The no shame zone.

Even if you dislike the folks at FOX and what they represent, you have to respect their business model. For years they would show more legs than news, much to the delight of their old white male viewers in red states. Now, though, it seems that the gig is up.

It turns out that not all the women in the FOX fun house were pleased with how they were being treated. And, as a result, the head hog was forced out. Sadly, he might not have been alone in the FOX skirt chase Olympics. 

FOX recently paid over 13 million to make sexual harassment claims go away in order to keep their star talking head on the air.

But apparently not all of his accusers wanted money, and so there was no settlement to silence at least one of the accusers.

"Wendy Walsh, a former guest commentator on “The O’Reilly Factor” and adjunct professor of psychology, appeared with her attorney Lisa Bloom on Monday to call for an independent investigation of the culture at Fox News in light of claims of sexual harassment against anchor Bill O’Reilly.

Walsh, at a press conference in Bloom’s Woodland Hills, Calif., offices, claims that early in 2013, after she had started weekly appearances on “The O’Reilly Factor,” she met O’Reilly at his invitation for dinner at the Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles, and talked of her prospects for getting hired as a paid contributor. She said she later refused his invite to his suite. After that, she said, O’Reilly was “hostile” to her and, in May, her weekly segments were put on hold.

Walsh said O’Reilly’s “job offer disappeared the moment I refused to accompany him to his hotel suite. His friendliness to me vanished the moment I rebuffed him.”

Walsh’s account was among those detailed in a New York Times report of multiple settlements totaling $13 million paid after sexual harassment claims against O’Reilly." [Source]

I can't blame Ms. Walsh for not wanting to go with Billo to his hotel room. I mean money can only go so far. If these stories are true, Billo and the old white men at FOX are truly despicable human beings.  

Good for Mercedes Benz for pulling ads from his program. It would be nice if more advertiser's followed their lead, but I won't hold my breath.

*Pic from crooksandliars.com

How "toxic white masculinity" hurts America.

     The Field Negro education series continues.

Tonight we will read the words of my friend Chauncey Devega. Chauncey has his own blog  (love the name), but I first caught this piece that he wrote over at Salon online magazine.

"Dear White America,

 

I am your friend. I have written several letters of this type to you before. It pains me to have to do so again. What I am going to share in this letter may be commonsense for many white brothers and sisters. Other White Americans may be surprised. Because our society is so segregated, people of color often do not have many opportunities to talk with white people in a direct way regarding our sincere worries about the problems in your community. I hope that this open letter can be part of a broader conversation in that regard.

When a person suffers from chronic pain they often find ways to compensate for it. Some people self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. Others develop the mental discipline necessary to compartmentalize their physical suffering. Others cocoon themselves in a bubble of denial. Because I am your friend, I am going to be honest with you. White America is suffering from a type of cancer. It is hurting you; it is killing your children; it is damaging families; it hurls shrapnel in many directions, maiming and otherwise bringing an end to the lives of those people who are unfortunate enough to be in its blast radius. If you want the truth, this is it: toxic white masculinity, and the backward right-wing politics which nurture and protect it, are hurting millions of you every year.

I know that is hard to digest. But, because I care about you White America, I am obligated to tell you the truth, even at the risk of your discomfort.

For many of you, the very idea that there is such a thing as toxic white masculinity is both surprising and enraging. Denial and anger are a very normal reaction when an uncomfortable truth is called to account. But it is the truth. Toxic white masculinity is a fear of the world changing to the disadvantage of white men, and where what too many white men take as natural rights are actually going to be exposed as unfair advantages, advantages which were gifted by a lottery of genetics and fortune of birth, as opposed to earned merit.

Toxic white masculinity defaults to violence as a means of maintaining social and political control. It clings to guns as a symbol of “real” male identity. It fears women as equals; it lashes out at non-whites who are somehow “stealing” white men’s jobs and power. Toxic white masculinity sees “liberals,” “progressives,” “social justice,” and “feminism” as enemies — out of a fear that “white masculinity” will somehow be made obsolete or extinct. The dream worlds and paranoid fantasies of angry white men are distractions that look to some type of Other as the preeminent threat to America’s safety and security. The reality is of course, very different.

