connecting*the*dots

From Media Matters:

Melanie Morgan, Lee Rodgers, Rush Limbaugh, and John Gibson all forwarded the accusation made by a website controlled by Rev. Sun Myung Moon that Sen. Hillary Clinton was responsible for spreading information linking Sen. Barack Obama to a madrassa, or Muslim school. None of the four cited any evidence, other than the article, that Clinton was responsible for promoting the madrassa story, and the article cited no one by name.

Below is a clip from The Big Story with John “War on Christmas” Gibson, where Gibson reports on Hillary Clinton “playing the Muslim-phobia card” and holds a conversation with the “level-headed” Republican strategist, Terry Holt.

These guys couldn’t hide a fart in a Trojan Horse.

Here’s my play-by-play breakdown of the clip:

• Charge Hillary Clinton with dirty tactics (from a non-sourced article, published on a right-wing nut job’s website)
• “Expose” Obama being a “Muslim” and being educated at a “madrasa” (after he talked about going to a Muslim school as a child and being a Christian in his book, The Audacity of Hope, which was released earlier this year)
• “Innocently” provide context that a madrasa wasn’t radical 40 years ago (while the rest of Fox News runs with the story as if it were exposing something relevant for American voters to chew on)
• Completely forget to include the fact that Obama was barely out of diapers at the time of his schooling
• Repeat that Clinton is playing political hardball because the American public “knows what a madrasa means” (again, while the rest of Fox hard-sells the ties to terrorists)
• Refuse to explain that The Washington Times is not the same as the “left-leaning” Washington Post (classifications in this culture war that most Americans might confuse rather easily)
• Cry innocent by stating that exposing a cigarette smoker is nothing like this form of political dirty work (while the rest of the network piles on the significance of this insignificant fact)

What’s the result?

An uniformed American public swallowing this story hook, line and sinker, creating doubt with Barak Obama and more venom directed at Hillary Clinton, adding to her baggage — perceived or otherwise.

Until sources are named outside of Insight.com’s word, I’ll file this under Republican Noise Machine.

Fox News isn’t biased; they’re a major part of the spin cycle.

UPDATE: CNN completely debunks the charges — both that Hillary Clinton outed Obama and that Barak Obama attended a “radical madrasa.” They even sent a reporter to Jakarta to show the normalcy of the school on tape. The best line out of Wolf Blitzer’s mouth following the ridiculous clips from Fox News?:

CNN did what any serious news organization is supposed to do in this kind of a situation. We actually conducted an exclusive, first-hand investigation, inside Indonesia, to check out the kind of school Barack Obama attended as a little six year-old boy.

Guess what happened next? Fox News swallowed their story. Lying bastards.

The Guardian
Internet means end for media barons, says Murdoch
· Magnate hails second great age of discovery
· Power ‘moving from the old elite to bloggers’
Owen Gibson, media correspondent

Rupert Murdoch last night sounded the death knell for the era of the media baron, comparing today’s internet pioneers with explorers such as Christopher Columbus and John Cabot and hailing the arrival of a “second great age of discovery”.

The News Corp media magnate nurtures a long-held distaste for “the establishment” but last night confided to one of the few clubs to which he does belong - The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers - that he may be among the last of a dying breed.

“Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors,” said Mr Murdoch, having flown into London from New York after celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday.

Far from mourning its passing, he evangelised about a digital future that would put that power in the hands of those already launching a blog every second, sharing photos and music online and downloading television programmes on demand. “A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it,” he said. Indicating he had little desire to slow down despite his advancing years, he told the 603-year-old guild that he was looking forward, not back.

“It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and destroy - not just companies but whole countries.”

The owner of Fox News added: “Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important. The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism it breeds.”

[…]

Until Murdoch implodes the Fox News Channel and those religous propaganda nutso’s, Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson, I’ll continue to take everything he says with a grain of salt, but this degree of a proclamation — from the master of all mainstream media empires — *must* be a good sign to those of us who are already knee deep in this revolution.

Speaking of mainstream media empire builders, I wonder where Jason Calacanis sits on the future of the web…

With thirteen simple words, David Letterman expressed to Bill O’Reilly what the entire blogosphere has been squaking with post after post for the past month or so:

I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap.

Well, that just about sums it up for me. You know, I tried my best to stay away from this “War on Christmas” meme, but when David Letterman dropped that gem on Bill O’Reilly last night, I had to get a word out on this contrived issue.

To begin with, Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson may be a lot of things, but they’re not idiots; neither of them believe the bullshit they spew for one single minute. Both O’Reilly and Gibson are key, prime-time players in the Fox Broadcasting Channel ecosystem, the modern day network equivalent of a Bill Veeck run ballclub. Not familiar with Veeck’s antics for filling seats back in the day? Check out this quote from ESPN Classic:

Just as he predicted, Bill Veeck, for all his accomplishments, is best remembered as the guy who sent a midget to the plate. And yet, Eddie Gaedel’s lone major league appearance, while the most famous of Veeck’s stunts, may not even have been his most bizarre.

I wonder where this “War on Christmas” meme will rank in the annals of Rupert Murdock’s broadcast network legacy.

See, the problem I have with the coverage that Media Matters, Think Progress and the rest of the well-meaning blogosphere has given this topic is, well, it’s on multiple levels. To begin with, the meme had no legs until the blogosphere chimed in. A large percentage of this country — not “dumb middle-America” mind you — considers this form of opportunistic stupidity a cheap form of simple entertainment. With the costs at the theatre and the ballgame, can you really blame them? I’d be extremely interested in seeing someone create a model to express the amount of free advertising the ’sphere provided The Factor with it’s coverage of this meme.

Remember, conversations don’t always subvert hypocracies, they can also reinforce them.

Last year, while working on the Media Matters redesign, I posted about O’Reilly’s incessant whining regarding MM’s coverage of his “60 percent of crap,” I ended the post with a bit of baiting:

So put on your seatbelt, Billy Boy. If you don’t stop spewing misinformation from a projected position of “news,” your rough ride is going to continue to get worse.

Now, imagine if you can that Fox and O’Reilly actually decided to see how far MM and the ’sphere would go to frame his retarded crusade as a litmus test for the network (with the running premise that all data is good data). Just a month prior to defending Christmas, O’Reilly went on a media blitz, admitting that he was worn out and considering retirement; what if that was the grand bait and switch of all bait and switches?

1. He plays gimpy in the mainstream media, drawing in his “smear sites”
2. He gets us salivating over the prospect that just one more major O’Reilly campaign from the blogosphere will get him to call it quits
3. He launches the War on Christmas meme, and like clockwork, the sphere bites hook, line and sinker

I’m all about framing propaganda for easy digestion by the public, but the War on Christmas? Call me paranoid, but don’t you think it’s possible that Fox and O’Reilly learned their collective lesson when their trademark lawsuit made Al Franken’s book a top seller on Amazon? Just by going after him and dedicating airwave time to the battle, they exposed Franken to a whole new audience (which he greatly appreciated).

All I’m saying is that sometimes a softball isn’t necessarily a softball. Sometimes it’s an iceball packed by evil, elves aiming knee-high.

In either case, thank you Dave!

UPDATE: While trekking across the web today, I found this gem from O’Reilly, where in 2001, just a month after Clinton left office, he claims that Letterman can smell bullshit from a mile away. Ha!