FOX News Declares War on Columbia Journalism School...?

Roger Ailes

I guess the people at FOX News must have of lot of free time on their hands since they are avoiding real news stories like torture, the economy and foreign wars. Now the FOX brain trust has declared war on the Columbia School of Journalism, which is regarded as the Harvard of the Journalism business. I am not sure why Columbia has generated such hatred from FOX. Maybe it's because the professors at Columbia know FOX is anything but a news organization, and use FOX as a text-book example of what budding journalists should not do.

FOX is accusing Columbia's J school of being "out of touch" and part of that mythical "liberal elite." This is ironic because FOX's Bill O'Reilly, for all his blue-collar posturing, received a master's degree from Harvard. George W. Bush was a third-generation Ivy league graduate, and it does not get more elite than that.

In response, Nick Lemann, dean of the Journalism school, says FOX's attacks are great advertising. He said that he doubted if FOX President Roger Ailes had the skills to go out and cover a regular story. Judging by the new stories that come out of FOX, I am sure much of the on air- talent doesn't have the same skills either.

FOX is doing this to play to it's audience, which is 95 percent white, and largely rural. To people like that, New York is Sodom and Gomorrah, and not even part of America. After all Sarah Palin said that "real Americans," don't live in places New York.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/teaching-fox-news-a-lesson-and-upholding-the-spirit-of-pulitzer-1899389.html

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Daily Beast Names Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh on List of Top 25 Conservative Journalists

Beck Had Said That He is Not a Journalist

It's difficult to take some of the arguments coming out of the political right seriously. After all these are the people who say that George W. Bush kept the nation safe from terrorist attack, and want a return to tax cuts and deregulation, the same polices that tanked the economy.

But this list of the top 25 Conservative Journalists, written by the Daily Beast's Tunkun Varadarajan, a research fellow at the right-wing Stanford Institute, is staggeringly inaccurate and just downright stupid. Varadarajan lists Glenn Beck as no. 2 on the list. He also lists neo-fascist propagandists, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, on the list. Now Limbaugh, on various occasions, has said that he is not a journalist, and is just a comedian. And any no journalism professor worth his salt would ever describe Hannity as a journalist.

Appearing on television doesn't make you a journalist. Also opinion columns does not make you a journalist. Beck even said explicitly on "The View" that he is not a journalist, and does'nt bother to check his facts. Of course, anyone with Google and a semi-functional brain could tell you that.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-10/the-rights-top-25-journalists/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsC6

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Massachusetts Gun Nut is a Palin, Tea Party Fan

Right-wing Media, Politicians Urging Violent Revolt

On Thursday, I posted a story about Gregory Girard, a Massachusetts man who was arrested with a stockpile of weapons he had gathered in preparation for Armageddon.

Well it turns out that he is a fan of Sarah Palin and also supported the Tea Party's agenda. Girard was also a neo-racist, who believed that Obama was going to raise an army of an "army of inner city youths" who were going to impose martial law on all the God-fearing, gun-toting white folks. (And we all know who lives in the inner city.)

Girard also believed that Sarah Palin was some kind of Joan of Arc sent by God to lead America back to the light. You can read more of Girard's views on his blog, "Patriots for America."

This is not the first time the far right has been linked to political violence. Last August, Nancy Genovese, a Glenn Beck fan, was arrested for scoping out an Air Force base, while she had an assault rifle, a shot gun and 500 rounds of ammunition in her car. And in February 2009, James Adkisson, shot up a Tennessee Unitarian Church after reading Bernard Goldberg's "100 People Who are Screwing Up America." Adkisson also said that he wanted to kill every Democrat in Congress.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/man_charged_for_stockpiling_weapons_was_tea_partie.php?ref=mp

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Mass. Man Arrested With Stockpile of Weapons

Paranoid, white people with guns always scare me. According to this story from Talking Points Memo, the latest is Gregory Girard of Manchester, Mass., who was recently arrested by agents of the Bureau of Alchohol, Firearms and Tobacco.

Girard, a technology consultant, was arrested with camouflage uniforms, guns, knives, bullet proof vests, night vision goggles and a six-month supply of food! He is believed to have been hoarding supplies in preparation for Armageddon. Girard's wife became alarmed when he suggested that she "stop talking to people, and just shoot them in the head because traitors deserve it." That sounds awfully like some media commentators I know.

It's easy to laugh at this kind of behavior, but this kind of paranoia is being fueled by FOX News, which has Glenn Beck running "The sky is falling," type stuff every night.

It will be interesting to see what media sources Girard was reading.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/police_ma_man_stockpiled_weapons_feared_armageddon.php?ref=fpblg

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Post's Broder Says Palin Tea Party Speech Was "Pitch Perfect"

David Broder

Washington Post columnist David Broder is referred to as the "dean of the Washington Press Corps." Well it might be time for the Dean to retire. His latest column is a fawning a love letter to Sarah Palin and her recent speech at the Tea Party convention.

(I think Broder may have scored some Viagra and is hot for Palin.) One of the problems with the newspaper business if you have fossils like Broder, who have been in place for years, and no one dares to question or even challenge.

