Hacking the Fox News Twitter feed, tweeting a false report of presidential assassination.

"We wish @joebiden the best of luck as our new President of the United States. In such a time of madness, there’s light at the end of tunnel."

Media Matters makes a montage of the Glenn Beck show.

Media Matters hates Glenn Beck, but this montage is pretty damned entertaining, perhaps because the Fox News channel show is ending. Tonight is the last installment:

An advertising boycott that began after Beck said Obama had a “deep-seated hatred for white people” led to more than 400 advertisers telling Fox they didn’t want their commercials seen on his show.

Fox and Beck headed for a divorce, their relationship largely soured by control issues. Beck has set up his own diversified business, as he makes speeches, writes books and owns a website along with GBTV, which is run by a former Fox executive.

That Media Matters montage made me...
	... think about why I love Glenn Beck.
	... wish I'd paid more attention to what might have been a great show.
	... think about why I hate Glenn Beck.
	... realize that man needed to be exiled to the internet.
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"What happened after the Obama election, I think, is that Fox morphed into something that isn’t even recognizable as a form of media."

"It looks more like a political committee than what it looked like pre-Obama, which was essentially talk radio on television. It’s more dangerous now; it’s more lethal. And so as Fox has doubled down, we’ve doubled down."

We  = David Brock and his Foxophobic enterprise Media Matters for America.

Brock has used his buck-raking ability to turn Media Matters into a political force. What began in 2004 as a ten-person shop with a $3 million annual budget now has around 90 employees and plans to spend $15 million this year. In a fancy office building on Massachusetts Avenue, the organization’s researchers work in six-hour monitoring shifts, from five in the morning till one at night, watching Fox or listening to talk radio in the hope that Rush or Sean or some other conservative yakker will step in it. They’re seldom disappointed. “I knew that as soon as you started shining a light on these people,” Brock says, “there was enough outrageous and despicable and offensive and false commentary that you could make a splash.”

I appreciate their work! Keep clipping those clips and serving them up. As you monitor FoxNews and Limbaugh, I'll monitor you and whatever the hell you've morphed into. To me, it's all recognizable as media. And I'm always looking for juicy bits to chew on.

Part of Media Matters’ strength is its staff’s almost unfathomable endurance. “People who work here have to have a personality that enjoys getting angry watching Fox for six hours every day but then being patient enough to want to fact-check every second of it,” explains Ari Rabin-Havt, Media Matters’ executive vice-president. 

Ha. I love the way New York Magazine, writing this lengthy piece, goes to the Media Matters executives. I'd like to hear from those employees who do the detail work, "getting angry" for the rich execs. They're supposed to be all about truth and anger and for the left...  always for the left. How does that feel, as you comb through all those video files, looking for trouble truth — but only one perspective of the truth — and cull the clips that make the truth that your bosses want to tell as truthy as possible? Are you angry enough all the time, angry in the right way, angry about truth as you do the bidding of guys who are raking in money to get at the people you're paid to hate for them? What are you paid?

The group demands accuracy from those staffers. Last year, according to Rabin-Havt, Media Matters produced 20,000 pieces of content and issued only 24 corrections. “There’s the expectation that you can’t get something wrong,” he says. “There are consequences for mistakes. One person was fired for an error last year.”

Oh! How ineffably virtuous of you! Get to work, staffers! Stay angry, stay truthy, cut clips that stoke hatred of the right, but don't cut them to the point where we have to issue a correction, or we will cut you.

(Hey, that guy who got cut should write an exposé of what goes on inside Media Matters.)

Althouse on Fox News with Megyn Kelly.

The video.

Althouse on Fox News at 1:45 ET/12:45 CT.

I'll be on for 5 minutes around that time, talking to Megyn Kelly about the video Meade and I made of the children doing protest chants in the rotunda.

What the hell is "It's Time to Take Out the Trash Day"?

Okay, this is a Facebook group setting up an event today at the Capitol, to go from 1 to 4 p.m.

