Carlson: ‘You Don’t Hear As Much About The Scrutiny’ Of Pelosi Because Conservative Women ‘Get More Attacks’
Carlson: ‘You Don’t Hear As Much About The Scrutiny’ Of Pelosi Because Conservative Women ‘Get More Attacks’
On Fox and Friends this morning, the hosts discussed a recently released Fox News poll that measures the favorable opinions that Americans have about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The poll found that 47 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Palin while only 28 percent had a favorable opinion of Pelosi.
“Also, 61 percent of you feel that governor Sarah Palin, former governor, has been treated unfairly by the mainstream media,” commented Steve Doocy. Co-host Gretchen Carlson suggested that Pelosi’s numbers are low even though she doesn’t get much “scrutiny” because “if you’re a conservative woman, you get more attacks“:
CARLSON: It’s interesting because even though that number shows that Pelosi has a much higher unfavorable rating, you don’t, you don’t at least hear as much about the scrutiny of Nancy Pelosi as you did about Sarah Palin. And that may go back to that whole age old argument that if you’re a conservative woman, you get more attacks than if you have liberal points of view.
Watch it:
The contention that the media treats conservative women worse than liberal women is conventional wisdom on the right. But Carlson’s claim that scrutiny of Nancy Pelosi is under the radar is surprising considering her own network’s often times downright mean treatment of the first female speaker of the House:
– On the November 10 edition of Fox and Friends, for instance, radio host Laura Ingraham said that “Pelosi basically did everything except sell her own body” to pass health care reform.
– On Nov. 4 on the O’Reilly Factor, Dennis Miller said Pelosi had a “sub-reptilian intellect” and likened her face to a “lizard laying on a hot rock.”
– On October 30, Fox and Friends laughingly re-enacted protesters calling for Pelosi to “burn in hell.”
– On October 21, Bill O’Reilly mocked Pelosi, saying, “If there wan’t Botox involved, with all due respect, there might have been more expression” on her face.
– On August 6, Glenn Beck joked about putting poison in Pelosi’s wine.
– On May 20, Hannity guest Jay Thomas said, “I think if you waterboarded Nancy Pelosi, she wouldn’t admit to plastic surgery.”
– On May 19, Dennis Miller called her a “train wreck” and a “shrieking harridan magpie.”
On Fox, a progressive woman like Pelosi doesn’t just get “scrutiny,” she gets insults.
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Rupert Murdoch denies he said Obama made a racist comment.
Rupert Murdoch denies he said Obama made a racist comment.
Earlier this month, News Corp. president Rupert Murdoch said that President Obama made “a very racist comment” when Obama inserted himself into the July spat between Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Officer Jim Crowley. Murdoch also said Fox News host Glenn Beck “was right” to say Obama is a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” Today on Capitol Hill, Media Matters’ staffers asked Murdoch to be more specific about what “racist” comments Obama allegedly made, but Murdoch denied he had made the charge:
MMFA: Mr. Murdoch, can you be more specific about what racist comments the President allegedly made?
MURDOCH: I denied that absolutely. I don’t believe he’s a racist.
“But you said that he made racist statements,” the staffer noted as Murdoch walked away. Watch it:
Fox issues on-air apology for misleading footage of Palin crowds.
Fox issues on-air apology for misleading footage of Palin crowds.
Following ThinkProgress’ report yesterday that Fox News had recycled old file footage of Sarah Palin rallies to assert that she is currently getting huge turnouts on her book tour, the network issued an on-air apology this afternoon. Fox’s Happening Now co-host Jane Skinner said it was mistake, but didn’t explain how it happened:
In the tease before the segment — the tease to commercial — we told you how those people were already lining up to meet Palin. The problem is, we didn’t actually show you the video we were referencing. Instead, we mistakenly aired what’s called file tape of Sarah Palin. We didn’t mean to mislead anybody in that tease. It was a mistake. And for that, we apologize.
Watch it:
The Swamp reported earlier that Fox News may take “serious disciplinary action” against control room staffers over the incident. The on-air apology made no reference to such action.
Fox acknowledges ‘production error’ and promises ‘disciplinary action’ for misleading Palin footage.
