Fox News

Seriously.

"STOSSEL: I’m not saying we should have a test or something. But this endless cheerleading — let’s go to the rock concerts and register the kids. And the kids aren’t paying attention. And it’s important in a democracy, it’s important to vote. And these are important issues. The people who participate ought to be the ones who pay attention… I’m just saying we shouldn’t have these "Get Out The Vote” campaigns and make these statements: "Everyone has to vote. It’s your patriotic duty!" Well if you’re not paying attention, I think it’s your patriotic duty not to vote."

This explains the GOP's campaign to make it harder for democratic voters to participate in democracy. I mean - really why bother, right? Let's just have a dictatorship. Democracy is too expensive anyway. Or maybe a monarchy - those are fancy right? Maybe John Stossel is just too dumb to vote.

(h/t ThinkProgress)

Michelle Obama is more powerful than I thought.

First, I came across a Media Matters post highlighting yet another crazy piece of trash story from Fox News. This one claims that Michelle Obama gave "weird" relationship advice in her recent meeting with English schoolgirls. Fox used a relatively tame Daily Caller piece as an inspiration for the story, adding the "weird" language in their own headline:

This is the text from the Daily Caller story:

First lady Michelle Obama always believed her husband would be "useful," yet never expected him to land the most powerful job in the world.

"I always thought he would be useful, but I had no idea he was going to be president," the first lady told a group of schoolgirls gathered to hear her speak Wednesday at Christ Church College in Oxford, England.

Michelle Obama went on about the president, whom she met more than 20 years ago while working at Sidley & Austin, a corporate law firm in Chicago. The first lady was tasked with mentoring Barack Obama and their relationship blossomed.

[...]

"I knew he was a special person. And it had nothing to do with his education, it had nothing to do with potential," the first lady said of Barack Obama, who attended Harvard Law School and Columbia University. "It was those kind of values that made me think, you don't meet people like that often. And when you couple that with talent -- and he's cute."

Reflecting on her "useful" spouse, the first lady had some relationship suggestions for the young females in attendance, warning them to steer clear of negative influences.

"Reach for partners that make you better," Michelle Obama said. "Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts. Good relationships feel good, they feel right...It's with the people you surround yourselves with, and that's just as important as the school that you choose."

Hmmm... not finding anything that weird. In fact, it sounds like what I would hope any well-meaning, successful, normal adult would say.

After reading this nonsense, I just chalked it up to another instance of Fox being Fox. But then I remembered reading a USA Today story a couple days ago that might explain Fox's sudden assault (this story, as well as the ridiculous Common controversy) on Michelle Obama.

First lady Michelle Obama is holding steady with the support of two-thirds of voters in a new poll - and she's gaining ground among young people as she's starting to hit the campaign trail on behalf of her husband's re-election campaign.

A Marist Poll out today finds that 66% of registered voters have a favorable impression of the first lady compared with 17% who have an unfavorable impression. The rest said they were unsure.

[...]

The biggest gap is generational. Millennials (ages 18-30) are crazy about her. They give her an 84% approval rating. The numbers drop from there as people age. Gen Xers (ages 31-46) give her a 67% approval rating; Baby Boomers (ages 47-65) give her 62%; the Silent or Greatest Generation (over 65) gives her 59%.

Emphasis added.

There are probably political scientists out there who might argue that spouses don't have electoral value and that this doesn't really mean anything. But when her favorability is as high as it is, especially with young people, and with her being one of the few people speaking officially about the 2012 campaign, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that a Republican mouthpiece like Fox News might deliberately misrepresent stories to temper her appeal.

