Posted 6:34 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Chick Tract
The Chickster's latest "The Bully" is kinda sappy.

Posted 1:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

Who Has The Messiah Complex?
Since Barack Obama hit the national scene, critics on the right have accused him of having a "Messiah complex" and claimed that his followers are like members of a cult. I have pointed out (here and here) the irony of people in a political movement that receives heavy funding by a megalomaniac who literally believes himself to be the new Messiah, who was sent by Jesus to fulfill JC's unfulfilled mission of redeeming humanity. Also, there is the issue of Reagan worship in the ranks of the contemporary movement--e.g., the creepy "What Would Reagan Do?" talk among the right that mirrors the WWJD armbands that evangelical teenagers wear.

The other day, there was the revelation in Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin that she sent a mass e-mail to friends announcing the birth of her baby Trig:

When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

One final note, those of you familiar with this blog know that I have two blogs that addresse Amway Global (also here). Here's a YouTube video of Birdie Yager, the wife of Amway kingpin and bigoted reactionary Dexter Yager explaining why she is the "Bride of Christ."

Posted 8:53 PM by Scoobie Davis

Posting Tomorrow
I've had a bad cold the past few days

Posted 5:35 PM by Scoobie Davis

What a Relief!
Pat Boone wants to see Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Posted 10:09 AM by Scoobie Davis

Bruno World Premiere
I was in Hollywood last night for the premiere of Sasha Baron Cohen's upcoming film Bruno. I didn't get into the after-party but I walked by director Larry Charles.

Posted 3:47 PM by Scoobie Davis

Michael Jackson is Dead
MsNBC just reported it. I wasn't a fan.

Posted 2:56 PM by Scoobie Davis

You Gotta Hear This
Rush, the exemplar of the Party of Individual Responsibility, blames Governor Mark Sanford's Argentina trip for trim on Obama:

Posted 8:56 AM by Scoobie Davis

Public Enemies
I'm in LA right now. Last night I went to a preview screening of Public Enemies, the film about John Dillinger starring Johnny Depp. I thought the film was okay but not great. Favorite line: when Depp/Dillinger tells his love interest: "What else do you need to know?"

Posted 12:57 PM by Scoobie Davis

Quick Read
Salon's Andrew Leonard on whose economy it is.

Posted 1:26 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal on why Megyn Kelly of Fox News owes America and explanation regarding Senator John Ensign. included is a letter that cuckolded husband Doug Hampton regarding his wife Cynthia's affair with the senator.

Posted 1:07 PM by Scoobie Davis

Quick Thought on Fox News
There's a lot of talk about President Obama's clear reference to Fox News in his recent interview with CNBC. Here's the portion of the interview with John Harwood that Obama clearly refers to Fox:

OBAMA: It’s very hard for me to swallow that one. First of all, I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration. I mean, you know, that’s a pretty…

HARWOOD: I assume you’re talking about Fox.

OBAMA: Well, that’s a pretty big megaphone. And you’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front.

Fox News is the type of organization that would elevate someone like Bill Sammon to be its vice president of news and Washington managing editor.

Posted 7:10 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Joe Conason on the attempt by wingnuts, lead by the Moonie Times, to invent a "Walpin-gate" scandal revolving around the firing of Americorps inspector general Gerald Walpin.

UPDATE: Media Matters for America has more.

Posted 11:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Sean Hannity Get Zinged on His Fox News TV Show Last Night about GOP Sexual Hypocrisy
Last night on Sean Hannity's Fox News television show, there was a "Great American Panel" discussion. The token liberal punching bag wasn't a punching bag last night (unfortunately I tuned in during the middle of the discussion and don't know his name and I can't find video of the discussion). The topic was John Ensign's philandering. Hannity was dumbfounded when the token liberal said that Ensign's behavior fit in with Newt Gingrich and his pattern of collecting wives. It reminds me of when I had similar thoughts when I spoke to Hannity on his radio radio show a few years ago.

Posted 12:04 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
A. Serwer: "The GOP: History's Greatest Victims"

UPDATE: Another must-read on the GOP: Hendrik Hertzberg "Tweety Birdbrains."

Posted 7:50 PM by Scoobie Davis

Light Posting
I've been at the beach.

Posted 3:22 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry "Excusing Outrages of the Right."

Posted 10:07 AM by Scoobie Davis

I'm Stumped
I'm writing a long blog post and I was trying to figure out if there are any legitimate reasons why any progressive should appear on Fox News, other than to denounce the channel. E-mail me at scoobiedavis77@yahoo.com if you can think of any good reasons.

Posted 12:42 PM by Scoobie Davis

Alternate Reality Indeed
Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer: "What Fox [News] did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality."

Posted 11:15 AM by Scoobie Davis

Woo Hoo! Terry McAuliffe's Campaign Tanks and He Loses the Primary!
If you want to know why I'm so happy, read my recent open letter to Virginia Democratic primary voters.

UPDATE: The Boorman Tribune has more.

Posted 3:11 PM by Scoobie Davis

Moonie Times' Frank Gaffney Spreads Debunked Rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim
One of the biggest urban legends of the past few years is the rumor that Barack Obama was raised as a Muslim (variants of this smear are the claims that Obama is Arab and that he was born outside the United States). This canard was first publicized in the Sun Myung Moon-owned (and now-defunct) Insight magazine.

Today in the Moon-owned Washington Times, Frank Gaffney wrote an op-ed in which he make the jaw-dropping claim that "[t]here is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself." Media Matters for America is one of the media watchdogs that have debunked Gaffney's claim (MMFA also cited Gaffney's baseless claims made during the 2008 election about Obama's birth certificate and Gaffney's attempts to link Obama to a "convert to radical Islam" named Khalid al-Mansour).

Tamron Hall of MSNBC addresses the issue:


Cross-posted on the Real Sun Myung Moon blog.

