But he has one problem: the First Amendment does not allow him, as president, to use the power of government to fight his enemies. Obama’s solution to this dilemma lies in 501(c)3 charitable organizations working in close tandem with the federal government.

Here’s how it works. First, President Obama forges deep and abiding connections with like-minded charitable organizations. These are theoretically supposed to be non-partisan, but they are typically not – they have a direct line to the White House. So, for example, Media Matters for America coordinates routinely with the White House on important issues of the day. And they are experts at initiating so-called secondary boycotts.

Their expertise was honed in the Don Imus affair, as the Daily Caller reported. When Imus made offensive comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, Media Matters sprang into action, coordinating with other allies and pushing for a boycott of advertisers on Imus’ show. Soon, Imus was gone.

They quickly moved on to Lou Dobbs. They attempted to force his advertisers to stop buying time on his radio show; in particular, they looked to put pressure on Ford. And they were successful. By November 2009, Dobbs had moved on from CNN, to Media Matters’ delight.

All this time, Media Matters was working with the Obama Administration. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, met regularly with Media Matters to plot strategy. Media Matters had weekly calls with the White House.

The stage was set. The actors were in place.

Their first joint target was Glenn Beck. While the White House claimed that Fox News wasn’t a “real” news channel, Media Matters worked the back channels, coordinating with Color of Change to “expose Glenn Beck’s racist rhetoric in an effort to educate advertisers about the practices on his show.”

Limbaugh has responded by accusing the liberal front group for the Democratic party of seeking to censor his — and any other views — with which it disagrees. And there has been a spillover effect into government as the Los Angeles City Council has adopted a symbolic resolution that calls on radio stations to police their on-air talent’s “hate speech” while arguing that stations need to hire more minorities so that there is a “diversity” of viewpoints.

The ad campaign by Media Matters is just the latest broadside in their long standing effort to purge the radio host from the airwaves. This time, there appears to be a little more urgency to their work. Could it be that the liberal website has been bleeding so much traffic over the last year that they desperately need to stoke the fires of activism in order to boost outside revenue? According to Site Analytics, in February, 2011 Media Matters welcomed 603,000 unique visitors. A year later in February, 2012, that number had fallen off a cliff, as the website got only 276,000 for the month. That’s a catastrophic drop of 54%. What better way to increase revenue than gin up outrage and declare war on the biggest target on talk radio?

Writing at Big Government, Ben Shapiro points out that since the Daily Caller’s brutal exposé of Media Matters and its weird, paranoid founder David Brock, that detailed charges “including funding from left-wing allies, bizarre office hijinks, anti-Semitic employees, backdoor payoffs to former lovers, and connections with the Obama Administration, the organization remains largely silent” about the substance of the accusations in DC’s articles. In a way, Limbaugh’s comments have been a godsend to MMFA as it has deflected attention from the DC series while allowing the organization to implement a plan it has actually had in the works for 3 years.

That plan is detailed by William Jacobson of the blog Legal Insurrection. The effort to silence Limbaugh goes back at least to 2009 and is headed up by the Media Matters Director for Online Strategy Angelo Carusone. He admitted to the Village Voice:

I initially rolled it out in late 2009 and early 2010. At the time, the Beck work was doing well. I thought that in dealing with advertisers, some really appreciated being educated about where their ads were running. The ad market took care of this. The word “boycott,” it’s very rare that I called for a boycott or attacked a company. For the most part, I let advertisers know where there money was being spent, where it was going, and what it was helping. They made the decision themselves.

Carusone engineered astro-turfed campaigns on social media, bombarding advertisers for Limbaugh with threats. Limbaugh’s spokesman points out:

These Media Matters mobs bear a simple message: Renounce our enemies or become one of them. They distribute target lists of advertiser phone numbers, email addresses, Facebook links and Twitter handles, and then they come out of nowhere, en masse, against selected advertisers in rotation. They barrage small business with threats until they cancel their advertising.

Several dozen advertisers gave in to the pressure, which only made the attacks even more hysterical. There was blood in the water and Media Matters and its sharks were in a feeding frenzy. What is lost in all this social media churning is that only a handful of stations have dropped Limbaugh from their talk radio lineup. He may be losing some advertisers, but the owners of Clear Channel and other networks aren’t stupid. It would be economic suicide to cancel a show that attracts upwards of 20 million listeners a day. It’s why MMFA and other liberals like Jane Fonda who want the FCC to throw Limbaugh off the air, are dreaming.

Al Jazeera has descended to such low depths that a critic from the Arab media had this to say about it:

Al-Jazeera’s problem is not its political stance. It is entitled to that. Its problem is that it has dealt a blow to every genuine attempt to build strong and reasonably independent Arab media. The channel will allow no discussion of what has become of it, and has taken us back to the days of the ‘no voice rises above the sound of the battle’ media. It casts aspersions on the motives of anyone one who criticizes it, defends fatal mistakes with feigned naivete, and at the same time refuses to concede that its ‘logical justification’ for what is happening today is: “we are implementing the policy of our funder, period.”

Media Matters was founded with the help of another Soros-sponsored enterprise, the Center for American Progress, the radical brain of the Democratic Party. Media Matters itself couldn’t care less about upholding professional standards in journalism. Its affinity with Al Jazeera has nothing to do with a shared commitment to journalistic integrity. Rather, it shares a common enemy with Al Jazeera: Fox News.

Some of Al Jazeera’s most severe critics in the U.S. media just happen to be Fox News commentators such as Bill O’Reilly, who reports periodically on its blatantly biased anti-American, anti-Israel coverage. Media Matters’ founder and head honcho, David Brock, hates Fox News so much for its rejection of left-wing orthodoxy that he decided to use Media Matters’ resources to launch what he called an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel. Thus, it is no wonder that the two organizations, Media Matters and Al Jazeera, have formed a mutual admiration society. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Media Matters Action Network senior foreign policy fellow MJ Rosenberg has a profile on Al Jazeera’s website, where his articles attacking Israel and the United States regularly appear. As reported by the Daily Caller, Rosenberg represented Media Matters at the first Al Jazeera “Unplugged” forum on social media in Doha, Qatar in May 2010. At the forum, he praised Al Jazeera as a “mainstream network” and “factual” while attacking Fox News as a “very, very dangerous force in the United States.” For good measure, Rosenberg also charged that Al Jazeera “was bombed by orders of the United States government.”

