Why go on?

By Capt. Fogg

There's really no point, is there? I mean, I've been protesting and griping and occasionally exulting about things for over 50 years and although it sometimes seems I've been on the right side, sometimes on the winning side, the wins have been so slow to grow into anything and the losers so able to readjust their stories to define the losses as wins that perhaps it doesn't matter. Even angels have to fear the sticky epithets falling on the guilty and the innocent, fear to tread on the right and the wrong because right and wrong can't be discerned through the fog of politics of any denomination. Descriptions mean nothing when our language, our history, our morals are written in water and change with the tide. We are not saved by works, but damned at random.

I don't believe in protests any more. I don't believe in elections. I don't believe in the public's ability to pay attention, to be objective, rational or enlightened enough to do anything but make noise and make it all worse. If we actually feel we've been allowed anything like good government, it's often really that we've been thrown a bone to distract us from seeing that the chuck wagon has rolled off  with dinner. Take the amazing fact that Congress passed a budget rather than shutting down the country they pretend to love. Reading it you may feel like the patient who learns his illness is gone, but there's a disturbing spot on his lungs. The spot, the shadow, the tumor, the poison pills, are riders you won't hear about, unless the Fox decides they can blame them on Obama.

And of course the president will have to support it else we hear more of the chorus of "he's a tyrant, an emperor ignoring the will of the people" even though there can't be a whole lot of "the people" who approve of allowing a huge increase in the amount of money one can contribute to the Republican Party (up to three million for a married couple) and of allowing a return to the reckless bank chicanery with exotic derivatives that caused the recent recession. After all that protest and demonstration and passion! Should we just admit there's no way to control the course of events that involves democracy? 

And of course I've always been told that I hated America, because I opposed a whole shooting gallery of things, like the war in Vietnam or segregation or torture or the end of probable cause or forfeitures without due process. I hated America, it's said, for warning that paying  for our most expensive and lengthy war with tax cuts for the wealthy wouldn't work. I hated America for making a fuss about My Lai 4, for the abomination of HUAC. I hated it for not hating enough.

Perhaps now, with the voice of evil, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros claiming that the only reason we finally admit to illegal and immoral practices like torture, is that Obama wants you to think America isn't awesome, with the ability of  war criminals to define their crimes away, perhaps now I can decide that, yes, I really do hate this evil empire. This abomination of a country that dares screech about FREEDOM but won't let you leave, won't let you live abroad and wants to make you pay U.S. taxes even if you're a foreign national and don't live in the U.S. -- unless you're a corporation of course. I have to oppose it. I can't do otherwise.

No, the center isn't holding. 

Yes, I'm a fool for protesting, for blogging, for hoping. I can't change minds or anything else and even if I did, our country is a runaway train anyway because people do not vote, corporations do. It's a runaway train because no one can do anything without the permission of  the ruling party. Even old John McCain who lost an election because he had to pretend his masters weren't evil, because he had to run with that Alaskan millstone around his neck must hate America for trying so eloquently to hold it to a moral standard higher than the Spanish Inquisition. It brought tears to my eyes. Misery makes strange bedfellows indeed.

Are there enough of us to rebel, to force the money grabbers, the tyrants out of the government? Of course not, and not only because only the worst of us vote. We can't unite because we truly are a small-minded, self-absorbed, uncompromising, and gullible group of fractious fools, and because it's too late anyway and it's all our own fault. The enemy is us. It always has been.

(Cross-posted to Human Voices.)

Is rational political dialogue in America still possible?

By Richard K. Barry

I haven't written much about politics lately. I've mostly concentrated on music at another blog. It seems that nothing changes in the so-called national dialogue and saying the same thing over and over gets tiring. But just when I thought I might want to jump back in, I come across a comment by Fox News resident psychiatrist Keith Albow.

Tom Kludt at TPM describes Albow's recent's comments about our president:

"I think that we became psychologically mired in a form of national Stockholm Syndrome," he said of Obama's election victories during his radio interview last week. "We said to ourselves, and the world, 'Look at this guy. We're going to elect this guy president. Why would you attack us? We're not even voting for somebody who likes us. This guy, who has names very similar to two of our archenemies, Osama, well, Obama. And Hussein. Hussein. Surely you won't attack us now because we've got a shield here of a guy who, as the leader of our country, says we're bad.'"

I know it's only one asshole at Fox, and, given the source, it doesn't surprise. I suppose that's the problem. Tired, tired, tired.