Posted 8:37 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
The Daily Kos on Sean Hannity's "Muslim nation" accusation (with video)

Posted 10:33 AM by Scoobie Davis

How Weird People Got to this Site
There are some weird people in this world--and they land on this site due to some odd keyword searches. Every once in a while I post the strangest and funniest keyword searches that people used to get to this site (I get this data from my Statcounter stats). Quick note: here is the post from the last time I did this. I noticed that a lot of the weirdest keyword searches were about right-wing radio shock jock Mark Levin (whom I discussed in this post). Here are the most recent weird keyword searches:

sean hannity reptilian
mark levin liberty and tyranny bookstore conspiracy
george w. bush's groom of the stool [note: click here if you don't what a Groom of the Stool is]
is ann coulter 99 pounds?
kellyanne conway boobs [check them out here]
mel gibson is a repulsive lying cheating hypocrite
rush limbaugh's wife
bob basso reporting nude [note: Bob Basso is the ham actor who plays Thomas Paine--I sure wouldn't like to see him nude]
karen hanretty boobs
ross jeffries pheromones [Note: Ross Jeffries is a picking-up women guru I met at a party]
mark levin is nuts
joseph farah paranoid
mark levins book sucks
sean hannity huge ego
419eater nipple circle
mark levin controversies
did fred ricart get a curling iron up his ass? [Fred Ricart is a Columbus, Ohio Ford dealer and full-time douchebag who was the victim of a rumor that his wife shoved a hot curling iron up his ass]
horney women
why do liberals hate cheney
mark levin ratings
julie ann emery naked
krauthammer sugar tit
mark levin right wing nut

Posted 10:24 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Eric Boehlert: "Sotomayor, Gingrich, and the demise of our press corps"

Posted 6:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Salon's Gabriel Winant on Bill O'Reilly, the politics of hate, and a dead doctor.

Posted 10:34 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Moonie Blog
Click here

Posted 5:50 PM by Scoobie Davis

Welcome to Members of the Democratic National Committee
I was checking out my Statcounter stats and noticed that twice today people from the Democratic National Committee were reading this blog (it was probably due to my recent open letter to Democratic voters in Virginia regarding Terry McAuliffe). I only wished that people from the DNC had read my blog and taken my advice and the advice of other bloggers and activists years earlier; that way it wouldn't had been necessary to wait until the Bush presidency to implode before they were able to gain a governing majority.

Posted 2:51 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Anti-Amway Video Blog
Those of you familiar with this blog know that I have been a harsh critic of the Amway Global scam (which is a de facto ATM machine for the GOP and various reactionary causes).
I've seen a lot of good, critical YouTube Videos about Amway Global. I decided that one way to spread the word about Amway would be to start a blog devoted to videos about Amway. Click here to view the new Amway Global Video Blog which serves as a companion site to my main anti-Amway web site.

Posted 11:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Eric Boehlert on media double standards.

Posted 2:25 PM by Scoobie Davis

An Open Letter to Virginia Democratic Primary Voters Regarding Terry McAuliffe
Dear Virgina Democratic Primary Voters,

I hesitate to give you political advice because I am neither a Virginian nor am I a member of the Democratic Party (here are some of reasons why I am not a Democrat). Another reason that I am not a Democrat is that it is a party that has had people like Terry McAuliffe in its leadership. I believe that McAuliffe, who is running for governor of Virginia as a Democrat, has engaged in activities that are harmful to Democrats and the progressive cause.

I have been doing this blog for the past seven years and one of my targets has been the Fox News Channel. Fox News is an insult to journalism and a conduit for reactionary propaganda that smears Democrats and progressives (Click here for a long article on the misdeeds of FNC). I have used this blog to discredit Fox News (for instance, my Googlebomb of Fox News was a big success). In recent years, ad revenue for FNC has been down and fewer Americans are taking it seriously. I am other bloggers have done damage to Fox's reputation as a news outlet and the Fox News brand is increasingly becoming marginalized (though much more work needs to be done).

Progressive bloggers and others have been able to marginalize Fox News and FNC CEO Roger Ailes in spite of efforts of people like McAuliffe to accord legitimacy to the right-wing propaganda network. For instance, during last year's Democratic presidential primary, McAuliffe appeared on Fox and his praise for the channel was so lavish that Fox CEO Roger Ailes made the clip of McAuliffe's words into a promo for the channel. With friends like McAuliffe, progressives don't need any enemies.

My challenge to you: 1) read my extensive critique of Fox News; 2) watch McAuliffe's unctuous endorsement of FNC (see the addendum); and 3) vote your conscience.

Sincerely,

S

Addendum: Fox News ad featuring Terry McAuliffe:

Posted 11:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
The Daily Howler's minor correction of Paul Krugman: The right has always been mad.

Posted 1:52 PM by Scoobie Davis

Happy Memorial Day!

Posted 2:23 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Internet Versus Right-Wing Disinformation: A Case Study
Over the past couple years, this blog has received hundreds of hits for a Google search of some combination of the "Gore Monticello." The reason for this is a canard, apparently started on Rush Limbaugh's 1990's television show (quick note: the show was produced by current Fox News CEO Roger Ailes). Here's what happened: prior to their inauguration as president and vice president, Bill Clinton and Al Gore toured Monticello with Hillary and Tipper. As they entered one of the rooms, directly in front of them were busts of John Paul Jones and Marquis de Lafayette (on the extreme left and right of the room were busts of Washington and Benjamin Franklin). Gore asked "who are these people?" clearly referring to the busts of the Marquis and Jones. On the TV show, Limbaugh tried to pretend as if Gore couldn't recognize Washington and Franklin.

In the 2002 book Slander: Liberal Lies about American Right, Ann Coulter repeated the lie. I wrote about this on my blog with the correct information. This blog entry is in the top ten for a Google search of "Gore Monticello." While the Internet is a source for rumors and misinformation, it is a good resource for correct information about right-wing talk radio smears and dishonest authors like Coulter.

Addendum--More on Gore: The Daily Howler has a recent article on the Gore/Love Story media hoax. Also, in case you haven't read it, here's the transcript of phone call I made to Limbaugh's radio show in which I corrected Limbaugh to his audience about Love Story and other anti-Gore disinformation he was spreading to his millions of Dittoheads during the 2000 campaign.

Posted 2:42 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Jack Chick Tracts
For a while I thought The Chickster was losing his edge. I think his two new tracts--"Evil Eyes" and "It's a Deal"--have the demented hilarity I haven't read about in a while

Posted 1:06 AM by Scoobie Davis

Fair and Balanced
I was checking out the fair and balanced Fox Nation and noticed on the comments section for an O'Reilly Factor story critical of ACORN that the first commenter had the following observation: "Enough of this nonsense. Revoke the 13th and 14th amendments."

Generally I don't judge a web site based on the comments because anyone can post a comment; however, Bill O'Reilly compared the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post based on what some anonymous people wrote on the comments sections of their sites.

Posted 9:58 PM by Scoobie Davis

California Election
I just got back from being a poll worker for today's statewide special election. Over 120 people voted in my precinct--not a single one of whom was a hot babe.

I got a lot of writing done and will do posts soon on journalistic ethics and other topics.

Posted 1:57 PM by Scoobie Davis

Simpsons Season Finale
I just checked out Fox.com and the episode for the Simpsons' season finale is called "Coming to Homerica"; apparently, Homer forms a Minuteman Project-like group to protect Springfield's border. I'm going to watch it.

UPDATE: I watched the episode and thought it was very funny.

