We’ve learned quite a lot about how loathsome a commentator Lawrence O’Donnell is from his “Rewrite” segment on James Hudnall’s and Batton Lash’s “Obama Nation” cartoon.  His hilariously uptight lecturing and blatant hypocrisy have already been documented, but one element of his “Rewrite” that needs more attention is his shocking violation of journalistic ethics.  Not only does O’Donnell make a fool of himself here, but he crosses several lines, going from pompous to downright menacing.

First of all, check out how O’Donnell introduces Batton and Lash to his audience.  The “Rewrite” segment usually includes a comic-style graphic with the title of the segment and, if he’s talking about a right-winger, an unflattering picture of his target next to the word (no picture when it’s a left-winger).  However, this particular instance of “Rewrite” went a step further, pasting each author’s picture in the “Rewrite” graphic as well as their names.  The formatting turns the graphic into a phrase/sentence: “Rewrite James Hudnall” and “Rewrite Batton Lash.”  Am I splitting hairs?  Not as finely as those who called for a “New Tone” because of Palin’s target map.  From the deluge of death threats these men have received in the wake of O’Donnell’s show, these graphics (and the uniqueness of their layout in this instance) clearly violate the rhetorical standards that pundits like O’Donnell haughtily demanded in the wake of Gabrielle Giffords’ horrendous shooting.

The New Tone at work.

Furthermore, O’Donnell divulges the name of Batton Lash’s wife– not once, but twice.  She is a private citizen who had no role in the creation of the cartoon.  That fully constitutes an unwarranted breach of privacy on its own, but he goes even further by naming the city in which she and Lash live, directly asking his viewers to confront them in public about Lash’s cartoon– in effect, commanding them to personally harrass a private citizen.

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Meet the New Tone. Same as the Old Tone.

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The New York Daily News published a column Tuesday on the fabricated cartoon controversy – except they saw no reason to hyperventilate as Lawrence O’Donnell did last night, and bring race into a situation where it clearly doesn’t belong.

In the cartoon, posted over the weekend, the First Lady is sitting at a dinner table with President Obama.

“I’ve stepped up my efforts to control America’s eating habits by telling restaurants to lower portion sizes and fat content,” a double-chinned Michelle Obama says, referring to her anti-obesity campaign, which celebrated its one-year anniversary last week.

The President, pictured with huge ears and sitting next to her in front of a tiny plate of vegetables, responds, “Michelle, I want to get reelected. What you’re doing is only going to annoy a lot of people.”

The First Lady responds, “Shut up and pass the bacon!”

[...]

“Michelle Obama’s work on nutrition issues has gone beyond the normal First Lady advocacy into the realm of shaping national policy, so, on this issue, I think she is fair game for criticism,” Flynn [Mike Flynn, Editor, BigGovernment.com]  added.

A local news station in Cleveland also reported on the story:

Controversy over a new conservative slam against the white house. A cartoon features an overweight Michelle Obama eating burgers while promoting healthier eating to the President. The creators say nothing racist here, just a jab at what they call the hypocrisy in the first lady’s campaign against obesity, telling people how and what to eat.

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When Batton Lash and I decided to take on the Obama Administration with our strip 16 months ago, few people were willing to mock the president. Yet we both saw that this president was at times foolish, mendacious, clueless and vain. Perfect fodder for a political cartoon.

Batton and I are not so much conservatives as libertarians. We’re believers in small government because, as I outline in my political thesis, it’s the only workable form. President Obama is very much a big government fan. He has tripled the debt and deficits in his first year in office. His new budget would add another three trillion. These are things we don’t like about him. We also don’t like the lies. Which seem to be second nature to the man.

So last Sunday we turned in what we thought was a very mild cartoon mocking the first lady’s over reach of her powers. And I decided to show her eating hamburgers like Wimpy from the old Popeye cartoons to mock the fact that she tends to scold other people’s eating habits, yet every time we read about what they’re eating at the White House, it’s extreme. And to throw in a gag we used before, the President is shown eating hardly anything. Because, let’s face it, she is bigger than he is. Her arms are thicker than his legs. But no one was suggesting she was fat. No one was commenting on her race. It’s merely funny to show them in contrast to one another.

The cartoon did not get a lot of comments at first. I figured it was rather mild. I would try to be funnier next time. Little did I expect the firestorm that followed a few days later.

The propaganda wing of the Democrat party known as Media Matters for America, who is out to destroy all critics of this administration, ran an article saying the cartoon attacked the first lady’s weight and gave out our emails, encouraging people to send us hate mail. Like pigs to the trough the mainstream press jumped on the story. Yesterday morning I got up and saw it mentioned on several websites like Salon. The NY Daily News wanted to interview us. And it was on the local TV news. We started getting inundated with hate mail. But the worst was yet to come.

The Daily News article came out and basically said we were mocking her weight, which wasn’t true at all. We posted our full response on the Big Sites and my blog. Most of the emails and comments we received during the day were about us allegedly mocking her weight. And I had to set people straight over and over again. Some of them accused us of racism. Which is just the left’s way of telling you to shut up. One e-mailer suggested our cartoon was going to inspire teen suicides because we were supposedly mocking body issues.

