FOX surrenders in the War on Christmas

This is hilarious. Apparently FOX has defected to our side in the War on Christmas.



Wonder if anyone has told Megyn or Bill O yet? [Media Matters screen capture via Oliver Willis]

Behind the scenes at Fox News

Joe Muto wrote a book about his eight years at Fox News as an alleged undercover liberal. This excerpt article is mostly about Bill O'Reilly but the description of the Fox News hierarchy is fascinating.

For example, some unlucky guests were banned for life from every show on the network, a result of a diktat from the Second Floor. Comedian Bill Maher, once a semi-regular guest on “The Factor” and some other Fox shows, made too many cracks about Sarah Palin over the years, raising the ire of a powerful female VP who banned him from our air and demanded that all Fox-affiliated websites refer to him only as “Pig Maher.”

Sometimes entire organizations were given lifetime bans. The website Politico wrote something a few years back that rubbed Roger the wrong way (we were never told what exactly the transgression was) and word went out to all the shows: No more Politico reporters as guests. Also, any anchors who mentioned the site on air had to use the phrase “left-wing Politico” — an absurd designation for a publication that usually played it down the middle.

The rest is an hour by hour visit inside Fox's star hothead. Doesn't make me want to buy the book, but interesting read for the curious.

Tea Party turns on Fox News

If your March Madness bracket is broken or you just didn't care about basketball in any case, here's some amusing reading for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Loving this one. Tea Party types are boycotting Fox because it's too liberal now.

Funniest sentence in the whole piece:

“We have seen FOX suddenly get very loud about Benghazi after the 1st boycott, but conservatives are conservative because they are not stupid,” the website reads.

And actually, I guess they're not entirely imbeciles. Another guy had this to say:

“The more I research into Fox—I saw that they donate more to Democratic candidates than conservative or Republican candidates—I was like holy cow! Maybe they are just trying to snatch our pockets. Maybe they are just talking the talk, because it sure doesn’t look like they are walking the walk.”

This apparently is their second boycott and they're just certain that they scared the bejeebers out of the Fox the first time, so this one is going to work even better. Besides, they have such reasonable demands.

Among the demands the protesters have is that Fox News “be the right-wing CBS News: to break stories, to break information, and to do what news organizations have always done with such stories: break politicians,” that the network have at least one segment on Benghazi every night on two of its prime-time shows; that Fox similarly devote investigative resources to discovering the truth of Obama’s birth certificate; and that the network cease striving to be “fair and balanced.”

Meanwhile, these stalwart guardians of conservative values are going to the real news sources, Breitbart, Drudge and Glenn Beck. Because it's not real news if it disagrees with their world view. Surprisingly, Fox declined comment.

Newest Fox hire endorses child abuse

If there ever any doubt he was the perfect hire for Fox "News" punditry, it was laid to rest today when Erick Erickson applauded corporal punishment of children by complete strangers with this tweet:

The link goes to a story about a short tempered store clerk:

A Dollar General employee arrested in Wrightsville last week for hitting a child with a belt has now been charged with aggravated assault. The charges were upgraded from simple battery because store video showed the woman hitting the 8 year old at least 25 times.

Picture that for a moment. She beat him with a belt at least 25 times. Because he threw a cookie at her. Which under Erick son of Erick's family values deserves high praise and public gratitude. Erick son of Erick is an admired figure and leading voice in the crackpot con community. He wouldn't have made it so far without them. They built his brand. This is the America they want to bring back.

Fox can't handle the truth

Guessing whoever booked Mr. Ricks on Fox is fired or at least sternly reprimanded for failing to make clear their cardinal rule. No inconvenient truths allowed on air:

Thomas E. Ricks, the veteran defense reporter and author, said he expected his Monday morning appearance on Fox News to last about three minutes. It ended, in fact, after 90 seconds — his last sentence was a description of the network as “a wing of the Republican Party.”

After the interview, a Fox News staffer told Mr. Ricks that he had been rude. [...]

Mr. Ricks said in an e-mail message afterward that he did not think he was being rude. “I thought I was being honest,” he said. “They asked my opinion, and I gave it.”

Silly pundit. Honesty, no matter how politely stated, is simply not done there. It confuses the loyal viewers.

Election night 2012 in pictures

As I said earlier, I don't gloat over winning. I remember too well the morning after 2004. Walking to work in lovely downtown Northampton. It was eerily quiet. Streets were full of people wandering around in stunned silence. Dread settled over that little, very liberal city like a funeral shroud. This is how conservatives are feeling today. Just because their beliefs are founded on the longest, most concentrated and effective disinformation campaign in the history of civilization doesn't make their emotional response any less real. So no, I'm not inclined to rub it in.

That being said, I won't deny I'm deliriously happy about the outcome. Feels great to win when the stakes are high. These images still make me smile. I'm told this Barack Obama tweet was the most shared in the history of the twitter.

This was the official White House photo.

[photo via]

I liked this one even more.

[photo via]

Okay, maybe just a little gloating. Certainly these guys deserve it as the greasiest cogs turning the gears of the GOP disinfo machine. The sad faces on Fox News.

And let's not neglect the biggest clown of 2012, who wins the derp award hands down in a very crowded field.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Hate is in the blood, says Lyin' bill

By Capt. Fogg

So lyin' Bill is still at it.  I don't go looking for his wisdom any more than I go around opening manhole covers looking for a pleasant smell, but sometimes you just stumble into it - like you might step into some dog shit on the sidewalk.  Anyway,  here we have him again running his foul mouth for his foul audience hoping to promote evil and ugliness and hate wherever he can -- and get rich from doing it.

So Barack Obama hates half the country, says O'Reilly -- the white half, of course, because even though the only family he ever knew was white, he must hate white people because he's black -- even though he's every bit  as white as he is black, unless of course, the old Confederate, Secessionist USA hating bigots like Lyin' Bill  are right that one drop of "black" blood means you're black and inferior. Old Confederate, Secessionist bigots like Lyin' Bill must think that "black blood" is mighty powerful stuff though, if one drop of it can pollute an ocean of whiteness and all the superiority it conveys. Lyin' Bill must believe in "black power!"  Whattaya know!

But Dennis Miller, that other Fox bastard who, back when he was funny and before he sold his soul for a buck thirty seven used to try to impress us all with his brilliance and erudition and vocabulary is reduced to making a living with pusillanimous persiflage for the amusement of the stupidest fraction of mediocre American minds by bantering with Bill would none the less opine that he seeth not the anger of blackness but the haughtiness of the educated.  Fox and grapes, Dennis? Nobody thinks you're smart or funny any more.

So they're back to this -- still at this, since every factual seeming accusation has been erased like grafitti under the blast from a power washer.  The face numbers, the fake stories, the false identification with George Bush's blunders misdeeds, blunders and frauds -- it all has a shelf life and perhaps the lies have gone past it and are beginning to spoil and so it's back to racists and Bolshevik class warfare:  he's a racist, he's a snob, he's consumed with hate (just like us.)