Posted 3:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

A Comparison

Ann Coulter May 13, 2009:

Liberals wouldn't attack James Dobson with the amount of bile they've directed at a 21-year-old beauty contestant. It's not just Christianity – it's women liberals hate. From Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso and Bertrand Russell, who treated women--mostly their mistresses–-like dogs, to Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton in our own day, liberals are ferocious misogynists. [Note: Sartre, Picasso, and Russell were liberals?] They share Muslims' opinion of women, differing only to the extent that liberals also support a women's right to have an abortion and to perform lap dances. You'd be better off in a real burqa than under the authority of a liberal American male.

Ann Coulter May 06, 2004:

Well, you can't avoid the fact that there are a disproportionate number of women involved, for one thing, in the [Abu Ghraib] abuse photos. It was a girl general [Janis Karpinski] who was in charge of running our Iraqi prison. And, you know, for one thing, I'm a little disappointed in Rumsfeld--he allows the greatest fighting force on the face of the globe to have girl generals--what are we doing with girl generals? But I think as a general matter, besides the fact that women don't have the physical abilities to do the training exercises while carrying even a medium-size backpack, women are more vicious than men . . . These are a few, you know, I mean, in general, these abuse photos are manifestly a few bad apples in an overwhelmingly honorable military. I don't know if you remember, but back during the Afghanistan war--and that was even the war that liberals pretended to support--our military was trained how to bury the dead so that their heads were facing Mecca. That's an incredibly honorable thing to do--and, by the way, it's something that doesn't occur to a woman because we are vicious. You don't want us in the military. . . I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek about how vicious women are, but I do think it is a serious problem having women in the military. Men are used to this sort of thing.

Posted 2:36 PM by Scoobie Davis

Not the First Time
Media Matters for America has a post about Sean Hannity playing dumb; it's not the first time--click here and here.

UPDATE: Steve Benen has more on Hannity and Limbaugh

Posted 1:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

Quick Thought
I have really noticed that there are a lot of insane comments on my YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult."

Posted 2:11 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Moon Blog
Check it out

Posted 10:06 AM by Scoobie Davis

Wanda Sykes' Tasteless Joke
Tasteless? Yeah. Funny? Yeah.
For the right-wingers who thought it was beyond the pale, here's a few lines from a parody song that Limbaugh played during the Clinton years: (to the tune of the Doobie Brothers' "Black Water")

Poor Vince Foster, seems we lost ya,
Cleaned out your office on the double.
Webster Hubble, made us stumble,
Another Rose partner is in trouble.
Oh, Whitewater, keep stonewalling, we did nothing wrong,
Won't you just stop picking on me?

UPDATE: Media Matters (who else?) has more.

Posted 1:46 PM by Scoobie Davis

Update
Because of Michael Savage's talk about suing British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for putting his name on a "name and shame" list of people banned from entering Britain, I have updated my recent post on Savage's frivolous lawsuits.

Posted 1:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Posts on the Moon Blog
Click here

Posted 12:50 PM by Scoobie Davis

Thugocracy
Yes, it is a word. This is the description that Rush Limbaugh had for the Obama administration today. Erick Erickson of the Red State blog used the term a few days ago. It's fun to watch the right become unhinged. This shows that the Limbaugh strategy is working. This kind of rhetoric is red meat for the right's base (the 25 percent of Americans who never lost faith in George W. Bush). However this kind of talk is poisonous to the independents and moderates the GOP needs to regain power.

Posted 6:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Sun Myung Moon Blog
Click here

Posted 5:15 PM by Scoobie Davis

My Dinner With Bill Clinton--Well, Not Exactly

I was excited when I received an e-mail with the subject heading, "President Clinton Dinner - May 1st." When I opened the e-mail, I discovered it was the real deal; I invited to have dinner, cocktails, and discussion with Bill Clinton to benefit The Clinton Foundation at the home of Rica and Jon Orszag, an LA couple who had worked with Bill Clinton in the White House.

The e-mail and the invitation attachment didn't specify a minimum amount that an attendee so I thought that I might be able to slide in with a nominal contribution (before you accuse me of being a giant sponge, think about it: a guy who has gotten over $40 million in speaking fees since leaving the White House is asking me for money). It was only a few days later that I found out that it was a big fake-out--I read the other attachment that came the e-mail that informed me that dinner attendees had to contribute $5000 just to get in the door. Fuck that noise. The Clinton Foundation is a good cause and I was willing to contribute four figure amount to a good cause. The only problem was that two of the figures are behind the decimal point.

It's just as well. An event like that would totally not be my scene. In fact, last Monday night, I attended a Hollywood event to benefit the World Food Programme (see addendum) and met Rica Orszag; I asked her why a guy like me would be invited to have dinner with Clinton.

I don't want to give Bill Clinton any money, but I did prepare some good advice for the discussion portion of the evening. Since I can't get through the door, I am writing an open letter for President Clinton's benefit:

An Open Letter to Bill Clinton

Dear President Clinton,

I am honored to have been invited to have dinner with you on May 1 in Los Angeles. I am unable to attend dinner with you because I don't have the bread; perhaps in the future, you can have some kind of sliding scale.

I thought in lieu of a contribution, I could give you some advice. My main piece of advice is this: learn from your past. During your presidency, there were people who lied in order to discredit you. These people included Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes (now the CEO of Fox News), Richard Mellon Scaife, and Sun Myung Moon's media empire. These people exploited the tragic death of Vince Foster to score political points; unfortunately, none of these entities have paid a price for their actions. On my blog, I have discussed why the people in your administration did a horrendous job of addressing these attacks here.

It's one thing to have failed to mount an effective counter-attack. It's quite another to not learn from these costly mistakes. It certainly didn't benefit you when you reached out to Josette Sheeran, one of Sun Myung Moon's operatives; in fact, it was an unmitigated disaster: not only did it not stem the attacks from the cult leader's media apparatus but it gave the cult's media apparatus legitimacy that money couldn't buy. It certainly didn't help when you appeared on Rush Limbaugh's radio program last year. It didn't help when Hillary sat down with Scaife and the editorial staff of his vanity newspaper. It didn't help when prominent members of Hillary's 2008 campaign legitimized Ailes' Fox News. It doesn't help when Hillary recently endorsed Sun Myung Moon's Universal Peace Federation. I recently wrote a far-from-exhaustive post, "Notes of a Former Clinton Defender," on how you and your people have befriended the very people who have smeared you and Vince Foster's memory and who continue with the politics of personal destruction. It is folly to befriend them; they need to be discredited and defeated.

I hope my comments are of value to you.

