Showing posts with label Fox News Channel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fox News Channel. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

'Well, just shoot up here amongst us --
one of us has got to have some relief'


Don't look at Boris and Natasha, who stole the 2016 presidential election for the biggest, vilest buffoon and existential threat to ever soil 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

No, look at the Mexicans! The Central Americans! They're overrunning our southern border! Raping our women! Sucking at the taxpayer teat! Talking funny! Montezuma's revenge! AAAIIEEEE!

And don't look at all-American concentration camps! They're . . . they're . . . essentially summer camps! Yeah, that's the ticket! Summer camps! Ex-cel-lent. . . .
If you thought Kirstjen Nielsen’s defense of the Trump’s administration’s policy that separates immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border was disturbing, wait until you see what Laura Ingraham had in store for her Fox News viewers on Monday night.

“Consistent with American law, when a party is arrested, your children are either sent to relatives or they become wards of the state,” Ingraham said. “So since more illegal immigrants are rushing the border, more kids are being separated from their parents, and are temporarily housed in what are essentially summer camps.”

The host did not show any images of children being held in cages, nor did she play audio of them screaming for their parents in agony as border agents callously joked, “We have an orchestra here.”

Instead, Ingraham channeled Ann Coulter when she used air quotes around the words “separated children” and attacked Democrats for supposedly feigning outrage in an attempt to “emotionally manipulate” the public for political gain.

SUMMER CAMPS populated by . . . "child actors"! Ooooooooh! That's good!

Just two days into this week, I got nothing left except despair and smartassery. And a Jerry Clower story tailor-made for a nation sick unto death of Donald Trump and his sycophants (pronounced something like "sicko fans").

To wit:


YEAH, ol' Jerry pretty much summed up our predicament with his tale of the coon hunt, John and the bobcat he tangled with way up a sweet gum tree. Most sane, nonauthoritarian and unbigoted Americans, I think, can identify with John.
"What's the matter with John?"
"HOOOOOOOOO! Shoot this thing! Have mercy! This thing's killin' me! Shoot this thing!"

"Johnnnnnn! I can't shoot up in there. I might hit you!"

"Well, just shoot up here amongst us -- one of us has got to have some relief."
SO . . . until somebody gets some relief, here's some smartassery which, I fear, comes way too close to the truth.



Tuesday, January 20, 2015

You want some assimilation, Governor?


Louisiana's embarrassment-in-chief is at it again.

This time, Gov. Bobby Jindal went all the way to London to say deeply stupid things, making his state a laughingstock internationally as opposed to scandalizing just a domestic American audience, as Louisiana has done time and again.

In a speech to the Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank named for the late U.S. senator from Washington state, Jindal took discredited Fox News assertions about Islamic "no-go zones" in the United Kingdom and France, then ran with them in decrying immigrant Muslims' failure to assimilate into Western societies. After all, what is truth, anyway?

According to an Associated Press  report:
In a speech prepared for delivery at a British think tank, Jindal said some immigrants are seeking “to colonize Western countries, because setting up your own enclave and demanding recognition of a no-go zone are exactly that.” He also said Muslim leaders must condemn the people who commit terrorism in the name of faith as “murderers who are going to hell.”

Jindal aides said he did not make significant changes to the prepared text.

The claims on “no-go zones” are similar to those a Fox News guest made last week about places where non-Muslims were not welcome in parts of the United Kingdom such as Birmingham, and “Muslim religious police” enforce faith-based laws.

Steven Emerson, an American author who often is asked about terror networks, told Fox News that in Britain “there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”

Prime Minister David Cameron responded by calling Emerson a “complete idiot.”

Emerson later apologized and said his comments “were totally in error.” Fox News also issued apologies for broadcasting the comments.

Jindal, however, used similar rhetoric during a speech, warning of “no-go zones” in London and other Western cities. Jindal’s remarks come in the wake of the massacre by Islamic extremists at a Paris magazine’s offices and subsequent attack on a kosher supermarket in the city. Three gunmen killed 17 people in the attacks.

“I knew that by speaking the truth we were going to make people upset,” Jindal told CNN during an interview from London.

“The huge issue, the big issue in non-assimilation is the fact that you have people that want to come to our country but not adopt our values, not adopt our language and in some cases want to set apart their own enclaves and hold onto their own values,” said Jindal. “I think that’s dangerous.”

