***ADDED: Something else the Blaze didn’t bother to share was this.

You have to wonder what’s going on with Glenn Beck.

Beck’s fall from grace started when his site, The Blaze, falsely attacked James O’Keefe — to the delight of the very people who used to attack Beck. Then Beck, of all things, betrayed the Tea Party in the worst way any conservative could. I thought he’d hit bottom with that. After all, how much lower can you go than selling out to the mainstream media?

Well, yesterday, what I thought had been a rhetorical question was answered when The Blaze went full Andrew Sullivan, full Politico, full Wonkette, and and attacked Sarah Palin over a situation involving her family. 

The Governor’s sin? Composing what amounts to a touching article about her family’s life with Trig – Todd and Sarah Palin’s youngest son with Down Syndrome.

To understand how misleading the Blaze attack is, you first have to read what Beck’s writer, a piece of work named Eddie Scarry (more on him below), wrote:

What’s the first thing that came to mind when you heard that Rick Santorum‘s special needs child was in the hospital with pneumonia late last month? I bet all of Mitt Romney‘s money it wasn’t Sarah Palin unless you are Sarah Palin. …

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Glenn Beck’s The Blaze has joined the “progressive” left’s all-out attack on James O’Keefe after his Project Veritas successfully demonstrated that dead people could vote in the New Hampshire primary due to the state’s lack of voter ID requirements at the polls.

Instead of focusing on the issue of voter fraud, Beck has slandered O’Keefe, stoking an apparent grudge that surfaced during O’Keefe’s successful NPR sting last year. At that time, The Blaze tried–and failed–to discredit O’Keefe’s exposé of political bias among NPR’s senior executives, which resulted in the departure of CEO Vivian Schiller. Today, The Blaze claims the New Hampshire attorney general is investigating O’Keefe, when in fact the attorney general is investigating the state’s voting system over the flaws O’Keefe exposed.

Ironically, Beck had previously treated voter fraud with the seriousness it deserves.

In 2008, he attacked “liberal whiners” for defending ACORN on the issue of voter fraud. In 2009, he attacked voter fraud by Democrats in the Minnesota election that saw Al Franken unseat Republican Norm Coleman. In 2010–relying on O’Keefe’s ACORN exposé–Beck attacked “progressives” and MSNBC, whom he said were promoting voter fraud in an attempt to help Democrat Martha Coakley defeat Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election for U.S. Senate:

“Fix the rules! Make sure that it doesn’t happen again! The rules are severely flawed, clearly!” Beck exclaimed in 2009. O’Keefe has made the same case with his New Hampshire sting.

But today, Beck is so desperate to discredit O’Keefe that he has discarded his principled stance against voter fraud and thrown his lot in with Barack Obama’s legal team and dead voters.

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Keith Olbermann is making waves. Again.

The former MSNBC host has pulled out the big guns, bringing in Hollywood (and gaming) superlawyer Patricia Glaser “to ‘determine his rights’ in his five-year contract,” after his public spat with Current TV bosses, a source tells The Wrap.

Meanwhile, executives at Current TV said that relations – especially those with Current CEO Joel Hyatt – were at a breaking point after deteriorating over the past several months.

“I hope Keith is part of our future, but it’s up to Keith,” an executive with Current who declined to be identified told TheWrap. “Keith set us in the right direction and we’re on that path now … and as I’ve learned over the years, everybody is replaceable.”

Olbermann was conspicuously absent from special election coverage of the Iowa Caucuses at Current TV, where the notably cantankerous host has held the title of Chief News Officer since his abrupt departure from MSNBC last summer. After his “Countdown” program, which was migrated from MSNBC to Current TV, was pre-empted Tuesday night by the GOP primary coverage, sans Olbermann, details of a breaking point began unfolding to the public.

It initially appeared that the programming change came as a surprise to Olbermann. On Tuesday, he tweeted what implied the return of Countdown following its holiday hiatus, only to later tweet a correction, directing his 360,000+ followers to defer questions to his bosses.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

Glenn Beck suggests that Newt Gingrich is so “progressive” that only racism could explain why the tea party would support him over President Obama. He is alluding to Gingrich’s praise of Theodore Roosevelt. But the “progressive” outlook of Republican Theodore Roosevelt (TR) was much different than the Progressive Party of Henry Wallace, who served as Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president. TR opposed socialism and communism.

