SoonerBlue

FishbowlDC reports that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs met with Fox News official Michael Clemente yesterday and smoked the peace pipe about the little dustup between the WH and the news network.

Clemente, who oversees Fox's news coverage, is said to have met with staffers at the Washington bureau and told them to play nice... to remain "fair and balanced."

I'm not holding my breath on any of that...

So, Fox News wants to come over and trash your house, call you every name in the book, then wants to be invited back...and even be treated like an honored guest?

Doesn't look like Fox would've called a truce if its ratings were still good...more likely the hot war has turned cold.

O'Reilly, Hannity and Beck sure made hay there for a while, using the quarrel as a public-relations tool to stir up support with their base and boost ratings. I still say they probably don't believe half of what they rant about...but simply play the game to gain ratings...which brings power, attention, and money.

In these days of so much easy low hanging ratings fruit - see balloon boy - I guess it's too much to hope for responsible journalism to report on the real problems of our country...and I'm not just talking about Fox. All network news information should be taken with a grain of salt...and it's easy to spot the partisan BS. I personally get my serious news from PBS's "News Hour."

TV news critic and "Network" screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky said: "Television is Democracy at its ugliest."

Thank goodness we have Freedom of the Press in this country. Fox News certainly has the right to say whatever they want about the Obama administration. But, Freedom of the Press does not require news outlets to be responsible or unbiased. So, Fox has every right to slant stories to align with their political and editorial viewpoints.

Just like the White House has the right to call Fox another arm of the Republican party. Freedom of the Press does not require the WH to treat all news outlets equally...or provide them with a seat at the briefing room table.

Fox News has made no bones about being hostile to the Obama administration. They are perfectly within their rights to practice journalism that way -- and make oodles of money doing it -- but it is NOT responsible journalism.

Another thing -- Fox News will create the story it wants to report. Like when they spent a week promoting the 9/12 protests...and then their newscasters were caught on video whipping up teabagger anger...just so they could report on how furious the "Tea Party" protesters were.

So...if Fox wants to do business that way, they have the right to do so...but there's nothing in the Constitution wot sez the White House has to invite them to sit at the table with the grown-ups.

Or - when you lie down with dogs....

Last Friday media analyst Marc Lamont Hill learned that he had been fired by Fox News through a Google Alert.

A Google Alert.

Here is the audio and transcript of his interview with radio host Steve Malzberg.

"I got a Google alert at 11 o’clock [a.m.] that it had been announced that I’d been fired. After that, I guess someone followed up later in the day, you know because I was sort of trying to figure out what was going on…I found out that it was true but other than that I don’t have any other information…I haven’t had any thorough conversation with anyone."

Then, over the weekend, a possible reason for his dismissal came to light. Seems that Hill had once said some not so flattering things about Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Seems that News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch broke the news of the firing himself, at stockholders meeting Friday morning.

There are those who say that Fox is an arm of the Republican party...what if it's scarier? And the Republican party is an arm of Fox?

See, Hill was being gunned for by rightie propagandist Cliff Kincaid, who works for "Accuracy in Media", and had been trying to get Hill fired...he told Murdoch that Hill is a "left wing cop-killer apologist."

Isn't it ironic that the same news outlet that's playing the victim and crying about the White House trying to "silence them" is truly silencing liberal commentators on their "news" channel?

Hey Hill, consider this a bullet dodged...count your blessings. This is what happens to someone who gives off the slightest whiff of 'fair and balanced' at Fox News.....

Boy, you know the wingnut base of the GOP is becoming more radical when they boo and hiss Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and call him a RINO -- Republican In Name Only.

I mean, he's one of the most conservative senators around. If he ever strays from the hard right position on a vote it's because it doesn't matter. Like Sotomayor was going to be confirmed anyway, so his vote didn't matter. But next time it does matter he can vote the hard right position, then point to Sotomayor as proof that he's willing to be open-minded.

So if Graham strays from conservative dogma, it's pure strategy...he is no "front man for the Democrats."

That's why it was odd when Graham encountered an angry crowd of wingnut teabaggers at a townhall meeting a couple of days ago. They kept interrupting him with cries of - 'You're a country club Republican'...'Sotomayor!'...'You lie.' Outside people carried signs -- 'Unconstitutional Anti-Christ Socialist Federal Deficit Spending Programs"... "Democrat in Drag" and "RINO."

Looks like Graham has suddenly become the new target of tea party activists. In fact, "Beckerheads" started to turn on him about a week after he publicly spoke against TV crazy Glenn Beck.

I have news for you Lindsey, it wasn't Ron Paul who hijacked your party...it was Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Coulter, Malkin, Bachman, Kristol, Dick and Liz Cheney, Karl Rove, etc., etc., etc....

Read about the townhall ruckus here: (CNN) – South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has always enjoyed a little back-and-forth with belligerent audiences.

The Republicans have a big problem if their crazies endorse only hard right candidates...some might make it through the primaries, but if their candidate gets to the national election they will lose. This great country is so much larger than a small pocket of only white angry people.