Gateway Pundit reports it as:

Wisconsin tea party members are planning a “It’s Time to Take out the Trash Day” at the Wisconsin State Capitol to clean up after the smelly slobs who defaced the capitol building during their two weeks of protesting and sleepovers. Wisconsin officials say the cleanup after the protests will cost the state tens of thousands of dollars.

Do we know that "Wisconsin tea party members" set up that Facebook group? There's no official Tea Party organization here, with leaders who adopt policies and stage events. Any individual — for whatever reason — can take it upon himself to announce an event like this and promote it via websites like Gateway Pundit and Breitbart and Instapundit.

And here's "Fox and Friends" referring to the person who put up the Facebook group. They don't name him. He's "the guest that we had on earlier" who is "affiliated with the Tea Party." The female Fox Friend frantically explains that, according to this guy, it doesn't have to cost what was estimated at $7.5 million to clean the Capitol because "we're going to bring a bucket and pail" and clean the building.

This is idiocy! The reason the estimate is so high is that this is extremely valuable old marble that needs to be cleaned according to the protocols of historical restoration. Don't come in here with buckets of water and scrub brushes or whatever you think will make you look good on camera. Don't you realize you could cause more damage? You can't have every well-meaning do-gooder slopping around in there with water! Even aside from the damage to the 100-year-old building, somebody could slip and fall on the water you get on the floor or the junk you put down where someone might walk. (Go to 2:00 in this video of mine to see how the protesters caused a big Democratic legislator to fall by leaving stuff on the ground. (Ironically, it was a pile of peace signs.))

Meaning well isn't enough. Remember the old Reagan quote: "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

I'm from the Tea Party and I'm here to help isn't exactly terrifying. But it doesn't make me feel great. The general rule is: Don't help unless you know what you are doing! The default position should be: Do nothing. First, do no harm. This is an essential conservative principle. It's especially obnoxious to help for the purpose of looking good — and making other people look bad.

I assume "take out the trash" is intended as a double entendre, and the person who named this group intended to call the protesters "trash." They are not trash. They are people you disagree with, who have chosen a means of expression that you disagree with.

Now, it's a great idea for Tea Party folk to come down to the Capitol to express themselves and to pick up any litter that they find around the place, inside and out. That doesn't take any special expertise. But if you believe the place is strewn with litter, you are just plain wrong. Meade and/or I have been down there every day for the 2+ weeks, and we're not seeing trash. I have been blogging about this for many days, after a picture of mine showing litter on one of the first days went viral on the internet. The protesters got the message and were extremely diligent picking up trash after that point. Not knowing that makes you look ignorant.

Preening about being better than they are, when you are that ignorant, is really embarrassing.

UPDATE: Meade was at the Capitol from about 1 to 3:30, and he says he didn't notice any Tea Party activity. Maybe they did good deeds in such an un-show-offy fashion that he couldn't see them. Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing...

AND: Instapundit says: "It’s funny that cleaning is now transgressive."

"Now, that guy just hit me."

The hit isn't on camera, but we can see and hear that the Wisconsin protesters don't like Fox News.

"Yes, she’s got political views, but gosh, look how political views have worked for Fox."

"There’s certainly the opportunity to create a much more powerful liberal voice in the country. The fact that it hasn’t been done yet, doesn’t mean it can’t be done."

And since you paid $315 million for it...

"History tells us" something that history doesn't tell us, say sociologists stumbling to protect Frances Fox Piven.

Here's the expression of "outrage" by the officers of the American Sociological Association:

Scholars of her caliber, intellectuals of her stature, and especially those who tackle social conflicts and contradictions, mass movements and political action, should stimulate equal levels of serious challenge and creative dialogue. Being called by Glenn Beck one of the “nine most dangerous people in the world,” and an “enemy of the Constitution” is not a credible challenge; it is plain demagoguery.

So vigorous debate about Piven's ideas is really important, but it better be the right kind of debate by the right kind of people and most certainly not that terrible, terrible man Glenn Beck. She's very lofty and serious, so, while she should be challenged, she must be challenged only by lofty and serious individuals, and of course, Glenn Beck is not one.