David Brock is a member of an exclusive club of fake conservatives like Arianna Huffington who, when the winds turned blustery and the money looked better on the other side, crossed the Iron Curtain going the other way and headed to Moscow.

There is something to be said for the right, which has attracted its defectors from the best of the left. And there is something to be said for the left, which has attracted defectors from the worst of the right. While the right has gotten men like Irving Kristol and David Horowitz, the left has gotten a mentally unstable gay man and a woman who married a gay man for the money.

Since joining up with Team Soros, Brock has not engaged in journalism so much as become the head apparatchik of a propaganda corps, the officially unofficial smear corps for the left. Media Matters’ official mission is to correct misinformation. Its actual operation is to conduct character assassinations on behalf of the left. Its operating principle is a paranoid obsession with a vast right-wing conspiracy which justifies the creation of a vast left-wing conspiracy to counter it.

As David Horowitz has pointed out in his pamphlet, “Sex Lies and Vast Conspiracies,” on his entry to the ranks of the left, Brock’s new mentor was none other than Sidney Blumenthal, the originator of the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” meme.

Media Matters operates by targeting prominent conservatives. The more prominent the public figure, the more attention Media Matters dedicates to the task of destroying him or her. To visit Media Matters is to enter a parallel universe where the world revolves around FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly. Like a black hole, Media Matters forms a completely negative space that contributes nothing to the national dialogue except a mouth breathing obsession with the conservative media it hates so much, yet cannot stay away from.

An organization is a reflection of its leader, and Media Matters is a reflection of David Brock. Its paranoia, its dishonesty and its negative energy all emanate from its founder. A recent Daily Caller expose paints a picture of an organization run by a man with delusions of grandeur who is operating under the belief that he might be assassinated at any moment. A man whose organization not only distributes the most outlandish conspiracy theories about conservatives imaginable, but whose leader actually appears to believe them.

Brock began his career as an attack dog and is ending it as an attack dog, but his attacks are not motivated by principles. Principles are positive things and the only thing that Brock has ever offered is the ability to defame and attack the principles of others. There is no light side to David Brock. Only the darkness of endless paranoia, the fear and hatred of others, which makes him a willing weapon in the arsenal of political vendettas.

It was appropriate enough, then, that Media Matters came into being as part of the apparatus of the Soros Shadow Party. As the Shadow Party obscures transparency and good government, so too Media Matters obscures the truth. That is indeed its only function. It traffics in conspiracy theories about the pernicious power of conservative media in order to justify its own abuses of power. It maintains the myth that it is the only thing standing in the way of conservative media dominance to justify the progressive dominance of the press.

Jews occupy a peculiar position in the Democratic Party: The Jewish vote is part of the Democratic base, but at the same time the party does not represent Jewish interests, either at home or abroad, and of the last three Democratic presidents, two were nakedly hostile to the Jewish state. Now the second of them is running for reelection and is counting on the Jewish vote.

After November 6^th, 2012, Barack Obama will either be a leader with absolute control over foreign policy and nothing to lose or the first Democratic incumbent since Carter to lose the White House. For Obama everything hinges on securing the next four years and that requires him to play up his pro-Israel credentials while trying to convince Jewish voters that the animosity and ugliness of his present term never happened.

But there are two things dragging him down: The Center for American Progress and Media Matters.

Jewish discomfort with the administration has been growing for some time now. While Obama’s growing loss of Jewish support cannot only be put down to Israel, the Jewish state has become shorthand for the administration’s attitude toward the Jewish community. Vocal condemnations by former New York mayor Ed Koch and now by prominent civil rights attorney Alan Dershowitz make it clear that even mainstream Democrats are aware of the problem and that it is not going away.

While Koch’s remarks have been fairly vague, Dershowitz has been much more direct about identifying and attacking the root of the problem. “Media Matters and Center for American Progress are two extremely left-bigoted groups that are so virulently anti-Israel and anti-supporters of Israel that they’ve gone over the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism,” Dershowitz recently affirmed.

“These two organizations have been found to be anti-Semitic by many of the objective monitoring groups. And now they are closely associated with the Democratic Party and I have said very clearly there is no room in this tent for me on the one hand, and for Media Matters and for this other group on the other hand. We can’t be in the same tent. I will not be in a tent with fascists, with supporters of Ahmadinejad, with supporters of Hamas, with supporters of Hezbollah, with anti-Semitic bigots, whether they’re Jewish or not.”

Unlike Koch who did not set up a specific test that Obama needed to pass, Dershowitz has issued a clear call for accountability, and that creates a specific metric that cannot be avoided with vague promises and assurances. It offers Obama a choice between the radical left and the Jewish community.  But the radical left is no longer radical; it has become the establishment.

The Center for American Progress is not just another think tank; it is the brain, heart and soul of the administration. It is the interface between the proposals of the left and the policies coming out of Washington D.C. and it is also the interface between the policies of the White House and the media coverage of those policies and the opposition to them.

The Center represents the power of the left over the message, shaping the ideas that reach the White House and then shaping the ideas that leave the White House, blending the power of policymaking with the power of spin to form one of the most powerful arms of the shadow government set up by billionaire criminals like George Soros to control the American political process. But the power and radicalism of the Center is also becoming a liability.

Media Matters, the left-wing media watchdog, has had a rough time of late. Notwithstanding its mission of “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” it is Media Matters that has come under withering media scrutiny.

The group’s troubles started in December when M.J. Rosenberg, a senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matters Action Network, a sister site, set off a media firestorm by calling Israel’s supporters “Israel firsters.” Media Matters’ use of the term, whose implication of loyalties to Israel first and America second echoes a classic anti-Semitic trope, was widely panned by the Jewish community and by newspapers like the Washington Post. The ensuing backlash cast a harsh light on Media Matters’ extremist politics, all the more so when neither Rosenberg nor Media Matters abandoned the slur.

Now Media Matters is once again in the crosshairs following a damning exposé by Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller. One of the Daily Caller‘s more notable revelations is the extent to which Media Matters has become successful in dictating the content of left-liberal media. As documented by the Caller, newspapers like the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times all take their editorial cues from Media Matters’ talking points.

