I don't watch Fox & Friends. I don't have any intention of ever watching Fox & Friends. First of all, it's a misleading name. It's supposed to be some morning news show with a bunch of news holes discussing current events. And I suppose that is what it is. But the name makes it sound like it is going to be a kid's show. You know, with an animated fox and his friends from the forest (I envision a deer, a bear, several birds, possibly doves, and a talking frog) all having wacky adventures with a feel-good message at the end. Kind of like the After School Specials, only without all of the drugs and teen pregnancy.
But here's why I'm not watching: The people who host the show, the "friends" I guess, are morons. Complete, class A, morons. Allow me to make my case.
Meet a one Gretchen Carlson. Ms. Carlson is one of the "friends". If she were a Spice Girl, she'd be Short Skirt Spice, as she the establishments at which she buys her apparel do not seem to carry items that go below her mid-thigh (on a conservative day). The other day, she was discussing whether or not President Barry show fire General McChrystal for some remarks that he made in a Rolling Stone interview (which didn't seem all that inflammatory to me, but I wasn't the one that the remarks were about). It was during that discussion that she felt the need to point out to people (who might not have been aware of this) that the President of the United States has to make very hard, very tough decisions. Really, Gretchen? Thanks for sharing. Oh, but she didn't stop there.
No, she made sure that we all understood just what being President was all about. So, according to the huffy folks over at The Huffington Post, she presented us with a comparison...to herself. That's right. She said that her job is just like being President of the United States. Now, I haven't seen President Barry sporting any mid-thigh skirts lately, but let's take a gander at her reasoning, shall we? She said, "It's just like our job...what's the role of an anchor during huge breaking news? You remember growing up? You'd tune to the television, and that one moment during the year, they would have to carry a story all along, It's the same thing as being the President of the United States."
::: blink ::: ::: blink :::
Good Lord, woman! What is wrong with you?! That rationale doesn't even make sense! How is carrying along a news story anything like being the leader of the most powerful nation in the world and trying to decide whether or not to fire the general who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan? I'm sure the connection is there and I'm just missing it by a little bit or something, right? WRONG! It's the most asinine comparison she ever could have come up with. And quite frankly, I don't have any faith that she could, in fact, carry a story all along. I'm actually rather skeptical as to whether or not she can carry her purse out to her car.
And I love how she says "You remember growing up?" Actually, I do remember growing up. It was fabulous. Nothing to worry about, especially the news! I certainly wasn't glued to the TV at 6am watching Fox & Friends. Is she also comparing herself to Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather or some other news fellow? She probably is. If she thinks that her job is just like the President's, then she probably also thinks that she does the same quality and caliber job as Walter Cronkite did. (Side note: Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather didn't do exactly what the President of the United States did either.)
I can go on and on (and I have) about how the media sucks. But this is not a case of the media sucking. This is a case of the media lying. And just because something isn't said out loud it doesn't mean that it is not a lie. IN the case of the media, if you are "reporting" and you are editing, altering, omitting or in any other fashion misrepresenting the facts of anything, then you are lying. And the folks over there at MSNBC are reprehensible "journalists" and liars. (Please note that "liars" is not in quotes.)
The other day a one MSNBC newshole, Contessa Brewer, was doing a story with her cohorts, a one Dylan Ratigan and a one Toure. (That's his name. Toure. That's it. Like Prince. Or Cher. Only he's on MSNBC. What does that tell you? We're doomed, that is correct.) It started out going in one direction and ended up in a completely different direction. Perhaps all of the misdirecting was due to someone having their head up their arse. (Quite difficult to accurately navigate from that position I'm told.) I thought it was going to be on the Second Amendment issue, as there have been folks showing up to places where President Barry is speaking and they have had guns in holsters strapped to their legs or strapped over their shoulders. My first thought upon hearing this was that the folks who were toting arms were way out of line. Upon further consideration, I realized that we can't just trample all over the Constitution of this fine land because something makes us a little uncomfortable or uneasy. I'm a huge fan of the right to bear arms (and to arm bears). Regardless, I thought it was going to be about that.
Turns out, it wasn't about that AT ALL. Here's what Contessa Brewer opened with: "Yesterday...A man at a pro-health care reform rally just outside, wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip....And if the scene looks familiar, that’s because it should, last week a guy stood outside Obama’s health care town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with a gun strapped to his leg and police arrested a 62-year-old before that New Hampshire event for carrying unlicensed loaded gun. And the reason we’re talking about this, a lot of talk here, Dylan, because people feel like, yes, there are Second Amendment rights for sure but also there are questions about whether this has racial overtones. I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists or to their legs." Um, what now? I'm sorry, I mean, WTF?!
Racial overtones?! Racial? Overtones?! So just because there was a white guy carrying a gun outside of where Obama was speaking, THAT implies that there are "racial overtones" to the story? What?
