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By Amy S. Greenberg $30.00
By Rebecca Skloot $15.21
$18
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By Joe Conason — For anyone who followed the story of how and why Sarah Palin fired her state’s public safety commissioner, last week’s release of a legislative investigation that found she had violated state ethics statutes was anticlimactic.
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 lasvegasvegas.com
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What would Gordon Gekko, the ruthless corporate raider from Oliver Stone’s 1987 classic cautionary tale “Wall Street,” have to say about the current state of the American economy? Well, we just might find out.
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 collage: Flickr / videocrab / transplanted mountaineer
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Flush with cash, Barack Obama has purchased air time on at least two networks for a half-hour special to air a week before the election. No word yet on how much a half-hour of prime-time sweeps air costs, but it’s certainly more than Ross Perot paid back in ‘92.
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We’re used to seeing Rupert Murdoch release the hounds on any number of Democratic campaigns, but here Fox News’ Megyn Kelly demands that McCain mouthpiece Tucker Bounds explain the straight talker’s lies about Barack Obama.
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 iamatvjunkie.typepad.com
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While MSNBC reshuffles its anchor chairs, thanks in part to criticism from rival media outlets and a certain presidential candidate, Fox News continues to be a loudmouth right-wing spin factory. Is it a case of the boy who cried “terrorist,” or is there a double standard for Murdoch’s media empire? Truthdig contributor Elliot Cohen has more.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — John McCain’s campaign acknowledged this weekend that Sarah Palin is unprepared to be vice president or president of the United States.
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Griff Jenkins of Fox News got a little more free speech than he bargained for after taunting, er, interviewing some antiwar protesters marching in Denver.
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The 91-year-old actor sent the cast of “Fox and Friends” into a juvenile tizzy this week when he revealed the key to his longevity: “I masturbate a lot.” Don’t snicker. The health benefits of autoeroticism have been well documented, yet modesty prevents many adults from discussing such matters.
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The Rev. Jesse Jackson quickly switched to damage-control mode Wednesday after Fox News picked up a “crude” and “private” comment that Jackson made about Barack Obama when he thought wasn’t being recorded. Multiple updates.
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This election cycle has seen no shortage of inane non-scandals and mock outrage, but the dimwitted fracas over Gen. Wesley Clark’s comments is a particularly grievous example. With Fox News leading the way, the cable channels have been competing to see who can get it wrong the loudest.
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 mediamatters.org
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Fox News apparently doesn’t handle bad publicity very well. In response to a New York Times story that suggested the network’s ratings might be slipping, the co-hosts of “Fox & Friends” cried foul, broadcasting photos of Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe. The problem? The “news” channel had doctored the pictures to make the journos appear less attractive.
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 Flickr / soldiersmediacenter
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Coverage of the Iraq war on American newscasts gets a fraction of the airtime it has in past years. Some network journalists complain that they have to beg to get Iraq stories on the air. Although the war in Afghanistan has recently gotten more coverage, no American network has a full-time correspondent on the ground there.
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“Daily Show” host and media critic Jon Stewart lampoons cable’s talking heads for bragging about their journalistic superiority to the Internet while reporting rumors directly from YouTube.
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 washingtonpost.com
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The third time’s no charm for Fox News, which has been forced yet again to apologize to Barack Obama for making racist comments against the presumed Democratic nominee. This marks the third “oops” moment for the television channel, all in the span of only two weeks.
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 Flickr / VictoryNH: Protect Our Primary
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Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama made a big splash when they won the Iowa caucuses at the start of the campaign. Since then, their paths have diverged. Huckabee may or may not run again, but in the meantime, the former governor and Chuck Norris man crush will spend the next year peddling his unique brand of commentary to the viewers of Fox News.
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If it comes down to oratorical skills, Barack Obama will win in a landslide. That’s the assessment of pundits across the political spectrum, who were collectively appalled by John McCain’s preemptive rhetorical strike. Fox News seemed particularly offended by McCain’s snoozy demeanor and small crowd.
