Archive for the ‘Fox’ Tag
The Amazing Democrats – Editor’s comment: God Bless America – Everyone got it wrong and to a point, so did we. Leave a comment
Here’s An Idea: Why Doesn’t Mike Huckabee and the GOP Same-Sex Marriage Haters Move to Russia! Leave a comment
by Olga Bugorkova and Ghada Tantawi (BBC News)
It was wildly popular, but not everybody likes Facebook’s pro-gay marriage photo filter – it’s prompted a backlash in Russia and across the Arab world.
If you went on Facebook over the weekend you may have seen friends’ profile pictures turned multi-coloured. Maybe you even tinted your own pic. A rainbow filter tool was introduced by the company after last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision which cleared the way for same-sex marriage across the US. But in some areas of the world the response to the initiative was less than enthusiastic – and even downright hostile.
In Russia, several filters were created which splash the colours of the national flags rather than rainbow banners across a picture. One such app has been downloaded more than 4,000 times. “Our response to the rainbow world #Proudtoberussian,” said one typical comment by Moscow resident Elena Starkova.
Russia has controversial laws which ban providing information about homosexuality to people under age 18, and a recent poll showed that more than 80% of Russians oppose legalising same-sex marriage.
Despite this, some Russians back lashed against the backlash. Anna Koterlnikova, who had changed her profile pic to a rainbow flag, commented: “Sorry! I’m straight and Russian but I’m not a homophobe!”
In the Middle East, many social media users also came out strongly against the rainbow flag. “It’s a message that it hurts me,” said Egyptian Twitter user Sharif Najm, while Rami Isa from Syria tweeted: “Damn you and your marriage. You have distorted our innocent childhood [symbol], we used to like the rainbow.” Ahmad Abd-Rabbuh, an Egyptian political science professor, said that gay marriage “is not in harmony with society and culture.”
“I know that I will make many of my friends angry,” he commented.
In Egypt, around 2,000 tweets mentioned the rainbow motif, most of them critical. Some users even went so far as to sarcastically blame a weekend storm on users who turned their profile pics multi-coloured. But not all reaction was negative. Egyptian TV presenter Muna Iraqi commented: “[I support people’s] right to live and love freely, without any persecution.”
Of course, it also should be noted that same-sex marriage is by no means universally popular in the US – about two-fifths of Americans oppose it, according to the Pew Research Center.
“I’m 100% against gay marriage,” tweeted Joshua Taipale. “I have gay friends and they’re great ppl; it’s not personal. But U.S. can’t decide. Should be state-by-state.”
And some transsexual activists continue their criticism of Facebook – which sponsors San Francisco’s gay pride parade – for its “real name” policy.
That’s Why Hillary’s The Boss! Leave a comment
By JASON HOROWITZ (New York Times)
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — Hillary Rodham Clinton was in a forgiving mood. She had been discussing the small-business economy at a round-table gathering at a bike shop here on Tuesday when the Fox News correspondent Ed Henry interrupted. When, he shouted, would she take questions from the news media she had ignored for weeks on end?
“Maybe when I finish talking to the people here,” Mrs. Clinton said as she leaned over a 3-D printed mechanical part that looked like a post-apocalyptic Rubik’s cube. “How’s that?”
“You’ll come over?” Mr. Henry followed up.
“I might,” Mrs. Clinton said teasingly. For the amusement of the 19 local residents invited to attend this latest installment of the movable Clinton court, and to the annoyance of the more than 50 members of the news media roped off around them, she added: “I have to ponder it. But I will put it on my list for due consideration.”
Unlike in 2008, when Mrs. Clinton’s regal bearing was brought low by Barack Obama’s insurgent campaign, there is no one to force her out of her Rose Garden. Neither Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, nor Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, has applied significant pressure on her. That leaves the news media as her only real opponent so far on the way to the Democratic presidential nomination, and while it may not be great for an educated populace or the furtherance of American democracy, it makes all the political sense in the world for Mrs. Clinton to ignore them, too.
There is no shortage of reminders of the downsides of engagement. She need only look at her Republican counterparts, starting with Jeb Bush, who has made a point of opening up more to reporters but damaged himself during a several-day struggle with how to answer a question about the wisdom of the war in Iraq.
Senator Marco Rubio’s difficulties with the same question were condensed to a few highly awkward and viral minutes. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has been working for weeks to overcome his flubbing of initial questions about foreign policy, and Senator Rand Paul’s snappish interactions with female reporters have only fed the impression that he is thin-skinned.
Mrs. Clinton had her own rocky introduction to the 2016 press corps when she gave defensive and not entirely convincing answers at a news conference prompted by the revelation that she had used a private email server as secretary of state. But as reporters have dug deeper into the emails, the financial conduct of her family’s foundation and the character of the company she keeps, Mrs. Clinton has only seemed more comfortable and dominant on the campaign trail.
She has rolled out more liberal positions on immigration reform and college debt and stayed mum on inconvenient things she does not want to talk about, like a potential trade deal or Israeli policiesloathed by her liberal base. And unlike in 2008 — when the battle between her and Mr. Obama forced Mrs. Clinton to do events late into the night, and she often slipped up or held forth about brain science — she is keeping her campaign schedule to a bare minimum.
This week, as she campaigned in Iowa, Chicago and New Hampshire, where on Friday she again took questions from reporters — a relative flurry of activity — she generally filled each day with one event open to the news media, a smaller one with a pool reporter, and then some unexpected stops where she ordered coffee or bought toys for her grandchild. Always the grandchild.
At the bike shop event on Tuesday, she listened intently to the stories of the round-table participants, nodding 43 times a minute as they talked about their ice cream shops and 3-D printing. As television lights cast the shadows of two rows of “everyday Americans” onto the tablecloth, she looked expertly over the locals’ heads and into the television cameras behind them to give her prepared remarks (“I want to make the words ‘middle class’ mean something again”).
She complimented the participants on their inquiries (“that’s a very fair question” or “that’s a very good question”), and when the moderator unexpectedly pushed her on her position on President Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, she dodged artfully.
When it finally came time to ask their questions, the reporters seemed more agitated than the candidate as they pushed against a rope line for the impromptu news conference and gasped when her traveling press secretary, Nick Merrill, joked, “Wouldn’t it be funny if she walked off?”
“Hey, y’all ready?” Mrs. Clinton asked as she sauntered over.
“Yeah!” said the chorus of reporters.
“Tell me — tell me something I don’t know,” she said, almost musically, as she snapped her head to the left in a Janet Jackson-era dance move. “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
The smile on Mrs. Clinton’s face slowly faded as she nodded and replied and obfuscated in response to the half-dozen questions asked of her. She did so with ease, despite the people shouting about her destroying her emails and calling out, “Did you take official actions for the Clinton Foundation donors?” And then she turned away, essentially dusting the whole dodging-the-press story line off her bird’s-eye blazer.
Mrs. Clinton’s relationship with the political press has never been warm. She started the 2008 race straight-arming reporters, and only when the nomination began slipping from her grasp did she seek to embrace them. It was too late. When she boarded the press bus with bagels (“I didn’t want you to feel deprived”), no one partook. Despite that chill, though, there was a sense of professionalism and familiarity on the Clinton bus, because many of the reporters represented New York-based publications and had covered her as a senator. News conferences were not frequent, but they occurred behind curtains after events.
Now, both Mrs. Clinton and the news media have changed. She seems less a presidential candidate than a historical figure, returning to claim what is rightfully hers. And the press corps, both blessed and cursed with live streaming, tweeting and Snapchatting technologies, is armed with questions devised to win the moment. The result is a carnival atmosphere. It is not clear what Mrs. Clinton gains politically from playing the freak.
The solution for her team has been to keep the press at bay as Mrs. Clinton reads the scripts to her daily campaign shows.
“The media was confined between the bar and the stove,” Gary Swenson said, describing an event with Mrs. Clinton at his home in Mason City, Iowa, on Monday. Asked if he had learned anything from her talk, he said, “No, I don’t think I learned anything remarkably new,” but added after a pause: “I think it was more her demeanor. It astonished me. I expected somebody who had space between herself and the people who lived here, and there was none.”
The press did not learn much, either, from Mrs. Clinton’s remarks in Mason City or her answers at the impromptu bike store news conference, except that she is an exceedingly strong candidate. But that did not mean the event was entirely without news.
Outside, by the steps of the bike shop, Mr. Henry did a stand-up in front of his Fox camera. “The reason she had a news conference is because I started shouting questions,” he crowed to his viewers. He called that the day’s “bottom line.”
Small victories.
Bill O’Reilly – Fox News – The Liar Who Never Stops Lying. Leave a comment
by J.K. Trotter (GAWKER)
Three weeks ago, a Nassau County Supreme Court justice ended a bitter three-year custody dispute between Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly and his ex-wife, Maureen McPhilmy, by granting custody of the couple’s two minor children to McPhilmy. Though nearly all documents pertaining to New York family court cases are sealed, Gawker has learned that the justice in the case heard testimony accusing O’Reilly of physically assaulting his wife in the couple’s Manhasset home.
According to a source familiar with the facts of the case, a court-appointed forensic examiner testified at a closed hearing that O’Reilly’s daughter claimed to have witnessed her father dragging McPhilmy down a staircase by her neck, apparently unaware that the daughter was watching. The precise date of the alleged incident is unclear, but appears to have occurred before the couple separated in 2010. The same source indicated that the daughter, who is 16 years old, told the forensic examiner about the incident within the past year.
UPDATE: O’Reilly has denied that he abused his wife, telling Politico’s Dylan Byers late Thursday: “All allegations against me in these circumstances are 100% false. I am going to respect the court-mandated confidentiality put in place to protect my children and will not comment any further.”
The apparent domestic violence assault would be the latest in a series of revelations about O’Reilly’s disturbing treatment of his family members, and his ex-wife in particular.
O’Reilly and McPhilmy separated in April 2010, after which McPhilmy began dating a Nassau County Police detective named Jeffrey Gross. Upon learning of their relationship, as Gawker reported in 2011, O’Reilly called up his high-placed connections within the NCPD to have something done about Gross. Since O’Reilly was helping raise money for the department’s associated charity, the Nassau County Police Department Foundation, his calls sparked an internal affairs investigation into Gross and his relationship with McPhilmy—an incredible waste of police resources, and a devious way of getting back at McPhilmy by harassing her new boyfriend.
The O’Reillys formalized their divorce in September 2011, and agreed to share custody of their school-aged children. As part of their agreement, the couple mutually agreed to assign a neutral therapist named Lynne Kulakowski to arbitrate any potential custodial disputes, should they happen to arise in the future. Shortly thereafter, however, McPhilmy learned that O’Reilly had in fact added Kulakowski to his household payroll so she could serve as a full-time nanny—in which capacity, as judge later explained, she was required “to perform virtually all of [O’Reilly’s] parental duties.”
In a unanimous decision two years ago, a New York appeals court ruled that O’Reilly’s behavior “could undermine the integrity” of their joint-custody agreement and ordered a trial court to consider McPhilmy’s petition for sole custody.
While all of this was going on, as Gawker reported in March 2013, O’Reilly was trying to get McPhilmy excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, in which the couple married in 1996. McPhilmy even received a letter from her local parish, another Long Island institution where O’Reilly enjoys influence, admonishing her for taking communion. (In the Church, divorcing and remarrying is considered a grave offense to God.) At the same time, O’Reilly was seeking a formal annulment—a procedure most commonly sought for marriages that last less than a year—for his and McPhilmy’s 15-year-long matrimony.
We were able corroborate the fact that the justice issued a decision in the case, and that O’Reilly has appealed it, at the Nassau County Clerk’s office in Mineola. Neither O’Reilly nor McPhilmy responded to requests for comment. A representative for Fox News Channel did not return messages.
O’Reilly’s lack of response is especially worth noting. The anchor has spent his highly remunerated career obsessing over patterns of violence among racial minorities, particularly black people, and the apparently unique effect of violence on the integrity of black families. As he fulminated on-air in December 2014: “The astronomical crime rate among young black men—violent crime—drives suspicion and hostility. … No supervision, kids with no fathers—the black neighborhoods are devastated by the drug gangs who prey upon their own. That’s the problem!”
Or, as O’Reilly claimed in August: “The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African-American family.”
Good Old Fox News – Honest and Factually Reporting As Always! Leave a comment
by Paul Farhi (The Washington Post).
Fox News erroneously reported that Baltimore police shot a man Monday in the same neighborhood where unrest broke out last week — a mistake quickly corrected by the news network.
The midafternoon report by correspondent Mike Tobin, which also found its way onto Foxnews.com, was potentially dangerous, given the elevated tensions in Baltimore’s Sandtown section where protests and lotting erupted in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody.
Tobin’s report caused about 30 minutes of unease in Baltimore before Fox anchor Shepard Smith went on-air to correct the story and apologize for the incorrect information. His apology followed a statement from Baltimore police that there had been no shooting.
Live news reports often have errors, and Tobin’s is merely the latest in a long series of them. Yet few recent reports have had as much potential as Tobin’s to stir a violent reaction, considering it came amid more than a week of protests about alleged police misconduct.
Bystanders near Pennsylvania and North avenues shot cellphone footage of a man lying on the sidewalk surrounded by an apparently agitated crowd around 2:45 p.m. As police quickly moved to surround the scene, some in the crowd began to shout that the unidentified man had been shot in the back by officers.
Tobin was on the air moments later reporting that “a guy running from cops” had been shot. “As he was running away, an officer drew his weapon and fired,” said Tobin, who reported seeing a revolver lying on the ground next to the man.
Tobin said he was sitting in a car about 40 feet from the incident and was preparing for a later live report. He said on-air that he “never saw the individual do anything aggressive” and that he counted one gunshot. He also said he saw an officer draw his weapon.
Fox aired footage of the man on a stretcher as he was loaded into an ambulance.
Smith began to back way from Tobin’s initial live report after 3 p.m., although he inaccurately reported, “According to our team there . . . an officer shot that man you see there on the stretcher. We are hearing conflicted reports on local scanners there. It’s very early, and Fox News cannot confirm exactly what happened.”