Apr 12 2010
Fringe From Fox?
This is a very bizarre article by Fox News, trying to discern who is fringe and not fringe inside the Tea Party movement. I would guess there are some clear ‘fringe’ folks out there, but I must admit I find one example a bit odd. Let’s review Fox’s version of fringe:
But while organizers have held the tour as a way to stay front-and-center as a political force, the rallies have also attracted the kinds of mistruths, exaggerations and conspiracy theories that make Tea Party leaders cringe.
[1] “Obama, to me, is a socialist. He’s a Muslim and all he wants to do is bankrupt us and run us into the ground,” Ken Schwalbach of Escanaba, Mich., said at a rally on Friday.
Though Obama is a Christian — and his Christian faith was a focal point of debate during the campaign-era controversy over his former pastor Jeremiah Wright — the allegations that the president is a secret Muslim persist years later.
OK, I agree President Obama is not a Muslim. He was raised within a partially Muslim family, which means he has a deep understanding of the Muslim community. There is no evidence he is Muslim – none. And if he were, there is no evidence he is outside the mainstream Muslim community who are not at war with The West through Jihad. It is a bit crazy to claim he is a close cousin of Bin Laden. So what is next on the Fox Fringe list:
[2] Some suggest Obama wants to keep Americans unemployed so that they become dependent on government-run programs. Lenin and Stalin have become catchwords to describe Obama in the speeches denouncing his policies.
Going further, swastikas, as well as pictures of Obama’s face next to Adolf Hitler’s, have appeared on signs at dozens of rallies blasting the president and the Democrat-controlled Congress.
This is the liberal socialist claim, which President Obama and this Democrat Congress rightfully deserve. However, while they are closet socialists (whether they care to admit it or not) does not mean they are Hitler or Stalin. Exaggeration seems to be a big issue with being ‘fringe’.
I know Obama leans too far left for this nation. But I do not see him prepared to invoke martial law and murder millions of people to invoke his policies. He has blundered too many times to be seen as a ruthless killer. Â Americans rightfully fear his policies will destroy America and our ability to personally excel, and that righteous fear causes exaggerated claims. I am not sure this makes someone ‘fringe’. Fear of useless and destructive upheaval is not a sin.
So, what is fringe factor 3 on the Fox list:
[3] Other Tea Party members continue to question the president’s citizenship — a sign reading “Show Us Your Birth Certificate” popped up at a recent rally in Traverse City, Mich.
“What’s more disturbing is that he’s not answering them,” Tea Party member and conservative blogger Andrea Shay King said of the questions over Obama’s birthplace.
The Hawaiian government twice confirmed during the 2008 presidential election that a copy of Obama’s birth certificate was authentic. Factcheck.org tracked down the birth certificate and posted copies of it online.
Yep, this one is pretty much laughable – with no disrespect for co-blogger Shea-King. As Fox notes this has been answered a gazillion times and hundreds of variations of the conspiracy theories have been debunked. This is one of those self inflicted wounds that keeps on giving – to Team Obama and the liberals.
Now to Fringe Factor 4 from Fox:
[4] Ron Moore of Petoskey, Mich., said he stood firm in his belief that the Democrats’ goal was to implement “death panels” to decide who receives medical care and who does not.
“They’ve already started,” he said.
But Tea Party organizers — both nationally and locally — say the misinformed beliefs of some do not represent the views of all.
Well I am clearly not buying this one – and I am not sure Fox is really either. There is no rebuttal to this claim, just a vague reference to minority views. One of those in the Minority is Vice Presidential Candidate Governor Sarah Palin. And there are plenty of documented panels inside Obamacare designed to ration health care to all those Americans so naive as to sign up for it. If you liked HMOs controlling your access to care, wait until the IRS and all these bureaucracies gets involved.
By now a lot of people are probably trying to figure out what Fox is attempting to communicate here. Of the 4 examples, 2 are clearly fringe (Obama is a Muslim/Not a US citizen), one is too vague (Obama is a socialist at heart politically, but he is not Hitler or Stalin) and one is outright leftist (Obamacare has no Death Panels).
My guess is this article is not going to go over well with Fox’s customers of its new media products.
My guess on articles like this is that Fox wants to throw in a few left wing articles every now and then to appeal to people switching from other outlets like CNN. Kind of a “hey, you say we’re right wing? Well, look at the stupid crap we just ran yesterday, how ’bout that, huh?” We can never forget that for Murdoch and all his media captains, it’s all about gaining market share. The calculation must be that they think they’ll steal a few viewers from this kind of thing and not lose any, because if it’s just once in a while it won’t chap anyone on the right enough to actually make them quit watching or reading. Besides, where else would they go? The rotten thing about having a monopoly on a particular market position is that they can start to treat the long term customers like crap and get away with it for quite a while. (kind of like the democrats have done to the country)
And I don’t think there’s anything more to it than that. Kind of the same reason they keep Shep Smith on the air.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by AJ Strata. AJ Strata said: new: Fringe From Fox? http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/13202 […]
WWS,
you nailed it – it’s all about market share. Since I don’t chase readers and just spout my daily heartburn, I tend to not do as well as those outlets crafted to an audience.
Some day it will not be about the packaging anymore.
But there’s a bunch called “Crash the Tea party”
.
Their stated goal is to “infiltrate” crowds with dirty signs… and… shout ugly epithets … Get the News outlets to focus on them….
.
Be aware and wary, Tea Party…
Toes,
You got some links to share?
http://www.crashtheteaparty.org/
WWS,
I disagree.
Murdoch’s adult children, and his current wife Wendi, hate the conservative bent of Fox News.
What you are seeing are reporters and editors kissing up to the post Rupert regime they see coming at News Corporation.
See:
http://whiskeys-place.blogspot.com/2010/01/stick-fork-in-fox-news-and-wall-street.html
To quote this blogger:
News Corporation, long term, is finished. Lacking any ability to generate viewers, the Murdoch family (no one is immortal) will turn Fox News into a clone, harder left at that, of MSNBC with a fraction of the latter’s tiny amount of viewers. The Wall Street Journal will become a SWPL (stuff white people like) parody, with no business news at all. Fox Broadcasting will turn into an earnest, PBS-style purveyor of PC moralizing with maybe the viewership of half of PBS.
Unlike the NYT, News Corp is even more highly leveraged, and so the Murdoch family will run it into bankruptcy and sale for assets fairly quickly. About three to five years, would be my guess. Enormous debt levels allowed Murdoch to make expensive acquisitions (such as the WSJ, which News Corp recently wrote down about $1.7 of the book value of the purchase), without diluting equity control, making shareholders very, very rich as the cash comes in. The high level of debt, however, requires the cash coming in, constantly. No one in the Murdoch family besides Rupert seems to understand this financial reality.
Of course this means more influence for conservative blogs and websites, when News Corp flips Fox News to MSNBC-lite, with anchors Markos Moulitsas and Maureen Dowd. Andrew Breitbart’s investments in his websites looks more and more prescient.
Elven – your kidding, right? It’s a store! There is no blog, no coordination, not sign ups, no nothing.
It looks to be a fake making money selling shirts.
WWS—you forgot Geraldo. Shep at least outcried him during Katrina.
I think FOX surprised itself by how popular they became and how quickly—talk about pent up demand. And while I enjoy watching bimbos deliver the news, they are bimbos at the end of the day. But where would we be without them?
What I saw was a discussion forum and incitement. I’ve read that they are selling t-shirts, but did not see a link to products, just the discussion board. Granted, I did not stick around long.
Other articles/posts referencing Crash the Tea Party:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21802
http://www.examiner.com/x-11748-Jefferson-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m4d10-Group-plans-to-discredit-and-crash-the-tea-parties
http://www.helium.com/items/1799908-how-crash-the-tea-party-plans-to-demolish-the-tea-party-movement
Elven,
Don’t get me wrong, I would only be surprised if the liberal bastards weren’t muckraking. Just wanted more solid evidence.
Cheers, AJStrata
Whenever I see or hear of Geraldo, I can’t help but remember that I actually watched “The Opening of Al Capone’s Vaults!!!” live. My God, that was 24 years ago now, even before Al Gore invented the Internet! Makes me start to feel old or something.
The biggest irony is that Geraldo’s career never got any better than that, it just stayed right on that level but keeps going and going and going…
I think he is a muslim.
Of course there is (no longer) any evidence.
That was taken care of.
I cite the circumstantial evidence that muslims are pretty hot on their supposed crimeof apostasy.
In sharia law, the punishment for leaving islam is pretty final.
Yet Obama had a muslim father and was raised a muslim in Indonesia.
This much of his records survive, yet no islamic
doodah is calling for the sharia sanction to be prosecuted
against Obama.
Why?
Here is my opinion:
He never left.
I think it is responsible reporting by Fox to report all aspects. There is no proof for some of the leftist allegations against the tea party movement (Fox reported); and, there are certainly all kinds of people in the tea party movement, including some fringe ideas (Fox reported). I don’t see a problem with Fox on this one. All in all, the platform of issues that drives the tea party movement (small government, fiscal responsibility) shines through the strongest.
The parliamentary member of Kenya who recently stated that Obama was born in Kenya doesn’t help matters any. Just saying….
Kenyan Parliament claims Obama born in Kenya
http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/04/11/kenyan-parliament-claims-obama-born-in-kenya/
daniel:
Obama is not a Muslim, the only God he woships is the one staring back at him from his mirror.
Treant;
Well, they will go broke if they take that route. There is a reason Fox is growing and the NYT and CNN are shrinking.
BTW, I think there are reporters for all the networks that will come up with different sorts of stories now and then just to avoid type casting.
Hot Air has a link tonight about the crashtheteaparty effort.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/12/too-dumb-to-check-lefties-publicly-advertising-plans-to-frame-tea-partiers-as-racist/
don’t know if it’s effective, but apparently the effort is real:
“Jason Levin, creator of http://www.crashtheteaparty.org, said Monday the group has 65 leaders in major cities across the country who are trying to recruit members to infiltrate tea party events for April 15 — tax filing day, when tea party groups across the country are planning to gather and protest high taxes.
“Every time we have someone on camera saying that Barack Obama isn’t an American citizen, we want someone sitting next to him saying, ‘That’s right, he’s an alien from outer space!’†Levin said…
Levin says they want to exaggerate the group’s least appealing qualities, further distance the tea party from mainstream America and damage the public’s opinion of them.
“Do I think every member of the tea party is a homophobe, racist or a moron? No, absolutely not,†Levin said. “Do I think most of them are homophobes, racists or morons? Absolutely.â€