Fox acknowledges ‘production error’ and promises ‘disciplinary action’ for misleading Palin footage.
Yesterday, ThinkProgress first reported that Fox News aired old file footage of Sarah Palin rallies to claim that she’s “continuing to draw huge crowds while she’s promoting her brand new book.” Host Gregg Jarrett presented the video with commentary that suggested the footage was “just coming in.” (Watch it.) Media Matters noted that one of the scenes was from a Nov. 1, 2008 Palin rally in Florida. Crooks and Liars’ John Amato filed an FCC complaint for passing on “false information” to the public. By day’s end yesterday, Fox released this statement responding to the controversy:
“This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn’t alert the control room to update the video,” Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news at FOX, sad this evening. “There will be an on-air explanation during Happening Now on Thursday.”
Citing unnamed sources, The Swamp reports Fox is planning to take “serious disciplinary action” against those “responsible behind the scenes in the control room.”
O’Reilly Upset Over 9/11 Trials: ‘I Don’t Care About The Constitution!’
O’Reilly Upset Over 9/11 Trials: ‘I Don’t Care About The Constitution!’
Since Attorney General Eric Holder announced his decision to move five Guantanamo Bay detainees — including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad — to New York for civilian trials on charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, Fox News personalities have been up in arms. Karl Rove called it a “long-standing plot” by the Obama administration’s “left-wing lawyers who do not love America.”
But last night on Fox, the network’s top legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano — who has been known to disagree with Fox’s right-wing narratives on legal issues — disputed that view, citing the constitutional right to be tried in the place where the crime has been committed. “I don’t care about the Constitution!” host Bill O’Reilly responded. The debate continued:
O’REILLY: So why is he entitled to come to New York City to be tried in the civilian criminal court if he’s arrested in Pakistan?
NAPOLITANO: Because the document you don’t want me to talk about says when the government is going to prosecute you, it must do so in the place where the alleged harm was caused.
Later in the program, Fox analyst Brit Hume said he’d “been scouring the columns of various people opining about this to see if somebody makes a good argument for doing it,” adding, “And I really haven’t heard one.” Hume then noted Napolitano’s opinion and said, “I’m not certain I agree with that.” Watch it:
Holder’s “bold and principled” decision was “a victory for the rule of law and the American system of justice,” the Center for American Progress’ Ken Gude said.
“If you are accused, you get to know what you know what you are accused of, you get to face your accusers, and you get to defend yourself in court, and then you face a trial and a conviction. This is who we are as a system,” said Tom Andrews, director of the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo. “The Taliban? You can get a trial and a beheading in a few hours. That’s not our system of justice.”
Read more about Holder’s decision in today’s Progress Report.
Washington Times op-ed: Obama lacks ‘blood impulse’ for what America ‘is about’ due to his ‘Kenyan father.’
Washington Times op-ed: Obama lacks ‘blood impulse’ for what America ‘is about’ due to his ‘Kenyan father.’
In a column today criticizing President Obama’s bow before the Japanese Emperor, Wesley Pruden, the editor emeritus of The Washington Times, claims that President Obama “seems never to have studied much American history” because he apparently doesn’t know that “the essence of America is that all men stand equal and are entitled to look even a king, maybe particularly a king, straight in the eye.” Pruden then claims this lack of understanding of America’s “essence” is “no fault of the president” because Obama’s father was Kenyan and his mother was “attracted to men of the Third World”:
But Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy ’60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to “hope” for “change.” It’s no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of “the 57 states” is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.
Pruden has a history of writing racially-charged items. In 2005, he wrote a column criticizing the Senate for passing a resolution that apologized for never enacting an anti-lynching law. As Media Matters noted at the time, Pruden had previously made numerous “sympathetic statements about the Confederacy” and employed “a neo-Confederate activist in the Times newsroom.”
Sarah Palin Lies To Oprah
Sarah Palin Lies To Oprah
On the afternoon of Oct. 2, 2008 — the day of the vice presidential debate last year — Politico’s Jonathan Martin broke the news that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign was “pulling out of Michigan.” The next day, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told Fox News’ Carl Cameron that she disagreed with the decision. “I fired a quick e-mail and said, oh, come on. Do we have to call it there?” said Palin. “I want to get back to Michigan and I want to try.”