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The Fox News personality who incited outrage with a horrible giggly tailspin of a comment about “knocking off” Barack Obama apologizes for her “lame attempt at humor” and chalks it up to a “very colorful political season.”
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Fox News contributor Liz Trotta has a chuckle over the idea of knocking off “Osama ... uh ... Obama ... well both, if we could [laughing].”
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Although several clips showing Fox’s top bloviator, Bill O’Reilly, coming unhinged on his former job at “Inside Edition” have been pulled after ricocheting their way around the Web, this amazing remix of O’Reilly’s now-infamous meltdown proves that video magic like this just can’t be stopped ... but it can be set to a slammin’ beat. Long live the Internet.
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This early footage of Bill O’Reilly from his previous gig at “Inside Edition” captures the future Fox pundit letting fly with a few F-bombs when he doesn’t approve of—or understand—the copy written for him to read during the show’s final moments. Hey Bill, there’s no “I” in ... oh, never mind. Updated.
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Barack Obama has frozen out Fox News since he found himself the victim of the network’s attack journalism at the start of the campaign. Here he lifts the ban to run the gantlet with Chris Wallace on flag pins, the Rev. Wright and, to be fair, more substantive issues.
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 White House / Paul Morse
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Tony Snow, the pundit who became Bush’s press secretary, but then left because his $168,000 salary didn’t cut it, is returning to cable news. CNN has hired the Fox News veteran to be a conservative talking head.
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By David Sirota — Since the 1960s, bigotry has undergone an aesthetic makeover. Today, the most pernicious racists do not wear pointy hoods, scream epithets and anonymously burn crosses from behind masks. They don starched suits, recite sententious bromides and stage political lynchings before television cameras.
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Fox newsman Chris Wallace just bit the hand that feeds him talking points. While a guest on “Fox and Friends,” Wallace took his colleagues to task for their coverage of Obama and race, accusing them of both belaboring and distorting the story.
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By Eugene Robinson — How weird is this presidential election? So weird that I’m about to give a nod of appreciation (of sorts) to Geraldo Rivera, of all people—and also to, gulp, Fox News.
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 AP photo / Mark J. Terrill
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Having just rebuffed a $42.1-billion offer from Microsoft, Yahoo Inc. has another suitor: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Although Murdoch is rich, he’s not Bill Gates rich, and MySpace, which is supposed to entice Yahoo into the deal, is so 2007. Murdoch detractors, therefore, should take pause, but not panic. The most popular news site on the Internet and Yahoo’s many other properties remain impartial, for now.
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 AP photo / Carlos Osorio
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By Chris Hedges — Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges—a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy—to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic.
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OK, so clearly Ann Coulter is not above leaning heavily on hyperbole to raise a few eyebrows and sell a few books, but this time she even managed to shock us a little with her announcement on Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes” that she’d go to bat for Hillary Clinton if she’s up against John McCain for the presidency, because, Coulter said, Clinton’s “more conservative” than McCain.
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When Barack Obama first started running for the White House, Fox News tried to paint him with the terrorism brush. Rather than play games with the network, the Obama campaign simply blackballed Fox. Robert Greenwald’s “Fox Attacks” brings us up to date after Bill O’Reilly’s manhandling of an Obama staffer last weekend.
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By Marie Cocco — The English language won’t be done in by the influx of Latin Americans. To see the fallacy of this warning, just take a little look at American history.
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 satiricalpolitical.com
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Fred Thompson told Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” that his network was biased, charging that criticism against Thompson’s campaign “has been a constant mantra of Fox.” As if to demonstrate the point, Wallace shot back: “Do you know anybody who thinks you’ve run a great campaign, sir?”
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 nytimes.com
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Judith Regan, the HarperCollins publisher who was fired after her O.J. Simpson book project fell apart, has accused an unnamed executive from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. of telling her to lie to federal investigators in order to protect Rudy Giuliani.
