Another one bites the dust.
Steve Rendall, a not-so-proud liberal, "policy analyst" for the liberal and deceptively-named Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), and author of a book slamming Rush Limbaugh, folded rather than defend his beliefs. Since my last email to him Dec. 16, he has failed to respond to my challenge to back up his claims that AIDS is not 100% fatal, progressive is not just a weasel word for liberal and he is not a liberal and FAIR is actually a FAIR media analysis organization. Why didn't he respond? Because when backed into a corner and challenged on their wacko dogma, liberals can't defend their beliefs because they can't support them with facts. This is not a futile effort. I'm not attempting to get Mr. Rendall or any other liberal to change their beliefs. I'm simply pointing out their factual inaccuracies and challenging them to defend their beliefs. It's something more people need to do. Fight the liberal dogma by challenging them to defend their beliefs.
Read more!
Sunday, December 28, 2003
Monday, December 22, 2003
Happy Kwanzaa, Jailbird Ron
We all like Christmas stories. Well, I found a good one on FrontPageMagazine.com. You've heard of the true story of Christmas. Well this is the true story of Kwanzaa -- that innocuous little African holiday they teach my kids and yours about. It turns out (as those of us who are paying attention have known for quite a long time) not to be so happy and innocuous after all. Read it and get angry. Then write your local school board. We should all be pissed that they pass this crap off as some kind of black cultural celebration.
Happy Kwanzaa
By Paul Mulshine
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 26, 2002
On December 24, 1971, the New York Times ran one of the first of many articles on a new holiday designed to foster unity among African Americans. The holiday, called Kwanzaa, was applauded by a certain sixteen-year-old minister who explained that the feast would perform the valuable service of "de-whitizing" Christmas. The minister was a nobody at the time but he would later go on to become perhaps the premier race-baiter of the twentieth century. His name was Al Sharpton and he would later spawn the Tawana Brawley hoax and then incite anti-Jewish tensions in a 1995 incident that ended with the arson deaths of seven people.
Great minds think alike. The inventor of the holiday was one of the few black "leaders" in America even worse than Sharpton. But there was no mention in the Times article of this man or of the fact that at that very moment he was sitting in a California prison. And there was no mention of the curious fact that this purported benefactor of the black people had founded an organization that in its short history tortured and murdered blacks in ways of which the Ku Klux Klan could only fantasize.
It was in newspaper articles like that, repeated in papers all over the country, that the tradition of Kwanzaa began. It is a tradition not out of Africa but out of Orwell. Both history and language have been bent to serve a political goal. When that New York Times article appeared, Ron Karenga's crimes were still recent events. If the reporter had bothered to do any research into the background of the Kwanzaa founder, he might have learned about Karenga's trial earlier that year on charges of torturing two women who were members of US (United Slaves), a black nationalist cult he had founded.
A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of one of them: "Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said."
Back then, it was relatively easy to get information on the trial. Now it's almost impossible. It took me two days' work to find articles about it. The Los Angeles Times seems to have been the only major newspaper that reported it and the stories were buried deep in the paper, which now is available only on microfilm. And the microfilm index doesn't start until 1972, so it is almost impossible to find the three small articles that cover Karenga's trial and conviction on charges of torture. That is fortunate for Karenga. The trial showed him to be not just brutal, but deranged. He and three members of his cult had tortured the women in an attempt to find some nonexistent "crystals" of poison. Karenga thought his enemies were out to get him.
And in another lucky break for Karenga, the trial transcript no longer exists. I filed a request for it with the Superior Court of Los Angeles. After a search, the court clerk could find no record of the trial. So the exact words of the black woman who had a hot soldering iron pressed against her face by the man who founded Kwanzaa are now lost to history. The only document the court clerk did find was particularly revealing, however. It was a transcript of Karenga's sentencing hearing on Sept. 17, 1971.
A key issue was whether Karenga was sane. Judge Arthur L. Alarcon read from a psychiatrist's report: "Since his admission here he has been isolated and has been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers and that his attorney was in the next cell. … During part of the interview he would look around as if reacting to hallucination and when the examiner walked away for a moment he began a conversation with a blanket located on his bed, stating that there was someone there and implying indirectly that the 'someone' was a woman imprisoned with him for some offense. This man now presents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment."
The founder of Kwanzaa paranoid? It seems so. But as the old saying goes, just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean that someone isn't out to get you.
ACCORDING TO COURT DOCUMENTS, Karenga's real name is Ron N. Everett. In the '60s, he awarded himself the title "maulana," Swahili for "master teacher." He was born on a poultry farm in Maryland, the fourteenth child of a Baptist minister. He came to California in the late 1950s to attend Los Angeles Community College. He moved on to UCLA, where he got a Master's degree in political science and African Studies. By the mid-1960s, he had established himself as a leading "cultural nationalist." That is a term that had some meaning in the '60s, mainly as a way of distinguishing Karenga's followers from the Black Panthers, who were conventional Marxists.
Another way of distinguishing might be to think of Karenga's gang as the Crips and the Panthers as the bloods. Despite all their rhetoric about white people, they reserved their most vicious violence for each other. In 1969, the two groups squared off over the question of who would control the new Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA. According to a Los Angeles Times article, Karenga and his adherents backed one candidate, the Panthers another. Both groups took to carrying guns on campus, a situation that, remarkably, did not seem to bother the university administration. The Black Student Union, however, set up a coalition to try and bring peace between the Panthers and the group headed by the man whom the Times labeled "Ron Ndabezitha Everett-Karenga."
On Jan. 17, 1969, about 150 students gathered in a lunchroom to discuss the situation. Two Panthers—admitted to UCLA like many of the black students as part of a federal program that put high-school dropouts into the school—apparently spent a good part of the meeting in verbal attacks against Karenga. This did not sit well with Karenga's followers, many of whom had adopted the look of their leader, pseudo-African clothing and a shaved head.
In modern gang parlance, you might say Karenga was "dissed" by John Jerome Huggins, 23, and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, 26. After the meeting, the two Panthers were met in the hallway by two brothers who were members of US, George P. and Larry Joseph Stiner. The Stiners pulled pistols and shot the two Panthers dead. One of the Stiners took a bullet in the shoulder, apparently from a Panther's gun.
There were other beatings and shooting in Los Angeles involving US, but by then the tradition of African nationalism had already taken hold—among whites. That tradition calls for any white person, whether a journalist, a college official, or a politician, to ignore the obvious flaws of the concept that blacks should have a separate culture. "The students here have handled themselves in an absolutely impeccable manner," UCLA chancellor Charles E. Young told the L.A. Times. "They have been concerned. They haven't argued who the director should be; they have been saying what kind of person he should be." Young made those remarks after the shooting. And the university went ahead with its Afro-American Studies Program. Karenga, meanwhile, continued to build and strengthen US, a unique group that seems to have combined the elements of a street gang with those of a California cult. The members performed assaults and robberies but they also strictly followed the rules laid down in The Quotable Karenga, a book that laid out "The Path of Blackness." "The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black," the book states.
In retrospect, it may be fortunate that the cult fell apart over the torture charges. Left to his own devices, Karenga might have orchestrated the type of mass suicide later pioneered by the People's Temple and copied by the Heaven's Gate cult. Instead, he apparently fell into deep paranoia shortly after the killings at UCLA. He began fearing that his followers were trying to have him killed. On May 9, 1970 he initiated the torture session that led to his imprisonment. Karenga himself will not comment on that incident and the victims cannot be located, so the sole remaining account is in the brief passage from the L.A. Times describing tortures inflicted by Karenga and his fellow defendants, Louis Smith and Luz Maria Tamayo:
"The victims said they were living at Karenga's home when Karenga accused them of trying to kill him by placing 'crystals' in his food and water and in various areas of his house. When they denied it, allegedly they were beaten with an electrical cord and a hot soldering iron was put in Miss Davis' mouth and against her face. Police were told that one of Miss Jones' toes was placed in a small vise which then allegedly was tightened by one of the defendants. The following day Karenga allegedly told the women that 'Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know.' Miss Tamayo reportedly put detergent in their mouths, Smith turned a water hose full force on their faces, and Karenga, holding a gun, threatened to shoot both of them."
Karenga was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment. He was sentenced on Sept. 17, 1971, to serve one to ten years in prison. A brief account of the sentencing ran in several newspapers the following day. That was apparently the last newspaper article to mention Karenga's unfortunate habit of doing unspeakable things to black people. After that, the only coverage came from the hundreds of news accounts that depict him as the wonderful man who invented Kwanzaa.
LOOK AT ANY MAP OF THE WORLD and you will see that Ghana and Kenya are on opposite sides of the continent. This brings up an obvious question about Kwanzaa: Why did Karenga use Swahili words for his fictional African feast? American blacks are primarily descended from people who came from Ghana and other parts of West Africa. Kenya and Tanzania—where Swahili is spoken—are several thousand miles away, about as far from Ghana as Los Angeles is from New York. Yet in celebrating Kwanzaa, African-Americans are supposed to employ a vocabulary of such Swahili words as "kujichagulia" and "kuumba." This makes about as much sense as having Irish-Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day by speaking Polish. One possible explanation is that Karenga was simply ignorant of African geography and history when he came up with Kwanzaa in 1966. That might explain why he would schedule a harvest festival near the solstice, a season when few fruits or vegetables are harvested anywhere. But a better explanation is that he simply has contempt for black people.
That does not seem a farfetched hypothesis. Despite all his rhetoric about white racism, I could find no record that he or his followers ever raised a hand in anger against a white person. In fact, Karenga had an excellent relationship with Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the '60s and also met with then-Governor Ronald Reagan and other white politicians. But he and his gang were hell on blacks. And Karenga certainly seems to have had a low opinion of his fellow African-Americans. "People think it's African, but it's not," he said about his holiday in an interview quoted in the Washington Post. "I came up with Kwanzaa because black people in this country wouldn't celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that's when a lot of bloods would be partying." "Bloods" is a '60s California slang term for black people.
That Post article appeared in 1978. Like other news articles from that era, it makes no mention of Karenga's criminal past, which seems to have been forgotten the minute he got out of prison in 1975. Profiting from the absence of memory, he remade himself as Maulana Ron Karenga, went into academics, and by 1979 he was running the Black Studies Department at California State University in Long Beach.
This raises a question: Karenga had just ten years earlier proven himself capable of employing guns and bullets in his efforts to control hiring in the Black Studies Department at UCLA. So how did this ex-con, fresh out jail, get the job at Long Beach? Did he just send a résumé and wait by the phone? The officials at Long Beach State don't like that type of question. I called the university and got a spokeswoman by the name of Toni Barone. She listened to my questions and put me on hold. Christmas music was playing, a nice touch under the circumstances. She told me to fax her my questions. I sent a list of questions that included the matter of whether Karenga had employed threats to get his job. I also asked just what sort of crimes would preclude a person from serving on the faculty there in Long Beach. And whether the university takes any security measures to ensure that Karenga doesn't shoot any students. Barone faxed me back a reply stating that the university is pleased with Karenga's performance and has no record of the procedures that led to his hiring. She ignored the question about how they protect students.
Actually, there is clear evidence that Karenga has reformed. In 1975, he dropped his cultural nationalist views and converted to Marxism. For anyone else, this would have been seen as an endorsement of radicalism, but for Karenga it was considered a sign that he had moderated his outlook. The ultimate irony is that now that Karenga is a Marxist, the capitalists have taken over his holiday. The seven principles of Kwanzaa include "collective work" and "cooperative economics," but Kwanzaa is turning out to be as commercial as Christmas, generating millions in greeting-card sales alone. The purists are whining. "It's clear that a number of major corporations have started to take notice and try to profit from Kwanzaa," said a San Francisco State black studies professor named "Oba T'Shaka" in one news account. "That's not good, with money comes corruption." No, he's wrong. With money comes kitsch. The L.A. Times reported a group was planning an "African Village Faire," the pseudo-archaic spelling of "faire" nicely combining kitsch Africana with kitsch Americana.
With money also comes forgetfulness. As those warm Kwanzaa feelings are generated in a spirit of holiday cheer, those who celebrate this holiday do so in blissful ignorance of the sordid violence, paranoia, and mayhem that helped generate its birth some three decades ago in a section of America that has vanished down the memory hole.
Read more!
Happy Kwanzaa
By Paul Mulshine
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 26, 2002
On December 24, 1971, the New York Times ran one of the first of many articles on a new holiday designed to foster unity among African Americans. The holiday, called Kwanzaa, was applauded by a certain sixteen-year-old minister who explained that the feast would perform the valuable service of "de-whitizing" Christmas. The minister was a nobody at the time but he would later go on to become perhaps the premier race-baiter of the twentieth century. His name was Al Sharpton and he would later spawn the Tawana Brawley hoax and then incite anti-Jewish tensions in a 1995 incident that ended with the arson deaths of seven people.