But in her interview with Oprah Winfrey, which aired yesterday, Palin claimed that she only “went rogue” on the Michigan message because she “didn’t know we pulled out of Michigan”:
WINFREY: Didn’t several times they say to you when actually you mentioned, when you were talking about pulling out of Michigan and you said I wished we’d stayed in Michigan. Weren’t you told then, Sarah just stay on script?
PALIN: Right, told after wards and that, that was always puzzling to me because if I were to respond to a reporter’s questions very candidly, honestly, for instance, they say, “what do you think about the campaign pulling out of Michigan” and I think, “darn I wish we weren’t. Every vote matters, I can’t wait to get back to Michigan” and then told afterwards that, “oh, you screwed up. You went rogue on us Sarah, you’re not supposed to be.” And my reminder to the campaign was, I didn’t know we pulled out of Michigan. My entire VP team, we didn’t know that we had pulled out. I’m sorry, I apologize, but speaking candidly to a reporter.
Watch it:
Clearly, if Palin told Cameron that she had sent an e-mail to the McCain high command disagreeing with the move, she knew that the decision had been made. Additionally, in their reported book on Sarah Palin, former Fox News embed Shushannah Walshe and CBS News digital journalist Scott Conroy reveal that Palin knew she had made a mistake in her interview with Cameron:
The e-mail that Palin sent was, in fact, essentially how she described it to Cameron. She wrote to her traveling staff and top McCain advisers, “If there’s any time, Todd and I would love a quick return to Michigan-we’d tour the plants, etc. . . . If it does McC any good. I know you have a plan, but I hate to see us leave Michigan. We’ll do whatever we had [sic] to do there to give it a 2nd effort.”
A senior aide replied, “Michigan is out of reach unless something drastic happens. We must win oh and hopefully pa.”
Palin replied that she “got it,” but her subsequent interview with Cameron had shown that she hadn’t. She acknowledged as much in a post-interview e-mail to senior staff, writing, “Oops-I mentioned something about that to Carl Cameron and it’s now recorded that I’d love to give Michigan the ol’ college try.” Later in the day, she tried once more. “It’s a cheap 4hr drive from WI. I’ll pay for the gas,” she wrote.
This isn’t the first claim that Palin has made in her book and during her promotional tour that has been contradicted by campaign e-mails. In her book, Palin wrote that “from the beginning” she liked the idea of appearing on Saturday Night Live. But in an e-mail thread from the campaign that was provided to the Huffington Post, Palin said she was “not thrilled” about the idea of going on the show because “these folks are whack.”
In an interview with Walshe and Conroy, The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder noted that their book chronicles “fairly persuasively, a large number of what seem to be fairly egregious distortions” by Palin. “Sarah Palin is quick to cast aside people who cross her in even minor ways, and her unwillingness to tolerate much dissent often leads to an infallibility syndrome,” replied the authors, who later added that she has a “tendency to wildly exaggerate the truth.”
We kicked the next morning off with a lot of prep for the day's events, including an on-camera interview atop the hotel with Fox News reporter Carl Cameron, with the St. Louis Gateway Arch framed in the shot behind me. Among his other questions, he asked what I thought of the campaign pulling out of Michigan.
"Yes, I read that this morning," I answered, then said I wished we weren't pulling out of Michigan -- that evvery single person and every single vote mattered, and I sure didn't want anyone to give up anywhere. No harm giving a little shout-out to the Great Lakes State, I though. No one had mentioned to the VP staff or me that the campaign was even considering pulling out of Michigan, much less that we already had. So when I was asked about it, I was caught a bit off guard, but I answered truthfully about having read about it in the newspaper. We moved on to the next question and wrapped up the interview. No big deal.
But we soon heard that back at headquarters, it was a big deal.The word came hurtling down that I had been "off script" with Cameron. Of course, it's pretty easy to issue candid, off-script messages when there is no script to begin with. It wasn't the end of the world, though, and I hoped headquarters would forgive me and move on.
They didn't. One or more McCain senior staffers would later anonymously tell reporters that I was "going rogue."
