New Audio of Hannity's Homophobic History

01/03/2012 by Steve Rendall
http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/01/03/new-audio-of-hannitys-homophobic-history

Sean Hannity got his start in radio on UC Santa Barbara's KCSB in the late 1980s, where he got in trouble for promoting homophobia and disinformation about HIV and AIDS. I wrote about this in a 2003 Extra! profile of the then-Fox News show Hannity & Colmes:

After airing for less than a year, Hannity's weekly show was canceled in 1989, when KCSB management charged him with "discriminating against gays and lesbians" after airing two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts About AIDS (Independent, 6/22/89). Written by homophobic Christian-right activist Gene Antonio, the book crankily argued that AIDS could be spread by casual contact, including coughs, sneezes and mosquito bites. Antonio charged that the government, medical establishment and media covered up these truths in the service of "the homosexual movement."

When Antonio appeared by phone on one of the shows, Hannity and his guest repeatedly slurred gay men. At one point, according to the UCSB campus newspaper the Daily Nexus (5/25/89), Hannity declared: "Anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed. It's very dangerous if we start accepting lower and lower forms of behavior as the normal." According to the campus paper, Antonio responded by calling gay men "a subculture of people engaged in deviant, twisted acts."

When a fellow KCSB broadcaster called the show to challenge the host and his guest, Hannity pointed out that the caller, a lesbian, had a child through artificial insemination, and Antonio dubbed the child a "turkey-baster baby." When the caller took issue with that "disgusting" remark, Hannity followed up with "I feel sorry for your child" (Independent, 6/22/89; KCSB, 4/4/89).

This information as indicated was gleaned from local Santa Barbara and UCSB print media. At the time, I was unable to get audio of Hannity's KCSB shows, a situation now remedied by KCSB programmers Elizabeth Robinson and Richard Flacks, who have packaged two of the original Hannity shows in a station archival retrospective, "50 Years of People-Powered Radio."

What Hannity said on the air more than 20 years ago would perhaps not be overly relevant today but for the fact that he has always denied being homophobic...and his homophobia continues: For instance, reacting to the 2009 Academy Awards broadcast featuring a montage of romantic film kisses (not exactly a new feature of cinema), Hannity paraphrased his wife in protesting the inclusion of same-sex kisses in the montage (Hannity, 2/23/09): "They keep showing the scenes of men kissing. And I'm thinking, do we have to expose our children to more and more sex, more and more violence, you know, more and more controversy?"

Beast of the Month - July 2009

Glenn Beck
Right-Wing Propagandist

"I yam an anti-Christ..."
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"And if I may speak to Glenn directly for a moment, dude, you are rocking it. I know some people say you're an unstable individual and to give you a public forum is grossly irresponsible, but remember: they crucified Jesus. Crank up the crazy and rip off the knob."
Stephen Colbert on Mr. Beck

Okay, we admit it, The Konformist isn't the biggest fan of Barack Obama. Still, even if you hate a guy, it should be on what he actually is and not on what he isn't.

Over the last few months, criticism of Obama in the mainstream press has been dominated by two groups of people: the "teabaggers" (seriously, stop snickering!) led by noted "men of the people" such as multi-millionaires Rick Santelli of CNBC and Sean Hannity of Fox News, who protest O's supposed far left economic policies; and the "birthers" led by the entertaining Orly Taitz, who insist that Obama can't even be president due to his alleged secret birth in Kenya (or perhaps some even more exotic and sinister locale, such as Russia or - God forbid - France.) The end result of these two movements is the image of Barack Hussein Obama as an evil socialist totalitarian who is secretly plotting to destroy America for his foreign masters. (Never mind that Obama actually occupies the far right of the Democratic Party economically, and that if he's destroying America for any foreign master, it's the banking system.) Suddenly, the charges of Larry Sinclair seem tame that Obama is merely a closeted crack-smoking homosexual.

True, maybe The Konformist has little leg to stand on in mocking others for engaging in elaborate paranoid conspiracy theories. Still, one recent news hysteria perfectly exemplifies how most of the right-wing paranoia surrounding BHO is not only silly, but seems to be a designed misdirection of a mass movement. Consider what happened in April after the Department of Homeland Security’s report, titled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, was leaked onto the Internet, detailing the DHS contention that right-wing politics was a breeding ground for not-so-future terrorism. Immediately, a frenzy of reactionary frothings exploded over the web and right-wing radio about the report. Leading the charge was host Michael "Weiner" Savage, yet another right-wing establishment media blowhard who is a millionaire faux populist. The report, Savage and others insisted, was proof that the Obama administration was a crypto-Marxist cabal plotting to destroy America. So The Konformist must give credit to Kurt Nimmo of Alex Jones' excellent PrisonPlanet.com website, which has been a leading source for top notch political analysis in the age of Obama. Because of the supposed conservative leanings of Mr. Jones (though a review of his site would show his opinions are far more nuanced and certainly more honest than the mainstream media's right wing shills) Prison Planet became one of the sites the DHS report was leaked to. Unlike most other sites that followed with delusional rants, Nimmo noted something about the report that should have been immediately obvious: it was written in January 2007, when the Bush Administration was in charge. Likewise, another DHS report released earlier this year was titled Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade. This pretty much proves that the Rightwing Extremism report wasn't an Obama Kult assault on the right but rather part of an attack embraced by both George and Barack on anyone deemed a political misfit of any stripe.

Of course, perhaps it says something about the current political climate that Alex Jones and The Konformist can now be described as moderate voices of reason. (We don't mean this as a knock on Jones, but even his biggest fans would concede central to his appeal is a sensational style that resembles a carnival barker.) Chalk it up to a political dialogue dominated by the likes of Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter and Savage. Still, in recent months even these mouthpieces have been overtaken by radio and TV host Glenn Beck, The Konformist Beast of the Month.

Mr. Beck has been host of his own nationally syndicated radio show since 2000. His astounding success over the radio has led to a TV career as a host, first on CNN Headline News since 2006 and then moving to Fox News in January. (His success on TV is all the more remarkable considering he is a decidedly physically repulsive specimen.) He has also written two New York Times bestsellers, making him a multi-media sensation who rivals Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.

How has Mr. Beck become so popular? Simple: by behaving in a decidedly unhinged manner over the airwaves, all while espousing a reactionary political philosophy.

This was highlighted in March, when he choked up on air, wiping tears from his eyes and declaring, "I'm sorry. I just love my country, and I fear for it." For this one, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert (who has had a field day over the entire Glenn Beck trend) spoofed him by choking up on his own show and saying, "I'm sorry. I just love Glenn Beck's sanity. And I fear for it." Colbert also earned some chuckles after Beck had a close-up of his "crazy eyes" so viewers could see just how serious he was. Colbert one-upped this by having an anal exam with a camera so viewers could literally see just how full of crap he was.