In reality, right-wing domestic terrorists and mass shooters are the number one threat to America’s safety and security since September 11, 2001.

White men are approximately 31 percent of the United States population. And yet, white men are nearly 63 percent of those people who commit mass shootings. Such behavior, among any other group, would be considered pathological and a public health crisis.

Dylann Roof turned his toxic white racist masculinity on a black church in Charleston. And John Houser — a white, right-wing, conservative, Christian fundamentalist, an anti-feminist, woman-hating Nazi sympathizer — directed his rage towards a movie theater in Lafayette last month, where he killed three people and wounded eight others.

Because I am your friend White America, I will share another truth with you: While the mainstream news media will run away from subjects that make you uncomfortable, it is no coincidence that “Trainwreck,” a movie written by a white Jewish feminist comedian, was the target of John Houser’s lethal actions. It was not “mental illness” which made John Houser shoot those people in Lafayette, although such a claim is a common deflection that prevents a serious discussion of white masculinity and mass shootings. One can be “mentally ill” separate and apart from their violent impulses. No, it was extreme right-wing politics and toxic white masculinity that drove Houser to kill.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The killing and abuse of women by men in the United States — the vast majority of it committed within the same “racial” group — is so common that it is rarely deemed to be newsworthy by the mainstream news media. This is a disgusting national embarrassment.
Toxic white masculinity is a complex problem. And you cannot fix it unless you also confront how toxic white masculinity is nurtured and encouraged by your news media and political representatives. While I do not think that you are a victim of your news media and political parties, you have nonetheless been done a disservice by them.

Fox News is your mouthpiece: 92 percent of its prime time viewing audience is white. Fox is the most popular cable news network in the United States. Millions of people watch it on a daily basis. Fox News is part of a propaganda machine that consists of the Internet, radio, and social media. This has created an alternate reality for many White Americans where down is up and up is down, so to speak. Researchers have shown that the right-wing media actually makes its public less knowledgeable about empirical reality and current events than those people who do not watch or listen to it.

The white identity politics, grievance mongering, conspiracies, paranoid thinking, eliminationist rhetoric about liberals and progressives, hostility to women, rage against immigrants, anxiety about those who are not “Christian”, and mainstreaming of white supremacy and white racial resentment, are the fuel for toxic white masculinity. The right-wing media gins up and encourages such sentiments because it is dependent on them for viewers and ad revenue.

The Republican Party, meanwhile, is America’s most prominent white identity organization. Since the end of the civil rights movement, the modern GOP has fused together conservatism and racism as its name brand. In the Age of Obama, the Republican Party has found itself increasingly dysfunctional as its politics are seemingly unable to evolve beyond “hate the black guy in the White House and anything that he proposes,” however reasonable. In many ways — the fetishistic embrace of guns, hostility to women’s rights, Islamophobia, symbolic and overt racism against black people — the policies and talking points of the contemporary Republican Party are toxic white masculinity as a campaign platform. Together with the alternate reality created by the right-wing media, the Republican Party has become so radicalized, breaking many of the standing norms of consensus politics in modern American politics, that it no longer functions as a responsible political organization.

White America, you have been confused, misled, and lied to by your primary political party and media. This is hurting you in many ways.

The American economy is broken. Wealth and income inequality are severe. The psychological wages of being White in America may still exist, but they are not translating into the material wealth they once did in the not so recent past. For example, there are more White Americans on welfare and other types of public aid than any other group. White Americans also receive a disproportionate percentage of public assistance dollars. As Robert Putnam details in his new book ”Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” the life opportunities and upward mobility of White America are increasingly imperiled. The abuse of prescription drugs, as well as illegal narcotics such as heroine and methamphetamines, is a severe problem for White America. The sum total of these and other troubles have left white folks – white men especially – less hopeful and feeling more insecure and angry about their future." [More]

Chauncey wrote all that to tell you, my white male friends, that the days of John Wayne are long gone.

It's time that you all got in touch with your sensitive and cerebral side. This might be a bit tough for some of you, but I think you can do it.

*Pic from Salon.com


 

The art of spin.

I have to give it to the right wing propaganda machine, they know how to control the media narrative and spin a story in their favor.


It starts with Drudge, then it's picked up on FOX, and then their politicians take it from there. Once they (the politicians) start with the talking points, the rest of the main stream media jumps in to get a quote from the politician. It's brilliant.


