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?