Fox lies, America dies

By Capt. Fogg

You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

asked Joseph Welch of "tailgunner Joe" McCarthy, for decades the prototype for the vicious, unscrupulous and dishonest Republican Jihadist. The unstated but nearly universally understood answer was "hell no."

McCarthy has been somewhat de-demonized after years of propaganda and revision, but compared to what we had in 1954, at the height of the Communist witch hunt, the wealthy Corporate Political monsters now stomping on America like something from a 50's Japanese monster movie makes those little demons as pathetic as the rubber suited Godzilla compared to the thousand foot tall computer generated version.

But is it surprising that the one thing Foxzilla has to say about the ultra radical (too radical for the al Qaeda leaders) ISIS, now rendering all those dead and wounded and all those spent billions nugatory, is that not only is this not Bush's fault, but Bush foresaw that this would happen if we had some weak, Muslim-smelling, black Communist incompetent like Barack Obama in the White House. 

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Hillaryous

By Carl 

So Karl Rove got caught with his tongue firmly up his ass cheek by one of his own media outlets and now he's been forced to jog back some comments:

Last week, Karl Rove questioned her capacity for the White House and reportedly said she had brain damage.

The New York Post reported on Tuesday that Mr Rove, the strategist behind George W Bush's election to the White House, had told an audience in Los Angeles last week, "Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she's wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what's up with that."

In fact, Mrs Clinton was in hospital for three days after falling ill with a stomach bug in December 2012. After becoming severely dehydrated, Mrs Clinton fell at home and struck her head, suffering a concussion. While she was in hospital doctors diagnosed a blood clot.

Needless to say, when this became public, Rove was forced to eat his words:

"I didn't say she had brain damage. I said she had a serious health episode," he said on Fox News.

It's incumbent of me to point out that Fox News and the New York Post are both owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., so essentially Rove is denying that Murdoch's people can tell the truth.

And the delicious irony is that he used Murdoch's outlets as his own personal PR machine for decades. The cherry on top? He worked for a man in George W. Bush with enough emotional and mental instabilities to likely choke a horse. An unrecovering alcoholic, possible cocaine addict with delusions of godhood and perfection, yet Rove couldn't quite bring his armchair medical insight to a real problem of a real person with the very real ability to screw us all up, but good. Which Bush managed to do.

Somehow, Rove missed all that.

He seems nice.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Welfare leech Cliven Bundy and the proliferation of Republican racism

By Marc McDonald 

I don't know much about the cattle business. But I'd suspect that if one owns a cattle ranch, your biggest expense by far is buying food for your cattle.

Wingnut hero Cliven Bundy owns a prosperous cattle business. His cattle get to graze for free on publicly owned land. (That's right: all taxpayers, including you and me, are subsidizing Bundy's business.) He refuses to pay the $1 million he owes the government for supplying his cattle with free food over the decades.

In short, Bundy is a government welfare leech. He can't be bothered to pay the same grazing fees that tens of thousands of other ranchers across the West pay every year.

And yet, incredibly, this right-wing asshole has the gall to criticize African-Americans for living off "government subsidies." That, in and of itself, is an outrageous lie. The vast majority of African-Americans in fact never collect any kind of government subsidies (although this is widely believed by the Rush Limbaugh crowd).

Speaking of which, Bundy's comments on African-Americans sent the previously supportive right-wing media scurrying away from Bundy on Thursday.

Which raises a question: why?

After all, the right-wing media and its wingnut followers pretty much all believe what Bundy said about African-Americans. Switch on a wingnut talk radio station on any week day and you'll hear similar views (although perhaps not as crudely or explicitly expressed). I myself have had countless discussions with right-wingers over the years and they all have expressed similar views to Bundy's.

Limbaugh, the de facto spokesman for the GOP has in fact been making racist and offensive remarks about African-Americans and other minorities for many years. So has Fox News.

And yet, Fox News, after strongly supporting Bundy earlier this month, meekly tiptoed from the whole story after Bundy's racist remarks.

(Cross-posted at BeggarsCanBeChoosers.)