Jindal’s parents immigrated to the United States from India. As a young man, Jindal converted from Hinduism to Catholicism.
TO HIS CREDIT, the governor did not tell his British audience that he was "a recovering wog."
"My dad and mom told my brother and me that we came to America to be Americans. Not Indian-Americans, simply Americans. If we wanted to be Indians, we would have stayed in India," Jindal, who is seen as a potential Republican Presidential candidate, is slated to tell the Henry Jackson Society in London on Monday, according to an advance transcript of his speech released by his office.

"It's not that they are embarrassed to be from India, they love India. But they came to America because they were looking for greater opportunity and freedom," Jindal maintains, adding that he does not believe in "hyphenated Americans."

"They like to refer to Indian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and all the rest. To be clear - I am not suggesting for one second that people should be shy or embarrassed about their ethnic heritage. But, I am explicitly saying that it is completely reasonable for nations to discriminate between allowing people into their country who want to embrace their culture, or allowing people into their country who want to destroy their culture, or establish a separate culture within," Jindal argues. 
THAT IS a fair point. But exactly what is "establish a separate culture within"? And exactly how credibly can the governor of Louisiana say such a thing?

For example, you have the United States of America. And then you have Louisiana. Technically, the state is part of the United States. Practically, not so much.

In Louisiana, you have an entire tourism infrastructure predicated upon how not typically American the state is. And if Louisiana ever were to be assimilated to the Borg level Jindal seems to advocate for immigrants to Western nations, it would cease to be anything one might recognize as Louisiana -- both for good and for bad.

If tomorrow, the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government woke up and decided to make Bobby Jindal and his constituents eat a big heapin' helpin' of what the governor feels free to preach to Europeans, I doubt that would go down well. In fact, it might go down something like this:

You want assimilation, Louisiana Governor Boy? We'll give you some damn assimilation.

First off, the United States Army arrives tomorrow to resume Radical Reconstruction, thanks to Louisiana's woeful non-assimilation on matters of race, poverty, education and official corruption. Your whole high-functioning Third World vibe continues to give the United States of America an international black eye. Furthermore, your election -- twice -- proves that the Louisiana electorate is in need of some radical re-education and, frankly, an attitude adjustment.

Also, because David Duke.

About that civil-law, Napoleonic Code thing that screws up your legal dealings with the rest of the country and makes it quite difficult for attorneys educated elsewhere to practice in Louisiana . . . we'll be sending a Justice Department legal task force within the month to rewrite your statutes and begin the rewrite of your constitution. Two words for you, Governor: Unassimilated and un-American.

And you now have counties, not "parishes" . . . and all your remaining "police juries" will be known as either "county boards" or "county commissions," effective immediately.

Now, while we're at it, about your state flag and state seal. . . . 





WE DETECT medieval Catholic symbolism for the Eucharist there. They'll have to go. Separation of church and state, don't you know?

What, Governor? You are displeased by our heavy-handed, totalitarian cultural imperialism? Just the kind of thing we have come to expect from unassimilated, un-American separatists like yourself. If you people do not wish to live as Americans, we certainly won't make you stay, Governor. Comprenez-vous?

Listen, Gov. Jindal -- May we call you Piyush? -- you quite publicly have made your and your state's bed. Now lie in it.


We are America. You will be assimilated.



Love and kisses,

The United States of America

Thursday, September 04, 2014

Good to know


Uhhhhhhh . . . isn't this the not-radical-Muslim version of the ISIS philosophy?

And isn't that what we're all saying is a barbaric violation of basic human rights?

Man, either Sean Hannity is an idiot or he thinks his audience is really, really stupid. Either way, you just can't make this stuff up.

HANNITY: You dedicated this, your book, to Miss Kay, which I thought was really nice. Let me ask you first. I wrote a book once, "Deliver Us from Evil." I think good people have a hard concept understanding evil. That book talks about evil you have there in front of you. The lord's prayer says "deliver us from evil." I think you're a preacher at heart. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But if anybody could cut off somebody's head like that and put children's heads on our stakes, isn't that evil in our time? And how should we deal with it?

ROBERTSON: Worldwide, planet-wide, Biblically speaking, two groups of people, the children of God, and the whole world is under the control of the evil one. That's First John 5:19. The evil one works in those who are disobedient. Galatians 3, they are prisoners of sin. Second Timothy 2, the Bible says they've been taken captive by Satan to do his will.

