Tag: Fox News

The Glenn Beck Show Is No More

Trish

images

First that dog gets rescued in Japan and now this? What a world!

Glenn Beck’s talk show is being dropped by the Fox News Channel after sinking in the ratings and suffering financially due to an advertiser boycott…

Beck was a quick burn on Fox News Channel. Almost immediately after joining the network in January 2009, he doubled the ratings at his afternoon time slot. Fans found his conservative populism entertaining, while Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert described Beck’s “crank up the crazy and rip off the knob” moments…

Ailes: ‘Half of the headlines say he’s been canceled. The other half say he quit. We’re pretty happy with both of them.’

Beck said that he went to Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman and CEO, in January to discuss ways they could continue to work together without the daily show.

“Half of the headlines say he’s been canceled,” Ailes said. “The other half say he quit. We’re pretty happy with both of them.”

Beck said he noted on his show Tuesday that “how many times can I tell the (George) Soros story,” referring to the liberal donor that Beck has made a target of attacks.

[…]

Huckabee and the Boy Scouts

Jon Ponder
David Huckabee in mug shot from weapons arrest
David Huckabee in mug shot from an April 2007 arrest on weapons charges

On Day Three of Mike Huckabee’s Lie-apalooza Tour this week, in an interview with hate-group radio host Bryan Fischer, Huckabee said this:

At age 18, Huckabee’s son David was fired by the Scouts as a camp counselor after he and another counselor captured a stray dog, hanged him by the neck, slit his throat and stoned him to death.

HUCKABEE: “…I do think [Pres. Obama] has a different worldview and I think it’s, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.”

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist preacher, former governor of Arkansas and Fox News host, first got himself into rhetorical trouble on Monday when, on another right-wing radio show, he opined that Obama’s worldview had been warped by having grown up in Kenya under the influence of his paternal grandfather, who, according to Huckabee, had been involved in the Mau Mau Revolt against the British in the 1950s.

As evidence of how Obama’s worldview had been distorted by his Mau Mau revolutionary grandfather, Huckabee cited the president’s decision early in his term to return to the British Embassy a bust of Winston Churchillthat had been on loan in the Oval Office. Churchill was Britain’s prime minister during the revolt.

Except for the fact that Obama returned the Churchill piece — which he replaced with a bust of Abraham Lincoln — all of that was a lie. Obama was in his late twenties when he first stepped foot in Kenya. He met his paternal grandfather for the first time and only time then. There is no evidence his grandfather was involved in the uprising, other than a less-than-reliable recollection of it decades later by his then-87-year-old widowed third wife.

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Verbatim

Trish

This is like holding a gun to our heads and telling the federal government, “Don’t give us this money or we’ll blow our brains out.”

— Florida State Sen. David Simmons (R-Orange County), on the precipitous decision by Gov. Rick Scott to refuse $2.4 billion in federal assistance for a high-speed rail line in Central Florida. Local and national office holders from both parties worked for years to bring in the bullet train, but the tea party rejects infrastructure spending. Scott, who has appeared on FOX News four times since taking office last month, is widely acknowledged to be using every issue in Florida to position himself against Obama for a tea party run for president in 2012.

Aren’t All Black People Poor and Uneducated? Florida’s New Governor Thinks So

Trish

Scott

Florida’s new tea party governor, Rick Scott, didn’t make any friends when he met recently with 20 of Florida’s black state legislators.

The luncheon was billed as a get-to-know-you welcome to Tallahassee from Scott, who has barely been in town a month. But the political novice wasted no time in offending his guests.

In discussing his own humble origins, Scott implied that all black lawmakers grew up poor.

“I grew up probably in the same situation as you guys,” Scott said to the group of 20 Democrats. “I started school in public housing. My dad had a sixth-grade education.”

Rep. Betty Reed, D-Tampa, said she was offended by the remark…Afterward, she said, “He assumed that everyone [in the room] was poor and that can only be because you’re black.”

Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, said Scott’s choice of words was unfortunate even if he was trying to “empathize” with the black caucus.

“Some of us might be from the projects, but we come from all spectrums of life,” Gibbons said.

Rick Scott on refusing to call the health care reform act by its proper name instead of “Obamacare”: ‘You know, when I’m on Fox, they never call it that.’

Scott of all people should know there are rich African Americans. He chose as his lieutenant governor former state Rep. Jennifer Carroll despite her ongoing problems in reporting her net worth. When she was not trying to win minority small business contracts, she said was worth about $23 million. When she was applying for the set-asides, she said it was only $2 million and explained she got her zeros and decimal places wrong. Either way, it’s doubtful the Florida legislature’s first black Republican woman can empathize with those in public housing.

Nor any longer can Scott, who didn’t spend $75 million of his own money to buy the governorship without the expectation of a hefty return on his investment.

[…]

Interdiction: There’s Method to Fox’s Rudeness to the President

Jon Ponder
1. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly-Pres. Obama, Feb. 6, 2011 2. Fox’s Bret Baier-Pres. Obama, March 2010
3. O’Reilly-candidate Obama, Sept. 4, 2008 4. Baier-George Bush, Dec. 17, 2008

During the live portion of Fox’s interview with Pres. Obama before the Super Bowl on Sunday, Bill O’Reilly interrupted the president 43 times, according to Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” on Monday. (See #1 above.)

If Fox were a legitimate news organization, its purpose in interviewing the president would be to let its audience hear what he has to say.

The interruptions continued in a second, taped part of the interview that was shown later, so that by the end of the 15-minute sit-down, O’Reilly had interrupted the president more than 70 times — once every 19 seconds, according to O’Donnell in a follow-up segment Tuesday night.

Conversely, the number of times O’Reilly let the president finish a sentence was zero, by O’Donnell’s count.

O’Reilly’s 70-plus interjections more than doubled the number of interruptions the president endured in his previous interview on Fox. In March 2010, O’Reilly’s lesser known colleague Bret Baier — host of Fox’s daily round-table presentation of Republican talking points — stopped the president in mid-sentence just 30 times or so. (See video #2.)

So, other than rudeness, what is behind this behavior from Fox? In a word: fear.

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Why FOX News Viewers Can’t Find Their Backsides with Two Hands

Trish

FOXEgyptMap

That country labeled “Egypt” in between Iran and Syria in this FOX News graphic, caught by BuzzFeed, is actually Iraq. You might have heard of it, unless you watch a lot of FOX News, in which case, think, “Persia.” Egypt, of course, is that large country on the tip of North Africa, the one with a big river running through it. What’s the name of that river? Oh yeah, what FOX News does when faced with facts: denial.