Despite its lack of substance, Beck’s attacks have resulted in a flood of hate mail and internet postings attacking Professor Piven, including a series of death threats. While it is true that death threats are generally only a form of extremist rhetoric, they indicate an overheated emotional atmosphere that researchers on collective violence call “the hysteria zone.” It is a zone in which deranged individuals can be motivated to real violence against those targeted by demagoguery. History tells us that such things as the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords that resulted in six deaths in Tucson, Arizona can be examples of how abundant, polarizing rhetoric by political leaders and commentators can spur mass murder.

Does lofty, serious, intellectual sociology involve looking at evidence and analyzing it rationally? Linking the Tucson massacre to hot political rhetoric was a rash mistake made by demagogues — you want to talk about demagogues?! — demagogues who were slavering over the prospect of a right-wing massacre that would prove politically useful.

We call on Fox News to take steps to control the encouragement of violence that has run rampant in recent months. 

Fox News? And do you also call on The Nation, which published "Mobilizing the Jobless," by Frances Fox Piven, the article Glenn Beck brought to the attention of his large audience? Piven called for riots. She wrote:

An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees....

When did Glenn Beck call for violence?  Back to the sociologists' letter of outrage:

Serious and honest, undistorted disagreement and public debate on unemployment, economic crisis, the rights and tactics of welfare recipients, government intervention and the erosion of the American way of life should be supported. 

Undistorted? Okay, let's see you do it first. The "American way of life"? By that term, do you mean — in an undistorted sort of way — like Greece?

We in no way advocate restricting the freedom of speech of political commentators.... Where we all should draw the line is at name-calling and invective rising to the level of inciting others to violence.

So Piven should not have called for "something like" Greek-style riots, and it was good of Glenn Beck to point out that Piven crossed the line, right? I mean, we're dedicating ourselves to serious, undistorted analysis here. That's what you said you wanted, didn't you?

Roger Ailes to Fox News "guys": "I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually..."

"You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that."

By I hope the other side does that, I think he means he hopes the other side tones it down. But maybe her means he hopes the other side does it with bombast — so that it's the conservatives who are rational and the liberals who are raving.

Wait a minute! What am I saying? Conservatives... liberals... they're all journalists! But Ailes is the one who used the expression "the other side" — which is, I might add, rather militaristic and hence not toned down. Ironically.

***

Let me take one more opportunity to reprint what George Orwell said about dying metaphors:

Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying.

Yeah, I know dying metaphors. Dying. Another negative metaphor. A metaphor about a metaphor.

By the way, what is bombast? Bombs must be involved, right?

bombast (n.)
1560s, "cotton padding," corrupted from earlier bombace (1550s), from O.Fr. bombace "cotton, cotton wadding," from L.L. bombacem, acc. of bombax "cotton, 'linteorum aut aliae quaevis quisquiliae,' " a corruption and transferred use of L. bombyx "silk," from Gk. bombyx "silk, silkworm" (which also came to mean "cotton" in Medieval Gk.), from some oriental word, perhaps related to Iranian pambak (modern panba) or Armenian bambok, perhaps ultimately from a PIE root meaning "to twist, wind." From stuffing and padding for clothes or upholstery, meaning extended to "pompous, empty speech" (1580s). Also from the same source are Swed. bomull, Dan. bomuld "cotton," and, via Turkish forms, Mod.Gk. mpampaki, Romanian bumbac, Serbo-Cr. pamuk. Ger. baumwolle "cotton" is probably from the Latin word but altered by folk-etymology to look like "tree wool." Pol. bawelna, Lith. bovelna are partial translations from German.

See? That's exactly what Orwell was talking about! People use the word "bombast" to convey explosiveness, but that is not the original metaphor.

NPR set Juan Williams on fire.

And it's all on Fox News.



Especially hot:

Nina Totenberg wished that Senator Jesse Helms and his grandchildren would get AIDS -- I said would get AIDS. She's still working there.

