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Armed and Stupid: Fox News viewer threatens man over his beard


 
If you’ve got a beard, you’d best tread carefully around riled-up Fox News viewers.

In one of the single dumbest news stories I’ve read in a year that’s been chock full of ‘em, Benedetto DeFrancisco, a transgender Chicago teaching assistant, was harassed and threatened at gunpoint after he was mistaken for a member of ISIS, apparently solely on account of—drumroll please—his beard.

His beard!

Late last month, William Jackson began shouting at DeFrancisco as he was taking an early morning stroll around the school before work, as he told the Windy City Media Group’s Matt Simonette:

“I literally just walk around the school, so on my second lap, he was definitely shouting [again], and it felt like it was aimed at me. It was getting louder and more aggressive. A lot of swearing. I honestly thought he was drunk. I took out my headphones and looked at him, and heard what he was saying: ‘I know what you’re doing, motherfucker. You’re scaring my wife — get out of here.’”

At this point DeFrancisco saw Jackson’s .45 caliber Ruger semi-automatic pistol and calmly walked away, calling authorities after he was safely around the corner. Police arrived on the scene soon afterwards.

DeFrancisco told Windy City:

“They were getting scared, because the ISIS attack happened in France, and getting more scared that ISIS was in Chicago. It’s clear that they had been watching me since the previous Monday — this happened on a Wednesday. I’ve been taking these walks since I’ve been working there. On my walk, I notice the same people come around. My thing to do is say hello. Unfortunately, with this man and his wife, their fear got the best of them. They could have just asked, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’”

Mr. Jackson is due in court on Wednesday on charges of aggravated assault. He’s lucky that flagrant stupidity isn’t a crime because the judge would be obliged to throw the book at him.

Coming as no surprise to anyone, according to detectives, Jackson and his wife are avid Fox News fans! DeFrancisco’s “look”—which includes a beard—was making Mrs. Jackson nervous and so her husband decided to grab his gun and verbally assault him while waving a gun around. Cute couple.

This is kind of abject idiocy you can’t reason with. Fox News + Islamophobia + Republicans + GUNS = Modern America going completely insane. With his own experience being a vivid example of how this sort of irrational “thinking” can hurt totally innocent people, DeFrancisco believes that the Fox News fear-mongering has negative repercussions:

“[Jackson] is not the only person watching Fox News — it’s a toxin and it’s spreading fear, and this fear leads to hatred. Instead of wanting to know something about a culture or religion, they just shut it down in the most horrible or scary way.”

I’ll say it again: His beard is what set them off!

It’s too sadly moronic to contemplate, isn’t it?

Admirably Benedetto DeFrancisco is taking this unfortunate incident in his stride and although he would like a letter of apology from Mr. Jackson he doesn’t hope for him to spend any time in jail, thinking that his assailant, who was allegedly quite contrite upon his arrest, has learned a valuable lesson.

Fuck that. Make an example of this idiot. At the very least fine him an awful lot of money, so much that it hurts, AND TAKE AWAY HIS FUCKING GUN FOR GOOD.

If Fox News tries to make a martyr out of poor dumb-dumb sap William Jackson—he’s the new Kim Davis, a brave American going after an Islamic terrorist with a gun OR AT LEAST THIS IS WHAT THE FUCK HE THOUGHT HE WAS DOING, this story will crawl up its own ass in ways I can’t even anticipate. Perhaps Mike Huckabee will show up at his arraignment with a guy in a Santa Claus suit and a camera crew and the theme from Rocky playing over the PA system.

God help us all.

Via Raw Story

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.07.2015
12:21 pm
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Freedumb fried: Fox News gets ridiculed by the French


Barbie and Ken talk terrorism…

When Fox & Friends co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck recently interviewed Nolan Peterson, a former US Air Force pilot, on the Islamization of French society, the obviously extremely intelligent Mr. Peterson (not to be confused with Steven Emerson, the Fox News terrorism “expert” British Prime Minister charitably called a “complete idiot”) claimed that there were “741 no-go zones throughout France” under de facto Islamist control.