During an appearance on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Fox Business Channel program, Beck said about Gingrich:

“This man is a progressive. He knows he’s a progressive. He doesn’t have a problem with being a progressive. So if you’ve got a big government progressive [in Gingrich] or a big government progressive in Obama, one in Newt Gingrich, one in Obama, ask yourself this tea party. Is it about Obama’s race? Because that’s what it appears to be to me. If you’re against him but you’re for this guy, it must be about race.”

With this comment, Beck is claiming that the policies of Gingrich and Obama are the same or at least very similar. However, in his interview with Beck, Gingrich made the point that he believes government has a role in maintaining some “minimum regulatory standards of public health and safety.” He also said government programs have to be reformed to maximize individual choice and that some federal subsidies, such as those which bolster a domestic oil and gas industry, are defensible. None of this qualifies as Obama-style socialism.

Christopher Ruddy of Newsmax noted in his article, “Glenn Beck Should Revere Theodore Roosevelt,” that “The policies advocated by TR were not those of some social engineer who wanted to remake the United States based on a Saul Alinsky radical model.”

Beck notes that Theodore Roosevelt started the Progressive Party, but this is not the same Progressive Party, dominated by the Communists, that nominated Henry Wallace for president in 1948 and which continues to influence the Democratic Party today. (more…)

- SNL parodies “resist we much.”

Is it really a parody though if it’s indistinguishable from the original content?

- “Face the Nation” expands to one hour.

- Television anchors and their mini me stand-ins. A cute art project.

- “Layoffs and cutbacks lead to a new world of news deserts” … or do they?

I had a discussion the other day about how new media, live media (i.e. Twitter) had taken the place of so much of our news diet. We were trying to recount the number of stories we first learned through traditional media. Neither of us could. Whether it was first learning about earthquakes, riots, scandals, we each learned of the biggest stories of the past couple of years via new media. Yet to hear the dying print newsies tell it, all of news is dying simple because of their lot in life. Look beyond your navel. Even in areas where governments cracked down on social media like Twitter, citizens still found a way around it with proxy servers and the like. News still leaked through the cracks, more urgently, grittier, and more immediate than the foreign correspondents, most of whom had been expelled from the country, to relay it.

- NYT shocked to discover that in 2011, some women anchors are working full time and juggling motherhood out in the open. How many male anchors are juggling fatherhood and work?

- If you tolerate Newt Gingrich but dislike Barack Obama, are you a racist? Or do you jut think that Gingrich’s brand of beltway is less heinous than Obama’s brand of socialism?

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- Two super fun facts about Matt Lauer.

- The UHF of cable news now has an app.

- NYT stock downgraded. Surprise.

- Seriously, is there anything short of brain damage that qualifies as an acceptable excuse for watching MSNBC?

Take this evening’s Ed Show. Schultz accused Rep. Paul Ryan of “inciting civil war” and suggested Republicans might “want violence to take place in our society.” Not to be outdone, thankfully former Florida congressman Alan Grayson called Ryan and Republicans “the real killers,” akin to O.J. Simpson.

- Bill O’Reilly challenges Glenn Beck in the epic Restoring Battle 2011.

(more…)

I’ve finally made it home from TeaCon 2011, where I spoke yesterday morning and fellowshipped with hundreds of conservative activists. It was a great event all around, organized by WIND 560 (amazing hospitality; I broadcasted the DLRS from their studios on Friday), the Illinois Tea Party, and the Chicago Tea Party.

Some photos and video from the event:

Chris Loesch photo

Cain’s post-speech press conference:

I’ve more video here:

Cain Unplugged: ‘I Still Worship In The Hood’

Cain On Romney: ‘Great Hair’

Cain At TeaCon: ‘I Have No Idea Why Other Candidates Aren’t Here’

Unfortunately, Cain was unprepared for his appearance on “This Week” following his showing at TeaCon.

After three years of hateful smear attacks from Janeane Garofalo, Andrew Breitbart hit back.

