Bryan Zepp Jamieson: Outfauxed

Tie me Kangarupe down, sport!

Bryan Zepp Jamieson, November 11, 2009

It really hasn’t been a good fortnight for Rupert Murdoch (hereinafter
referred to as “Kangarupe”) and his minions (hereinafter referred to as
“minions”).

First, there was the matter of the 23rd District in New York. This was
the one where the far right was supposed to really flex its muscles, and
solidify the role of Faux News as the true opposition party to the Obama
administration. A Conservative Party candidate named Hoffman ran, with
heavy backing from Faux, Sarah Palin, Pawlenty Stupid, and various other
big-name far right wingers, including, eventually, everyone’s favorite
politician-for-hire, Newt Gingrich. They knocked off the Republican
candidate, a moderate, and did it so viciously that she wound up giving
her support to the Democrat. Two days later the Democrat won, and Faux,
which had been promoting the 23rd as THE race that would show, once and
for all, that the GOP would have to align with them in order to win
seats in 2010, suddenly discovered two fairly uneventful governor’s
races, neither of which featured any upsets, but in which the
Republicans won.

Faux and minions couldn’t even bring themselves to mention Hoffman by
name, something that got widespread notice – and derision – among the
punditocracy. It was widely noted that the 23rd hadn’t gone for a
Democrat since 1871 (yes, that was eighteen seventy one). Faux tried
showing that the 23rd had changed shape from one decennial apportion to
the next, and that PARTS of what is now the 23rd had been represented by
Republicans at one point or another. They probably should have shut up
whilst they were behind, as various historians were quick to note that
the central town and population hub of the District, Watertown, hadn’t
had a Democratic Congressman since 1871.

That same day, Faux got into a fight with Oscar the Grouch.
That would be the muppet that lives in a garbage can on “Sesame Street”.
Long time readers with severe OCD and no life whatsoever will
doubtlessly recall that I mentioned Oscar in an essay about 10 years
ago. “Sesame Street” was being shot for a Russian audience, and it turns
out that Russians are unamused by grouchiness, and consider it an
extremely negative character trait, but consider sadness to be
hilarious. So Oscar the Grouch became Oscar the Lugubrious. But the
American Oscar, grouchy as ever, had his own media empire, featuring
luminaries such as Dan Rather-Not, and Walter Cranky. They referred to
guess who as “The Pox News Channel”, not such a bad name, given Faux’s
obsession with H1N1. Breitbart, acting on Kangarupe’s behalf, moaned
publicly that Pox didn’t get a cute, affectionate name like Walter
Cranky, and saw evidence of a liberal media conspiracy on PBS as a result.
Getting into fights with muppets rarely works out well, even if you are
a world-wide media conglomerate. This didn’t work out well for Pox, er,
I mean Faux. Kangarupe suffers from overenthusiastic minions.

Liberals around the world were delighted when Kangarupe announced that
he was going to put all his on-line material on a “pay to view” basis.
So Kangarupe started a fight with Google, implying that he would sue
Google if they linked to his pay-only articles. He considered use of the
opening paragraph or even the headline to be a violation of his
copyright. Google, puzzled, noted that there was a simple line of code
any programmer could put into a page that would put the page off limits
to Google. Given that Murdoch owns dozens of websites with millions of
pages, you would think he might know that.

Later that day, another heroine of the right imploded. Carrie Prejean,
widely seen as a victim of liberals because she is bigoted against gays
and who got fired because she didn’t bother to carry out any of her
contractual obligations, became a Faux front-liner. Until that day, when
an extremely explicit sex tape of her emerged. Along with anatomical
details they like to pretend beauty pageant winners don’t possess.

The shootings at Fort Hood, horrific as they were, should have been a
bonanza for Faux. Not only would it give them a chance to Moslem-bash,
but they could also claim that it showed the utter incompetence of the
Obama administration.

The problem, as it turned out, was they did exactly that and were
greeted with a stony silence from the vast majority of Americans. They
were just a bit too anxious to exploit the situation, and the false
claims that Hasan was in contact with al Qaida, and the ludicrous
attempts to show that Obama didn’t care because he was greeting the
crowd before he spoke of the shootings at an event didn’t go over with
the public.

In the meantime, Faux darlin’ Sarah Palin showed Kangarupe and minions
why McCain had so many blinding headaches during the campaign. It was
bad enough when it came to light that she wanted the Iowa Republicans to
pony up $100,000 if they wanted her to come and campaign (they decided
they could live without her), and then she announced that no recording
devices of any kind would be allowed at a speech she was giving. (You
can pretty much guess how that worked out, and if you can’t, have no
fear, because I shall tell you in a bit). That just added to her
now-monumental reputation as a politically tone-deaf flake. She had
already alienated many mainstream Republicans when she involved herself
in the 23rd and threw her support to the independent—the same one who
had the bad grace to lose the election of the century.

She gave the speech, and of COURSE someone sneaked a recording device
in. You aren’t really going to tell me you didn’t see that coming, are
you? The device caught her making a strange screed about the dollar
coins, which had “In God We Trust” on the rims. Palin saw the sinister
forces of liberalism behind this, an obvious effort to “secularize the
money.” Too bad Jesus isn’t at hand; I would love to see the expression
on his face when he learned that secularizing money just ain’t
Christian. The only trouble is that the decision to put the phrase on
the rim was made sometime in 2005, when Republicans controlled all three
branches of government. Darn those secular liberal Republicans! That was
so blatantly goofy, even Faux News had to admit they couldn’t blame
Obama for that.

