LYING BLOGGERS AND THE LIES THEY TELL

News Hounds, Media Matters, Newscorpse, Keith Olbermann and others lie and distort about Fox News.

At least, if they want ot monitor Fox News or any other news organization, these people should tell the truth.

This comes form Johnny Dollar’s Place.    http://homepage.mac.com/mkoldys/blog/wll273368806.html

 

‘Family’ Values:
We begin our survey of Fox hater hypocrisy with an incident from The Fox Nation, brought to light in hysterical fashion by the mavens at Media Matters. Is the Obama Family Going to the Mattresses?, said the Fox Nation link, and MM fumed:

Fox Nation renews smear comparing Obama administration to organized crime

Naturally the echo chamber picked this up and ran with it. The News Corpse gang called it a “blatant association of Obama with a famous fictional crime family”, and promptly reposted their claim on Keith Olbermann’s blog of choice, the Daily Kos. And what Media Matters Fox attack isn’t parroted by the newshounds? This time Ellen did the echo chamber honors, cackling that this “demonizes” Democrats, and shows that “it’s OK to demean your opponent if he’s President Obama”.

But wait? Doesn’t something about this sound eerily familiar? It did to Chris Golas, who blogged about a similar comparison, when Keith Olbermann spent an entire segment of his show likening the Bush family to the Sopranos:

Hmm. Did Media Matters expose this “smear” comparing Bush to organized crime? Did the Daily Kos blast this “blatant association” of the President with a crime family? (Surely they would have had space to do so, even with the hundreds of references to the “Bush mafia” on their site.) And what of Ms Brodsky and the newspoodles? They too only seemed to object to this comparison when Fox did it.

Except of course that Fox didn’t make the comparison. The evil, reprehensible “going to the mattresses” quote? Not written by Fox Nation at all. It is from the New York Daily News, an article by Michael Goodwin that Fox Nation merely linked to:

We could call it doubling down on a mistake. Or drawing a partisan line in the sand. But this is Barack Obama and his favorite movie is – I’m not making this up – “The Godfather,” so let’s stick with the mob theme. The Obama Family is going to the mattresses.

Oddly, none of the above sites offered any denunciations of the Daily News or of Mr Goodwin for publishing the piece. Only of Fox for linking to it. Now why would that be?

We should add that this is nothing new for Media Matters. They have repeatedly gotten their panties in a bunch over any suggested association of the President with facism, particularly if it comes from Glenn Beck. And yet, it’s hard to get more blatant and direct then yelling at the President “You’re a fascist!”.

Yet not a word from Media Matters when Keith Olbermann does it. Why would that be?

Shaggy Dog Stories:
As we survey the front page of the newspooch blog, there are at least a half-dozen entries dealing with the boycott of Glenn Beck. The promotional push helpfully includes links, lists of sponsors, and encouraging comments like “our effort worked magnificently”. But something seems strangely awry. Somehow we thought the mastiffs didn’t hold boycotts in such high regard. Maybe we got that impression because they referred to boycotts in this fashion:

Hate is hate, no matter where it comes from.

And of course they have been quick to point out the harmful effects of a boycott:

his intended campaign to smear the state and boycott their products would hurt the hard working families living there.

So why are the newsmutts hyping the Beck boycott? Have they forgotten all they have written in the past? Well we’re pleased, and surprised, to say that one writer there is willing to show intellectual equilibrium. Melanie compares boycotts to censorship:

a fairly large segment of our citizenry believes that (l) one should never speak ill of the president – this particular president, that is, and (2) people who disagree with this particular president have no right to say so. One of the characteristics of fascism is to use violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition.

At least one writer there is consistent, so we salute her for… Oh wait. That article is from 2005, and the President then was… um, well, never mind.

Speaking of double standards at the pound, we had to notice when Ms Brodsky got up in paws about Fox Nation:

It has removed its comments section for its leading story announcing the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. This despite the fact that comments on the site are moderated.

And yet, wasn’t it the newspooches who, on the death of Tony Snow, turned off comments on their own site? Yes it was, a fact that led to this amusing exchange amongst the kennel-dwellers:

• “Fox Nation turned off its comments…” Yeah, just like this site did when Tony Snow passed away. –Damail
• You’re a liar. I was here. I didn’t see anything like that.
• You’re wrong. Again.
• Damail, You my friend are a stinking sappy drooling liar!

