for his stance on torture. The caller said Limbaugh was a “brainwashed Nazi” for claiming torture was an effective interrogation technique and giving the U.S. a pass for using it at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. The caller also said Limbaugh was in part to blame for the Republicans losing last November.

Limbaugh was befuddled at first, trying to write the caller off as an Obama voter. Then, when the caller set Limbaugh straight on his political leanings, Limbaugh went on the offensive, cutting off the caller and calling him “stupid” and “ignorant.” But the caller wouldn’t let up, cornering Limbaugh to the point that he made the ludicrous assertion, “I don’t know of anybody who died from torture.”

Clearly, Limbaugh has absolutely no respect for our country’s veterans. As Richard Smith points out at VetVoice, Limbaugh has a long history of attacking vets, even though he never served. What’s more, it’s evident Limbaugh will do and say whatever it takes to silence veterans’ views of national security, particularly when they run opposite to his own erroneous ideological beliefs.

Read the rest of this entry →

I love watching Jon Stewart shred right-wingers and their sour grape-fueled conspiracy theories, especially when it involves the idiocy espoused by FOX blowhards Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. It is astounding though to see the these shock jocks do a complete 180 from when Bush was in power, back when they labeled you unpatriotic simply for criticizing the President.

Stewart: Yes, tyranny. A.K.A. our democratically elected President. You know what guys….I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing. And I feel for you because ah…I’ve been there. A few times. In fact one of them was a bit of a nail biter. But see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he’s probably going to do things you disagree with. He could cut taxes on the wealthy. Remove government’s oversight capability. Invade a country that you thought should not be invaded but that’s not tyranny. That’s democracy.

See now you’re in the minority. It’s supposed to taste like a s#%t taco. And by the way, if I remember correctly when a disagreement was expressed about that President’s actions when ya’ll were in power I believe the response was “Why do you hate America?”. “Watch what you say.” “Love it or leave it.” “Suck on my truck nuts.”

…..

For god’s sake guys. You’ve been out of power for ten f*%#ng weeks. You’ve got a mid-term election in twenty months. Pace your rage!

(h/t C&L)

Bill O’Reilly continues to pretend his Harassment Machine is quote “a legitimate brand of journalism,” but nobody’s buying it. Columbia Journalism Review editor in chief Mike Hoyt, a victim of the O’Reilly Harassment Machine, said these journalistic ambushes are a far cry from real street interviews because O’Reilly is “grabbing whatever out-of-context quote that he can use to make you look stupid.” O’Reilly then spins these quotes to further his conspiratorial rants, like he did by conjuring a connection between Think Progress’s Amanda Terkel and his imaginary enemy NBC.

The best part is, O’Reilly’s sponsors aren’t buying this bastardized form of journalism either. Check out what Bayer and Johnson&Johnson had to say because so many people have been writing to The Factor’s key advertisers, telling them to Stop the O’Reilly Harassment Machine.

Bill O’Reilly took his history of harassment to a deplorable new low last weekend. He sent FOX producer Jesse Waters to ambush Think Progress’ Amanda Terkel for highlighting O’Reilly’s outrageous comments about the rape and murder of Jennifer Moore in the context of his recent appearance at the Alexa Foundation for rape victims. O’Reilly clearly said–and there’s audio proof–that Moore and women who dress in a certain way and consume too much alcohol basically bring rape upon themselves. But did O’Reilly bring up those atrocious comments on last night’s show? Hell no!

According to Terkel, “Here are the two things that O’Reilly conveniently left out of his segment:”

– His Original Comments. O’Reilly said that he posted the full Aug. 2 interview about Moore on his website. (It’s here.) But he did not repeat his comments on air, nor did he try to defend them — perhaps recognizing that they are indefensible. These comments elicited outrage from more than 900 signatories to a petition by the Concerned Citizens Against Sexual Violence.

– His Harassment. O’Reilly never mentioned to his viewers how he scored that interview with me. He never contacted me for a statement or the chance to appear on his show before deploying his harassment machine. Instead, he sent his producers to stake out my apartment, follow me for two hours, and accost me while I was on vacation in Virginia (and the least prepared to recall a post I had written three weeks earlier).

So O’Reilly had Waters stalk and harass Terkel while on vacation; accuse her of dishonesty for not recalling there and then an unrelated part of that radio segment regarding Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-semitic comments (which O’Reilly actually compared to Moore’s rape!); and then used this video to continue his delusional beef with NBC. O’Reilly even managed to include GE and Iran in the same conspiratorial breath. Now you tell me who’s in dire need of a “Reality Check?”

The fact remains that O’Reilly has a long, sordid track record of harassment, both on air and in his personal life. He clearly has no regard for people’s right to privacy, and he thinks these phony “gotcha” moments constitute quality reporting and journalistic accuracy. It’s high time the world stopped watching O’Reilly altogether and forced him to switch off the harassment machine. Until that day arrives, you can send Jesse Waters an e-mail at Jesse.Watters@FOXNEWS.COM. And as John Amato suggests at C&L, if you ever find yourself ambushed by an O’Reilly henchman, just repeat the words “Andrea Mackris.”

FEMA concentration camps for Republicans? A totalitarian state? Hmm, wonder if Glenn Beck’s unique blend of sensationalistic journalism and warped reality is what drew FOX News to him? Maybe it was the other way around, with Beck as the delusional moth to FOX’s flames of distortion. The saddest part is, Beck isn’t even coming up with his own fringe conspiracy theories anymore; turns out he stole this directly from The X-Files movie.