The racist rancher; or, how Cliven Bundy is pretty much exactly what you thought he was

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So right-wing hero (and welfare rancher) Cliven Bundy was revealed by the Times, in an interview, to be, unsurprisingly, an abhorrent racist espousing slavery (and cotton-picking) as the proper place for "the Negro," a revelation he denied, claiming his comments were taken out of context, but then, well, there was the actual video, which is rather hard to deny:


In response, his chief right-wing cheerleader, Fox News's Sean Hannity, said Bundy's comments "are beyond repugnant to me. They are beyond despicable to me. They are beyond ignorant to me," which is really the least he should have said, but, really, what did you expect, you fucking idiot?

**********

But do not think for a minute that Bundy's views, what with Hannity's distancing himself from them, are somehow beyond the current morass of ugliness that is contemporary American conservatism. As Slate's Jamelle Bouie writes:

In other words, the real problem with African-Americans today is that they’re addicted to welfare and unwilling to work. Sure, slavery wasn’t ideal, but at least the Negroes had skills (cotton picking!), work, and family.

Obviously, Bundy is a crank. But he’s not alone. Not only are these views shared on the survivalist fringe of American life, but they’re fairly common within the conservative movement...

[T]he only difference between Bundy and a whole host of conservatives is that the renegade rancher isn't sophisticated enough to couch his nonsense in soundbites and euphemism. Or, if Bundy has anything to say about "the negro," he learned it from the conservative movement.

This is not to say that all conservatives are Bundy-style racists, or that they all harbor similar views. It is to say, however, that Bundy's abhorrent views are alive and well in today's conservative -- and, yes, Republican -- ranks, and that they are far more comment than you might think, and than Hannity and his odious ilk would have us believe.

Bill O'Reilly understands neither Lincoln nor the presidency nor comedy

By Carl 

It's odd that a man who claims among his favorite guests both Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart would have a problem with President Obama's appearance in a comic interview on the website Funny or Die. But he does:

All I can tell is you Abe Lincoln would not have done it. There comes a point when serious times call for serious action. We're a divided nation which Talking Points believes is in decline. Mr. Obama is quick, has a good sense of humor. Those are assets.

Oh, um, Bill? About Lincoln? Yeah. He likely would have.

In response to a discussion about the pressure from abolitionists for the president to take action against slavery, Lincoln said:

Wa-al that reminds me of a party of Methodist parsons that was travelling in Illinois when I was a boy, and had a branch to cross that was pretty bad — ugly to cross, ye know, because the waters was up. And they got considerin' and discussin' how they should git across it, and they talked about it for two hours, and one on 'em thought they had ought to cross one way when they got there, and another another way, and they got quarrellin' about it, till at last an old brother put in, and he says, says he, 'Brethren, this here talk ain't no use. I never cross a river until I come to it.'

It was a characteristic Lincoln moment. He deflected the question of what he would do about slavery; he used the story as a device to explain his policy; in a display of folksy wisdom, he got his listeners to laugh.

Lincoln understood what Obama understands and what even idiots like Frank Luntz get: if you want to get your point across, you have to hit your audience in their gut with something.

It can be humor. Often, it can be tragedy, or anger. Bush utilized our anger to talk us into two massively destructive wars that made little sense in toto. Yet to this day – and it even echoes in your network's offensive, treasonous coverage of our president – people talk about how "strong" Bush was, and how "weak" Obama looks.

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Fox News joins Obama-led War on Christmas

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Even the home of right-wing unfairness and imbalance couldn't resist the compelling allure of liberal secularism.

Welcome to the 21st century, morons...

The Idiot O'Reilly can protest all he likes. He and his "folk" are on the wrong side of history, just like they're on the wrong side of everything else.

White Jesus, White Santa: Megyn Kelly nominates herself for title of stupidest person in the world

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, she went there, exposing herself as an ignoramus and, it would seem, a bigot:

On Wednesday night Megyn Kelly declared on her Fox News show that both Santa Claus and Jesus were white. Discussing a piece in Slate by Aisha Harris about a black versus white Santa, Kelly that "just because it makes you feel uncomfortable it doesn't mean it has to change." 

"You know, I've given her her due. Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"

Um... no:

Santa Claus can be traced to a real life monk named St. Nicholas who lived in what is today Turkey, according to the History Channel. Jesus Christ was born to a Jewish family around what is now Israel, and his race has long been debated with several scholars saying he likely looked like what many modern day people of Middle Eastern descent look like.

Exactly.

I get that there may be some confusion about Santa Claus, given that he's basically a Dutch cartoon character, but Jesus? Come on. Insofar as he was a real person, the guy was from Judea, basically the present-day West Bank. You know, because that's where Bethlehem is, and he was supposedly born in a manger there. I think the whole "Christ" story is bullshit, but who the hell doesn't know the story of Jesus's birth? Surely "God"-fearing Megyn does.

And, you know, people from that part of the world aren't "white," unless you stupidly think "white" is anything, oh, non-black. But maybe "fact"-based Megyn thinks just that. Or maybe thinks Jesus is the cartoon character of the right-wing Christian imagination.

Whatever the case, she's a fucking moron.

Sarah Palin drowns in her own verbal diarrhea

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, Sarah Palin was in fine form on Fox News on Thursday, amazing host Megyn Kelly with the enormity of her inanity:

Just the usual casual bigotry and abject stupidity on full display at Fox News

By Michael J.W. Stickings

When I first read about this at New York's Daily Intelligencer blog, I thought it must be a joke:

[F]rom the moment it was decided to pair the hosts of Fox & Friends with Hispanic meteorologist Maria Molina for a segment on National Taco Day this morning, the derp was inevitable.

It was inevitable that Brian Kilmeade would ask Molina, "What are tips we need to know to do it correctly? You grew up on tacos, correct?"

It was inevitable that Steve Doocy would pause from stuffing his face to chide, "She did not grow — she's Colombian."

It was inevitable that Molina would inform both hosts that she was Nicaraguan and tacos are not a Nicaraguan food. And it was inevitable that Elisabeth Hasselbeck would chime in, "But if you did — if you did grow up on tacos..."

Such are the laws of the physical universe.

But, no, it's no joke. This actually happened. Because it's Fox News. And because Fox & Friends in particular is populated with morons.

Here he is - Mr. America

By Capt. Fogg

Racism?  Just like those liberals to think that "American Values" are racist, says Fox jerk Todd Starnes and after all it was only 'politically correct' judges that enabled a dark skinned American woman of East Indian descent to win the Miss America contest over  someone with real American values like blond hair and big tits. American womanhood as traditionally seen by pageant judges always has been typified by tattooed Army Sergeants, hasn't it?  If that isn't true American womanhood, perhaps those judges will choose a man next.

"Americans were backing Miss Kansas -- but the liberal Miss America judges were not interested in a gun-toting, deer-hunting, military veteran." said Tiny Todd on his Facebook page on Sunday.  Americans -- Americans who can't tell the difference between Indians, Arabs and Muslims but are sure that to be an American; to have American values means TBBT: you're tall and blond and have big tits.

"Americans" (that being Todd) were backing Theresa Vail and I'm sure many were, even though most Americans I would venture have as little interest in this cattle call as I do -- even though tattoos make me cringe even on male Army Sergeants, she was a fine candidate and for all I know a fine person.

If that's what the repulsive troglodyte from the caves of Fox likes, that's his privilege - de gustibus and all that, but for those of us who don't have a problem calling an American citizen, born and raised a 'real' American if they don't have 100% European ancestry; even for those of us who might actually consider an Indian or Chinese or Middle Eastern or, God forbid, African woman attractive and intelligent and talented and worthy to represent 'American Values"  --  for us Nina Davuluri is a fine choice and a real All-American girl.

Smug racist assholes like Starnes and the Network he rode in on don't, needless to say, represent any values, much less American ones I'd respect, or even tolerate -- or even refrain from punishing with extreme prejudice and considerable violence given the chance.  But I've been around long enough to know there isn't anything to be done about convincing these people. No dispassionate analysis, no baseball bat will make these people see non-European people as anything but a threat to their imaginary "values."  As Max Plank once said, the truth does not triumph by making its opponents see the light, but because they eventually die.

So if we're unable to stop hoping for some new America that gives more than lip service to its principles while festering like a cesspool of hate and stupidity and bellicose self-aggrandizement perhaps we should hope and pray that Fox fall into some lake of fire, that the earth opens up and swallows Todd Starnes like the foul and fetid carcass of the loathsome creature he is, so every good and true and righteous person can piss on his grave.

(Cross-posted to Human Voices.)

What's wrong with an Indian-American Miss America?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Nothing. Nothing at all.

(What's wrong with this and other such pageants? A whole lot, but that's another matter.)

New Yorker Nina Davuluri, who won the title on Sunday, is, as you can well imagine if you haven't yet seen her, is a beautiful woman. And apparently a really smart one as well. (I hate these pageants, but at least this one isn't entirely about physical objectification anymore.)