From my speech Saturday morning:

Chris Loesch photo

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Continuing our series illustrating how MSNBC relies on Media Matters (the Soros-funded non-profit organization whose dubious tax-exempt status is currently under fire) as their research department, we are pleased to present the Ed Schultz “Psycho Talk” edition.

The Ed Show on MSNBC has a segment called “Psycho Talk” where Schultz shows clip of Republican politicians and media figures saying things that he finds objectionable. Here are three examples in the past few weeks that show how Schultz is taking the story, the talking points and in one case even source video directly from Media Matters.

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Flashback: “The Right’s Rising Tide of Violent Rhetoric”:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords appears be the latest victim of anti-government violence that has taken hold in America since 2009. It’s a wave of violence that’s cresting along with a tide of hateful, insurrectionist rhetoric that far too many conservatives refuse to condemn. Instead, the toxic talk is routinely defended as being nothing more than spirited debate.

It’s not. It’s deadly. And until those in positions of power say so, the dangerous rhetoric is likely to continue.

Whether that rhetoric played a role in the gun massacre that erupted at the Tucson shopping center on Saturday, we don’t yet know. Note that over the weekend the local Arizona sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, condemned “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business,” and especially the influence it may have on “unbalanced” people, like the Tucson shooter.

What’s undeniable is that the attempted assassination of Giffords took place against a right-wing media backdrop that has been targeting the government, and specifically Democrats, in an unconscionable manner.

Last night, a group of moviegoers in New York City’s Bryant Park accosted Glenn Beck and his family members, intimidating them and kicking a container of wine onto his wife (a commandment of the Mormon church prohibits alcohol consumption). We here at Big Journalism wonder, was this attack on Beck and his loved ones a product of “hateful rhetoric” and “toxic talk” from Beck’s left-wing detractors? Let’s take a look at the dangerous language coming from Media Matters about Beck from just this past week:

Soros blogger says Beck is "doomed."

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I honestly had no other conclusion to reach after reading Frances Martel’s latest, wherein she compares Glenn Beck mocking David Carr’s “Real Time” comments to the behavior of a mentally disabled person.

Except Beck’s imitation of Neanderthal wasn’t so much ape-like but downright… disabled. He was fairly plainly, amid the twitching and bizarre facial expressions, behaving like someone with a serious mental deficiency– which, in some sense, made his point. Beck claims that, according to Carr and other “elitists” (read: people who are respected for knowing things about politics), the Johnny-come-latelys who have never participated in government until the Tea Party came around are to be treated as if their ideas are the product of some sort of mental illness– as if they themselves are mentally disabled. In the process, though, Beck stopped making fun of Carr and very visibly made fun of the mentally disabled.

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Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank tends to use an unusual barometer to select his topics.  He likes to write about subjects for which he has a very strong opinion, but very little knowledge. His latest column, “Joe Lieberman joining Glenn Beck: a shanda” proves my point.  Unfortunately Milbank would not know a shanda (Yiddish for embarrassment), if one jumped up kissed him on the lips and wished him a gut morgan (good morning).

The purpose of this column was to criticize Senator Joe Lieberman for joining Glenn Beck for his August rally in Jerusalem called “Restoring Courage.”

“I’d love to participate,” Lieberman confirmed when The Post’s Felicia Sonmez found him in a Capitol hallway. “It’s just going to be a rally to support Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

This nearly caused me to plotz [faint].

Notice how cleverly Milbank stuck a Yiddish word into his column to prove his Jewish “street cred?”

Joe Lieberman, first Jew on a presidential ticket, was embracing Beck, the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in the mass media. One of the most visible Jews in America was making common cause with a man who invoked apocalyptic Christian theology in promoting his rally in Israel.

I admire Lieberman, and I’ve defended him over the years when he defied party and faction. But if he shares a stage with this creature, he will surrender the decency that has defined his public life. [my emphasis]

Its interesting that Milbank uses Yiddish to establish his Jewish “street cred”, but calls him the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes” If Milbank truly wants to prove his Jewishness, perhaps he should learn the concept of, “motzi shem ra“is the spreading of malicious lies,” which according to the Rabbis is a severe sin. With this comment, Milbank is showing he buys into the George Soros/ Media Matters strategy of trying to destroy Glenn Beck by branding him as an anti-Semite (the history of this strategy is outlined here).

