"News organizations will want to think twice before getting involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus which appears to be controlled by radical fringe out-of-state interest groups, not the Nevada Democratic Party. In the past, Moveon.org has said they 'own' the Democratic party -- while most Democrats don't agree with that, it's clearly the case in Nevada." - David Rhodes, VP of Fox “News”
Plus, we hired the Blackwater snipers. And do you have any idea how much we put down on a deposit for those water cannons? We can’t get that money back!
The first time I ever defended myself against a bully as a child was when I lived in San Vito, Italy. This psychotic little fuck named Paul Villanno was beating me up near the courtyard of our school in front of dozens of people and I’d had enough. I blindly flailed and missed with a right lead by about a country mile and Villanno went berserk and basically creamed me with renewed vigor.
The second time I ever defended myself against him was considerably more successful. We were in the Youth Center on base and Paul launched a kick at me. Now Villanno gave up a few inches and a few pounds on me and his abuse was neverending. Why? Well, Paul obviously had… issues and was clearly insane. And since no one ever came to my rescue I figured I had it coming to me. Maybe I deserved it, maybe it was a right of passage into manhood.
But this time I’d really had it with him. So when Paul raised his foot with the intention of doing me more harm, I simply caught it with my right hand, gave it a little twist and watched him sprawl onto the floor. I stood over him with an eerily blank expression on my face and when he realized that I was no longer going to silently suffer his abuse, he literally ran out of the Youth Center.
This is pretty much what the Nevada Democratic party did to Fox News and what Bill Clinton did to Chris Wallace when he wouldn’t allow himself to be blindsided in Wallace’s clearly partisan “hit job.” Except Fox “News” is fighting back at being mortally embarrassed by Harry Reid, John Edwards and now Bill Richardson backing away from Fox’s televised debate that was to be televised in August.
Fox Chairman Roger Ailes, in accepting, if you can believe this, a First Amendment Leadership Award (but we live in a world in which people nominate Rush Limbaugh for the Nobel Peace prize and clowns like Paul Bremer get the Presidential Medal of Freedom) basically used what should’ve been a moment of victory as a platform for sniping at the Democrats. Here’s a sample of the wit and wisdom of Roger Ailes:
And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, 'Why can't we catch this guy?'
It is true that just in the last two weeks Hillary Clinton has had over 200 phone calls telling her in order to win the presidency she must stay on the road for the next two years. It is not true they were all from Bill.
Then, after setting the table on a roar, Ailes had this to say about the Democrat defection:
Recently pressure groups are forcing candidates to conclude that the best strategy for journalists is divide and conquer, to only appear on those networks and venues that give them favorable coverage.
I think I’ll stick with the good Roger Ailes for my laughs in the future.
Now, the hypocrisy of Ailes is breathtaking even for a Republican windbag who controls Fox “News.” After taking potshots at two major Democratic presidential candidates, as well as France, Ailes then accused the Democrats for backing out so they could get “favorable coverage”, the implicit understanding that in order to look brave, you ought to go on a channel that will almost surely not give you that favorable coverage.
One hardly knows where to begin feasting on this cornucopia of hypocrisy and willful stupidity. Let’s start with his charge of Democrats seeking a friendly, sympathetic forum. Where would that be, Roger? Free Speech TV, which is channel 1434 here in Central Massachusetts and the only channel where they’d be guaranteed of getting a fair hearing?
Or should they take a chance with CNN and Wolf Blitzer? How about having Glenn Beck moderate the debate? Or would ABC be a better bet? After The Path to 9/11, how could they possibly not get a fair hearing? We could even get Mark Halperin's non-partisan operatives at The Note to give a fair and balanced commentary on the debate, with perhaps a supplementary commentary by Pat Robertson on ABC Family's the 700 Club.
This is just the latest confirmation of the battered wife syndrome that we’ve been seeing from the far right. If you play ball, you’ll get only one eye blackened. If you fight back, you’ll get both of them blackened and then be coerced into saying that you fell down a flight of stairs. And all this is done with a blind eye to their own soul-crippling hypocrisy.
Take Dick Cheney: For all his Go Fuck Yourself bravado, about as far left as Cheney has the courage to venture is Wolf “Well (gulp), I thought it was a fair question” Blitzer and CNN, which is hardly a bastion of liberal journalism. More often than not, bottled human spiders like Cheney, Malkin and Coulter find themselves on Fox taking one ignorant, unchallenged potshot at liberals and Democrats after another.
So when the Nevada Democrats finally woke up from their collective slumber after being screamed at over 265,000 times by Moveon’s supporters and saw the stick propping up the orange crate and the rope attached to the stick and Roger Ailes holding the rope with a snicker, they wouldn’t bite. How dare they? That just about makes up for them being stupid and naïve enough to sign on for this trap in the first place.
Let’s move on to Moveon.org and how they “own” the Democratic Party. To my knowledge, they never publicly said that they own them. And even if the Democratic Party was owned by Moveon.org, I’d still be more comfortable with that than Fox “News” being owned by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the GOP and acting as mere stenographers and mediums for every right wing rumor, smear and lie that oozes its way down the Beltway.
Let’s also not forget how George W. Bush got “elected” President in the first place. After the dinosaur networks had declared Al Gore the winner in Florida, hence in the presidential election, George and Jeb Bush cousin John Ellis, hired by Fox “News” as a freelance political “advisor”, called the election in favor of his cousin.
Yes, Fox followed the lead of a temp worker because he was related to one of the candidates and the governor of a pivotal state. And everyone else fell in line.
The other networks, fearful of being scooped and embarrassed by an upstart piece of shit network like Fox, took a gamble and fell in line and political history wasn’t written as much as sloppily erased and revised, a tragic, blood-stained palimpsest scrawled over what should’ve been and it was the beginning of the Oceanic rise of the White House’s Propaganda Ministry, aka Fox News.
And, perfectly in harmony, pitch and tune with the Republican party that’s screwing itself into the ground with furious frustration over the last election results that even John Ellis couldn’t call, Fox is screaming itself hoarse at the highest corporate levels for being shown up and skeeved for the lying, partisan right wing hacks that they truly are.
Finally, I turn the mic over to Howard Beale, who used to be Fox’s most trusted newsman (you’ll seriously want to watch the entire video, on the off chance that Beale’s/Paddy Chayefsky’s words don’t entrance you.) :
And, yes, the choice of French subtitles is a deliberate dig in the flabby sides of Ailes and every other windbag in the Network/Church of Howard Beale.
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