Faux, caught off guard by the health care vote in Congress, immediately
started howling that Pelosi had broken her vow to post the bill 72 hours
before the final vote. It made for good howling until it emerged that
Pelosi had posted the working floor version of the bill – the one that
existed – 72 hours before the vote. Ooops.

That’s when it really started to go downhill for Kangarupe and his minions.
First there was the Republican anti-government rally fiasco. Bad enough
that featured speaker Michelle Bachman missed a vital quorum call,
costing her party a vote on some major legislation. There was the Faux
coverage, particularly that of minion Sean Hannity. They claimed 20 to
45 thousand showed (other estimates ran between 5 and 10 thousand) and
showed throngs of crowds after images of the Republicans on the
grandstand vowing to smash the evil American government. Jon Stewart and
his crew were watching, of course, and Faux handed them their own asses
on a silver platter. As Stewart gleefully noted, the demonstration took
place on a clear blue fall day, with the leaves on all the trees
changing color. But the images of the vast crowd listening were on a
partly cloudy day, and, mirabile dictu! The trees had all turned back to
green! Maybe right wingers emit large quantities of chlorophyll or
something.

Stewart then showed camera coverage of the rally, and camera coverage of
the big 9-12 rally two months ago. It was the same coverage. It didn’t
help that the voiceover from Faux was gushing about what an
extraordinary turnout it was for a cool fall Thursday, which, as Stewart
acidly noted, was actually a summer Saturday. Thanks to Faux, Stewart
hasn’t had to write a joke in years.

Kangarupe then went on a Sky network show to be interviewed by a minion,
and during the interview, affirmed that Obama was a racist for
saying…well, something or other. Kangarupe wasn’t sure what it was,
but it sure was racist. He knew this because Glen(n) Beck told him so.
Beck caught hell for that, and a Faux minion had to issue a formal
retraction and apology. And so Kangarupe blew that up. The next day,
they sent another minion out to explain that Kangarupe didn’t really
think that, and just said it because he said it, or something.
I wouldn’t want to be a Faux minion. Unless you happen to be a
sociopath, the job would give you ulcers.

Then Glen(n) Beck had his Army / McCarthy moment. McCarthy’s poisonous
reign of demagoguery ended when a lawyer named Welch turned to him and
said, “At long last sir, have you no shame?” Beck’s reign of demagoguery
ended yesterday.
He sued the owner and operator of a website, Isaac Eiland-Hall, the
satirist behind
glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. Now, normally, if someone
puts up a website accusing you by name of raping and murdering a young
girl, regardless of the year, you would have grounds for a lawsuit.
Except the site never does actually claim he did such a thing. It just
notes that there was a rape at a specified address (in fact, the
location where the infamous “Duke LaCrosse Team” case occurred) and that
the name “Glen Beck” appeared in the documents. The site then says that
people are talking about this, and asks why Beck doesn’t come forward to
settle the matter once and for all.

In other words, it was a parody of the sleazy style Beck uses on his
show, night after night, to call Obama a racist, or imply that a member
of his adminstration facilitated underage gay sex, or that another
member was a Maoist.

Beck’s lawyers doubtlessly told him he couldn’t hope to win such a suit,
since the site is very clearly satirical and starts out saying they
don’t believe Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young woman in 1990.
So he filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property
Organization instead, the outfit that tries to safeguard intellectual
property world wide.

He got a humiliating defeat Friday, when WIPO ruled that the site was
obviously satirical in nature and thus had strong first amendment
protection.

Eiland-Hall, gracious in victory, promptly emailed the account name and
password of the site to Glenn Beck to dispose of, and included a letter,
portions of which appeared in Raw Story and are reprinted below. It was
a complete humiliation of Beck. He lived by the smear, and he’ll die by
the smear.

Kangarupe and minions also got hit by a huge lawsuit from one Sandra
Guzman who is charging discrimination against Murdoch’s media empire,
News Corporation, the New York Post and its editor-in-chief Col Allan
for the treatment she received at Kangarupe’s flagship American paper.
Accusing Kangarupe and his eldest son of “”hostile work environment
where female employees and employees of colour have been subjected to
pervasive and systematic discrimination and/or unlawful harassment based
on their gender”, Guzman charged that she had been subject to such
treatment after trying to avoid yet another embarrassment to the
Kangarupe empire when she argued against the Post publishing a cartoon
which showed Obama as a dead chimpanzee.

Finally, remember the shrill brays about how the supposed “war” between
Faux News and the administration had sent ratings through the roof?
Turned out the numbers were fabricated, as so much of Faux “news” is.
The two week ratings, before and after, showed less than two points
difference in viewership, well within the normal range for such period.
So no ratings boost.
But now it might go up, as gleeful liberals watch to see what sorts of
fuckups Kangarupe and Minions pull next!

Excerpts of Eiland-Hall’s letter, printed by Raw Story:

In a letter to Beck that concluded with the username and password to
access the domain, Eiland-Hall said:

It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what
was merely one small critique meme, in a sea of internet memes, and
turned it into a super-meme. Then, in pressing forward (by not
withdrawing the complaint and instead filing additional briefs), you
turned the super-meme into an object lesson in First Amendment principles.

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

Shame on you Mr. Beck.