Prominent columnists like the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne have been among the most receptive to Media Matters spin. Indeed, as a follow-up investigation by Front Page shows, it is remarkably easy to trace a direct line from Media Matters to Dionne. In March 2007, Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert charged that Republicans and Fox News were waging “a smear campaign against NPR.” Dionne clearly got the message, because just a few months later he was reprising the charge of a Fox News “smear campaign against NPR” during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press and denouncing Fox as a “Republican propaganda network.” The latter attack echoed Media Matters founder David Brock’s charge that Fox was part of a “Republican noise machine.” If nothing else, Dionne’s faithful recitation of the Media Matters line on Fox shows that the left-wing pundits most willing to ascribe a political agenda to the network are themselves being directed by partisan interests.

Even as it was denouncing Fox as Republican propaganda, Media Matters was putting its own propaganda on the air via left-wing networks like MSNBC. So minimal was the fact-checking and editorial supervision at MSNBC, apparently, that a Media Matters source boasted to the Daily Caller, “We were pretty much writing their prime time.” Left-wing bloggers were even more willing to serve as mouthpieces for Media Matters, most notably Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent. Embarrassingly for Sargent, Media Matters sources describe him as being so eager to rehash their editorials that the organization considered him a reliable dump for its content. As one source boasted to the Daily Caller, “If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game.”

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/15/media-matters-exposed/feed/ 37 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nrb-feature/~3/W0BcPPTz4a8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nrb-feature/~3/W0BcPPTz4a8/#comments Sat, 30 Apr 2011 14:30:03 +0000 Chris Queen http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=129653

I can’t remember who told me this: “People don’t attack you unless they see you as a threat.”

The Left’s biggest targets — from Rush Limbaugh to Ronald Reagan — have been the ones who were capable of the most damage to the progressive cause. That adage must apply to Andrew Breitbart, because the Left hasn’t stopped trying to discredit him and bring him down.

Breitbart has emerged as one of the leading soldiers on the front lines of the cultural war between the Right and the Left. He has called himself a “reluctant cultural warrior,” yet he is unafraid to dive head-first into controversy. Whether he’s calling out the NAACP for accusing Tea Party activists of racism, going toe to toe with the tools at Media Matters, or facing down the worst interviewer in the world, Martin Bashir, Breitbart confronts the Left head on.

His websites — Breitbart.com, Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace — are popular, and they effectively and often irreverently expose the Left for who they really are. The release of his new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save The World, along with the ensuing book tour and media appearances, have made him an even bigger target as of late.

Andrew Breitbart has been subject to some of the most vicious charges by the Left lately. These assaults range from libel lawsuits and other attempts to paint him as a liar to ugly, uncalled-for personal attacks. These barrages may be different in nature, but they are all vicious in their attempts to drag Breitbart through the mud, and ultimately to end his career.

The following is a list of five of the most vicious attacks on Andrew Breitbart. This list doesn’t even really begin to scratch the surface of the vitriol used against him, but you’ll get a good idea of just how much the Left hates him and how badly they want to see him discredited.

We’ll start with a series of attacks that Breitbart gleefully makes public…

I can’t remember who told me this: “People don’t attack you unless they see you as a threat.”

The Left’s biggest targets — from Rush Limbaugh to Ronald Reagan — have been the ones who were capable of the most damage to the progressive cause. That adage must apply to Andrew Breitbart, because the Left hasn’t stopped trying to discredit him and bring him down.

Breitbart has emerged as one of the leading soldiers on the front lines of the cultural war between the Right and the Left. He has called himself a “reluctant cultural warrior,” yet he is unafraid to dive head-first into controversy. Whether he’s calling out the NAACP for accusing Tea Party activists of racism, going toe to toe with the tools at Media Matters, or facing down the worst interviewer in the world, Martin Bashir, Breitbart confronts the Left head on.

His websites — Breitbart.com, Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace — are popular, and they effectively and often irreverently expose the Left for who they really are. The release of his new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save The World, along with the ensuing book tour and media appearances, have made him an even bigger target as of late.

Andrew Breitbart has been subject to some of the most vicious charges by the Left lately. These assaults range from libel lawsuits and other attempts to paint him as a liar to ugly, uncalled-for personal attacks. These barrages may be different in nature, but they are all vicious in their attempts to drag Breitbart through the mud, and ultimately to end his career.

The following is a list of five of the most vicious attacks on Andrew Breitbart. This list doesn’t even really begin to scratch the surface of the vitriol used against him, but you’ll get a good idea of just how much the Left hates him and how badly they want to see him discredited.

We’ll start with a series of attacks that Breitbart gleefully makes public…

Jennifer Rubin once characterized the left wing blogosphere as the Borg.  They sometimes march in robotic lockstep, a reactionary mob seeking the enemy, incapable of individual thought with one singular purpose – destroy.  Media Matters today reminds us why that characterization is on target.

I had a piece at today’s Washington Examiner describing some of the crazy policies and hires inside the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department.  For example, the DOJ hired a person from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State to – get this – protect religious liberties.  This is one of the most hostile organizations in America to organized religion.  But that’s the new normal inside this DOJ.  One of the other things that Eric Holder’s Civil Rights Division did was foul up the debut of a new model of the Amazon Kindle reader because the blind could not use it.  It did not have Braille buttons.  Byron York broke this story at the Washington Examiner and I also mentioned it in my article today, namely “DOJ stopped the debut of the Amazon Kindle because it was not in Braille.”

Summon the Borg.

Under the headline, “Blatant Adams Lie: Obama DOJ ‘Stopped The Debut Of The Amazon Kindle’” the Borg, Media Matters Division, attack my piece.  I make a habit of largely ignoring the Borg, but this one was too good to pass up.  The Borg point out that the Kindle debuted in 2007 when Bush was President.  Caught and cornered by the Borg!

Not so fast.  The Kindle DX model is the one at issue.  And it debuted in May of 2009, right when the infamous Loretta King was at the helm of the DOJ unit.

The debut of the Kindle DX model was gummed up because the DOJ got involved in a university pilot program that would use the new Kindle DX model as a textbook platform.  The DOJ’s own press release takes credit for this: “The universities agreed generally not to purchase, recommend, or promote use of the Kindle DX, or any other dedicated electronic book reader, unless the devices are fully accessible for students who are blind or have low vision.”