On a more serious note, FAIR columnist Norman Solomon had this to say about Glenn: "Beck has become a national phenom with his nightly hour of polemics... urging war on Iran, denouncing 'political correctness' at home, trashing immigrants who don’t speak English, mocking environmentalists as repressive zealots, and generally trying to denigrate progressive outlooks." Eric Boehlert of MediaMatters.org notes that on his show, Beck "disparages liberals, gays, Democrats, blacks, immigrants, and Muslims at will."

That's not all he's tried to disparage. In 2005, he called the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans "scumbags." He then added: "I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims." He said both after admitting that nobody "in their right mind is going to say this out loud," proving that Beck himself knows he's insane. Not to leave bad enough alone, in 2007, he mocked victims of the Southern California forest fires as "a handful of people who hate America... a lot of them are losing their homes." It got even funnier the end of June, when Beck had on his show "former" CIA agent Michael Scheuer. Scheuer declared, "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States... Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary.” To this adovocacy of mass terrorism, Beck nodded in approval.

Pretty hilarious stuff.

Hilarious, at least, until someone dies. That's what happened in April, when 22-year-old Richard Poplawski killed three Pittsburgh policemen and wounded two others in a bloody shootout. It soon was uncovered that Poplawski, a neo-Nazi, was a huge fan of Beck and his right-wing rantings on Fox News. He was also a fan of the white supremacist Website Stormfront, posting videos of Beck's show on the site. Poplawski was obsessed with right-wing conspiracies, believing that Obama was going to start confiscating guns and rounding up right-wingers in FEMA concentration camps, all part of a New World Order plot to turn Team USA into a Maoist dictatorship.

To be fair, much of this thinking is central to the appeal of Alex Jones, who Poplawski also was a fan of. What Jones did not share, however, was his racist world view, including a belief that America was secretly controlled by a gang of evil Jews. While Beck also eschews the anti-Semitic plots (perhaps because Jews are fortunately not a socially sanctioned scapegoat group anymore) he does, as noted before, engage in trashing of minorities in the same vein as Limbaugh does. Perhaps it isn't overt, in-your-face racism, but it is there.

Certainly it is too much to blame the Pittsburgh murders on Glenn Beck. After all, many "liberal" sites tried to smear Alex Jones with the same brush after it was discovered Poplawski was a fan. But it is hard not to listen to the venomous rage spewed out by Beck (as well as Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter and Savage) and imagine what it could do to borderline personalities. Somehow The Konformist suspects the Poplawski murders are the first shot of what may turn into a very disturbing fad.

Which, of course, is only part of what is dangerous about Beck. The bigger issue is that he, along with his fellow right-wing blowhards, are channeling the legitimate anger and frustration of the masses into options controlled by the GOP. Thus, the protests of Ron Paul that once frightened the Republican establishment (tellingly, Paul was even more marginalized on Fox News than CNN in 2008) has morphed into the teabagger movement, which is backed by mainstream GOP politicians such as Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey. The controlled teabagger movement focuses all its rage on the Obama stimulus plan that marginally aided the poor and middle class, while remaining silent about the obscene bailout of Wall Street (which Ron Paul vociferously opposed.) Likewise, Beck will embrace the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones, provided they can be packaged in a way where viewers can use them to support the Republicans. And perhaps even more important, Beck and his cohorts will ignore any criticism of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the Pentagon decides to attack in the future, even though an anti-war message is central to both Jones and Paul.

Of course, whenever Beck gets cornered by his own reactionary beliefs, he tries to dismiss himself as a rodeo clown, a harmless buffoon who is more of an entertainer than a political ideologue. On this issue, The Konformist must concede that as pure theater, Beck is indeed very entertaining. But looking at what the Poplawski murders might lead to, and looking how Beck is manipulating the anger of the masses into faux-populist movements, we have to wonder who will get the last laugh.

In any case, we salute Glenn Beck as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Glenn!!!

Thanks to ColbertNation.com, Fair.org, MediaMatters.org, PrisonPlanet.com & RawStory.com for help on this article.

Beast of the Month - May 2009

Beast of the Month - May 2009
Timothy Geithner
Obamanomics Mastermind

"I yam an anti-Christ..."
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town
And DC's bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground
Yeah while they're living it up on Wall Street in that New York City town
Here in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down"
John Rich, "Shuttin' Detroit Down"

Well, it's been 100 days into the Obama Administration, and already a picture of the next four years is becoming pretty evident. True, he isn't the combo of Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao that the "teabaggers" (quit snickering!) of the Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh crowd try to make him out as. On the other hand, he clearly isn't the perfect mixture of JFK, MLK & Jesus Christ that the so-called "progressive" cultists fantasize he is either.

Say what you will about the teabaggers, but their anger at Barack Hussein Obama, however misdirected, at least seems like the logical response to the looting of America that has continued under his reign. Indeed, it seems that the left is far more delusional about what Barack Obama is than the Fox News watchers could ever be as they continue to wave pom-poms for the dude. For the general direction of the Obama Administration is exactly what The Konformist warned it would be: a sniveling betrayal of the duped progressives who supported his election victory as he bootlicks Wall Street and the Pentagon.

To be fair, Prez Obama hasn't been as terrible as some predicted he'd be. (And he certainly isn't as bad as George W. Bush, though that's hardly an amazing feat.) The good news: he has yet to launch World War III against Russia and/or China. Of course, the main reason is because there's no money left to finance WWIII after the massive swindling by the banksters and Wall Street under his reign, and that of his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, The Konformist Beast of the Month.

Under Geithner and Team Obama, the siphoning of bucks to prop up the Wall Street monoliths has continued unabated. And though the Obama Administration pushed through a $787 billion "stimulus" program as well as a $75 billion plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure, the general direction of the Obama years is definitely still slanted towards funneling money to the powerful few. Indeed, though the $787 billion was more than the Wall Street Bailout - no doubt done to convince the public they've received more help than the bankers have - the vast majority of these dollars will only come to the poor, working class and middle class indirectly, if at all. Likewise, the foreclosure plan appears to be just enough to help only the subprime debtors who the financial system can profit off via the aid. Tellingly, it is the stimulus program and the homeowner plan that became the focus of the rage ranted over the airwaves by reactionary blowhards like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rick Santelli rather than the Wall Street Bailout. This appears to be a calculated obfuscation by these loathsome pundits. The end result is threefold: one, to channel the legitimate anger of the masses at the economic crisis towards those who are the victims rather than the perpetrators; two, to make it seem that it is only right-wing nut jobs and racists who oppose Obamanomics; and three, to frame the Obama economic policies as far left via distortion and shift the entire debate even farther to the right than before.

