In the wake of a near-murder caused by a fake conservative news story known as “Pizzagate,” Fox trotted out its crackpot psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, to blame liberals for the spate of fake news. Ablow also conveniently deflected from the involvement of Trump administration insiders Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and his son.
CBS News has some background:
The younger Flynn … has attracted attention because of tweets about #Pizzagate, a fabricated story accusing Hillary Clinton leading a child sex trafficking ring at Comet Pizza in Washington, D.C. His tweet came after a a man named Edgar Welch showed up over the weekend at the pizzeria armed with an assault-style rifle so that he could investigate the story for himself.
Michael G. Flynn afterward tweeted that #Pizzagate would remain a story until it’s “proven to be false.”
Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many "coincidences" tied to it. https://t.co/8HA9y30Yfp
— Michael G Flynn🇺🇸 (@mflynnJR) December 5, 2016
CBS also notes that Flynn has “trafficked in other conspiracy theories and fake stories, including one that said former President Bill Clinton had raped a 13-year-old and another that accused Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, of being a gay cocaine user.”
This morning, on MSNBC, Vice President-elect Mike Pence insisted Flynn, Jr. had no role in the Trump transition team, despite the fact that Flynn, Jr. had an official government transition email address. Later today, Flynn, Jr. resigned from the Trump transition team. So either Pence was lying (i.e. promoting fake news) or he’s completely out of the loop.
You might think this was one outrage right-wingers could not blame on the left. But the ever-resourceful TV propaganda wing of the Trump administration, also known as Fox Business Network and Fox News, found a way.
“Fake news hysteria continuing” was how FBN anchor Adam Shapiro began his introduction to the discussion, thus suggesting there is no problem with fake news. He also suggested that the man with the gun in the pizzeria was the only culprit. “Clearly, this man is unstable, right?” Shapiro asked Ablow.
“Clearly, he bears the responsibility,” Ablow agreed, thus absolving Flynn or anyone else who promoted the fake story. Still, Ablow found a way to blame liberals anyway.
ABLOW: We do have to look at this force in our culture.
[…]
Look, most profiles on Facebook aren’t accurate. Facebook encourages individuals to fictionalize their existence. And the liberals, together with technology, have formed an unhealthy alliance. After all, look at Tinder. Tinder now says you can select more than two genders, select from more than two genders as to what you are. That’s a lie. There’s no evidence that people can be more than female or male.
Look at the borders. A country has to have borders. Well, not according to the liberals. These things, these fictions, also spawn fictional stories that capture people who’ve been softened up by the liberals to receive them as fact.
Judging from the look on Shapiro’s face (above), he wasn’t buying it. But he didn’t challenge Ablow. Shapiro merely asked, “Don’t most people understand when they’re reading crud that it’s crud?”
No, they don’t, Ablow insisted. He cited hoax stories the media fell for, such as Balloon Boy, as proof. Ablow acknowledged that there are people “who will do the wrong thing faced with real news or fake news. That’s on them.” He also claimed the “individual has to be held responsible.” He should have added, “unless it’s a conservative.” Because then Ablow said:
ABLOW: But guess what? This is a massive problem for our culture. And who caused it? The very folks, PBS and the rest of it, who are complaining about it. They strayed from the facts, they strayed from what is obvious. They encouraged Americans to not believe that you don’t win and you don’t lose and get a trophy, for instance. That there really are grades, there are winners and losers. They wanted everything to be fiction, right? They even want this election to be fiction, it never happened.
Watch this nut job below, from the December 6, 2016 Risk & Reward show on FBN and pray none of your loved ones ever winds up in his care.
“As more and more Right Wingers are feeling emboldened, and are exercising their long-festering hatred of everyone else, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the likelihood of more events like this occurring.”
So am I Kevin. Here’s a recent case in point: a Muslim New York City transit worker was VIOLENTLY SHOVED down an escalator at Grand Central Terminal in New York CIty by a DYED-IN-THE-WOOL Trump supporter who kept yelling anti-Muslim insults like “TERRORIST!” and “GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY!” at her — she suffered a BADLY TWISTED KNEE AND ANKLE from this POSITIVELY SICK incident. Just what the hell is America turning into — NAZI GERMANY, PART TWO??
;^(
The Nazis had Goebbels controlling all aspects of German media. But thankfully our media isn’t 100% rotten yet. Thank you News Hounds and others.
This really isn’t hard to understand as a story. Right Wingers, including Flynn’s wacky son, promulgated a vicious lie about a pizzeria that resulted in one of their followers bringing an assault rifle to the place with the intent of committing violent mayhem. There isn’t anything more to it than that. It’s the same kind of nonsense as Bill O’Reilly repeatedly referring to Dr. Tiller as “Tiller the Baby Killer” until one of his viewers murdered Tiller.
I really wish the Right would take responsibility for this kind of thing, but they never seem to want to do so.
In the current mode of Right Wing bullying and gloating, this kind of thing is becoming a greater concern. As more and more Right Wingers are feeling emboldened, and are exercising their long-festering hatred of everyone else, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the likelihood of more events like this occurring.