Further crowing about their intervention, and successful effort to block universities from using the new Kindle DX, the press release continues:

The current model of the Kindle DX has the capability to read texts aloud, so that the materials would be accessible to blind individuals, but the device does not include a similar text-to-speech function for the menu and navigational controls. Without access to the menus, students who are blind have no way to know which book they have selected or how to access the Kindle DX Web browser or its other functions. The technological “know how” to make navigational controls or menu selections accessible is available.

The Borg seek to disassociate DOJ from the interference, instead blaming the National Federation of the Blind.  But that ignores reality.   The 1,000 pound gorilla that blocked the Kindle DX from being debuted as a university textbook platform was the Eric Holder Justice Department, not the National Federation for the Blind.  Faced with the possibility that their whole product launch to universities would be derailed, Amazon decided to redesign a product largely because of the intervention of the DOJ – the Obama DOJ, not the Bush DOJ.  The derailed product launch was the Kindle DX, which debuted in 2009, not the 2007 version of the Kindle.

It is small consolation that the Borg occasionally encounter a barely independent voice that verifies the events I wrote about.  The Borg’s reaction to my story illustrates a curious Borg rhetorical tactic perhaps borrowed from the criminal defense bar – make any wild claim and see what sticks  They probably think O.J. didn’t do it either.  Thankfully the Borg can provide some fantastic laughs, like this video with the copious references to lotion.

There’s only so much mileage the Left can get out of vehemently denying that President Barack Obama is a socialist. For best propagandistic results, it’s ideal to highlight people on the Right who allegedly admit the same thing (and if their remarks can be used to embarrass a hated cable news channel in the process, so much the better).

Case in point: relying upon Media Matters research, Howard Kurtz’s latest on the Daily Beast highlights recent remarks made by Fox News Channel’s Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon during a 2009 cruise hosted by Hillsdale College (my alma mater):

“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 ‘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.”

That he did—on several occasions.

On Oct. 14, 2008, Sammon said on the air that Obama’s “spread the wealth” remark “is red meat when you’re talking to conservatives and you start talking about spread the wealth around. That is tantamount to socialism.”

On Oct. 21, he told Greta Van Susteren: “I have read Barack Obama’s books pretty carefully, and he in his own words talks about being drawn to Marxists… Now all this stuff’s coming out about whether he’s a socialist. I don’t know why anyone is surprised by it, because if you read his own words and his sort of, you know, orientation coming up as a liberal through college and a young man, it’s not a huge shock.”

Sammon, a former Washington Times reporter, also made sure his troops got out the word. On Oct. 27, he sent an email to staffers highlighting what he described as “Obama’s references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists” in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father.

Sammon’s response:

In an interview, Sammon says his reference to “mischevious speculation” was “my probably inartful way of saying, ‘Can you believe how far this thing has come?’” The socialism question indeed “struck me as a far-fetched idea” in 2008. “I considered it kind of a remarkable notion that we would even be having the conversation.” He doesn’t regret repeatedly raising it on the air because, Sammon says, “it was a main point of discussion on all the channels, in all the media”—and by 2009 he was “astonished by how the needle had moved.”

In defense of Sammon’s ethics, raising a subject on the air and speculating about it, even “mischievously,” aren’t the same as reaching or arguing for a firm conclusion about the subject. Indeed, if you watch the full clip the Oct. 14 quote comes from, Sammon’s not even arguing for the Obama-as-socialist charge—he’s just objectively analyzing 2008 rival John McCain’s strategic interest in pressing the issue.

“Spread the wealth around,” Marxism in Dreams From My Father, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers…these details of Obama’s life and career aren’t right-wing fabrications. Taken on their own, each story raised serious, legitimate questions about just how radical Obama’s views were, and it shouldn’t take a Republican partisan to notice, or to discuss their significance.

There is an entirely plausible interpretation of Sammon’s words that gives his honesty (if not his political judgment) the benefit of the doubt—he found these stories noteworthy but didn’t ultimately think they added up to Obama personally being a full-blown socialist, perhaps out of a hesitancy to read too much into his words or attribute the views of others to Obama himself.

Ultimately, though, what Bill Sammon believed when is a sideshow; the real purpose of this narrative is to indirectly discredit the idea that Obama’s politics are radical. And on that score, it fails utterly. So Sammon didn’t think candidate Obama’s record indicated socialism; that doesn’t make Sammon’s 2008 judgment correct. For one thing, it makes no effort to acknowledge or refute the compelling evidence and arguments for Obama-as-socialist that have been made, and is no substitute for a comprehensive, objective look at Obama’s own record. For another, it ignores something else Sammon said on the same cruise—simply looking at what Obama has done since taking office puts the debate in a whole new light:

“Now imagine my surprise when this year, I witness President Barack Obama standing in the cross hall of the White House and having taken over the American car industry, look into the camera, and announce to the nation essentially, that he would personally vouch for the warranty on your car’s muffler. All of a sudden, the debate over whether America was heading for socialism seemed anything but far-fetched…The debate over whether America is headed for socialism seems all too real, especially to those who still believe in capitalism.”

The following remarkable revelation hit the internet on April 14, courtesy of Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert. It succinctly sums up not only the world view of George Soros’ steno pool, but of much of the rest of the left. Says Boehlert:

“Fact: Without Fox News and the national platform it gives the haters, there essentially would be no ‘anti-government’ movement in this country today.”

Fact? Admittedly, I am not blessed with a degree in journalism like Boehlert, but that statement sounds more like something we used to call an opinion. Boehlert and his fellow fellows look at Fox’s ratings and conclude that they must be – just have to be – leading the gullible, unwashed masses who are otherwise incapable of original thought or of getting information anywhere else but via the Murdoch empire. That’s obviously where all this “antigovernment” stuff comes from. Now, we used to have another word for “anti-government” called “anarchism,” but using the latter term would make the writer sound ridiculously inflammatory, so naturally the left avoids associating the right with either Sacco or Vanzetti. The more honest description of the mind-set that drives conservatives and libertarians to protest the policies of the Obama administration would be “limited government,” or “small government,” but those terms sound entirely too reasonable for the left to utilize.