Great minds think alike. The inventor of the holiday was one of the few black "leaders" in America even worse than Sharpton. But there was no mention in the Times article of this man or of the fact that at that very moment he was sitting in a California prison. And there was no mention of the curious fact that this purported benefactor of the black people had founded an organization that in its short history tortured and murdered blacks in ways of which the Ku Klux Klan could only fantasize.
It was in newspaper articles like that, repeated in papers all over the country, that the tradition of Kwanzaa began. It is a tradition not out of Africa but out of Orwell. Both history and language have been bent to serve a political goal. When that New York Times article appeared, Ron Karenga's crimes were still recent events. If the reporter had bothered to do any research into the background of the Kwanzaa founder, he might have learned about Karenga's trial earlier that year on charges of torturing two women who were members of US (United Slaves), a black nationalist cult he had founded.
A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of one of them: "Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said."
Back then, it was relatively easy to get information on the trial. Now it's almost impossible. It took me two days' work to find articles about it. The Los Angeles Times seems to have been the only major newspaper that reported it and the stories were buried deep in the paper, which now is available only on microfilm. And the microfilm index doesn't start until 1972, so it is almost impossible to find the three small articles that cover Karenga's trial and conviction on charges of torture. That is fortunate for Karenga. The trial showed him to be not just brutal, but deranged. He and three members of his cult had tortured the women in an attempt to find some nonexistent "crystals" of poison. Karenga thought his enemies were out to get him.
And in another lucky break for Karenga, the trial transcript no longer exists. I filed a request for it with the Superior Court of Los Angeles. After a search, the court clerk could find no record of the trial. So the exact words of the black woman who had a hot soldering iron pressed against her face by the man who founded Kwanzaa are now lost to history. The only document the court clerk did find was particularly revealing, however. It was a transcript of Karenga's sentencing hearing on Sept. 17, 1971.
A key issue was whether Karenga was sane. Judge Arthur L. Alarcon read from a psychiatrist's report: "Since his admission here he has been isolated and has been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers and that his attorney was in the next cell. … During part of the interview he would look around as if reacting to hallucination and when the examiner walked away for a moment he began a conversation with a blanket located on his bed, stating that there was someone there and implying indirectly that the 'someone' was a woman imprisoned with him for some offense. This man now presents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment."
The founder of Kwanzaa paranoid? It seems so. But as the old saying goes, just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean that someone isn't out to get you.
ACCORDING TO COURT DOCUMENTS, Karenga's real name is Ron N. Everett. In the '60s, he awarded himself the title "maulana," Swahili for "master teacher." He was born on a poultry farm in Maryland, the fourteenth child of a Baptist minister. He came to California in the late 1950s to attend Los Angeles Community College. He moved on to UCLA, where he got a Master's degree in political science and African Studies. By the mid-1960s, he had established himself as a leading "cultural nationalist." That is a term that had some meaning in the '60s, mainly as a way of distinguishing Karenga's followers from the Black Panthers, who were conventional Marxists.
Another way of distinguishing might be to think of Karenga's gang as the Crips and the Panthers as the bloods. Despite all their rhetoric about white people, they reserved their most vicious violence for each other. In 1969, the two groups squared off over the question of who would control the new Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA. According to a Los Angeles Times article, Karenga and his adherents backed one candidate, the Panthers another. Both groups took to carrying guns on campus, a situation that, remarkably, did not seem to bother the university administration. The Black Student Union, however, set up a coalition to try and bring peace between the Panthers and the group headed by the man whom the Times labeled "Ron Ndabezitha Everett-Karenga."
On Jan. 17, 1969, about 150 students gathered in a lunchroom to discuss the situation. Two Panthers—admitted to UCLA like many of the black students as part of a federal program that put high-school dropouts into the school—apparently spent a good part of the meeting in verbal attacks against Karenga. This did not sit well with Karenga's followers, many of whom had adopted the look of their leader, pseudo-African clothing and a shaved head.
In modern gang parlance, you might say Karenga was "dissed" by John Jerome Huggins, 23, and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, 26. After the meeting, the two Panthers were met in the hallway by two brothers who were members of US, George P. and Larry Joseph Stiner. The Stiners pulled pistols and shot the two Panthers dead. One of the Stiners took a bullet in the shoulder, apparently from a Panther's gun.
There were other beatings and shooting in Los Angeles involving US, but by then the tradition of African nationalism had already taken hold—among whites. That tradition calls for any white person, whether a journalist, a college official, or a politician, to ignore the obvious flaws of the concept that blacks should have a separate culture. "The students here have handled themselves in an absolutely impeccable manner," UCLA chancellor Charles E. Young told the L.A. Times. "They have been concerned. They haven't argued who the director should be; they have been saying what kind of person he should be." Young made those remarks after the shooting. And the university went ahead with its Afro-American Studies Program. Karenga, meanwhile, continued to build and strengthen US, a unique group that seems to have combined the elements of a street gang with those of a California cult. The members performed assaults and robberies but they also strictly followed the rules laid down in The Quotable Karenga, a book that laid out "The Path of Blackness." "The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black," the book states.
In retrospect, it may be fortunate that the cult fell apart over the torture charges. Left to his own devices, Karenga might have orchestrated the type of mass suicide later pioneered by the People's Temple and copied by the Heaven's Gate cult. Instead, he apparently fell into deep paranoia shortly after the killings at UCLA. He began fearing that his followers were trying to have him killed. On May 9, 1970 he initiated the torture session that led to his imprisonment. Karenga himself will not comment on that incident and the victims cannot be located, so the sole remaining account is in the brief passage from the L.A. Times describing tortures inflicted by Karenga and his fellow defendants, Louis Smith and Luz Maria Tamayo:
"The victims said they were living at Karenga's home when Karenga accused them of trying to kill him by placing 'crystals' in his food and water and in various areas of his house. When they denied it, allegedly they were beaten with an electrical cord and a hot soldering iron was put in Miss Davis' mouth and against her face. Police were told that one of Miss Jones' toes was placed in a small vise which then allegedly was tightened by one of the defendants. The following day Karenga allegedly told the women that 'Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know.' Miss Tamayo reportedly put detergent in their mouths, Smith turned a water hose full force on their faces, and Karenga, holding a gun, threatened to shoot both of them."
Karenga was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment. He was sentenced on Sept. 17, 1971, to serve one to ten years in prison. A brief account of the sentencing ran in several newspapers the following day. That was apparently the last newspaper article to mention Karenga's unfortunate habit of doing unspeakable things to black people. After that, the only coverage came from the hundreds of news accounts that depict him as the wonderful man who invented Kwanzaa.
LOOK AT ANY MAP OF THE WORLD and you will see that Ghana and Kenya are on opposite sides of the continent. This brings up an obvious question about Kwanzaa: Why did Karenga use Swahili words for his fictional African feast? American blacks are primarily descended from people who came from Ghana and other parts of West Africa. Kenya and Tanzania—where Swahili is spoken—are several thousand miles away, about as far from Ghana as Los Angeles is from New York. Yet in celebrating Kwanzaa, African-Americans are supposed to employ a vocabulary of such Swahili words as "kujichagulia" and "kuumba." This makes about as much sense as having Irish-Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day by speaking Polish. One possible explanation is that Karenga was simply ignorant of African geography and history when he came up with Kwanzaa in 1966. That might explain why he would schedule a harvest festival near the solstice, a season when few fruits or vegetables are harvested anywhere. But a better explanation is that he simply has contempt for black people.
That does not seem a farfetched hypothesis. Despite all his rhetoric about white racism, I could find no record that he or his followers ever raised a hand in anger against a white person. In fact, Karenga had an excellent relationship with Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the '60s and also met with then-Governor Ronald Reagan and other white politicians. But he and his gang were hell on blacks. And Karenga certainly seems to have had a low opinion of his fellow African-Americans. "People think it's African, but it's not," he said about his holiday in an interview quoted in the Washington Post. "I came up with Kwanzaa because black people in this country wouldn't celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that's when a lot of bloods would be partying." "Bloods" is a '60s California slang term for black people.
That Post article appeared in 1978. Like other news articles from that era, it makes no mention of Karenga's criminal past, which seems to have been forgotten the minute he got out of prison in 1975. Profiting from the absence of memory, he remade himself as Maulana Ron Karenga, went into academics, and by 1979 he was running the Black Studies Department at California State University in Long Beach.
This raises a question: Karenga had just ten years earlier proven himself capable of employing guns and bullets in his efforts to control hiring in the Black Studies Department at UCLA. So how did this ex-con, fresh out jail, get the job at Long Beach? Did he just send a résumé and wait by the phone? The officials at Long Beach State don't like that type of question. I called the university and got a spokeswoman by the name of Toni Barone. She listened to my questions and put me on hold. Christmas music was playing, a nice touch under the circumstances. She told me to fax her my questions. I sent a list of questions that included the matter of whether Karenga had employed threats to get his job. I also asked just what sort of crimes would preclude a person from serving on the faculty there in Long Beach. And whether the university takes any security measures to ensure that Karenga doesn't shoot any students. Barone faxed me back a reply stating that the university is pleased with Karenga's performance and has no record of the procedures that led to his hiring. She ignored the question about how they protect students.
Actually, there is clear evidence that Karenga has reformed. In 1975, he dropped his cultural nationalist views and converted to Marxism. For anyone else, this would have been seen as an endorsement of radicalism, but for Karenga it was considered a sign that he had moderated his outlook. The ultimate irony is that now that Karenga is a Marxist, the capitalists have taken over his holiday. The seven principles of Kwanzaa include "collective work" and "cooperative economics," but Kwanzaa is turning out to be as commercial as Christmas, generating millions in greeting-card sales alone. The purists are whining. "It's clear that a number of major corporations have started to take notice and try to profit from Kwanzaa," said a San Francisco State black studies professor named "Oba T'Shaka" in one news account. "That's not good, with money comes corruption." No, he's wrong. With money comes kitsch. The L.A. Times reported a group was planning an "African Village Faire," the pseudo-archaic spelling of "faire" nicely combining kitsch Africana with kitsch Americana.
With money also comes forgetfulness. As those warm Kwanzaa feelings are generated in a spirit of holiday cheer, those who celebrate this holiday do so in blissful ignorance of the sordid violence, paranoia, and mayhem that helped generate its birth some three decades ago in a section of America that has vanished down the memory hole.
Read more!
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Steve Rendall Continues to Flail Away .. and I Pummel Him Again
This time, Rendall wrote his responses within my email. I've bolded them and my response follows the initial email. Although humorous, this exchange is getting a little tiresome and his arguments are just too easy to refute. Unless he comes up with an extraordinary rebuttal (which isn't likely), this will probably be the last installment of my debate with Rendall that I'll post. Check it out for yourself at FAIR.org. This group is a liberal think tank (I know -- that's an oxymoron) masquerading as a "media watchdog group".
Mr. Rendall.
Thanks for your response. It's not often that you'll find a liberal who even attempts to defend their beliefs or try to back them with facts. Your response falls far short of being factual or mounting much of a defense of your beliefs but at least it's a response which is more than you can say for most liberals who are challenged on their beliefs. The typical response to for the liberal to retort with nasty names. Now, it's time to pick apart you response point by point - with facts.
First of all, I would challenge you to copy and paste my response to your Hannity column into your email program and bold the portions containing the "name calling tirade". The only name I called was a suggestion - in jest - of a more descriptive (and accurate) name for your group. Sorry you can't take a joke. And sorry, calling a liberal a liberal doesn't count as name-calling, even though I'm sure you'd like it to.
Steve Rendall:
Nonsense. You called us "yahoos." Don't tempt me to add "liar" to my perfectly accurate description of you as a name caller.
Secondly, progressive is a term that most people who aren't politically aware don't understand. Most people recognize the word liberal for what it is - liberal, which is why liberals like you mask your bias with the word "progressive". (I don't mind being called a conservative and don't have to obfuscate the label with misleading synonyms.) Combine a misunderstanding of the word "progressive" with the misleading first sentence of your opening paragraph, (FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.) and it's easy to see how someone could mistake your group for being unbiased. When I see Jeff Cohen on panel discussions regarding the media on the "conservatively biased" Fox News (which, somehow, despite it's radical conservative bias, manages to find room for Cohen and other "progressives" on their panels) it's in the role of an unbiased critic of the media. Indeed, your very name is misleading. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, implies fairness and accuracy, the definition of which, in any rational person's mind, is an absence of bias.