Well, as we reported at the time, the hound thread (“Tony Snow has died”)–the only Tony Snow thread in all of July 2008–has zero comments. The comments were closed, and still are closed, with only a sham comment box that has cleverly kept the total comment count at zero no matter how many people think it actually functions.

O’Reilly Attacks Olbermann’s Deceased Mom, Blogosphere Erupts:
It was like setting a match to gasoline when Bill O’Reilly unwisely decided to drag Keith Olbermann’s deceased parent into his feud with the MSNBC host. The reaction was as incendiary as O’Reilly’s attack. The staid TV Newser asked in a headline: “Has O’Reilly Crossed the Line?” Media Matters produced an instant special investigative report detailing Mrs Olbermann’s saintly existence. Gawker called for O’Reilly to be fired, commenters on Daily Kos upped the ante with colorful description of how to “off” the Factor host, and the Huffington Post splashed huge red-type headlines across the page: “O’Reilly Smear of Olbermann Family: The Last Straw?” (The question mark was their nod to impartiality and fairness.) And the newshounds produced one “original” post for each of the above that they linked to and parroted.

Of course none of that happened, except maybe on Bizarro planet in an alternate universe. But the proposed reactions are not unlikely. For a nationally televised cable news personality to use his air time to attack personally one of his competitors and smear a family member in the process–that would be an act of unspeakable degeneracy. And yet, that did happen this week. Only it wasn’t Bill O’Reilly–who has steadfastly avoided personal attacks on Mr Olbermann or his family. No, it was Olbermann who, just before lying about his ratings, characterized Bill O’Reilly in this fashion:

In his nightly round of self-applause last night, designed to drown out the echo of daddy hitting him…

Does it surprise anyone that Olbermann’s diseased invective has passed almost unnoticed? Nothing from TV Newser. Nothing from Gawker. Nothing from Media Matters. Nothing from News Corpse, the newshounds, or The Daily Beast. Sites like these have posted hundreds of articles about the “feud”, yet none of them found this sick defamation newsworthy. A Google search shows a whopping nine references to Olbermann’s quote. Only one major media site noted the remark: a report from Steve Krakauer on mediaite (ironically run by MSNBC legal analyst Dan Abrams). To the rest of the blogosphere it was the dog that did not bark.

There was one noticeable exception, and in a further dose of irony it was an Olbermann fan site: The O Files. There JFein’s increasing discomfort with Olbermann’s ways reached a breaking point with Keith’s repellent attack. JFein’s piece was quickly deleted by the site’s administrator, but has been reposted by the author where it cannot be erased:

When you start it out by joking about a matter that is so serious (child abuse), you crossed the line with me and I have absolutely had it with him. It’s wrong, it’s DAMN WRONG! You don’t make that kind of reference, no matter how much you can’t stand someone. And the sad part is, there is not a damn person at MSNBC willing to do something about it.

When will the rest of the blogosphere treat this story as they would if it had been O’Reilly–or Glenn Beck–who had said it? Or will they simply allow their silence to imply approval?

SLAVERY REPARATIONS………..BY FRED REED

On the Web I find that Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman
of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, is demanding that
whites pay reparations to blacks. It’s because of slavery,
see. He is joined in this endeavor by a gaggle of other
professional blacks. I guess he’ll send me a bill, huh?

            I feel like saying, “Let me get this straight, Hank. I’m
slow. Be patient. You want free money because of slavery,
right? I don’t blame you.” I’d like free money too. Tell you
what. I believe in justice. I’ll give you a million dollars
for every slave I own, and another million for every year
you were a slave. Fair enough? But tell me, how many slaves
do you suppose I have? In round numbers, I mean…say to the
nearest dozen. And how long were you a slave?

            Oh. In other words, I owe you reparations for something that
I didn’t do and didn’t happen to you. That makes sense. Like
lug nuts on a birthday cake.

            Personally, I think you owe me reparations for things you
didn’t do and never happened to me. I’ve never been coated
in Dutch chocolate and thrown from the Eiffel Tower. I’ll
bet you’ve never done it to anyone. I want reparations. Kind
of silly, isn’t it?

            But if we’re going to talk about reparations, that’s a
street that runs in two directions. You want money from me
for what some other whites did to some other blacks in
another century?’