After the stimulus plan was pushed through, the Obama Administration offered up a trillion dollar "toxic assets" bailout for Wall Street. (In fact, it appears the push to get the stimulus program passed so quickly was because another round of obscene Wall Street handouts without a penny to the public would've been too in-your-face class warfare.) The plan puts federal funds to back 97 percent of the money used to buy away these bad assets, with the loans and three quarters of all losses backed by Uncle Sam. The investors in this scam will thus have their losses pretty much covered with a big upside for any financial rewards. All in all, the plan seems to be born from the big business philosophy of "socialize the costs, privatize the profits."

While the Obama team has been warm and snuggly to Wall Street, they have been equally ruthless to anyone with a United Auto Workers union card. While they coddle the bankers with trillions in bailouts, the pocket change handed to the Detroit Big Three was conditional on UAW workers accepting massive layoffs, pay cuts and reductions in retiree benefits. This shouldn't be too surprising, as the head of Obama's Auto Task Force is a real life Gordon Gekko in Steve Rattner, a corporate raider who has made a living crushing worker benefits for personal profits.

All this seems to follow the reactionary pattern that's been in place since the Wall Street Bailout of last October. Which leads to a logical question: just who was behind the bailout in the first place? As it turns out, a key player in creating the TARP program was the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank at the time. This was none other than (drum roll please) Timothy Geithner himself.

The appointments of guys like Rattner and Geithner shouldn't be too surprising either: as has been noted on The Konformist, Obama has long surrounded himself with the most right-wing elements economically tied to the Democratic Party. This includes Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago professor who is on the "left" side of the far-right economic program made famous thanks to Milton Friedman. Goolsbee was named staff director and chief economist for the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, whose chairman, also appointed by Obama, is former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, the man whose ruthless monetary policies (also inspired by Milton Friedman) led to a nasty recession that nearly destroyed Ronald Reagan's presidency in its first term.

Beyond just surrounding himself with right-wingers, Obama's positions, even before his election, were decidedly to the right of Edwards and Clinton. Indeed, though it is almost never acknowledged, by the end of the 2008 campaign, John McCain had offered a far more generous solution to foreclosure victims than any Obama proposal. Of course, Obama may have been too busy raising a record $650 million dollars to show any concern for these bitter financial victims. And though the sales job of Obama feigns his campaign was fueled by small donors, the Campaign Finance Institute concluded Obama "raised significantly more large-donor money in absolute terms than any of his rivals or predecessors." (It should be mentioned as almost an afterthought that Obama's VP pick, Joe Biden of Delaware, is so tied to the banking industry he has earned the nickname of "Credit Card Joe" for his efforts.)

The punch line in this rightward tilt in Obamanomics: after repeatedly being accused of being a far-left socialist by the Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh crowd, the left will be blamed for any failures in his economic programs. The general suspicion of The Konformist staff is the stimulus program will be enough to stop a major depression, but not enough to stop a lingering recession. Meanwhile, in January, economist Paul Craig Roberts warned the deficit would be $3 trillion in 2009, and his projection looks more accurate by the day than the predictions of others. With the unemployment rate looking to hit double digits soon, it appears there's a lot of failure ready to be pinned on the left in the coming years.

In any case, we salute Timothy Geithner as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Timmy!!!

Sources:

Allen, Mike. "Volcker Will Head New Obama Board." Yahoo News 26 November 2008 <http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081126/pl_politico/15997>.

"Credit Card Joe." The Real Joe Biden. 24 August 2008 <http://therealjoebiden.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/credit-card-joe>.

Eley, Tom. "Buyer Beware! Obama Named 'Marketer of the Year'." World Socialist Web Site 6 December 2008 <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/obad-d06.shtml>.

Grey, Barry. "Wall Street Celebrates Government Windfall for Banks and Big Investors." World Socialist Web Site 24 March 2009 <http://wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/toxi-m24.shtml>.

Marshall, Bruce. "Barack 'Hoover' Obama." Rense.com 11 March 2009 <http://rense.com/general85/hoov.htm>.

"Obama: 'Everybody Thinks They’re Economists'." Infowars 6 February 2009 <http://www.infowars.com/obama-everybody-thinks-theyre-economists>.

"Reality Check: Obama Received About the Same Percentage from Small Donors in 2008 as Bush in 2004." The Campaign Finance Institute 24 November 2008 <http://www.cfinst.org/pr/prRelease.aspx?ReleaseID=216>.

Roberts, Paul Craig. "Another Real Estate Crisis Is About to Hit." Online Journal 23 January 2009 <http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4274.shtml>.

Sirota, David. "Obama's Gordon Gekko Targets Union Workers." OurFuture.org 31 March 2009 <http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009031431/obamas-gordon-gekko-targets-union-workers-0>.

Tarpley, Webster G. "Defeat Obama - Advice For Voters." Rense.com 3 November 2008 <http://www.rense.com/general83/advi.htm>.

Tarpley, Webster G. "Motormouth Joe Biden - Warmonger, Wordmonger And Political Hit Man." Rense.com 25 August 2008 <http://rense.com/general83/biden.htm>.

Beast of the Month - April 2009

Beast of the Month - April 2009
Rick Santelli
Pseudo-populist Cable Shill

"I yam an anti-Christ..."
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

Populism in America is a funny thing. When it comes from the mouths of guys like Michael Moore, Jim Hightower or Greg Palast who focus their energy defending the little guy against corporate abuse and the collusion of big business and big government, the work gets either ignored or relentlessly attacked. When so-called populism focuses its ire on lesser (and often uglier) targets, on the other hand, it gets highlighted as something to take notice of.

Take Glenn Beck, for example. (And we really mean it, PLEASE take him.) He has become a leading doomsayer in the Obama hackathon that takes place daily on Fox News, and a ratings champ on the "We report, you decide" network. This despite (or perhaps because of) the fact any examination of Beck's rants would reveal a man who isn't a populist like often hyped, but rather someone who is utterly psychotic. Stephen Colbert recently had fun with this on his show, urging Beck to "crank up the crazy and rip off the knob!" He did so after Beck presented an apocalyptic scenario Colbert described as "the most terrifying fictional future I have ever heard yanked right out of someone's ass." He summed up Beck's future vision of America as a land of "ignorant, illiterate, whacked-out hillbillies with nothing to lose. Terrifying! But, more viewers for Fox News!" It's hard to believe that Fox, already the home of borderline personalities such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, could actually lower the bar for unhinged behavior, but, by golly, we gotta hand it to them, they have.