UPDATED Shields: I’m ‘Nostalgic’ For A ‘Manly Man’ President Who Will ‘Kick Some Tail And Ask Questions Afterwards’
UPDATED Shields: I’m ‘Nostalgic’ For A ‘Manly Man’ President Who Will ‘Kick Some Tail And Ask Questions Afterwards’
UPDATE: Shields contacted ThinkProgress and kindly informed us that his comments below were intended to be sarcastic. We regret our error in misinterpreting his comments and for questioning his motives. Shields told us that his comments were meant to disparage those who consistently argue that more war will solve America’s problems and that his statement was directed at co-panelist and right-wing neoconservative Charles Krauthammer, who, according to Shields, was displeased with the remark. With a deeper appreciation for his wit, we extend our sincere apologies to Mr. Shields.
Since reports emerged last month that top commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal asked President Obama for upwards of 40,000 additional troops to continue the war there, the right wing has been attacking the President for taking time to make a decision on his new strategy. “It is absolutely unconscionable,” Liz Cheney said yesterday on Fox News, that Obama “is denying our troops on the ground in Afghanistan the resources that they need to prevail to win that war.”
Also during that time, Obama has made reflective gestures to those who have fallen in the wars he is now running, paying tribute to returning war dead at Dover Air Force Base and making an impromptu visit to Section 60 at Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day to commemorate Iraq and Afghanistan war casualties. Yesterday on Inside Washington, during a discussion of Obama’s upcoming decision on Afghanistan, syndicated columnist Mark Shields scoffed at Obama’s demeanor, wishing instead for a “manly man” in the White House:
SHIELDS: We have a president of real intellectual horse power who is cool, detached and analytical and if anything you can watch the emotional side of him emerge in this whole process. … There’s an emotional aspect, the comforter in chief as well as the commander in chief. Both roles. And I think it makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection.
Watch it:
Shields’ rhetoric is eerily reminiscent of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s justification for the war in Iraq, who in May 2003 argued that after 9/11, the U.S. had to invade in order to “burst” the terrorism bubble:
FRIEDMAN: And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand? You don’t think, you know we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck on this, okay?” That Charlie is what this war [in Iraq] is about. We could of hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. Could of hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.
Of course Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and after nearly 4,400 U.S soldiers dead, 32,000 wounded and nearly $1 trillion spent, the U.S. still has well over 100,000 troops stationed in Iraq.
CNN paid Lou Dobbs $8 million to quit.
CNN paid Lou Dobbs $8 million to quit.
Although Lou Dobbs has been saying that his departure from CNN was an “amicable parting on the best of terms,” the New York Post reports that CNN wanted him gone so badly that it gave him an $8 million severance package. Dobbs “had a year and a half to go on his $12 million contract.” He’ll be appearing on Fox News tonight to talk with Bill O’Reilly, who has called the former CNN host a “stand-up guy.”
Report: Dobbs to appear on The O’Reilly Factor next Monday.
Report: Dobbs to appear on The O’Reilly Factor next Monday.
On Wednesday, when CNN anchor Lou Dobbs announced his resignation for the network, speculation began about whether he would join the Fox Business Network. Fox put out a statement saying that they had “not had any discussions with Lou Dobbs for Fox News or Fox Business.” But Daily Finance’s Jeff Bercovici reported last night that Dobbs first big post-CNN interview will be on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly:
The network is set to announce that Dobbs will be a guest on Monday night’s edition of Bill O’Reilly’s show, DailyFinance has learned. Warm feelings between the two men goes back to last summer, when O’Reilly publicly defended Dobbs against critics who wanted him fired for repeatedly showcasting the claims of “birthers” who allege President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. Dobbs offered to be interviewed on The O’Reilly Factor then, but quickly backed out, prompting speculation that CNN had ordered him not to appear on a competing network.
Monday’s appearance could be a make-good for that…or it could be a not-so-subtle signal that Dobbs is inclined to sign on with Rupert Murdoch’s legions, as many believe he will. (On his radio show today, callers were reportedly urging Dobbs to do just that.)
As Bercovici notes, O’Reilly has defended Dobbs on the air multiple times. Dobbs has replied by calling him “a stand up guy.”