For those of you who are not familiar with the Beck rally allow me to present this explanation.

Israel is in the most precarious position she has faced since the 1967 War. Palestinian terrorists are on three of its borders, Fatah in Judea and Samaria,  Hamas in Gaza,  Hezbollah in Lebanon. Adding to the threat is that the Syrian regime is  facing collapse, so it is tying to divert its people’s attention from hating it leaders to hating Israel, Egypt is becoming radicalized and most of the parties with potential to twin the next election and take over leadership of the country are promising to tear up the Camp David treaty. And Iran, close to developing the capability to send a nuclear warhead into Tel Aviv continues to threaten to wipe the Jewish State off the map.

(more…)

Media Matters enjoys a comfy tax exempt status under the guise of this mission statement:

Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. [emphasis mine]

Let’s look at how MMFA carried out it’s charter in the past week by  ”comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media”.

In this post Media Matters analyzes the accuracy of Fox and Friends criticizing President Obama’s failure to start the “job machine.” Curiously, Media Matters never defines “job machine” and neither does anyone on Fox. It’s just a subjective term that Media Matters apparently considers “misinformation.” The realization that tax-free organizational employees spent time “researching” and crafting a response to the “job machine” line is so absurd it’s enough to make any sane person question what service Media Matters is actually providing to the American people. But what’s interesting is how Media Matters “fact-checks” Fox and Friends.

From the offending segment:

DOOCY: How can you say [the trend of the economy is] overall very positive? I just don’t get that. This past week, a new report came that out for the chroniclely [sic] unemployed, it now takes 40 weeks to find a new job.

CAMEROTA: Oh boy.

DOOCY: That is the longest it has ever taken in the history of the survey, and that just shows you how many people out there are suffering. They want jobs! But right now, in this economy, nothing that this administration has done has fired up the job machine, and people are angry.

So it’s clear that Doocy’s argument that the “job machine” not being fired up is the recent release of dismal unemployment numbers. Media Matters goes on to cite several sources that claim that the 2009 Recovery Act helped lower unemployment. The only problem is several of those sources are from 2010 and do not take into account today’s job numbers, which is exactly what Fox and Friends was referencing. Media Matters did link to a recent blog by the CBO.

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I have always wondered who made Howard Kurtz the arbiter of Reliable Sources, but in Weinergate, we are reminded that Kurtz’s ability to discern them is very much in question.  For that matter, so is CNN’s.  It has never been a secret that the supposedly even-handed journalism maven is in reality almost too liberal to function, but if he can’t get his head screwed on straight, he might have to fork over the name of his show to someone else altogether.  Hopefully Kurtz will have the decency to straighten out some of his Weinergate missteps soon and reconsider who really are “reliable sources.”

Kurtz’s history of judging Reliable Sources is staggeringly one sided and ideological.  For one thing, I have frequently seen him go out of his way to profess his respect for the reliability of Keith Olbermann, of all people, not to mention the rest of the guttersnipes at MSNBC:

Now, I don’t put Keith Olbermann in the same category as Beck at all. His MSNBC show, agree with it, disagree with it, was a very well-researched program.

Sure it was, Howard.  Also have a look at how incensed he got when Hugh Hewitt insulted Olbermann on Reliable Sources.  Kurtz and his publication The Daily Beast also seem to regard the Daily Kos, where Olbermann once blogged, as a very legitimate publication.  The most recent example comes during Weinergate.  The Daily Beast didn’t respond when I inquired who writes the captions for their “Cheat Sheet,” but have a look at this caption.  This is The Daily Beast’s own writing, not a quote from the linked story:

Not even a hint of suspicion about the reliability of the post by an anonymous blogger “stef” at a radically partisan website with absolutely no editorial oversight.  The Daily Beast simply reported it as fact. Not long after this story was posted, Kurtz gave it his blessing on twitter, boasting how his “wait[ing] for the facts” had just been validated:

The bottom line is that Kurtz actually believes “the facts” come from anonymous, unaccountable bloggers at one of the murkiest breeding grounds for partisan trolls there is.  Once “stef” weighed in, Kurtz could finally comment on Weinergate without even bothering to check.  “The facts” had arrived. (more…)

What drove Glenn Beck to tell an increasingly large series of lies about his participation in the Shirley Sherrod story that broke back in July, 2010?