Steve Rendall:
First of all, I am not a liberal. When it comes to liberals I like to quote Heywood Broun: "liberals are the first ones out of the room when a fight breaks out." In addition, as I was growing up liberal American politicians were prosecuting illegal wars and assassinating and attempting to assassinate foreign leaders (Diem, Lamumba and Castro for starters.)
"Progressive" is an broad term encompassing liberals, democratic socialists, left libertarians and other left leaning tendencies. (Libertarianism originated on the left.)
I'm sorry I don't have time to educate you on the subtleties of U.S. political tendencies, though it's clear that you need educating.
And on Jeff Cohen and Fox News Watch: You haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. Jeff and Laura Flanders (also of FAIR) were hired to be the left-leaning media critics on the show. If you hadn't figured that out from watching them (they've been off the show for years) you have a real perception problem.
As far as my "AIDS tirade" goes, you mention a "homophobic" (there's a FAIR word) Christian right activist's concerns about the spread of AIDS in a book published in 1989 (and presumably written earlier than that) a time when there were real questions about the spread of AIDS (ask the family of Kimberly Bergalis). Yet the connection I make between questions regarding the spread of this 100% fatal disease and the fact that it's illegal to inquire of the status of someone who is essentially walking around a ticking time bomb, goes right over your head.
Steve Rendall:
Again AIDS is not 100% percent fatal-- besides the significant success of protease inhibitors there have been some sero conversions -- where once sero-positive patients become sero-negative-- that are not entirely understood.
The way the media distort the facts on AIDS (such as your myth that AIDS is not 100% fatal) is certainly "applicable to media criticism work." Your comment on my "AIDS tirade" proves a couple of maxims about liberals. 1) Your (opposing) point is only relevant if a liberal deems it so and 2) because I'm a liberal, whatever I say is true - don't complicate my distortions with facts. The facts are that, while expensive drug cocktails have prolonged life for many AIDS patients in this country and other industrialized nations by as much as 10 years or more, they all eventually die or will die of complications of AIDS. In developing countries in Africa, without these drugs 2.4 million people died of AIDS in 2001 and 28 million or more are infected. As far as heterosexual transmission of AIDS among monogamous partners who don't use IV drugs, it just can't happen unless some other method of transmission that you liberals are loathe to admit ever happens occurs. That's an indisputable fact.
Steve Rendall:
Nice try. On the subject of the impossibility of monogamous heterosexuals contracting HIV, you are trying to slither away from what you wrote in your first note. Here's it is: "Is it FAIR not to point out that the risk of monogamous heterosexuals getting AIDS through sexual contact is non-existent..."
As you see, you made no mention of drug use in that passage. Like I said, nice try. BUT, even by adding the 'drug use' wording your bases are still not covered: Monogamous heterosexuals can contract HIV if their single partner does not act monogamously-- a not uncommon occurrence.
Can you say "oops!"
You really haven't thought nearly deeply enough about this to present any sort of intelligent commentary.
Finally, the idea that the mainstream media is centrist is laughable at best. Examples of liberal bias in the mainstream media abound. I'll deal with this in my next installment of this discussion. As far as the idea that less than five percent of your criticism is dedicated to conservative pundits, that isn't what's reflected in your home page. Of the 19 links to original pieces on FAIR's home page, five of them were dedicated to criticism of O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Hannity. That's better than 25%. Combine that with your use of openly liberal interest groups in a book that nit-picks Limbaugh to death, and you're hardly painting a FAIR or accurate picture. If you're going to have a blatant liberal bias, don't call yourselves FAIR and don't hold yourselves out to be fair and accurate. Because you're neither.
Steve Rendall:
That you cannot muster a single fact to defend Limbaugh against FAIR's copious evidence documenting his falsehoods speaks volumes. You've seen my evidence, don't write back until you have some of your own.
Sincerely, Steve Rendall
Hi Steve,
Here's my latest installment:
Mr. Rendall,
You liberals are humorous. Yes you are a liberal. I'm not interested in your shades of gray nuances about the differences between liberals and I'm not interested in your liberal re-education about the political "subtleties" of liberalism. It's just another way to obfuscate your unpopular political beliefs and transform them into something minimally palatable.
At the risk of sending you of the thin skin off the deep end about another name-calling tirade, I'll tell you that attempting to engage a liberal in meaningful debate is like poking a weak, toothless, clawless old bear with a stick (Hmm, a weak, toothless bear, what an appropriate animal for a liberal mascot). The more you challenge them, the more surly they get, growling and spitting, but never coming up with any substantive response to your goading.
I will ask politely one more time, copy and paste my previous email into your email program and bold the name-calling tirade. You can't because it didn't happen. Another perfect example of "if a liberal says it it must be so and don't try to confuse the issue with facts." If I was as thin-skinned as you (and most other liberals) are, I'd whine about the "name calling tirade" you opened with when you labeled me a name caller in your first response. (I'm really on a tirade now! Not only did I call you a "yahoo" (oooh!), I've now likened you to a toothless bear and called you thin-skinned. You wanted a tirade, you've got a tirade. I won't be as uncivil as to call YOU a liar, but if the shoe fits.)
As far as the AIDS claim goes, it isn't even a nice try on your part and I�m not backing down: AIDS is 100% fatal. Eventually, everyone who contracts full-blown AIDS dies from it or its complications. Being HIV positive is not fatal in all cases and in some cases, people who a re HIV positive, such as Magic Johnson, go into complete remission. But being HIV positive is different from having full-blown AIDS. Again, explain away the rampant epidemic of AIDS in African countries where they don�t have ready access to protease inhibitors and the like.
As far as the monogamous couples deal goes, okay, I didn't explicitly state what I implied -- couples who are monogamous and have no other risk factors cannot get AIDS -- that's a fact. AIDS is still a disease that afflicts primarily homosexual males, people who have unprotected sex with multiple partners and IV drug users -- refute that please.
The Limbaugh thing is a great attempt at liberal slight of hand, but it doesn't counter my point that the idea that FAIR spends less than five percent of it's time critiquing the right is ridiculous. But if you want to bait and switch, I'll go along with you because the topic you switched to is a loser for you as well.
First of all, where is your "copious evidence documenting (Limbaugh's) falsehoods"? It�s certainly not in your book. The fact that you quote a "scientist" from the radical Environmental Defense Fund slamming Limbaugh, isn't evidence that he's wrong. The EDF is comprised of such a bunch of quacks (there I go again on a name-calling tirade) that their top link under "campaigns in the news" urges people to help them keep beating that dead horse global warming. Anyone who is up to speed on the issue can tell you that the theory of man-made global warming has been largely de-bunked (although the media still continue to treat it as irrefutable science). Read this excerpt from an article by James K. Glassman in the site capmag.com:
Lately, some environmentalists, in an effort to win approval for Kyoto-style restrictions, have made radical claims about future warming. Some have pointed to an article published in the journal Nature by Michael Mann and his colleagues, which found that "Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the past eight years are warmer than any other year since [at least] 1400 A.D."
The Mann research is commonly known as the "hockey stick," for the shape of a graph that shows temperatures roughly flat from 1000 through the early 20th century, then rising sharply on the right-hand side, like the blade-end of a hockey stick. The United Nations used Mann's research to declare that "the 1990s has been the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millennium."
A new paper, however, published in the journal Energy and the Environment, repudiates the Mann claims. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick examined Mann's data and found his research "contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects."
A new computation, with the errors corrected, discovered that the "late 20th Century is unexceptional compared to the preceding centuries, displaying neither unusually high mean values nor variability." In fact, temperatures were higher during periods in both the 15th and 16th Century than they were in the late 20th Century.
The gradual warming (and cooling) of the earth is a natural cycle and yet your expert �scientist�s� group continues to sound the alarm bell:
The Earth is heating up. By burning fossil fuels and clear-cutting forests, humans are adding carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at a perilous rate. The consequences of global warming are potentially catastrophic. But there is hope. You can help to undo global warming.
Do you remember Paul Ehrlich's book the population bomb? According to Ehrlich, most of us should have starved to death by now. And yet there is more per capita food production in the world now than ever before.
Who can forget Carl Sagan standing on the fringes of the flaming Iraqi oil fields during the closing days of Gulf War I and predicting a nuclear winter-like scenario for the region due to the smoke. Did it happen? No.
Quoting someone who comes from the militant environmentalist point of view and would probably identify with the ravings of Erlich and the late Carl Sagan as an unbiased source on the validity of Limbaugh's claims is sloppy (if not dishonest) journalism (there I go again on a name-calling tirade). And please don't try to tell me that Michael Oppenheimer's political views are well known or that the average uninformed Joe is going to be aware of the EDF's political bias cause it just ain't so.
Well, it's time to close this installment, but not before taking issue with you -- again --for your organization's misrepresentation of itself. I've talked to many people of different political stripes over the past couple weeks and asked them what their definition of "fairness and accuracy" as it applies to media criticism is. Everyone has nearly the same answer and that is fair and impartial, covering both sides of the issue. Indeed, that's what you'll find when you look up information on Jeff Cohen's career. The vast majority of citations list him as "media critic" or "recognized as one of the foremost experts in media analysis and criticism". The only clear reference I've found to Jeff Cohen as being a "liberal media critic" is when Eric Burns eludes to Cohen's political bias on the closing comments of the last Fox News Watch Cohen appeared as a regular on (in May of 2002, not "years" ago as you asserted). Most people wouldn't know that the founder of the "media watchdog group" FAIR was an attorney for the ACLU before founding FAIR. And most people wouldn't know that this "media watchdog group" has it's teeth firmly planted in the asses of prominent conservative pundits while being absolutely toothless when it comes to the rabid anti-American vitriol spouted by such people as Michael Moore and many other liberals.
The simple fact of the matter, Mr. Rendall, is that it's not that difficult being a policy analyst for a liberal think-tank masquerading as a "media watchdog group" when the vast majority of the mainstream media share your political bias.
Yours Truly,
Steve Bowers
Read more!
Mr. Rendall.
Thanks for your response. It's not often that you'll find a liberal who even attempts to defend their beliefs or try to back them with facts. Your response falls far short of being factual or mounting much of a defense of your beliefs but at least it's a response which is more than you can say for most liberals who are challenged on their beliefs. The typical response to for the liberal to retort with nasty names. Now, it's time to pick apart you response point by point - with facts.
First of all, I would challenge you to copy and paste my response to your Hannity column into your email program and bold the portions containing the "name calling tirade". The only name I called was a suggestion - in jest - of a more descriptive (and accurate) name for your group. Sorry you can't take a joke. And sorry, calling a liberal a liberal doesn't count as name-calling, even though I'm sure you'd like it to.
Steve Rendall:
Nonsense. You called us "yahoos." Don't tempt me to add "liar" to my perfectly accurate description of you as a name caller.
Secondly, progressive is a term that most people who aren't politically aware don't understand. Most people recognize the word liberal for what it is - liberal, which is why liberals like you mask your bias with the word "progressive". (I don't mind being called a conservative and don't have to obfuscate the label with misleading synonyms.) Combine a misunderstanding of the word "progressive" with the misleading first sentence of your opening paragraph, (FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.) and it's easy to see how someone could mistake your group for being unbiased. When I see Jeff Cohen on panel discussions regarding the media on the "conservatively biased" Fox News (which, somehow, despite it's radical conservative bias, manages to find room for Cohen and other "progressives" on their panels) it's in the role of an unbiased critic of the media. Indeed, your very name is misleading. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, implies fairness and accuracy, the definition of which, in any rational person's mind, is an absence of bias.
Steve Rendall:
First of all, I am not a liberal. When it comes to liberals I like to quote Heywood Broun: "liberals are the first ones out of the room when a fight breaks out." In addition, as I was growing up liberal American politicians were prosecuting illegal wars and assassinating and attempting to assassinate foreign leaders (Diem, Lamumba and Castro for starters.)
"Progressive" is an broad term encompassing liberals, democratic socialists, left libertarians and other left leaning tendencies. (Libertarianism originated on the left.)
I'm sorry I don't have time to educate you on the subtleties of U.S. political tendencies, though it's clear that you need educating.
And on Jeff Cohen and Fox News Watch: You haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. Jeff and Laura Flanders (also of FAIR) were hired to be the left-leaning media critics on the show. If you hadn't figured that out from watching them (they've been off the show for years) you have a real perception problem.
As far as my "AIDS tirade" goes, you mention a "homophobic" (there's a FAIR word) Christian right activist's concerns about the spread of AIDS in a book published in 1989 (and presumably written earlier than that) a time when there were real questions about the spread of AIDS (ask the family of Kimberly Bergalis). Yet the connection I make between questions regarding the spread of this 100% fatal disease and the fact that it's illegal to inquire of the status of someone who is essentially walking around a ticking time bomb, goes right over your head.