If you’re paranoid and delusional, you naturally to see the rest of the world in those terms. After initially trying to dismiss the tea party movement as an unimportant, small collection of extremists, the left finally woke up to the fact that tea partiers are going to flex a lot of electoral muscle in November 2010. At that point, full-scale paranoia kicked in. The left grudgingly acknowledged the importance and size of the tea party movement, an admission that occurred seemingly overnight, but then, in their world, it naturally followed that the tea partiers’ message had to be far more sinister than they could have ever imagined. The left’s paranoid response to realizing that the tea party movement was something more than an unimportant, isolated fad was predictable: the left decided that the tea partiers were even more paranoid than they are. To them, the tea party movement just has to be about racism, fascism and violent revolution.

An April 9 article in Newsweek entitled “Hate, antigovernment extremists are on the rise—and on the march” penned by Evan Thomas and Eve Conant was about as paranoid as any liberal could want. Thomas and Conant paint a frightening picture of simmering right-wing hate, ready to explode in bloody, righteous outrage. They go to great, if dubious, lengths to link today’s disgust with the Obama administration’s neo-socialist policies to extremists like Timothy McVeigh and Father Charles Coughlin. The lesson, according to Thomas and Conant, is clear: America is teetering on the edge of falling into the abyss once more. Here’s a taste:

“Economic distress and social change make for fear, and fear makes for anger, now and always. Night riders terrorized the defenseless after the Civil War. During the Great Depression, two demagogues in particular whipped up conspiracy theories against Jewish bankers and the rich elites to arouse angry mass movements. Huey Long, governor of Louisiana, later a U.S. senator who wanted to soak the rich, and Father Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic Catholic priest whose radio show reached 40 million people, seemed a political threat to FDR, until Long was assassinated and Coughlin became increasingly unhinged.”

Of course Long was a Democrat and a populist who pushed the kind of “progressive” policies that would do the Obama administration proud. “Soak the rich” doesn’t cover the half of it. Coughlin may have “reached 40 million people,” but the fact that America united to fight a war that was, in large part, dedicated to defeating the most murderous anti-Semite in history suggests that he was not so nearly as influential as Thomas and Conant imply. But hey, why let a few relevant historical facts get in the way of the narrative?

Still, one would think that an article like that would quickly receive a hearty stamp of approval over at Media Matters. No such luck. While Boehlert expressed grudging gratitude with regard to Newsweek’s  paranoid delusions, he still had a problem: Newsweek just wasn’t paranoid enough:

“The bad news? The phrase ‘Fox News’ does not appear until the last paragraph of the Newsweek piece.”

Of course. According to Media Matters, all attacks on the right are welcome, so long as such attacks are prefaced with the disclaimer: “the following outrages have been perpetrated at the behest of Rupert Murdoch.” For Eric Boehlert and his fellow “senior fellows,” and presumably Media Matters’ “junior fellows” along with their “deputy assistant fellows in training,” nobody would “essentially” be upset by an administration that rammed a health care bill down our throats, spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up failing businesses and thumbed its nose at our most important ally in the middle east, but for the nefarious influence of Fox News. We’re in the midst of the Age of Communication, but all of these issues would have somehow escaped our attention, were it not for Murdoch’s minions. What a bunch of dolts we are!

While Fox is a network powerhouse, there are millions of conservatives (me among them) who don’t watch Fox on anything approaching a regular basis. For the most part, I appreciate what Fox does, but I’ve also been critical of Murdoch’s network too. Still, whatever Fox says or does not say, it really doesn’t matter. There are plenty of other sources of information and the American people are savvy enough to know when salient questions aren’t being answered. That’s why we have Free Republic, Andrew Breitbart, Matt Drudge and, to put a point on it, David Horowitz. People are curious and hungry to learn more. If the mainstream media won’t answer their questions, they’ll find other outlets that will. Fox isn’t directing a conspiracy, they’re filling a vacuum.

The left seems entirely incapable of digesting that possibility. The tea-party movement and all of the other forms of protest against this administration, have been motivated by – more than anything else – the policies of the administration itself. It’s about assuming crippling debt, the tax-hikes any intelligent observer knows are sure to come and the creeping intrusion of more and more government bureaucracies controlling our lives. People don’t need Fox News, or any other media outlet, to understand that. All they have to do is to pay attention to what the Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their supporters have been doing and saying.  

stupid people are defining what people know about global warming http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/ta040810.html

and thank God that we have professional progressives like Alterman and his pals at Media Matters to set us straight.  According to the illustrious Alterman, even the liberally vaulted NYT may not “get”  this whole global warming :

Of course, some of this is just stupidity. The New York Times recently profiled a group of meteorologists who have no particular expertise in climatology playing the role of climate deniers to the general public as a means—it would appear—of retribution toward climatologists because of all those fancy degrees real scientists have. Meteorologists have only bachelor’s degrees, while climatologists have doctorates and lab experience and the like and tend to look down on their little brothers and sisters.

I’m delighted to be living in a world where the pejorative use of  “their little brothers and sisters” is so sadly typical of the climate crisis cabal.  I find this more than a little insulting, but maybe that’s just my puny bachelor’s degree and apparently even punier little brain talking.

Fortunately, Alterman is working hard to set me straight.  He quotes the UK’s leftist rag as confirmation of his superior wisdom and intellect:

According to a report prepared by the Guardian’s Alok Jha for the Copenhagen summit, should we stay on the path we’re on, we can expect a four-degree rise in the earth’s average temperature…

Because if Jha at the lots-left-of-center Guardian writes it, it MUST be true.  I’m so stoopid.  Does it seem warm in here?

If you want to gauge how important an issue is to the Left, the best indicator is to observe how it reacts when the issue is raised. Last Friday, Ralph Peters (Lt. Col., USA, retired) penned a column for Front Page in which he opined that extending voting rights to eleven million illegal immigrants currently residing in this country would be a disaster for America. In response, Terry Krepel,  a member of George Soros’ steno pool Media Matters, penned an outraged response slamming Peters for raising such a ridiculous, inflammatory issue. How dare he!