Not “700 plus” or “around 750” “no-go” zones, but exactly 741 “no-go” zones. Surely a dude this specific came armed with the knowledge to drop on the Fox New viewers. Peterson described Paris as “pretty scary,” comparing the City of Light to Afghanistan, Iraq and Kashmir and adding that he’s seen “young men wearing Osama Bin Laden t-shirts in a hookah shop.”

Sounds like something some old fart watching Fox News who has never been that far beyond the confines of his hometown would think is true, so… hey, why not? It’s not like it’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s job to know what he’s talking about, is it? She’s just supposed to nod with a furrowed brow, try to look serious and read from a teleprompter. She barely understands what she’s saying half the time, let alone the “experts” she interviews, so cut her some slack.


This is the face of a man who definitely knows what he’s talking about. You can tell by his smirk.
 
The segment is the quintessence of Fox News: False (i.e intellectually useless) information propagated by two people, one who has no idea what he’s talking about and a second who has no idea what he’s talking about either, producing together an incoherent news segment for an audience who has no idea if what they’re hearing is even true or not, but who accept it as true because it sounds like something they already believe.

When Yann Barthès, host of the French show Le Petit Journal saw the Fox News segment he sent his courageous producers, dressed in full combat gear to some of the 741 “no-go” zones to survey the situation with some pretty nonplussed man-on-the-street interviews.

Snopes investigated the claim of these supposed Islamist “no-go” zones only to find that the brain trust at Fox News mistranslated “zones urbaines sensibles” (ZUS), which is basically the equivalent French term for “urban renewal zones” and turned it into something it wasn’t…

Fox News vs. reality. Amusing yes, but ultimately it’s reality itself that ends up diminished…

Peterson apologized to the entire country of France for his smirky Fox News appearance in an open letter.
 

 
Via Daily Kos

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.16.2015
03:40 pm
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The Fox News Color Chart, apparently
01.14.2015
05:35 pm
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This Fox News Color Chart helps elderly viewers and Fox News “journalists” alike calibrate who’s a terrorist and who is George Hamilton.

Odd that there’s no indicator for John Boehner…
 
Via Bipartisan Report.

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.14.2015
05:35 pm
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John Cleese: FOX News viewers are too stupid to realize that they are stupid


Be afraid, be very afraid…

For some years now, I have been fascinated with the Dunning-Kruger effect. I believe it was some Internet writings by Errol Morris that first turned me on to the idea around 2007. It’s incredibly useful, I feel like I find a use for it almost every day. If nothing else, it’s a spur to humility, because we’re all susceptible to it. Some, ahem, far more than others.

In a 1999 article called “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University came to the conclusion that the qualified are often more skeptical about their own abilities in a given realm than the unqualfied are. People who are unqualified or unintelligent are more likely to rate their own abilities favorably than people who are qualified or intelligent. In the paper, the authors wrote, “Across four studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.”

However, people with actual ability tended to underrate their relative competence. Participants who found tasks to be fairly easy mistakenly assumed that the tasks must also be easy for others as well. As Dunning and Kruger conclude: “The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”
 

 
Charles Darwin put it most pithily in The Descent of Man when he wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” As W.B. Yeats put it in The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Apparently there is a scientific grounding for that line.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is unusually suitable in describing the many frustrating positions and rhetoric of the Republican Party. My favorite (if depressing) example of the Dunning-Kruger effect comes from the mouth of George W. Bush in the days before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As Bob Woodward wrote in Plan of Attack:
 

The president said he had made up his mind on war. The U.S. should go to war.

“You’re sure?” Powell asked.

Yes. It was the assured Bush. His tight, forward-leaning, muscular body language verified his words. It was the Bush of the days following 9/11.

“You understand the consequences,” Powell said in a half-question. …

Yeah, I do, the president answered.

 
Yeah, I do, the president answered. What on earth could that utterance by Bush possibly mean? Could it not be clearer that what was in Bush’s head at that moment and what was in Powell’s head at that moment had very little to do with each other? In effect Powell was taking Bush’s word that Bush had seriously considered the consequences of invasion, when to be frank, all available evidence, both at the time and later on, suggests that Bush was foolhardy about what the actual consequences of invasion might be.
 