Steve Rendall:
Again AIDS is not 100% percent fatal-- besides the significant success of protease inhibitors there have been some sero conversions -- where once sero-positive patients become sero-negative-- that are not entirely understood.
The way the media distort the facts on AIDS (such as your myth that AIDS is not 100% fatal) is certainly "applicable to media criticism work." Your comment on my "AIDS tirade" proves a couple of maxims about liberals. 1) Your (opposing) point is only relevant if a liberal deems it so and 2) because I'm a liberal, whatever I say is true - don't complicate my distortions with facts. The facts are that, while expensive drug cocktails have prolonged life for many AIDS patients in this country and other industrialized nations by as much as 10 years or more, they all eventually die or will die of complications of AIDS. In developing countries in Africa, without these drugs 2.4 million people died of AIDS in 2001 and 28 million or more are infected. As far as heterosexual transmission of AIDS among monogamous partners who don't use IV drugs, it just can't happen unless some other method of transmission that you liberals are loathe to admit ever happens occurs. That's an indisputable fact.
Steve Rendall:
Nice try. On the subject of the impossibility of monogamous heterosexuals contracting HIV, you are trying to slither away from what you wrote in your first note. Here's it is: "Is it FAIR not to point out that the risk of monogamous heterosexuals getting AIDS through sexual contact is non-existent..."
As you see, you made no mention of drug use in that passage. Like I said, nice try. BUT, even by adding the 'drug use' wording your bases are still not covered: Monogamous heterosexuals can contract HIV if their single partner does not act monogamously-- a not uncommon occurrence.
Can you say "oops!"
You really haven't thought nearly deeply enough about this to present any sort of intelligent commentary.
Finally, the idea that the mainstream media is centrist is laughable at best. Examples of liberal bias in the mainstream media abound. I'll deal with this in my next installment of this discussion. As far as the idea that less than five percent of your criticism is dedicated to conservative pundits, that isn't what's reflected in your home page. Of the 19 links to original pieces on FAIR's home page, five of them were dedicated to criticism of O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Hannity. That's better than 25%. Combine that with your use of openly liberal interest groups in a book that nit-picks Limbaugh to death, and you're hardly painting a FAIR or accurate picture. If you're going to have a blatant liberal bias, don't call yourselves FAIR and don't hold yourselves out to be fair and accurate. Because you're neither.
Steve Rendall:
That you cannot muster a single fact to defend Limbaugh against FAIR's copious evidence documenting his falsehoods speaks volumes. You've seen my evidence, don't write back until you have some of your own.
Sincerely, Steve Rendall
Hi Steve,
Here's my latest installment:
Mr. Rendall,
You liberals are humorous. Yes you are a liberal. I'm not interested in your shades of gray nuances about the differences between liberals and I'm not interested in your liberal re-education about the political "subtleties" of liberalism. It's just another way to obfuscate your unpopular political beliefs and transform them into something minimally palatable.
At the risk of sending you of the thin skin off the deep end about another name-calling tirade, I'll tell you that attempting to engage a liberal in meaningful debate is like poking a weak, toothless, clawless old bear with a stick (Hmm, a weak, toothless bear, what an appropriate animal for a liberal mascot). The more you challenge them, the more surly they get, growling and spitting, but never coming up with any substantive response to your goading.
I will ask politely one more time, copy and paste my previous email into your email program and bold the name-calling tirade. You can't because it didn't happen. Another perfect example of "if a liberal says it it must be so and don't try to confuse the issue with facts." If I was as thin-skinned as you (and most other liberals) are, I'd whine about the "name calling tirade" you opened with when you labeled me a name caller in your first response. (I'm really on a tirade now! Not only did I call you a "yahoo" (oooh!), I've now likened you to a toothless bear and called you thin-skinned. You wanted a tirade, you've got a tirade. I won't be as uncivil as to call YOU a liar, but if the shoe fits.)
As far as the AIDS claim goes, it isn't even a nice try on your part and I�m not backing down: AIDS is 100% fatal. Eventually, everyone who contracts full-blown AIDS dies from it or its complications. Being HIV positive is not fatal in all cases and in some cases, people who a re HIV positive, such as Magic Johnson, go into complete remission. But being HIV positive is different from having full-blown AIDS. Again, explain away the rampant epidemic of AIDS in African countries where they don�t have ready access to protease inhibitors and the like.
As far as the monogamous couples deal goes, okay, I didn't explicitly state what I implied -- couples who are monogamous and have no other risk factors cannot get AIDS -- that's a fact. AIDS is still a disease that afflicts primarily homosexual males, people who have unprotected sex with multiple partners and IV drug users -- refute that please.
The Limbaugh thing is a great attempt at liberal slight of hand, but it doesn't counter my point that the idea that FAIR spends less than five percent of it's time critiquing the right is ridiculous. But if you want to bait and switch, I'll go along with you because the topic you switched to is a loser for you as well.
First of all, where is your "copious evidence documenting (Limbaugh's) falsehoods"? It�s certainly not in your book. The fact that you quote a "scientist" from the radical Environmental Defense Fund slamming Limbaugh, isn't evidence that he's wrong. The EDF is comprised of such a bunch of quacks (there I go again on a name-calling tirade) that their top link under "campaigns in the news" urges people to help them keep beating that dead horse global warming. Anyone who is up to speed on the issue can tell you that the theory of man-made global warming has been largely de-bunked (although the media still continue to treat it as irrefutable science). Read this excerpt from an article by James K. Glassman in the site capmag.com:
Lately, some environmentalists, in an effort to win approval for Kyoto-style restrictions, have made radical claims about future warming. Some have pointed to an article published in the journal Nature by Michael Mann and his colleagues, which found that "Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the past eight years are warmer than any other year since [at least] 1400 A.D."
The Mann research is commonly known as the "hockey stick," for the shape of a graph that shows temperatures roughly flat from 1000 through the early 20th century, then rising sharply on the right-hand side, like the blade-end of a hockey stick. The United Nations used Mann's research to declare that "the 1990s has been the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millennium."
A new paper, however, published in the journal Energy and the Environment, repudiates the Mann claims. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick examined Mann's data and found his research "contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects."
A new computation, with the errors corrected, discovered that the "late 20th Century is unexceptional compared to the preceding centuries, displaying neither unusually high mean values nor variability." In fact, temperatures were higher during periods in both the 15th and 16th Century than they were in the late 20th Century.
The gradual warming (and cooling) of the earth is a natural cycle and yet your expert �scientist�s� group continues to sound the alarm bell:
The Earth is heating up. By burning fossil fuels and clear-cutting forests, humans are adding carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at a perilous rate. The consequences of global warming are potentially catastrophic. But there is hope. You can help to undo global warming.
Do you remember Paul Ehrlich's book the population bomb? According to Ehrlich, most of us should have starved to death by now. And yet there is more per capita food production in the world now than ever before.
Who can forget Carl Sagan standing on the fringes of the flaming Iraqi oil fields during the closing days of Gulf War I and predicting a nuclear winter-like scenario for the region due to the smoke. Did it happen? No.
Quoting someone who comes from the militant environmentalist point of view and would probably identify with the ravings of Erlich and the late Carl Sagan as an unbiased source on the validity of Limbaugh's claims is sloppy (if not dishonest) journalism (there I go again on a name-calling tirade). And please don't try to tell me that Michael Oppenheimer's political views are well known or that the average uninformed Joe is going to be aware of the EDF's political bias cause it just ain't so.
Well, it's time to close this installment, but not before taking issue with you -- again --for your organization's misrepresentation of itself. I've talked to many people of different political stripes over the past couple weeks and asked them what their definition of "fairness and accuracy" as it applies to media criticism is. Everyone has nearly the same answer and that is fair and impartial, covering both sides of the issue. Indeed, that's what you'll find when you look up information on Jeff Cohen's career. The vast majority of citations list him as "media critic" or "recognized as one of the foremost experts in media analysis and criticism". The only clear reference I've found to Jeff Cohen as being a "liberal media critic" is when Eric Burns eludes to Cohen's political bias on the closing comments of the last Fox News Watch Cohen appeared as a regular on (in May of 2002, not "years" ago as you asserted). Most people wouldn't know that the founder of the "media watchdog group" FAIR was an attorney for the ACLU before founding FAIR. And most people wouldn't know that this "media watchdog group" has it's teeth firmly planted in the asses of prominent conservative pundits while being absolutely toothless when it comes to the rabid anti-American vitriol spouted by such people as Michael Moore and many other liberals.
The simple fact of the matter, Mr. Rendall, is that it's not that difficult being a policy analyst for a liberal think-tank masquerading as a "media watchdog group" when the vast majority of the mainstream media share your political bias.
Yours Truly,
Steve Bowers
Read more!
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Steve Rendall Responds ... and I Respond Back
The latest correspondence between myself and Steve Rendall, a Senior Analyst for the misnamed liberal group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
Dear Mr. Bowers.
As a name caller you really aren't entitled to a reasoned response, but I found so many misapprehensions in your note that I couldn't resist correcting them. Among your errors...
* You wrote: "you purport not to have a political bias." Where do we purport that? Answer: We don't, your statement is false. I would suggest that next time you decide to attack a group with a name calling tirade, that you take the time to learn a few basic, easily-found facts about the group. We state our left-of-center point of view right up front. In our prominently displayed mission statement, "What is FAIR," we proclaim ourselves "progressive". http://www.fair.org/whats-fair.html
* Your AIDS tirade is ridden with errors of fact and mostly not applicable to media criticism work. For instance, your beef with those arguing that people with AIDS should not have to disclose their illness, has virtually nothing to do with media criticism. Your claim that AIDS is "100% fatal" is false, as is your statement that "the risk of monogamous heterosexuals getting AIDS through sexual contact is non-existent."
* You say that we spend a lot of time "slamming" conservative pundits (I wonder if you would use the same verb to describe conservative criticism of liberal pundits?) But you are wrong again, less than 5% of our media analysis and criticism is directed at the right, most of the rest targets the largely centrist mainstream media.
* You say we *attempted* to discredit Limbaugh. This is more a question of opinion than fact, but I think Limbaugh was substantially discredited by our work. I could show many examples (e.g after our report David Letterman dubbed Limbaugh "The Lyin' King") but here's one of my favorites: after comparing our original report on Limbaugh, to Rush's "rebuttal" to our report, Limbaugh's favorite daily, the Washington Times, gave FAIR the higher marks.
Mr. Bowers, you are free to believe Limbaugh's falsehoods. You may agree with Rush that the NY Times never published a story on Whitewater (the Times BROKE the Whitewater story), or that Iran Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh never handed down a single indictment (he delivered 14). But no one should believe you if you do.
Finally, your accusation that the sources we used to debunk Limbaugh are less reliable than Limbaugh, cannot be taken seriously. If you were serious you would have cite errors on the part of our sources. Until you are able to show evidence debunking our work and the reliability of our sources, your charges are simply empty and meaningless.
Thanks for your interest.
Sincerely,
Steve Rendall
Senior Analyst
FAIR
Mr. Rendall.
Thanks for your response. It’s not often that you’ll find a liberal who even attempts to defend their beliefs or try to back them with facts. Your response falls far short of being factual or mounting much of a defense of your beliefs but at least it’s a response which is more than you can say for most liberals who are challenged on their beliefs. The typical response to for the liberal to retort with nasty names. Now, it’s time to pick apart you response point by point – with facts.
First of all, I would challenge you to copy and paste my response to your Hannity column into your email program and bold the portions containing the “name calling tirade”. The only name I called was a suggestion – in jest – of a more descriptive (and accurate) name for your group. Sorry you can’t take a joke. And sorry, calling a liberal a liberal doesn’t count as name-calling, even though I’m sure you’d like it to.
Secondly, progressive is a term that most people who aren’t politically aware don’t understand. Most people recognize the word liberal for what it is – liberal, which is why liberals like you mask your bias with the word “progressive”. (I don’t mind being called a conservative and don’t have to obfuscate the label with misleading synonyms.) Combine a misunderstanding of the word “progressive” with the misleading first sentence of your opening paragraph, (FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.) and it’s easy to see how someone could mistake your group for being unbiased. When I see Jeff Cohen on panel discussions regarding the media on the “conservatively biased” Fox News (which, somehow, despite it’s radical conservative bias, manages to find room for Cohen and other “progressives” on their panels) it’s in the role of an unbiased critic of the media. Indeed, your very name is misleading. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, implies fairness and accuracy, the definition of which, in any rational person’s mind, is an absence of bias.