Then there's good old Rush Limbaugh, who is being touted as the new leader of the GOP. Limbaugh, much like O'Reilly, has long portrayed himself as a champion against the establishment, though already unconvincing after any comparison of his deranged oxy-fueled radio rants with Republican talking points memos. Besides this, it's hard to take seriously a multi-millionaire who has never worn blue jeans his entire life when he feigns to be a common man, especially when he froths about right-wing economics that screws the working class in favor of the rich.

Speaking of the working class, how about Joe Wurzelbacher, AKA Joe the Plumber, who was made into a working class hero near the end of the desperate McCain campaign? This after Joe whined to Obama about plans to raise taxes on people making over $250K a year (not a major working class concern.) To be fair, Joe W. deserves some sympathy after the Obama machine began illegally digging into his private files in order to uncover dirt after McCain used him as a political prop. However, Plumber Joe has since exploited his faux-celebrity status as a tool for reactionary political forces. Recently, he was hired by the Orwellian-named Americans for Prosperity to speak at rallies against the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize. Actual blue collar workers managed to sneak in to the events and heckle Joe while wealthy right-wingers cheered on his anti-worker pandering. Plumber Joe, hope you're enjoying your Warholian fifteen minutes while they last.

Still, the most offensive faux-populist moment of recent has not come from Rush, Beck or even Joe W. Instead, the award must go to CNBC's Rick Santelli, The Konformist Beast of the Month.

Santelli was, until February 19th, a fairly unknown third-rate correspondent for the minimally watched CNBC business news network. That all changed when discussing Barack Obama's Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan to help nine million families avoid foreclosure with a $75 billion fund. On the network, he blasted the plan: "The government is promoting bad behavior... Why don’t you put up a Web site to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages, or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water... It's time for another tea party!"

(As he said this, Santelli was on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and the traders who cheered him on appeared to be the wimpiest, most pasty-skinned mob since the Brooks Brother riot in Florida during the 2000 election.)

The so-called "Rant of the Year" was curious in many respects. Imagine, for example, if a cable news correspondent had pulled something similar about the Iraq War being a scam right before it was launched. Just what would've been the reaction to that? No doubt he/she would've been blasted for lacking journalistic objectivity and likely would've lost their job. Or perhaps for an even more recent comparison, when the Wall Street $700 billion dollar bailout was being debated in September and October, where were the Rick Santellis blasting the promotion of bad behavior and declaring the recipients of the boondoggle to be losers? Instead, all objectivity was thrown out the window and the swindle was pushed through with establishment media hysteria behind it, promoting bad behavior be damned. Yet suddenly, when the issue becomes providing $75 billion in aid to help victims of subprime loan scams keep their homes, outrage becomes acceptable. This, of course, is the bigger point: attacking trillion-dollar war rackets and Wall Street handouts isn't kosher, but calling poor and middle-class home owners "losers" while they struggle to remain afloat is okely-dokely.

The hypocrisy in this case is even worse: on the Website The eXiled, Mark Ames and Yasha Levine reported that General Electric, the parent company to CNBC, received $139 billion in government-backed loan guarantees to keep GE Capital from going bankrupt and sinking the GE empire, CNBC included, with it. That amount, incidentally, is $64 billion more than what nine million subprime victims Santelli mocked as losers are to receive in the Obama plan. Noting these facts, Ames & Levine sarcastically dismissed Santelli as a bailout welfare queen.

The response to Santelli's rant proves just how okay the media establishment was with his hypocritical stand. As Santelli frothed, the folks in the CNBC anchor booth chuckled as though it was entertaining truths. Quickly, the rant went "viral" on YouTube, which is quite unusual since media/entertainment oligopolies such as NBC normally ruthlessly suppress any free distribution of their copyrighted work over the Internet. The "viral" nature of the video was pushed on cyberspace by Matt Drudge, who seemed flushed with an excitement he normally gets only from gay porn. On CNBC's big sister MSNBC, it was promoted by smiling mouthpieces who gushed about the - here comes the "P" word - populist nature of his rant.

Of course, perhaps the fault here lies in the continuing promotion of the George Magazine philosophy which has turned politics into entertainment, reducing actual debate about substance and ideas into shallow celebrity cults of personality. In that context, Santelli is indeed a "populist" hero, as his manufactured celebrity status qualifies him for the name brand certification.

But laying the blame at the feet of poor John-John (who even in death has been the most influential man in journalism over the last decade, though that is definitely influence to the worst) wouldn't be honest. For it wasn't mere celebrity narcissism behind the promotion of the Santelli rant, but rather a heavily financed right-wing machine. A Playboy article by Ames and Levine links Santelli's demand for a "tea party" with a project backed by the deep pockets of the ultra-right Koch family. Santelli’s call for a "Chicago Tea Party" was a mainstream push for an Astroturf "grass-roots" campaign for “tea parties” nationally protesting Obama's economic policies from the right. The case made by Ames and Levine is pretty simple: if Santelli wasn't pimping out his minimal journalistic cred for major Koch bucks, he was definitely selling himself short.

Here's another case study to show how out of whack the framing of "populism" is in the USA: the telling reaction to the AIG bonus scandal. When it was revealed that AIG had paid $165 million out of $170 billion in bonuses to employees, there was legitimate widespread outrage in the public, outrage that was neither orchestrated nor anticipated. (And yes, let's ignore for a second that, at this point, $165 million is chump change for Wall Street.) Establishment politicians chimed in, feigning outrage as well, including Barack Obama, who unconvincingly pretended to be upset, even though his administration directed legislation allowing the bonus loophole. Faced with mass anger, Congress originally pushed for 90 percent surtaxes on Wall Street bailout company bonuses for anyone making over $250K, but after Obama declared opposition to the plan, it appears to be dead on arrival. (Obama's excuse, that to stop the bonuses from going through would interfere with legal contracts, oddly wasn't used when he forced UAW members take massive pay cuts in Detroit.) Quickly, the korporate media, rather than helping the AIG outrage go viral, tried to squash it, with Michael Gerson of the Washington Post decrying the controversy as "demagoguery" rather than genuine.

To be fair, there was some backlash against Santelli as well. Still, it seems the main source of any mainstream outrage against him was not for his crude dismissal of struggling homeowners, but rather for how his rant was an attack on Barack Obama, the patron saint of yuppie liberalism. (Tellingly, it was Jon Stewart, the leading media mouthpiece of yuppie liberalism, who smacked up CNBC the most, using Jim Cramer of the news network's Mad Money as a stand-in after Santelli wimped out on a Daily Show appearance.)

Meanwhile, after Team Obama later announced their trillion dollar "toxic asset" bailout for Wall Street, there was again no populist rant on cable news against subsidizing losers and promoting bad behavior. Putting it all together, let's note the pattern:

* $700 billion TARP bailout deal for Wall Street: Mass cheerleading for the plan

* $787 billion Obama Stimulus Plan that was somewhat aimed at the middle and lower class: Controversy and vigorous debate

* $75 billion Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan fund to help homeowners avoid foreclosure: Smug “journalist” denounces it as a plan to help "losers"

* Attempt to tax $165 million in bonuses at bailout recipient AIG: Controversy is denounced as "demagoguery"

* $1 trillion plan to bailout Wall Street's "toxic assets": No controversy whatsoever


It seems the only time any controversy is hyped in the mainstream press is when the recipient of the money is even partially the poor, the working class and the middle class. Meanwhile, though the public is indeed outraged by the massive swindle over the last year by Wall Street (with up to $9 trillion in government resources pumped in to these korporate parasites) blowhards like Santelli are trying to intentionally confuse the public, equating the Wall Street bailout with the stimulus package and focus the ire of rage against the poor and disenfranchised rather than the bankers.

Perhaps most important, there appears to be a concerted attempt by the right wing to frame Barack Obama's positions as far left, even though he has pushed more to give handouts to Wall Street than even the Bush Administration. With unemployment at 8.5 percent and rising, hopefully the image of Obama as the great progressive champion will soon be gone (and good riddance.) Until then, it appears that even Santelli isn't the worst example of phony populism coming from Chicago.

In any case, we salute Rick Santelli as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Ricky!!!

Sources:

Ames, Mark and Levine, Yasha. "Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High On Koch?" Playboy 27 February 2009 <http://www.playboy.com/blog/2009/02/backstabber.html>.

Ames, Mark and Levine, Yasha. "'Slick Rick' Santelli Is A Bailout Queen." The eXiled 3 March 2009 <http://exiledonline.com/%E2%80%9Cslick-rick%E2%80%9D-santelli-is-a-bailout-queen-tea-party-mascot%E2%80%99s-company-took-139-billion-in-bailout-funds-ge-uses-taxpayer-money-to-censor-its-critics-destroy-bailout-program-f/>.

Ames, Mark and Levine, Yasha. "Victory Gloat: Ames & Levin Serve Up Santelli's Head on The Daily Show." Huffington Post 5 March 2009 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/05/jon-stewart-eviscerates-c_n_172057.html>.

Calmes, Jackie and Story, Louise. "Outcry Builds in Washington for Recovery of A.I.G. Bonuses" New York Times 19 March 2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/19bailout.html>.

"CNBC's Santelli Rants About Housing Bailout." ABC News 19 February 2009 <http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/02/cnbcs-santelli.html>.

Donmoyer, Ryan J. "Dodd Blames Obama Administration for Bonus Amendment." Bloomberg 19 March 2009 <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aT_tMXRy2vDs>.

"Doom Bunker - Glenn Beck's 'War Room'." ColbertNation.com 4 March 2009 <http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/220649/march-04-2009/doom-bunker---glenn-beck-s--war-room->.

Edwards, David and Webster, Stephen C. "Colbert Mocks 'Crazy Eyes' Beck with 'Doom Bunker' Segment." Raw Story 5 March 2009 <http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Colbert_mocks_Glenn_Beck_with_doom_0305.html>.

Ford, Glen. "So President Obama Is Finally Pissed Off? So What?" Black Agenda Report 18 March 2009 <http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/so-president-obama-finally-pissed-so-what>.

Grey, Barry. "Wall Street Celebrates Government Windfall for Banks and Big Investors." World Socialist Web Site 24 March 2009 <http://wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/toxi-m24.shtml>.

Oswald, Rachel. "Union Plumbers Heckle and Jeer 'Joe the Plumber' at Rally." Raw Story 31 March 2009 <http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Union_plumbers_heckle_Joe_Plumber_at_0331.html>.

Ritholtz, Barry. "Rick Santelli’s Planted Rant?" The Big Picture 28 February 2009 <http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/rick-santellis-faux-rant>.

Sirota, David. "Welcome to Double-standard America." Salon 21 March 2009 <http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/03/21/sirota>.

Spitzer, Eliot. "The Real AIG Scandal." Slate 17 March 2009 <http://www.slate.com/id/2213942/>.

Savage: Obama appointees the Nazi Party

http://www.prisonplanet.com/savage-%e2%80%9cobama-appointees-actually-have-almost-the-same-exact-policies-as-the-nazi-party-did%e2%80%9d.html

Savage: “Obama appointees actually have almost the same exact policies as the Nazi Party did”
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
March 13, 2009

Michael “Savage” Weiner, corporate media talk show host and former beatnik, has told his audience that Obama’s appointees are following the policies of the Nazis. Savage, a former Bush supporter and notorious carnival barker for the false right-left paradigm (and neocon Muslim-hater), does not bother to call out a single Obama appointee by name. Instead, in the audio clip here, Weiner concentrates on Obama’s “green shirts,” an allusion to Hitler’s SA brown shirts.

Savage is correct about the fascistic character of Obama’s mass movement, but he has conveniently omitted an important part of the larger picture.

Hitler was a creation of Wall Street financiers and the international bankers, a historical fact documented by British economist, historian, and writer Antony C. Sutton. Sutton documents the roles played by J.P. Morgan, T. W. Lamont, the Rockefeller interests, General Electric Company, Standard Oil, National City Bank, Chase and Manhattan banks, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, and other elitists in the rise of Hitler and Nazism.

“Wall Street financed the German cartels in the mid-1920s which in turn proceeded to bring Hitler to power,” writes Sutton in the final chapter of his book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. “Hitler and his S.S. street thugs came in part from affiliates or subsidiaries of U.S. firms, including Henry Ford in 1922, payments by I.G. Farben and General Electric in 1933, followed by the Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.T.T. subsidiary payments to Heinrich Himmler up to 1944.” Hitler’s mass movement was a creation of bankers and industrialists.

In Adam Lebor’s Hitler’s Secret Bankers (see also Charles Higham’s Trading With the Enemy), we learn how the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and its American president, Thomas McKittrick, continued trading and money laundering on behalf of the Nazis throughout the Second World War.

BIS is an international organization of central banks established under the globalist Bretton-Woods International Financial scheme. BIS is closely associated with the Bilderberg Group, the elitist organization established by the Nazi collaborator Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (see Alden Hatch’s H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands for more on Bernhard’s SS connections).

It should be noted that Timothy F. Geithner, Obama’s point man on the economy and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, sits on the board of directors of BIS (Fed mob boss Ben Bernanke also sits on the board of this one-time Nazi front group that now controls the IMF and World Bank).

It is no mistake Bilderberg and Rockefeller stooge Henry Kissinger came out early in favor of Obama, as did Rockefeller minion and co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Obama’s appointees are overwhelmingly of the globalist and bankster persuasion — a preponderant number are members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission.

Financial support for the Obama campaign flowed in from Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and others.

Michael “Savage” Weiner would have us believe Obama is a “neo-marxist fascist dictator” and his hand-picked appointees “actually have almost the same exact policies as the Nazi Party did,” when in fact Obama’s policies are those of the bankers, not Hitler or Ernst Röhm, co-founder of the Sturmabteilung or SA. In fact, Obama is a puppet for the global elite and it is completely irrelevant if he subscribes to Marxism, Nazism, or anything else.

Savage and the neocons are fond of conflating Nazism with “progressive” Democrat liberalism — which is yet another artificially generated flavor of bankster dominated statism — a tactic they employed in the days following the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001, when neocons absurdly attempted to demonize Muslims as “Islamofascists.”

In a call to Savage’s radio show, activist Mark Dice was able to get the former beatnik turned talk show host to admit he believes any mention of the Bilderbergers is too “esoteric” for his largely neocon wannabe audience. It is not the Bilderbergers (and by way of extension the CFR and the Trilateralists) we need to worry about, but rather the “Democrat socialist group run by Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Ann Feinstein, and the others.”

Weiner further admits he has known about the Bilderberg Group since 1990, and yet he refuses to discuss the organization’s objectives and the indisputable fact members are at the highest levels of government, including the Obama administration. It is the Democrats we need to worry about, declares Savage, not the international banking elite.

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers,” wrote the historian of the elite, Carroll Quigley, in his book Tragedy and Hope. “Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”

Michael “Savage” Weiner understands this all too well. His role — along with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and other corporate media “conservatives” — is to foment a carefully orchestrated and controlled opposition to the current regime so that in four or eight years, after Obama has accomplished the tasks assigned to him by the global elite, the American people “can throw the rascals out… without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, please define "populist"

http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200902210004

NYT's Sheryl Gay Stolberg, please define "populist"
Sat, Feb 21, 2009
Eric Boehlert

The Times reporter dutifully anoints the previously unknown Rick Santelli of CNBC a "populist" because he uncorked an on-air rant about the Obama housing recovery while reporting among all-white, all-male traders on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It was a rant where Santelli suggested Obama was leading America down the road to communism.

But nowhere in her article does the Times reporter explain why Santelli, who Chris Matthews rightfully likened to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, in any way tapped into a "populist" feeling. The former VP for Drexel Burnham Lambert (you remember that `80's hothouse of populist fever, right) simply mouthed divisive, right-wing talking points, and disconnected media elites crowned him a populist anyway. The closest Stolberg came to suggesting Santelli articulated populist rhetoric was when she pointed out:

[Santelli] called for the creation of a Web site where Americans could vote on whether they "really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages."

She might think that's "populist," but probably lots of Times readers simply chalk that up as being idiotic.

Hal Turner Confirms Friendship With Sean Hannity

http://www.newshounds.us/2008/03/23/neo_naziwhite_supremacist_hal_turner_confirms_friendship_and_kinship_with_sean_hannity.php

Neo Nazi/White Supremacist Hal Turner Confirms Friendship And Kinship With Sean Hannity
Reported by Ellen - March 23, 2008

Earlier in the week, Sean Hannity denied, albeit in contradictory terms, ever having a relationship with neo Nazi/white supremacist Hal Turner. As I posted the night Hannity was confronted about Turner, the evidence conflicts with Hanniy’s claims. Now Turner has confirmed their friendship and their sympatico views in a blog post called, “About Sean Hannity and Me. . . . . Yes, we were friends and yes, Sean agreed with some of my views.” H/T Davefromqueens.

UPDATED: Comments received from someone claiming to be Hannity's Program Director

In his post (Warning: not for the faint of heart) that reveals just what kind of guy he is, Turner writes:

In my opinion, based on my first hand experience, I believe Sean Hannity is, in fact, a Hal Turner sort of guy. It seems to me that a big difference between Sean and me is that I am willing to say publicly what I think about savage Black criminals, diseased, uneducated illegal aliens and the grotesque cultural destruction wrought by satanic jews while Sean and many others keep quiet to protect their paychecks.

We have cited many times an article in The Nation as evidence that Turner and Hannity were palsy. In his post, Turner calls the author, Max Blumenthal, a “douche bag sodomite,” but Blumenthal’s account is essentially confirmed by Turner’s:

I was quite disappointed when Sean Hannity at first tried to say he didn't know me and then went on to say that I ran some senate campaign in New Jersey. In fact, Sean Hannity does know me and we were quite friendly a number of years ago.

…When Hannity took over Bob Grant's spot on 77 WABC in New York City, I was a well-known, regular and welcome caller to his show. Through those calls, Sean and I got to know each other a bit and at some point, I can't remember exactly when, Sean gave me the secret "Guest call-in number" at WABC so that my calls could always get on the air.

When I utlized that call-in number, Sean would very often come onto that line during commercial breaks so we could chat before I went on the air. Our off-the-air chats grew to an exchange of other phone numbers, me giving Sean my home and cellular number and Sean giving me his direct dial-in number at Fox News channel.

In 1993, My wife got pregnant and around a month later, Sean reported that he and his wife were expecting their first child. We got to talking about things expectant dads talk about and the relationship grew.

…Over the course of the next three or four years, Sean and I spoke regularly off the air about our kids, politics and news of the day. My on-air calls to his show remained regular and welcome


Turner concludes his blog post by threatening to use “force and violence” against his enemies. “Those using me as a prop to attack Sean Hannity would do well to remember this fact. Rest assured I will remember them when the opportunity presents itself.”

Last Wednesday (3/19/08), Hannity & Colmes guest Malik Shabazz asked Hannity, in response to his continual attacks on Barack Obama regarding his pastor, "Are you to be judged by your promotion and association with Hal Turner?”

Hannity at first denied knowing Turner, then asserted that Turner was someone running a campaign in New Jersey whom Hannity had banned from his radio show. Then in what sounded like a tacit admission to me, Hannity told Shabazz, “I’m not running for president.”

Two nights later (3/21/08) on Hannity & Colmes, Hannity professed to be saddened by the racial divisiveness engendered by the controversy about Obama and his pastor. But Hannity seems to have directly participated in far more divisiveness than Obama. Please write Hannity and FOX News and demand that Hannity come clean about his own associations before he continues accusing Barack Obama about his.

Hannity@foxnews.com

comments@foxnews.com

It's a wrap - 'Milk' filming ends in S.F.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/18/DDNDVJJHL.DTL

It's a wrap - 'Milk' filming ends in S.F.
Ruthe Stein, Chronicle Senior Movie Writer
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

"Harvey will be coming out soon," an extra assured the crowd in front of City Hall on a recent Sunday. They had gathered to be in a scene in "Milk"- the movie about the life and death of Harvey Milk - in which the San Francisco supervisor delivers an impassioned speech. It was really Sean Penn, of course, who plays the martyred supervisor, who would be appearing. But, this extra explained, because he's a "method actor," he wants to be called Harvey.

From the bright sun, it could have been June, when the Gay Freedom Day parade was led 30 years ago by Milk, seated on top of a convertible with flowers in one hand and the other hand a clenched fist. He was as pumped up as his bulging muscles.

A couple thousand people waited for a re-enactment of Milk's fiery speech, which capped the parade. This was the last day calling for such a large cast.

"Milk" had been filming all over San Francisco for eight weeks and wrapped Monday with a scene shot on a set on Treasure Island of Milk watching "Tosca." The movie is due in the fall, positioning it for Oscar consideration.

Appearing on the City Hall steps to deafening applause, Penn looked shockingly like Milk. He had his almost Grecian nose and dark wavy hair parted to one side and wore a tight T-shirt that showed off his muscles.

"Brothers and sisters, you must come out to your parents," Penn/Harvey shouted, pronouncing his vowels distinctly to sound like a New Yorker. "It may hurt them. But think how they could hurt you in the voting booth."

Penn would do eight takes of this speech all to loud applause from an indefatigable crowd, including people who had stood in the same spot 30 years ago listening to Milk urge gays to protect their rights from those trying to get gay-friendly legislation repealed.

A dozen rows back from Penn, John Hershey, 63, started crying. Milk had influenced him to come out to his family, Hershey recalled.

"This is an important thing for me because I want all the kids to know what Harvey did," he said.

All age groups were represented. Peter Weitl came with his wife, Jenni. They're both 28. "We came to be part of history, even if it's re-created history. We couldn't have been there the first time," he said.

The production company had posted instructions on the Internet of what to wear to look of the period. Shorts and blue jeans were fine; bell bottoms and garish colors were not. A lot of people blithely ignored this, dressing in copies of Pucci's brightly colored wrap dress and in drag. Men showed off large tattoos by wearing leather vests with nothing under them. The few cars on Polk Street were all period, including a Thunderbird and Ford Pinto station wagon.

Bottled water was available for free, but extras were warned to pitch the bottles when the cameras were on. People drank H2O out of the tap in the '70s.

A production assistant followed Penn around the front of City Hall with a large navy blue umbrella. She held it over his head to shield him from the sun. Seeing he had a captive audience, Penn broke loose of the umbrella to deliver an impromptu speech that Milk would have loved.

"I almost wish Jerry Falwell were alive to see this. Almost," Penn shouted to the crowd. After dropping some names of conservatives who are still with us - "Bill O'Reilly, who is too stupid to talk about," and "Sean Hannity, the butt boy of Rupert Murdoch," Penn said, "We know something more. We know their end is near."

What was fun about having "Milk" shot here is how "in" it made locals feel. They could go home that Sunday and tell friends that Penn gave a speech just for them. Keen observers might have caught a glimpse of Robin Williams, who at one point was to play Milk, and Oliver Stone, who was to direct one version of the biopic. Both stopped by to watch Penn and director Gus Van Sant, whom Williams worked with on "Good Will Hunting."

Thousands of San Franciscans marched in a simulation of the Gay Freedom Parade that was held on June 25, 1978, and of the vigil in November that year to commemorate the deaths of Milk and Mayor George Moscone, both murdered by Supervisor Dan White.

The cast and crew have been all over town spending money in restaurants and hotels and generally adding to the San Francisco economy. There were other ways in which the local population benefited from the "Milk" people being here.

Those who weren't around to see the Castro district in the 1970s got a sense of it after scenic designers went to work changing storefronts. Overnight a store called Aquarius Records popped up with a purple, yellow, orange and periwinkle front. The shop used to be in the Castro but moved to Noe Valley. Designers also brought back China Court, a popular restaurant in the '70s. Milk's election headquarters was decorated with posters of him under a colorful canopy.

The interior of Milk's camera shop also was re-created and became a place where his pals from the old days like author Armistead Maupin, one-time Milk aide Anne Kronenberg and Cleve Jones, founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt who is an adviser on the film, would stop in. "They were moved to tears to see everything exactly the way it had been," said Dan Jinks, co-producer with Bruce Cohen. The two previously produced "American Beauty" and "Big Fish."

"I have never gotten to work on a project before that not only is based on a true event but where we are shooting it in the places where it actually happened," Cohen said.

Jones came on the set to watch himself be played by Emile Hirsch, telling the actor, "This is where I was standing."

"I feel like 'Milk' is really a once-in-a-lifetime chance," Cohen said. "It is so much about the city. But it isn't just a storybook place. We are re-creating a part of the history of San Francisco."

This is the first time since the cast and crew of "Zodiac" disembarked here in 2005 that a major motion picture has been shot in San Francisco. Like "Milk," "Zodiac" takes place in San Francisco. But not all of it was filmed here because of how expensive this city is. In part because Penn lives in the Bay Area but mainly because, as Jinks put it, "Harvey Milk is such a San Francisco story," he and Cohen resisted pressure from the money people to shoot most of it in Vancouver. It was always their idea that the city be a character in the movie.

"The picture is scripted for the city, and you know it would be a creative embarrassment if they had to shoot it somewhere else," said Stefanie Coyote, executive director of the San Francisco Film Commission, who helped negotiate good access to City Hall.

The area surrounding City Hall, as well as the building, plays a big role in "Milk." In one scene inside City Hall, Supervisor White, played by Josh Brolin fresh off his career-making role in "No Country for Old Men," was being grilled by the press on his decision to remain supervisor. He had resigned his seat, then changed his mind but could not get Moscone to give the position back to him. Milk wanted White gone, which was why he also was shot dead.

Mayor Newsom offered to lend the "Milk" crew his office to film Moscone's shooting. "We did not take him up on his offer. We thought it was more important that he be using his office," Jinks said. Instead, the anteroom to his office, where the killing took place, was re-created on a set. The room has been redecorated numerous times, so the film's version probably is more accurate. Cubicles in the Federal Office Building at 50 United Nations Plaza substituted for the supervisors' work space because they have far more luxurious offices now than in 1978.