But of course, as you can also well imagine if you haven't seen it already, there are many across the country who don't think Davuluri is quite "American" enough -- you know, American as defined by, say, the KKK. Or Fox News:

It should go without saying that Davuluri, a Syracuse native of Indian descent, is neither Muslim nor an Arab. But according to Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes, the American-born Davuluri doesn't "represent American values," unlike the blonde-haired, blue-eyed contestant from Kansas, Theresa Vail.

This is not to say that Vail isn’t an unprecedented contestant in her own right: she's spent five years in the Kansas Army National Guard and is double-majoring in chemistry and Chinese at Kansas State University. But, according to Starnes on Facebook, she lost because "the liberal Miss America judges were not interested in a gun-toting, deer-hunting, military veteran."

Yes, you see, Davuluri is... different. As in, has a different skin color. And a different name. And all that. For many, she's part of the Other, and that Other is a broad category. Davuluri is Indian, and a Hindu, but the common smear has been that she's an Arab and/or a Muslim, because of course that's often what the Other is seen to be, you know, because 9/11.

The ignorance is blatant, and hardly surprising. It's bigotry, pure and simple, including when some jackass talk radio host couches it as not representing American values. If you're different, you see, you're just not American.

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Republicans have been very, very good to social conservatives

By Frank Moraes 

I have a bone to pick with Paul Krugman. His column today is quite good, "Republicans Against Reality." The first half of the article is about Republican dysfunction. He highlights last week's transportation bill fiasco. It's an old story. Talk to any conservative (and sadly many liberals as well) and they will tell you that there is loads of wasteful spending in the government. But when you ask them what ought to be cut, the first thing they say is: foreign aid. There are two problems with this. First, foreign aid really does help us out globally by pushing back against all the bad stuff we do. (And note: Israel gets by far the most foreign aid of any country.) Second, foreign aid only makes up about 1% of the federal budget.

So the problem the House Republicans are having is that they've gone along with Paul Ryan's new mythical budget. But when it comes to actual policies, the House members don't like it because it requires cutting programs that their constituencies like and depend upon. So vauge notions of cutting "waste": gooood! Concrete ideas of cutting actual programs: baaad!

The second half of Krugman's article is about how the Republican leadership is reaping what it sowed. He writes:

For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party's base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities -- deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

That is mostly true, but I take exception to the claim that the Republican Party has abandoned the social conservative base. Just in terms of policy, they got things like the Defense of Marriage Act and Terri Schiavo. But more important, they've gotten really conservative judges throughout the federal court system. I don't have any doubt that if Roe v. Wade came up for a vote in the Supreme Court that it would be overturned. So social conservatives have gotten what they want.

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Fox zealot vs. mainstream Aslan

By Frank Moraes

The Fox News interview of Reza Aslan was interesting and fun. (For those who haven't seen it, it is embedded below.) He was on to hock his book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. And basically, the entire interview was about why a Muslim would write a book about Christianity. I understand why they approached Aslan and his book this way. The truth is that he was only being interviewed because according to conservative ideology the only interesting thing about the book was that Aslan is a Muslim. And really: who in the mainstream press is interested in New Testament scholarship?

What is sad about the current state of Biblical scholarship is that the field is overflowing with Christians. To me, there is no question that a Muslim can be a good Biblical scholar. But I have great questions as to whether any given Christian can be a good Biblical scholar. This isn't to say that there aren't Christian Biblical scholars who are good. In fact, there are great Christian biblical scholars. But there is a natural concern that these scholars will try to conform their scholarship to their religious beliefs. A Buddhist, for example, doesn't have that problem.


The attitude on view at Fox News is typical. It is also an indictment of modern American Christianity. The way I see it is that "believers" are so insecure about the truth of their belief that they can't brook any objective discussion of it. What's funny about it is that such people think they are protecting the religion. But any objective viewer can see the terror in their attacks.

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No such thing as bad publicity (for Reza Aslan)

By Mustang Bobby 

Reza Aslan is raking it in after the mega-cringe-inducing interview on Fox News:

Since then, the Buzzfeed page featuring the video has been viewed nearly four million times. Mr. Aslan quickly amassed an additional 5,000 Twitter followers. On Monday, Random House, Mr. Aslan's publisher, said the interview had clearly helped book sales: in two days, sales increased 35 percent.

