2016 archive

Chauncey Devega explores how Fox News pollutes the discourse. A snippet:

While Fox News is making cosmetic changes to its lineup, on-air talent and management in the wake of its former CEO Roger Ailes’ sexual harassment scandal, this will have little to no impact on the underlying product: a news outlet that (very profitably) mainstreams right-wing talking points to a pliant and receptive audience.

CNN and other outlets in the American corporate news media are complicit in perpetuating this alternate reality; they are reluctant to speak plainly about Fox News and its role in disseminating right-wing lies and disinformation because they have been bullied into submission by the myth of the “liberal media.”

The sum effect of this is that CNN and other major American news outlets elevate right-wing talking points and falsehoods to the level of factual “news.” This legitimizes them as now being worthy of inclusion as an “alternative point of view” that should be spoken to in serious discussions of politics. CNN and the so-called liberal media then circulate right-wing propaganda to a broader public outside of the Fox News echo chamber.

Read it.

Excerpt:

Apparently his campaign has taken away his Twitter. . . . If somebody starts tweeting at three in the morning because SNL made fun of you, then you can’t handle the nuclear codes.

Via TPM.

James Comey confirms that he’s a jerk there was no there there.

Also, too.

And then there’s this from BadTux.

As I was emailing to my brother a couple of days ago, whatever reputation Comey had for integrity is–how shall I put this tactfully?–in tatters, gone, kaput, non-existent, as if it had never happened, a slag heap, a dump, a junk pile, a stinking pile of political hackery, sewer-fuel, a junkyard, a Ford Pinto–I could go on, but you get the point.

He is now the FBI’s own Chris Christie.

Next time you watch a TV show (say, Criminal Minds or reruns of Numb3rs) in which the FBI is sanctified, feel free to enjoy it, but think of James Comey and remind yourself that real life and television shows are two different things.

You’re damned right I’m pissed. Southbound end of a northbound horse.

Video via C&L. Charlie Brown image via Balloon Juice.

Historiann.

In related news, Raw Story reports that the Toronto Star has created an interactive catalog of Trump’s campaign cavalcade of lies. The tally is 490 to date (and, no doubt, counting).

Via Job’s Anger.

Jen Froderman has had it with corporate media’s bothsiderism. A snippet; follow the link for the rest:

Drawing a false equivalency between the two candidates is a lazy way to downplay the extraordinary awfulness of Trump. It allows the press to keep up the pretense that “both sides” are just as bad so they can maintain their phony neutrality. It also just so happens to normalize Trump’s dangerously abnormal behavior.