A so-called humorist on NPR said the world would be a better place if 4 million Christians evaporated. Hilarious.

And calling millions of members of the Tea Party movement a sexual pejorative, tea baggers won't get you in hot water either.

So it seems some opinions are more equal than others at NPR.

"... Williams can come out of the closet as a full-on wingnut cartoon character."

"No more living a lie as a one-time journalist playing a fake liberal on Fox News."

Sayeth Josh Marshall.

NPR Fires Juan Williams because of what he said about Muslims.

Williams was on "The O’Reilly Factor":

Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”

Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.

He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Mr. Williams said.

NPR said in its statement that the remarks “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”

Williams managed to be a commentator on both NPR and Fox for quite a while, but I guess it was just too much to see him feeding red meat to O'Reilly just a few days after O'Reilly enraged Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg over the very same subject. These news media — Fox and NPR — want the image they want, and Williams did a great job, fitting into both templates for as long as he did.

The response from lefties and righties is predictable. William Kristol says:

I suspect the powers-that-be at NPR pretty much think what Juan thinks. But the standards of political correctness must be maintained. Pressure groups speaking for allegedly offended Muslims must be propitiated. And so Juan had to go.

Glenn Greenwald says:

Williams' trite attempt to glorify his bigotry as anti-P.C. Speaking of the Truth is inane, as his remarks were suffused with falsehoods...

Whether these latest comments were merely the opportunity they [NPR] were looking for to terminate their relationship with him, or whether it was caused solely by these disgusting comments, is unclear. But what is clear is that the anti-Muslim bigotry he spewed is both the proximate and cited cause....

And so on.

Williams is now free of the need to preserve his relationship with NPR. I'm pretty interested to hear what he'll say now that he's shaken off the chains of PC-radio. Talk to us, Juan!

Who said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance?

Surely, not anybody on Fox News!

VIDEO: Here's the right video.

Sorry, I had the wrong video before. I did not want to link to the video that way, at TNR, precisely because TNR displayed a Media Matters video without the embedding code. I hate when websites do that. They take video MM collected and use it in a way designed to force the link that I have now given them. I would have been happy to link to them, because that's where I found the video, if they had been properly generous to Media Matters and shown the embedding code. So I went to Media Matters to find the code myself... and found the wrong video, which made me write a post that didn't make a whole lot of sense. You have no idea how irritating that is to me.

ADDED: At that TNR link, Jonathan Chait not only has the video without embedding code, he also says "watch this fantastic video from HuffPo's Ben Craw (via Media Matters)" without any links to Ben Craw or Media Matters. It's easy enough to retaliate against TNR by dispensing with the usual "via" links when blogging about something you've found through them.

"Thanks Fox News."

From yesterday's Tea Party in Madison... I really don't know whether that sign is intended with sincerity or sarcasm.

Hoosiers line up early in the morning for a chance to see Sarah Palin at a Borders in the small city of Noblesville.

Here are the first 2 of the 1000 who got wristbands to allow them in this evening:

The line started last night at 9 PM.

More pictures like that, by Sam Riche, at the link.

Meanwhile, Fox News screws up by showing video from last year to illustrate a story about the crowds at her current book tour.

"We may be No. 1, but there is sort of an insurgent quality to Fox News."

"And that's kind of our attitude: 'Hoist a Jolly Roger, pull out our daggers and look for more throats to slit.' This is tremendous fodder for us. My lord, we've been living on it."

Barack Obama has an enemies list.

Another occasion for the tag "Obama is like Nixon."

Anita Dunn, the White House communications director: "We’re going to treat [Fox News] the way we would treat an opponent."

"As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

Good lord, they really are "the biggest bunch of crybabies."

***

I'm giving this post my "Obama the Candidate" tag, which means that the man needs to step past his candidate mode and recognize that he is the President.

"I knew pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters would attempt to blame us for the crime."

Bill O'Reilly stands his ground after the Tiller murder:



(Via Think Progress.)