Megyn Kelly tried to mainstream the racism of Breitbart.com, whose former head just became the CEO of the Donald Trump campaign, by arguing that it was just a right-wing version of Media Matters.
Whatever you think of Media Matters, there is simply no comparison with its mission of “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media” to that of Breitbart’s. I couldn’t find a mission statement on the Breitbart site but some of its own former writers have described it as, “Trump’s personal Pravda,” and Stephen Bannon, its former executive chairman and now Trump campaign CEO, as a “pathological liar.” But more importantly, under Bannon it openly promotes the extremist anti-immigrant, Islamophobic and anti-immigrant views of the “Alt-Right.”
For Megyn Kelly to argue that there’s any equivalence between Breitbart and Media Matters means she’s either lying or blinded by the fact the latter frequently criticizes her.
But last night, Kelly tried to make that argument to Democrat Bill Burton, who didn’t buy any of it.
From Media Matters’ transcript:
MEGYN KELLY (HOST): So Steve Bannon ran Breitbart.com, which some are describing as, you know, alt-right or at least favorable to the so-called alt-right.
BILL BURTON: He describes it as alt-right.
KELLY: But let me ask you, Bill Burton, she is like this with the guy who founded Media Matters, and that is a hateful website. Ask any conservative or Republican in the country.
BURTON: Megyn, we’re talking about different things. Because conservatives don’t agree with what Media Matters has on its website does not make it a hate website. It means they disagree with that.
KELLY: My point is it’s in the eye of the beholder, Bill. It’s in the eye of the beholder.
BURTON: Misogyny and racism are bigger than just political disagreements.
During this same discussion, Trump supporter David Wohl argued that because the Black Panthers supported President Obama’s re-election in 2012, and that did not make Obama racist, Trump's racist supporters say nothing about him. “You cannot control the people who support you,” Wohl said.
But there’s a world of difference between a group supporting you and the guy running your campaign. But Kelly let Wohl slide, presumably because he was comparing the Black Panther support to the KKK support for Trump. “He doesn’t agree with their positions on any level,” Wohl said. Except that a) the KKK obviously thinks he does and b) Trump repeatedly refused to disavow the support of former KKK member David Duke.
Instead of noting that, Kelly yelped that “Greg Gutfeld!” also wrote for Breitbart.com as Wohl added that Gutfeld was “great friends” with founder Andrew Breitbart.
“While Andrew Breitbart was a great man,” Kelly continued, “the website has obviously changed a lot since Andrew’s death.”
And let’s look at what it was when that “great man” ran it. It was the site that promoted such lies, smears and distortions as the bogus, racist ACORN videos, the racist Shirley Sherrod smear and many others.
Watch Kelly’s ridiculous argument, below, from the August 25 The Kelly File, via Media Matters.
Her accusations sure indicated that!
If she was fired from the Faux, so much the better.
“Fox News faces a choice — keep Bill O’Reilly or ‘It girl’ Megyn Kelly?: report”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/fox-news-faces-a-choice-keep-bill-oreilly-or-it-girl-megyn-kelly-report/
Not only Megyn but a lot of the traditional establishment Republican Foxies like O’Reilly (though he’s a milkshake sharing pal of Trump’s) and the co-hosts of popular crap like “The Five” and “Outnumbered” don’t get it. But Fox News’ many years of their right-wing agitation-propaganda (and that of their hate radio companions) has unleashed waves of crazed right-wing proles.
First came the Tea Party clowns. Now we have all of America’s alienated white bigots attracted to Fox trainee Trump like flies to dung. Logically culminating in The Donald joining the hateful, paranoid, and conspiracy minded Cult of the Alt-Right at Breitbart (as if his womb at Fox News isn’t right-wing enough).
My recommendation for Megyn and her other “fair and balanced” establishment Republican shills at Fox News is to follow Hannity’s lead and start planting hickeys on Trump’s butt and make huge displays celebrating your whiteness, misogyny, and embrace Alt-Right paranoia and neo-Fascism. Not that you haven’t done that some in the past but now it’s got to be an unquestioning, unwavering, and unequivocal salute. Not just applying a coat of whitewash here and there apologizing for conservative neo-Fascists like Trump.
