Glenn Beck assails Prof. Frances Fox Piven, fans issue death threats

Glenn Beck's new obsession has been City University of New York (CUNY) Professor Frances Fox Piven. (Piven has been best known for her 1970s book co-authored with her late husband, Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements (Pantheon).)

Beck of the Fox News Network has been making hay out of a 1966 Piven and Cloward magazine article that called for straining the welfare system with applications. Beck said that this strategy was akin to "economic sabotage."
Click to today's "New York Times" article, "Spotlight From Glenn Beck Brings a CUNY Professor Threats."

In the wake of Beck's on-air campaign against Piven, and comments-posters' death threat language on website discussion pages, the professor has received e-mail death threats, the Times has reported.

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (Dem.-Arizona), who was targeted with a crosshairs map by Sarah Palin, Beck is utterly irresponsible and without conscience.

Join MoveOn's campaign to Turn Off Fox

There is so much to dislike with Fox News:
the constant drumbeat of a right-wing Tea Partier, Republican agenda that permeates the political talk and the "news,"
the Islamophobia.
If one needs a brief overview of the role of FoxNews as a transmission belt for the Republican Party, one should just view Robert Greenwald's quintessial video, "Outfoxed!"



And visit BraveNewFilms' site with continuing updates about the lies and disinformation on the Fox News Network.

Click to this Facebook link on the MoveOn campaign to "Turn Off Fox: Bad News for America."

Fox News is endorsing Town Hall un-civil mob thuggery

Media Matters, the monitors of mainstream media performance, has spotted FoxNews' endorsement of Town Hall mobs:

Just as it promoted the April 15 "tea party" protests, Fox News is now promoting the disruptions of Democratic town hall events by protesters opposed to health care reform, protests that are being touted by Republican leaders and supported by conservative groups. Following the August 2 disruption of a town hall event hosted by Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Fox News personalities have repeatedly lauded such protesters and urged viewers to take similar action.

Economic indicators suggest an Obama recovery; yet GOP & FOX-type media give no credit

By the latest economic indicators, the economy is moving in the direction of recovery.

ABC News reported today that several indicators are pointing to an economic recovery. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to surpass 9,000 last week (to 9,069.29). This was the first time that it exceeded that level. And all the large stock indexes rose by more than two percent, TIm Paradis and Sara Lepro in "The Minneapolis Star-Tribune" reported Thursday. The NASDAQ had its most impressive rally since 1992: a 12th straight advance, i.e., the composite index rising by 47.22, or 2.5 percent.

Home sales (of previously lived-in homes) were at 4.89 milion in June, compared with the anticipated 4.84 milion.

INVESTMENT MANAGER BILL MILLER BULLISH
Legg Mason trust fund manager Bill Miller, who is renowned for "beating the S&P 500" says that the worst is over.
Jeff Kearns and Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam report in "The Washington Post" this weekend that Miller said of the stock market that "the worst has passed."

"Bull markets typically begin when the following four conditions are present: the economy is bottoming, profits are bottoming, the Fed is stimulating and valuations are low. That's where we are now."

Miller, famed for beating the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index for a record 15 years through 2005, trailed the U.S. benchmark for the past three, partly because of investments in home builders, banks and mortgage companies. Those bets caused a record 55 percent loss in 2008. Legg Mason Value Trust has returned 19.8 percent this year, ahead of the index by 12.6 percentage points when dividends are included.

Banks and other financial institutions have rallied the most among 10 industries since the S&P 500 tumbled to a 12-year low March 9, surging 96 percent. Technology shares had the second-best gain, climbing 55 percent.

SEVERAL PROBLEMS REMAIN
There are several problems, enduring, however. Consumer confidence remains low.

Well, no wonder. Psychology is at play for lots of this. Consumers don't want to spend if they have reason to fear that their jobs are not secure.

Credit cards as a boon to economic vitality
Let's face it: credit cards are the crack of consumer spending. They provide(d) an illusory high of easy, immediate satisfying of buying impulses. And more seriously, they provided an important trigger that stimulated spending. It is no wonder that with the two factors of tighter credit and fears of job stability or security there is a decrease in consumer confidence. This made it particularly easy to splurge frequently or on big ticket items like plasma televisions.

Unemployment still troubling
Unemployment presently stands at 9.5 percent, the highest level since the first administration of President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s.

RIGHT-WING, GOP, OTHER MEDIA --ESPECIALLY FOX-- NOT GIVING CREDIT WHERE DUE
This recovery, or at least positive turn-around on a number of fronts, is here after six months of the Barack Obama administration. The Republicans, the right in general, and the media need to be honest and give the administration credit where it is due.

These delusional pontificators were booming about how Obama was a socialist, a Marxist, a Stalinist. Just listen to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or Monica Crowley. Yet, where are they now, with the multiple positive signs suggesting a turn towards a recovery. They have now shifted their demagogic rhetorical flourish to Obama on health care policy, bandying about these -ism labels on Obama's public option.
Is it any wonder that one of the latest "Washington Post" polls has the public trusting President Obama over the Republicans on health care by a 54 to 34 margin.

Look in the news search engines and listen to the Republicans on the Sunday morning talk shows you cannot find Republicans acknowledging the loud hints of a recovery, let alone credit Obama with the recovery.

Just two weeks ago Obama was asking for more time for the stimulus to kick in. It seems as though this is happening.

**
As to whether this is a jobless recovery, that remains an open question. I believe that much of this question lies in the de-industrializing spiral that economic policy-makers have placed us in.

Fox's position in news oligopoly

A little historical background on why there --historically-- had been Federal Communications Commission (FCC) restrictions on one company's ownership of multiple media outlets in one media market:
There had been a growing outcry at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century against oligopolies (small numbers of companies controlling an industry) and monopolies (single companies controlling an industry).
In several sectors of industry the United States government established laws and agencies to increase competition and to limit monopolies and the monopolization of industries. The FCC limited media companies, whether headed by individuals, or run by corporations, to one media outlet (such as a newspaper, a radio station or a television station) in one media market.
A few media corporations secured exemptions to these restrictions. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation secured numerous exemptions to this restriction. His corporation owns the tabloid newspaper, The New York Post, in New York City. And in the same city, his corporation owns channel 5 (WNYW) and channel 9 (WWOR). In Boston his corporation owns the tabloid, The Boston Herald, and channel 25 (WFXT). (See my Sunday February 22 post below to see the other metropolitan areas in which Murdoch's News Corporation owns multiple television stations.)

See Robert Greenwald/ Brave New Films' seminal video, "Outfoxed," on the News Corporation's Fox News' integration with Republican Party talking points.

Whether to boycott NY Post, News Corp / List of Fox-owned stations

Broad reasons to boycott the News Corporation's Fox Network outlets: It is widely demonstrated that the Fox News Network is an aggressively biased network that distorts the news and promotes Republican Party interests and leads the television networks in booking more Republican Party guests than Democratic Party guests. (See Robert Greenwald's documentary video and web-site, “Out-Foxed” and MediaMatters: www.mediamatters.org, e.g., see this recent report.)

Film director Spike Lee has called on entertainers and athletes to refrain from speaking to the Post. Lawyer and talk radio host Ron Kuby, on WWRL and Air America Radio, has argued that boycotting the post is unproductive, since the newspaper loses money.

Yet, the parent of the New York Post, the News Corporation has other significant holdings to which consumers can direct their protests.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. media holdings include the Fox News channel and the Fox Network in general. The latter has major shows that viewers can stop watching: American Idol, House, Lie to Me, Fringe, 24, Cops, The Simpsons, Family Guy and King of the Hill.

Also, those seeking to boycott News Corporation can boycott the following 27 Fox Television Stations that it owns:
*in New York City and Secaucus, NJ: WNYW (5) and WWOR (9)
*in Los Angeles: KTTV (11) and KCOP (13)
*in Chicago and Gary, Indiana: WFLD (32) and WPWR (50)
*in Philadelphia: WTXF (29)
*in Dallas-Fort Worth: KDFW (4)
*in Boston: WFXT (25)
*in Atlanta: WAGA (5)
*in Washington, DC: WTTG (5) and WDCA (20)
*in Houston: KTXH (20) and KRIV (26)
*in Detroit: WJBK (2)
*in Phoenix: KSAX (10) and KUTP (45)
*in Tampa-St. Petersburg WTVT (13)
*in Minneapolis-St. Paul: KMSP (9) and WFTC (29)
*in Orlando-Daytona Beach: WOFL (35) and WRBW (65)
*in Baltimore: WUTB (24)
*in Memphis: WHBQ (13)
*in Austin: KTBC (7)
*in Ocala-Gainesville, FL: WOGX (51)

Again, the stations in the above list are Fox-owned stations, not mere affiliates.

How media pundits carry the political water for McCain; this fall's Swift Boat for McCain

The media pundits are the Republicans’ October surprise.

Obama has the lead over McCain in the polls. He has a more confident understanding of the economy than McCain has.

Yet, currently many of the television news and discussion programs have recycled, over and over again, talking points from Fox News and from conservative talk radio hosts. The successive effect of a conservative, pro-McCain agenda could winnow away Obama's lead by November. (Look back to 2000, to 2004, note how strong Democratic nominees were in the summer, only to lose their lead by the fall.)

Robert Greenwald, in his 2004 video, “Outfoxed,” detailed how Republican operatives would channel a number of talking points to the Fox News network, and the network would drive its coverage and its approach to interviewing guests, based on the agenda in those talking points. In political science and media analysis, this creating of an agenda is called agenda setting, (a phrase first used by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw). More to the point, with Fox this establishing of an agenda extends beyond a set of topics to defining what are the proper opinions to have on issues. It defines what are legitimate opinions and what are unacceptable, unpatriotic, irresponsible, illegitimate opinions.

