"DID HOWARD DEAN THREATEN THE ENTIRE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY?!!!"
That's the Fox News caption for a piece about Howard Dean's recent comments. I'm still amazed (and saddened) that this kind of noise could masquerade as news. It took me all of five minutes to trace it's path through the right wing's "noise machine."
Yesterday the Christian Science Monitor published bullet points from Howard Dean's appearance at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. For "religion and politicis," they had a single, 17-word quote from Dean:
"The religious community has to decide whether they want to be tax exempt or involved in politics."
That seems reasonable. Ministers probably shouldn't be issuing instructions to their congregation on who to vote for.
But by Thursday afternoon, Fox News had James Dobson on the air, spending six minutes fulminating about an imagined affront to the religious community. Within hours, it had apparently become the right wing's designated talking point. (Or is that "smearing point"?)
Anger-stoking press releases were issued.
"Howard Dean Issues Ultimatum to Churches: Give Up Religion or Stay Out of Politics"
That's from a group which likes to refer to itself (mis-leadingly) as "a national Catholic based advocacy group." That's actually the first words in the press release - before the predictible mis-representation of Dean's 17-word quote.
"Howard Dean's statement makes it clear that he wants to muzzle America's churches and religious groups... Dean should be welcoming the voice of America's churches, not attempting to silence them... Dean has shown utter disregard for people of faith...threatening the historical and treasured role of religious groups and churches in American public life."
But it's not the Catholic church. It's a radical right-wing political group created to fight abortion and gay marriage, and push for the confirmation of religion-friendly judges. (They were heavily involved in promoting Justice Sunday.)
This pretend religious organization - issuing handy press releases - lets pretend news agencies make believe that there's an actual story.
Dean Trying to 'Muzzle' Churches, Group Says
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's recent comments calling on groups in the religious community "to decide whether they want to be tax exempt or involved in politics" drew the ire of a Catholic-based advocacy group on Friday...
It's not a right-wing radical activist group now; it's a "Catholic-based advocacy group." Any real news organization would recognize this for the manufactured astro-turf controversy that it is. They'd know it's intended solely to bring bad political fallout onto Howard Dean. But of course, this isn't a real news organization. It's "
Cybercast News Services" -- Jeff Gannon's old employer. (They cleverly put the word "news" in the name of their web site, hoping it confuse people into overlooking the fact that the site was founded by a Conservative Communications group whose founder has links to right-wing astro-turf funder Richard Mellon Scaife...)
It seems pretty obvious that Fox intended to send their viewers the message "Hate this man - he hates you!!" But the only way they can do that is by having an army of puppets willing to repeat the same baseless (but emotional) charges. I'm keeping an eye on Google News to see if any legitimate news outlets swallow the bait.