As far as my “AIDS tirade” goes, you mention a “homophobic” (there’s a FAIR word) Christian right activist’s concerns about the spread of AIDS in a book published in 1989 (and presumably written earlier than that) a time when there were real questions about the spread of AIDS (ask the family of Kimberly Bergalis). Yet the connection I make between questions regarding the spread of this 100% fatal disease and the fact that it’s illegal to inquire of the status of someone who is essentially walking around a ticking time bomb, goes right over your head. The way the media distort the facts on AIDS (such as your myth that AIDS is not 100% fatal) is certainly “applicable to media criticism work.” Your comment on my “AIDS tirade” proves a couple of maxims about liberals. 1) Your (opposing) point is only relevant if a liberal deems it so and 2) because I’m a liberal, whatever I say is true – don’t complicate my distortions with facts. The facts are that, while expensive drug cocktails have prolonged life for many AIDS patients in this country and other industrialized nations by as much as 10 years or more, they all eventually die or will die of complications of AIDS. In developing countries in Africa, without these drugs 2.4 million people died of AIDS in 2001 and 28 million or more are infected. As far as heterosexual transmission of AIDS among monogamous partners who don’t use IV drugs, it just can’t happen unless some other method of transmission that you liberals are loathe to admit ever happens occurs. That’s an indisputable fact.
Finally, the idea that the mainstream media is centrist is laughable at best. Examples of liberal bias in the mainstream media abound. I’ll deal with this in my next installment of this discussion. As far as the idea that less than five percent of your criticism is dedicated to conservative pundits, that isn’t what’s reflected in your home page. Of the 19 links to original pieces on FAIR’s home page, five of them were dedicated to criticism of O’Reilly, Limbaugh and Hannity. That’s better than 25%. Combine that with your use of openly liberal interest groups in a book that nit-picks Limbaugh to death, and you’re hardly painting a FAIR or accurate picture. If you’re going to have a blatant liberal bias, don’t call yourselves FAIR and don’t hold yourselves out to be fair and accurate. Because you’re neither.
Yours truly,
Steve Bowers
Read more!
Dear Mr. Bowers.
As a name caller you really aren't entitled to a reasoned response, but I found so many misapprehensions in your note that I couldn't resist correcting them. Among your errors...
* You wrote: "you purport not to have a political bias." Where do we purport that? Answer: We don't, your statement is false. I would suggest that next time you decide to attack a group with a name calling tirade, that you take the time to learn a few basic, easily-found facts about the group. We state our left-of-center point of view right up front. In our prominently displayed mission statement, "What is FAIR," we proclaim ourselves "progressive". http://www.fair.org/whats-fair.html
* Your AIDS tirade is ridden with errors of fact and mostly not applicable to media criticism work. For instance, your beef with those arguing that people with AIDS should not have to disclose their illness, has virtually nothing to do with media criticism. Your claim that AIDS is "100% fatal" is false, as is your statement that "the risk of monogamous heterosexuals getting AIDS through sexual contact is non-existent."
* You say that we spend a lot of time "slamming" conservative pundits (I wonder if you would use the same verb to describe conservative criticism of liberal pundits?) But you are wrong again, less than 5% of our media analysis and criticism is directed at the right, most of the rest targets the largely centrist mainstream media.
* You say we *attempted* to discredit Limbaugh. This is more a question of opinion than fact, but I think Limbaugh was substantially discredited by our work. I could show many examples (e.g after our report David Letterman dubbed Limbaugh "The Lyin' King") but here's one of my favorites: after comparing our original report on Limbaugh, to Rush's "rebuttal" to our report, Limbaugh's favorite daily, the Washington Times, gave FAIR the higher marks.
Mr. Bowers, you are free to believe Limbaugh's falsehoods. You may agree with Rush that the NY Times never published a story on Whitewater (the Times BROKE the Whitewater story), or that Iran Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh never handed down a single indictment (he delivered 14). But no one should believe you if you do.
Finally, your accusation that the sources we used to debunk Limbaugh are less reliable than Limbaugh, cannot be taken seriously. If you were serious you would have cite errors on the part of our sources. Until you are able to show evidence debunking our work and the reliability of our sources, your charges are simply empty and meaningless.
Thanks for your interest.
Sincerely,
Steve Rendall
Senior Analyst
FAIR
Mr. Rendall.
Thanks for your response. It’s not often that you’ll find a liberal who even attempts to defend their beliefs or try to back them with facts. Your response falls far short of being factual or mounting much of a defense of your beliefs but at least it’s a response which is more than you can say for most liberals who are challenged on their beliefs. The typical response to for the liberal to retort with nasty names. Now, it’s time to pick apart you response point by point – with facts.
First of all, I would challenge you to copy and paste my response to your Hannity column into your email program and bold the portions containing the “name calling tirade”. The only name I called was a suggestion – in jest – of a more descriptive (and accurate) name for your group. Sorry you can’t take a joke. And sorry, calling a liberal a liberal doesn’t count as name-calling, even though I’m sure you’d like it to.
Secondly, progressive is a term that most people who aren’t politically aware don’t understand. Most people recognize the word liberal for what it is – liberal, which is why liberals like you mask your bias with the word “progressive”. (I don’t mind being called a conservative and don’t have to obfuscate the label with misleading synonyms.) Combine a misunderstanding of the word “progressive” with the misleading first sentence of your opening paragraph, (FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.) and it’s easy to see how someone could mistake your group for being unbiased. When I see Jeff Cohen on panel discussions regarding the media on the “conservatively biased” Fox News (which, somehow, despite it’s radical conservative bias, manages to find room for Cohen and other “progressives” on their panels) it’s in the role of an unbiased critic of the media. Indeed, your very name is misleading. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, implies fairness and accuracy, the definition of which, in any rational person’s mind, is an absence of bias.
As far as my “AIDS tirade” goes, you mention a “homophobic” (there’s a FAIR word) Christian right activist’s concerns about the spread of AIDS in a book published in 1989 (and presumably written earlier than that) a time when there were real questions about the spread of AIDS (ask the family of Kimberly Bergalis). Yet the connection I make between questions regarding the spread of this 100% fatal disease and the fact that it’s illegal to inquire of the status of someone who is essentially walking around a ticking time bomb, goes right over your head. The way the media distort the facts on AIDS (such as your myth that AIDS is not 100% fatal) is certainly “applicable to media criticism work.” Your comment on my “AIDS tirade” proves a couple of maxims about liberals. 1) Your (opposing) point is only relevant if a liberal deems it so and 2) because I’m a liberal, whatever I say is true – don’t complicate my distortions with facts. The facts are that, while expensive drug cocktails have prolonged life for many AIDS patients in this country and other industrialized nations by as much as 10 years or more, they all eventually die or will die of complications of AIDS. In developing countries in Africa, without these drugs 2.4 million people died of AIDS in 2001 and 28 million or more are infected. As far as heterosexual transmission of AIDS among monogamous partners who don’t use IV drugs, it just can’t happen unless some other method of transmission that you liberals are loathe to admit ever happens occurs. That’s an indisputable fact.
Finally, the idea that the mainstream media is centrist is laughable at best. Examples of liberal bias in the mainstream media abound. I’ll deal with this in my next installment of this discussion. As far as the idea that less than five percent of your criticism is dedicated to conservative pundits, that isn’t what’s reflected in your home page. Of the 19 links to original pieces on FAIR’s home page, five of them were dedicated to criticism of O’Reilly, Limbaugh and Hannity. That’s better than 25%. Combine that with your use of openly liberal interest groups in a book that nit-picks Limbaugh to death, and you’re hardly painting a FAIR or accurate picture. If you’re going to have a blatant liberal bias, don’t call yourselves FAIR and don’t hold yourselves out to be fair and accurate. Because you’re neither.
Yours truly,
Steve Bowers
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Friday, December 05, 2003
Carl Be Smokin' Some Crack!
Nathaniel Jones apparently wasn't the only one on PCP and coke. It would seem like Carl Parrott, the Hamilton County coroner, is too. Here's what he had to say about the death of a morbidly obese black man on coke and PCP (according to a CBS news report):
Hamilton County Coroner Carl Parrott said his autopsy showed that Jones suffered from an enlarged heart, obesity and had intoxicating levels of cocaine, PCP and methanol in his blood.
Parrott said the death will be ruled a homicide, but that such a ruling "should not be interpreted as implying inappropriate behavior or the use of excessive force by police." (Just what the hell is this bit of illogic supposed to mean? Either someone caused his death intentionally (a homicide) or they didn't. Isn't this an admission that this was NOT a homicide?)
Jones' body had bruising on the lower half, but did not show signs of blows to the head or organ damage, Parrott said.
The coroner said he had to rule the death a homicide because it didn't fall under other categories of a death in Ohio: accident, suicide or natural. (So we're supposed to believe that the death of a grotesquely obese man with a bad heart and high levels of three dangerous drugs in his system after super-human exertion isn't a natural or expected outcome?)
Jones' death certificate will list a cause of death as an irregular heart beat because of a stress reaction from the violent struggle, Parrott said.
Who was responsible for the violent struggle???? Anyone who sees the WHOLE tape and hears the WHOLE transcript knows that the racist bigot black man on PCP and coke was responsible for the violent struggle. Better call it suicide, Carl. All the cops were trying to do was subdue an angry 350-pound black man on PCP in the most professional manner possible. This guy killed himself. What are you on Carl????????
And yet here's what the purposely-deluded race baiters have to say about it according to the same CBS news report:
"Another black man has been killed at the hands of the Cincinnati police, but it's nothing new," said one man. "The city is divided, black and white, but the blacks always die."
If we continue to have people in our society who are consumed by the type of colossal ignorance demonstrated by this statement, we won’t survive as a society for a whole lot longer.
Read more!
Hamilton County Coroner Carl Parrott said his autopsy showed that Jones suffered from an enlarged heart, obesity and had intoxicating levels of cocaine, PCP and methanol in his blood.
Parrott said the death will be ruled a homicide, but that such a ruling "should not be interpreted as implying inappropriate behavior or the use of excessive force by police." (Just what the hell is this bit of illogic supposed to mean? Either someone caused his death intentionally (a homicide) or they didn't. Isn't this an admission that this was NOT a homicide?)
Jones' body had bruising on the lower half, but did not show signs of blows to the head or organ damage, Parrott said.
The coroner said he had to rule the death a homicide because it didn't fall under other categories of a death in Ohio: accident, suicide or natural. (So we're supposed to believe that the death of a grotesquely obese man with a bad heart and high levels of three dangerous drugs in his system after super-human exertion isn't a natural or expected outcome?)
Jones' death certificate will list a cause of death as an irregular heart beat because of a stress reaction from the violent struggle, Parrott said.
Who was responsible for the violent struggle???? Anyone who sees the WHOLE tape and hears the WHOLE transcript knows that the racist bigot black man on PCP and coke was responsible for the violent struggle. Better call it suicide, Carl. All the cops were trying to do was subdue an angry 350-pound black man on PCP in the most professional manner possible. This guy killed himself. What are you on Carl????????
And yet here's what the purposely-deluded race baiters have to say about it according to the same CBS news report:
"Another black man has been killed at the hands of the Cincinnati police, but it's nothing new," said one man. "The city is divided, black and white, but the blacks always die."
If we continue to have people in our society who are consumed by the type of colossal ignorance demonstrated by this statement, we won’t survive as a society for a whole lot longer.
Read more!
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
FAIR or FAIRLY Liberally Biased? I vote for the latter of the two.
Just for the sake of amusment, I subscribe to FAIR's (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) email updates. Their title is a joke. Their past time is to slam conservatives for having conservative opinions (and for being right, of course). Try not to bore yourself as you read this "FAIR" analysis of one of my favorite conservative talk show hosts -- Sean Hannity. Steve Rendall slams Hannity for having conservative opinions and being right. My email to Rendall follows his ridiculous tripe:
Rendall's vomitous tripe:
Hannity & Colmes, Fox News Channel's primetime debate show, figures prominently in the cable network's campaign to market its right leaning programming as "fair & balanced," the network's ever-present slogan. Fox News executives argue that the show, pitting conservative Sean Hannity against liberal Alan Colmes with guests from both right and left, presents a spirited and evenhanded nightly debate.
Fox News president Roger Ailes is clearly riled by those who suggest the show has a slant to it (New York Times, 6/24/01): "I get attacked for putting Sean Hannity on because he's a conservative--even when Alan Colmes, the liberal, is there to balance him!" Ailes is so insistent that Hannity & Colmes plays it "down the middle" that he says producers use a stopwatch to ensure equal time between the two hosts (Washington Post, 2/5/01).
But a systematic review of Hannity & Colmes does reveal a show listing to the right in virtually every respect, from mismatched hosts--the show pairs the aggressive conservative Sean Hannity with the mildly liberal, often conciliatory Alan Colmes--to a format where conservatives out-number, out-talk and out-interrupt their liberal opponents.
The dissimilar circumstances under which the two hosts came to Fox News are revealing. Recruited from Atlanta's talk radio scene by Roger Ailes, Hannity was hired so far in advance of a decision about a co-host that Fox staffers referred to the show as "Hannity & Liberal To Be Determined," or "LTBD." Finally, after auditioning prospective left hosts, Colmes won the job--after Hannity expressed his preference for the mild-mannered New York radio host (Newsday, 10/20/98).
The result is a debate show that doesn't add up to a fair fight, say many critics, because Colmes' wishy-washy views and low-key delivery just can't stand up to the relentlessly ideological and combative Sean Hannity. It's a widely held view outside Fox studios.
"The title…Hannity & Colmes, is something of a misnomer, because the other host--the timid, bespectacled liberal Alan Colmes--acts essentially as a sacrificial lamb and may as well not be there," reads a review in Britain's Sunday Business Post (8/24/03). Other critics are no less harsh. When the show recently began featuring a weekly commentary by outspoken conservative comic Dennis Miller, further weighting the discussion to the right, Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg (6/23/03) described the Hannity/Miller/Colmes line-up as "two rants, one runt."
The notion that Colmes plays second fiddle to Hannity is shared by television critics across the country. At least four papers (Salt Lake City Tribune, 6/21/03; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6/3/03; Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 10/12/96; New York Times, 10/10/96) have run articles referring to Colmes as Hannity's "sidekick."
Fellow liberals don't disagree. In his best selling Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, liberal comic Al Franken calls Colmes "a moderate milquetoast" and "a liberal on-air punching bag" and puts Colmes' name in tiny typeface in every reference to the show.
And though Fox News markets Colmes as "a hard-hitting liberal known for his electric commentary" (FoxNews.com), it doesn't even get much help from Colmes himself. "I think I'm quite moderate," Colmes blandly told USA Today (2/1/95), not long before being hired as the show's left-wing counterweight to Hannity.
Even Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch seems to have trouble making the case that Colmes is a clear-cut liberal. When asked at a congressional hearing last spring (5/8/03) to identify the liberals featured on the Fox News Channel, he offered "Alan Colmes for one." He added the name of On the Record host Greta Van Susteren--a liberal mainly because she used to work at the centrist CNN--before seeming to apologize: "You know, it's in the eye of the beholder, I guess."
"I voted for Giuliani"
Conceding points to conservatives and Republicans seems to be a Colmes specialty.
Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Colmes (9/28/01) assured former Republican congressmember Susan Molinari that he'd voted for New York City's Republican mayor: "Hold on. Susan--Susan, look, I voted for Rudy Giuliani. I'm a liberal Democrat. I voted for this Republican, Rudy Giuliani." Reminding Fox viewers that he voted for Giuliani is a sort of Colmes on-air mantra; according to the show's transcripts, he's done it at least eight times since 1998.
Colmes sometimes joins his conservative co-host and guests in criticizing the left. When conservative author Tammy Bruce appeared on the show touting her book, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values (4/21/03), Hannity predictably agreed with the author about the blame for declining values: "But, literally, the left is responsible for this." Then Bruce clarified her point: "Well, as I show in the book…it's the left having gone so far to the left." Rather than putting up some kind of resistance to this left-bashing--as one might expect a left-of-center host to do--Colmes instead concurred: "I think in some respects you're right. And you and I have talked about this before."
While Hannity, a devout movement conservative, can be relied upon to dwell on the slightest conservative grievance, Colmes seems to see his role as one of policing liberal excess. When left-leaning New York City councilmember Charles Barron dubbed George W. Bush a "selected" president on the show (3/28/03), Colmes scolded the wayward leftist: "Look, my problem with my fellow liberals is they keep arguing the election of 2000. Let's move forward. If you want to win in the future, stop talking about the past."
Once appearing as a guest on Fox's O'Reilly Factor (4/11/03), Colmes received a figurative pat on the head from the show's host, Bill O'Reilly, for not criticizing the White House during the Iraq war. O'Reilly praised Colmes for his silence: "I put forth that once the shelling starts--and you did this--you kept quiet, OK." Colmes dutifully responded: "Well, look, I've kept quiet. My choice has been--I have not criticized the administration or this war effort while there are men and women in harm's way, and I will not, and that is my --that's a choice I make."
"I defended Trent Lott"
When Sen. Trent Lott (R.-Miss.) appeared on the Hannity & Colmes show (4/30/03) chiding Democrats for conducting a filibuster to stall confirmation of Bush judicial nominees, he got no argument from Colmes: "I agree with you. I don't think the Democrats should be doing that. I think they're viewed as obstructionist when they do that."
Colmes seems to have a special affinity for the conservative senator. When Lott stepped down as Senate majority leader in December 2002, after praising Senator Strom Thurmond's racist 1948 presidential campaign at Thurmond's 100th birthday party, guest Oliver North appeared on the show to defend Lott (12/23/02). When North blamed "Alan and all of his colleagues" for Lott's downfall, Colmes corrected him: "By the way, Ollie, I defended Lott and said he should not have had to step down." When North responded, "Because you wanted him there so you could continue to kick him around," Colmes cited his own pattern of defending Lott: "Absolutely not. Absolutely untrue. You haven't been watching our show."
Similarly, when conservative radio host Laura Ingraham (1/22/03) charged that Lott had been "tarred and feathered…destroyed on the public forum," Colmes protested: "I defended him. I defended Trent Lott."
During one of Newt Gingrich's many appearances on Hannity & Colmes (7/24/03), Colmes thanked the former Republican House speaker profusely for writing a blurb for his upcoming book. It was nothing, Gingrich insisted: "You are my favorite liberal to argue with." And Gingrich isn't alone on the right. If Colmes remains largely a non-person in progressive circles, his tendency to concede points to the right and criticize the left make him the favorite liberal of many conservatives.
In addition to Gingrich, Colmes has won the praise of Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch ("you're great for a liberal"--4/16/01), Republican House Whip Tom DeLay ("you are my favorite liberal"--10/18/99), Christian right leader James Dobson ("he's my favorite liberal"--4/28/03) and, of course, Sen. Trent Lott ("you may be a liberal but you're one of the better ones I've seen on TV"--4/30/03).
"Lower forms of behavior"
If Colmes' fans are almost all on the opposite side of the spectrum, the same cannot be said about Sean Hannity. A popular figure in conservative movement circles, Hannity reportedly gets as much as $10,000 per speech, his first book spent time near the top of national bestseller lists, and his radio show is one of the most listened-to in conservative talk radio, trailing only Rush Limbaugh's show in the ratings.
Before Fox News, Hannity's career included hosting a handful of confrontational talk radio shows in various states. He got his start in the late 1980s as a volunteer broadcaster at the University of California at Santa Barbara's KCSB radio station, where his tenure was revealing.
After airing for less than a year, Hannity's weekly show was canceled in 1989, when KCSB management charged him with "discriminating against gays and lesbians" after airing two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS (The Independent, 6/22/89). Written by homophobic Christian-right activist Gene Antonio, the book crankily argued that AIDS could be spread by casual contact, including coughs, sneezes and mosquito bites. Antonio charged that the government, medical establishment and media covered up these truths in the service of "the homosexual movement."
When Antonio appeared by phone on one of the shows, Hannity and his guest repeatedly slurred gay men. At one point, according to the UCSB campus newspaper The Daily Nexus (5/25/89), Hannity declared: "Anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed. It's very dangerous if we start accepting lower and lower forms of behavior as the normal." According to the campus paper, Antonio responded by calling gay men "a subculture of people engaged in deviant, twisted acts."
When a fellow KCSB broadcaster called the show to challenge the host and his guest, Hannity pointed out that the caller, a lesbian, had a child through artificial insemination, and Antonio dubbed the child a "turkey-baster baby." When the caller took issue with that "disgusting" remark, Hannity followed up with "I feel sorry for your child" (The Independent, 6/22/89; KCSB, 4/4/89).
Saved by the ACLU
Hannity challenged his dismissal with help from the Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. The civil liberties groups wrote letters on Hannity's behalf, arguing that the state school was breaching his free speech. When KCSB relented, offering him his show back, Hannity held out for more airtime, walking away from the station when he didn't get it.
Hannity's own accounts of his time at KCSB have been selective and incomplete. A few years ago he summed up the experience to Newsday (7/12/99): "You work for free at a college station, where they spit on you and then they fire you." In his best-selling book, Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism, Hannity wrote:
My first gig was with my own talk radio show at the University of Santa Barbara. But it didn't last long. I was too conservative, the higher-ups said, and they didn't like the comments one guest made on the show…The left-wing management had zero-tolerance for conservative points of view. And I was promptly fired. Once my voice was silenced, my destiny was set--do or die, I'd make my career in radio.
In this bit of personal mythmaking Hannity attributes his troubles at KCSB to his conservatism and to the behavior of a guest on his show. Both claims distort what actually happened, exonerating Hannity of any responsibility and casting him as a victim. Maybe that's the point. After all, accurately recounting the KCSB story, including his own hateful language and the inconvenient fact that he was offered his job back, might spoil the pristine image of the free-speech martyr Hannity wants us to believe.
Hannity's relentless application of ideology allows for few exceptions, none of the soft spots or quirks of the sort acquired over time when one's rigid beliefs are tempered by experience. So while one might expect Hannity to maintain at least a quiet gratitude toward the ACLU, it's surprising to see how ungenerous he is toward the group that supported him in Santa Barbara. For instance, in a discussion about free speech last year, Hannity charged Colmes with being "a card-carrying member of the ACLU." When Colmes said he that was proud to be a member, "because they defend all free speech," Hannity interrupted him: "No they don't, actually. But go ahead" (Hannity & Colmes, 7/17/02).
"Three Times a Liar"
Hannity's first big-city success in talk radio came on Atlanta's WGST-AM, where by all accounts he was no less confrontational than in California. African-American clergy groups, according to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (9/15/95), charged WGST with spreading hatred on the airwaves, specifically citing Hannity's show. The paper reported (3/27/96) on Hannity's campaign to get "Oscar attendees to wear blue ribbons, in support of the L.A. police officers who beat Rodney King." Also according to the Journal (4/30/96), a blurb promoting Hannity on the WGST website touted him as "making a proud name for himself by insulting lesbians."
When Hannity reported to New York City in 1996 to begin work on what would become Hannity & Colmes, it wasn't long before he'd also landed an afternoon show on the biggest talk radio station in the country, New York City's WABC-AM.
On his WABC show, as with his earlier radio shows, "the left" and its various constituencies were blamed for the nation's problems; and crime, affirmative action, welfare and "illegitimacy," all talk radio staples, were discussed ceaselessly. But Hannity really distinguished himself with his crusading efforts to defend the police against charges of brutality. When Haitian immigrant Abner Louima accused New York City police officers of sodomizing and badly injuring him with a wooden rod in 1997, Hannity used his WABC show for a vicious counter-offensive targeting the victim.
The father of chief defendant Justin Volpe, an NYPD police officer, regularly appeared on show during the 1999 trial. And Hannity and various guests repeated rumors that Louima's injuries resulted from a "gay sex act" and not from police brutality. Playing on the homosexual rumor and inconsistencies in Louima's story, Hannity and his producer sang a parody of Lionel Richie's song "Three Times a Lady," changing the words to "you're once, twice, three times a liar." Hannity stopped referring to the victim as "Lying Louima" only after Volpe confessed to sodomizing Louima with the help of another officer (OnePeoplesProject.com).
Meanwhile, at Hannity & Colmes, the Louima story got somewhat less, and less sordid, play; Hannity only repeated the homosexual rumor once on the national cable show (5/13/99). But there, on national television, Hannity was gaining a reputation as a leading conservative advocate who could be depended on to echo and amplify the latest lines in conservative and Republican thinking.
The Elián switcheroo
While Fox has made Hannity an increasingly important mouthpiece for the right, Colmes remains little more than Hannity's foil on Fox. One story that seemed to bring this out was that of Elián Gonzalez, the five-year-old Cuban refugee who was rescued in November 1999 from the shark-infested waters off the coast of Florida that claimed his mother's life. The debate that developed on Hannity & Colmes over whether the child ought to be returned to his father in Cuba took some strange turns.
"Unless information comes out that he was a bad father or something, he has a right to his son. And we've got to honor that." That was Hannity's take on Elián Gonzalez in the first segment of the show dealing with the story (11/29/99). In the segment, Hannity agreed with one conservative guest who wanted the child returned to Cuba based on immigration law, and disagreed with another conservative guest, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R.-Fla.), who represents Florida's Cuban-American community. Colmes downplayed the father's rights, siding with Diaz-Balart, who insisted that the child should stay in Florida: "What about the interests of the mother, who as was pointed out, gave her life so her child might find freedom in America?" It was a peculiar position for a liberal to take.
As the Elián saga dragged on, becoming all-important in Florida's anti-Castro community, it stretched into the political primaries of 2000, where most Republicans were hardening their anti-Castro rhetoric and calling for Elián to remain in the U.S..
By March 27, Hannity's pro-father position had begun to soften; on-air, he admitted to being "torn" between the father's right to raise his son and the son's right to "freedom." By late April, he'd completed the reversal; consonant with the Republican consensus, Hannity was demanding that Elián not be sent "back to slavery." This definitive turn-around happened during an April 26, 2000 segment again featuring Diaz-Balart.
While Hannity's position was shifting and he was acknowledging the shift on air, Colmes was changing his view too, but with virtually no explanation. On the same April 26, 2000 segment, putting aside earlier concerns about the child's "freedom," Colmes now polarized with Diaz-Balart, arguing for the father's rights: "But there's no mother, Mr. Congressman, there's only a father left."
Because Colmes did not discuss his switch, the reversal seemed to have no motivation other than to keep Colmes positioned as a sparring partner for Hannity. Unlike his partner, who speaks to and is respected by a conservative movement, Colmes appears to have no goal other than to maintain the illusion of debate on a univocal network.
"A liberal that is a cut above"
And that, in the end, is the job of Hannity & Colmes, a lopsided discussion of political issues between a forceful, connected conservative firebrand and an affable, accommodating subordinate. If the Harlem Globetrotters have the Washington Generals as their nightly fall guys, Sean Hannity has Alan Colmes. The notion that the two hosts are co-equals, fighting it out on a level playing field, cannot be supported by evidence, any more than the rest of Fox's daily offerings can be described as "fair and balanced."
One final example illustrates the role that Colmes plays in the world of right-wing journalism: When Rush Limbaugh came under fire and resigned from ESPN after saying that a highly regarded African-American football star was overrated by the media because he was black, Colmes ran to Limbaugh's defense (10/2/03). Colmes praised the conservative radio talker: "We in talk radio owe Rush a debt of gratitude, no matter what side we're on, because he made it possible for us to do what we do, liberal or conservative, because he paved the way for so many of us." Colmes said Limbaugh, a close friend of both Hannity and Fox News president Roger Ailes, was getting a bad rap, and defended him against charges that the remark was racist: "He wasn't making a racial comment. He was commenting on the media."
Colmes' homage to Limbaugh drew this response from Hannity: "I think what Alan Colmes did in the last segment of this program tonight and what he said about Rush Limbaugh shows why Alan is a liberal that is a cut above and a class act and why I'm proud to have him as a partner."
Hannity might have been speaking for Fox News in expressing his gratitude for Colmes' brilliant performance as the ultimate "Liberal to Be Determined."
My Response to Rendall's vomitous tripe:
Mr. Rendall,
I'd like to suggest a new name for your organization -- FAIRLY -- Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting for Liberal Yahoos.
It's quite obvious that you think every aspect of the media should be judged from your slanted liberal view of the world and that everything that FAIR considers fair has a liberal bias to it. How about a little truth in advertising? Your sight reads like democraticundeground.com only worse because you purport not to have a political bias.
Using emotionally charged, biased words like "homophobic" in your analysis shows your liberal bias. The word 'homophobic" is a construct of the liberal media and the gay lobby that is intended to slant the debate over homosexual rights in a direction that favors the liberal perspective. Not only that, it's intended to hijack the debate before it even starts by automatically discrediting the legitimate issues surrounding gay rights. The idea that anyone fears homosexuals is ridiculous. It's FAIR to say that there are legitimate questions about the whether homosexuals should be able to drag their private sexual behavior out into public and demand special rights for it. And if you were truly interested in FAIRness, you would concede that point.
Additionally, your failure to recognize that AIDS is the first politically-correct disease -- the third rail of deadly diseases, if you will -- and that people raise legitimate questions about its transmission and the public policy issues surrounding the disease is hardly FAIR. It's only FAIR to point out that this is a disease that is 100% fatal and yet it's illegal to ask people if they have it. It's transmitted through contact with the infected person's blood, but there has never been a legitimate explanation why it can be transmitted through needles but not through mosquitoes and other type of contact with infected blood. In my state, and most states it's illegal to ask high school kids in contact sports about their HIV status and yet they are playing around other kids where the exchange of bodily fluids such as blood is a real possibility. Is it FAIR not to point out that the risk of monogamous heterosexuals getting AIDS through sexual contact is non-existent and yet the media lead us to believe that anyone is at risk for the disease? Is if FAIR not to point out that the vast majority of AIDS cases in this country involve homosexual males? It's clear that you are more interested in labeling people who don't agree with the liberal-speak about gay rights and AIDS as homophobes than it is for you to give a FAIR airing of the issue.
You spend a whole lot of time slamming conservative commentators like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly for not being fair and balanced. News flash, bud: they are conservative commentators and their shows deal with opinion --- they aren't supposed to be fair and balanced. As far as Hannity being paired against the milquetoast Colmes, on CNN you have the vitriolic, acerbic and abrasive James Carville and Paul Begala (whose opinions are hardly grounded in reality most of the time) against the mild-mannered Tucker Carlson and Bob Novak, who is hardly mild-mannered but a whole lot less hyper that either Begala or Carville and not at all shrill as those two are. I don't see FAIR doing a huge analysis on balance on CNN's Crossfire.
Additionally, you spend time writing a book attempting to discredit Rush Limbaugh using sources such as liberals from the Environmental Defense Fund, whose "facts" are more debatable than Limbaugh's. I'm waiting for your book criticizing Michael Moore for the shrill, illogical and dangerous tripe in his books, or perhaps Al Franken's books. But I'm not holding my breath waiting.
Read more!
Rendall's vomitous tripe:
Hannity & Colmes, Fox News Channel's primetime debate show, figures prominently in the cable network's campaign to market its right leaning programming as "fair & balanced," the network's ever-present slogan. Fox News executives argue that the show, pitting conservative Sean Hannity against liberal Alan Colmes with guests from both right and left, presents a spirited and evenhanded nightly debate.
Fox News president Roger Ailes is clearly riled by those who suggest the show has a slant to it (New York Times, 6/24/01): "I get attacked for putting Sean Hannity on because he's a conservative--even when Alan Colmes, the liberal, is there to balance him!" Ailes is so insistent that Hannity & Colmes plays it "down the middle" that he says producers use a stopwatch to ensure equal time between the two hosts (Washington Post, 2/5/01).
But a systematic review of Hannity & Colmes does reveal a show listing to the right in virtually every respect, from mismatched hosts--the show pairs the aggressive conservative Sean Hannity with the mildly liberal, often conciliatory Alan Colmes--to a format where conservatives out-number, out-talk and out-interrupt their liberal opponents.
The dissimilar circumstances under which the two hosts came to Fox News are revealing. Recruited from Atlanta's talk radio scene by Roger Ailes, Hannity was hired so far in advance of a decision about a co-host that Fox staffers referred to the show as "Hannity & Liberal To Be Determined," or "LTBD." Finally, after auditioning prospective left hosts, Colmes won the job--after Hannity expressed his preference for the mild-mannered New York radio host (Newsday, 10/20/98).
The result is a debate show that doesn't add up to a fair fight, say many critics, because Colmes' wishy-washy views and low-key delivery just can't stand up to the relentlessly ideological and combative Sean Hannity. It's a widely held view outside Fox studios.
"The title…Hannity & Colmes, is something of a misnomer, because the other host--the timid, bespectacled liberal Alan Colmes--acts essentially as a sacrificial lamb and may as well not be there," reads a review in Britain's Sunday Business Post (8/24/03). Other critics are no less harsh. When the show recently began featuring a weekly commentary by outspoken conservative comic Dennis Miller, further weighting the discussion to the right, Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg (6/23/03) described the Hannity/Miller/Colmes line-up as "two rants, one runt."
The notion that Colmes plays second fiddle to Hannity is shared by television critics across the country. At least four papers (Salt Lake City Tribune, 6/21/03; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6/3/03; Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 10/12/96; New York Times, 10/10/96) have run articles referring to Colmes as Hannity's "sidekick."
Fellow liberals don't disagree. In his best selling Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, liberal comic Al Franken calls Colmes "a moderate milquetoast" and "a liberal on-air punching bag" and puts Colmes' name in tiny typeface in every reference to the show.
And though Fox News markets Colmes as "a hard-hitting liberal known for his electric commentary" (FoxNews.com), it doesn't even get much help from Colmes himself. "I think I'm quite moderate," Colmes blandly told USA Today (2/1/95), not long before being hired as the show's left-wing counterweight to Hannity.
Even Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch seems to have trouble making the case that Colmes is a clear-cut liberal. When asked at a congressional hearing last spring (5/8/03) to identify the liberals featured on the Fox News Channel, he offered "Alan Colmes for one." He added the name of On the Record host Greta Van Susteren--a liberal mainly because she used to work at the centrist CNN--before seeming to apologize: "You know, it's in the eye of the beholder, I guess."
"I voted for Giuliani"
Conceding points to conservatives and Republicans seems to be a Colmes specialty.
Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Colmes (9/28/01) assured former Republican congressmember Susan Molinari that he'd voted for New York City's Republican mayor: "Hold on. Susan--Susan, look, I voted for Rudy Giuliani. I'm a liberal Democrat. I voted for this Republican, Rudy Giuliani." Reminding Fox viewers that he voted for Giuliani is a sort of Colmes on-air mantra; according to the show's transcripts, he's done it at least eight times since 1998.
Colmes sometimes joins his conservative co-host and guests in criticizing the left. When conservative author Tammy Bruce appeared on the show touting her book, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values (4/21/03), Hannity predictably agreed with the author about the blame for declining values: "But, literally, the left is responsible for this." Then Bruce clarified her point: "Well, as I show in the book…it's the left having gone so far to the left." Rather than putting up some kind of resistance to this left-bashing--as one might expect a left-of-center host to do--Colmes instead concurred: "I think in some respects you're right. And you and I have talked about this before."
While Hannity, a devout movement conservative, can be relied upon to dwell on the slightest conservative grievance, Colmes seems to see his role as one of policing liberal excess. When left-leaning New York City councilmember Charles Barron dubbed George W. Bush a "selected" president on the show (3/28/03), Colmes scolded the wayward leftist: "Look, my problem with my fellow liberals is they keep arguing the election of 2000. Let's move forward. If you want to win in the future, stop talking about the past."
Once appearing as a guest on Fox's O'Reilly Factor (4/11/03), Colmes received a figurative pat on the head from the show's host, Bill O'Reilly, for not criticizing the White House during the Iraq war. O'Reilly praised Colmes for his silence: "I put forth that once the shelling starts--and you did this--you kept quiet, OK." Colmes dutifully responded: "Well, look, I've kept quiet. My choice has been--I have not criticized the administration or this war effort while there are men and women in harm's way, and I will not, and that is my --that's a choice I make."
"I defended Trent Lott"
When Sen. Trent Lott (R.-Miss.) appeared on the Hannity & Colmes show (4/30/03) chiding Democrats for conducting a filibuster to stall confirmation of Bush judicial nominees, he got no argument from Colmes: "I agree with you. I don't think the Democrats should be doing that. I think they're viewed as obstructionist when they do that."
Colmes seems to have a special affinity for the conservative senator. When Lott stepped down as Senate majority leader in December 2002, after praising Senator Strom Thurmond's racist 1948 presidential campaign at Thurmond's 100th birthday party, guest Oliver North appeared on the show to defend Lott (12/23/02). When North blamed "Alan and all of his colleagues" for Lott's downfall, Colmes corrected him: "By the way, Ollie, I defended Lott and said he should not have had to step down." When North responded, "Because you wanted him there so you could continue to kick him around," Colmes cited his own pattern of defending Lott: "Absolutely not. Absolutely untrue. You haven't been watching our show."
Similarly, when conservative radio host Laura Ingraham (1/22/03) charged that Lott had been "tarred and feathered…destroyed on the public forum," Colmes protested: "I defended him. I defended Trent Lott."
During one of Newt Gingrich's many appearances on Hannity & Colmes (7/24/03), Colmes thanked the former Republican House speaker profusely for writing a blurb for his upcoming book. It was nothing, Gingrich insisted: "You are my favorite liberal to argue with." And Gingrich isn't alone on the right. If Colmes remains largely a non-person in progressive circles, his tendency to concede points to the right and criticize the left make him the favorite liberal of many conservatives.