 
Earlier this year, the research of Dunning and Kruger was referenced by a relatively unlikely source: John Cleese, the brilliant comedian who famously portrayed one of the single most obtuse and supercilious characters in TV history, Basil Fawlty. Cleese believes FOX’s viewership is too unintelligent to put the proper brakes on their own thought processes: “The problem with people like this is that they are so stupid that they have no idea how stupid they are. You see, if you’re very, very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you’re very, very stupid, you’d have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid you are.”

Apparently Cleese and Dunning are pals—he says so in the video, anyway. Here, have a look:
 

 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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09.29.2014
11:53 am
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The most idiotic moment on Fox News so far today


 
Fox and Friends’ resident cheerful idiot Steve Doocy is obviously one of the stupidest people on television. Doocy comes off as so completely brainless that his utterly gormless co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Elisabeth Hasselbeck look good (or at least slightly better) by comparison. One would have to think that Fox News viewers with low to barely average IQs would be perceptive enough to realize that Steve Doocy is an abject buffoon. I don’t think SNL even does Fox and Friends parodies anymore, do they? Why bother?

In any case, this morning Doocy made a game attempt to get a small number of “Fox fans” (as he called them) to react negatively to the new multigender bathroom signage at Illinois State University (This is the latest “outrage” on Fox News, in case you aren’t aware of it, even though they are for single-occupancy restrooms!)

Here’s how it went down, live on Fox News as Chyron captions read: “Bathroom Boondoggle: Are New Gender Signs Just Too Confusing?” and “Gender Bender”!

Doocy: “See, they were designated as ‘family restrooms’ in the past and now, apparently, they’re going to be known as ‘all-gender’ restrooms! Does that make sense?”

Woman: “Restrooms for both genders.”

Doocy: “That’s right. Bathrooms for both genders, or transgenders!”

Man: “Transgender, that’s right.”

Unable to rile up even the slightest bit of “moral” indignation, let alone any anxiety even among these “Fox fans,” the floundering Doocy quickly threw it back to his co-tool Brian Kilmeade in the studio who then, astonishingly, offered up pretty much one of the truest things that I’ve ever heard a Fox anchor say (if only accidently):

“Well, they’re better people than us.”

Yes, indeed they are. Most people are better people than bigoted Fox News morning show hosts, I’d have to agree with that and this segment proved it. In spades!

Just yesterday, Fox News ran a story mocking the University’s attempt to accommodate everyone with equal respect.
 

 

Bonus clip, Steve Doocy before his tenure at Fox and Friends, back when he was a serious journalist…
 
Via Media Matters

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.10.2014
04:45 pm
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‘Heaven Is For Real’ kid’s interview on Fox News is COMEDY GOLD


 

Sean Hannity: Do you think everybody goes to Heaven?

Colton Burpo: Um…. No. Not everybody does go to Heaven.

Sean Hannity: How do you know?

Colton Burpo, the little boy who had an NDE on an operating table a few years back and claimed to have been to Heaven, has had his experiences “there” recounted in several Heaven is for Real books that have sold like hotcakes to people desperate to believe they will live forever in the Kingdom of Heaven, eternally youthful, kickin’ it with their homeboy Jesus C. and all the dead people they ever knew.

Watch this clip of Colton promoting his parents’ books (his dad is a minister and radio broadcaster, natch) and a major Hollywood film about to come out based on this fiction. From where I’m sitting it seems rather obvious that this kid is lying through his teeth and Sean Hannity is just too stupid not to uncritically believe every word of it.

This is truly remarkable, Marjoe Gortner-level hoodoo nonsense. Even by the admittedly sad standards of Fox News, this is riveting in its abject stupidity…

Colton Burpo: Heaven is… such an amazing place and… and you just want to be there for a long time. I mean, I didn’t wanna come back.

Sean Hannity: What’s the difference… in other words, what did you see? What did you feel? Who did you meet?

Colton Burpo: Well, I saw a lot of stuff… In Heaven there are a lot of colors, but there’s even more than we have down here on Earth. Also I got to meet my great grandpa and my sister who was miscarriaged and… it just feels like home.