Listen, let me show you one. I've got the old -- hey, America, Declaration of Independence, it's my book marker. Don't forget that. Listen to this, Sean. Solomon, one of the wisest men on earth if not the wisest, he's speaking of wisdom, "Whoever finds me, wisdom finds light. Watch and receives favor from the lord. But whoever fails to find me," this is the God of the Bible, "harms himself." Now, listen to this on this ISIS thing, "All who hate me love death."

So you scratch your head and you say, well, why is it that when we're not even over there in the Middle East, why do they continue to slaughter each other when we're not even on the premises? They can't blame us. We left Iraq. You said what happened in Egypt and Syria, you say in Libya. They just slaughter each other. You say, what? "All who hate me love death," Sean.

HANNITY: What is the answer? I think the only answer is, I think they are at war with us.

ROBERTSON: Yes.
HANNITY: Whether we like it or not, I think most people would rather live in peace. Most Americans, just leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. They're not going to leave us alone. They're not going to leave Israel alone. So that leaves us with two options -- do nothing and get ready for the next attack. And then we'll have a report that says, they're at war with us, we weren't at war with them.

ROBERTSON: In this case you either have to convert them, which I think would be next to impossible. I'm not giving up on them, but I'm just saying, either convert them or kill them. One or the other.

HANNITY: That's going --

ROBERTSON: Maybe that time has come and gone, so I think that with this ideology that we're faced with, this is like street gangs, street thugs on steroids. You think about it, most of the wars we've fought, they were not asymmetrical like this one. This one, it's not a country with a standing army, and we line up and do battle with a certain amount of rules that they violate. But you say this is more like worldwide gang warfare, but this gang is well-armed and well-organized. I think, my opinion, we're going to have to deal with this group way more harshly than we have up to this point.

HANNITY: Because they're so harsh. I know they're going to be people that are always looking to jump on you and say, "Convert them or kill them." And they're going to say, "There goes Phil Robertson again." I know the media. I know they how act.

ROBERTSON: I'd much rather have a Bible study with all of them and show them the error of their ways and point them to Jesus Christ, the author and perfector of having your sins removed and being raised from the dead. I would rather preach the gospel of Jesus to them. However, if it's a gun fight and a gun fight alone, if that is what they're looking for, me, personally I am prepared for either one.
NEXT on Fox News Channel, we'll hear some words of wisdom about how to have a closer relationship with the tween girl in your life from Sons of Guns' Will Hayden.

Oh, brother. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, BROTHER!

Today's culture -- with cable TV leading the charge -- has ruined parody and satire for the next 200 years.



HAT TIP: Romenesko.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Nattering nabobs of know-nothingism


I miss Eric Sevareid.

I miss the days when newscasters stuck to the facts and not their ill-informed opinions. I miss the days when silence, or moving on to the next story, was a viable alternative to babbling about those things one does not yet know with certainty.

I miss the days when grown-ups sat behind the TV anchor desk, not overgrown teen-agers emoting when thought -- or silence -- would be more appropriate.

Those are not the days in which we live.

Eric Sevareid
THE CLIP ABOVE represents the days in which we now live. Days in which we are free to speak ill of the dead, so long as we put on a somber face and gravely speak words which signify nothing apart from our ignorance and prejudices. Fox News' Shepard Smith must have thought he was saying something when he blithely proclaimed that "something inside you is so horrible, or you're such a coward -- or whatever the reason -- that you decide to end it."

Like too many journalists today, Smith doesn't know what he doesn't know.

But that doesn't matter today so long as the words -- which words matter not -- just keep spewing from one's mouth like vomit out of a drunk behind your local tavern. It's all good. If forced to, you can vomit out an apology later.

Over at CNN, entertainment reporter Nischelle Turner inadvertently -- Isn't that always the case? -- indicted her genre of journalism and all its malpractitioners:
“I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from the mental health community in using that word,” Turner said. “A lot of times when we’re doing live coverage we say things and we’re talking and we don’t realize what we’re saying. They’re absolutely correct. That it is a disease, so I apologize for using the word demons.”
HERE ARE some words to live by for broadcast journalists when the red light goes on: If you don't realize what you're saying, it's far better to say nothing at all.