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No, our headline isn’t giving the title of J.K. Rowling’s surprise follow-up to her final installment of the Harry Potter series—it’s a quote from Bill O’Reilly on “The O’Reilly Factor.” As the eagle-eyed folks at Media Matters note, Fox’s cuddliest pundit seems to be having a hard time with the idea of a gay Dumbledore.
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Boy, is al-Qaida ever busy these days! In addition to threatening U.S. troops in Iraq, running riot in the hinterlands of Pakistan and generally requiring huge amounts of money and the potential sacrifice of thousands of lives to thwart its infiltration on several fronts, al-Qaida might even be behind the wildfires currently plaguing Southern California, according to “Fox and Friends.”
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The gloves come off in this rhetorical showdown between the Republican candidates.
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By Joe Conason — Once among the most frightening epithets in American political culture, “socialized medicine” seems to have lost its juju. Today that phrase sounds awfully dated, like a song on a gramophone or a mother-in-law joke or a John Birch Society rant against fluoridated water.
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By Marie Cocco — They’re gone! How to describe the euphoria, the smug satisfaction, the unrestrained elation at seeing the New York Yankees eliminated once again so early in postseason play? I’m thinking something silly, like, Eureka!
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By Eugene Robinson — The cliché does not mean much anymore. It’s time to start seeing African-Americans as Americans, period.
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By Joe Conason — The controversy over what Rush Limbaugh meant when he uttered the phrase “phony soldiers” last week isn’t just another broadcast sideshow. As the political power of conservatism declines, the symbolic authority of figures such as Limbaugh is likewise shrinking.
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Sally Field worked her Emmy acceptance speech into an (unfortunately) incoherent anti-war crescendo during Sunday night’s telecast, which, like the other two muted moments showcased in this video montage by the always-hilarious Defamer team, was awkwardly squelched by hypervigilant editors at Fox.
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By Joe Conason — Following two days of carefully staged theatrics on Capitol Hill and cable television, the essential facts about Iraq remain unchanged. Despite the big charts and the blustering fanfare highlighted by Fox News, neither Gen. David H. Petraeus nor Ambassador Ryan Crocker could convincingly claim that the American military escalation in Iraq is achieving its original goals.
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The innovator of the Snow job says he’ll be leaving the White House before George W. Bush, but it won’t be for health reasons: “I’ve told people when my money runs out, then I’ve got to go.” Press secretary Tony Snow’s spintastic rhetorical flair will surely be missed by a president always in need of damage control and a blogosphere that has grown attached to those “did he just say that?” moments.
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By Eugene Robinson — Could the veteran of rough-and-tumble tabloid journalism with dubious ethics be the only appropriate buyer for the fabled newspaper?
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 msnbc.com
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In a landmark ruling, a federal appeals court has sided with broadcasters against the Federal Communications Commission on the issue of indecency, saying the regulatory body has not adequately explained how the Constitution could permit the censorship of “indecent” language.
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“The Simpsons” has never shied away from biting the hand that feeds it, but in its 400th episode—heavily promoted by the network—the show went for a two-fer, mocking both the low-brow Fox and the propagandistic Fox News.
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This parody from the Onion challenges the assumption that 24 hours of news coverage, satellite uplinks and bold graphics actually keep us more informed.
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By Marie Cocco — How much damage can an ambassador to Belgium do? Probably not as much as an ardent antagonist of Social Security might unleash in a top policymaking position at the agency that millions of Americans depend on.
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Check out this spot-on sendup of news and punditry, which proves that the dumbing down of America can be funny when it’s not just plain sad.
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Here’s another clip of Fox’s right-wing answer to “The Daily Show.” As the clip’s YouTube poster wrote of the show’s creators: “Conservatives again prove they are adept at torture.”
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Check out this quick clip of “The 1/2 Hour News Show”—Fox’s right-leaning answer to “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” It was created by the right-wingers behind “24.” (More info at Huff Po)
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