Welcome to the new, ‘improved’ Republican Party. It’s a bigger tent. Move over Social Darwinists. Move over Fundamentalists. Move over flag-waving chicken hawks. The white supremacists need some seats. So do the neo-Fascists. The anti-Semites. The America First anti-global isolationists. The crackpot New World Order conspiracy nuts. The paleoconservatives.
Sweet Jesus…..wake up.
I don’t know what level of Hell Andrew Breitbart is damned to, but the folks at Faux are on his heels.
The real conservative comparison would be MMFA to NewsBusters. But Megyn (and Fox in general) have their work cut out for them mainstreaming the Alt-Right Movement now that their guy Trump has hitched his clown car to Breitbart.
Fox is determined to go down with the USS Titanic despite Captain Trump ramming it into multiple icebergs. You’d think Fox News would jump ship and try to regain control of conservative thought in America. Otherwise, the stink of Trump, the rabble he’s roused will mean chaos for the Republican Party long after the election.
Megyn might want to start spraying Fabreze around the Fox studios because the rank stench is starting to spread there too! 😉
Let’s be upfront and honest about Media Matters before getting into the rest of the discussion. Media Matters was created by David Brock, who had previously run a series of right wing smear jobs, the most notorious of which was his campaign against Anita Hill for having the temerity to publicly speak about the behavior of Clarence Thomas when she had to work for him. Brock did an about face in the latter 90s and dedicated himself to liberal causes, the biggest one being Media Matters. (I note that there was an existing Media Matters idea already running before Brock’s organization – a radio show hosted by Robert McChesney about media issues and bias) It could easily be argued that Brock’s advocacy for Democrats has been equally as blind as his prior smearing for the GOP. But I note that the Media Matters work has really stayed on course as a direct challenge to what the right wing is actually saying – much as this site works. Brock castigates the right wing for their dishonesty and hypocrisy, but he doesn’t smear the right. To me, he’s still the same operative he was as a young man, but he’s learned to stop it with the mud. I don’t know that I’d completely trust him – there’s only so much one can believe he would change.
On the other hand, Brock’s Media Matters is not an open hate-speech organization like what we’ve seen at Breitbart.
Let’s be upfront and honest about Andrew Breitbart. He was emphatically NOT a “great man.” He was an angry, mean-spirited, vicious man who enriched himself by attacking liberals for sport. He pioneered the idea of aggressive personal attacks through the internet as a kind of political bloodsport. He reveled in the publication of misleading and deceptively edited videos as a way to smear those with whom he disagreed. He brought us the still-running saga of James O’Keefe, and the misery that has come from there. He destroyed the careers of various decent people, including Shirley Sherrod, who reportedly won a massive settlement from Breitbart’s estate after his death in 2012. His is a legacy of negativity. He left the world an angrier and nastier place than he found it. We continue to deal with the fallout of his antics, including the continuing existence of what’s left of the Breitbart media empire. Some of his unpleasant acolytes have now spread out across the media and political landscape, such as Ben Shapiro, and it is important that we continue to remember where these guys come from. Like Breitbart, those who have gone on the ride with him and participated in this negativity frankly have no moral ground on which to stand, and no credibility as writers or political thinkers. They are, like Breitbart, simply bullies, and they should be responded to as such.
Kelly’s false equivalence here is telling. She tried the same approach in her mildly contentious interview with Jorge Ramos during the same broadcast. Ramos of course has had the temerity to point out that journalists who don’t speak out about Trump’s constant hate-baiting and race-baiting will need to answer for that in the future. And he’s clearly referencing the great statement of Martin Niemoller about how people in Nazi Germany didn’t speak up when the Nazis came for the Jewish community, the trade unionists, the communists, etc. But Kelly couldn’t see that. In a strikingly blind comment, Kelly actually tried to pose herself as a completely unbiased journalist. She even tried to shame Ramos by saying “since a majority of people think that Hillary Clinton is a liar and dishonest, would it be fair by your thinking for every host to start any discussion of her with the comment, ‘Well, many people think she’s a liar’?” Which is hysterical on its face, since pretty much every anchor on Fox News does exactly that every time they discuss Clinton. (And that’s without getting into Kelly trying to “gotcha” Ramos with a comment about how his daughter works for the Clinton campaign. Something that Ramos pointed out he’s been very open about, disclosing it frequently and even when he conducted a fairly contentious questioning of Clinton this year.)
