Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:40 pm
Circle the date on your calendar, kids. This is the week we finally discovered there are lines that cannot be crossed criticizing the POTUS when Fox News Suspends Two Contributors For Crude Obama Remarks. You read that right: Fox News Suspends Ralph Peters And Stacey Dash For “Completely Inappropriate And Unacceptable” Remarks.
Dash used a barnyard epithet for manure, a word Friday Fox Follies cannot use, while Peters called the president a “pussy” for not bombing ISIS into the stone age, or sumptin’. Naturally, Fox’s Allen West Criticizes His Employer For Suspending Ralph Peters: “Oh Come On!! He Spoke The Truth,” while The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah Astonished By Fox Analyst’s Insult Of Obama. Watch:
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Remember when mild criticism of the president was enough to get the Dixie Chicks banned from radio stations across the nation? We were so naive back then.
BLOWING MY OWN HORN: A difficulty FFF has is how many topics overlap or dovetail with each other. Should a headline fall under the rubric of Trump, or Fox & Friends, or O’Reilly, or all three? Amazed it gets done at all.
Last week’s FFF, Guns, Gutfeld and Geraldo, is echoed in Fox ‘News’ Tells Two Radically Different Stories About Two American Extremists.
A story we reported several weeks ago is just being noticed by others:
Roger Ailes Is Not Amused With
ABC Comedy Mocking Fox “News”
Note that Trump Is Devouring The GOP, And Fox News Fed It To Him. In other words: Fox “News” built this mess and no one is laughing over Donald Trump’s Islamophobia, as these headlines attest:
A Note on Trump: We Are No Longer Entertained • The Huffington Post says Donald Trump is no longer ‘entertainment.’ Was he ever? • Huffington Post took Donald Trump out of the entertainment section. Has anything changed? • Trump Literally Wants to Do Unspeakable Things and America Loves It • ‘Fascist Demagogue’: Trump’s Proposed Muslim Entry Ban Gets Torn Apart on Twitter • Fl. Mayor Bans Trump ‘Until We Fully Understand the Dangerous Threat Posed by All Trumps’ • J.K. Rowling: Donald Trump Is Worse Than Lord Voldemort • Several Papers Depict Donald Trump As ‘the New Furor’ With Hitler Comparisons • UK Petition to Keep Trump Out of the Country Has Enough Signatures to Get Gov’t Response
The criticism lands even closer to home as Trump’s GOP opponent Leslie Graham [says]: Trump’s Muslim Ban Must Be Condemned, GOP Must Tell Him to ‘Go to Hell’ ; consequently RNC Chairman: Trump’s Proposed Muslim Ban Contrary to American Values and Paul Ryan Blasts Trump Rhetoric: ‘It’s Not What This Country Stands For.’ Even Darth Vader Dick Cheney Dismisses Trump’s Muslim Ban: ‘Goes Against Everything We Stand For.’
Meanwhile, as the Media Call Out Donald Trump’s Plan To Ban Muslims From The US For Playing Into The Hands Of ISIS, Fox “News” goes into overdrive to defend him, as these headlines attest:
Fox Business Invites Gun Store Owner Who Banned All Muslims From Her Gun Range To Praise Trump For Adopting Her Idea • Fox’s Erick Erickson Praises “Brilliant Politics” of Trump’s Proposal To Ban Muslim Entry Into The US • Fox’s Doocy: “Politically,” Donald Trump’s Proposed Ban On Muslim Entry Into US “Has Been A Brilliant Move” • “And Here Is Where Donald Trump Is Correct”: How Bill O’Reilly Apologizes For Trump • Sean Hannity’s Website Cites Four Horrific Times in U.S. History to Defend Donald Trump • Hannity Again Pretends His Anti-Muslim Bigotry Is Concern For American Lives • Fox Contributor Defends Trump’s Anti-Muslim Proposals: This Is “The Constitution Versus The Quran”
BOTTOM LINE: Fox Pretends Trump’s Muslim Plan Is Unquestionably Constitutional while Legal Experts Explain How Trump’s Conservative Media-Backed “Ban Muslims” Proposal Is Unconstitutional.
ISLAMOPHOBIA AT WORK: As Trump Calls For Ban On Muslim Immigration, Fox Denies Existence Anti-Muslim “Backlash”, and O’Reilly [falsely claims]: No Evidence ‘Muslims Are Being Mistreated in the USA.’, while Fox Hosts Ask Who’s Vilifying Muslims (After Trump Releases Statement on Entry Ban). Really?
Then Fox Hosts Repeat Lie That Muslims Aren’t Denouncing Terrorists as Fox’s Bolling [bullies] on San Bernardino: ‘Fix This, Moderate Muslims.’