Ralph Peters doesn’t actually need anyone coming to his defense. He’s a real American hero who spent ten years in military intelligence defending this nation in ways that journalists like Terry Krepel could not imagine. Legendary novelist W.E.B. Griffin has singled Peters out as one of the “new breed” protecting our nation, who – in Griffin’s words – wrote the best analysis of our war on terror that Griffin has ever read. But, whatever Griffin, me or anyone else thinks of Ralph Peters’ service record doesn’t matter much to the Left. They’re not going to treat him as a worthy adversary with whom they might disagree. They’re going to fight back using any means at their disposal, employing the very tactics that they accuse conservatives and libertarians of using: invective, distortion and hyperbole.

To that end, Media Matters tries to make the case that Peters is a racist, extremist, blood-thirsty lunatic. Indeed, Media Matters dedicates a fair chunk of space chronicling what Peters has said and written. Peters has been an unapologetic advocate of taking and keeping America’s gloves off while fighting the war on terror. There’s good reason for his position: Peters believes that the war on terror can actually be won, if the West has the courage to pursue victory fearlessly, absent the self-imposed hobbles of political correctness, handicaps that do not constrain our enemies.

On the other hand, the Left believes that America can never defeat the terrorists because, to them, terrorism is the logical, inevitable reaction to American arrogance, imperialism and greed. Unless we reform our ways, the “disadvantaged” classes in the world, who have a legitimate gripe in their view (although, they will admit, a rather poor way of expressing their opinion) will continue to blow innocent people up in suicidal fireballs of righteous indignation. In contrast, Peters views the war on terror in much the same way that Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman viewed the War Between the States: as a conflict that ought to be pursued ruthlessly, because doing so will end a brutal war more quickly and once it is over – to paraphrase Grant’s hopeful, century-old words – the reasonable majorities on both sides could then return to the happy task of becoming friends again.

Supporting or attacking Peters’ stance on the best way to fight the war on terror isn’t germane if we are to consider the validity of his views when it comes to immigration policy. However, criticizing Peters’ stance on the war on terror is useful if somebody wants to marginalize any of his other opinions. The gist of Krepel’s riposte, such as it was, involved constructing a straw man of massive proportions so that the flames generated when he burnt it down would illuminate the supposed folly of Peters’ position on immigration beyond any reasonable doubt. Krepel believes – and if you read Peters’ piece, you’ll have as hard a time reaching this conclusion as I did – that Peters’ thinks illegal aliens are going to be given the right to vote without becoming citizens. In Krepel’s words:

“Nobody, let alone Obama, is proposing to allow undocumented immigrants to vote. Peters barely attempts to make the argument that creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, who would then be allowed to vote, is a bad thing. But Peters is on a roll: No voting rights for illegals! Mob rule! Never mind that President Reagan’s granting amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants didn’t exactly result in ‘mob rule.’”

Of course Reagan’s “amnesty” didn’t grant citizenship to illegal undocumented alien immigrants. What the Gipper actually did was to grant some illegal aliens “temporary resident status,” which did not include citizenship and the right to vote. That’s quite a bit different that president Obama’s plans. As part of his immigration plan, the president said that he would support “…a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.”

Peters didn’t argue that Obama was going to pass out voter registration cards to illegals. Any discerning, intelligent reader understood that Peters’ concern is about making illegals citizens – as the president has suggested we do – and therefore granting them votes. I’m not sure why those particular dots needs connecting, but apparently they do, at least at Media Matters.

The only part of Peters’ column that I would disagree with is when he discussed the possibility of mob rule in the future. It rather looks like we’re already there. Ramming health care through a reluctant Congress and past a disgusted populace required the kind of arm-twisting, bullying and mind-numbing populist propaganda that are the hallmarks of mob rule. It’s not the sort of mob rule that features vigilantes toting torches, throwing stones and shouting threats, but is instead a genteel mob rule of the political sort. Bullies are bullies, whether they’re riding on horseback carrying a noose they hope to fill with a deserving neck, or whether they’re strolling down the streets of Washington clutching a gavel that appears to have come from the Paul Bunyan collection of legislative essentials.

Immigration reform may be stalled for the time being, but only a fool would think that it’s been forgotten by the administration. The payoff is just too tempting. If even a few million illegal immigrants get citizenship, that’s a few million new voters who are – for the most part – poor, not very well educated and are therefore badly in need of government goodies. Might they therefore be expected to vote for Democrats — the party of big government — in overwhelming numbers? They’d be foolish to do anything else. That’s an end game worth the fight. Ralph Peters understands that and, based on the vehemence of their reaction when somebody raises the possibility, so does the Left.

Media Matters is now pretending to be outraged about Rush Limbaugh talking up “noncompliance with the health care reform legislation once it’s signed into law” for “the third time.”

Here’s Rush yesterday:

But I just can’t — I can’t — just don’t believe that here we are in 2010, and in three days the United States of America ceases to be a representative republic and turns into a veritable tyrannical dictatorship, which is essentially what’s going to happen if this health care bill passes. I just — and if it does pass, the American people aren’t going to put up with it. They aren’t gonna comply.

Never mind the dodgy legality of the healthcare bill itself, and those ever evolving “voting procedures.” I’m old enough to remember when “breaking the law for a good cause” was a favored leftist tactic. Civil disobedience and all that. Contrast Rush Limbaugh’s vague talk about “noncompliance,” and (to cite just one example) the actual burning of physical draft cards (illegal!) during the Vietnam War. But hey, we all know it’s different when they do it.

The George Soros Steno Pool is in a self-induced bind this week. On the one hand, Media Matters has a number of staffers clinging to Limbaugh’s every word; on the other hand, they’ve been trying to ignore the juiciest Rush story around…

People who don’t listen to Rush assume that he must be forever telling his listeners to call and fax their Congressmen about this or that. Lots of talk radio hosts do that. But in fact, Limbaugh has only played that card once before. He’s no dummy: with 20 million listeners, he knows it’s best to keep that very precious and combustible powder dry. Heck, “powder” isn’t the word; Rush knows he’s sitting on, well, “Fat Man.” His huge listenership is an empowered, energized, loyal, articulate and highly motivated weapon of last resort.

On Tuesday, Limbaugh decided it was last resort time. The Hill subsequently reported a 500,000 call tsunami hitting the Congressional switchboard. Rush told listeners on Wednesday:

I know a couple people who are journalists, and they said they couldn’t get through to their secret sources and their secret sources inside the Capitol couldn’t reach them.  They had to go outside, use a cell phone or something.  I don’t see any reason to stop this.