Sincerely,

S

Addendum: On April 27th, I attended a Hollywood event co-hosted by MPAA CEO Dan Glickman and the Creative Artists Agency that benefited the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP). There was a reception followed by a discussion with Drew Barrymore, Arianna Huffington, and WFP director Josette Sheeran. For those of you familiar with my Sun Myung Moon blog know that I have written extensively about Sheeran, who was a longtime member of the Unification movement and editor of Moon's Washington Times (here and here are two informative posts on Sheerhan). My guest, a fellow indie filmmaker, didn't want to go and rub elbows with Glickman because the MPAA shills for Hollywood and sticks it to the indies--especially with movie ratings. My guest and I had a blast. We ate, drank, and met people at the reception; the discussion was thought-provoking.

Posted 10:37 AM by Scoobie Davis

Camp and The Wingnut Right
(Updated below)

People wonder how I can listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, and the other wing-nuts. Quick answer: I don't much anymore since sites like Media Matters for America started taking up the slack.

I'm a bit ambivalent about wingnut ranting. When the right was in power in the White House and in Congress, it was really scary that these fringe types were taken seriously by those in power. Now they're entertaining. I have a camp appreciation of the Thomas Paine/Bob Basso YouTube videos. In case you're not familiar with them, somebody put a washed-up ham actor (Bob Basso) in colonial garb and has him do stilted rabble-rousing rants as if he were Thomas Paine (great way to appeal to the Generation Y). Today, I was flipping through the stations and heard this rant, "The Second American Revolution" (funny how the right starts using revolutionary rhetoric when the voters kick them out of power).

It's boilerplate right-wing rhetoric (e.g., Basso/Paine equates diversity with disunity and says "They call themselves progressive, global thinkers. We had another word for them in 1776; we called them 'traitors'"). I found this part near the end of the rant a bit scary:

Perhaps you allow all this destructive uncommon sense out of a distorted notion of tolerance. Remember what Aristotle said, "Tolerance is the last virtue of a dying society." You are tolerating the behavior that is destroying you. No presidential candidate, no political party can save you now. Only an aroused citizenry will turn this uncommon sense around. And he or she who does nothing now is helping them to destroy America.

Lighten up, Bob/Thomas. You lost a couple elections. Do some yoga or toke up; you'll feel better.

UPDATE: I just watched this Paine/Basso video, "On to Washington," for the first time. Paine is exhorting the teabaggers to march on Washington.
I can't do a full review but I have one piece of advice for people who watch it and take it seriously: if you value your job, don't "tell the boss you're taking a day off to fight for America."

Posted 10:39 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry on the Democrats' 'Battered Wife Syndrome'

Posted 3:21 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Theocratic Chain of Misery
Read it. It is cross-posted on the Moon and Amway blogs.

Posted 2:45 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Joan Walsh on wingnut welfare.

Posted 1:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

Michael Savage's Other Frivolous Lawsuit
(Updated below because of another potential frivolous lawsuit)
Radio talk show host Michael Savage (née Wiener), along with the sectarian right group The Thomas More Law Center, filed a lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder over the report put out by the DHS regarding tight-wing extremism. The lawsuit is clearly frivolous (here's a short blog post on why it has no merit).

This isn't' Savage's first frivolous lawsuit. Years ago, Savage and David Horowitz filed a frivolous lawsuit against the University of California Board of Regents because they didn't hire Savage for an academic position he was clearly unqualified to fill. I wrote about the frivolous suit in 2003 for the blog HorowitzWatch. Unfortunately, the blog is defunct but below is the post (I made a few changes for clarity and dead links):

The David Horowitz/Michael Savage Connection
The more I read about Michael Savage and the way his demented ideas are being applauded by people ostensibly in the mainstream, the more I feel like the teacher in the film Fast Times At Ridgemont High (portrayed by the late Ray Walston) who by the end of the film was convinced that everyone is on drugs. When Savage appeared on Hannity & Colmes on Monday [January 6, 2003], Hannity endorsed Savage’s best-selling book Savage Nation and called it a good read. I have been critiquing Savage Nation and I found out the Savage and David Horowitz were involved in one of the most frivolous lawsuits in California history—which is odd because trial lawyers are one of Savage’s biggest scapegoats.

Here’s what happened. In 1996, Savage applied for the position of dean at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. I’m sure that the hiring committee had a good horselaugh reading Savage’s vita. True, Savage has a Ph.D. but it is in epidemiology and nutrition science. Horowitz pointed out how Savage had written 17 books, but they are mostly books on herbs and questionable healing methods such as homeopathy. His job at the time—his current job—was incoherent radio talk show (click here for a recent example). Had Savage been chosen to head the journalism school, it would have been the laughing stock of academia.

Instead, the person chosen for the job was Orville Schell, a distinguished scholar and journalist. Schell has been honored with writing fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Additionally, he has received awards from the Overseas Press Club of America for best article on a foreign subject and the Page One Award for the best investigative story. In addition, Schell has contributed to magazines such as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Tricycle, The Atlantic, The Nation, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, Granta, and The China Quarterly.

On his radio show, Savage claimed that he was snubbed because he was white (Schell is also white) and proceeded to sue the UC at Berkeley regents and the head of the search committee, Troy Duster (Savage sued through one of Horowitz’s Scaife-funded front groups). Horowitz called the lawsuit “a small but meaningful step toward the restoration of democracy and institutional integrity to the nation's university culture.” The lawsuit was quickly dropped. I couldn’t find out how much the University of California system spent defending itself against this frivolous suit.

Addendum: I recently wrote about how the more Americans learn about the whackos in right-wing talk radio, the more likely GOP to be a minority party for the foreseeable future. In the post, I wrote about how the 3:00 PM EST time slot has a ratings war between two completely unhinged right-wing competitors: Savage and Mark Levin. For those who are unfamiliar with Savage's looniness, that post, along with this post that I linked to in my critique of Savage's Berkeley lawsuit as well as my critique of Savage's book Savage Nation serve as a good introduction into the fringe nature of Savage's outlook. . . Frivolous lawsuits are nothing new to the Thomas More Law Center. Previously, the group was involved in a suit to put the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools as an alternative scientific theory.

5/7/09 UPDATE: Savage says that he is planning to sue British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith because Savage is on a list of people banned from Great Britian for allegedly fostering extremism or hatred.

Posted 1:04 AM by Scoobie Davis

Interesting
(via Mark Crispin Miller)

The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove
A Documentary Record

Project Save Justice and world renowned film maker John McTiernan announce the release of The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, a video documentation of the systematic prosecution of Democrats by the Bush Justice Department. Drawing inspiration from the Shields Report, a 2007 and 2009 academic analysis showing that during the Bush years, the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuted seven times more Democrats than Republicans, the hour long film delves deeper than the few high profile cases that have caught the attention of the mainstream media, and instead sheds light on many of the 600 cases brought against Democrats across the country between 2002 and 2008.