Lou Dobbs Accuses ThinkProgress Of Conspiring With The White House To Carry Out ‘Insidious And Sordid Attacks’
Lou Dobbs Accuses ThinkProgress Of Conspiring With The White House To Carry Out ‘Insidious And Sordid Attacks’
Last night, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs abruptly announced that he was leaving the network, effective immediately. TPM notes that in the weeks preceding his departure, Dobbs told GQ that the White House had been conspiring with a number of groups, including ThinkProgress, to wage “insidious and sordid attacks” against him with the goal of intimidating him and his former network:
GQ: That was my next question. Have you heard from the administration?
LD: Of course I have. Sure. Without question. They are coordinating with a number of groups, including the Center for American Progress. The usual suspects. To carry out constant and absolutely insidious and sordid attacks on me. And the reason they’re doing so, I’m the leading independent voice, and I am critical on their policies and intent, on unconditional amnesty, and leaving the borders and ports unsecure. They cannot, they’re. . .
GQ: They’re afraid of that point of view? They don’t think their point of view will carry against…
LD: Apparently not. Otherwise why would you do such a thing? But I will not be intimidated, and I understand that. Therefore they’re trying to intimidate my network and my owners.
For the record, neither ThinkProgress nor its parent organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, collaborated with the White House on our Dobbs coverage. However, Dobbs’ paranoid remarks did come around the same time ThinkProgress began promoting the efforts of progressive activists who were leading the Drop Dobbs, Tell CNN Enough Is Enough, and Basta Dobbs campaigns aimed at pressuring CNN to hold Dobbs to journalistic standards.
ThinkProgress has always focused on media accountability. Throughout the years, Dobbs has repeatedly left himself wide-open to legitimate criticism, not baseless attacks. Some recent examples:
– This summer, ThinkProgress reported that Dobbs had joined the birther movement and claimed President Obama might be an undocumented immigrant.
– The Wonk Room reported that the Lou Dobbs Show was promoting the myth that “people who break immigration laws” will be “rewarded” with free health care coverage.
– Shortly after we noted that Fox News’ John Stossel and Glenn Beck openly criticized Dobbs’ anti-immigrant “rants,” Dobbs proceeded to rip Stossel as a “self-important ass” with his “own brand of myopic idiocy.”
– ThinkProgress documented Dobbs slamming the “vile stupidity and ignorance” of “annoying” Geraldo Rivera, who had also denounced Dobbs’ immigration tirades.
– Most recently, Dobbs claimed that “ethnocentric interest groups” and Rivera himself were to blame for gun shots fired at his house. ThinkProgress called up the New Jersey State Police and broke the news that the shooting more likely involved a hunter’s stray bullet.
The efforts to get Dobbs off the air were not one-sided. Scott Stanzel, who used to work in President Bush’s communications shop, applauded the decision today in a statement to Politico: “I will not miss Lou Dobbs, his show or his ‘advocacy journalism.’ In recent years, the blurring of the lines between opinion and news reporting has damaged the credibility of mainstream reporters and news organizations. It’s refreshing to see CNN make a decision to fill the Dobbs slot with a respected and accomplished hard news journalist like John King. Maybe there is hope for the news business after all.”
Hannity admits he ‘screwed up’ by using old footage to increase the size of Bachmann’s tea party.
Hannity admits he ‘screwed up’ by using old footage to increase the size of Bachmann’s tea party.
On Tuesday night, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart called out Fox News’ Sean Hannity for using images from the 9/12 rally in Washington to make it seem as though Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) “house call” rally attracted a larger crowd last Thursday. On his Fox show last night, Hannity confessed that he “screwed up,” claiming that it was “an inadvertent mistake.” “It pains me to say: Jon Stewart was right,” said Hannity. Watch it:
Media Decoder’s Bill Carter notes that “Hannity did not address specifically how the mistake came to be made.”
Lou Dobbs to announce departure from CNN tonight.
Lou Dobbs to announce departure from CNN tonight.
