Fox and Friends Epic Fail Over Phony Obama/Pirate Controversy

On Fox and Friends this week, Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson, and Brian Kilmeade made a big deal out of a photo President Obama tweeted in honor of "Talk Like a Pirate Day" (which was Wednesday, September 19th). However, as Al Sharpton points out in the clip below, there's a bit of problem with Doocy, Carlson, and Kilmeade's critique of the president. If these three weren't so stupid, they might be embarrassed by their clownish antics.

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Headquarters of New Orleans Women's Advocacy Group Set on Fire

On 5/24, Women With A Vision, a New Orleans-based advocacy group for sex workers, low-income women, women with substance abuse issues, and other at-risk populations, was broken into and set on fire. While no arrests have been made in connection with the fire, it appears to be politically based. Also, the NOFD has classifed it as arson. You can read more on the story at the NOLA Defender. 

In the first clip below, Deon Haywood (Exec. Director for WWAV) talks about the incident and how it will not stop her group from continuing with the work they do. 



Props to The Young Turks because I probably wouldn't have known about this story if they hadn't covered it. In the following clip, hosts Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian talk about not only the WWAV fire, but also how this type of domestic terrorism is downplayed in the media.

Cenk and Ana make some excellent points in this clip, but I especially love the fiery passion Ana exuded. If you're wondering about her disparaging reference to Bill O'Reilly and Lila Rose (the founder of the pro-life group Live Action), she had a good reason.

Think Progress story on domestic terrorism

Sunday Funnies, the Late Edition: Bob Beckel Drops the F-Bomb on Fox "News"

Although this incident happened in April (I meant to post it then, but was too busy), I still wanted to share because it's funny and timeless. During the "Great American Panel" segment of a recent installment of Hannity, Fox "News" personality Bob Beckel (who appears on various programs on the network as the token liberal), apparently didn't realize he was on live TV when he told fellow panelist Jennifer Stefano what he thought of her opinion on whatever it was they were discussing during the break. Although I don't know what Stefano said that got Beckel heated, I'm willing to bet he was right in his assertion that she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about.

Cenk Uygur: Not A Millionaire? You're A Jackass If You Vote Republican

Republican opposition to The Buffett Rule has Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks fired up! As you may know, the Buffett Rule (which failed Monday in the Senate) is the tax plan proposed by President Obama that would apply a minimum tax of 30 percent to individuals making more than a million dollars a year. The clip below features Cenk discussing the Republican's stance on The Buffett Rule interspersed with comments made by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) on Fox. 

More Inanity From Sean Hannity

Damn, Fox "News" is predictable! Just the other day at a family get together, me and some of my relatives were talking politics as we often do. I was telling them about one of Fox's favorite tricks in their worn out playbook: have black guests come on to spout "fear of a black planet" type rhetoric in order to give it some credibility. Almost on cue, GOP waterboy Sean Hannity has on Deneen Borelli and David Webb to whip up fear over President Obama's "ties" to the New Black Panthers. These two should be ashamed of themselves. But hey, as long as those Fox checks keep rollin' in, why worry about such minor things as honor and integrity.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks breaks down the silliness that is Fox "News" in the clip below:

The Glenn Beck TV Program Is Going Off the Air: The End of an Error

As you probably know, it was announced on 4/6 that Glenn Beck would "transition off of his daily program" on Fox "News" later this year. In just over two years of hosting his program on Fox, this lying, race baiting, fearmongering fraud has set new lows in political discourse. For a recap, Media Matters has documented the 50 worst things Glenn Beck said on Fox right here. Although it was hard to keep up, Diversity Ink also did its best to chronicle the nonsense spewed by Beck.

I've read some of the conservative blogs and their take on Glenn parting ways with Fox. Not surprisingly, The Lollipop Guild (aka suckers) who view Glenn as a hero are swallowing his "Paul Revere" speech in regards to why he is discontinuing his TV program on Fox. Oh yeah, he's on to bigger and better things...please! I thought it didn't get any bigger than Fox?!