In the hands of McTiernan, director of the Hollywood blockbusters, Predator, The Hunt for Red October, and the Die Hard trilogy, The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove offers a documented record of the pervasive misuse of the Justice Department. Sadly, as the film documents, Democrats were targeted at all levels of the system and in many states across the country. The film reveals startling evidence supporting the use of the U.S. Department of Justice to create a permanent Republican majority. In fact, statistics show that in the 15 months leading up to the 2008 general election, indictments of elected Democrats increased by nearly 50%. The soul-stirring documentary offers convincing evidence to indicate that a vigorous and comprehensive strategy was pursued to attack lower levels of the Democratic Party designed to completely uproot and undermine any challenges to Republican political power.

Posted 1:34 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Latest Wingnut Meme
(Updated below)
Yesterday morning, I was flipping through the stations and heard a local Rush Clone bitching and moaning about how presidential advisor David Axelrod was trying to marginalize conservatives, particularly those who were involved in the teabagging events last week. The basis for this accusation was something that Axelrod allegedly said about the teabaggers: ". . . I think any time that you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that's unhealthy."

The local Rush wannabe then used his radio time to go into a long harangue about how poor wingnuts were being targeted as mutations by Axelrod and as terrorists by the Department of Homeland Security. Like the wingnut spin on the DHS report on right-wing extremists, the claim about Axelrod was a right-wing talking point that was taken out of context and is being spread by the usual suspects such as Fox News and Sean Hannity on his radio program.

The truth about what Axelrod said is more complicated. Axelrod made these comments in an interview with Harry Smith on Face the Nation. What these right-wingers failed to mention was that Smith asked Axelrod about the teabaggers AND the genuinely nutty talk by Texas governor Rick Perry about the possible secession of Texas from the United States. Here are Axelrod's comments in their full context:

SMITH: What do you make of this spreading and very public disaffection with, not only the government, but especially the Obama administration -- the tea parties this week? You even have the governor of Texas even using the word "secession"? What -- should Texas be allowed to secede?

AXELROD: Well, I don't think that really warrants a serious response. I don't think most Texans were all that enthused by the governor's --

SMITH: But what about the first part of the question? This building disaffection --

AXELROD: -- by the governor's suggestion. Look, I think any time -- I think any time that you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that's unhealthy.

SMITH: Is this unhealthy?

AXELROD: Well, we're in a -- this is a country where we value our liberties and our ability to express ourselves, and so far, these are expressions. Now, one thing I would say is, the thing that bewilders me is this president just cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. So, I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere, because he certainly understands the burden that people face.

UPDATE: Media Matters has a video and a response to the way that Axelrod's comments were distorted on Hannity's Fox News show.

Posted 9:21 AM by Scoobie Davis

I'll Second That
Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman: "[T]here is now no way to view the people who ruled us these past 8 years as anything but monsters. "

Posted 9:05 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
What 420 means. Also, have a happy 420 Day.

Posted 7:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Fox Nation
I love those ads on Fox News promoting Fox Nation, claiming that Fox Nation is for those who don't like media bias. Media Matters reports that the Fox Nation website had the following headline, "Taliban Copies Democrat [sic] Playbook." The only flaw in the MMFA account is that it didn't mention the wingnut use of the word "Democrat" as an adjective.

Quick note: I went on the Fox Nation website and they had the following headline: "Why Does Obama Keep Blaming America?" that links to a Moonie Times article that simply reported on President Obama's trip to Mexico in which he noted that most of the guns used in the Mexican drug wars came from the United States.

Posted 7:14 AM by Scoobie Davis

Run Newt Run!
(Updated below)
There is talk that Newt Gingrich will run for president in 2012. I want him to run. The main reason: a polarizing figure like Gingrich is sure to lose.

There's also a bit of self-interest in my desire to see Gingrich in the race. Every time Gingrich appears on cable news program hinting that he will run, my post on this blog in which I have the transcript of the conversation with Sean Hannity in which I stop Slanthead dead in his tracks when I tell him that Bill Clinton is a lot better than Gingrich because at least Clinton didn't dump his wives and trade them in for a new model every few years. This slew of traffic to my site is due to the fact that on Google, the post is listed in the top ten for a Google search for "Marianne Ginther" (Wife Number Two for Gingrich) and the post is in the top 30 sites for a Google search of "Callista Bisek" (Wife Number Three for Gingrich).

So it's a win-win situation for all with a Gingrich run: a candidate who can't win will be in the race (but who could possibly get the nomination) and slew of hits to this site.

UPDATE: It didn't take long for me to find another instance of Gingrich being a total douche.

Posted 5:24 PM by Scoobie Davis

Top Party Schools according to Playboy
The latest issue of Playboy magazine (May 2009) has a list of America's top colleges and universities for partying:
1. The University of Miami (Florida). Quick note: a few years ago, my alma mater, Miami of Ohio, was listed in Playboy's honorable mention for party schools. Miami University is a party school for people who want it to be a party school (like me) but there were a lot of people who went there who didn't party (e.g., MU had a reputation for having a large number of students who are with Campus Crusade for Christ).
2. The University of Texas at Austin
3. San Diego State University
4. The University of Florida
5. The University of Arizona
6. The University of Wisconsin
7. The University of Georgia
8. Louisiana State U.
9. The University of Iowa
10. West Virginia University

Posted 2:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

Hollywood Film State of Play Has Blogger Character
Hollywood hottie Rachel McAdams plays a newspaper's blogger in the just-releaseed political thriller State of Play. It's not my kind of film. The trailer is here.

Posted 7:48 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Moon Blog
Click here.

Posted 9:42 PM by Scoobie Davis

Exclusive: Incendiary Rhetoric by Washington Times Commentator
On the Moon blog.

Posted 2:51 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Color Beige: The Tea Party Protests
Several commentators who either attended the tea party protests have noticed the dearth of non-white people in attendance. Kind of reminds me of when I went to see Bill O'Reilly speak in Westwood a few years ago.

Posted 1:11 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry "US News Media Fails America, Again." One nugget of wisdom:

the American Left never took media seriously, putting what money it had mostly into “organizing” or into direct humanitarian giving. Underscoring the Left’s fecklessness about media, progressives have concentrated their relatively few media outlets in San Francisco, 3,000 miles away – and three hours behind – the news centers of Washington and New York.

By contrast, the Right grasped the importance of “information warfare” in a modern media age and targeted its heaviest firepower on the frontlines of that war – mostly the political battlefields of Washington – thus magnifying the influence of right-wing ideas on policymakers.

One consequence of this media imbalance is that Republicans feel they can pretty much say whatever they want – no matter how provocative or even crazy – while Democrats must be far more circumspect, knowing that any comment might be twisted into an effective attack point against them.