Therefore, it’s no surprise that after Right-Wing Media Attack CAIR For Quickly Denouncing San Bernardino Shootings, the Council for American-Islamic Relations Evacuated After Receiving Package Containing a ‘Foreign Substance.’
Fox “News” pretends its not promoting the hate, but something is driving these headlines:
Muslims Attacked By Woman During Public
Prayer in Park: ‘You are Very Deceived By Satan!’
Muslim Congressman: I Got a Death
Threat Yesterday, Trump ‘Fanning the Flames’
Muslim Store Owner Attacked by
Man Who Shouted ‘I Kill Muslims’
Always the outlier, Fox’s Shep Smith: Trump Is ‘Representing the Worst, Darkest Part of All That Is America.’
“Somebody needs to come up and remind him what this nation is and what we’re about and how we dream and the way we were founded and what our constitution is. He’s not representing any of that. He’s representing the worst, darkest part of all that is America.”
Those words would resonate more loudly if Shep Smith didn’t work for the Fox “News” Channel, which represents the worst, darkest part of all that is media in ‘Merka.
#OUTCLASSED: With Elisabeth Hasselbeck leaving Fox & Friends — raising the IQ of that show — it’s time to talk about the sheer stupidity of #Outnumbered, the midday blabfest from which Stacy Dash was recently suspended, barely raising that show’s IQ.
Fox Host: After Obama’s Terrorism
Speech “Everyone Looked Like A
Terrorist To Me” On The Subway
Fox Yakker: Jihad Couple Had A ‘Jihad Baby’
Get this: Because Mark Zuckerberg Posts Message to Muslims: ‘We Will Fight to Protect Your Rights’, naturally #Outhouse Fox Co-Hosts Attack Mark Zuckerberg Over Statement Of Support For The Muslim Community.
The Tarantula spins her web of words at #Outback, too:
Tantaros Shreds NY Daily News: Terrorists
Are Playing the Media Against America
Fox Host Suggests Planned Parenthood
Doctors Have A “Higher Body
Count” Than “The Jihadists”
Not just stupid. #Outrageous, as well.
KELLY’S HEROES: Fox “News” loves to point to Megyn Kelly as a straight anchor. I like to point to her as another biased Fox personality with better P.R.
Megyn Kelly on Trump’s Muslim Ban:
‘Ceding the Moral High Ground’ to Obama
Fox’s Megyn Kelly Attacks Attorney
General For Promising To Address
Violent Anti-Muslim Rhetoric
Megyn Kelly Is Sick and Tired
of the Media’s Endless Trump
Coverage: Remember Terrorism?!
Megyn Kelly Rips Obama for
Silence on San Bernardino:
Supposed to Be ‘Comforter-in-Chief’!
A STORY YOU’LL NEVER SEE ON FOX:
Former conservative teen YouTube star backs Sanders
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE: Fox & Friends is a 3-hour sneer of hate and resentment sandwiched between cooking segments and gift ideas. Disguised as Morning Tee Vee Happy Talk, F&F is where Fox “News” road tests the daily memes to see which ones resonate with the viewers.
Let us never forget F&F birthed Demagogue Donald, taking his phone calls for years, allowing him promote Obama birtherism and himself. That’s why Fox [& Friends] Blames Obama For Trump’s Call To Ban All Muslim Immigration, and the reason Fox & Friends Defends Trump’s Anti-Muslim Claim About Mythical “No Go Zones” In Europe, while providing him a platform to lie and bluster: Donald Trump: Eagle Didn’t Scare Him, TIME Shouldn’t Have Picked Angela Merkel and Donald Trump: ‘Disgusting’ For Josh Earnest to Attack My Hair.
Defending and promoting Trump is bad enough, but this week also saw these F&F headlines:
Fox’s Kilmeade: It’s A Democratic “Ruse” To Talk About “Terrorists Being Allowed To Buy Guns If They Are On A No-Fly List” • On Fox & Friends, “It’s A Sad State” When President Obama “Gets Credit” For Calling San Bernardino Shooting “Terrorism” • Pro-gun lawmaker confronts Christmas photo scorn: My 5-year-old grandson ‘has total trigger control’ •
When Erick Erickson Gets Some Fox News Love For Shooting Up A New York Times Editorial, NewsHounds says:
As if Fox wouldn’t have had a meltdown if any liberal shot up a conservative publication. Don’t believe me? Consider the hissy fit over Quentin Tarantino speaking out against police brutality with words the Fox free-speech lovers didn’t like. When a Fox & Friends guest said he thought Tarantino should “shut the hell up so we don’t have to listen to him any more,” free-speech lover Doocy said, “Amen to that.” Doocy also seemed supportive of a police effort to boycott Tarantino’s movies as a result.