The New York Times reports that CNN anchor Lou Dobbs plans to announce on his show tonight that he is leaving the network, effective immediately. Dobbs has been the target of pro-immigration activists who launched two campaigns, Drop Dobbs and Basta Dobbs, aimed at pressuring CNN to “hold Mr. Dobbs to journalistic standards” or dump him altogether. Dobbs had become “a publicity nightmare” for CNN in recent months. His next stop could be the Fox Business network. Dobbs met with Fox chief Roger Ailes to discuss a potential position a couple of months ago.
Fox News Regular Bo Dietl: ‘Ten Years Ago, [Katie Couric] Looked American. Today, She Looks Oriental’
Fox News Regular Bo Dietl: ‘Ten Years Ago, [Katie Couric] Looked American. Today, She Looks Oriental’
On Monday during an appearance on Don Imus’ radio show, which is simulcast on the Fox Business Network, former George H.W. Bush appointee and Fox News regular Bo Dietl used sexist and racist language to attack CBS News anchor Katie Couric. “Katie Couric, the cougar,” said Dietl. “If she gets her eyes done anymore, she’s going to look like a split face.” As Imus meekly attempted to defend Couric, saying “she’s fine,” Dietl unleashed a derogatory rant about Couric:
DIETL: She looks like a Halloween cartoon. She’s got her eyes pulled so far, she’s starting to look Chinese herself. Enough with these face lifts, alright Kate. And enough with the young guys Katie. You’re over the top baby. You’re over fifty. Start going out with guys your own age. This cougar stuff don’t work.
After some cross talk, Imus tried to get Dietl to “leave Katie Couric alone.” But as Dietl approached the end of his rant, Imus offhandedly called Couric “a rodent” as he tried to end the conversation:
IMUS: I’m just saying that if she wants — leave Katie Couric alone. She’s fine.
DIETL: Oh no no no. You like her eyes the way they look?
IMUS: She looks fine to me.
DIETL: They’re getting smaller and smaller.
IMUS: She looks fine.
DIETL: Ten years ago, she looked American. Today she is an oriental.
IMUS: She is a rodent. Leave her alone.
DIETL: She doesn’t like you either pal. She never stuck up for you.
Watch it:
This isn’t the first time that Dietl and Imus have had a racially-charged discussion live on the air. In May 2008, after Dietl said that then-President Bush should fly to Saudi Arabia to talk to “those little hamel humpers over there,” Imus replied, “It’s, uh, ‘camel humpers.’” An advocate of having law enforcement “go out to the Muslim communities,” Dietl, who is a birther, has referred to Muslims as “Aba Dabba Doos.”
Dietl has appeared on Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto’s Fox News shows and is someone for whom Fox News CEO Roger Ailes personally vouches. “I have known Bo Dietl both personally and professionally for many years,” says Ailes in an endorsement letter posted on Dietl’s website. “He does excellent work and personally is a man I trust.”
Lawsuit alleges that New York Post DC bureau chief’s goal was ‘to destroy’ Obama
Lawsuit alleges that New York Post DC bureau chief’s goal was ‘to destroy’ Obama
The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reports today that a fired New York Post employee, Sandra Guzman, has filed a complaint against the Post, the paper’s parent company News Corp., and Post editor-in-chief Col Allan “alleging harassment as well as ‘unlawful employment practices and retaliation.’” Stein reports that Guzman “paints the Post newsroom as a male-dominated frat house and Allan in particular as sexist, offensive and domineering. Guzman alleges that she and others were routinely subjected to misogynistic behavior.” But in addition to horrible workplace conditions, the Post’s news division is operating with a clear partisan bias, according to Guzman. She said the Post’s Washington D.C. bureau chief vowed to bring down President Obama:
She says that hiring practices at the paper — as well as her firing — were driven by racial prejudices rather than merit.
And she recounts the paper’s D.C. bureau chief stating that the publication’s goal was to “destroy [President] Barack Obama.”
Guzman’s revelation isn’t all that surprising considering that a Senior Vice President at Fox News, also a News Corp. subsidiary, admitted earlier this year that the network is consciously aiming to be “the voice of opposition” to the Obama administration “on some issues.”