Posted 9:39 PM by Scoobie Davis

Teabagging America
Paul Krugman's column on the tea parties.

Daily Kos takes on that annoying actor portraying Thomas Paine.

Also, in case you missed it, here's the tea party video--I have more info on a previous update:

Posted 6:49 PM by Scoobie Davis

Right-wing Bush Defender Lets It Slip Out that Fox News is Controlled by GOP
Robert G. Kaufman, iscontributor to the Weekly Standard, the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review, and the Moonie Times makes the following observation while discussing his book In Defense of the Bush Doctrine:

The fifth thing that Republicans have to do is understand the problem of communicating in a world where much of the television media, particularly, is hostile...If I had to recommend one single thing that the Republicans should be doing to help articulate the message, it is to acquire another television network so that there is not just FOX, but multiple sources of alternative information that will do a much better job than we did in 2008 to keep things honest.

Posted 1:03 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Media Matters for America's "From Conspiracy Theories to Cable News"
(Updated below)


Apr 12, 2009 UPDATE: "Burn all the books . . . The brainwashing books like the evolution crap!" Check out the train wreck of a meeting of Glenn Beck's teabagging party. The things one teabagger made about the Coupon-eligible converter box (CECB) reminded me of what the John Birch society used to say about fluoridation: "This thing they're putting on our TVs,[the coupon-eligible converter box] it's a brainwash unit, seventeen million people are going to be brainwashed with this thing when you hook it up to your TV in June. Why do you think Obama waited until June? He wanted to wait until June till he put this thing in here, it's a brainwash device. They were using it in the federal government for at least the sixties. Now they're using it against us. If we don't get serious about this, we're gonna perish."

Posted 2:28 PM by Scoobie Davis

The F Word (Fascism)
Media Matters has a comprehensive list of commentators who have compared the Obama administration to Nazis, Facists, Stalinist, etc.

UPDATE: (via First Door on the Left) Jon Stewart on "Baracknophobia." Potato Day indeed! Enjoy:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Posted 4:10 PM by Scoobie Davis

WorldNetDaily's Marginalization
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the fringe right was able to do damage to the Clinton administration with its paranoid conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's death but that recently things have been rough. WorldNetdaily, run by Scaife-paid operative Joseph Farah, was a major proponent of the Vince Foster conspiracy theories. Before Farah ran WorldNetDaily, he was the head of a Scaife front group, the Western Journalism Center, whose goals was to provide cedibility to another Scaife-subsidized operative Christopher Ruddy (now at NewsMax), who had concocted theories (all of them discredited) about Foster's death.

The current conspiracy theory put forth by WorldNetDaily and the Western Journalism Center (currently run by veteran dirty tricks operative Floyd Brown) is that President Obama was not born in the United States. This time around, right-wing conspiracy theories are paying a price for their loony theories. This is largely due to forces such as the Daily Show, MSNBC, and media watchdogs like Media Matters for America.

Addendum: Terry Krepel of ConWebWatch has a comprehensive article about Brown's ascension to the helm of the Western Journalism Center . . . I noticed in today's WorldNetDaily that columnist Peter W. Heck cited a discredited study by fringe researcher Paul Cameron. Years ago, the Bookie of Virtue William Bennett cited the same methodologically flawed study.

Posted 4:47 PM by Scoobie Davis

Laugh Alert
This just in from the Politico (not The Onion): "Palin calls for Begich's resignation"

Shannyn Moore has the full story on Ted Stevens' botched prosecution.

Posted 3:56 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Jack T. Chick Tract: "It's All About You!"
Check it out here. Nothing particularly interesting about this tract--it's has the standard fundamentalist message of the need for a sinner to accept Jesus or roast in Hell. It's slams Catholicism (though it's nowhere near as inflammatory as Chick's second-most-recent tract "Papa?").

Posted 5:41 PM by Scoobie Davis

Ed Schultz to Have MSNBC Show
The Huffington Post has the details. You have to hand it to Schultz, he knows the score. Blast from the past: I confronted Hannity about chickening out on a debate with Schultz.

Posted 1:04 PM by Scoobie Davis

Texas-Style Justice and The War on Some Drugs
(Updated below)
I just received an e-mail informing me about American Violet, a film that is a dramatization of events that occurred in Hearne, Texas. In 1999, 28 people, mostly African-Americans, were arrested in Hearne for allegedly distributing drugs. There was a similar situation in Tulia, Texas the next year. In both cases, the raids were motivated by corrupt local officials who were interested in obtaining federal fund; hey, if a few black people are wrongly convicted--hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Along with American Violent, there is a feature film by John Singleton on the Tulia case, Tulia, that will released later this year (it stars Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry).

The War on Some Drugs in Texas is a national disgrace. More recently, there is the case of blacks being singled out and having their money and property seized in Tenaha, Texas. It sure as fuck didn't help having George Chucklehead Bush as governor for eight years. I wrote the following when Bush called Rush Limbaugh "a great American" after it was disclosed that El Rushbo used enough hillbilly heroin to get all of Appalachia high: "[W]hen Bush ran for governor, he shamelessly demagogued against Governor Richard’s programs to help nonviolent drug offenders with treatment instead of harsh sentences. Bush called it 'Penal Code Lite.' For drug offenders who don’t do Bush’s political dirty work like Limbaugh, Bush has one terse thought: 'Incarceration is rehabilitation.'"

UPDATE: Here's a scene from American Violet:

Posted 4:47 PM by Scoobie Davis

Take The Limbaugh Challenge
(Updated below)
The Manhattan Institute's Andrew Klavan throws down the gauntlet:

Therefore, I am throwing down my gauntlet at your quivering liberal feet. I hereby issue my challenge -- the Limbaugh Challenge: Listen to the show. Not for five minutes but for several hours: an hour a day for several days. Consider what he has to say -- the real policy material under the jokes and teasing bluster. Do what your intellectual keepers do not want you to do and keep an open mind. Ask yourself: What's he getting at? Why does he say the things he says? Why do so many people of goodwill -- like that nice Mr. Klavan -- agree with him?

Media Matters for America picks it up.

Also, you can read the links at the end of the transcript of my hilarious conversation with El Rushbo.

UPDATE I: FAIR's Steve Rendall has much more.


UPDATE II: April 5, 2009. Today, The LA Times editorial page gave space to four prominent LA area progressives to respond to Klavan's challenge: Marc Cooper Director of Annenberg Digital News at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, Laurie Ochoa Editor in chief, LA Weekly, Norman Lear Writer, producer and founder of People for the American Way, and Constance L. Rice Civil rights attorney in Los Angeles. All have incisive insights about Limbaugh. I think Cooper had Limbaugh correctly pegged:

Call Limbaugh's rants offensive, racist, extremist or just plain intellectually insulting, if it makes you feel better. I think it's more useful to understand him instead as a form of religious experience, one of the more dogmatic strain. He's a completely reliable inspiration and reinforcement for those who are embittered and battered and who confuse their natural allies for their enemies. He's an electronic opiate for the masses. For Limbaugh's audience is not a happy lot. They are completely convinced that an unholy coalition of liberals, homos, feminazis and overly entitled minorities are responsible for the mess of their own tiny, dead-end lives.