What's that?
Who wasn't?
Who wasn't white? The guy with the gun? Well, that wouldn't make any sense! How could the guy with the gun not be white?! She specifically mentioned that particular guy. And though she didn't say he was a white guy, when she got to her shpiel about the "racial overtones" she didn't NEED to! Everyone thought that the reason that there were "racial overtones" is because she told us that there was a white guy wearing a gun at a town hall meeting where the half-white president was speaking. How can he NOT be white?!
Oh. Well....his shirt was white.
What. The. Hell.
Not only did the trio of false reporting idiots fail to make the viewers aware of the fact that the man with the rifle slung over his arm was a black guy, they also failed to make the viewers consciously aware that they had edited the tape of this particular individual so that you could not tell that he was black.
Now, just because you can't tell that he's black doesn't mean that you wouldn't have been able to tell if he were white, either. IN what I would assume was the only unintentional part of the editing process, you do see the arm of a white guy in such a fashion that you don't consciously think about it, but the arm kind of looks like it could go to the guy with the guy. But that wasn't intentional. I'm positive of it. What WAS intentional was to take the footage which clearly shows that this was a black guy and edit it so that you couldn't tell what the race of the person was and so that newshole Contessa Brewer and her faithful sidekicks, Dylan and Toure, can make this issue about race instead of the Second Amendment. Nice job, newsholes.
What was the purpose in that? Why did they feel the need to MAKE it about race? WHY couldn't it be about the Second Amendment? Was Toure not up on his pop-culture 2nd Amendment references? I've never even heard of that guy until I learned of this atrocity, but he angers me. It wasn't enough for him to back up newshole Contessa Brewer and her reasoning that people were bringing guns to places where President Barry was speaking was because they were angry that there was a black President. No, he had to go just a bit more and suggest that: "I’m not going to be surprised if we see somebody get a chance and take a chance and really try to hurt him or really-You know, and I mean it’s up to the Secret Service to make sure that it doesn’t actually become history, but, you know, I think we’re going to see somebody, you know, some sort of Squeaky Fromme, some sort of Mark Hinckley figure, because there’s so much anger in the country about him, about what’s going on with government."
:::: sigh :::: (He's pretty skinny looking. I think I could take him.)
First of all, it's John Hinckley. Perhaps he was thinking of Mark David Chapman, the tool who gunned down John Lennon. John Hinckley was the one who shot President Reagan. Squeaky Fromme was a delusional follower of Charles Manson. Is he suggesting that another Helter Skelter awaits us, but this time, at the White House? (Yes, I know she tried to shoot President Ford.) In all of these cases however, there is a common theme. The first one being that they are idiotic comparisons to what is being talked about. The second one is that I don't believe that any of those people had a valid permit for their weapon. But really, neither one of those is the point. The point is that IT'S NOT THE SAME!
Contessa the Newshole EVEN specifically made it a point to make this story about race by asking Toure "...do you think if Barack Obama were white, though...let’s say if it were Bill Clinton – you would not see people showing up with weapons strapped to their legs?" (Does Hillary count for the evaluation of that question? I'm quite certain that after MonicaGate, she probably DID have something strapped to her leg for a while. She probably strapped something to Bill's leg as well, but I don't think it was a gun.) His eventual reply, after Dylan suggested that it was unknowable, was "...that’s hard to say. It is unknowable. But you do see a rise in hate group activity throughout the country."
Oh. My. God.
In a state where you CAN carry a gun out in the open like that, if you have a permit, how does that constitute "hate group activity"? How does that NOT constitute exercising your rights under the Second Amendment? How? Where did they find this guy? 1961?I have no idea what the point of this stunt was, other than to ignore, disregard and blatantly dismiss every single rule of reporting that there could be in order to fabricate (yes, LIE) a story to fit a particular narrative that you have in mind. They simply created their own truths by taking the truth and making it into a lie.
I'm not one to go around and suggest that folks boycott something. Do you know how many successful boycotts of things there has actually been? Ever? Not many. The Montgomery bus boycott is the only one that comes to mind at the moment. Calls for a boycott are generally useless. (Most people have the attention span of a gnat is why they're not more successful.) And I'm not usually one to go around advocating for people to be fired. These folks and anyone else who was involved in the production of that segment should be fired.
This isn't a "I don't like what they said" issue. They're not Don Imus (who, by the way, shouldn't have been fired. He shouldn't have said what he said, but he shouldn't have been fired.). They lied. They purposefully and willfully misled the viewer into believing something that wasn't true AT ALL. It's more than just irresponsible journalism. It's rogue reporting. The media is supposed to be neutral. They are supposed to be presenting the facts without a slant so that people can know what's going on without having to sort through someone's opinion to get to what the issue is about. For some reason, Contessa Brewer and Toure (poor Dylan pretty much just sat there, but it's not like he wasn't aware of the situation) wanted to make the issue of people bringing LEGAL firearms to a public event an issue about racism. Personally, I'd like to know why. I'd like to know why they felt that it was imperative that they not only go that direction with the issue, but do so in a deceptive manner. I'd like to know the answer the that and then I'd love it if they were fired.
Look, when you hire someone for your business, you want to make sure that the person you have in whatever position can do the job. If they can't do the job, are you going to keep them at your business? I don't think that's likely. What if they were lying to you while doing their job? Would you keep them then? I think that's even less likely. Contessa Brewer and the Newsholes (which isn't that bad of a name for a band)cannot do the job that they were hired to do AND they lied to us. If they can't do the job, which they obviously can't, they should be fired.
And if I thought that was going to actually happen, I probably wouldn't have mentioned it until it did happen. But I don't think that's the case. The good folks over there at Politico contacted MSNBC about this issue and they responded that the claim was "utterly ridiculous" and that "Contessa was speaking generally and not about that specific person with the automatic weapon." Yeah. That's why the cropped footage. That's why the not mentioning that there were black people with weapons also. That's why not mentioning that the guy with the gun strapped to his side shown in the cropped footage was black. That's why only mentioning that white people were coming to these public meetings wearing firearms. Yeah, she was speaking generally.
The footage of Contessa and the Newsholes is below. And it frustrates the hell out of me.
I don't watch Fox & Friends. I don't have any intention of ever watching Fox & Friends. First of all, it's a misleading name. It's supposed to be some morning news show with a bunch of news holes discussing current events. And I suppose that is what it is. But the name makes it sound like it is going to be a kid's show. You know, with an animated fox and his friends from the forest (I envision a deer, a bear, several birds, possibly doves, and a talking frog) all having wacky adventures with a feel-good message at the end. Kind of like the After School Specials, only without all of the drugs and teen pregnancy. 
she were a Spice Girl, she'd be Short Skirt Spice, as she the establishments at which she buys her apparel do not seem to carry items that go below her mid-thigh (on a conservative day). The other day, she was discussing whether or not President Barry show fire General McChrystal for some remarks that he made in a Rolling Stone interview (which didn't seem all that inflammatory to me, but I wasn't the one that the remarks were about). It was during that discussion that she felt the need to point out to people (who might not have been aware of this) that the President of the United States has to make very hard, very tough decisions. Really, Gretchen? Thanks for sharing. Oh, but she didn't stop there. 
she were a Spice Girl, she'd be Short Skirt Spice, as she the establishments at which she buys her apparel do not seem to carry items that go below her mid-thigh (on a conservative day). The other day, she was discussing whether or not President Barry show fire General McChrystal for some remarks that he made in a Rolling Stone interview (which didn't seem all that inflammatory to me, but I wasn't the one that the remarks were about). It was during that discussion that she felt the need to point out to people (who might not have been aware of this) that the President of the United States has to make very hard, very tough decisions. Really, Gretchen? Thanks for sharing. Oh, but she didn't stop there. 
No, she made sure that we all understood just what being President was all about. So, according to the huffy folks over at The Huffington Post, she presented us with a comparison...to herself. That's right. She said that her job is just like being President of the United States. Now, I haven't seen President Barry sporting any mid-thigh skirts lately, but let's take a gander at her reasoning, shall we? She said, "It's just like our job...what's the role of an anchor during huge breaking news? You remember growing up? You'd tune to the television, and that one moment during the year, they would have to carry a story all along, It's the same thing as being the President of the United States." 
carrying along a news story anything like being the leader of the most powerful nation in the world and trying to decide whether or not to fire the general who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan? I'm sure the connection is there and I'm just missing it by a little bit or something, right? WRONG! It's the most asinine comparison she ever could have come up with. And quite frankly, I don't have any faith that she could, in fact, carry a story all along. I'm actually rather skeptical as to whether or not she can carry her purse out to her car. 
carrying along a news story anything like being the leader of the most powerful nation in the world and trying to decide whether or not to fire the general who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan? I'm sure the connection is there and I'm just missing it by a little bit or something, right? WRONG! It's the most asinine comparison she ever could have come up with. And quite frankly, I don't have any faith that she could, in fact, carry a story all along. I'm actually rather skeptical as to whether or not she can carry her purse out to her car. 
And I love how she says "You remember growing up?" Actually, I do remember growing up. It was fabulous. Nothing to worry about, especially the news! I certainly wasn't glued to the TV at 6am watching Fox & Friends. Is she also comparing herself to Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather or some other news fellow? She probably is. If she thinks that her job is just like the President's, then she probably also thinks that she does the same quality and caliber job as Walter Cronkite did. (Side note: Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather didn't do exactly what the President of the United States did either.) 
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