November 26, 2010
November 20, 2010
November 19, 2010
November 15, 2010
Rupert Murdoch’s New Fox Tea Party Network TV Schedule
What will the defeated Tea Party candidates and their helpers do for a job now? Go to work for Uncle Rupert, of course!
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November 5, 2010
The Tattlesnake – Jon Stewart WTF?!? and Other Miscellaneous Head-Slappers Edition
– What is Jon Stewart playing at? I’m a big fan of The Daily Show star and think he’s done a great job in the past, so it pains me to write this, but WTF?!? Okay, so to make his point at the Rally to Restore Sanity he tossed Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz under the same bus reserved for Glenn Beck and Fox News. Last Monday, Olbermann graciously took his point and even cancelled indefinitely one of my favorite Countdown segments, “Worst Persons in the World.” But the other day on TDS, here’s Stewart heaping honey on Chris Wallace of Fox News and agreeing to appear on Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday.” Yes, he took a few mild swipes at Fox’s obvious Republican partisanship, but he also equated MSNBC, the home of Olbermann and Schulz, to a AA ball club compared to the Big Leaguers at Fox. He didn’t mean that in a complimentary way, but Jon can’t seriously believe there is any parity between what Fox does and what MSNBC does. (For one thing, Fox doesn’t give a liberal Democrat a three-hour weekday morning program, as MSNBC has with conservative Republican Joe Scarborough.) Put simply: Fox lies, as Stewart well knows, and MSNBC’s progressive hosts, even though they may display passion for their side, don’t. You can’t possibly have a restoration of sanity without fact, and Jon Stewart knows that, as well. So, why is Stewart trying to make them both seem equal? A few possibilities:
H/T to the Bartcop main page for the graphic
2. Maybe Stewart just has some personal animosity toward Olbermann and Schultz and he’s taking it out this way. That would be mighty petty of him, but nobody’s perfect, particularly in an ego-driven arena like show business.
3. This is the ugly one: Comedy Central is owned by corporate media giant Viacom and it’s possible they finally noticed TDS and Stewart have had quite an impact on recent elections and the voting trends of those under 30. Was Stewart brought in by Bush-backer and Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone for a pointed “Network” reminder of who signs his paychecks and told to back off? I have noticed Jon has been much more civil to right-wingers this year, even bottom of the barrel types like Bill O’Reilly. I’d hate to think the reason he’s promoting this ‘equivalency’ is that he doesn’t want to end up back humping the comedy club circuit doing 300 “Hey, I’ll be at McLaughington’s in Akron on Friday!” road gigs a year. He’s now a middle-aged man with a home, wife, family and a pile of bills – powerful reasons to toe the corporate line.
4. And this is the really horrible one: Perhaps his head is being turned by the ‘charm’ of the right-wing corporatists; they can be very persuasive ‘good guys’ in person, unless you remember the whole fetid history of the Republican Party of the past 30 years. I recall when Dennis Miller had his HBO show years ago: first he brought on right-wingers to lightly mock them, as Stewart does; then he had them on to explain their positions while he nodded his head; then he became one of the Pod People himself. Miller should be a warning of what happens to those who turn their backs on sanity and the facts – they end up losing their core audience, and money, as they perform for a bunch of dimwit thumbsuckers who don’t get their jokes.
5. Even more horrible than the last one: Stewart is angling for a nice, long-term berth at Fox hosting a TDS-style political satire show. It’s no secret Roger Ailes has been looking to compete with TDS; what better way than to back up Murdoch’s money truck and hire away Stewart? (Think Karl Rove: attack their strong point.) I’d hate to think this is Stewart’s motivation, but it’s a possibility.
Whatever the reason is, I wish Stewart would, in the interest of fairness, have Olbermann and Schultz as guests on his show to present their side, as he does with the Fox Newsers. (And Olbermann and Schultz should reciprocate by having Stewart on their shows to explain himself.) Let’s clear the air.
I hope this is all a tiff among friends, rather than the creation of another Miller monstrosity or Ailes attack dog.
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November 4, 2010
October 30, 2010
October 9, 2010
The Tattlesnake – New Entries for the (Politically) Askewed Dictionary
Almightyosis: The bizarre egomaniacal conviction that the creator of hundreds of billions of galaxies in a universe of vast unknown dimensions personally wants you to run for office and takes time out to tell you so. (See ‘O’Donnell, Christine.’)
Anglephile: A strange, pathetic creature, usually elderly, who, although dependent on Social Security and Medicare for their well-being, will nevertheless vote for those who would gladly take it away. (See ‘Lemmings.’)
Diptheoria: Maintaining a comically contradictory opinion on a subject with a straight face, such as bringing peace by starting wars, believing in Republican morality, or balancing the budget by incurring $700 billion more in debt to give tax cuts to yourself and your wealthy friends. (See ‘Bush, George W.’)
Fecktrescent: Describing an idea so outstandingly stupid it glows like moonlight on a fresh turd. (See ‘Palin/Beck 2012.’)
Foggle: A combination of Fox News, fearmongering, fog and mind-boggling. To foggle is to use egregious disinformation and unconscionable exaggeration to appeal to the basal ganglia or ‘reptilian brain’ in lower orders of ‘non’-homo sapiens with the goal of swaying by sheer panic and bigotry an individual or group into voting against their own best interests. Usage ex.: “We need more foggle to convince those tea partiers into rallying against health care reform!” (See ‘White Citizens Council.’)