But I will grant Limbaugh one slim glimmer of genius. Unlike similar demagogues (I'm thinking of Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity), Limbaugh makes no claim to be a little-guy populist. Instead, he's a perfect mouthpiece for the most elite portions of our society. He's a virile defender of wealth, privilege and greed. The rather fabulous trick he pulls off is to attract millions of little-guy listeners and make them believe that their interests are somehow the same as those of the jillionaires Limbaugh idolizes and celebrates.

Posted 8:34 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post
On the Moon blog, I have a new post on Sun Myung Moon, the Unification movement, and 1970's pop culture.

Posted 6:28 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Karl Frisch "The right's toxic assets"

Posted 9:26 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Media Matters corrects the misinformation circulating in right-wing circles that President Obama mindlessly read teleprompter comments intended to be read by Irish Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen and thanked himself in a speech. I first heard this canard on Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

Posted 11:00 AM by Scoobie Davis

UPDATE
I added a fourth update to my recent post on talk radio.

Posted 10:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

My Once-Every-While Look at Weird Keyword Searches that People Used To Get to This Site
People familiar with this blog know that when I check my Statcounter stats and collect the really weird keyword combos that people have used to get to my site (here is my last post on the subject--it has links to previous posts). Here are the latest group of search terms that people has used on Google and other search engines to get to this site:

hillary clinton satanic rituals
impotence wally george [note: Wally George (1931-2003) was an abrasive right-wing TV talk show host]
sermons onlion of the tribe of judah
john hagee urban legend
nikki cappelli hot pictures
why do women of cornerstone church have to wear dresses and have their hair long
harold & kumar go to white castle blonde nude
cheech and chong my ass hole is burning
rolling stones satanic cult threat
susan estrich suck dick
daschle comments debate reverend moon writing prayers
nikki cappelli nude go daddy
amway quixtar chickenhawks
jeffrey kuhner repulsive
tammy bruce's body
sean hannity wedding picture
xxx prostate milk blogspot
if you like harold & kumar you will also like
cindy hensley mccain hot nude pics
i hate bernard goldberg
cheating deceitful horney wife likes to 69 and her ass kissed movies
does al franken really hate those right wing motherfuckers media player
kristen powers hot legs [I think the person meant Kirsten Powers]
impotence cures blogspot
dexter yager illuminati
bill frist cheesestick santorum
pl ass site online
cheesecake nudes

Posted 3:21 PM by Scoobie Davis

Sorry
I know I meant to post over the weekend but a friend from out of town was over my place for the weekend.

Posted 8:57 AM by Scoobie Davis

Posting Over the Weekend
I promise

Posted 3:00 PM by Scoobie Davis

Wish I Wrote It
In one paragraph, Salon's Glenn Greenwald tells us what is wrong the DC press corps:

Journalists love to depict themselves as hard-nosed, rambunctious, ornery adversaries of establishment orthodoxies and political power. The reality is the opposite: there simply is no class of people more reverent of the political establishment and more devoted to protecting and defending its prerogatives. Of all people, journalists ought to be embarrassed to publicly play the role of decorum enforcers when it comes to how the politically powerful are treated. They should be the last ones -- not the first ones -- demanding that controversial political figures be treated with the type of profound reverence typically reserved for religious leaders and monarchs. Identically, in the most minimally healthy political culture, high political leaders would be the least entitled, not the most entitled, to be shielded from cutting political criticism.

Posted 2:04 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry on the Washington Post. DC currently has the Moonie Times--it doesn't need an imitator. The article brings back memories. It was just a few short years ago that dishonest hacks like the late Michael Kelly were considered to be a serious voice in our nation's discourse by the "kewl kids" in DC. Fortunately, Kelly has become almost completely forgotten in just a few short years.

Posted 1:23 PM by Scoobie Davis

Posting a long article later today or early Monday
In the meantime, check out my YouTube video about Sun Myung Moon.

UPDATE: The post is postponed for a while. Sorry

Posted 11:53 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Glenn Greenwald on contemporary media culture and journalistic ethics.

Posted 5:57 PM by Scoobie Davis

Congresswoman Scrubbed from Upcoming Moonie Event
Read more on the Moonie blog.

Posted 1:52 PM by Scoobie Davis

Ann Coulter and the White Supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC)
I didn't read Ann Coulter's latest book Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America (though I did receive a lot of hits for my blog that directed people to sites of people who had read the book). David Neiwert's blog links to an article by Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center who points out that in Guilty, Coulter defends a virulently racist group, The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCofC).

No big surprise: Coulter, who was raised in an affluent Connecticut suburb, has also defended the display of the Confederate battle flag.

Posted 8:32 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Limbaugh Strategy is Going to Work: A Few Reasons Why
(Updated below)
Some people think it's a strategic mistake for prominent Democrats to try to make Rush Limbaugh the leader of the Republican Party. A few of the reasons: 1) The controversy lines Limbaugh's pockets; 2) The controversy increases the number of minds poisoned by Limbaugh's vitriol; 3) Limbaugh benefited enormously after the Clinton White House took him on.

Some of these things are undoubtedly happening. More people are listening to Limbaugh and some of those people who started to listen will become "ditto-heads." However, the benefits of making Limbaugh the face of the GOP outweigh any disadvantages. Before I discuss the overwhelming benefits, I'll first discuss why the Clinton administration failed and why Democrats and progressive now will succeed.

1993 ≠ 2009
When Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, the response by Limbaugh and other talk radio jocks was swift and decisive: Limbaugh and the various Rush clones went on the warpath. When Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster committed suicide in 1993, Limbaugh and talk radio were an integral part of what journalist Trudy Lieberman called "the Vince Foster Factory," a group of prominent right-wing media people who were putting forth conspiracy theories that Bill and Hillary were responsible for Foster's death (years after several investigations debunked the right's theories, Limbaugh has continued to act as if the Clintons had murdered Foster).

How did the Clinton administration respond to this wing-nut onslaught? They put Lanny Davis on it. The Clinton administration didn't know what hit it. That's understandable but they did very little to counter the media wing-nuts. In fact, during the 1990's, the only effective hits on Limbaugh were by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and a former Saturday Night Live writer, but these efforts were too little, too late. The Clinton administration's fecklessness and ineptitude are no big surprise. I have written about how the Clintons dealt with the Unification movement (here and here). It also didn't help that much of the mainstream media has been clueless about Limbaugh (e.g., here and here).

The year 2009 is a lot different from 1993. For one thing, in 1993, the right had a powerful media apparatus and noise machine and progressives were way behind (for a discussion of this inequality, read Robert Parry's thoughtful analysis). That has changed since 2000. A few quick reasons: 1) The emergence of Media Matters for America in 2004. In the 1990's Limbaugh benefited because there was no paper trail because people weren't recording and transcribing Limbaugh's radio show. When I started this blog, I listened to Limbaugh and transcribed many outrageous things Limbaugh said (e.g., a racist parody commercial that Limbaugh aired). When Media Matters was established, its staff could not only monitor Limbaugh's radio show, but they had the ability to monitor Hannity, Savage, O'Reilly and other right-wing talkers. 2) The rise of the progressive blogosphere. 3) The rise of progressive commentators such as Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and the increase in popularity of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

The Internet as Great Equalizer
Sure, there has been a recent increase in listeners but also an increase in people researching Limbaugh on the Internet. As I have pointed out, the net is the bane of movements and people who seek to control others. The more people who research Limbaugh on the net, the more people dislike him. It also doesn't help Limbaugh that in the past few years,the following have occurred: 1) Limbaugh problems with hillbilly heroin have emerged; 2) Wife Number 3 left Limbaugh; 4) The infamous mocking of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's symptoms became a national story. The upshot is that the more Americans know about Limbaugh, the less they like him, namely because he is an unlikable person.

Demography as Destiny
As Ruy Texiera and John B. Judis pointed out a few years ago, demography favors the Democrats. The GOP has depended on the Southern strategy to become a white Southern party. The US is increasingly become a non-white society; the GOP has overplayed its hand and has become, to use the words of Zell Miller, "a national party no more." There's a strong generational component also. The real and latent bigotry as well as the terminal unhipness of the Republican right has made Limbaugh and the GOP anathema to younger voters. To an 18 to 30-year-old, Limbaugh must seem like the oldest man in the world. Polling research by Stanley Greenberg indicated that Limbaugh had an approval rating among American younger than 40 of 11 percent. Eleven percent! Having Limbaugh as the face of the GOP will accelerate the party's "death spiral."

Addendum: Battle of the Loons in the 3 to 6 PM Time Slot
Right-wing talk radio is a vast wasteland. An example of this is the 3 to 6 PM EST weekday time slot . The radio hosts with the largest audiences are Michael Savage (née Weiner) and Mark Levin. Both Savage and Levin are raging lunatics (I had written about Savage when his first political book came out--also here). Don't believe me: listen to these two men rant on their radio shows. For instance, today on their radio shows, Savage called President Obama as a "dictator in the making" and Levin referred to Media Matters and similar progressive groups as "brownshirts."

The recent Limbaugh controversy is great not only for the reason I've listed but because it is dividing the hard right. Some rational right-wingers like David Frum are being attacked not only by Limbaugh but by other wing-nuts such as Levin. The other day, Frum, who has written a couple scathing articles about the campaign to elevate Limbaugh as the nominal leader of the GOP, responded to attacks by Levin by calling the show--listen to the call here--it's priceless.

Also, having a unhinged wing-nut like Savage being the third most influential radio talk show host is great for dividing the right because less rabid right-wingers know what a nut Savage is (though it amuses me to no end that an unhinged Levin routinely attacks Savage as a nut).

A case in point, before George W. Bush left office in January, he invited several prominent right-wing radio hosts for a meeting in the White House. According to radio host Neal Boortz, when the radio hosts were together before Bush arrived, one topic of discussion among the hosts was how Savage will sooner rather than later "implode."

It's fun when they eat their own.

UPDATE I: Just a few more thoughts on Limbaugh. David Frum's description of Limbaugh ("A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence") is spot on. I've listened to Limbaugh since first hearing about him when 60 Minutes did a story on him. Limbaugh has a huge ego (that obviously he uses to try to mask his massive insecurities). That ego has been bad for the GOP. It's hilarious when we watch Michael Steele and other prominent Republicans apologize and grovel before Limbaugh, but more importantly, it reinforces the view that the modern Republican Party is a cult of fear in which people like Harry Whittington and John Dilulio are forced to apologize when they did nothing wrong. . . The essence of the post was to underscore how the media rules of the Clinton years don't apply now. During the Clinton years, mainstream journalists were either cowed or looked the other way when Limbaugh pushed his Vince Foster conspiracy theories or made racist comments. With Media Matters, The Daily Show, the blogosphere, and MSNBC, Limbaugh is, at long last, accountable for what he says due to prominent commentators who review what he says. Not only that, but he's becoming increasingly accountable for what he has said in the past. There are now consequences for what Limbaugh says.

UPDATE II: TPM has more on Stanley Greenberg's survey research on Limbaugh. One key point of the survey research: although Limbaugh is overwhelmingly unpopular with Americans, 63 percent of Republicans think Limbaugh has too little or the right amount of influence over the Republican Party. Sam Stein has more analysis of the polling data.

UPDATE III: Eating their own update. I don't regularly listen to either Mark Levin's or Michael Savage's radio shows. Before I wrote this post, I knew they were not just competitors but two men who hated each other. I've never heard Savage slam Levin on his radio show but I have heard Levin rub it in concerning media markets in which his show has higher ratings than Savage's. Levin also refers to Savage's show not as "Savage Nation" but "Weiner Nation." I just did a little googling and found some hilarious stuff. This YouTube video has Savage doing an apoplectic rant (go to about 3:00 on the video). Here's another video slam of Levin.

UPDATE IV: With the help of Drudge, Hannity, Malkin and other members of the right's media infrastructure, Mark Levin's book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto is now ranked #1 on Amazon.com.

UPDATE V: Michael Alan Weiner (also known as Michael Savage), along with others such as Amir Siddique and Fred Phelps, are banned from Great Britain.

Posted 5:51 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Eric Boehlert discusses radio ratings.

Posted 12:40 PM by Scoobie Davis

Democratic Congresswoman to Speak at Moon-sponsored Event on Capitol Hill
(Updated below)
Yesterday, on the Moon blog, I wrote about the Moon Tribune article reporting about how, once again, Sun Myung Moon has used his front groups to weasel his way back to Capitol Hill. This is typical of the Unification movement: arrange an benign-sounding conference ostensibly devoted to women and peace. Afterwards, use the footage from the event to accord legitimacy with Moon's followers, potential devotees, and others Moon wants to influence. Today, the Moon Tribune reports that Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) will speak at the conference.

UPDATE (3/05): I checked my Statcounter stats and someone in the U.S. House of Representatives was reading this post.