Still, all of this nonsense today apparently is much preferred over researching a subject, mulling it over and committing reasoned and humane commentary.

Because Eric Sevareid is dead. And journalism -- particularly that of the broadcast variety -- is busy at present committing suicide. Are all the Shep Smiths in the world just so many cowards, or is it that something inside of them is so horrible that they just can't help themselves?


Film at 11. Until then, we'll just prattle on about things we know not.

While today's talking heads are doing that, watch this master of the past and weep for the present.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Deck the halls with ginned-up outrage




If somebody had to say it, chances are that Jon Stewart just did.
"Uff course Kris Kringle iss vhite!"
A Festivus pole made out of beer cans at the Florida state capitol? That I find hilarious.
Fox News cynically using the commemoration of the Savior's birth to manufacture outrage, ill will and hatred of one's fellow man? That is as truly disturbing as it is completely predictable.
The TV gathering spot for pissed-off people on the political right might have "news" as part of its name, but it seems to have a lot more in common with Joseph Goebbels than it does with Edward R. Murrow.

The cynicism on display by Fox News regarding "the war on Christmas" is astounding, coming as it is from people casually cashing in on the sacred as they appeal to the worst demons of their viewership.

Thursday, May 03, 2012

More viral, please


This video of Shepard Smith violating Fox News policy (and MSNBC policy . . . and CNN policy . . . and . . . ) by telling the unvarnished truth needs to go more viral than it already has.

That is all.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

It's like Tabasco, right? Everybody likes Tabasco


When fascists get their own cable network, hilarity is sure to follow.

And what's funnier than Bill O'Reilly and some Fox News Channel legal analyst looking for ways to justify spraying peaceful protesters -- college kids who were just sitting there -- point-blank in the face with pepper spray, sending two to the hospital?

OK, I lied. It's not funny at all. It makes me want to throw up for one important reason . . . or rather one frightening thought that occurred to me. What if Bill O'Reilly had been a prominent national TV commentator in 1963?


What if O'Reilly had been on television every night convincing just enough Americans that they couldn't believe their eyes, not when it came to what they just plainly saw on the TV news. That the horrors being inflicted on blacks in the segregated South weren't nearly so bad as they appeared.

Move along. No injustice to see here. No need to do anything about it.

Can you hear him in your mind's ear, telling a nightly audience of about 4.5 million that it was just water coming out of the fire hoses blasting young civil-rights protesters in Birmingham, Ala.?

C'mon, everybody drinks water. You need water to live, right? It's the stuff of life -- listen, your body is, what, 80 percent water anyway.

And the police dogs being turned loose on those black kids? Who doesn't love dogs? C'mon, it's
Fido, for God's sake! If you make nice with the doggie, he'll be nice to you.

Besides, "I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police." Especially a longtime public servant like Bull Conner.

Right, Bill?

Monday, October 03, 2011

It don't take but one mistake


Hank, why do you drink?

Hank, why do we suddenly wanna roll smoke?

Why must you live out some crazy-ass song the tea party wrote?

Stop and think it over. Try and put your self in a sane man's position.

'Cause it looks to me like you got stoned and babbled all mornin' long. Must be a family tradition.



P.S.: If the president wants to get an apology out of ol' Bocephus for comparing him to Adolf Hitler on Fox & Friends today, I know how he can do it.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

While we were otherwise occupied. . . .


Wednesday evening, all the cable-news chatterers were chattering away about President Obama, birthers, evil Republicans and evil Democrats.

They were losing their minds over Donald Trump losing his mind.

Well, not Piers Morgan, it must be said.
Cable News Network's resident Brit was giddy over the someday-heir to the throne's impending marriage to a commoner way too good looking for Himself.

As far as we know (and the ranks are growing by the minute), 269 would-be viewers in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky were otherwise occupied. They were dying -- being bludgeoned, sliced, impaled or crushed as massive tornadoes turned the world around them into rubble.

Of course, you would have been hard pressed to notice if you were watching CNN, MSNBC or the Fox News Channel. Lawrence, Rachel, Eliot, Ed, Bill and Sean had bigger fish to fry, better "Others" to hate on than to focus on a bunch of Bubbas being ground up in the worst tornado outbreak since 1974.