Earlier this year there were reports about Fox and Beck not being able to come to terms on a new contract. That's probably the main reason his TV program is going bye-bye. The fact that Beck's ratings have steadily eroded didn't help his cause. If you follow television history, it was easy to predict Beck wouldn't be able to sustain the astounding ratings he achieved in the first year of his Fox program. When saying outrageous things, peddling fear, and cooking up tinfoil hat conspiracy theories is your schtick, it's going to wear thin rather quickly with all but the most ardent followers (paging "The Lollipop Guild"). Also, the massive boycott by advertisers (thank you Color of Change) likely made it easy for Fox to decide Beck simply wasn't worth the headache. In addition to the ratings drop and the advertiser exodus, Fox president Roger Ailes couldn't have been happy that it was the Blaze (the conservative blog launched by Beck) which debunked James O'Keefe's fraudulent exposé of NPR. 

In the clip below, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks gives his analysis of the Glenn Beck/Fox "News" situation. Included in the clip is footage of Beck telling viewers about his plans. It's amazing the amount of B.S. that Beck can spew in just over 3 minutes! If I had been drinking a beverage, I might have done a spit take at the 6:45 mark of the clip. 

Why do you think Glenn Beck's TV program is ending?

Garth Brooks Suffers From "White Guilt"?

 Early Saturday morning while watching a repeat of Friday's The O'Reilly Factor, I was intrigued by that night's "Pinheads and Patriots" segment. Although I find the "P and P" segment as a whole rather silly, this one caught my attention. For those who aren't familiar with "P and P", Bill O'Reilly runs a clip and the viewers vote on whether the people/person in the clip is "Patriotic" or "Pinheaded". On the following night, O'Reilly airs the poll results. Thursday night he aired a portion of the following clip:

 To the best of my knowledge, O'Reilly only aired the part of the clip in which Garth gave his answer to the question "Has President Obama lived up to your expectations?" When O'Reilly revealed the poll results, it showed that 85% felt Garth Brooks was a pinhead for what he said. This led me to see what people had to say about Garth Brooks' comments online. The following are some of what I found at FoxNation.com:

• Pssst, Garth, you don't have to like people just because they have a little extra melanin.
• ...another Loser supporting a Loser.......what a waste of whyte...
• Garth Brooks is a fat, stoopid-looking little dweeb who has made so much money peforming to primarily white audiences that his 'white-guilt bags' are overflowing to such a degree he can no longer pick them up. As a release, he has convinced himself that loving Obama will make all of his miserable feelings of shame go away.
• There is the perfect example of a caucasian that is incapable of talking down on a black man. And these are the people that got us into all this trouble.
• In Obamas' world, you committed the original sin simply being white and no amount of sucking up can change that.

Say it ain't so?! Members of the right needlessly injecting race into a topic. No, they'd never do that!

Note: The comments section for the Garth Brooks story has been closed at FoxNation.com.  However, you can read similar nonsensical remarks in the comments section here at CNSNews.com.

I plan on writing a guest post about the Garth Brooks controversy from a different and more serious angle on the conservative blog Teresamerica later this week soon.  As I said, the comments section for the GB story has been closed at FoxNation.com.  However, I cut and pasted some of the "best" comments into a Word document.  I'll be including some of these in the guest post. Stay tuned...

Heroes and Villains of 2010

Although 2011 has already started, I still wanted to take a moment and recognize or call out the people and organizations who I think deserve either bouquets or tomatoes tossed at them for their words and actions in 2010 regarding race issues. 

Diversity Ink's Heroes of 2010: The Young Turks

Led by host Cenk Uygur (above center), The Young Turks have set the bar high when it comes to tackling race-related stories.  In their pointed and humorous commentary, they don't hold their tongues nor do they pull any punches.  Along with calling out the usual suspects (you know who they are ), TYT has also shined an unflattering light on lesser known people/institutions such as Sen. Jake Knott (who used the term "raghead" in reference to President Obama and then gubernatorial candidate for S.C. Nikki Haley) and the Walthall County School District (which was guilty of segregating students). Because accusations of racism aren't always cut and dry, TYT will sometimes question whether or not an incident is an example of racism or not.  I also love the fact that the show has on guests that don't share their beliefs (for example, the controversial and far right Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson).