Hannity: And she came up to you? Are you there physically or spiritually?

Colton Burpo: You are there physically. You do have your own body.

Hannity: You were there in your body?

Colton Burpo: Well, not my earthly body, they were working on my earthly body.

Hannity: It’s the same? You look the same, relatively speaking?

Colton Burpo: Relatively speaking. If you die an old man or an old woman, you’ll be in your prime, like your late 20s, early 30s.

Hannity: And you say that you met Jesus Christ and God. (Colton nods) Can you describe God and Jesus Christ?

Colton Burpo: Well, Jesus was more like the humanoid version. He’s the one you can relate to because he… loves you so much and he’s actually your size, so you can like walk with him and talk with him.

Hannity: And you talked with him?

Colton Burpo: Yes.

Hannity: And he talked to you?

Colton Burpo: Yes.

Hannity: What did he say?

Colton Burpo: Well, I can’t remember what all it was that we talked about because some of it he even taught me! God has not allowed me to remember what Jesus has taught me.

Hannity: You saw God?

It just gets worse—and even more painfully funny—from there…

You can easily see why Hannity’s audience would eat this shit up, because it sounds exactly like something they already believe. Of course every mean old Archie Bunker watching Fox News will be young again in Heaven. Forever and ever! Throw away that Viagra! No need for it in Heaven, you’ll be 30 again soon, dude…

This is why there needs to a separation between church and state: America is a country full to the bursting point with idiots.
 

 
Via Christian Nightmares

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.17.2014
05:16 pm
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Worst Fox interview ever: Anchor seems genuinely irritated that Muslim scholar wrote Jesus book!
07.28.2013
01:13 pm
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To be fair, it was only on Fox News.com’s online show “Spirited Debate,” but Lauren Green’s interview with Dr. Reza Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the worst displays of ignorance on a Fox News property… well, all morning!

It starts going downhill with the first question:

“I want to be clear, so you’re a Muslim. Why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?”

Aslan, obviously taken aback by her aggressive query, replied:

“To be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim. So it’s not that I’m just some Muslim writing about Jesus, I am an expert with a PhD in the history of religions.”

But Lauren Green is like a stubborn dog who’ll simply just not give up. Watch in horror as she seemingly cannot help herself from digging her teeth deeper into the leg of her own blinkered idiocy.

This is a bit of a slow burn, but by the end of it, you’ll be just as flummoxed as Reza Aslan was. The petty way she prods him is ridiculous and unprofessional. A little more self-awareness might come in handy for a job like hers, but then again, at then again, at a place like Fox News, this embarrassing demonstration of fealty to stupidity might see Lauren Green get a promotion…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.28.2013
01:13 pm
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‘Union thug’ who punched out pathetic Fox News dickhead will not be charged with anything!

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Who wouldn’t want to punch this stupid face?

Hahahahahaha. I guess getting punched in the face by a “union thug” wasn’t quite the career break that Fox News dickweed and self-styled “comedian” Steven Crowder thought it would be. A Michigan prosecutor has declined to pursue assault charges against the man who punched him. On video.

Via Raw Story:

The Lansing State Journal reported on Tuesday that Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III decided not to pursue a case after watching unedited video of Crowder’s appearance at a protest against right-to-work legislation, which culminated in Crowder getting punched in the face.

Crowder filed a police report and claimed he was assaulted, saying in interviews that he was “beat down” and that protesters “literally would have killed me where I stood if I defended myself.” He also published an edited version of the confrontation online.

But after watching both that video and a longer, unedited account of the incident as aired on Current TV, Dunnings said, “It’s pretty clear the person that they wanted to charge was acting in self-defense.” In the longer video, the man who punched Crowder was pushed by an unseen person before striking him, giving the encounter a different context.

“I’m not holding that against him, but why would they provide the edited video?” Dunnings said. “The longer video clearly shows the guy got pushed down and came up swinging.”

Why would Steven Crowder have provided an edited video, I wonder?

Anyone care to hazard a guess?