SEE, to the media elite -- and to Washington . . . and to the think tanks . . . and to the entertainment industry . . . and to the eternally outraged activists whose continued existence depends upon staying eternally outraged (and making sure Lawrence, Rachel, Eliot, Ed, Bill and Sean do, too) -- we're all The Other, pretty much.

We don't matter, just our money or our votes. And if we're dead, there's no percentage in noticing that 269 of us just got bludgeoned, sliced, impaled or crushed to Kingdom Come.


ON THE other hand, video like this is da bomb. Pretty dramatic stuff here. Stuff's getting blowed up good, and you can cut the dramatic tension with a knife as the meteorologists' voices grow ever more urgent as the milewide Swirling Wall of Death (TM) approaches.

Yeah, with video like this, and with daylight views of all this rubble, 269 dead Bubbas might be worth a second look. Cable "news" might have an opening between the more urgent political contretemps Wednesday and the more pressing royal wedding Friday. Let's see whether CNN, MSNBC and Fox can shoehorn it in.

Rachel can blame it on global warming and the GOP. Sean can blame it on an angry God who's had it with the godless Democrats.

And Anderson can keep the tornadic supercells honest. Might work.


Videotape at 5:30, analysis at 8.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

It'$ a Wonderful Life in 'the real Bedford Fall$'


Wednesday in Wilmington, Ohio . . . unemployment rate 15.8 percent:

Glenn Beck Meet & Greet Breakfast
and Radio Show Ticket Package


Breakfast and Meet & Greet at 7AM
Radio Show at 9AM
Ticket Price:
$500.00

Package Includes:
* Breakfast at the General Denver Hotel
* Meet & Greet with Glenn Beck
* Photo with Glenn Beck
* Premium Ticket to the live Radio Show Broadcast at the Murphy Theatre

All Ages
Reserved Seating



Glenn Beck Live Radio Show Broadcast

Doors: 8:00AM
Radio Show: 9:00AM (Must be seated by 8:45AM sharp)

Ticket Price:
$125.00

All Ages
Reserved Seating


HAT TIP: PoliticusUSA.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

America 2010: A tragedy in four acts


Sorry, Glenn. In this case, "puppetmaster" George Soros was right.

"A 1957 movie -- made by a communist, appropriately"
-- Soros' alleged "gift" for Glenn Beck. That is, according to Beck. You see, Soros thinks the Fox News Channel's resident paranoiac is the real-life "Lonesome" Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan's 1957 "communist" classic.

According to Beck.


Well, heck. It must be true, the John Birch Society's magazine is picking up Beck's "exposé" of Soros and running with it.


OK, DOES Andy Griffith's character remind you of anyone here? Anyone at all?

Substitute Goldline for Vitajex, Lonesome's sponsor in the film. Anything come to mind now?


THANK GOD that the ultimate faith of "Lonesome" Beck's followers rests in the United States Constitution -- not a TV host. At least if Beck starts to steer them astray, the foundational document of our democratic republic -- and Tea Party America's exhaustive knowledge of it -- will be there to steer them (and us) away from the brink of something really nasty.


OH, S***.

Saturday, November 06, 2010

Hannity's mom can deal with Hannity


This is all fine and dandy, Rachel Maddow. We get it.

Fox News Channel and its video politicos using an alleged cable-news outfit for unending political propaganda is bad. Worse than Keith Olbermann even.

Fine.

Now, if you're in high school and get called into the vice-principal's office --
or, hell, get called into your boss' office at work -- on a disciplinary matter, what is the instantaneous response when you earnestly point out how much worse (and unpunished) everybody else is than you?

C'MON, this is a no-brainer. I'm sure your mom came back at you with this one a bazillion times.

The instant, and universal, response to your protestations is "This is not about them. This is about what you did. I will deal with them when the time comes."

And then you get suspended. Or fired. Or grounded.

Because Mom always liked him better.

Listen, Rach. We all know what Fox is. Fox is not MSNBC's kid.

We all know that Fox is a spoiled juvenile delinquent and, chances are, he's going to come to no damned good. He'll probably wind up in jail. You're not being raised that way.

I DON'T WANT to hear anymore of your whining. Now go to your room.

And I don't want to hear that stereo of yours blasting, either, young lady!
Don't you give me that look!

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Bomb-throwers and pyros for America

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


Everybody knows the game our self-proclaimed "patriots" are playing with "Obama's a Muslim" and the self-righteous faux outrage over "the Ground Zero terror mosque."