Liberal Professor Marc Lamont Hill Appears On O’Reilly’s Show After Murdoch Said He Had Been Fired
Liberal Professor Marc Lamont Hill Appears On O’Reilly’s Show After Murdoch Said He Had Been Fired
Last night on the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly brought on Marc Lamont Hill and Mary Katharine Hamm to talk about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He introduced Hamm as a “Fox News analyst” and called Hill — who was filling in for NPR reporter Juan Williams — a professor from Columbia University.
What was interesting about Hill’s appearance was that it was his first one in nearly a month — since he was supposedly fired by Rupert Murdoch. From a report by the Live Feed on Oct. 16:
Rupert Murdoch continued Fox News Channel’s duel with the White House on Friday while also announcing the termination of the network’s left-leaning analyst Marc Lamont Hill. [...]
Murdoch also said that Hill has been fired. He revealed the move after a shareholder had raised the question of how Hill was hired, citing his “reputation of defending cop killers and racists.”
Murdoch never said why the network let Hill go. However, the Columbia University professor’s views — such as his defense of White House adviser Van Jones — are often out of step with those of the network’s hosts. Additionally, Hill has been the target of Cliff Kincaid, who works for the right-wing “Accuracy in Media” organization and has been leading a campaign to get Hill fired.
But if his controversial views were the reason he’s no longer a Fox News analyst, then why would O’Reilly still have him on his show? Or was there another reason he was fired?
Late last month, Hill said that he found out he had been fired through a “Google alert.” But on Twitter, Hill still calls himself a “Professor/Activist/Fox News Analyst,” and his bio on his website reads:
Hill has not responded to inquiries from ThinkProgress about his arrangement with Fox.
Murdoch: Glenn Beck Was ‘Right’ To Say Obama Is ‘A Racist’ With ‘A Deep-Seated Hatred For White People’
Murdoch: Glenn Beck Was ‘Right’ To Say Obama Is ‘A Racist’ With ‘A Deep-Seated Hatred For White People’
After President Obama inserted himself into the July spat between Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Officer Jim Crowley, Glenn Beck infamously declared on Fox & Friends that Obama “exposed himself” with the incident “as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or white culture.” Challenged by co-host Brian Kilmeade, Beck claimed that he was “not saying that he doesn’t like white people,” just that he’s a “racist.” Beck’s comments led to a boycott of his program by Color for Change, which has resulted in 81 companies refusing to advertise on his show.
In an interview with Sky News Australia last week, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News’ parent company, stood by Beck. Though he claimed that Beck probably shouldn’t have said such a thing, Murdoch concluded that “if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right”:
SPEERS: The Glenn Beck, who you mentioned, has called Barack Obama a racist and he helped organize a protest against him. Others on Fox have likened him to Stalin. Is that defensible?
MURDOCH: No, no, no, not Stalin, I don’t think. I don’t know who that, not one of our people. On the racist thing, that caused a grilling. But he did make a very racist comment. Ahhh…about, you know, blacks and whites and so on, and which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. And um, that was something which perhaps shouldn’t have been said about the President, but if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right.
Murdoch apparently isn’t very familiar with the content of the network he owns. Numerous Fox News personalities, including Glenn Beck, have compared Obama and members of his administration to Stalin. Watch it (starting around 16:00):
Earlier in the interview, Sky News political editor David Speers asked Murdoch if “people who switch on Fox News know when they’re getting news and when they’re getting opinion.” “Oh, absolutely,” replied Murdoch, pointing to Glenn Beck at 5 p.m. and Sean Hannity, “a pretty academic conservative,” at 9 p.m. as the only examples of the network’s opinion programming. But as Jon Stewart pointed out last month, Fox only considers its programming to be news from “9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays.” “The only people you ever think about when you think about Fox News are not news,” said Stewart. “They’re Fox opiniotainment.”
Fred Hiatt employs fuzzy math to claim House health bill would bring ‘America a step closer to bankruptcy.’
Fred Hiatt employs fuzzy math to claim House health bill would bring ‘America a step closer to bankruptcy.’