Another fun fact about Crowder: He’s an abstinence advocate…

Roger Ailes really knows how to pick credible people for Fox News, doesn’t he?

Previously on Dangerous Minds
Fox News dickhead punched at labor protests in Michigan

Fox News chucklehead under scrutiny for creative editing of ‘union thug’ video

Fox News bastard who got cold-clocked at labor protest tells his own idiotic side of the story

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.19.2013
01:38 pm
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Fox News personality bursts out laughing at the dumb shit she’s expected to say
01.18.2013
03:48 pm
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In which one of the Fox News network’s newsreaders breaks the fourth wall, if only for a moment:

“No, no, who wrote that? Are you kidding me?”

Kimberly Guilfoyle is probably wondering why she left a promising legal career for this. Having a brain and being on the same program as Eric Bolling, Andrea Tantaros and Greg Gutfield five days a week must be an especially annoying way to make a living even if the money is good. Imagine that it’s you who had to read this copy coming across a teleprompter…
 

 
Via Media Matters

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.18.2013
03:48 pm
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Wait a minute, WHAT??? Liberal Dennis Kucinich joins Fox News!
01.16.2013
06:20 pm
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This might sound like it’s one of those things to file under “When Pigs Fly” or “When Hell Freezes Over,” but believe it or not, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich will be joining Fox News and Fox Business as a paid contributor, it was announced today.

In a PR statement, the archly liberal Kucinich said:

“Through 16 years in Congress and two presidential campaigns, Fox News has always provided me with an opportunity to share my perspective with its enormous viewership. I look forward to a continuation of our relationship this time as a Fox News contributor.”

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes added:

“I’ve always been impressed with Rep. Kucinich’s fearlessness and thoughtfulness about important issues. His willingness to take a stand from his point of view makes him a valuable voice in our country’s debate.”

If you ask me, Dennis Kucinich will make an excellent contributor to Fox News. This was an unexpected, but tres savvy move on Ailes’ part. He knows Fox News is in free fall and at the very least, having a bona fide liberal like Dennis Kucinich around will elevate the conversation a bit. Have you seen Fox News lately? It’s getting pretty threadbare. I’m sure the people who work there are tired of seeing the same faces day in and day out. Will Sarah Palin or Dick Morris ever say anything meaningful? Of course they won’t and Roger Ailes must know this, too. He’s a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them.

Kucinich will make his Fox News debut Thursday on The O’Reilly Factor.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.16.2013
06:20 pm
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‘I only know what I hear on Fox News’ says arsonist of Islamic Center in Ohio
12.20.2012
02:26 pm
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The idiot face of the Fox Nation

Randolph Linn, an Indiana man who pleaded guilty to arson charges today in a Federal Court in Ohio, revealed his motives to the judge in a plea bargain for the Sept. 30 incident at a Perrysburg Township mosque. Linn, drunk on 45 beers by his own estimate, poured gasoline on the second floor prayer room of the Greater Toldeo Islamic Center and started a fire. Luckily no one was there. Linn could clearly be identified in security cam footage and was caught swiftly by the FBI after a tip came in from a woman who knew him and was aware of his hatred for Muslims. He was in possession of three guns when he was arrested.

The 52-year-old truck driver claimed that he’d become “riled up” after seeing images of wounded soldiers on television. “Every day you turn on the TV, you see Muslims trying to kill Americans,” said Linn, who settled on the mosque in Toledo that he knew from his truck route.

When a federal judge asked Linn if he thought all Muslims are terrorists, Linn answered: “I’d say most of them are.”

When the judge then asked him if he knew any Muslims or what Islam is, one member of the mosque who was present at Linn’s hearing told WNWO-TV:

“And he said, ‘No, I only know what I hear on Fox News and what I hear on radio.’”

Predictable, but that still doesn’t make it any less sad. At least no one was hurt.

Linn also said:

“Muslims are killing Americans and trying to blow stuff up. Most Muslims are terrorists and don’t believe in Jesus Christ.”

Linn apparently had second thoughts during the drive home. “Coming back, I thought, `What in the heck did I do?’