(…)

People are having trouble making outgoing calls from inside the Capitol.  That was the case yesterday afternoon, I’m told it is the case today, and I’m told there’s quite a lot of frustration about this.  [Show call screener] ‘Snerdley’ made an interesting point to me mere moments ago, “What’s going on with the media here?  Normally they would be attacking the hell out of you for doing this.  You’re irresponsible, showboating, you’re just an entertainer, you’re gumming up the works.  But they’re not doing that, they’re not even saying that this is illegitimate.  They’re reporting it down the line, factually correct.”  One of the few times in history that something about me is being reported straight, factual, down the line and it is a curiosity.  Why?  I have no idea why.  This seems made to order, you know, to beat me over the coals again…

And yet, the “watchdogs” at Media Matters haven’t barked, or even wimpered, about this rare and dramatic phenomenon. Odd.

Gee, I hope folks will remember this incident when they consider bringing back the Fairness Doctrine…

“What?”

The George Soros Steno Pool, a.k.a. Media Matters, just won’t retire its tiresome “Limbaugh Wire,” feature, no matter how pathetic it gets.

Yesterday, they just kept hammering away at the now-debunked “global warming” thing, like a Newfie at a seal hunt:

Next, Rush turned the dittocam back on and held up a picture from the UK Sun of polar bears standing on a melting iceberg. Rush claimed that the picture is fraudulent, because polar bears can swim 60 miles, and so they’re not in danger (why not tell that to the bears that are drowning, Rush?). Rush added that even if they did die it would be no great loss, because there’s been an explosion in the polar bear population. This would be great news to the experts; Rush should really release his undoubtedly rigorous scientific findings.

I guess the college grads at Media Matters don’t realize this but: polar bears are not immortal. Maybe the drowned ones tried to swim 61 miles. Who knows? Certainly not the Media Matters kids.

No, they rely on “experts” for their polar bear information. In this case, their “experts” are something called Polar Bears International, which anthromorphizes wild creatures (“Wait for me…mom”) to get you to feel sorry for them, which is totally scientific and that.

And of course, Polar Bears International has NO agenda whatsoever wants to stay in business and raise as much money as possible. I mean, they’re obviously just like the World Wildlife Fund oh wait…)

I guess Media Matters hasn’t heard from this expert. Then again, neither has anybody else…

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Here’s my take: who cares?

If you live in Churchill, Manitoba, polar bears might as well be giant white rats. Unless they can somehow be trained to sniff out then kill terrorists, polar bears and all those other “endangered species” can go die all they want to.

A show called American Greed is the only reason I ever watch CNBC. I feel a bit guilty about that, given the program’s sleazoid name, and the fact that it’s just a bunch of recycled old “true crime” Dateline NBC episodes.

What’s weird (and annoying) is that CNBC only carries commercials for… CNBC. Over and over and over again, like one with Jim Cramer tapping at his keyboard, standing up. The weirdest of all? An ad for The Kudlow Report that’s about… the 2008 election. No, really: Kudlow assures viewers that no matter who wins the election (?!?), CNBC will be there with the, er, latest and most accurate business news.

Question: if you walk into a place of business and see a two year old calendar on the wall, are you impressed?

(But wait: CNBC just updated its on air graphics, like its stock tickers, to look more “modern.” Because that’s what their real problem was: old fashioned chyrons.)

Why does this matter? Because Media Matters and other leftists are still pushing their tired “Glenn Beck boycott” meme:

At least 80 advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Glenn Beck’s Fox News program since he called President Obama a “racist” who has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

Yet as Media Matters itself admits, Glenn Beck still has 18 advertisers. Which is 18 more than CNBC, apparently. Naturally, Media Matters is only telling you part of the story:

Cable TV generates its revenues from subscriber fees, not commercials — otherwise, CNBC would, by rights, be off the air by now.

And presumably, Glenn Beck’s show would have been canceled. And not, er, getting exponentially higher ratings than anything on CNBC (Beck is the red line in the chart above) — even though his show airs during the 5PM ET no-man’s land.

I know it gets tedious, but we need to debunk these “boycotts” and other rickety activist schemes whenever possible, to rob them of what little power they have. Media literacy matters.

You know who.

Kate Conway must really want to keep her job.

Conway is one of the three (count ‘em!) Media Matters staffers assigned to work the high steel listen to Rush Limbaugh every afternoon, duplicate his transcriptionist’s work, then make lame jokes about Rush’s lame jokes.

Here’s Conway’s take on a segment from Limbaugh’s show yesterday:

A dissenting caller then used a variety of colorful analogies to share his distaste for Rush. After telling Rush that his callers all tell him he’s walking on water when he’s really sinking in quicksand, the caller said he believes the country is heading in the right direction and then hung up. For a moment it looked like Rush was going to keep his cool, but then he began to shake his head and gesticulate, asking: “What is he, on welfare?”

Since Conway omitted a few “colorful” details about the call, here’s the official show transcript:

RUSH: From Austin, Texas, Anthony, welcome to the EIB Network, sir.  Hello.

CALLER:  Yeah, I want to make a comment but I’d like to ask you a question because this is a way I can get my point across.  Rush, if you put a mouse in the same box as a snake, what would you think would happen?

RUSH:  If I put a mouse in the same box as a snake…

CALLER:  What would you take out?  The snake will attack because that’s his natural instinct.  You have a lot of people calling your show.  They applaud you, they praise you, they make you feel like you’re walking on water, when actually you’re sinking in quicksand.  You do all this knocking about Barack Obama, holding Barack Obama to a double standard, when the man has been in office a year, and he’s supposed to solve all of America’s problems.  And Barack Obama — and I see America heading in the right direction. I’m not going to agree with you.  I’m not going to go along with you just to get along, because this is who I am.  But I will say that Barack Obama is doing a great job.  It is the Republican Party that is dividing the United States of America.  And I will also say that, if all these people knocking, hating, criticizing Barack Obama, if anything happens to Barack Obama, God have mercy on the United States of America. Like Jeremiah Wright said: “God damn America,” and I’m for real with you.

RUSH: Ummm.

CALLER: (click)

RUSH:  He hung up. Thank you. You know, there’s a lot of anger out there on the left, folks.  There is a tremendous lot of anger out there. I couldn’t understand everything he said so I’m just now reading the transcription.  “[H]ave mercy on the US like…” Oh, he said, “‘God d— America,’ and I am for real with you,” and he thinks the country is headed in the right direction.  What is he, on welfare?  Does this guy have a house he couldn’t afford? Is this guy being kept in a house he can’t afford? I don’t know how you can think America is headed in the right direction unless you’re feeding off your neighbors.

Hmmm… that caller certainly had something “colorful” to say between the “he believes the country is heading in the right direction”part and the “hanging up” part…

Incidentally, it was clear from the caller’s voice that he was African-American. Conway leaves this out, too, of course, even though this politically correct omission renders her faux outrage about Rush’s Archie Bunker-ish “welfare” crack somewhat confusing.

(Although I must say, Conway’s conscious or subconscious use of the word “colorful” in her post certainly was a delightful touch…)

Kate Conway shouldn’t worry so much about keeping her job at the George Soros Steno Pool. With her ability to twist herself into uncomfortable positions, she’d make a helluva yoga instructor.

Then again, I shouldn’t be so hard on Conway. That whole “voice” thing can be confusing. Here’s proof, brought to you by Rush Limbaugh’s in-house parodist and impressionist, “white comedian” Paul Shanklin:

“You’d be surprised how many conservative talk show fans there are here in the Deep Blue Hot Tub,” writes SFGate politics blogger Joe Garofoli.

I know I was. I still can’t believe Michael Savage lives and works in San Francisco, for one thing.

Now a shakeup at KSFO has Bay Area listeners wondering: was veteran morning host Lee Rodgers unceremoniously fired after pressure from “ultra-left and pro-Muslim groups?”

That’s what Rodgers claims. In an open letter to fans, he said:

I was seriously considering retirement at the end of my contract in early July, and I certainly wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye.  Instead, within one minute of the conclusion of last Thursday’s show, I got the word that it HAD been my last one; cut with no notice, in violation of my contract. (…)

I WILL tell you, in all candor, that thanks to [CEO Farid] Suleman’s Citadel management, I could no longer proudly say that the company had never told me what to say or what not to say.  There was an obvious cave-in to some ultra-left and pro-Muslim groups, making it unlikely that I would have ever renewed my contract with the company, anyway.

Getting fired, sometimes abruptly, is a way of life for talk radio hosts, especially when they venture into “politically incorrect” territory. In Lee Rodgers’ case, he made Media Matters‘ “Most Outrageous Comments of 2009″ list for saying that, should a terrorist attack occur, a “few million dead Americans” will “wake up” public “to the fact that they have elected an anti-American President.”

Rodgers also earned the wrath of the George Soros Steno Pool for calling Obama “the most corrupt” president in history, and an “incompetent, Muslim-sympathizing fool.”

So did these and other controversial outbursts really get Lee Rodgers’ fired? If so, why would KSFO replace him with someone like Brian Sussman, who promises to “give the Left a major headache” by spending “four hours daily on one of America’s most successful radio stations to expose” the “shenanigans” of “global warming, government tyranny [and] fiscal insanity.”

Speaking of which: Citadel — the nation’s third largest radio broadcaster — has troubles of its own, having filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December. Like Rodgers, broadcasting industry watcher Brian Maloney has nothing good to say about Citadel CEO Farid Suleman, who he says has “overseen the complete destruction of this once-promising company”:

Under Suleman’s rule, the company’s left-wing political bias became so unbearable that it convinced Sean Hannity to move his program to another syndicator.

Just last month, Citadel admitted that the loss of [#2 rated] Hannity caused it to lose millions in desperately-needed revenue.

So here’s where we stand:

Progressives and/or radical Muslims have tried, and failed, to take down big name talkers like Glenn Beck, Dr. Laura, Don Imus and Rush Limbaugh. Assuming Rodgers is being candid about why he was fired, are AstroTurf activists now setting their sights on more vulnerable local conservative pundits?

While monitoring threats to talk radio coming from “above,” (such as FCC “localism”), we need to watch for leftist AstroTurf campaigns, and worry about implosions caused by ideological incompetence — from within the industry itself.

I guess the price of liberty (and conservative talk radio) really is eternal vigilance.

There are some things that I opt not to write about, especially if I don’t feel well-schooled enough on the subject matter to offer intelligent, insightful comment.

For lefties Messers Eric Boehlert and Karl Frisch at Media Matters that doesn’t seem to be much of an issue today.  Frisch wrote and Boehlert retweeted:

What say you Fox News? PBS Tops Latest ‘Most Trusted’ Poll -

Hmmm, buried in a lengthy Roper survey respondents have given the “most trusted” nod to PBS News and Public Affairs programming.  Wow, what a tremendous kick in the teeth to the Fox News Channel – or it might be if it meant a damn thing.

If  you are actually schooled in television research, viewing behavior, or the construct of a viewer survey you would know that people have always responded favorably to public television simply because it is the “right answer”.

Any thinking person already knows this and I’ll offer a final case in point:  for many years the outlandish tabloid talker called The Jerry Springer Show tested abysmally in one research project after another, while PBS and network news tested ever more highly.  The ratings (which are clearly a reflection of viewership and therefore a better gauge) were just the opposite.

There was a perceived “right” answer and a “wrong” answer – but it doesn’t have a whit to do with what people watch or what they favor.

(credit: Oleg Volk)

The George Soros Steno Pool, a.k.a. Media Matters, had lots to say about the 2009 murder at the Washington, D.C. Holocaust Museum — until the shooter turned out to be a 9/11 truther who hated “neo-cons.”

Media Matters is now observing radio silence regarding the recent mass murder at an Alabama college.

Usually, leftists shamelessly use events like this to call for more gun control. Not this time. Maybe because the shooter is what the late novelist Dominick Dunne, in a very different context, called “an inconvenient woman”:

A family source said Bishop (…) was a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting.

Ooopsie!

Being a Canadian, and therefore, well-acquainted with school shootings (our first contemporary one predated Columbine by almost fifteen years), I think the solution is obvious:

We don’t need gun control. We need school control.