            How about you guys paying whites reparations for current
expenses caused by blacks? Not long ago blacks burned down
half of Los Angeles, a city in my country. Cities are
expensive, Hank. Build one sometime and you’ll see what I
mean. Whites had to pay taxes to repair Los Angeles for you.
You can send me a check.

            Now, yes, I know you burned LA because you didn’t like the
verdict in the trial of those police officers. Well, I
didn’t like the verdict in the Simpson trial. But I didn’t
burn my house and loot Korean grocers, or burn down a city.

            Over the years blacks have burned a lot of American cities:
Newark, Detroit, Watts, on and on. Now add in the
fantastic cost over the years of welfare in all its forms,
the cost of all of those police calls people had to make,
for cells and jails and security systems in department
stores.

            I can’t live in the capital city of my own country
because of crime committed by blacks. Toss in the cultural
cost of lowering standards in everything for the benefit of
blacks. See what I mean?

            Now, I’d view things differently if you said to me, “Fred,
blacks can’t get anywhere in a modern country without
education. We know that. We need better schools, smarter
teachers, harder courses, books with smaller pictures and
bigger words. Can you help us?”

            I’d say, “Hallelujah! Hoo-ahh! Not just yes, but hell yes.
Let’s sell an aircraft carrier and get these folks some real
schools and get them into the economic main-stream.” I’d say
it partly because it would be the right thing to do, and
partly, because I’d like to add you guys to the tax base.

            The current custodial state is expensive. I’d just love for
blacks to study and learn to compete and stop burning
places. But is it going to happen? You may not believe it,
but I, and most whites, don’t like seeing blacks as
miserable and screwed up as they are.

            I spend a fair amount of time in the projects. Those places
are ugly. It’s no fun watching perfectly good kids turn into
semi-literate dope dealers who barely speak English. It just
plain ain’t right. But, Hank, what am I supposed to do about
it? I can’t do your children’s homework. At some point,
people have to do things for themselves, or they don’t get
done. Maybe it’s time.

            I’ll tell you what I see out in the world, Hank… I think
blacks are too accustomed to getting anything they want by
just demanding it. True, it has worked for over half a
century. Get a few hundred people in the street, implicitly
threaten to loot and burn, holler about slavery, and sadly,
the Great White Cash Spigot turns on.

            Thing is, whites don’t much buy it any longer. Most
recognize that what once was a civil-rights movement has
become a shakedown game. Few people still feel responsible
for the failings and inadequacies of blacks. Political
correctness keeps the lid on — but everyone knows the
score. Which scares me, Hank.

            On one hand, blacks hate whites and incline toward looting
and burning. (The whites you hate are the ones who marched
in the civil-rights movement. Ever think about that?)

            On the other hand, whites quietly grow wearier and wearier
of it. Not good Hank.

            On the third hand (allow me three hands, for rhetorical
convenience), blacks keep demanding things. As I write, you
demand reparations for slavery. Blacks in Oklahoma (I think
it was) want money for some ancient race riot. Other blacks
reject the Declaration of  Independence, blacks in New York
hint broadly at burning and looting over a trial, yet more
demand the elimination of the Confederate flag, and the
federal equal opportunity apparatus, which means blacks,
want to sue Silicon Valley for not hiring nonexistent black
engineers. That’s a lot of demanding for one month, Hank.

            What happens if whites ever say, “No”?

            Now, how about you? You’ve got a cushy job up there at
Harvard, and you can hoot and holler about what swine and
bandits whites are. I guess it’s lots of fun, and you get a
salary for it to boot. But don’t you think you might do
blacks more good if you told them to complain less and study
more?

            For example, if you want blacks to work in Silicon Gulch,
the best approach might be to find some really smart black
guys, and get them to study digital design ~ not Black
Studies (as you teach). That’s how everybody else does it.
It works. Then blacks wouldn’t feel left out, and racial
tensions would decline. Sound like a plan?

            Just out of curiosity, how many hours a week do professors
of Afro-American Studies spend in the projects, encouraging
poor black kids to study real life sho-nuf subjects?

Fred Reed was a police reporter
for one of the large Washington newspapers. He now writes a column which
can be googled “Fred on Everything.”

Fred published a weekly online column in which he got to say the things
his  editors would never, ever have let him write in the paper. His stuff
is iconoclastic and various articles have probably offended
everyone…regardless of political orientation.