Thank goodness the wingnuts are on the wrong side of both demographics and history. The Angry White Guy Party can make some noise, the mainstream media will report its every move...but in the end they will wither and die.

If you look at every single poll that asks people their beliefs and policy positions, a huge majority of people express views that are the exact opposite of what the teabaggers believe. It's just a fact.

Get this - guilt-ridden conservatives are all over the media trying to convince us that the Holocaust Museum murderer - James von Brunn - isn't really a right-winger, he's a leftie.

Let me get this straight -- a white supremacist consumed with hatred of Jews and blacks...who is a Holocaust denier...who said President Obama was created by Jews...who said Obama has a fake birth certificate...who hates the US government...who hates Liberals...who fears the takeover of our country by black governors...who tried to help his segregationist friend (John G. Crommelin). of the ultra right-wing National States' Rights Party, get elected Governor of Alabama...who has published his rantings on many rightwing hate websites like stormfront and freerepublic -- isn't really a right-winger?

Yep, sounds like a typical lefty to me.

We'll just see...after the police get through checking out the contents of von Brunn's car, court documents, arrest record, his 40 years of collected written ravings and his hard-drive....then we'll know how many of his favorite websites were of the leftie persuasion.

Sorry, but I tend to "pigeon-hole" Jew-hating, Afro-American-hating, militia-loving lunatics as rightwing. Deductive reasoning...it's just the way my mind works. Everybody knows that Neo-Nazism and white supremacy are forms of violent extremism of the right...not the left.

Hey, I wonder if they also have proof that the killer of Dr. Tiller is also a leftwing nut job as well...

BTW...I wonder what all his neo-Nazi skinhead friends think about being called "lefties" by their rightwing media BFFs? Doesn't look to me that they'd like it one bit. Has someone pointed that out to them?

It's all an old wingnut propaganda trick - redefine the meaning of a term loud enough and often enough and people will come to - even subconsciously - believe it's true. The swiftboater attacks on John Kerry is a good example...another is claiming that President Obama is Muslim who doesn't have a valid birth certificate.

It's so comforting to think that there are legions of heavily armed lunatics wandering this country coast to coast, getting fired up by the rightwing hate machine, blaming all their problems on them hippies who want to take away their SUV’s...looking for opportunities to shoot people who think like me.

But I won't hold my breath waiting for people like Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Malkin, Beck and Coulter to realize that words have consequences...that they have all gone far beyond what should be tolerated in a moral society.

Yet, I have to be fair, the majority of Conservatives do not share these extremist rightwing views...too bad they're too chicken shit to stand up and disown these rightwing crazies because they're scared it might cost them votes in future elections.

A security officer at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Ever notice how the far-left has loons that advocate such craziness as arson...and the far-right loons advocate such craziness as murder?

Lefty loons are mostly eco-terrorists who chain themselves to trees, set SUV's on fire and torch ski-lodge building sites...while right wing zealots get guns and shoot people.

An ugly undercurrent of violence seems to be taking over our country. Just in the last few weeks a women's doctor was shot and killed in his church by a rabid pro-life terrorist, one of our soldiers was shot and killed outside an Army recruiting center by a rabid US Muslim terrorist...and now a security guard was shot and killed in the Holocaust Museum by a rabid white supremacist terrorist.

Yes, they are all domestic terrorists in my opinion.

BTW - I don't think I'll ever understand how neo-Nazi white supremacists think. They deny the Holocaust when they should be proud of it and want to celebrate that ugly piece of history. I mean if they hate Jews and love Hitler, wouldn't they praise him for the great thing that he did?

I guess denial means denying that Jews are people who suffered, neo-Nazis would probably prefer to think of them as so many cockroaches that have to be squashed.

I heard on the news this morning that this country has more rightwing hate groups now than ever before...the Southern Poverty Law Center says the number has grown to around 900. The catalyst is probably that, for the first time, we have an Afro-American in the White House...and a Democrat to boot.

These crazies have probably stepped up their violence because they see their white culture way of life crumbling. The economy probably exacerbates their hate - if life's circumstances grind you down, you look for someone else to blame for your lot in life.

It's so upsetting that there are tens of thousands of these sick people simmering with the same hatred that James von Brunn was consumed by. They are consumed by anti-semitism, anti-abortionism, xenophobia, homophobia...and don't forget God and guns.

They literally can't sleep because of who the president is - and the flames of their delusions have been fanned by sections of the media. Fox News pundits and Rush Limbaugh are stand-out examples.

I worry about Obama's safety every single day.

These murders were done by sick minds full of hate, sick minds that need tending...not inflaming. When they are egged on by the likes off Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Riley, it's inevitable that some of them will change their thoughts into actions.

It looks like these murders by right wing zealots will continue because the sick rightwing fringes are energized and feel justified...and are all but celebrated by their mouthpieces.

And to think that right-wing zealots preach that Liberalism is a mental illness...