In this morning’s Washington Post, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt argues that the House health care bill “could take America a step closer to bankruptcy” and harm “the poor and vulnerable.” But since the CBO’s analysis of the House health care bill doesn’t support Hiatt’s contention that it would bring America to the brink of bankruptcy, Hiatt relies on the CBO’s analysis of the President’s entire budget and implies that it’s Obama’s health “plan”:
The root difficulty is Obama’s insistence that the nation can afford a large new social program without raising taxes on anyone who earns less than $250,000 per year. Under his plan, according to a CBO analysis, the government will be spending 24.5 percent of gross domestic product — the total value of the national economy — by 2019 while raising only 19 percent in revenue: a huge, unsustainable gap.
The 24.5% of GDP isn’t a measure of government spending as a result of the House/Obama health care bill. It’s a measure of the outlays of all of the President’s policies in his 2010 budget in 2019 and does not capture the deficit-reducing effects of health care reform or the House bill. The Wonk Room has more.
Fox And Friends Muse About ‘Special Screenings’ And ‘Special Debriefings’ For Muslims In The Military
Fox And Friends Muse About ‘Special Screenings’ And ‘Special Debriefings’ For Muslims In The Military
After news broke yesterday that the suspected gunman responsible for the “horrific outburst of violence” at Fort Hood, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was Muslim, some commentators began assigning “collective responsibility for the actions of one man” to the Muslim community as a whole. On Fox and Friends this morning, Geraldo Rivera warned against casting “a gloomy cloud of suspicion over all the Muslim G.I.s who serve with great honor”:
RIVERA: I think that the great tragedy of this incident is that it will cast a gloomy cloud of suspicion over all the Muslim G.I.s who serve with great honor and who are an amazing assist to the United States in this conflict we’re having with radical Islam. This will, and also, I remember my dad, just very briefly. When we were growing up there would be a notorious crime and my dad used to gather the family. We used to say, like a little prayer, “please God” that it’s not a Puerto Rican. You know because we had, dealing with so many social pressures and prejudices, dealing with all the rest of it, we didn’t want one of these awful examples to cast aspersion and negativity on our group. And this is the same thing with American Muslims now, specifically American Muslim G.I.s.
But, as both Raw Story and Media Matters have noted, later in the segment the hosts of Fox and Friends suggested that “special debriefings” and “special screenings” of Muslim soldiers should be considered. “If I’m going to be sticking in an outpost, I got to know the guy next to me is not going to want to kill me,” said Brian Kilmeade. Gretchen Carlson pondered whether the military had been “exercising political correctness in not approaching” Hasan “as seriously as they would have had he not been a Muslim.” Watch it:
Muslim- and Arab-American organizations have loudly spoken against Hasan’s attack. “We condemn this cowardly attack in the strongest terms possible and ask that the perpetrators be punished to the full extent of the law,” said a Council on American-Islamic Relations statement. In a statement, the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military urged “the media, government officials and all of our fellow Americans to recognize that the actions of Hasan are those of a deranged gunman, and are in no way representative of the wider Arab American or American Muslim community.”
Is Glenn Beck Being Treated By SEIU Nurses?
Is Glenn Beck Being Treated By SEIU Nurses?
One of right-wing TV host Glenn Beck’s most frequent targets is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Beck has in the past repeatedly referred to SEIU members as “thugs” involved in radical leftist conspiracies, even going as far as to say that SEIU president Andy Stern is trying to re-create the Bolshevik Revolution. “When you start to figure out who SEIU is and what they want, you’re not really comfortable,” Beck said last month.
In recent days, Beck has been hospitalized for appendicitis. As Alternet’s Alexander Zaitchik points out, the staff treating the ailing pundit is likely under the auspices of SEIU nurses:
The security-conscious Beck has not disclosed the name of the facility, but it’s a safe bet that it is staffed by proud members of a storied union: New York’s Local 1199, aka United Healthcare Workers East, which belongs to the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU has organized all of Manhattan’s major hospitals, including every facility to which Beck could have conceivably been sent.
Beck certainly isn’t complaining about being treated by nurses who were organized by the union he regularly demonizes. On his Twitter account, he praised the staff that is attending to him:
If it does turn out that Beck’s “amazing” nurses happen to be members of the SEIU, will he retract the statements he has made condemning the union or will he continue on his McCarthyite tirade?
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