Stop. Just stop. No more appearances on Foxaganda. We've been saying that for a long time here at Daily Kos. But some Democrats keep doing it anyway. I'm not talking about the President's interview with Bill O at the Super Bowl. Even though O'Reilly is a despicable piece of work, the White House had zero to gain from turning down that 15-minute session. But that ought to be the last time for him, other Democrats and unaffiliated progressives.
It's not because the channel airs the ravings of Glenn Beck, the fakery of Bill O'Reilly, the inanity of Sean Hannity and all the other twisted crapola of its all-star line-up. It’s not that these opinion-mongers at Fox are to the right of Genghis Khan. It's because they and members of the news team are scam artists and liars. Not pathological liars. Pathological liars don't know they're lying. Foxagandists know full well. They're media thugs who have as much in common with good journalism as Muammar's Gaddafi's state-run television. If you think "thug" is too strong a word, perhaps you've forgotten the threat of violence by Bill O'Reilly and Fox fixture Bernie Goldberg against an actual journalist. Just a joke, of course, uh-huh.
Fox's internal memos demanding bias and adherence to right-wing talking points and pushing various wacko ideas like climate change denialism are well known.
You would think this would have long ago caused Democrats and sensible progressives to shun Foxaganda altogether. But since more evidence of their malevolent intent and lack of ethics and morals seems to be needed, today Media Matters brought it, as Jed Lewison explained earlier.
The condensed version: Foxaganda's Washington News Managing Editor Bill Sammon, also a vice president for the "news" team, engaged in "mischievous speculation" that Barack Obama is an advocate of socialism. If it were true, that would indeed be news, especially to people who actually are socialists. But, of course, it's a bald-faced lie, whether you call it "mischievous speculation" or a whiskey sour.
It's no surprise that Bill Sammon is a right-wing liar. He did, after all, work for another propaganda outlet, the Washington Times, which, when he was there, was still owned by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon. And, as KingOneEye pointed out earlier today, he's got a pile of books filled with more lies illustrating his point of view in all its glory:
The Evangelical President: George Bush’s Struggle to Spread a Moral Democracy Throughout the World
At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election
Strategery:How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media.
Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism from Inside the White House
Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, Media Bias and the Bush Haters The Evangelical President: George Bush’s Struggle to Spread a Moral Democracy Throughout the World
Foxaganda isn't a news operation. It's not an entertainment operation. It's an insult. And that's exactly how it should be responded to. No more legitimizing it.
The only reason any Democrat, any progressive or left-winger should ever willingly appear with any of its leading lights or answer any of its reporters' questions is to yank their chains. Cornered by one of them in a hallway or a townhall or on the street, the appropriate response is to bring up the details of one or more of Foxaganda's internal memos. Let them broadcast that to their heart's content.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2008:
Once again, it seems we have to remind Mukasey and all the other Republicans who insist on tying retroactive amnesty for phone companies who spied on Americans to September 11 that it wasn't weaknesses in our intelligence that failed us on September 11.
Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their "hair on fire," warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famous President's Daily Brief (by one of Tenet's underlings), warning that this attack might take place "inside the United States." For the previous few years—as Philip Zelikow, the commission's staff director, revealed this morning—the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities.
Well, at least not weaknesses in our intelligence system. Just in the intelligence of the people receiving the information.