But then they died down. As evening came, I got a message that MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell was taking us to task, calling us mentally disturbed racists. He showed our pictures. He gave out where we lived. Told people to go after us. Even mentioned Batton’s wife who had nothing to do with the cartoon. I had to wait for the video clip to be uploaded and what I saw was jaw dropping. Aside from the patently absurd characterization of the strip where he calls it “racist” and claims (without showing the art) that it depicts the president as a half-human, half animal creature, it was the most hysterical, over-the-top tirade since, well, since Keith Olbermann did his nightly carny act.

Frankly, I was surprised that Lawrence O’Donnell made such an epic fool of himself, that he would open himself and his company to such legal liability. Not only did he lie about what we were doing, he told people where we lived and to attack us! Is this a professional show? Is he a professional news commentator? Not hardly. He should be fired. What he did was tantamount to a call for violence.

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Our latest Obama Nation cartoon has caused quite a stir. It’s gained national attention. Naturally, the shills for the Obama Administration at Media Matters decided to draw national attention to it because, why deal with real issues like the President’s nation destroying budget?

The media was asking for our response to calls that the cartoon is racist. So here they are:

James Hudnall:

As a classical liberal (aka Libertarian) I’m  opposed to the nanny state. The first lady has every right to express her opinions about obesity or try to bring awareness to the issue, but when an unelected official starts dictating what industries should do,  it deserves our scorn. She’s decided to tell schools what foods and drinks they can sell to kids. And now she started telling the National Restaurant Association (NRA) what they should be doing regarding portion sizes and options. When you combine her actions with recent attempts by other politicians like NYC mayor Bloomberg to legislate salt and transfats, it’s starting to come off like creeping fascism.

The government has no business intruding on citizens personal lives beyond enforcing reasonable laws. But control freaks never tire of interfering with other people’s choices and options.

There is nothing racist about the cartoon. The artist (Batton Lash) merely drew the first couple in caricature, which is what political cartoonists do. All we’ve done was do take a mild poke at the hypocrisy of the first lady. The press has already detailed the kind of foods served at white house dinners. It’s rarely diet friendly.  Such as the menu at their super bowl party.

When someone steps out on to the political stage, they have to expect criticism from people who disagree with them. It doesn’t matter what their race is. Race doesn’t give them a free pass. Our criticism was very mild.  The reaction the cartoon has gotten, which has been fueled by political agitators like Media Matters, has been over the top.  The true measure of success of any political cartoon is how it effects the other side in the argument. Apparently, this one was a home run.

Batton Lash:

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If you want to know what “progressive” policies will do to America in the long run, look no farther than the president’s home state. According to the MSM narrative, the economic disaster in Illinois is Rod Blagojevich’s fault. That’s true to some extent, but there’s much more to the story than the incompetence of one man. Despite the recession, there is no good reason that Illinois should be bleeding jobs and that its state budget should be on life support.

The Prairie State – my state – sits atop the transportation crossroads of America, has a rich, diversified economic base and a multi-talented workforce. Less than a decade ago, the state had money in the bank, unemployment was low and the outlook was bright. Illinois even managed to shrug off the mini-recession that followed 9-11 with barely a pause. Then, in 2003, Democrats took over complete control of state government, brimming with progressive policies that – cross their hearts and hope to die – wouldn’t hurt the state’s budget or damage its economy one little bit. Happy days, the bedazzled citizens of Illinois were told, were here again.

Seven years later, the Illinois’ economy is lies in smoldering ruins thanks to the progressive policies foisted upon its citizens by a cabal of Democrats that included then-state senator Barack H. Obama. Illinois ranks forty eighth in the nation in job loss, with over 200,000 jobs lost in 2009 alone and unemployment over eleven per cent. Our leading exports used to be corn and soybeans. Today, our number one export is college graduates, because young adults can’t find jobs in the state that gave them their education. In 2000, Illinois debt basically matched revenues. Now, the state’s total debt totals over $100 billion, almost four times annual revenue. (more…)

As you may know, I do a cartoon on Big Hollywood every Sunday with Batton Lash called Obama Nation. It gives us the opportunity to lampoon the WPE* since few others seemed willing to do it when we started. But Big Journalism offers the opportunity to mock the “mainstream media” which constantly fails to report the facts or deal with reality. So I called up another friend, comics veteran and fellow libertarian, Val Mayerik to enter the fray and have a few laughs.

The strip we’re doing is called “Useful Idiots.” A term coined by the Soviets as the pet name they had for Western Lefties who believed any lie they were fed. It will feature a cast of familiar characters you may have seen on TV while changing channels. For the sake of storytelling we’ve put them all at the same network which we call BSN. And we focus on showing how the so called infotainment world provides neither. Info nor entertainment. Just a lot of partisan noise dressed up as “news” or “commentary”.

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