Last Friday, nearly a month after she posted a disparaging, homophobic remark about MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on her Facebook page, Tricia Macke, weeknight news anchor at Cincinnati's FOX 19, finally issued a quasi-apology on behalf of herself and her employer.
After Fox News—like everyone else—called Ohio for Obama, Karl Rove challenged the decision on-air, causing what can only be described as a kernel panic. Fox News' decision desk, its institutional center of authority for making sound election calls, had issued its decision. And Fox News, in its capacity as a newsgathering operation, had called the election for Obama. But Karl Rove, Fox News' ideological paymaster, challenged the decision. So Megyn Kelly got out of her anchor chair, walked down the hall, and interrogated her own highly trained election analysts on Rove's behalf. You are actually watching what happens when reality intrudes on a dying fever-dream.
While the talking heads over at Fox News would love to tell you that Romney's gonna come out on top in this election, their faces say otherwise. It's like they're all trying to hide a secret that everybody already knows.
Fat asshole and Fox News president Roger Ailes just re-upped to run his network through the 2016 election, and he continues to maintain the grotesque fiction that he operates an independent news outlet and not a vital constituency in the Republican coalition. In case there was any doubt left, though-there isn't, really-here's a handwritten note he sent to George W. Bush's secretary of state in 2005 offering "help off the record" any time.
Peter Doocy, a "Fox News General Assignment reporter" and son of the notable Fox and Friends personality Steve Doocy, brings us the first reporter wipeout related to Hurricane Sandy. Was this wipeout attributable to 45 mph winds or severe flooding? No, unfortunately. Poor Peter Doocy stepped off the dock and got his foot stuck in wet sand. We're all expecting a little better effort next time.
Backstage at Lynn University's debate HQ, an unidentified individual with press credentials decided it would be necessary to walk into the background of a Fox News interview with General Wesley Clark and do that thing where you pretend you're rubbing your face but you're really giving someone the bird.
Fox Nation, the delicate wordsmiths behind delicious turns of phrase like "Hip Hop BBQ," have a new creation under their belts (said belts are probably holding up Glenn Beck jeans): The conservative millennial Mark Twains have now proclaimed that Mitt Romney "smoked" Barack Obama in the coin toss for tonight's debate.
After mocking MSNBC's now infamous freakout over Obama's first debate performance, Jon Stewart turned the spotlight on Fox's latest attempts to spin the debate in Ryan's favor. Across the board, Fox News made some expected accusations: Biden's laughing was "hostile, aggressive, scornful"; some not so expected accusations: "Dementia"; and, of course, some all together laughable accusations courtesy of "Eskimo Annie Oakley" Sarah Palin: Biden "reminded me of a muskox running across the tundra with Ryan and [Raddatz] underfoot."
Last night, Bill O'Reilly got fired up about this photo of Mitt Romney bending over in front of an astonished small child, which most of the internet already saw and appropriately captioned on Monday. After categorizing the photo as "suggestive" and borderline child abuse, O'Reilly called for the person responsible for distributing this photo to be fired. O'Reilly predicted that the AP would have issued an apology by today, though he is likely still waiting for the AP to personally apologize, kneel down and beg for forgiveness. (Or a job.)
When I was a young boy my father's best friend, Art, lived in Alabama, and every now and again my family and I would travel from Arizona to spend a week visiting him at his lake house. On one of those trips, on the way back from an errand to buy ice, my dad and I pulled over for a quick bite at a roadside shack advertising catfish fritters. At that point, most of my life had been spent in Saudi Arabia and Arizona, where I could count the number of black children in my elementary school on one hand, and without using my thumb. Alabama was different. Black people were everywhere, though not in Art's neighborhood, and on that day, on the back patio of that fish shack, I recognized code-switching for the very first time.
As expected, Fox News aired the 5-year-old video of Obama's speech at Hampton University that conservative bloggers—namely Tucker Carlson—tried (and failed) to make an issue of in 2008. Though there may have been a few previously unreleased segments in tonight's footage, the right-wing discussion was the same old thing: "He sure does talk funny," "But what about white people?," and "Why is he so angry?"
Way back in 2007, conservative bloggers went wild over then-presidential candidate Barack Obama's so-called "quiet riots" speech at Hampton Unversity, a historically black college in Virginia. For all the right-wing consternation over Obama's address, which included a shout-out to controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the future president's words were mostly benign, the kind of pro-black, inspirational speech black politicians give to large audiences of black people as a matter of course. Yes, the speech did contain a few uses of the term "quiet riot," but they were in reference to the daily indignities under which many blacks in America suffer, not calls to arms.
Last night on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" an entire segment was dedicated to the 1987 photograph taken by Andres Serrano of a crucifix submerged in his own piss, otherwise known as "Piss Christ." Dobbs invited former Komen VP Karen Handel and Catholic League President Bill Donahue along for the ride. Handel and Donahue, who are clearly not art critics, proceeded to list the reasons they do not like "Piss Christ" and the whole thing climaxed when Donahue revealed his "opus."
