Tag: Fox News
Guess Which Cable News Pundits Liked Obama’s Support of ‘Ground Zero’ Islamic Center – Hint: Their Network’s 4th Largest Investor Is a Muslim
OBAMA: Let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.
Given the hyper-partisan tenor of our times, you might assume that the right-wing Obama haters at Fox News would seize on this statement as proof that the president is the Muslim, socialist Nazi they have long claimed him to be.
But in this particular case, the world has turned upside down. Here’s CNN pundit Erick Erickson, on his own blog, suggesting that because the president supports the rights of Muslims to build an Islamic center on private property, he therefore also endorses human sacrifice:
[What] about the Greater First Church of Satan wanting to do human sacrifice of a willing victim? I guess our founding principles demand the president support that too. After all, it is a religious belief and only willing participants.
Obama Opens Iftar Dinner at the White House
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
It’s just a shame that he had to spend so much time establishing the duty to protect religious freedom. That should be a given.
Olbermann Schools the White House on the Difference Between Liberals and Republicans
In the segment before this commentary on MSNBC’s “Countdown” last night, Keith Olbermann made a point of saying that he personally likes Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman and that he believe Gibbs does a good job, so his commentary here is not meant as a personal retaliation against Gibbs’ senseless and badly timed attack on the “professional left” yesterday.
Instead, what Olbermann delivers here is a thoughtful, measured rebuttal to the idea that left-wing media — like the opinion shows on MSNBC and liberal radio talk shows and websites — is just an analog to Fox News and right-wing radio and blogs.
FoxNews.com Is Dead Last Among News Websites
Foxnews.com averages around 12 million or 13 million monthly unique users, according to Nielsen Online, rarely approaching the 35 million to 40 million uniques that leaders Yahoo News, MSNBC and CNN regularly deliver in aggregate. Some of that disparity can be explained away, as both Yahoo and MSNBC draw heavy traffic from their portal counterparts, and CNN benefits from traffic driven by CNNMoney.com and Sports Illustrated’s site.
But even on its own, CNN.com consistently beats Foxnews.com by 7 million or 8 million unique users. Per comScore, the gap is even larger: 43.4 million uniques for CNN.com in June vs. 11.4 million for Foxnews.com. Plus, CNN.com regularly bests Foxnews.com in measures like page views, time spent and video streams—and it has opened an early lead in mobile (14 million uniques vs. 9 million in May for Fox, per Nielsen).
This reinforces my theory that liberal radio and television shows lag in ratings because, unlike right wingers, liberals can read. But seriously, while a lot of folks over 65 are online, it’s fair to say that they are more educated, and thus more liberal, than Fox’s audience, for which the average age was 65 in 2009.
Conservative Olson: All Rights Aren’t Up for a Vote
Olson was probably only allowed to speak without being shouted down because of his conservative creds. After all, he was the man who won Bush v. Gore and was rewarded with the job of Solicitor General under George W. Bush. The entire exchange is great, but the part where he asks Chris Wallace whether we should also put FOX News’ right to free speech up to the voters is brilliant.
O’Reilly on Defense: Denies Race-Baiting on Fox – Maddow Rolls Tape, Proves He’s Wrong
If it’s true that, according to the Rove-Breitbart playbook, when your side is on defense you are losing, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly is losing the debate with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about his network’s use of racism to inflame and agitate its predominantly elderly white Republican viewers.
According to Bill O’Reilly, highly rated shows can’t possibly be racist.
Maddow apparently got under O’Reilly’s skin last week when she did a story about race baiting on Fox that documented the network’s on-air personalities’ lies about Van Jones, ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, the New Black Panthers Party, illegal immigration and other racially charged stories.
The next night O’Reilly took to the airways in defense of his network. He rebutted the video evidence of his colleagues’ racially inflammatory comments with a succinct, “Nuh-UHH” — Fox can’t be racist, he suggested, because his ratings were higher than MSNBC’s, and everybody knows that highly rated shows can’t possibly feature racism.
This defense was the subject of much well-deserved derision the next day, which prompted O’Reilly to return to the air and resort to name-calling — Maddow is a “far left loon,” he said. He then repeated the much-derided defense that his network’s high ratings are irrefutably prima facie evidence that Fox is free of racism.
Maddow responded last night by noting that sharks must be more even less racist than Fox because “Shark Week” beat Fox in the ratings last week.
She followed up with a video retrospective of O’Reilly’s own on-air racist comments — which she offered as irrefutable proof that race baiting is what Fox does.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Here’s a rough transcript of Maddow’s report — this was provided by MSNBC:
Obama Proves Hoover, GOP, Tea Party, and FOX Wrong
Score one for the Obama administration; zero for Republicans, Tea Baggers, and FOX News. A newly released study by two esteemed economists (yes, I know that’s an oxymoron) shows that Obama’s fiscal policies did indeed pull the country back from the brink of a depression brought about by Bush-Cheney mismanagement.
…the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus program, the nation’s gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year.
In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation.
We all know how Hoover’s policies worked out. This study show the GOP/Tea/FOX versions would work no better.
The authors of the work, reported in the New York Times, are former Federal Reserve vice chair Alan S. Blinder and Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.
The study makes clear that Obama’s use of multiple strategies to bolster the economy was essential.
Dean Goes on Fox to Attack Network’s Race Baiting
Former Vermont governor and chair of the Democratic National Committee HOWARD DEAN: The Tea Party called out their racist fringe and I think the Republican Party’s got to stop appealing to its racist fringe. And Fox News is what did that. You put that on. Continuing to cater to this theme of minority racism and stressing comments like this — some of which are taken out of context — does not help the country knit itself together…
Caught Race Baiting, Breitbart’s Site Blames the People Breitbart Snookered
The scandal around the firing of USDA staffer Shirley Sherrod began on Wednesday when Andrew Breitbart, the notorious tea-bagger propagandist, posted a deceptively edited video of a speech Sherrod gave on racism to his website, Big Government. Here’s part of what he wrote about the video then:
