Bullsmith: Can you provide a similar quote from your NPR bogeymen?

He cannot. I mean, it's possible he could find a needle in a haystack if he did some actual research and analysis-- he might find and use some out-of-context quote. But this is the usual wingnutty way: trying to get you to do their homework and prove a negative.

The rise of Fox and the GOP has been a laid out strategy that was planned many years ago - a symbiotic relationship where one would propagate for the GOP, and the GOP once back in power would support its propaganda wing, ensuring authoritarian dominance by controlling the spin and "news" ... on one level you have to give the credit for building such an apparatus through time and money, though at the expense of a free and objective media.

What Fox does is laughable and we can disparage it all we want, but the problem persists - most people outside the main cities get ALL there "news" from Fox, and hence the incredible disconnect from reality and the Right's stranglehold on spin. My question is: What can be done to shut Fox down? It is clear they present lies and disinformation in the guise of news - isn't there anything under FCC laws (and other basic slander laws) that can be used to throw lawsuit after lawsuit, fine after fine at them? I am starting to think a concerted effort of this nature is needed to force Fox to change or at least cramp its efforts. Has anything of this sort been attempted? Just curious...

Quote:

It's too bad

We can't bust down their doors, drag them outside and lynch them all. Because at a certain point that's what you have to do. Take them out, push them against the wall and shoot them. All of them. Hume, Malkin and all the rest. I'm not kidding.

This person is "not kidding." I guess that means he or she is "not kidding."

Hillary is trying to get out troops out of the hell-hole. McCain wants them to remain there--so hopefully, they are still fighting and dying in case he wins in 2008, so then he can continue the exploitation of the troops in service of his own John Wayne imitation.

Journalism of the so-called objective sort is a fairly recent invention, and when you think about it, a somewhat odd one at that. It's like pornography in that famous formulation of Justice Stewart's -- hard to define, but we know it when we see it.

It's nice to have, at least so long as every U.S. officials say is countered by an independent expert so-and-so disputes what U.S. officials say, but as Glenn points out, this has been honored more often in the breach than in the observance in recent years.

In the midst of our long cultural war, the narrative is more important than the news per se, and partisan reporting, for better or worse, suits us and our time better than an academic objectivity.

What are we to do for example, with the Elephantman, a reasonable person who accepts the phrase left-wing Democrat as part of a catechism he learned long ago, the origins of which he may not know, and in any case, can no longer remember. To point out to him that in the spectrum of modern political history, no Democrat has been more than two clicks to the left of center, and that the modern Republicans he accepts as centrists are only two clicks to the left of Francisco Franco or Benito Mussolini would be viewed as a radical attack on all that he holds dear.

So be it. This is a battle over the meanings of things. Ugly sometimes, yes, but always desperately real. Academics aside, it's hard to understand who could define objective on this battleground without seeming a hopeless Pollyanna.

I might take you more seriously, Mr. Greenwald, if you were equally hard on Juan Williams, who spouts a predictable Left line on that same news show. Guess it doesn't count then, eh, Glenn?

And while I realize it was a few years ago, let's talk about that female commentator on Pacifica Radio Network (which receives our tax dollars, by the way) who stated on the air that she hoped Clarence Thomas' wife fed him a lot of fried food so that he would die soon of heart failure. Tell when's the last time you heard anything close to that from Brit Hume or anyone on Fox.

Our soldiers must keep fighting and dying. That's the only way the right wing can pretend they are more patriotic than everyone else. The only way the opposition can be called weak.

Some unnamed woman said something awful on Pacifica radio a few years ago so that excuses Brit Hume?

And you want to talk about taking people seriously?

The 'angry white man' syndrome could be summarized perhaps as a conservative push-back by white men, middle-aged and older, against some ill-defined injury that they have sustained. And seems to me that Hume is their flag-bearer. One can't help but start with his permanent expression of anger, disgust, and injury. In Texas, we describe such people as having been 'weaned on a pickle'. They simply seem to be in a permanent state of sour anger. I have never seen him smile in all the years he's been on TV.

Why the anger? Where is the injury? When have white males been anything but a priveleged minority in our country's history? Hume was born to privilege. Graduated from St. Albans school, one of the most elite private schools in the country. Other grads: Al Gore. John Warner. Prescott Bush. Bill Frist and Joshua Bolten sit on the school's board right now. Educational deferment from draft during Viet Nam War, just as with other famous chicken-hawks like Richard Cheney.

As Mona said, he was once quite good, note the following from wikipedia:

"As a reporter for Anderson's column, Hume uncovered an internal corporate memo indicating that the 1972 Republican National Convention had been underwritten by ITT and that in exchange an antitrust case had been dropped by the Richard Nixon administration shortly thereafter. Later Anderson published a series classified documents indicating the Nixon administration, contrary to its public pronouncements, had tipped in favor of Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. After those revelations Anderson and his staff, including Hume and his wife and children, were placed under surveillance by the CIA. The agents codenamed Hume "Eggnog" and observed him and his family going about their daily business. This came to light during the Gerald Ford administration in congressional hearings, and as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit."

Regardless of the reasons for his shift (I did not know about his son, Mona--perhaps that's it), his credibility matches that of Fox News in general, as well as the administration. You simply cannot trust what they say. He strikes me as a very sad figure.

(ot--can't find way to turn "blockprint" off in post)