He added “I feel bad I did it,” and “It’s a little too late now.” Ya think?

Fox News had this asshole’s head so twisted up that he actually believed in his tiny little mind that he was a good patriotic American performing an heroic act. Fox News whipped up so much hate and rage in this poor buffoon that he literally couldn’t handle it and now he’s going to spend the next two decades rotting in a Federal penitentiary.

This isn’t the first time Fox News has inspired some loser to do something potentially homicidal (‘memba Byron Williams, the obsessed Glenn Beck fan and Oakland freeway shooter? What about good old boy, Kenneth B. Kimbley Jr., another ardent Glenn Beck follower?).

With a guilty plea like Randy Linn’s, well, that ‘s a gift: it’s time for American Muslims to take Fox News to task in some sort of very expensive class action suit. They slander Muslims with impunity, convincing killer dum-dums like Randy Linn that all Muslims are terrorists and providing a forum for folks like that hateful harpie Pamela Geller. We know what motivated this lunatic—he told us—hatred, ignorance and Fox News, not necessarily in that order.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.20.2012
02:26 pm
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Fox News chucklehead under scrutiny for creative editing of ‘union thug’ video

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Steven Crowder: even dumber than he looks?

It’s been hilarious to watch the reichwingers having conniption fits pointing at the “union goon” in Lansing, Michigan who punched curiously smug Fox Contributor Steven Crowder: Uncle Sean Hannity, the pindicks at Breitbart.com, mean ol’ Dana Loesch, and the delightfully insane Michelle Malkin have all been tripping over themselves to get the word out about this heinous, earth-shaking, momentously evil event. You’d think that the livelihoods of working families in Michigan, and what they stand to lose in the Republican sneak attack against the unions, might be the main story, or even a tiny part of it, but no, it’s the Republican frat boy who deservedly got punched in the face—who indeed only went to Lansing in the first place so he could GET punched in the face ON CAMERA—that they all want to talk about.

Fair enough, except that these intellectual pillars of the right might want to look at his video a little more closely before they really get on-board the Steven Crowder Express, next career stop his parent’s basement…

Certainly Crowder underestimated even the Fox News audience’s ability to see—clearly—in the video evidence that he himself provided, that the supposed “union thug” was getting off the ground before he hit him.

Even his supporters want to know what happened immediately before the video starts. Why was the union guy on the ground before the fight broke out? Why did Crowder decide that this part wasn’t important enough to leave in the video he uploaded to YouTube before calling Fox News?

Is this guy for real? Did he even think this shit through?

And what does this say about Fox News and their producers’ ability to divine shit from Shinola? They’re the ones who showed the damned video. Did they even bother to LOOK at it first? Post Romneygeddon it’s not like Fox News has got a whole lot more credibility to piss away with the general public and now they’re embracing a twit like Steven Crowder in prime time? (Great idea, Roger Ailes! You’re a propaganda genius… or at least you used to be. These days, not so much).

The mighty Eclecta blog was the first place to compare the videos, the reddit community then picked up on the story and amplified it from there and now it’s made it to The New York Times. I would imagine that this will be young Mr. Crowder’s first—and probably last—time to be mentioned in the Times. I’m sure his wife and family will be so proud of him when they read this:

Unfortunately for Mr. Crowder, a look at the video broadcast on the Sean Hannity show appears to show quite clearly that he left out an important section of the footage when he put together his edit. A section of the Fox News broadcast preserved by the Web site Mediaite shows that Mr. Hannity’s producers at Fox News started the clip five seconds earlier than Mr. Crowder did. What the extra footage reveals is the man who punched Mr. Crowder being knocked to the ground seconds before and then getting up and taking a swing at the comedian.

It remains unclear what caused the man who threw the punch to fall to the ground at the start of the incident, but Mr. Crowder did say in an interview with a conservative blogger that he and other men defending the tent did get into a physical confrontation with the union activists. “We didn’t get violent with them, but we did try and push them off the tent,” he said.

So wait: Crowder pushed a guy to the ground who then got up and hit him? And then Crowder went on TV and cried about being a victim of a “union thug” who he physically provoked?