Everybody except, of course, the willing dupes who comprise the intended target of the GOP brass, Glenn Beck, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and all those who define themselves through their rage.

It's all about hate; it's all about fear; it's all about paranoia. It also is all about politics and the upcoming midterm elections.

What it's also about is playing with fire. It's about ginning up a mob to demand that the federal government . . . New York city government . . . hell, anybody tear down the whole edifice of our constitutional rule in the name of saving the republic from The Other.

The cynical right wants us all to become a lynch mob to save ourselves from terrorism, which is related -- somehow -- to America's first black, socialist, Nazi Muslim president. Or something like that.

It's not exactly a credit to our cultural and democratic
bona fides that the vast majority of Americans fail to see the deep and toxic irony of this.

INSTEAD, every time I log on to Facebook, I am confronted with the sidebar list of how many family members, friends and old classmates "like" Glenn Beck.

Like Glenn Beck, like his message. Unfortunately, Beck's message is both bats*** crazy and racially incendiary.

As you know, I grew up in the Deep South -- south Louisiana to be exact. I know what that was all about 40 and 50 years ago, and what it is still too much about now.

I can't judge anybody's heart today -- especially folks I haven't seen in years, decades even -- but I know how a lot of them were raised.
I know how I was raised.

I know what was in the cultural air we breathed. How we never gave our assumptions, or those of the society around us, a second thought as we took spiritual Corexit into our hearts and minds. I know that such enculturation can be nearly inexorable, because when you're raised that way from birth, the poison gets into that space between visceral reaction and engagement of the conscience and the mind.

SCRATCH THE SURFACE of my home state, Louisiana, and you'll quickly get to a very bad place. Do the same in any part of America, and you're likely to find varying states of the same collective id.

They say the devil's greatest trick is to convince us he doesn't exist. He just hides in our crooked hearts as our overconfidence congratulates itself on what good, moral, patriotic and God-fearing works of art we have become.

Yet the lynch mob sings "Onward Christian Soldiers" as "the better angels of our nature" twist in the wind, strange fruit of a demagogue's tree.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Charlie Brooker explains it all


Is it still media criticism if you're rolling on the floor, gasping for breath with tears in your eyes, all because you haven't laughed this hard in ages?

Whatever it is, it's pretty much the God's honest truth as Charlie Brooker unloads via his Newswipe program programme on the BBC.

HE DOESN'T MIND his language -- and God knows Bill O'Reilly didn't in the clip below on differences between Brit and Yank TV news -- so you probably don't want to watch this if you're working in a church office right now. But it's safe to say Brooker has television's number, particularly regarding what happens when you mix the telly and a good snowstorm (above).


DO WATCH this segment, which features the best take on Glenn Beck ever, until the very end. Cheers!

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Brit Hume: Christian jihadist?


Poor Brit Hume.

The retired Fox News Channel anchor offers an opinion on a talk show -- an opinion that happens to be one of the least crazy things said on Fox in the last five years -- and all the usual suspects act like he's some kind of Jesus-y Osama bin Laden.

And what was this crazy opinion that threatens not only Western religious tolerance but liberal democracy itself? It was this:
Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think, is a very open question and it's a tragic situation with him. I think he's lost his family. It's not clear to me whether he'll be able to have a relationship with his children. But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, Tiger, turn your faith, to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.


WOW. If the republic cannot withstand a Christian going on television and saying (kinda awkwardly, actually) that he thinks poor, messed-up, ruined Tiger Woods might find solace, forgiveness and redemption in -- AAAIIIIIEEEEEE! -- Jesus Christ, you're looking at a country that not only won't survive but has no business surviving.

Especially when it's a country in which some faiths are more equal than others. I think it goes without saying that in the circles Keith Olbermann inhabits, a Muslim advocating for Muhammad would be just okely dokely. Even if it wasn't the preferred cup of tea for confirmed secularists.

I would wager that's because, when you get right down to it, the Keith Olbermanns and Dan Savages of the world are just culturally imperialistic enough to see Muslims as just "Other" enough (or perhaps as just primitive enough) to be utterly non-threatening, save the odd suicide bomber.

But Christians . . . there still are a lot of those in America, aren't there? And they're just a little too familiar -- one could be your next-door neighbor, for
Madalyn Murray O'Hair's sake!