Honorable mentions for Heroes of 2010:

• MSNBC (with a special nod to Rachel Maddow for her segments on the Southern strategy)
• Shirley Sherrod
• Turner Classic Movies
• Joe Madison
• The Phoenix Suns

 Below is a clip from "The Young Turks" in which Cenk Uygur gives his take on Rush Limbaugh's comments about the Shirley Sherrod incident:

Diversity Ink's Villain of 2010: Fox News Channel

 

The Fox News Channel (aka the video equivalent of the "Southern strategy") knows that fanning the flames of race plays right into the hands of their followers who hang on their every word.  Their overhyping of the New Black Panther Party case and the hit job they did on Shirley Sherrod are just two examples of how Fox does its part in widening the racial divide.  The efforts of Fox didn't go unnoticed in 2010.  Along with people like Howard Dean, the hosts of The Young Turks, and Shepherd Smith (one of the few hosts on Fox with any integrity),  a program on one of its sister channels also got into the act of calling out Fox News for its underhanded tactics.

Dishonorable mentions for Villains of 2010:

• Rush Limbaugh
• Rep. Steve King
• Jesse Lee Peterson
• Sharron Angle
• Gov. Jan Brewer
• Conservatives/Republicans who will bend over backwards to defend one of their own no matter how heinous the offense, but will pounce on a liberals/Democrats for the slightest misstep

The clip below, in which Monica Crowley fills in for Bill O'Reilly, is classic Fox:

Who are your heroes and villains when it comes to race matters for 2010?

Guest Post By Sandy: Fox News Uses Black Fringe Groups To Portray Blacks As Angry, Dangerous, Scary

One of my favorite blogs is Best Seat In the House. The blogger (Sandy Gholston) is one of the best when it comes to covering politics, race, the media, sports, etc. As of late, Sandy has been in a posting frenzy and I've been thoroughly enjoying it! He gave me the green light to use the post below. If you haven't already, I encourage you to visit Best Seat In the House. Even if you don't agree with Sandy, I think you'll find that he's fair and open to opposing viewpoints.

The following, Fox News Uses Black Fringe Groups To Portray Blacks As Angry, Dangerous, Scary, was posted by Sandy on his blog on July 14, 2010:

Fox News has a history of portraying black people as angry, dangerous, hostile and racist in many of its broadcasts (news and commentary alike).

The most recent example of this has been this massively over-hyped and B.S. story about the New Black Panther Party and alleged voter intimidation. Fox News has been pushing this story hard to its largely white and conservative audience to push an image of scary black people threatening white people and being allowed to do so by a black president (Barack Obama) and a black attorney general (Eric Holder) in spite of the fact this happened during the George W. Bush Administration. Fox News also has a dubious history of using black people to attack black people. We have witnessed that over and over again with the likes of the pathetic Jesse Lee Peterson, Sean Hannity's boy (that's right, I said it that way).

Republicans have a history of this and used the tactic of the scary black man in the famous Willie Horton ad from the late 1980s used by George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis.



From Wikipedia:

Republicans picked up the Horton issue after Dukakis clinched the nomination. In June 1988, Republican candidate George H.W. Bush seized on the Horton case, bringing it up repeatedly in campaign speeches.^[6] Bush's campaign manager, Lee Atwater, predicted that "by the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name."^[6][7] Media consultant Roger Ailes remarked "the only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."^[8]

It's an effort by the far right to show scary black hoods coming to get you and Democrats will not protect you, but Republicans will take care of these dangerous black thugs.

Fox News frequently has used fringe black groups to attack black people. One of its favorite examples of this is the use of the New Black Panther Party and, most frequently, Malik Zulu Shabazz.

Media Matters for America has showcased the effort by Fox News to use fringe black groups to negatively showcase black people (rarely do they do it with, say a Ku Klux Klansman, and think of how they bend over backward to defend racist tea party morons).

