This just in:
Sean Hannity and Karl Rove and both lying douchebags.
Semi-related, some fox news retardation.
I was watching CNN as I was going to sleep - I think it was Sunday morning. As they went to commercial, I flipped it one channel up to Fox News. There was a newscaster interviewing Don McLeroy, the a member of the Texas State board of Education. He’s a young Earth creationist and, in debates on the use of evolution in Texas biology books, has said “someone needs to stand up to all these experts!”.
By the way - if your state school board is half-full of young earth creationists, shouldn’t your state be committing mass suicide in embarassment and shame? I mean… for fucks sake, these people are at the highest level of educational control. What the fuck?
I wish I could find you the clip online somewhere (I searched, but couldn’t - anyone know if Fox archives their video somewhere?) because I can’t even describe how little sense the interview made. It was about how public schools downplay the role of the Bible in their history books. I couldn’t exactly make sense of what was going on, but it sounded like they (both the interviewer and Don McElroy) thought there was a librul conspiracy to keep the Bible out of history textbooks even though it was related to everything about American history.
At one point, Mr. McElroy explained that the founding fathers based our government around Christianity, because there were 3 branches of government. … That’s about as clear as he was on that. No elaboration. At some later point he mentioned something like “three branches of government, checks and balances, show that man is imperfect”… I suppose that was his attempt at justification.
And when he said this, the newscaster nodded and said “right… right”
Okay, I get it - Fox News tries to cater to people who lean conservative. Does that mean you have to be fucking batshit crazy and retarded and cater to every crackpot idea that anyone on the right wing has? Aren’t there reasonable republicans out there who aren’t fucking batshit crazy young earth creationist idiots who view this sort of pandering to the retarded as insulting to them?
Problem is that in many states, including Texas, member of those school boards are elected.
Plenty of Americans can barely drag their fat lazy asses to the ballot box when the Presidency of the nation is at stake. What percentage do you think vote in school board elections? These poorly-attended, downballot elections are often decided by very small numbers of voters, so any candidate that can marshall a devoted following of nutcases has a really good shot at election. And finding nutcases in Texas is no needle-in-a-haystack assignment.
More batshit crazy pandering:
Hannity does not point out that the Obama birth certificate conspiracies were debunked already.
http://www.newshounds.us/2009/07/16/fox_continues_promoting_birther_lawsuit_while_ignoring_red_flags_indicating_its_a_hoax.php
Even the GOP leaders know it is batshit crazy pandering, but they still continue to pander these yahoos.
They even admit that! Has their base shrunk so much that they have to depend on these yahoos now and in the future?
Is there something in the water? Even Lou Downs on CNN has gone batshit crazy!
“Seemingly the questions won’t go away”? Of course not, not if conservative talking heads continue to fear telling their viewers the whole truth.
In that vein, Chris Matthews rips a new one into a Republican congressman whackjob about Obama’s citizenship. Enjoy. (I especially like the part where said whackjob gets one of the three constitutional requirements for the presidency wrong.)
Even Lou Dobbs on CNN has gone batshit crazy???
You obviously haven’t been paying attention, he has been batshit crazy for a ocuple of years now.
I did pay attention.
My impression was that he was just crazy.
Now I see that he is batshit crazy, head trauma crazy; he is just a tight-ass, tossbag, tosspot, twerp, twit, troll of a tool.
Ah, so he has taken it to 11. You see most people can only go to 10, but when Dobbs needs just a bit more he can turn the crazy up to 11.
Why wouldn’t you just make 10 crazier?
…but his crazy goes up to 11!
Over 9000!!!
It seems others got the Memo too. Even Liz Cheney is getting on the Birther train. What’s fun is that the Birthers think they’re getting ever-so-closer to “The Truth” coming out, when nothing of the kind will happen, thus keeping their anticipation simmering/boiling. Multiple aneurysms may result.
That’s the problem. It’s like a TV show with a simmering, will-they-or-won’t-they thing between the two leads. You can draw people in with that tension. The payoff is seldom worth it, but for someone whose job is to attract attention and loyalty, that doesn’t matter. The longer they can push back the resolution, the more they’ve done their job. “What is he hiding?” is a compelling question, they’ll probably still be asking it after Obama is out of office.
“Whose side would you be on if the chips were down?”
“It is my job to see that the chips stay up.”
Jon Stewart massacred Lou Dobbs, the Republican congress critter and the nuts still making a lawsuit about Obama’s birth certificate.
While I agree with freedom of the press, I disagree that Fox is a news organization in anything but name. They are an editorial organization. As a cite, I remind you of the very heavy advertising they did before the April 15th tea party. Such promotion is not reporting news, but rather making news. There’s also the 100 or so screen shots floating around that show their bottom of the screen crawl identifying convicted republicans as democrats. Once is a mistake, but a regular re-occurrence is hard to swallow, especially in light of the fact that other news organs manage to make such mistakes much less frequently.
How can you say this with a straight face? Plenty of examples exist of Hannity baldly lying through omission, of which this is just the latest example. I have no problem with conservatives. But the hypocrisy of people like Hannity, who is actively trying to tear the government down while all the while suggesting it’s the left doing the destroying, give popularized conservatism a terrible name and image.
For you to defend him, or at least Fox news in this matter, is ludicrous. And your defense of that edited “interview” in this thread appears like nothing so much disingenuous weaseling. Man, defend your viewpoints, but be grown up enough to realize that your own proclaimed side has some serious flaws.
I agree, but given Brian Williams’ recent slavering, bowing reportage on Obama or ABC’s virtual infomercial on Obama’s healthcare plan, I find it hard to single out Fox, who is the only right-wing voice to counter the decades of pro-Democratic, pro-liberal reportage of ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, CNN, USA Today, etc., etc., virtually ad infinitum, for such ideological promotion.
Has this truly happened a hundred or more times, or even on a regular basis? I’m only aware of one time, but then I don’t watch Fox or follow what goes on there.
I’ll say the same thing again…does this really happen regularly? As I said upthread, I don’t watch Hannity so I honestly don’t know. But I do know that the clips which were omitted that the OP refers to don’t seem to be of particular importance from my perspective, and I can easily see how they might have been omitted for several legitimate reasons.
You are aware, of course, that to many of us on the right it’s you guys who are trying to tear the government down (or at least recast it in a much different way) and we who are trying to save the things that have made this country great and which have been under attack by the left for decades? What we have here, you and I, are ideological viewpoints and goals that are pretty much at complete loggerheads, and as a result we find ourselves, almost amusingly, accusing each other of the same things.
As I thought I said quite clearly upthread, I’m not defending Hannity (or Fox) so much as I’m challenging erroneous charges leveled in the OP. Would you seriously have me sit by and allow false and scurrilous accusations such as those in the OP simply because the subject of them “deserves” it in a big-picture sense? If Hannity, et al. are so wrong so often it shouldn’t be hard to condemn them legitimately. The fact of the matter, again, is that Obama didn’t answer the Major Garrett’s question well; Hannity didn’t “lie” by virtue of “chopping up the interview” (and for that matter, we don’t even know who omitted the clips, much less their motivation); Hannity didn’t “lie” when he said that Obama needed to study history (this is clearly just an opinion); and Hannity most certainly did not “cast aspersions on the President that he HATES AMERICA!!!”
So the OP is either lying or in error. I have no doubt that at the time he posted the OP he genuinely believed what he was saying, but the fact of the matter is that what he said was wrong, and I don’t happen to believe that his false claims should be allowed to stand simply because they were aimed at someone (Hannity) or something (Fox) that you feel has been unfair in other ways and therefore deserves it. Simply put, things are what they are – and what the OP is, is wrong. Period. End of story.
I said upthread that I don’t even particularly care for or even like Sean Hannity, but again if his behavior is so egregious, so often, why is it necessary to exaggerate or make things up? If honest examples of him behaving dishonestly were posted, I wouldn’t contest them.
Just as a clarification, I didn’t say that conservatives were trying to tear this government down, but rather that people like Hannity were. I see a difference. Having said that, you and I may indeed be philosophically at odds.
As for mainstream new orgs, I agree that they all exhibit bias to some degree. For me anyway, the tea parties and thefoxnation forums really pushed Fox far beyond the others.
Plenty of examples of Hannity’s work - http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/sean_hannity
Plenty of examples of Fox acting questionable - http://mediamatters.org/topic/onlyonfox/
In the interest of fairness, other news orgs get called out there as well, but seem to cross the line far less often.
http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/nbc
http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/abc
http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/cnn
As for the OP, Obama’s answer was nothing to write home about, but as presented by Fox and Hannity, it seemed recast in a worse light. Fox cuts out Obama’s acknowledgment of Lech Walesa and Václav Havel, and then Hannity himself invokes Walesa as a defense of Reagan. Obama answered the reporter’s question and acknowledged both Republican and Democratic presidents as material to ending the Cold War, but somehow that’s not enough for Hannity. Instead, since Obama didn’t lionize Reagan in his answer, he’s cast as an historically unaware idiot. I’d say that Hannity showed a much narrower view of history, then did our President.
No, Hannity didn’t say, in this instance, that Obama hated America. But it is hard not to hear it in his words as he’s spent so much sustained energy in pushing just that view. And, in this instance, both Fox and Hannity acted dishonest, IMO.
I just feel the need, for about the billionth time, to point out how much bullshit this is. Just because something isn’t right-wing, doesn’t make it left-wing.
Fox “News” is nothing but a shill for the right wing. You just don’t like the fact that the mainstream news sources aren’t. Tough shit for you.
ETA: nvm
Apparently, the dishonesty extends to his “charity” bilking war orphans and injured service vets: