Candidate #1: Arlington, Tennessee mayor Russell Wiseman, who took to his Facebook page with a message of despair upon learning that Obama's speech had trumped Charlie Brown, on the teevee. We'll just blockquote this thoroughly worthwhile Commercial Appeal story:

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."...

In Wiseman's extensive thread that attacked the president, his supporters and Muslims, he stated "...you obama people need to move to a muslim country...oh wait, that's America....pitiful."

At another point he said, "you know, our forefathers had it written in the original Constitution that ONLY property owners could vote, if that has stayed in there, things would be different........"

No further comment. Contestant #2: News Corp! Which just bought a 10% stake in Rotana, a media company owned by Saudi Prince Waleed. Why the outrage? Well after September 11, you see, various Fox News commentators were outraged at Waleed! Because he suggested that maybe US foreign policy had something to do with the attacks. So NYC rejected a $10 million check from him. Media Matters has some choice quotes:

Bill Sammon: "[I]t's blood money and we're better off without it."
Sean Hannity: Al-Waleed's statement was "such an egregious, outrageous, unfair offense that I would have nothing to do with his money either."

Unless that money comes in the form of dividends from media company profits! So, vote for your god damn favorite. [Pic via]

The subtext of the Times story is that Obama is classless, and that he snubbed the GOP in his first state dinner. Even though he did actually invite Minority Leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, both of whom snubbed Obama by declining to attend. (He also invited Republican governor Bobby Jindal, who did attend. And Dick Lugar was there, for some reason. And Eric Cantor, who wasn't invited to the dinner, was invited to the pre-dinner reception.)

So it doesn't look like much of a snub to us, at all. But whatever—it is fair game for a basically openly conservative paper to publish a news story with a partisan premise, so long as it's factually accurate, which this one is.

Then, of course, Fox picks up on this breaking news. Suddenly, the headline switches from "Top Republican lawmakers not attending State Dinner" to "Top Republican Lawmakers Not Invited to Obama's First State Dinner."

"Top Republican lawmakers," taken literally, means Boehner and McConnell, who were invited, and chose not to attend.

But Fox doesn't even acknowledge that.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner won't be there; he's on Thanksgiving break and home in Ohio. His deputy, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, also didn't get an invitation to the dinner.

Cantor also didn't get an invitation? That's a weird word choice, considering that the guy named in the previous sentence did get an invite. But that fact is, weirdly, edited out.

This is why Fox is way more successful than the Moonie Times: a grown-up could read that Times story and, based on the facts presented in that story, end up disagreeing with its premise. In order to preclude that possibility, Fox just makes up the facts to suit the premise.

(Thanks to readers Ronald and James Allen for alerting us to this very instructional case-study in modern journalism.)

The AP now report that Bill Sparkman, who was found in September bound and gagged with duct tape in Daniel Boone National Forest, staged the scene to look like a homicide.

Expect to see extensive discussion of this on Fox News, perhaps quoting in a fair and balanced way from articles like this. Which are correct despite today's news.

First Fox got caught lying about the crowd at Michele Bachmann's healthcare protest, then it got caught lying about the size of the crowd at Sarah Palin's book-signing. But the straw that broke the camel's back came last week when producers showed a screenshot of a horrible cruel attack on Sarah Palin called Going Rouge when they should have showed a screenshot of a brilliant sacred book by Sarah Palin called Going Rogue.

So now they've decided to start caring about "quality" to avoid embarrassing Palin again in the future, and sent out a staff memo, obtained by FishbowlDC, threatening everyone who screws up again with "termination." To that end, and to make things easier since facts are hard, Fox will "zero base" production, eliminating everything that has a potential for being wrong from each broadcast. It will be exceedingly boring to watch, but at least Roger Ailes will never have to "explain, retract, qualify or apologize again." Because the whole "never apologize, never back down, always attack" routine only works if you don't constantly get caught lying.

Subject: Quality Control We had a mistake on Newsroom today when a wrong book cover went on screen during a guest segment, the kind of thing that can fall through the cracks on any day with any story given the large amount of elements and editorial we run through our broadcasts. Unfortunately, it is the latest in a series of mistakes on FNC in recent months. We have to all improve our performance in terms of ensuring error-free broadcasts. To that end, there was a meeting this afternoon between senior managers and the folks who run the daytime shows in which expectations were reviewed, and the following results were announced: Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors. Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the "mistake chain," and those who supervise them. That may include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination, and this will all obviously play a role in performance reviews. So we now face a great opportunity to review and improve on our workflow and quality control efforts. To make the most of that opportunity, effective immediately, Newsroom is going to "zero base" our newscast production. That means we will start by going to air with only the most essential, basic, and manageable elements. To share a key quote from today's meeting: "It is more important to get it right, than it is to get it on." We may then build up again slowly as deadlines and workloads allow so that we can be sure we can quality check everything before it makes air, and we never having to explain, retract, qualify or apologize again. Please know that jobs are on the line here. I can not stress that enough. I will review again during our Monday editorial meeting, and in the days and weeks ahead. This experience should make us stronger editorially, and I encourage everyone to invest themselves one hundred and ten percent in this effort.

Bernard Goldberg is a Fox News commentator who thinks Liberals will always abort their Downs Syndrome baby, but it seems like he's also an aspiring satirist himself: "Let me try to respond to that brilliant analysis with a serious point," says Goldberg, his voice dripping with an icy blend of irony and disdain which subtly hints that Jon Stewart telling him to "go fuck yourself" was not really a smart thing to say, but instead was a funny joke made on a funny comedy show by a comedian which people laughed at because the word "fuck" is funny. In fact Goldberg's satire was so subtle that he didn't even get the joke himself.

Sort of undermines Fox's impassioned claims to being a real news organization when they find themselves constantly responding to a fake news program.

And here is the original "Daily Show" bit from last night's show:

[Via Business Insider.]

The snafu happened yesterday on Happening Now: Fox showed footage of Palin at campaign rallies that happened last year while anchor Gregg Jarrett claimed that Palin is "continuing to draw huge crowds while she's promoting her brand new book," citing "pictures just coming into us" as evidence. Sean Hannity was caught pulling the identical trick last week, showing old tea party footage while talking about the huge crowds drawn to a recent anti-healthcare protest.

But Fox News doesn't take these things lightly! The Chicago Tribune's Mark Silva reports that "news executives there consider this to have been a sloppy and unnecessary error," and intend to discipline whoever is responsible. Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente told Silva that it was a "production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn't alert the control room to update the video."

OK, then. Pack up your office, everybody who works at Fox News. You're fired.

The battle between the two was, sort of, raised at the beginning of the interview. "Mr. President the Fox News channel is very happy to see you," said Garrett. "Good to see you," responded Obama, with a grin that acknowledged the awkwardness.

Garrett's interview was as close to fair and balanced as his network gets. He did decide, however, that the best way to address the incredibly nuanced and sophisticated issues — healthcare, Guantanamo, the Middle East — was in a "lightning round" format. He kept pressing the president for yes or no answers. When Obama demurred and pointed out things were more complex, he was "reeled in", according to the Huffington Post.

Here are some clips so you can judge for yourself:

Last week, the Daily Show caught Sean Hannity passing off old tea-party footage as representative of the (much smaller) crowd at recent protest against healthcare. Today, it's Think Progress pointing out the sleight-of-video: These shots of what is allegedly "HAPPENING NOW"—"Sarah Palin continuing to draw huge crowds" according to "video just coming into us"—really look like campaign rallies. Especially the people waving McCain-Palin signs and wearing McCain-Palin shirt. Could crazed Palinites have pulled their "Country First" signs and campaign T-shirts out of the closet in an effort to relive the glory days of '08? Yes, they could have. Does Fox deserve the benefit of the doubt on this score? No. It does not.

Also, the footage features Palin wearing her "up-do," which she seems to have abandoned of late, to judge by her appearances on Oprah and Sean Hannity:

Murdoch was on a panel with Indian mogul Ratan Tata and Mexican billionaire and future New York Times owner Carlos Slim. The question that elicited Murdoch's bizarre reference to New York Gov. David Paterson was clearly directed at Fox News: "How do we bring more civil discourse to the discussion, and stop appealing to the populists on the right and the left?"

One way would be to not pay people millions of dollars to pursue bizarre conspiracy theories and call the first black president a racist—but that's not the Murdoch way! No, Murdoch's slurred, barely coherent answer blamed politicians, including Paterson, who, it's important to note, is "blind, and can't read braille, and doesn't know what's going on." And therefore is responsible for the lack of civil discourse in our political conversation. Class act. Good thing Murdoch has leftie liaison Gary Ginsberg at hand to smooth this over for him.

We're just going to throw this out there: Rupert Murdoch is not well. This senseless gaffe, on top of his strange and uncomprehending assertion last week that Barack Obama is indeed a racist just like Glenn Beck said and that no one at Fox News has ever compared Obama to Stalin when they obviously do on a nearly nightly basis, make him seem strange and muddled. He's getting old, and it's showing.

The conference had another highlight—Slim's defensive and belittling discussion of his minority stake in the New York Times. Asked why he loaned a quarter of a billion dollars to the struggling paper, Slim responded with a casual, "Why not?" before nearly interrupting the panel's moderator to point out that on top of a 14% interest rate, he'd received warrants in the deal. Asked to elaborate on the value of media investments, Slim started with, "I think the New York Times will pay. It was credit, with a high yield, and warrants." How reassuring. Slim did offer a perfunctory defense of the Times as a business, calling it one of the best newspapers in the world. Then he offered to lend money to the Wall Street Journal at 12%, two points better than he gave to the Times.

Spend even a few minutes on a politically-inclined blog that leans to the left, and you'll spot the little red-and-white "News1News" logo (above) attached to the upper-left corner a YouTube clip, usually of Glenn Beck ranting hilariously or otherwise being horrible. News1News specializes in capturing and uploading Fox bloviator's most outrageous statements for all of eternity. And each day, we bloggers—from the Huffington Post, Mediaite, Truthdig, Gawker, etc.—plucked newsworthy clips from News1News' Youtube channel, surrounded them with our words, and put them on our sites. (In fact, Mediaite's feature "Your Moment of Glenn" is all News1News clips.) From all this blog love, News1News videos had more than 20 million cumulative views by the time it was shut down. It was the simple, convenient way to stoke Liberal ire!

But today, it appears that Fox News determined it was time to close this one-stop Liberal blog fodder shop: They sent more than 150 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube regarding Fox News clips on the News1News channel, said the channel's proprietor, John. (John, a doctor living in Washington, DC, didn't want his last name used.) This put the channel well over YouTube's controversial "three-strike" copyright violation limit. News1News was shut down, and John was inundated with emails from caffeine-addled bloggers asking, frantically, "what happened!?"

Because, now, if you try to watch Hannity's infamous apology to Jon Stewart on the Huffington Post, or Michael Jackson's "ghost" on Gawker, or Glenn Beck saying dumb stuff on Truthdig, you will only see "This Video is no longer available due to copyright claim by Fox News LLC". (SPOOKY!!)

Which, granted, these clips did belong to Fox, and they were well in their rights to have them taken down, as specified by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. So how do we know this is a politically-motivated move by Fox to hinder the liberal blogosphere's ability to make fun of them? Because plenty of Fox News clips are still available on YouTube—only on conservative-leaning channels: GlennBeckDailyClips, for example has more than 630 clips of, well, the Glenn Beck Program. And ConservativeNation has 186 stomach-churning videos from the whole spectrum of quality Fox News programing. Also: Duh, Fox News would totally do something like this.

News1News is back up, at a new address—at least until Fox takes it down again. But what's surprising about this whole episode isn't that Fox will use digital copyright law to fight back against its political opponents; it's that the operators of these popular cable news-ripping YouTube channels are actually pretty important players in the blog game. Think about it: They not only get to select which cable news clips have the possibility of "going viral" and becoming news themselves, but if they're taken down, whole swaths of video-based blog posts become a lot of words surrounding a big empty space.

Fox News thought John was important enough to take down, even though he's just some guy whose hobby is clipping videos and putting them on YouTube. And John said that network bigwigs took enough notice when one of his MSNBC clips hit 500,000 views that VP of Digital Media, Mark Lukasiewicz, personally called him to say they had their eye on him. (Mark Lukasiewicz could not be reached for comment because he is important and it is 9:30pm.)

How does John do it? "I DVR things," he said. "I know what people are going to find interesting. You can watch a Bill O'Reilly show and you can pick out the things that are going to make heads explode. Literally, when my head explodes I know it's going to be a good clip."

UPDATE: Fox filed three takedown notices against the new News1News account this morning. (See below.) STEEEERRRRRIKE ONE!

UPDATE 2: It appears that both GlennbeckClipsDaily and ConservativeNation YouTube accounts are now "suspended". A commenter claiming to be the owner of ConservativeNation says: "it seems as though Fox is hell bent getting ALL their clips off You Tube..I don't think this is aimed specifically at liberals." That could certainly be true—but the fact that these accounts didn't go down until after this article went up still suggests a preference for targeting liberal channels. (ConservativeNewMedia—a popular conservate channel that wasn't mentioned originally in this article—remains active. Let's see it it goes down now!)

Fox Business Network
Pro: Fox has been wooing Dobbs for months; TV chair Roger Ailes reportedly wined and dined him in September. Between the additions of mustachioed libertarian John Stossel and ebullient racist cowboy Don Imus, FBN's on a hiring spree. Dobbs would be a perfect fit; one mere lifetime ago, he was a well-respected business reporter, after all. The fact that he went off the rails into right-wing demagoguery will only sweeten this deal.
Con: Dobbs' intense xenophobia forces him to break from the pro-business pack's love of cheap immigrant labor. They'd bond over their mutual revulsion for Barack Obama, though.
Odds: 1:100

Presidential Run
Pro: Conservative columnist Robert Novak was the first to float Dobbs' name for a third-party presidential ticket. The self-proclaimed "independent populist" has a diehard fanbase in politically sought-after middle America, and is himself from Idaho and Texas. Though bashful about his political prospects, he said in January, "I cannot say never."
Con: He also said this: "I haven't got the personality or nature to be a poitician."
Odds: 10:1

His One True Love: Astronaut Media
Pro: Last time Dobbs cut and ran from CNN, it was to be CEO of Space.com, a start-up venture that indulged his unabiding passion for deep space and extraterrestrials. Space tourism is heating up, and the leap from birther to earther isn't so far...
Con: Space.com is doing just fine without Dobbs—even finagling a content-sharing deal with CNN. Also, it'd be totally insane.
Odds: 40:1

CNBC
Pro: During Dobbs' Space.com phase, he worked closely with the very network that had undermined his business news show on CNN. At the time, CNBC's aggressive formula of stock tips and financial advice was ratings gold. Now, whatwith the financial collapse and all, it's just embarrassing.
Con: Going to CNBC would break Dobbs' trajectory of moving away from his actual area of expertise (finance, economics) and towards his imagined one (the president's birth certificate). That's the kind of momentum that's hard to stop, but if all he wants is a job and a platform, CNBC will probably be willing to listen.
Odds: 5:1

Please be advised that a demonstration, directed at FOX News and consisting of approximately 150 people, is expected in front of 1211 today (Wednesday, November 11) from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm. The NYPD will be present to monitor the demonstration along with News Corporation security.

Although no disruptions are expected, you may wish to contact any visitors or appointments you are expecting this afternoon and suggest they allow additional time for processing. If you are booking car service this afternoon, request pick up on 48th Street.

We also encourage employees to use the alternate entrances at the back of the building and on the C-1 level if the main entrance becomes congested. As a reminder, it is always recommended that you NOT display your building ID card once outside of 1211. This is particularly important when arriving and departing the building during the demonstration.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Corporate Security Manager Lee Boody through the Security Operations Center at [redacted].

Karl Solterer
Vice President, Corporate Security
News Corporation

[Pic via]

That's them in the tiny pen in the middle.

"The dude is a very anti-birther friend who could not resist the opportunity."

Yes, Bill O'Reilly, the only reason we're dicking around over there installing potable water systems is because we don't yet have the capability to kill every single Muslim in the Middle East. And your guest, Lt. Col. Peters, of course knows this. He is a soldier, and we all know that soldiers secretly die a little on the inside when they are forced to hand out boring old life-sustaining Powerbars to Afghan villagers instead of getting to have an awesome firefight with them.

(O'Reilly was right in one important aspect, though: killing every Muslim in Afghanistan would definitely end the war there, seeing as how 99 percent of Afghans are Muslim. Seems like we're disturbingly well on our way to doing this.)

Bill O'Reilly: Always good for a laugh, followed by a long period of reflective silence, followed by a little more laughing, then a bit of weeping, then silence again, then some more weeping, and, finally, a week-long bout of problem drinking.

Because he is an idiot, Glenn Beck tried in September to shut down glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, a satirical site that used Beck's insidious "I'm just asking the question" pose to advance the Fark-inspired meme that Beck may have raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, because, well—have you ever heard him deny it?

The proprietor was anonymous at the time, but he's come out of the closet as Isaac Eiland-Hall, a Florida computer programmer who was sick of Beck's posturing and enjoyed funny things on the internet. Beck complained to a WIPO arbitration panel that the site was defamatory and infringed on the trademark he holds over his own name. Late last month, his complaint was denied.

The arbitration panel's decision renders in hypnotically robotic, lawyerly prose a precise distillation of what is wrong with Glenn Beck, and it's worth quoting at length. Here's what Beck's lawyers said about the trademark:

Complainant contends that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar to the GLENN BECK mark.

And here's what Eiland-Hall responded:

Respondent alleges that only a "moron in a hurry" could be confused by the disputed domain name.

And here is the panel's magnificent summary of Beck's rhetorical style and why his site constituted a satire of that style:

Respondent argues that the disputed domain name is a meme that is based on the technique deriving from a comedy sketch performed by Gilbert Gottfried on a Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget during which Mr. Gottfried made continuing references to an unflattering rumor concerning Mr. Saget (similar to the one embodied in the disputed domain name), while requesting that those repeating the rumor cease to do so. According to Respondent, Glenn Beck has used a similar technique while interviewing at least one individual on his news broadcast by making an unsupported assertion about his activities, and placing a burden on the interviewee to deny the unsupported assertion. According to Respondent, this technique places the interviewee in a compromised position regardless of underlying facts.

The best part of the whole affair is that, after Eiland-Hall won at arbitration, he sent a letter to Beck with the site's admin username and password and said, essentially, "Here you go you big crybaby. You can have your precious web site. I don't want it any more."

It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what was merely one small critique meme, in a sea of internet memes, and turned it into a super-meme.

[snip]

It also bears noting, in this matter and for the future, that you are entirely in control of whether or not you are the subject of this particular kind of criticism. I chose to criticize you using the well-tested method of satire because of its effectiveness. But, humor aside, your rhetorical style is no laughing matter. In this context of this WIPO case, you denigrated the letter of First Amendment law. In the context of your television show and your notoriety, you routinely and shamelessly denigrate the spirit of the First Amendment. The purpose of the expressive freedoms embodied in the First Amendment is not to simply permis the greatest possible scope of expression, but also, in doing so, to also [sic] strive for excellence in the conveyance of ideas. Rather than choosing to strive for excellence and civic contribution, you simply pander to the fears and insecurities of you audience. And in the process, you do then, and us all, a great deal of harm.

[snip]

Now that it is safe, at least from you (for the time being), I have no more use for the actual scrap of digital real estate you sough. I will transfer the domain to you now.

So glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com is no more. But a mirror still lives here, so Glenn Beck still loses anyway, as is his wont.