Journabalism: Reprinting press releases from a corporation, lobbying firm or political party and calling it news. (See ‘The Washington Times.’)
Kochcrapola (pronounced ‘Cokecrapola’): The desire of spineless billionaires to fund far-right Astroturf causes for their own benefit while hiding that information from the public so as not to offend customers of their consumer products, such as Brawny paper towels or Northern bathroom tissue, and thereby lose business. Named after the Koch brothers. (See ‘US Chamber of Commerce.’)
Murdochism: A mental trick wherein you pretend you aren’t aware of what pestilent self-serving propaganda appears in your media outlets on a daily basis while still insisting they are actual news organizations nonetheless. Named after Rupert Murdoch. (See ‘Bozell, Brent.’)
Odontestry: The appearance of ugly gaping truth as a candidate’s false Tweets fall out, reduced as she is to campaigning solely on Twitter since she’s terrified of facing any reporter who might dare to ask her a tough question. (See ‘Grizzly, Mama.’)
Palmystery: Stage magic wherein the performer makes $100K disappear in return for a tepid speech based on hoary, imbecilic talking points written on her hand. The mystery is why anyone would pay for this bum fodder. (See ‘Pledge to America.’)
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
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September 23, 2010
September 19, 2010
September 10, 2010
September 8, 2010
September 7, 2010
September 4, 2010
September 2, 2010
How Many Attended Beck’s ‘Sermon on the Make’ on the Washington Mall?
There was no promised miracle, unless it’s that 80,000-plus people showed up to the New Messiah of the Right’s Gospel Meet-and-Bleat. (Incidentally, a possible third of the crowd may have just been ordinary tourists who stuck around to see what was going on rather than Teabagger acolytes of St. Beck.)
Carrie Dann at MSNBC’s First Read fretted:
“Estimates of just how many people attended Saturday’s event have varied from modest calculations of under 90,000 to brassy declarations of over a million.
“CBS News, which hired company AirPhotosLive.com to conduct an estimate, put the tally at around 87,000. One park service official told NBC News that the number was somewhere around 300,000. (The National Park Service no longer issues official crowd estimates after it was pilloried for allegedly miscalculating attendance at the 1995 Million Man March.)
“Beck himself told the crowd that he’d seen estimates that ‘between 300,000 and 500,000′ people showed up. Sarah Palin told POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin that she was disappointed by an Associated Press description of the ‘tens of thousands’ of ralliers, adding that she believed turnout to have been over 100,000.
“And, at a rally piggybacking off of the Restoring Honor event, Minnesota congresswoman and Tea Party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann challenged anyone who calculated Beck’s audience at anything less than seven digits. ‘We’re not going let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today because we were witnesses,’ Bachmann said.”
– Carrie Dann, “A Big Beck Crowd – But How Big?” MSNBC First Read, Aug. 30, 2010.
We already know dippy Michele’s estimate of anything, including the size of the Teabagger movement, is as solid as Dick Cheney’s interpretation of the Constitution, so discard that ‘million’ tripe. In this case, Wasilla’s Mama Grizzly may be closest; about 100,000, with perhaps a quarter to third apolitical, unreligious sightseers or celebrity gawkers. As Sam Seder confirmed, it was an old, white, middle-class gathering, just like Fox News’ dwindling audience.
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The Tattlesnake – Thank God They’re a Small Minority Edition
“It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em. It’s an old political trick.”
– Harry S Truman
Your Tattlesnake has had running arguments with various Teabaggers and Tea Party sympathizers for many months now and they all share the same tactic: Should you ask a question they can’t answer or make a point they can’t refute, they start screaming at you or rudely talking over you, as if the volume of their voice can eradicate reality and reason. This leads not to debate, but confrontation, and that seems to be what they want.
Beyond that, exactly how do you ‘debate’ people who insist:
– There are no racists in the Tea Party movement;
– It’s Obama and not George W. Bush who started the TARP bailouts of the banks and Wall Street;
– The terrible economy is exclusively the fault of Obama and his liberal social programs;
– All of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s social programs were complete failures;
– Social Security, Medicare, the VA and the GI Bill were/are not liberal social programs;
– Obama has raised taxes for the poor and middle-class;
– Obama is a Muslim/socialist/communist (take your pick) plotting the downfall of the US backed by George Soros’ money (and Soros was a teenage Nazi, too, incidentally);
– Rupert Murdoch is completely different from Soros, since he’s a loyal, patriotic American (Murdoch is, of course, from Australia);
– Obama was not born in this country and the ‘liberal media’ is hiding the truth;
– Sarah Palin has been shunned by the ‘lamestream’ media, despite the millions she’s made from doting MSM coverage of her;
– God has personally chosen the Tea Party candidates and opposition candidates are all the pawns of Satan;
– The only economic system God approves of is free market capitalism (you can look it up — it’s in the Bible somewhere);
– Jesus endorsed the death penalty; it’s obvious because he – duh – allowed himself to die on the cross;
– Liberals, not big corporations, are sending American jobs overseas to Communist countries like China in a conspiracy to position China to take over the U.S.;
(more…)