Yesterday Tea party wingnuts were donating to a “reward” fund to bring the “union thug” to “justice,” but dollars to donuts, I predict that no charges will be filed by little Stevie Crowder….

Crowder is now going full-tilt Breitbart and playing the martyr card hard, but unconvincingly:
 

 
Boo-fucking-hoo, asshole…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.14.2012
12:01 am
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Fox News bastard who got cold-clocked at labor protest tells his own idiotic side of the story

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It’s quite easy to find pics of Steven Crowder looking like a knob

There was a memorable cover of the fabled British anarchist paper Class War in 1984 that had Ian MacGregor, the despised head of the UK’s National Coal Board (his BBC obituary mentions how he was at risk of people spitting on him when he stepped out of the house), photographed moments after being assaulted in the bitter, brutal, almost apocalyptic-seeming miner’s strike of 1984-85.

I lived in the UK then, it was the #1 news story for better than a year. You saw utterly unbelievable footage on the BBC every night that made it look like a civil war was imminent in Great Britain. (When I returned to the US, I looked up in The Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature how many major news articles appeared in print about the strike. As I recall, there were only TWO. A few years later I checked the database at the Museum of Television and Radio and saw that throughout all of 1984, just NBC News had mentioned it on television).

I can’t find the cover anywhere online, save for it’s what Class War’s Ian Bone, the heroic anarchist figure who was the paper’s spearhead, is pictured holding on the cover of his book, Bash the Rich: True Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK. The MacGregor cover read:

WE SHOULD HAVE FINISHED OFF THE BASTARD RIGHT THEN AND THERE.

This cover came immediately to mind this morning when I watched the below clip from last night’s edition of The Sean Hannity Show on Fox News where witless rightwing Nathan Barley wannabe Steven Crowder admits that:

I want to make something very clear here, Sean. I never went out here to try and be assaulted, as leftists might say. I went out here to prove the left for who they truly are. Certainly, these union thugs. And I’ve achieved that.

What a remarkable achievement for this titan of civil rights activism! Some smarmy conservative media bottom-feeder who deserved a good thrashing very nearly gets one.

Aim slightly higher next time, Steven, won’t you?

“I literally believe, Sean, that if I had defended myself at all, even flicked a small little jab, that they would have killed me where I stood. I have never seen this kind of angry, vitriolic hatred… I expected these people to actually tear me limb from limb. I knew I couldn’t take that.”

If you want to sicken yourself, I mean really induce projectile vomiting, then have a look:
 

For another, very different take on this, prepared with help from an eyewitness:
Fox News Steven Crowder & Americans for Prosperity use Breitbart-style film editing to show “union thug brutality”

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.12.2012
12:32 pm
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Fox News dickhead punched at labor protests in Michigan

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Who wouldn’t want to punch this face?

Steven Crowder, a self-described “comedian” and Fox News contributor, got punched in the kisser today, repeatedly, during a heated exchange at an organized labor rally in Lansing, Michigan.

What did Crowder expect would happen when he showed up with a camera crew at the angry protests at Republican Governor Rick Snyder signing a hastily-passed right to work bill into law? It’s pretty obvious what he expected—and hoped—would happen, preferably on camera so he could run right back to Fox News with the footage. Riling up some union workers? Piece-a-cake and then Fox News can call them “union thugs” and demonize organized labor. So predictable, but then again this is Fox News, and old people, i.e. their pension-drawing, Depends-wearing viewers, like things to be predictable, don’t they?

For a talent-less, witless, conservative wiseass like Steven Crowder, getting punched in the face by a “union thug” is just the big career break he was looking for (as deeply fucking pathetic as that might be). Via Huffington Post:

Crowder argued with protesters who began to tear down a tent pitched on the Capitol lawn by the pro-right-to-work group Americans For Prosperity. According to MLive, Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said they were contacted because several people, including two in wheelchairs, were trapped under the tent.

He was then punched repeatedly in the face by a protester, while another man speaking off-camera threatened to kill Crowder with a gun. Crowder said there was no police presence in the area during the altercation.

Over 12,000 protesters gathered in Lansing on Tuesday to show their opposition to the hastily-approved right-to-work legislation, which they say will weaken unions financially and make it more difficult for labor employees to negotiate with employers. At least two protesters were arrested, while a former Michigan Democratic representative was hit with pepper spray.

Speaking on the Dana Loesch radio show immediately following the physical confrontation, Crowder said “Dana, they literally would have killed me where I stood if I’d have fought back and defended myself after the sucker punch. They literally would have torn me limb-from-limb.”

Crowder tweeted:
 

 
(*whistles quietly*)

Crowder also tweeted about further footage that will be seen tonight—surprise, surprise—on The Sean Hannity Show. It will shock no one that Michelle Malkin and Dana Loesch want in on the union-bashing action, too:

Below, Gov. Rick Snyder’s Wikipedia entry as of a few moments ago:
 
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An edited version of reality…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.11.2012
09:44 pm
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Do Fox News viewers REALLY have ‘an IQ that is 20 points lower than the U.S. National average’?
12.09.2012
05:28 pm
Topics:
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We’ve known for a long time that Fox News has the oldest cable audience (average age 65) and we know, too, that Fox has the dumbest and most misinformed audience. But are they really THIS DUMB?

A PRWeb press release reposted on Yahoo News, “Intelligence Institute Study shows Fox News viewers have an IQ that is 20 points lower than the U.S. National average.” is currently quite high on the hit parade at reddit/r/politics. I’d like to believe that’s true, but it’s very obviously a prank.

Although it admittedly does feel “true enough” to be plausible for a moment (or even two moments) if you do a search for “The Intelligence Institute” and “lead researcher, P. Nichols” you don’t come up with much. In this case, just a bunch of people who are either gullible lefties who want to believe this is true, reposting it frantically, or else people who simply find the writing hysterically funny.

I wonder who paid PRWeb to post this:

The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence.

Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.

One test involved showing subjects a series of images and measuring their vitals, namely pulse rate and blood pressure. The self-identified conservatives’ vitals increased over 35% when shown complex or shocking images. The image that caused the most stress was a poorly edited picture of President Obama standing next to a “ghostly” image of a child holding a tarantula.

Sweet Jeebus is that droll. But it’s still totally plausible isn’t it?

Test subjects who received their news from other outlets or reported they do not watch the news scored an average IQ of 104, compared to 80 for Fox News viewers.

Admittedly. if they said the Fox News watchers had IQs of around 90, I could totally see that, but 80?

Lead researcher, P. Nichols, explains, “Less intelligent animals rely on instinct when confronted by something which they do not understand. This is an ancient survival reaction all animals, including humans, exhibit. It’s a very simple phenomenon, really; think about a dog being afraid of a vacuum cleaner. He doesn’t know what a vacuum is or if it may harm him, so he becomes agitated and barks at it. Less intelligent humans do the same thing. Concepts that are too complex for them to understand, may frighten or anger them.”

He continues, “Fox News’ content is presented at an elementary school level and plays directly into the fears of the less educated and less intelligent.”

The researchers said that an IQ of 80 is well above the score of 70, which is where psychiatrists diagnose mental retardation. P. Nichols says an IQ of 80 will not limit anyone’s ability to lead happy, fulfilling lives.

The study did not conclude if Fox News contributed to lowering IQ or if it attracts less intelligent humans.

Sputtering with laughter on this end…

P. Nichols concludes that he wasn’t shocked by the studies’ results, rather how dramatic their range. “Several previous studies show that self-identified conservatives are less intelligent than self-identified moderates. We have never seen such a homogeneous group teetering so close to special needs levels.”

It’s the sort of thing that could have been written by jokesters on either on the right or from the left, it’s hard to tell what the motivation was here. I expect we’ll find out soon. Since it’s actually funny, I don’t think this is likely to turn out to come from a conservative prankster, but maybe it was.

More info to this study can be seen here:
P. Nichols
The Intelligence Institute
202-656-1746
Email Information

The email information leads nowhere, but if anyone calls the number and gets someone on the line, leave what happens in the comments.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.09.2012
05:28 pm
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