Outrageously, this is what is happening this month. Conservative pundits grouse about some part of Barack Obama’s candidacy. What is more upsetting is that Fox News is not alone in carrying the agenda. A broader range of networks –beyond Fox-- are pursuing the conservative talking points / agenda. (Remember, the agenda are both topics and the proper opinion/response to topics or questions.) First, they doubted Obama’s understanding of foreign policy and the Middle East in particular. So, Obama took a trip to the Middle East. How did these media pundits respond? He’s paying too much attention to the Middle East. He was wildly popular in Germany. Yet, for Obama, this success would be a curse: the pundits dismissed him by labeling him as a mere entertainment celebrity. Little surprise that the McCain camp finds it convenient to compare him to Britney Spears. The media already wrote this script for the public. The McCain camp is merely building on a foundation that the media laid for it.

Taken on its face, the behavior of the McCain camp is simplistic and desperate. But it is disturbing that some reporters and pundits in the media have concerns that are trivial, a focus that verges on the puerile and the inane. Their focus diverges from the issues of governance and policy [what politicians will do once in office]. Who cares that Barack and Michelle Obama gave each other fist bumps?

News flash revision: McCain's ads comparing Obama to Spears has brought a backlash. Even his former consultant John Weaver criticized the ads as childish. About the negative ads, Obama noted that "He doesn’t seem to have anything to say very positive about himself."
Another update: The Republicans smear. And the lies or half-truths get a second generation of circulation, appearing as lead items on television news and on online news sites. After the dirt has been smeared, the sources of the smears might issue retractions or qualifications. Their retractions might not get the extended attention that they had when first introduced. The retractions are likely to have little impact, as the taint has already been imbedded in the public mind. It's nice that the McCain campaign made this concession, but will the networks and the news websites give this vague explanation the attention they first gave to the myth that Obama snubbed US troops in Europe: “It does not seem that Barack Obama snubbed the troops for reasons other than a lack of Photo-op potential . . . The initial reports were less clear.” --McCain campaign, MSNBC, July 31, 2008.

Some media are avowedly partisan. Cheers to Air America Radio's Rachel Maddow (in contrast to biased reporters, she is open and honest about her partisanship) for raising the issue of McCain and the parallels for a Swift Boat campaign against Obama. (The Swift Boat campaign was a stealth campaign by conservative Vietnam veterans to distort and discredit Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in his 2004 candidacy. Their television ads inflicted devastating harm on Kerry’s candidacy.) Yesterday on “The Rachel Maddow Show” she brought to light Freedom's Watch. This organization is poised to discredit Obama’s campaign with the same kind of smears. Maddow pointed out that it has many of the familiar names from the recent Republican past: Karl Rove, the indicted Bush operative, as a lead political consultant, and Ari Fleischer as a press aide. It has Sheldon Adelson, a Nevada casino operator that leased a luxury jet to Rudy Giuliani last fall, as a major benefactor. Reminiscent of Swift Boat, Freedom's Watch is funneling money to pro-McCain veterans group, Vets for Freedom. (Reference links to come: David Saltonstall, "Daily News"; Laura Rozen, "Mother Jones"; Peter Stone, "National Journal" and "Roll Call" via DSCC.)

UPDATE: Here's a more recent Laura Rozen article on the benefactor that could be the "The Right's White Knight", Aug. 8, Mother Jones.

Funny that McCain grouses about Obama’s media attention. Here’s a video by his daughter Meghan McCain. (Formerly an independent, she voted for John Kerry in 2004; this year she registered as Republican -from her wikipedia biography.) In the video she shows a Sedona picnic that the McCain campaign hosted for the press. She gushes about how nice some of the reporters are, referring to them by first name.

For a broader analysis of McCain and myths, see this Nevada-focused blogspot blog.

And how the real media love affair is with McCain himself:
David Brock and Paul Waldman, “Free Ride: John McCain and the Media.”

McCain on Fox News: "I didn't really love America until ...

Yes, watch his lips, hear his voice, yes, John McCain really says this!!
"I really didn't love America until I was deprived of her company."
Fox News censored itself: this phrase McCain gets scrubbed out in a Sean Hannity interview.
Compare the first version that aired with the later version with the offending phrase scrubbed out.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/20/fox-attacks-video-proves-foxnews-erased-mccain-saying-i-really-didnt-love-america/

Then take a look at a video made from rapper Nas' "Sly Fox" (criticizing Fox News' bias) from his newest CD "Untitled":
The song opens, “The Sly Fox, Cyclops, We locked in the idiot box.”
http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/

For the video, go to "news corpse" and scroll down.
Get a brief introduction from the video producer Rik Cordero, at Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films website:
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/45246-nas-sly-fox-video-shoot

This blogger [I, myself] does not condone the violence or n- word in Nas' other songs. The "Sly Fox" song has two of the banned "seven words."