On Friday, "Zealot" was in the No. 8 spot on Amazon.com, the nation's biggest seller of books; by Sunday, it had hit No. 1.

Random House is rushing to meet the surge in demand for the book. On Monday, the publisher ordered 50,000 copies, bringing the total to 150,000 copies in print by the end of the week.

An investigation of the historical Jesus, "Zealot" has been praised by many reviewers since its publication on July 16. In a review in Tablet magazine, Adam Kirsch called "Zealot" a "coherent and often convincing portrait of who Jesus was and what he wanted."

But some conservative critics have suggested that the book is not a work of scholarship, but merely "an educated Muslim's opinions about Jesus and the ancient Near East," as John S. Dickerson, an opinion columnist, wrote on FoxNews.com last week.

[...]

Mr. Aslan said that after reading Mr. Dickerson's essay on FoxNews.com, he was prepared for a similar line of attack from Ms. Green.

He was so eager to promote the book on Fox News that his publisher tried — in vain — to secure an interview spot on "Fox & Friends," a morning show.

"I'll be perfectly honest — I'm thrilled at the response that people have had to the interview," Mr. Aslan said. "You can't buy this kind of publicity."

Mr. Aslan should send Ms. Green a plate of baklava.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

For any reason

By Capt. Fogg

Lyin' Bill. He earns his title every day. What's he lyin' about now, you might ask? Why, he's telling us that a Texas women can get an abortion at any time -- simply because of a sprained hand, for instance.

You can just kill the baby, or the fetus, however you want to describe it, any time you want for any reason, you know, women's health, that's any reason at all.

Sure, we all know that women are hypochondriacs, prone to hysteria and likely to be faking things like they fake orgasms and I'm sure Bill has experience there. God makes sure women don't die in childbirth anyway, just like he makes sure they don't get pregnant when they get raped. So if a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy, we can be sure it's because she doesn't want to cancel a hair dresser appointment or something equally as important. Why we ever let them vote, I don't know.

In one of those bilious exchanges that Fox is famous for, O'Reilly and Kirsten Powers went back and forth ratcheting up the lies: 

Lyin' Bill:  In New York here, there's a proposal, "I don't want any limitations on anything!" It’s crazy.

Powers: The current status quo in Texas that these people are fighting for, who are fighting the bill, is to be able to abort your baby up until the third trimester.

Lyin' Bill:  Yeah! For any reason! Women's health! "Hey! Look I sprained my hand!" 

Powers: "Yeah. For any reason. For any reason. Yeah."

Of course, no one of integrity, no one who gives a rancid shit about the truth or human rights or anything but his stinking faith believes this garbage. Very, very few late term abortions are ever performed and even fewer of that "partial birth" procedure they'd love to tell you happens all the time. Such things are done with dead fetuses, fetuses with no brain and the like, but Fox has never stumbled over a fact so far. Nor, for all their ranting, whooping, and hollering, all their pusillanimous persiflage about how liberals are trashing the Constitution have they ever really seen the law as anything but a nuisance and impediment to "freedom" and something that can be and should be ignored by any state with or without public support. 

No, there should be no regulation of anything but women and if God didn't bother to ban abortion, well then the Great State a' Texas is gonna take care of it for him, now all y'all have a nice day, y'hear?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The myth of objective journalism

By Frank Moraes 

The primary difference between Fox News and MSNBC is not ideology; it is that Fox pretends to be objective. Yes, in general, MSNBC does a better job of reporting actual facts and doesn't go out of its way to mislead. But they are both advocacy groups: one for the Republican Party and the other for the Democratic Party. But no one ever claims that MSNBC provides the Truth that the other networks don't want the people to know.

Other than this fact, I have no problem with Fox News. I believe strongly that news organizations should have an explicit political inclination because they all have an implicit inclination. But even worse than that Fox who any reasonable person can see is just GOP-TV, I'm concerned about the middle-of-the-road media outlets. I'm visiting my sister and I just overheard some reporting on the TV from a local station, KTVU. They were covering information about the company that did Edward Snowden's background check. It was anything but objective. The coverage was akin to the coverage of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial.

This has long been a thorn in my side: the idea that centrists are not ideological. They are -- every bit as ideological as those of us on the left and the right. It is just that their ideologies are usually incoherent. Let's think about my favorite centrist example: Nazis. On one side you have the Nazis who want to kill all the Jews, on the other you have people who don't want to harm any Jews, and in the middle you have those who just want to give all Jews life in prison. It's clear than the centrist position is ideological.