The funniest article about F&F this week:
Brian Kilmeade Can’t Remember His Most
Embarrassing Moments. Here They Are.
While the most disgusting F&F segment of all time must surely be:
Fox News Wants Your Kids
to Charge at Active Shooters
Fox News Tells Young Children
To Run At Active Shooters
WATCH:
When I went to school it was “duck & cover.”
I GOTCHER WAR ON CHRISTMAS RIGHT HERE!!!
Lou Dobbs Bashes Zombie Nativity: ‘If
You’re Going to Mock a Religion,’ Choose Islam
TUCKER WITH AN “F”: As I’ve written before, Tucker Carlson occupies a unique position in Fox World. Concurrently he is a co-host of Fox & Friend Weekends (when he bothers to show up); contributes the extreme right position in those so-called “Fair & Balanced” debates (that are never) during the week; and is the publisher of The Daily Caller, a publication to the right of Fox, which Fox “News” then quotes. This week:
When has whiny man-boy Tucker ever been Fair & Balanced? Alex Jones? Really?
BEN GHAZI IS BACK AND HE’S BETTER THAN EVER!!! Here we go again as Fox News Goes All In On The Benghazi Journalism Catastrophe as Fox Falsely Claims Defense Dept. Email Contradicts Obama Administration’s Benghazi Testimony. Yes, once again Fox Hypes Debunked Benghazi Lie As A “Smoking Gun”, as Media Matters says, Conservative Benghazi Reporting Is A Dumpster Fire. To quote Matt Gertz:
By this morning, Fox News was describing the email as yet another Benghazi “smoking gun.”
This is a pathetic failure of basic reporting, and everyone involved should be embarrassed. As noted above, Benghazi has an incredibly long paper trail. But the conservative journalists covering the story either couldn’t be bothered to consult that record or they are deliberately lying to their audiences to get clicks.
[…]
I cannot emphasize enough how easy it was to determine that this was not, in fact, a contradiction. I literally spent about thirty seconds thinking “huh, that sounds unlikely,” then ran the Panetta quote through Nexis and read the transcript of Panetta’s testimony. Later in the same opening statement, he details the various forces that were deployed but either didn’t arrive in time or did arrive but couldn’t stop the attacks — the forces that had been “spinning up” at the time of the email. If conservative outlets don’t have Nexis, a Google search for “Leon Panetta 2013 Benghazi hearing” produces both transcript and video of the event.
Again, I didn’t use some sort of fancy-pants research tricks, I just looked up the quote that Judicial Watch was saying was contradicted by the email and checked myself to see if it actually was.
The propaganda was so bad that the Ranking Member Of Benghazi Select Committee Pushes Back Against Baseless Allegation That DOD Emails Contradict Leon Panetta’s Benghazi Testimony.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT’S DUE: Or, even a stopped clock is right twice a day:
Fox Guest Slams The GOP For Debating Semantics Instead Of Offering Policy Solutions To Combat Terror • Geraldo lights into Judge Jeanine Pirro for suggesting anyone who looks like a Muslim and carries boxes should be reported to authorities • ‘They Are at War With Us!’: Geraldo and Pirro Have Heated Debate on Radical Islamists • Fox’s Hemmer Goes Off on Reporters In San Bernardino Apartment: ‘I Was Steaming All Weekend’ • O’Reilly: Trump’s Muslim Comments Have ‘Sealed His Doom’ in the GOP • Guest Accuses O’Reilly of ‘Being Misleading’ to Link Obama Failures With Trump Success
FOX BYTES: Fox’s Chris Wallace Agrees To Right-Wing Host’s Request To Stop Using Term “Assault Weapon” • Fox Business Network Announces One More GOP Debate Two Days After State of the Union • Fox Gives Marco Rubio A Pass On Washington Post Front-Page Report Detailing Personal Profits From Political Clout • Palin Says She Got Fired from Fox News ‘Because I Called Somebody Out’ • Fox News’ Glaring Hypocrisy On The UN Climate Summit’s Carbon Footprint • Fox Presents Ben Stein As An Awesome, Stupendous Gun Control Genius (Because He Hates It) • Fox Loves The Sheriff Who Wants Everyone To Buy Guns And ‘Be Ready To Take On Terrorists’ • Florida Sheriff Appears On FOX News Channel, Calls On Armed Citizens To Stop Terrorists • What Bill O’Reilly Gets Wrong About Ronald Reagan
Headly Westerfield recently launched a new series, The Annotated Bill O’Reilly Talking Point Memo, at the Not Now Silly Newsroom.