Broder said that Palin was "pitch perfect" and hit all the conservative and populist notes. Maybe Broder is getting senile, because most media pundits widely condemned her speech, which was the usually grab bag of GOP talking points, strung together in Palin's grammar-free style of talking.

Also Broder needs to remember that Palin was speaking to a group of assorted nuts who believe that the president was born in Kenya and one of their speakers advocated bringing back racist voting laws. Huffington Post Editor Simon Whatley describes the Tea Baggers as a "national embarrassment.

Broder goes on to say that Palin may pose a challenge to GOP front runner Mitt Romney in 2012. The GOP had better hope that Palin, who prepared for her big speech by writing notes on her hand, doesn't run in 2012, because a recent Washington Post poll said that most Americans think she is not qualified to lead the country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/10/AR2010021002451.html

Need a Reliable Uncle Tom? Call Project 21

Jesse Lee Peterson

FOX News knows that its a right-leaning/white-leaning network, but they realize that these days neo fascists, like Sean Hannity, cannot just came out and call black people, lazy shiftless bums, even though that is what is going through their minds. To vocalize these ugly ideas, they turn to a small cadre of black conservatives. While there maybe some black conservatives, who believe in the principles of fiscal moderation and traditional values, there are also several black straw men.

People like the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a notoriously self-loathing African American, who is happy to vocalize every racist and offensive comment white commentators are too scared to say. The good Rev. Peterson, showed true Christian spirit, when he blamed the Hurricane Katrina disaster on the poor moral values of the mainly black residents of New Orleans. Some of his other hits include:

• Calling civil rights leader W.E.B Dubois "a communist pig."
• And calling black men "weak and insecure."
• He also said Obama was elected by "black racism and white guilt"

Another Project 21 member Kevin Martin compared the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan in an appearance on Hannity's show. Peterson is close friends Hannity, who was a major contributor to his Brother Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) foundation, a fact that Hannity failed to mentioned when he regulalry hosted Peterson on his show. So effectively Hannity was writing Peterson a check, and then asking him to appear as an "objective" guest. (But really, is any guest objective on FOX?.) Peterson has also associated with white sepratist and immigrant hating groups.

If you ever wondered where these professional Uncle Toms come from, you need to look to Project 21. Tomming has been a pretty good gig for Patterson, who has gotten a book, radio show and numerous television appearances out of it. According to left-wing journalist Max Blumenthal Project 21 was created by the National Council for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), a right-wing think tank, who were looking for black faces to rebut the many charges of racism levied at the Los Angeles Police Department after the Rodney King riots in 1992. Project 21 provided black media pundits who could refute these charges, and in many cases vocalize the offensive comments that white pundits where too scared to say.

NCPRR Executive Director David Almasi, who is white, almost blew the lid of the Project 21 scam, when he stood in for one of his talking heads. Almasi also coordinates Project 21 media strategy and tells its pundits what to say.

poll by twiigs.com

Vice magazine correspondent tours Liberia, aka Hell on Earth

It's a common adage to refer to a place as hell on earth, but Liberia is pretty close to it.

In a 30-minute online documentary, Shane Smith, a correspondent for VBS TV, Vice magazine's online TV station, goes on a tour of Liberia, a West African country which is trying to recover from years of civil war.

Liberia was founded by freed American slaves. Unfortunately, America's experiment in African democracy turned into a disaster, as the freed slaves promptly enslaved the local Africans, and ran a plantation system based on the American South. In 1980, Samuel Doe, a sergeant in the Liberian Army, led a bloody coup, and became the first descendant of native Africans to rule Liberia.

However Doe's regime was marked by corruption and brutality and soon descended into civil war, with American-educated warlords attempting to seize power. The civil war lasted for most of the 1990s, and law and order broke down, until the country looked like a post apocalyptic-Mad Max style movie. Gangs of armed children roved the streets. The gangs were led by brutal war lords who often drugged their young soldiers before battle.

The armies were very irregular which often created bizaare scenes. Some soldiers went into battle wearing wigs and lipstick, others went into battle naked, believing local black magic would protect them.

Local war lords adopted names such as General Bin Laden, General Rambo and General Butt Naked (he led his troops into battle in the buff). One group called themselves Tupac's Army, because they all wore Tupac t-shirts. (There was an army named after Biggie too.)

The war descended into the worst war crimes you can think of, rape, mass murder, cannibalism, mutilation, you name it. Many of the war lords traded diamonds for drugs and weapons. So now a country that was ripped apart by wars is also flooded with drugs and guns.

Smith follows General Butt Naked, who has now renounced violence and reverted to his given name Joshua Blahyi. Although he has admitted that he was responsible for 20,000 deaths, Blahyi has reinvented himself as an evangelical preacher. Let me warn you about this documentary, it shows some pretty graphic material and you need a strong stomach to sit through it, but it's still worth watching.

In 2005 Harvard-educated Ellen Sirleaf Johnson was elected president. However it has a long way to go in trying to reintegrate thousands of child soldiers back into society. In the words of General Butt Naked, once violence has gotten into a child, it's hard for him to ever go back to normal.
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia