Mediaite Matters

What up with Mediaite? Hard to say, but some strange stuff has appeared there lately. Case in point: Frances Martel writes about Sarah Palin appearing on O’Reilly. Palin argued in favor of permitting foreign ships to assist in the gulf clean-up. Not an outrageous or extreme suggestion, but it was possible to make it seem so through misrepresentation. Ergo, the headline for the article reads:

Sarah Palin To Bill O’Reilly: Outsource Gulf Oil Cleanup To Scandinavians

In addition to using the loaded (and inaccurate) term ‘outsource’, Martel takes a further poke at Fox:

Immediately after President Barack Obama’s Oval Office address, Sarah Palin was given the first opportunity on Fox News to respond to the President

Nice shot, only it isn’t true. Palin didn’t appear immediately after the address. Bret Baier’s panel had the “first opportunity” to respond. After that O’Reilly came on and gave his analysis. That’s roughly five people who had the opportunity to respond to Obama on Fox before Palin said a single word.

A more egregious bit of chicanery comes from Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher, and it stems from this one sentence spoken by Greta van Susteren:

Arizona, finally, after being quite patient, steps in, passes a statute, whether it’s constitutional or not, and the reaction now seems to be, by the federal government, “You guys are the bad guys.”

Once again, nothing outrageous there, until Christopher decides to sex it up with an accusatory headline:

Greta Van Susteren Doesn’t Seem To Care If Arizona Law Is Constitutional Or Not

Talk about willful distortion! The “whether or not” construction has nothing to do with whether someone “cares” about something, but rather directs the attention to something that is true irrespective of the other issue. Sort of like “Whether or not Mediaite is turning into a Fox Hater site, this article is riddled with illogic”. Now mind you, Greta did do a segment on the law that discussed the issue of its constitutionality--the very issue that Tommy Christopher claims she didn’t care about. What’s more, it was on that same program! Is it any surprise that Mr Christopher made no mention of that?

After describing van Susteren, a practicing attorney for decades, as a “supposed legal expert” (a dig that Christopher tried to backpedal from in an “update”), he then “explains” what van Susteren really meant:

What really matters is whether most white people support the law.

White people?!? Is it so important to discredit Greta that Tommy has to whip out the race card? He also takes issue with Greta’s claim that Obama met with AZ Governor Brewer due to “political pressue”, citing as evidence the word of...Robert Gibbs! Because Brewer requested the meeting, Greta must be wrong. Never mind that Obama had turned down that request the month before, and only agreed at the last minute.

In the face of this smear job, Greta posted a lengthy rebuttal to Christopher, saying in part:

Of course I care whether statutes are constitutional or not - that was not the point of my comment last night (and by the way, I will put my record up against this writer's any day of the week of actually FIGHTING for Constitutional rights of clients in court while he worries about what he dreams up in his postings about what I care about or not.)... My statement about the attention to the statute in no way means I support unconstitutional statutes (that is the author below's fantasy.) That would be bizarre.... By the way...is the Arizona statute unconstitutional? I think it might be but not for racial profiling (racial profiling is bad) but because it seeks to usurp the Constitutional authority of the Federal government to direct immigration policy. (If the author listened to the next interview after Gov Palin I think I pointed that out.)... By the way..he got other things wrong in his posting but so be it.

But Tommy Christopher did not write an article in response to Greta. In an usual move, an anonymous post by “Mediaite Staff” covered van Susteren’s post, while complaining about Greta’s “puerile” wording and defending Christopher as a “respected member of the White House Press Corps”. (Maybe he’ll get Helen Thomas’s seat!) Oddly, the article noted that any responses from Christopher would appear in the comments section, where Tommy made an ill-considered analogy to lynching and reminisced about how good Greta van Susteren was--before she moved to Fox. ‘Nuff said.

Dogged Dishonesty

The Arizona law also tripped up someone else: our second-favorite blogger over at the House of Hounds: Miss Priscilla. She writes:

Fox & Friends Solicits For Arizona Immigration Law Defense Donations?... It’s not surprising that the three pals, on Fox & Friends, would have no problem pimping contributions, to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer... So now you know. Send money. Fox & Friends is counting on you!

Unfortunately, nobody on F&F solicited funds. They reported that $20,000 was raised, didn’t encourage anyone to contribute, didn’t name the organization that was raising the money, and made no mention of where to send it. Pretty strange way to “solicit”! Then Prissy goes and makes one of her classic incorrections:

[Gretchen] cited a poll which showed that 58% of Americans support the law. Of course, she didn’t cite the poll numbers for American Hispanics who, overwhelmingly, oppose it. She also didn’t note that in May, support for the Arizona law was up around 73%.

Priscilla won’t tell you this, but the poll cited by Gretchen was conducted by the Washington Post, and it had no breakdown for Hispanic voters. And then there’s Prissy’s claim that support for the Arizona law was 73% in May. She’s not telling the truth about that either. According to her own link, support in May was just about the same as it is now:

Considering everything, opinion of new Arizona law: Support: 59%.

But why bother being honest when name calling and sexual slurs are so much more her style? As of today, the Google tally of Prissy’s use of “teabagger” or “teabagging” stands at a grand total of: 156 times. Tune in next time for the update.

Meanwhile head hound Ellen Brodsky was up in paws because Dennis Miller made a joke about Bob Etheridge, the sitting congressman who was caught on video making an assault and battery on a student. Miller opined that Etheridge was “either drunk or drunk with power”. Brodsky got up on her high horse and pontificated:

Dennis Miller Baselessly Paints Rep. Bob Etheridge As A Drunk...even though Miller acknowledged he had no actual knowledge about Etheridge’s drinking. Classy!

Now mind you, this is the same Ellen Brodsky who gave us these classy gems:

• Like a drunk at a Party, Coulter giggled.
• [Susan] Estrich, sounding a little drunk...
• [Ann Coulter] really sounded flat drunk at that point.
• Was Katherine Harris Drunk When She Appeared On Hannity & Colmes?
• Ann Coulter seemed high on something last night...

My my. And Brodsky has no actual knowledge about these people’s drinking. Classy, indeed. Welcome to the Wide World of Houndpocrisy!

In other news, Ellen has a post up “co-authored” by one of her revolving-door guest-bloggers (all of whom are so proud of their work that they won’t give their real names or qualifications). In this case it’s outrageous outrage because Cavuto didn’t question Carly Fiorina’s business record:

There’s no excuse for that same anchor to host GOP Senate candidate and former head of Hewlett-Packard Co. Carly Fiorina and not ask anything about her business record.

Now perhaps Brodsky and her mysterious sidekick believe that every time Fiorina appears on Fox she should be asked the same questions. You know, so that every interview will result in the same answers. Ellen’s piece says nothing about all the other interviews Fiorina has given on Fox, or how often she has been asked this very question. In fact, just days earlier she was quizzed on this stuff, and on Fox. Ellen doesn’t mention this. Which is odd, since Brodsky did a post about that very interview. And yet she said nothing about the questioning of Fiorina’s business record.

See, that’s how it works in the dog kennel: complain when a question isn’t (re)-asked, but when it is asked, leave that out and don’t tell anyone it happened.

Brodsky’s piece de resistance is her claim that Fox News is trying to hide Rep Barton’s “apology” to BP. Her “evidence” is a clip from that most trusted news source, Daily Kos. Of the two examples given, one is a pair of brief clips (under 20 seconds) from the (D) and (R) sides. Her complaint: the (R) clip didn’t include Barton saying “I apologize”. The second example was a Barton clip paired with a statement from the White House--the clip showed the portion of Barton’s comment that the White House statement was responding to (the “shakedown” claim), not all the rest of the stuff he said. Ergo, Fox News is trying to cover up Barton’s “apology” by editing it out! Pretty thin soup, but it’s enough to convince the credulous denizens of the dog pound:

• I'm surprised Fox felt the need to cut the apology part, yet aired the rest of the pro-corporate ass-smooching by Barton
• Great catch, Ellen.
• From the network that repeatedly changes scandal ridden Republicans into Democrats, adds boos to Democratic speeches and silences their applause, what's new?
• I always wonder if they actually do this stuff deliberately knowing what they are doing, or just editing out anything just to show clips. It can't be the latter... Fox knows this.

Remember when Brodsky insisted that Fox anchors refused to call an incident terrorism...when in fact they did exactly that? Yeah, this is the same thing. Submitted for your consideration, the footage that Ellen Brodsky doesn’t want you to see, footage that shows just a small sample of FNC airing the “apology” footage repeatedly...that day and into the weekend:

Ellen Brodsky could have explained to her commenters that Fox really did air the apology, over and over again, in its reports. But this is just like the Fiorina business: bash Fox when something doesn’t appear, and then refuse to mention all those other times when it does. Consider that as you read one more comment to Ellen’s diatribe:

• Juan Williams got around it by saying "Barton apologized for his remarks later", but did not say who he apologized to or for what and when.... Fox News and the rest of the Ailes scum alliance will be right there to edit it out from their faithful viewers awareness. These politicians should be tarred and feathered and send out of town on a slippery rail by their very constituents who are too stupid to know when they are being lied to and played as the suckers they are.
  

Yes, people are being lied to all right, and played for suckers. They’re the gullible lemmings who actually believe Brodsky’s bilge.

Spot something you’d like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

Tags: newshounds, mediaite, kos