Why would he tell both TV and live audiences things like this….

Shirley Sherrod, is the next example. We didn’t rush to condemn her. This is another seemingly “redistribution of wealth” woman — who I would bet that I vehemently disagree with on probably everything. But she asked for the rest of the tape to be heard, the farmers in the story backed her up. It was a turning point story. We defended her and said her side of the story demanded to be heard — because context matters…

or this?

I have a story I want to share with you that I haven’t shared yet. Do you know why I didn’t do the Shirley Sherrod story? Did anyone think that story was uncommon for the people that we have in the White House? That there might be some prejudice that is happening? No. I stood in my office with my entire team, and I said, “something’s wrong, don’t do this story.”That’s what saved me: the Sword of the Spirit.

As you’ll see, both of those statements are totally false. Glenn Beck not only didn’t initially defend Sherrod but he actually dropped the entire context that Sherrod’s video clip was originally presented in. Close to a year later, Beck still hasn’t been honest about his initial context dropping attacks on Sherrod.

So – why? Did Beck start spinning a story and was unable to discern truth from fiction? Did he enjoy the praise he got from left wing sources, who believed his spin?

(more…)

On Tuesday evening the New York Observer posted an interview with Andrew Breitbart written by Kat Stoeffel.  In it she invented a new and preposterous claim about the Shirley Sherrod story:

According to Mr. Breitbart, fellow Tea Partier Glenn Beck first joined him in editing and eviscerating Ms. Sherrod’s 2010 N.A.A.C.P. speech on the radio, before publishing the unedited version on his Web site, discrediting Mr. Breitbart on television and calling for his apology.

This is a complete and total fabrication on multiple levels.  First, and most important, is the fact that the Shirley Sherrod video was not “edited” in any way by anyone at all.  An excerpt was shown at Big Government and Breitbart.tv but the excerpt was a continuous clip with no edits made to it at all.  I know, I’m the one who posted it.

Which brings us to the second and most ridiculous claim made by the New York Observer:  that Glenn Beck had anything at all to do with the “editing” or presentation of the Shirley Sherrod clip.  This is, of course, a complete and total fabrication.  And, on Wednesday April 20th, two days ago, the author of the post Kat Stoeffel acknowledged that it was wrong and needed to be corrected.

As of now, the correction still has not been made.  Which can only lead us to believe that the editors and publishers of the New York Observer want to lie to their readers and want them to think that Glenn Beck edited the video of Shirley Sherrod with Andrew Breitbart.

Here is the letter I sent to Ms. Stoeffel within hours of the post going up:

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Yesterday I was all confused, when I originally heard the news that Glenn Beck was leaving his daily Fox TV show, I wasn’t surprised.  Beck had been dropping hints about it since the end of 2010.  He was saying things like, “You must prepare yourselves to carry on without me,” which was a signal that he was either looking for other opportunities, God-forbid had a fatal illness, or that girl he dated finally admitted to the police that he was fully aware of the fact that she was only nine.

On the other hand, the folks at Media Matters claimed victory, they said their efforts to slander Beck had finally worked and Fox was getting rid of him.  According to the Soros funded group, Beck’s audience was way down (even though he still beats most prime time cable audiences) and thanks to their efforts, every TV advertiser in the universe refused to advertise on his program (even those in the Gamma Quadrant).

The Jewish Funds for Justice agreed, in fact they said that the efforts of the 400 Rabbis who condemned Beck in the Wall Street Journal was a big factor in what they claimed was the cancellation of the Beck show.  Apparently those “Rabbis” were praying to God non-stop ever since someone explained to them what prayer was (and what God was also).

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This morning on Talk Radio Network’s nationally syndicated, “America’s Morning News,” George Will told co-hosts John McCaslin and Amy Holmes that he is happy to see Glenn Beck leave the Fox News Network.

Will said that Beck’s “drift into more extreme and bizarre positions was threatening the Fox brand.” And that the “the health and happiness of Fox is served by his departure.”

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