This is how a narrative is spun in America.


Of course once you get past the narrative and the talking points and you start looking for the real facts, something different might start to take shape.


"Since Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s release this weekend in exchange for five Guantanamo Bay detainees, criticism of the swap has emerged from fellow members of Bergdahl’s unit, who have decried him as a deserter whose actions cost the lives of six other service members. The criticism has been vocied through a variety of mediums, from Facebook groups to internet columns to appearances on The Kelly File.


Another avenue: a New York Times article published Monday, which quoted two of Bergdahl’s fellow service members — in interviews, the paper noted, arranged by GOP strategists:




RELATED: MSNBC Guest to Steele: If Bergdahl ‘Were a Hero,’ You’d Make the Swap


Both the service members quoted via the strategist-arranged interviews went on to say they wanted to see Bergdahl court martialed as a result of his actions." [Source]


There is more.


"Gerald Sutton, one of the members of Bowe Bergdahl‘s platoon, was rather hesitant to repeat claims by others who served with them about a link between Bergdahl’s disappearance and increased attacks on their base, telling Jake Tapper that’s a pretty serious allegation to make without all the evidence to back it up. Evan Buetow, Bergdahl’s team leader, and Justin Gerleve, his squad leader, both told Tapper this week that they noticed an increase in attacks on their base after Bergdahl reportedly deserted.


Sutton said that neither he nor the other soldiers in the platoon he’s spoken with have any knowledge of prior instances when Bergdahl walked off-base, as one report said, and none of them have knowledge of a supposed note Bergdahl left behind beforehand.


Tapper then asked him about the idea that attacks on the base increased after Bergdahl left. Sutton was hesitant to make any kind of direct connection.

“As a unit stays in-country for a longer period of time, the placement of IEDs always changes. So that could just be a part of it… it could be a number of different things, and to say that it was Bergdahl alone, that he’s the main factor, that’s kind of a powerful statement and we need some serious evidence to back that up.”

[Source]




Throw all that in with this admittedly left wing leaning article , and now I am totally confused.


I honestly don't know if this Bowe Bergdahl dude is some kind of traitor or Manchurian Candidate , or whether articles of impeachment will be drawn up against the president of these divided states for breaking the law. But I do know this: All the facts are not yet in.

Please call off the "Drop Squad". Don Lemon might be coming around.

I still can't believe that CNN found it necessary to let George Zimmerman pimp himself out to them. All the good they did by covering the Michael Dunn trial the way that they did, was overshadowed by promoting and conducting the Zimmerman interview.


Sadly, money always wins out in the end.


BTW, I hear that George Zimmerman declared that he is homeless in that interview. If he is, I would like to personally prepare a place for him right here in Philly to stay.


Speaking of the Michael Dunn trial, I guess Don Lemon might not be moving over to FOX Views after all. (And he tried so hard to be the straight shooting black man who isn't afraid to call out his own people.) Apparently he pissed off the white establishment over there and today they let him have it.


"Before the verdict in the Michael Dunn trial was announced Saturday (found guilty of four charges, including second-degree murder, but a hung jury on the question of first-degree), CNN’s Don Lemon very clearly expressed on the air how outraged he was at the whole thing, saying it should be a very clear, open-and-shut case for the jury.


Today Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett fired back with some pretty personal barbs aimed at Lemon and his knowledge of the law.


Jarrett blasted Lemon for lacking objectivity about the case and called it “pathetic” that Lemon would feel personally affected by the case. He said, “The sum total of what Lemon knows about the law and this case… could be written on the head of a pin. And there would be plenty of space left over.”
He concluded by tweeting, “What a pompous, pretentious jerk.”' [Source]


"Lacking objectivity"? That's rich. A Fox Views host attacking someone for lacking objectivity. News flash, he is a black man in America; he should be personally "affected by the case".


But the reverse race- baiters over at FOX would never see it that way, they are too busy defending the Michael Dunns of the world and their right to kill innocent teenagers.


Of course FOX and their news people had a chance to show us how to cover a story the proper way but....wait....they never touched this story.


Hmmm, I wonder why? 


Still, I am glad to see that Don Lemon fired back at this clown.