For weeks, Fox News has been hyping J. Christian Adam's discredited allegations that the Department of Justice has "a hostility in the voting section and in the civil rights division to bringing cases on behalf of white victims for the benefit of national racial minorities." Predictably, right-wing media quickly used the phony controversy to race-bait, attempting to connect the Obama administration to the New Black Panther Party -- a designated hate group. Fox News' Glenn Beck, for example, said on his radio show that the New Black Panther Party represented "the kinds of people that our president aligns himself with," and Fox News' David Asman accused Obama of "defending racists" by "letting the Black Panthers off." More recently, Megyn Kelly, the biggest Adams cheerleader of them all, devoted airtime interviewing New Black Panther President Malik Shabazz. This episode follows a pattern of Fox highlighting this radical fringe group over the years.

Research posted by Media Matters shows more than 50 instances of Fox News hosting someone from the New Black Panther Party:

Date	Show	Guest
6/24/1998	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
8/31/1999	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
6/21/2000	The Edge with Paula Zahn	Quanell X
6/22/2000	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
6/23/2000	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
2/19/2001	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
3/19/2001	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
4/12/2001	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
5/3/2001	The O'Reilly Factor	Malik Shabazz
5/18/2001	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
7/30/2001	The O'Reilly Factor	Malik Shabazz
9/7/2001	Fox News Edge	Malik Shabazz
11/1/2001	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
1/16/2002	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
2/18/2002	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
7/7/2002	Fox Wire	Malik Shabazz
7/8/2002	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
7/18/2002	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
8/16/2002	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
10/24/2002	The O'Reilly Factor	Malik Shabazz
10/28/2002	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
7/9/2003	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
2/28/2004	Big Story Weekend Edition	Malik Shabazz
6/21/2004	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
5/3/2005	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
5/5/2005	The O'Reilly Factor	Quanell X
5/25/2005	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
9/19/2005	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
9/27/2005	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
10/13/2005	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
10/17/2005	The O'Reilly Factor	Malik Shabazz
10/17/2005	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
11/29/2005	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
2/9/2006	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
3/10/2006	The O'Reilly Factor	Malik Shabazz
4/10/2006	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
5/1/2006	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
5/1/2006	On the Record with Greta Van Susteren	Malik Shabazz
6/7/2006	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
8/11/2006	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
11/16/2006	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
11/30/2006	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
12/5/2006	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
1/5/2007	The O'Reilly Factor	Malik Shabazz
2/26/2007	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
3/9/2007	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
4/13/2007	Hannity & Colmes	Hashim Nzinga
7/16/2007	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz
10/19/2007	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
12/4/2007	Hannity & Colmes	Quanell X
3/19/2008	Hannity & Colmes	Malik Shabazz

Again, this is no accident with Fox and its mostly white and conservative audience. This is a calculated effort to fear monger and make white people afraid of black people.

Media Matters for America:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007140028

Fox News Pundit Glenn Beck Calls President Obama A Racist

During an appearance Tuesday morning on Fox and Friends in which the topic was the "beer summit" scheduled to take place on Thursday, July 30th at the White House, Glenn Beck called President Obama a racist. The tired old right-wing talking point about the Rev. Wright and Obama's criticism of the police were two of the reasons Beck listed for why he feels the way he does about the president. As I said in my previous post about the Henry Louis Gates incident, Obama's criticism of the police wasn't race related. It would be different if he called Sgt. James Crowley a "stupid, white cop". Unfortunately, Beck and several others jumped on the "stupidly" remark and are automatically assuming that the reason for Obama using the term is because Gates is black and Crowley is white.

I do give credit to Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade because he did call Beck out for his nonsensical theories. I wonder if Glenn listens to himself when he speaks because when Kilmeade defended Obama, Glenn said that he's not saying that President Obama doesn't like white people... then he turns around and calls Obama a racist again!

There has been speculation that Glenn Beck is nothing more than the Fox News Channel's version of Stephen Colbert, meaning that his on-air persona is a character spouting off things that the "real" Glenn Beck couldn't possibly believe. When I've watched Beck in the past, sometimes I wasn't sure if he was for a real or if it was all a joke. After viewing his recent appearance on Fox and Friends, I'm convinced that he does believe what he says. If I am wrong, Glenn needs to take his show to Comedy Central and let everyone in on the joke because his recent comments about President Obama are irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

Below is a clip of Glenn making his comments about President Obama on Fox and Friends: