News Hounds

Is Glenn Beck Trivializing Rape In Comparing Government Run Health Care To Rapist Polanski?

Remember when the right wing got so upset about a comment made by Democratic Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, who referenced Nazis in the context of a comment about Guantanamo. They were very angry about the inappropriateness of using a Nazi metaphor in connection with American politics. Flash forward to 2009 and the right wing routinely compares Obama and health care reform to Hitler. Despite the ADL’s Abraham Foxman’s statement that this type of rhetoric is "outrageous, deeply offensive and inappropriate,” Glenn Beck, a voice for America’s radical right, persists in the Obama/health care reform as Nazi metaphor. Last night, on Beck’s “One True Thing” segment, he outdid himself in the "outrageous, deeply offensive and inappropriate” category when he compared government run health care to what Roman Polanski did to a 13 year old girl. In the use of a disgusting act of violence to describe a health care system, he insults our duly elected representatives who are working on health care reform, those who support it, and all who have been sexually assaulted. The question to Beck is “have you no shame, sir?”

H/T: TPM

The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans (and the Fox Who Loves Them)

A very interesting piece of political analysis, called Why Republican Leaders will have Trouble Speaking to the Rest of America was recently released by Democracy Corp, a non-profit research and analysis group founded by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg. This paper goes a long way to explaining the “man the barricades” mentality of a segment of the electorate and the blind faith in Fox News. And it also highlights the difficulty, if not impossibility, of Republican leaders being able to talk to those on both sides of the barricades.

Sean Hannity’s Hypocrisy

Fox News is aiding and abetting the right wing’s attack on Obama’s “Safe School Czar,” Kevin Jennings who, in the 80’s, gave advice to a 16 year old (age of consent in Massachusetts) student and who is now being accused of covering up statutory rape. But it’s not surprising given that Fox is the go to network for conservative Christians whose love of Jesus is matched by their hatred of homosexuality. Media Matters for America has a very extensive compilation of the Fox attacks, some of them homophobic in nature. Brian Kilmeade, like the American Taliban group the Family Research Council, opined that Jennings' advocacy for gay students is “promoting homosexuality.” (I guess Brian wants gay youth to be consigned to a life in the closet with all its attendant problems some of which could lead to suicide.) But leading the Fox charge partisan attack on Jennings is Sean Hannity who, in engaging in his baseless smears, is engaging in hypocrisy – given his lack of outrage towards republicans who commit real “sins of the flesh” while in office.

Fox News Headline Chock Full Of Irony

The Murdoch media that uses the fear of liberals, Democrats, African Americans, Hispanics, gays, immigrants, non Christians…card accuses Nancy Pelosi of playing the “fear and violence” card when Speaker Pelosi said that the current culture of hatred towards the president reminds her of a time when anti gay rhetoric resulted in the assassination of the mayor of San Francisco and a gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. That’s not a fear card, it’s a fact.

Fox Nation Resident Is "Proud To Be A Racist"

When Fox Nation inaugurated its website, this statement was made: "...How can we make certain that children of all races are fairly judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character? FOX Nation will be a forum for Americans to speak out on important and controversial issues, and to act on their beliefs and values--while always upholding the traditional American ideals of free speech, fair play, and tolerance..." Flash forward to now and there are twoFox Nation race baiting threads about a school bus fight involving black and white children. One of the threads is about the fight. The other is devoted to Rush Limbaugh's race baiting comment about how this incident shows that Obama is empowering blacks to do bad things to whites. (Really??)