Yes, quite a scary title, but stick with me. Hannity is disturbed by President Obama's comments at a town hall event on Friday in Strasbourg, France. Obama called on Americans to stop ridiculing Europe as many have increasingly over the past eight years, while simultaneously calling out Europe's tendency to blame much of the world's woes on the United States. Thanks to Think Progress, here's the rundown of what was said:

That evening, Fox News’s Sean Hannity truncated Obama’s speech, cutting out Obama’s criticism of Europe’s anti-Americanism. Hannity was apoplectic that Obama would “blame America first,” declaring the president was just like the Dixie Chicks. What’s more, he insisted, the speech was proof of Obama’s “deep resentment” of America:

HANNITY: You know, I’m going to — I resent this. When you consider…all we have done just in the last century alone to save Europe from themselves. I resent this. I think it’s outrageous, the media’s ignored it. But don’t you think this is like the Dixie Chicks? […]

HANNITY: But didn’t we see all of this in the campaign? As I was bringing up — didn’t Reverend Wright give us a little insight into his thought process? Didn’t, you know, Michelle Obama, America is a downright mean country. … But I’m thinking, didn’t we get some insight? When you sit on a board and give speeches with Bill Ayers, didn’t this — Do you think he harbors deep resentment that he just hides? Because I believe he does.

As painful as it might be to watch that video (I can't stand Sean Hannity anymore than you can), I think we can get something out of this. Let's first explicate what Hannity said.

We can start with the word "resentment." Webster's Dictionary gives us the definition of "resent": "to feel or express annoyance or ill will at." So Sean Hannity believes that, at best, America annoys President Obama, and, at worst, Obama wishes the United States ill will. Hannity's rhetoric is obviously divisive here. By expressing his belief that the president wishes for America to fail, Hannity telegraphs to us that he believes himself to be in line with America's values. By accusing President Obama of not investing himself in the United States and its long-term health, Sean Hannity is implying that he knows what it takes to make that investment.

The questioning of Barack Obama's patriotism is certainly not shocking given the character assassination John Kerry had to endure from the right in 2004. The conservative machine, fueled by hacks like Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Hannity himself, is disinterested in honest discussions of the issues facing America today (there's not much to work with). Instead, they'd rather discredit the messenger and reap the political benefits, not enjoying widespread support from the American people, but dividing them enough to ensure electoral success, and thus, power. This didn't work for Hannity and Co. in 2008, and so someone's still throwing a hissy-fit in the playpen. But I digress.

I don't believe that simply attacking Hannity for having an opinion is the efficient thing to do here, though it's tempting. We can take Hannity's tirade above at face value and get pissed off, or we can examine what's really being said and represented between the lines. When you do that in this case, things get very interesting.

Like I explained before, in order to make the claim that Obama isn't supporting America enough, Hannity must believe that he has the recipe for the ideal American patriotism. Let's dig in his biography a bit to find out what we all should be doing in order to be the best Americans we can be.

Hannity hosted his first talk radio show in 1989 at the volunteer college station at UC Santa Barbara, KCSB-FM, while working as a general contractor. The show aired for 40 hours of air time; Hannity has since called the show "terrible." Hannity's weekly show on KCSB was canceled after less than a year when management charged him with "discriminating against gays and lesbians." This was after two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS by Gene Antonio; among other remarks, Hannity told a lesbian caller that "I feel sorry for your child". The station later reversed its decision to dismiss Hannity due in part to a campaign conducted by the Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Hannity decided against returning to KCSB.

After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an ad in radio publications presenting himself as "the most talked about college radio host in America." Radio station WVNN in Athens, Alabama (part of the Huntsville market) then hired him to be the afternoon talk show host. From Huntsville, he moved to WGST in Atlanta in 1992, filling the slot vacated by Neal Boortz, who had moved to competing station WSB. In September 1996 Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes hired the then relatively unknown Hannity to host a television program under the working title Hannity and LTBD ("liberal to be determined"). Alan Colmes was then hired to co-host and the show debuted as Hannity & Colmes.

Later that year Hannity left WGST for New York, where WABC had him substitute for their afternoon drive time host during Christmas week. In January 1997, WABC put Hannity on the air full-time, giving him the late night time slot. WABC then moved Hannity to the same drive time slot he had filled temporarily a little more than a year earlier. Hannity has been on WABC's afternoon time slot since January 1998.

Hmm... anything else?

Conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel, in their book Common Ground, describe Hannity as a leader of the pack among broadcasting political polarizers, which following James Q. Wilson they define as those who have "an intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another, rival group."

Ah, right - you have to be divisive as well. To be fair, Mr. Hannity is part of one initiative for the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund:

Hannity has hosted country music-themed Freedom Concerts since 2003, billed to help benefit the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, a charity created by Oliver North to provide college scholarships to children with a parent severely disabled or killed in military action. Appearing artists have included Sara Evans, Martina McBride, Lee Greenwood, LeAnn Rimes, Montgomery Gentry, Darryl Worley, Charlie Daniels, Larry the Cable Guy, and Michael W. Smith.

The Freedom Concerts were held annually in the Northern Star Arena at the Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey through 2006. In 2007, the annual concert was expanded to a summer series held at five locations across the United States, culminating with the September 11 event in New Jersey marking the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Speakers at the September 11, 2007 concert included Oliver North, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and several conservative talk show hosts from WABC Radio.

This analysis demonstrates the values that Sean Hannity believes to be requisite in being a sincere American. Apparently, loudmouth, conservative bigotry is the name of the game. Yet, remember -- Hannity was criticizing our president. For shits and giggles, let's take a look at his formative years.

Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind." He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. He disclosed that he used alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind". At the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency in 2008, Obama identified his high-school drug use as his "greatest moral failure".

Reflecting later on his formative years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."

Following high school, he moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. After two years he transferred in 1981 to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations and graduated with a B.A. in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time. He returned in August 2006 in a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.

Today's Republican Party sees its vision for America crystallized in Sean Hannity, who talks a lot, is divisive, and eventually came up with one idea that significantly helps some Americans. Meanwhile, Democrats have Barack Obama to symbolize their values, someone who is a product of multiculturalism, someone who learned tolerance from a young age, someone who turned down a likely six-figure job to improve the quality of life of others', and yes, someone who happened to experiment with drugs more than 25 years ago.

Sometimes we criticize the right-wing lunacy automatically, without analysis. And sometimes that is necessary. (We can't always be dismantling every assertion spewed from the conservative machine -- it'd take forever.) But sometimes thinking through these illogical rants is quite helpful because they illuminate precisely what we're fighting for. With the largest generation in America's history coming of age and espousing values identical to those found in President Obama's story, it's clear that it's Obama's brand of citizenship and view of America that is ascendant. Unfortunately for Mr. Hannity, Fox News, and the GOP, they're going to get lost in the shuffle until they recalibrate their idea of America.

From the absurdity files, Glen Beck (I know right?), has decided that Al Gore's attempts to reach out to young people in efforts to fight the climate crisis qualifies him for the label of the mass murdering herr wolf Adolf Hitler.

Seems the admirable former Vice President was at a youth conference (though I can't figure out which one) where he praised the teens and pre-teens in the audience for their understanding of the climate crisis. Gore acknowledged that there are some things that young people know that older people don't ... though it wasn't clear from the Glen Beck clip whether Gore was talking about Facebook or the impending problems we face because of our royal screw-up with global warming.

Beck apparently believes that Gore is building a purist race of greeniacs to fight the front lines of the climate crisis armed to the max with reusable grocery sacks, recycling containers, and and LED lighting. My god... can you imagine the tragedy if these people were allowed to organize. The effects would be ... go green or To the Camps!

Imagine what Beck would say if he heard audio of some of the conferences where we talk about things like health care or fully funding education.

Update: Go read Ari Melber's take over at The Nation.
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Yesterday I mentioned that Nas, Color of Change, and MoveOn were holding a rally outside Fox News to protest the network's racism. Fox ignored them, but Colbert made them the feature of his program last night. Here's the whole thing. Watch it.

Last night Fox News had an hour-long special on the youth vote called "The Y Factor." I have to admit that when the introduction mentioned that Millennials could be the decisive factor in the presidential election and that there was a youth vote revolution I was impressed.

The feature started out by talking about some of the characteristics of the Millennial generation: that it is the most marketed-to generation in history, that authenticity and genuineness are valued, and that the generation has been shaped by seeing organizations and corporations essentially screw over their parents.

It also talked about what the first impression of US politics was for many Millennials. The first major political news story that many were aware of was the Lewinsky scandal and the first Presidential campaign that Millennials remember was Clinton vs. Dole in 1996.

As was expected, the feature spent a lot of time talking about our generation's use of the internet and affinity for user-generated content. Specifically, to many young voters, if it doesn't exist on the internet it might as well not exist. Because of all this, word-of-mouth influence is key.

An interesting point that was made is that the reason many older people remain skeptical about the political involvement of young people is that a lot of their involvement occurs over online mediums, and those mediums are not being monitored by older people.

Winograd and Hais, authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, were interviewed in the piece and talked about some of the things they covered in the book, including that this will be a defining election in which this generation's attitudes will turn America's politics.

Another thing that was interesting was the comments made by young Republicans that were interviewed. They seemed disappointed with the Republican Party's youth outreach and admitted that their party tends to ignore young voters.

The segment ended with the following advice: Take a chance on the future of America. Respect the youth vote's intelligence. Old-school political consultants try to tell candidates not to pay attention to it, but whoever takes the chance on young voters may walk away very happy.

I've heard that there was also a segment on CNN about the youth vote but I missed it. If anyone saw it and has any thoughts please share them in the comments.

• How Green is your candidate? Grist will let you know with a new election '08 series and widget to deliver news directly to your blog of SocNet profile.
• Think Progress reports that Fox's Daily Show knock-off, The Half-Hour News Hour, is getting canned:
  

  The reviews for the program were consistently dismal. Its very first review, from the Orlando Sentinel, decried the “[l]aughter, of an awfully canned variety, greets all the gags. Nothing happening on screen justifies these outbursts. … If we’re lucky, we’ll never hear of this dreadful show again.” “Sometimes the humor is so heavy-handed that it seems almost like self-parody,” said the New York Times. “The 1/2 Hour News Hour is slow torture all by itself,” said the Philadelpha Inquirer.

  What the right-wing failed to grasp is Jon Stewart is funny not because he spins falsehoods but because he tells the truth.

• Student loan shenanigans continue. Nelnet is being forced to pay a $1million fine (peanuts, really) for deceptive marketing practices. This after Nebraska Attorney General Jim Bruning, who had originally "forgiven" Nelnet's fine, was revealed to have received campaign contributions from NelNet employees. The Higher Ed Watch article is ugly. Bruning goes to bat big-time for the corporate lenders, going so far as to call NY AG Cuomo's investigations into the industry (which have revealed major corruption) as an "embarassment." Bruning is the real embarassment. For any Nebraska FM readers: what can y'all do to get this joker out of office?
• The Washington Blade profiles David Hardt and Chris Anderson, the new heads of the Young Democrats, who had this to say about the future of YDA:
  

  “Right now I want to grow the organization,” he said. “We need to have better organization and communication between the national organization and local chapters. Young people make up the largest voter block and we need to raise money to reach young voters.”

  Amen.

• A blogger at Campus Progress notes that Senator Pat Leahy just wrapped up a bit piece in the new Batman movie. The blogger "doesn't know what to do with" the information, but I do - applaud it. Leahy is on the front lines right now in fighting Republican corruption in government. Yay on him for realizing that popular culture is a tool to embrace in that fight, not a pariah to attack (as some other Democrats seem to think *cough*Hillary and Lieberman*cough*).
• "Fair and Balanced" Fox News got caught editing Democratic candidate Al Franken's Wikipedia entry.
• Finally, what if the last five years were a giant Batman episode, and Dennis Kucinich a Superhero? Keep your eye out for Teen-Wolf Blitzer:
  

Update: You can see video of the actual Hillary/CDA incident here. To watch the Hannity and Colmes segment, you'll have to go here and dig around a bit. The piece was called "Hillary Heckled!"
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Alexandra Acker, Executive Director of the Young Democrats writes in to note that Fox News once again failed to live up to its motto - Fair and Balanced - last night when she appeared on the Hannity and Colmes program.

I don't have video of the segment, or of the real college dem footage they mention, but here's what Alexandra writes on the YDA blog:

I was on Hannity & Colmes tonight on Fox News (I know, I know -- I'm sure many of you think I got what was coming to me by going on Fox). I knew I'd be talking about Hillary Clinton getting heckled at the College Democrats of America convention and the media frenzy around the minor foreign policy disagreements between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama.

I was happy to go on and defend our Democratic nominees for debating important issues while Republicans run to the right and pander to the base.

What I didn't know (because I didn't have a monitor in front of me while I was on live) was that the caption on the screen for the entire segment read HILLARY GETS RUDE WELCOME FROM YOUNG DEMOCRATS FOR AMERICA.

Let's start with the obvious errors. First, we're the Young Democrats OF America, not For (although we're for America, as well). Second, Hillary was speaking at the COLLEGE Democrats of America convention, not the Young Democrats.

But, most importantly, the clip they showed was misleading and that caption was misleading, too. I know what happened. I was there. Hillary was cheered by the College Democrats. The boos you hear are the College Dems booing the lone, middle-aged heckler with a handmade sign. The College Democrats did not boo Hillary Clinton!

I'm interested in this for two reasons. First, because, as I've noted before, the youth narrative is currently tied to Barack Obama's campaign. If he does well, then we get a positive narrative about the youth vote in the media. If he does poorly, then we get a negative narrative. That may just be the place we are in, but the polls don't back it up, and if we can wrangle a positive narrative out of either a Clinton or Obama victory that's a good thing. As Hillary looks more and more inevitable as the nominee, this type of story just moves us further away from that goal. Youth don't hate Hillary, in fact, many seem to support her.

Second, because I wonder if it would be a better strategy for the Young Democrats to not appear on Fox News altogether. Between the de facto cancellation of the debate cosponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, the Nevada Democratic Party, and Fox News due to the withdrawal of the top tier candidates, to Obama's black-balling of Fox reporters, delegitimizing Fox News as a credible, balanced journalistic organization is gaining traction as a progressive media strategy. It might be good for the Young Democrats to embrace that strategy. We're clearly not going to gain any new supporters over at Fox, and our appearance on their programs is just window dressing for the propaganda that each show is rigged to spread.

If no Democrats or Progressives went on their programs, they would lose the veneer of respectability that now hides their pretty blatant partisan agenda.

It's been a busy week for Fox, as they've also taken to smearing the Daily Kos and Yearly Kos, the convention that I'm speaking at later this week. Apparently I'm a member of a hate group.

Check out more films about Fox News bias at Brave New Films.

You know, sometimes I really have to wonder if the right-wing Republican propagandists over at Fox news take themselves seriously, because I have to believe that every time the cameras turn off the "reporters" let loose a devious "Bwaa-Haa-Haa". Check out Fox News' reaction to Sicko, and the way that they use the latest (and completely inept) terror attacks in London as a means to scare Americans away from supporting Universal Health Care

Here's the Paul Krugman article mentioned in the video: Health Care Terror.

These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.

"National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?" read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.

While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens.

...

What outrages people who see "Sicko" is the sheer cruelty and injustice of the American health care system - sick people who can't pay their hospital bills literally dumped on the sidewalk, a child who dies because an emergency room that isn't a participant in her mother's health plan won't treat her, hard-working Americans driven into humiliating poverty by medical bills.

"Sicko" is a powerful call to action - but don't count the defenders of the status quo out. History shows that they're very good at fending off reform by finding new ways to scare us.

These scare tactics have often included over-the-top claims about the dangers of government insurance. "Sicko" plays part of a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association, warning that a proposed program of health insurance for the elderly - the program now known as Medicare - would lead to totalitarianism.