Similarly with Edward Snowden, the centrist position that he did something dangerous that put us all in danger is just as ideological as my position that he did the American people a great favor that did not put us in any danger. Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent article yesterday about this issue, "Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism." It is basically a defense of Glenn Greenwald.

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What's wrong with MSNBC? (hint: Joe)

By Mustang Bobby

Why are MSNBC's ratings so low? Well, as Alex Parene at Salon suggests, it's not because of Rachel Maddow:

"Morning Joe" is the lowest rated of the big three cable news morning shows in both total viewers and the younger demographic. Fox News' Red Eye — a show Fox airs at 3 in the morning — had more total and 25-54-year-old viewers in April 2013 than "Morning Joe" did. "Morning Joe" in April 2013 was down, from its April 2012 numbers, in total and in young viewers by a greater percentage than the rest of the network as a whole.

I'm not harping on "Morning Joe" because I think the show is representative of everything wrong with contemporary political elite thinking, though it is, but because it illustrates MSNBC's larger problem: It's a political talk show. Every other TV morning show is mostly fluff and weather. "Morning Joe," instead of entertainment news updates, has a former member of Congress wave a newspaper at Mark Halperin for a while. MSNBC's target audience may just be much less interested in listening to people talk about politics in spring 2013 than they were during an election year.

What would you rather wake up to: a perky news anchor shitting rainbows about traffic, weather, and the latest on Justin Bieber, or Joe Scarborough ranting to Mark Halperin about Benghazi! and the socialism of Obamacare? Granted, the morning crew at Fox and Friends isn't exactly Mensa in the Morning, but at least they're sitting on a couch.

MSNBC's biggest problem is that their target audience — progressives or at least those who don't care for Fox's rabid partisanship — aren't a mass communication major market. They don't listen to talk radio unless it's interrupted by a pledge drive:

MSNBC is actually making some good decisions, lately, from the point of view of someone who'd like (talking head) cable news to be better. And anyone who says the network's failing because of liberalism should probably have to account for the fact that the channel's highest-rated show remains Rachel Maddow's. (Followed by O'Donnell, who really is the insufferable smug self-satisfied liberal caricature everyone thinks all of MSNBC is.)

But do you know who watches cable news all day? And at prime time? When there's not an election on, or a war, or some terrorism? Older conservative people. If MSNBC wants better ratings, it'll either have to train a generation to want to pay attention to political years all the time, or it'll have to produce a scripted show about zombies.

Maybe that's why they run "Caught on Tape" all weekend. Add in some undead and you've got a hit.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Affinity bias and the White House scandals

By Frank Moraes 

I've been thinking a lot about why so many journalists I follow went so wrong on the supposed White House Scandals this week. I think it has a lot to do with affinity bias. And that does not speak well for the state of journalism.

A lot of people wonder why, for example, conservatives often hold opinions that are just wrong. Throughout the Bush administration, Fox News viewers were systematically misinformed about important issues. Why was that? It's quite simple: they trusted Fox News. And that is not only acceptable, it is necessary. We can't independently become experts on every issue we hear about. So we find people who we trust as experts and believe what they say.

Of course, it pays to be selective. Anyone who gets their information from cable news is cruising for a bruising. In general, I think that MSNBC is a lot better than Fox News. But that isn't always case. I think Fox News has done a better job under Obama than they did under Bush. It's all been pretty bad, though. MSNBC has done better generally, but I think they were soft on Obama during the campaign. At times they act as apologists for the Obama Administration -- especially certain shows. Regardless, I think that MSNBC does a better job of informing liberals than Fox News does informing conservatives. Of course, the best conservative print publications are better. Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review and Josh Barro of Bloomberg View are both fact based. I wish a lot more conservatives got their news from people like them.

There really is a difference between what liberals and conservatives think about things even when they are working off the same set of facts. And that should be enough. But instead, generally conservatives get different facts than liberals do. I think this is about 90% the fault of conservative media, but it hardly matters. My point is that we've got to trust someone.

I've worked very hard to find people who I feel I can trust -- people who will not knowingly deceive me and will admit when they are wrong. I still feel very dependent on these people. But not always. For example, most of them went crazy this last week. They acted as though there was something to all these scandals. There were damned few people like me who were pushing back against this. And my question is: why?

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