In addition to Gingrich, Colmes has won the praise of Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch ("you're great for a liberal"--4/16/01), Republican House Whip Tom DeLay ("you are my favorite liberal"--10/18/99), Christian right leader James Dobson ("he's my favorite liberal"--4/28/03) and, of course, Sen. Trent Lott ("you may be a liberal but you're one of the better ones I've seen on TV"--4/30/03).
"Lower forms of behavior"
If Colmes' fans are almost all on the opposite side of the spectrum, the same cannot be said about Sean Hannity. A popular figure in conservative movement circles, Hannity reportedly gets as much as $10,000 per speech, his first book spent time near the top of national bestseller lists, and his radio show is one of the most listened-to in conservative talk radio, trailing only Rush Limbaugh's show in the ratings.
Before Fox News, Hannity's career included hosting a handful of confrontational talk radio shows in various states. He got his start in the late 1980s as a volunteer broadcaster at the University of California at Santa Barbara's KCSB radio station, where his tenure was revealing.
After airing for less than a year, Hannity's weekly show was canceled in 1989, when KCSB management charged him with "discriminating against gays and lesbians" after airing two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS (The Independent, 6/22/89). Written by homophobic Christian-right activist Gene Antonio, the book crankily argued that AIDS could be spread by casual contact, including coughs, sneezes and mosquito bites. Antonio charged that the government, medical establishment and media covered up these truths in the service of "the homosexual movement."
When Antonio appeared by phone on one of the shows, Hannity and his guest repeatedly slurred gay men. At one point, according to the UCSB campus newspaper The Daily Nexus (5/25/89), Hannity declared: "Anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed. It's very dangerous if we start accepting lower and lower forms of behavior as the normal." According to the campus paper, Antonio responded by calling gay men "a subculture of people engaged in deviant, twisted acts."
When a fellow KCSB broadcaster called the show to challenge the host and his guest, Hannity pointed out that the caller, a lesbian, had a child through artificial insemination, and Antonio dubbed the child a "turkey-baster baby." When the caller took issue with that "disgusting" remark, Hannity followed up with "I feel sorry for your child" (The Independent, 6/22/89; KCSB, 4/4/89).
Saved by the ACLU
Hannity challenged his dismissal with help from the Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. The civil liberties groups wrote letters on Hannity's behalf, arguing that the state school was breaching his free speech. When KCSB relented, offering him his show back, Hannity held out for more airtime, walking away from the station when he didn't get it.
Hannity's own accounts of his time at KCSB have been selective and incomplete. A few years ago he summed up the experience to Newsday (7/12/99): "You work for free at a college station, where they spit on you and then they fire you." In his best-selling book, Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism, Hannity wrote:
My first gig was with my own talk radio show at the University of Santa Barbara. But it didn't last long. I was too conservative, the higher-ups said, and they didn't like the comments one guest made on the show…The left-wing management had zero-tolerance for conservative points of view. And I was promptly fired. Once my voice was silenced, my destiny was set--do or die, I'd make my career in radio.
In this bit of personal mythmaking Hannity attributes his troubles at KCSB to his conservatism and to the behavior of a guest on his show. Both claims distort what actually happened, exonerating Hannity of any responsibility and casting him as a victim. Maybe that's the point. After all, accurately recounting the KCSB story, including his own hateful language and the inconvenient fact that he was offered his job back, might spoil the pristine image of the free-speech martyr Hannity wants us to believe.
Hannity's relentless application of ideology allows for few exceptions, none of the soft spots or quirks of the sort acquired over time when one's rigid beliefs are tempered by experience. So while one might expect Hannity to maintain at least a quiet gratitude toward the ACLU, it's surprising to see how ungenerous he is toward the group that supported him in Santa Barbara. For instance, in a discussion about free speech last year, Hannity charged Colmes with being "a card-carrying member of the ACLU." When Colmes said he that was proud to be a member, "because they defend all free speech," Hannity interrupted him: "No they don't, actually. But go ahead" (Hannity & Colmes, 7/17/02).
"Three Times a Liar"
Hannity's first big-city success in talk radio came on Atlanta's WGST-AM, where by all accounts he was no less confrontational than in California. African-American clergy groups, according to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (9/15/95), charged WGST with spreading hatred on the airwaves, specifically citing Hannity's show. The paper reported (3/27/96) on Hannity's campaign to get "Oscar attendees to wear blue ribbons, in support of the L.A. police officers who beat Rodney King." Also according to the Journal (4/30/96), a blurb promoting Hannity on the WGST website touted him as "making a proud name for himself by insulting lesbians."
When Hannity reported to New York City in 1996 to begin work on what would become Hannity & Colmes, it wasn't long before he'd also landed an afternoon show on the biggest talk radio station in the country, New York City's WABC-AM.
On his WABC show, as with his earlier radio shows, "the left" and its various constituencies were blamed for the nation's problems; and crime, affirmative action, welfare and "illegitimacy," all talk radio staples, were discussed ceaselessly. But Hannity really distinguished himself with his crusading efforts to defend the police against charges of brutality. When Haitian immigrant Abner Louima accused New York City police officers of sodomizing and badly injuring him with a wooden rod in 1997, Hannity used his WABC show for a vicious counter-offensive targeting the victim.
The father of chief defendant Justin Volpe, an NYPD police officer, regularly appeared on show during the 1999 trial. And Hannity and various guests repeated rumors that Louima's injuries resulted from a "gay sex act" and not from police brutality. Playing on the homosexual rumor and inconsistencies in Louima's story, Hannity and his producer sang a parody of Lionel Richie's song "Three Times a Lady," changing the words to "you're once, twice, three times a liar." Hannity stopped referring to the victim as "Lying Louima" only after Volpe confessed to sodomizing Louima with the help of another officer (OnePeoplesProject.com).
Meanwhile, at Hannity & Colmes, the Louima story got somewhat less, and less sordid, play; Hannity only repeated the homosexual rumor once on the national cable show (5/13/99). But there, on national television, Hannity was gaining a reputation as a leading conservative advocate who could be depended on to echo and amplify the latest lines in conservative and Republican thinking.
The Elián switcheroo
While Fox has made Hannity an increasingly important mouthpiece for the right, Colmes remains little more than Hannity's foil on Fox. One story that seemed to bring this out was that of Elián Gonzalez, the five-year-old Cuban refugee who was rescued in November 1999 from the shark-infested waters off the coast of Florida that claimed his mother's life. The debate that developed on Hannity & Colmes over whether the child ought to be returned to his father in Cuba took some strange turns.
"Unless information comes out that he was a bad father or something, he has a right to his son. And we've got to honor that." That was Hannity's take on Elián Gonzalez in the first segment of the show dealing with the story (11/29/99). In the segment, Hannity agreed with one conservative guest who wanted the child returned to Cuba based on immigration law, and disagreed with another conservative guest, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R.-Fla.), who represents Florida's Cuban-American community. Colmes downplayed the father's rights, siding with Diaz-Balart, who insisted that the child should stay in Florida: "What about the interests of the mother, who as was pointed out, gave her life so her child might find freedom in America?" It was a peculiar position for a liberal to take.
As the Elián saga dragged on, becoming all-important in Florida's anti-Castro community, it stretched into the political primaries of 2000, where most Republicans were hardening their anti-Castro rhetoric and calling for Elián to remain in the U.S..
By March 27, Hannity's pro-father position had begun to soften; on-air, he admitted to being "torn" between the father's right to raise his son and the son's right to "freedom." By late April, he'd completed the reversal; consonant with the Republican consensus, Hannity was demanding that Elián not be sent "back to slavery." This definitive turn-around happened during an April 26, 2000 segment again featuring Diaz-Balart.
While Hannity's position was shifting and he was acknowledging the shift on air, Colmes was changing his view too, but with virtually no explanation. On the same April 26, 2000 segment, putting aside earlier concerns about the child's "freedom," Colmes now polarized with Diaz-Balart, arguing for the father's rights: "But there's no mother, Mr. Congressman, there's only a father left."
Because Colmes did not discuss his switch, the reversal seemed to have no motivation other than to keep Colmes positioned as a sparring partner for Hannity. Unlike his partner, who speaks to and is respected by a conservative movement, Colmes appears to have no goal other than to maintain the illusion of debate on a univocal network.
"A liberal that is a cut above"
And that, in the end, is the job of Hannity & Colmes, a lopsided discussion of political issues between a forceful, connected conservative firebrand and an affable, accommodating subordinate. If the Harlem Globetrotters have the Washington Generals as their nightly fall guys, Sean Hannity has Alan Colmes. The notion that the two hosts are co-equals, fighting it out on a level playing field, cannot be supported by evidence, any more than the rest of Fox's daily offerings can be described as "fair and balanced."
One final example illustrates the role that Colmes plays in the world of right-wing journalism: When Rush Limbaugh came under fire and resigned from ESPN after saying that a highly regarded African-American football star was overrated by the media because he was black, Colmes ran to Limbaugh's defense (10/2/03). Colmes praised the conservative radio talker: "We in talk radio owe Rush a debt of gratitude, no matter what side we're on, because he made it possible for us to do what we do, liberal or conservative, because he paved the way for so many of us." Colmes said Limbaugh, a close friend of both Hannity and Fox News president Roger Ailes, was getting a bad rap, and defended him against charges that the remark was racist: "He wasn't making a racial comment. He was commenting on the media."
Colmes' homage to Limbaugh drew this response from Hannity: "I think what Alan Colmes did in the last segment of this program tonight and what he said about Rush Limbaugh shows why Alan is a liberal that is a cut above and a class act and why I'm proud to have him as a partner."
Hannity might have been speaking for Fox News in expressing his gratitude for Colmes' brilliant performance as the ultimate "Liberal to Be Determined."
My Response to Rendall's vomitous tripe:
Mr. Rendall,
I'd like to suggest a new name for your organization -- FAIRLY -- Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting for Liberal Yahoos.
It's quite obvious that you think every aspect of the media should be judged from your slanted liberal view of the world and that everything that FAIR considers fair has a liberal bias to it. How about a little truth in advertising? Your sight reads like democraticundeground.com only worse because you purport not to have a political bias.
Using emotionally charged, biased words like "homophobic" in your analysis shows your liberal bias. The word 'homophobic" is a construct of the liberal media and the gay lobby that is intended to slant the debate over homosexual rights in a direction that favors the liberal perspective. Not only that, it's intended to hijack the debate before it even starts by automatically discrediting the legitimate issues surrounding gay rights. The idea that anyone fears homosexuals is ridiculous. It's FAIR to say that there are legitimate questions about the whether homosexuals should be able to drag their private sexual behavior out into public and demand special rights for it. And if you were truly interested in FAIRness, you would concede that point.
Additionally, your failure to recognize that AIDS is the first politically-correct disease -- the third rail of deadly diseases, if you will -- and that people raise legitimate questions about its transmission and the public policy issues surrounding the disease is hardly FAIR. It's only FAIR to point out that this is a disease that is 100% fatal and yet it's illegal to ask people if they have it. It's transmitted through contact with the infected person's blood, but there has never been a legitimate explanation why it can be transmitted through needles but not through mosquitoes and other type of contact with infected blood. In my state, and most states it's illegal to ask high school kids in contact sports about their HIV status and yet they are playing around other kids where the exchange of bodily fluids such as blood is a real possibility. Is it FAIR not to point out that the risk of monogamous heterosexuals getting AIDS through sexual contact is non-existent and yet the media lead us to believe that anyone is at risk for the disease? Is if FAIR not to point out that the vast majority of AIDS cases in this country involve homosexual males? It's clear that you are more interested in labeling people who don't agree with the liberal-speak about gay rights and AIDS as homophobes than it is for you to give a FAIR airing of the issue.
You spend a whole lot of time slamming conservative commentators like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly for not being fair and balanced. News flash, bud: they are conservative commentators and their shows deal with opinion --- they aren't supposed to be fair and balanced. As far as Hannity being paired against the milquetoast Colmes, on CNN you have the vitriolic, acerbic and abrasive James Carville and Paul Begala (whose opinions are hardly grounded in reality most of the time) against the mild-mannered Tucker Carlson and Bob Novak, who is hardly mild-mannered but a whole lot less hyper that either Begala or Carville and not at all shrill as those two are. I don't see FAIR doing a huge analysis on balance on CNN's Crossfire.
Additionally, you spend time writing a book attempting to discredit Rush Limbaugh using sources such as liberals from the Environmental Defense Fund, whose "facts" are more debatable than Limbaugh's. I'm waiting for your book criticizing Michael Moore for the shrill, illogical and dangerous tripe in his books, or perhaps Al Franken's books. But I'm not holding my breath waiting.
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