Fox News wasted little time politicizing the Fort Hood shooting. I’ll have more on that later. But “former FBI agent” Jonathan Gilliam shockingly used the incident to attack welfare recipients as doing “nothing to earn their citizenship.” Not surprisingly, neither host Sean Hannity nor Fox News contributor K.T. McFarland objected.
Hannity started the discussion by suggesting the shooting may be the result of Obama-administration negligence. Or at least feeding an opening for Gilliam – a guy with no apparent expertise in health issues - to politicize:
Jonathan you heard those statistics. Do we have ticking time bombs on these bases now? The second time this has happened at Fort Hood? One ideologically driven and this case, we assume at this moment, that it was more mental health related?
Even so, Gilliam’s response was jaw-dropping:
Two things come to my mind immediately when I hear these statistics. One is a political thing and the other is a leadership problem. The political thing is, why is it that we’re not spending more tax dollars on veterans and their families welfare than we are on the welfare for people in this country who do nothing to earn their citizenship? Nothing!
And the other one, from a leadership point of view, …why are they so comfortable – these executives in the military – so comfortable with sending men and women over to die for freedom and then bringing them back home and saying, “Look, you’re not responsible enough (to carry a gun on base)?”
Hannity picked right up on the gun issue and the two went on to complain about the difficulty in getting a concealed carry permit.
So I think we can count on “we need more guns” as another avenue of politicization.
By the way, FoxNews.com picked right up on Hannity's "ticking time bombs in the military" suggestion and used it in the title of the video below. Just in case the viewers missed the point the first time around.
Carol wrote about something she’d read elsewhere. Ellen looked for verification and decided that there wasn’t enough evidence for a post. IOW, she did NOT take the tip and run with it simply because it was credible.
This is a typical example of the attitude on this blog. Focus on the evidence, not wishful thinking. Perhaps less fun than taking a non-fact born of pre-conceived ideas and running with it frothing at the mouth.
it seems to be a hispanic or latino nationality, but we won’t say his name on air.
clever
http://www.mediamatters.org/video/2014/04/02/foxs-allen-west-links-obama-comment-on-crimea-t/198732#disqus_thread
. . . now, Gilliam is blaming it on welfare recipients (wonder if he knows most of them are white?)
I can’t WAIT for tomorrow, when they blame it on BENGHAZI!!
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Damn, Joe (the nit-picker) makes another typo.
Actually, “lower third” is used to describe almost any on-screen text regardless of location, except a box that contains another picture with or without its own text.
And frankly IMO, lower thirds on many networks these days are far too junked up. In my early days in the “biz,” (the mid 60s), it was a major accomplishment to put two simple lines of text (a name and identifier) beneath a talking head (such as Edwin Newman — anyone remember him? Probably not, but he actually had intelligent things to say).
But I have seen the word “chyron” used in print as a generic by people who know more about the TV biz than I ever will.
Whether it’s actually a Chyron or not is minimally important for TV production people so they don’t get confused, but for the rest of us, it’s immaterial whether an actual Chyron machine is what put the words on the screen.
I’ve picked this nit with Ellen before, but if you want to be more accurate, an on-screen graphic in the lower portion of the picture is commonly called a “lower third” these days, especially by people in the teevee business.
Chryon is a brand name of ChryronHego (history here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chyron_Corporation) that first made stand-alone, proprietary hardware for character generation in the early days.
There are other products in use these days. Do we know for sure that FNC uses products from Chyron (the company)?
Because your tea party heroes in the Congress keep trying to cut veterans benefits as well as increased medical and psychiatric care for returned military still on active duty.
And they’re cheered on by slimeballs on FNC like Slanthead who constantly pays lip service to the men and women who served their country (unlike Hannity who never put on a uniform because “my father served, I don’t have to”).
We all know Hannocchio’s now-defunct Freedom Concerts were a fraud and sham. Has anyone ever investigated whether his claimed private visits to Walter Reade were another of his thousands of lies?
Turns out, when she finally spoke up, she’d reported on Foxnews.com what every single other reporter on this story has been reporting, which is that the government and the military officials have said “There’s no evidence of terrorism,” and she was clearly pretty pissed off.
I couldn’t help but think this gal has still some illusions that she’d been hired to be an actual journalist, and she was finding out in a pretty crude and obvious way that actual journalism has no place on Fox.
McFarland also delivered a long, impassioned rant about how military and veterans are getting all their benefits slashed while civilian employees and “bureaucrats” in defense aren’t— presumably a reference to the very tiny proposed reduction in pension payouts to military retirees under 65, virtually all of whom draw their pensions while continuing to work in the civilian world, and will then get full benefits once they reach 65.
Once again, it’s what Fox doesn’t tell you that’s critical.