And if they all started taking that Jesus guy at His word -- and if they all actually started following His word -- why, the capitalist, materialist foundations of the modern consumerist-lemming state might crumble! And where would that leave MSNBC and its capitalist raison d'être?

Really, if people did as poor Brit Hume advised and started following the God, that might mean everybody couldn't be a god. And then Dan Savage not only would start to look as stupid and uncouth as he actually is, he'd also be out of business straightaway.

Which, ironically, probably would bring Olbermann and Savage to their knees.


HAT TIP:
Our Sunday Visitor.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Lou de Loop flies the coup


"Mr. Independent" really is now. Lou Dobbs quit CNN today to take his shtick elsewhere.

Where "elsewhere" is, we don't know yet. And neither does Dobbs -- at least that's what he's telling the public.

You have to wonder whether he's going to try -- now that he has no more "network supervision" (for what little that's worth) to worry about -- to out-Beck the sine qua nut
of the airwaves, Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck. Well, if he's going to try, he's gonna need a megaphone the size of the one he just left behind.

WHICH IS ODD, given Dobbs' stated reasoning:
Over the past six months it’s become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us, and some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day. And to continue to do so in the most honest and direct language possible.

I’ve talked extensively with Jonathan Klein — Jon’s the president of CNN — and as a result of those talks, Jon and I have agreed to a release from my contract that will enable me to pursue new opportunities.

At this point, I’m considering a number of options and directions, and I assure you, I will let you know when I set my course. I truly believe that the major issues of our time include the growth of our middle class, the creation of more jobs, health care, immigration policy, the environment, climate change, and our military involvement, of course, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
TRANSLATION: I was fired.

Either that, or there's going to be a Dobbs '10 campaign for something. That would be interesting -- frightening, but interesting.

Still, you have to wonder what happened to Lou Dobbs. He used to be a straight-laced business reporter and anchor. And there was nothing wrong with his questioning politically correct orthodoxies about immigration, particularly that of the illegal variety.

But. . . .


Apparently, there wasn't anything Lou Dobbs couldn't take too far. As in Too Far
. As in playing fast and loose with facts.

As in, sooner or later, lapsing into inflammatory rhetoric that -- in a saner day in TV news
-- would have gotten him fired on the spot.

And then there was his whole fascination this year with Birtherism, and his refusal to drop the subject when it became painfully clear not only that President Obama was indeed born in Hawaii, but also that the Birthers (and by association, Dobbs)
were a bunch of paranoid lunatics.

COME TO THINK OF IT, Lou Dobbs had been trying to out-Beck Glenn Beck even when Beck was just another radio talk-show blowhard.

Unfortunately for Lou, he lacked the blackboard, the tear ducts and the madman charisma to lead an armored division of nutwagons to ratings glory. Instead, Lou now has been relieved of his command.

Mobilizing the Unhinged Corps has fallen to a bolder general . . . a regular George Patton will lead that googly-eyed irregular army.

Because nobody out-Becks Glenn Beck. Enjoy oblivion, Lou; you earned it.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Blind cable channel finds acorn, drops F-bomb


Mrs. Favog is always getting on me about the F-word. She contends there is no proper use of "fudge" (not its real name) except, of course, when she "fudges" up and lets it slip in the heat of the moment.

Just kidding. She's generally mortified she let it slip.

My lowdown, sinful self, however, contends that some uses of the F-bomb are wholly appropriate as a means of conveying gravity and figuratively slapping the listener in the face, shaking him by the lapels and saying "Listen, dammit!" Of course, 99 percent of my personal use of "fudge" is completely gratuitous and, thus, unjustifiable.


EVERY NOW AND AGAIN, though, you run up against a completely justified F-bomb. Shepard Smith just accidentally unleashed one when discussing America's official torture program on the Fox News Channel.

Unfortunately for Shep, it was on live television. Fortunately for Shep, it was on cable TV, so it's not going to cost his bosses a big-time FCC fine.

And fortunately for viewers and connoisseurs of journalism, Shep's performance means there might be hope for "Faux News" after all.

But if Shepard Smith's head does roll due to his on-camera performance, you have to wonder whether it would be over a heaping helping of "fudge" . . . or because he came out foursquare against torturing in the name of God, Mom, apple pie and Chevrolet.


HAT TIP: Your Right Hand Thief.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Glenn Beck loses his s***


This is not helpful.

But, on the other hand, if President Obama really is turning us into a communist country, there will be a tremendous upside. Glenn Beck will disappear shortly, off for a lifelong vacation at a state insane asylum.

Which, come to think of it, might be a game plan -- communist or not.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Pictures flying through the air . . .
and other stuff not seen in the paper


Someday, electronic pictures will fly magically through the ether, to play out like a moving picture on a new kind of Radiola . . . right in your front parlor, where your present wireless apparatus sits to-day.

IT WILL BE CALLED TeleVision, and when it arrives here in Omaha, you can be assured that your Omaha World-Herald will be right on top of the story, bringing to you, the Midlands reader, the facts and figures, little comedies and big dramas . . . the story within the story of this modern marvel.

And perhaps someday, you will be getting the news and entertainment the World-Herald has to offer by means of this new, magical medium, as your hometown, home-owned news source embraces the best this century of progress has to off. . . .


OH . . . HANG ON A MINUTE:



WHAT??????? Since nineteen-freakin'-FORTY-NINE!?!?!?!?!

Damn, kind of got behind the curve on that one, didn't we? OK, here's what we'll do. We'll pretend it doesn't exist.

Sure, that's the way to go. People will ignore this "TeleVision" thing. And we'll be around forever . . . long after the novelty of moving pictures through the ether has passed and Midlanders come to their senses.

The WHAT?

What's an Enter Nets?

* * *

OK, I KID. But not that much.

And, face it, my joke is as good an explanation as any why blog readers in San Diego knew almost two weeks ago that Carlo Cecchetto -- one half of KMTV, Channel 3's anchor team -- was leaving Omaha to go back from whence he came. He's going to be the new weekend anchor at KFMB, Channel 8 in San Diego, where he was a reporter before teaming with Carol Wang (another then-newbie) at Action 3 News a year and a half ago.

An Omaha World-Herald stuck somewhere in 1932 also is as plausible an explanation as any that it was a Journal Broadcast Group press release Wednesday that revealed Craig Nigrelli, weekday 4 p.m. anchor at KCTV in Kansas City, would be Cecchetto's replacement. From there, the news surfaced in a blurb on MediaLine.com, then worked its way over to the Omaha TV News blog, and now you're reading it here.

But not in the World-Herald.

AND WHAT you haven't read anywhere yet is that -- if there be any rationality left anywhere in television news, either from a journalistic or a promotions standpoint -- Wang, Nigrelli's new co-anchor, ought to be worried.

Coming to Omaha with the new Channel 3 anchor is his wife, Carol Crissey Nigrelli, whose 20-plus years as an anchor at WIVB, the CBS affiliate in Buffalo, earned her a spot in the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame. She "retired from broadcasting" in June 2002 to marry Nigrelli, a former News 4 reporter then working in Albuquerque, N.M.

Here's what Carol Nigrelli's profile said when she was inducted into the Buffalo broadcasting hall:

Voted Buffalo’s Sexiest Woman too many years in a row to count, Carol transcended both television and news to become the unofficial Queen of Buffalo while anchoring the news on Channel 4 for 23 years. Her appeal as a newscaster and person is on many different levels . . .

She’s the smart, beautiful, authoritative and street savvy woman all women would love to be... and all men would love to marry. Combined with the sense and skill of a good newswoman, her career as a news anchor was a homerun.

Carol Crissey came to Buffalo from Harrisburg, PA in 1979, originally paired with John Beard at the anchor desk. Carol anchored the news at noon, 5, 6, and 11, with the likes of Beard, Bob Koop, Rich Newberg, and Kevin O’Connell until she “retired” to New Mexico last year.

NOW, IF THE perpetual Action Third News were looking to stop the ratings bleeding -- which never happened with "young blood" Wang and Cecchetto at the helm of KMTV's spastic Actioncast -- who's to say that the station won't find itself a new consultant . . . and won't start looking for another new piece to the anchor puzzle.

Maybe someone will get the bright idea to field a husband-wife anchor team. With at least one member a proven anchor talent.

And perhaps the folks at the Action Third News station -- sick of being . . . well . . . third -- will try to change a certain someone's mind about retirement.

"How do you like that? I buried the lede."