Tag: TV
Crapudrama and Farenheit 911 Not the Same
I’m already tired of hearing Bush supporters say that the crapudrama, “The Path to 9/11” is no different than Michael Moore’s, “Farenheit 911.”
It’s different, morons.
A “docudrama” employs actors to portray real people who participated in real events.
Farenheit 911 featured a narrator, Michael Moore, presenting his opinion with newsreels, interviews, and other nonfiction footage to illustrate.
Farenheit 911 was not presented on television without commercial interruption by a major broadcast network with a major broadcast news division.
Farenheit 911 was not picked up by Scholastic children’s publishing company to be presented as a curriculum in public schools.
Farenheit 911 was not denounced by people who appeared in it as a travesty before it was ever aired.
Farenheit 911 was blocked from being released by Disney/Miramax/ABC, acting on its own. The same media conglomerate has refused calls not to air The Path to 9/11 from Pres. Clinton, Secretary of State Albright, members of the 9/11 commission, other senators and representatives, and the public.
I’m sure there are lots more ways the two films are different. Help me out here in the comments section.
The Path to Scaife
Richard Mellon Scaife (right) and David Horowitz
Who Paid for ABC’s $40 Million Crocudrama?
If you are among the millions whose eyes have been opened over the past six years to the true depravity of Republican malfeasance, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the skullduggery didn’t start at George W. Bush’s inauguration. Not hardly.
Max Blumenthal’s expose at HuffPo on the rightwing cabal behind ABC’s controversial miniseries, “The Path to 9/11,” is a must-read. According to Blumenthal, the show’s producer, director and writer are part of a conservative insurgency within Hollywood. They have connections to David Horowitz, the often-disgraced rightwing media critic who is based in Los Angeles.
The connection into the conservative power grid that may be the most interesting, however, is the production’s ties to Richard Mellon Scaife:
Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1992, Horowitz has labored to create a network of politically active conservatives in Hollywood. His Hollywood nest centers around his Wednesday Morning Club, a weekly meet-and-greet session for Left Coast conservatives that has been graced with speeches by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens. The group’s headquarters are at the offices of Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a “think tank” bankrolled for years with millions by right-wing sugardaddies like eccentric far right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. (Scaife financed the Arkansas Project, a $2.3 million dirty tricks operation that included paying sources for negative stories about Bill Clinton that turned out to be false.)
Secretive people usually have something to hide, and “secretive” is among the first words that come to mind regarding Mr. Scaife, who is an heir to the Mellon fortune and lives in Pittsburgh where he publishes a daily newspaper known for its rightwing slant. (The other word most-often associatied with him is “eccentric.”)
If you are among the millions whose eyes have been opened over the past six years to the true depravity of Republican malfeasance, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the skullduggery didn’t start at George W. Bush’s inauguration. Not hardly.
Government Craps All Over First Amendment in Hez TV Case
Terror tube: In another example of why the Patriot Act is bad for your freedom, the FBI has entrapped a Pakistan-born, naturalized U.S. citizen who sold New Yorkers satellite television packages that carried Hezbollah’s al Manar channel, which is outlawed in the United States even though it is accessible for free over the Internet. On top of that, due to the recent warfare between Israel and Lebanon, the cable service Javed Iqbal sold to an FBI informant posing as a customer didn’t work — so the FBI guy never was able to see al Manar.
Can anyone spell First Amendment? Is there a list somewhere of all the TV channels banned by the gubmint?
The Patriot Act is a catch-all that allows the Bush administration to do whatever the hell it wants and your civil liberties be damned.
Note, too, this channel banning is being done by a government that for the past 40 years has beamed Radio Marti at Cuba. First, it used a huge balloon called Fat Boy that flew over Key Largo to shoot propaganda at Cubans who don’t get enough propaganda at home, and when Castro blocked that signal, the U.S. government responded by beaming the signal from an airplane that just flies around near the communist island nation.
But you’d better not try to tune in al Manar on your Sony Trinitron within the continental United States — or else. Seems that because al Manar broadcasts hate talk (like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, only in Arabic), but especially because it broadcasts bank account numbers where you can wire money to support your local Hezbollah gunfighter, it’s deemed illegal, ipso facto, with no discussion.
Who makes that decision? Is it Congress? I don’t think so, or we would have seen the hearings on C-Span. Is it the Supreme Court? Nope, ’cause this is the first case of its kind. Is it Bushco, as led by Attorney Genital Alberto Gonzalez? You bet. The Patriot Act is a catch-all that allows the Bush administration to do whatever the hell it wants and your civil liberties be damned.
I went to al Manar on the Internet, but the English-language version was not accessible due to recent bomb damage. On the Arabic site, however, it looked like there was a story about the president of Syria, Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, George Bush wagging his finger and some scenes from the war. Curiously, on the right side of the Google page was an advert for software that enables a PC to stream video from 3000 TV stations in 78 countries.
Something just ain’t right here. Read more about the case of hapless satellite TV sales guy Javed Iqbal in the New York Daily News.
GOP’s ‘Average’ Joe Scarborough Turns on Bush
Nothing Joe Scarborough, the former Gingrichite GOP congressman and current MSNBC Fox-News-wannabe, could ever say or do would give him credibility at this point. Still, it is interesting to note that he has joined rightwing rats like George Will and William F. Buckley in jumping off the good ship George W. Bush as it capsizes:
For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether “George Bush’s mental weakness is damaging America’s credibility at home and abroad.” For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, “IS BUSH AN ‘IDIOT’?”