Don, I might have to remove you from the house. In fact, I am calling the Drop Squad right now.

I bet that Megyn wishes Santa was a penguin right about now.

Megyn Kelly must really think that her viewers are stupid...wait, she is on FOX; I take that back. OK, she must really think that the people out in the public at large are stupid.

Megyn's excuse for slipping and letting her real racist views known to America was that she was just joking about Santa and Jesus being white.

"Just being "tongue -in- check" she declared. And, in typical FOX News fashion, she played the victim card and blamed everyone else for picking on poor FOX News.

“I offered a tongue-in-cheek message for any kids watching,” she explained. “Humor is a part of what we try to bring to this show, but sometimes that is lost on the humorless.”

“Many questioning whether I understand that Santa is a mythical figure, others’ suggesting that I am a racist who is outraged at the idea of a black Santa,” she continued. “Well, this would be funny if it were not so telling about our society, in particular the knee-jerk instinct by so may to race bait and to assume the worst in people. Especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News channel.” [Source]

Nice. Blame society for race baiting while being on a network that makes a tidy profit by race baiting and playing to the fears of old white people.

And it wasn't just a "knee jerk" reaction. Megyn had a panel of all white people discuss an article by a black journalist who dared to make her feelings known about how she feels about Santa.

Of course Megyn tried to twist that as well, by declaring that she knew that Aisha Harris was being tongue-in- cheek all along. And if you believe that you don't know how FOX News operates. They pick on the black person, no matter how insignificant and obscure, (Do you remember Megyn's obsession with the New Black Panthers?) who dares to celebrate their blackness, and then they make it an issue on their network (by featuring segments with an all white panel) to point out reverse racism by those all powerful black people.

It's what Megyn tried to do in this instance, but unfortunately for her it backfired this time.

Not that her bosses over at FOX are complaining. The publicity is good for their business. They don't care if they are viewed as racists because their "white conservative superiority complex"  allows them to be just that without apology.

It is why Megyn so confidently declared the following:

 "Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change..."

Yes, because getting along with others who are different is such a wimpy liberal concept.

"Humor is a part of what we try to bring to this show, but sometimes that is lost on the humorless,"

Sorry Megyn, there is nothing funny about being a racist.

*Pic from Slate.com

This Sammon tells Whoppers.

"The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief” ~Jacques Ellul~

I keep trying to tell anyone who will listen just how dangerous the folks over at Radio Rwanda have become, and today I got more proof to back up my position.

It seems that one of their news [and I use that word laughingly] reporters was caught in a little white lie. (No pun intended) Or, as Sammon himself calls it; "a Pre-Truth." (Stop laughing.)

"In an audio recording obtained by media watchdog group Media Matters, Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon admits that he repeatedly lied on-air about Barack Obama during the home stretch of the 2008 presidential campaign. Sammon’s remarkable admission came in the summer of 2009 aboard a 12-day cruise sponsored by conservative Hillsdale College. Tickets for the cruise ranged in price from $11,800 to $37,600 per couple. The Fox News executive gave an Obama-bashing speech in which he boasted: “Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio, and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to quote, ‘spread the wealth around.’ At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched.

In the run-up to the November 2008 election, Sammon indeed repeatedly took to Fox airwaves to denounce Obama as a “socialist” and tie him to “Marxists.” According to Media Matters, he also pushed his Fox colleagues to “play the socialism card.” Using the tried-and-true Fox strong-arm tactic of sending internal memos to staffers, Sammon made much of what he described as “Obama’s references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists.” Only problem is, Obama never once referred to socialism or Marxism during his campaign. Sammon knew exactly what he was doing; trying to smear a presidential candidate with the damaging yet false brush of socialism. Such tactics, he admitted, were “red meat when you’re talking to conservatives.” But they’re also anathema to the “fair and balanced” journalism Fox ludicrously purports to practice. " [Source]

Sammon was incredibly successful, because that is one of the wingnut talking points: "OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST". Of course, how hard can it be to preach to [and convince] a choir, where more than half of its members do not believe that their elected president was born here?

Let me repeat that: MORE THAN HALF OF THE REPUBLICANS IN THIS COUNTRY DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS BORN HERE!!!

And people wonder why I blog.