But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly “no.” While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: “I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don’t think he has the intellectual depth as these other people.”
U.S. Media — Hyping the Terror Hysteria
Media mania: There is a good chance the individuals arrested by British police last week were up to no good, but so far there has been no proof that they were about to launch an airline bomb attack of “unprecedented proportions,” as was breathlessly reported last week. No formal charges have been brought against them. Indeed, British authorities just went to court to ask for more time to hold and interrogate them without bringing charges. It’s not even clear how close they were to actually trying to perpetrate the alledged plot.
CNN, for example, chose ‘Target: USA’ as its phrase, Fox News opted for ‘Terror in the Sky,’ and MSNBC neatly combined the two with ‘Target America: Terror in the Sky.’
But that has not stopped the U.S. media — especially the squawking heads of cable TV — from heralding the beginning of “World War III.” The din of dumbness has proved particularly irksome to David Walsh, columnist for the World Socialist Web Site, who provides a comprehensive and compelling case for turning off the television and reading a book:
Since August 10, when British authorities arrested two dozen individuals in connection with an alleged plot to blow up a number of airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean, the American mass media has worked ceaselessly to create a climate of fear.
For the first several days after the news of the alleged plot broke, American news programs were virtually unwatchable. The lurid logos and wild, unsubstantiated allegations made a mockery of claims that the networks and cable channels are in the business of “news-gathering.”
The responses of the cable news channels to events like the August 10 arrests are predictable. One knows ahead of time that each of the channels will have its own sensationalist logo and catch-phrase. However, the combination of limited imaginations and shared political goals—centered on keeping the US population in a state of constant panic—often results in a certain overlap. CNN, for example, chose “Target: USA” as its phrase, Fox News opted for “Terror in the Sky,” and MSNBC neatly combined the two with “Target America: Terror in the Sky.”
Read the rest of the column here.
Arianna: CNN Newser Should Be Held Accountable for Calling Lamont ‘Al Qaeda Candidate’
Arianna Huffington was on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with Howard Kurtz yesterday. The topic was a rightwing blog’s revelation that news photos from the Israel-Hezbollah war were doctored but Arianna turned the tables on Howie by bringing up a rather egregious bit of wordsmithing by CNN newsreader Chuck Roberts:
HUFFINGTON: I mean, you had your own headline anchorman, Chuck Roberts, describe Lamont as the al Qaeda candidate. This is an equally deceitful, fraudulent, fabricated statement. There should be zero tolerance for all those deceits, whether in images or words.
KURTZ: Well, what Chuck Roberts said, according to the transcript, was that some are calling Ned Lamont the al Qaeda candidate. But it’s certainly not a formulation I would have used.
HUFFINGTON: You cannot find a single person who called Lamont the al Qaeda candidate, except Chuck Roberts. And what have been the consequences when it comes to Chuck Roberts? Has he been demoted to be covering Paris Hilton or entertainment news? … It’s about time that there is that same kind of accountability that Charles is demanding from photojournalists from journalists, as well.
Had anyone in the media ever called Lamont “the al Qaeda candidate?” Arianna says, no:
Indeed, an exhaustive Lexis Nexis search confirms that no one has called Lamont “the Al Qaeda candidate.” Except for Chuck Roberts. In fact, you know what you find if you Google “Al Qaeda candidate”? A lot of references to John Kerry being smeared by the RNC and its cronies during the 2004 election. Clearly, Lamont as “tha Al Qaeda candidate” is the latest rendition of an old G.O.P. tune.
Republicans have flourished under Bush because they have been able to elide in the public mind the 9/11 terrorist attacks by al Qaeda and their phony war in Iraq. Now that 60 percent of Americans view Bush’s war in Iraq as a mistake, the challenge for Democrats is to drive a wedge between the so-called War on Terror and the civil war caused by Bush’s bloodlust for Saddam Hussein.
What is clear is the “liberal” media will not be of any service in helping to separate our need for security against terrorism from the Iraq civil war.
Poll: Few Young People Get Their News from ‘Daily Show’
Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll:
Myth: Most young adults get their news about current events from satirical shows such as “The Daily Show” or the Internet.
Truth: Just 3 percent of teenagers and 6 percent of young adults cited such programs as “The Daily Show” as their main source of information about current events. Only 10 percent of teens and 11 percent of young adults said blogs or other websites were their best source. Teens and young adults said they most frequently kept up by talking with friends and family and watching local TV news.
More Fun in the Olbermann Vs. O’Reilly War
On Thursday’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann reacted to Bill O’Reilly’s comments about “vampires” Wednesday night. In case you missed it: When O’Reilly said “we should call these people out,” referring to “smear merchants” like Olbermann, Geraldo Rivera said he should call them by name. O’Reilly said no, because “then you give them more publicity.”
In his latest Factor Fiction segment, Olbermann retorted: “There have been three million articles about this feud. There was one this morning! How much worse could you make it by using my name, Billo? What are they going to do — build a statue of me? You’re so confident in your success that you have to keep my name and show a secret from your viewers, or all of your viewers will all leave you in one night?”
Watch the video at News Hounds.