A brisk woman with bouffant hair and wearing a blouse with a large bow was seen coming out of the building. She's Ashlee Temple, and she plays then Board of Supervisors President Dianne Feinstein. She auditioned by re-enacting Feinstein's stunning announcement to the press that Moscone and Milk were dead. "She didn't cry but you can see she is very shocked and very fragile," said Temple, who studied a news clip. "It takes every bit of energy in her to get those words out 'and the suspect is Dan White.' "

While the last scene shot here was of Penn listening to "Tosca," the part from the opera he is watching was filmed weeks ago. The modest budget was strained bringing in costumes from "Tosca" and renting an existing set from the opera. The crew put up some lights, and for a couple of hours a soundstage on Treasure Island became an opera house.

"Harvey was a huge opera fan," Jinks said. "Nothing made him happier." Except maybe a whole movie all about him.

E-mail Ruthe Stein at rstein@sfchronicle.com

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Conservative Pundits Against McCain

http://www.theonion.com/content/infograph/conservative_pundits_against

February 13, 2008 Issue 44•07
Conservative Pundits Against McCain

Conservative pundits Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter have spoken out against Republican presidential candidate John McCain, with Coulter even promising to campaign for Clinton if McCain is the Republican nominee. Here are some of the reasons:

Fears McCain will take away America's God-given right to torture a Muslim

Too Arizona-y

Was once a prisoner of war of a foreign enemy, a shameful stigma shared only by presidents Washington and Jackson

McCain and Coulter have both dated same girl from Tucson

McCain strongly, but not vehemently, supports the war

Has been spotted conversing with Democrats

Book sales, speaking fees, TV talk shows

McCain is soft on hate

Fox News is in for a very rough 2008

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200801290001

Fox News is in for a very rough 2008
by Eric Boehlert
Tuesday, January 29, 2008

My guess is that Fox News guru Roger Ailes has been reaching for the Tums more often than usual early in the New Year, and there are lots of reasons for the hovering angst.

Let's take an extended multiple choice quiz. Right now, which of the following topics is likely causing the discomfort inside Ailes' Fox News empire?

A) CNN's resurgence as the go-to cable destination for election coverage.
B) The incredible shrinking candidacy of Fox News' favored son, Rudy Giuliani.
C) The still-standing candidacy of Fox News nemesis and well-funded, anti-war GOP candidate Rep. Ron Paul.
D) The Democratic candidates' blanket refusal to debate on Fox News during the primary season.
E) Host Bill O'Reilly being so desperate for an interview from a Democratic contender that he had to schlep all the way to New Hampshire, where he shoved an aide to Sen. Barack Obama and then had to be calmed down by Secret Service agents.
F) Former Fox News architect and Ailes confidante Dan Cooper posting chapters from his a wildly unflattering tell-all book about his old boss. ("The best thing that ever happened to Roger Ailes was 9/11.")
G) The fledgling Fox Business Network, whose anemic ratings are in danger of being surpassed by some large city public access channels.
H) Host John Gibson's recent heartless attacks on actor Heath Ledger, just hours after the young actor was found dead.
I) Fox News reporter Major Garrett botching his "exclusive" that Paul Begala and James Carville were going to join Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, and then refusing to correct the record.

I'd say it's A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. (I doubt Gibson's grave-dancing or Garrett's whopper caused Ailes a moment's concern.)

Bottom line is that Fox News is in for a very rough 2008. And the umbrella reason for that is quite simple: Eight years ago the all-news cable channel went all-in on the presidency of George Bush and became a broadcast partner with the White House. Proof of that was on display Sunday night, January 27, during Fox News' prime-time, "Fighting to the Finish," an "historic documentary" on the final year of Bush's presidency. Filmed in HD and featuring "unprecedented access," according to the Fox News press release, the show was pure propaganda. (I must have missed Fox News' "Fighting to the Finish" special back in 2000, chronicling the conclusion of President Bill Clinton's second term and his "extraordinarily consequential tenure.")

The point is that Fox News years ago made an obvious decision to appeal almost exclusively to Republican viewers. The good news then for Fox News was that it succeeded. The bad news now for Fox News is that it succeeded.

Meaning, when the GOP catches a cold, everybody at Fox News gets sick. As blogger Logan Murphy put it at Crooks and Liars, "Watching FOXNews getting their comeuppance has been fun to watch. They made their bed, now they're having to lie in it and it's not too comfortable."

The most obvious signs of Fox News' downturn have been the cable ratings for the big primary and caucus votes this year, as well as the high-profile debates. With this election season generating unprecedented voter and viewer interest, Fox News' rating bumps to date have remained underwhelming, to say the least.

For instance, on the night of the big New Hampshire primary, CNN, which habitually trails behind Fox News in the prime-time race, attracted nearly 250,000 more viewers than its top competitor, marking a changing-of-the-guard of sorts.

The turnaround was striking when you consider that in 2004, even with no Republicans running against Bush, Fox News was still able to draw 200,000 more viewers than CNN on the night of the New Hampshire Democratic primary. Yet in 2008, with a very competitive GOP field, CNN was the ratings winner from New Hampshire.

And just look at the ratings for January 19, which featured returns from the Nevada caucus coming in during the late afternoon, and then fresh returns from the South Carolina Republican primary being posted during prime time that night. In the past, Fox News would have absolutely owned that night of coverage, as conservative news junkies flocked to their home team -- Fox News -- to see the results. But no more. CNN grabbed nearly just as many prime-time viewers for the Republican South Carolina returns as did Fox News.

The problem for Fox News is that it's the Democratic race that's creating most of the excitement, yet Fox News has been forced to mostly watch the race from the sidelines. That's because last winter, after Fox News tried to smear Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for purportedly attending a radical Muslim school as a child, liberal bloggers launched an initiative to get Democratic candidates to boycott a debate co-sponsored by Fox News and the Nevada Democratic Party. (The boycott, powered by Foxattacks.com, was later extended to any and all Fox News debates.)

The point of the online crusade was not to simply embarrass Fox News or rattle Nevada Democrats for being out of touch with the grassroots masses that distrusted and despised Fox News. The point, instead, was to begin chipping away, in a serious, consistent method, at Fox News' reputation. To spell out that Fox News was nothing more than a Republican mouthpiece and that Democrats need not engage with the News Corp. giant.

The lack of Democratic debates for Fox News has meant a huge setback for the news organization from a ratings perspective. Just look at the grand slam CNN hit last week when, on January 21, it broadcast the much-talked-about Democratic debate from South Carolina. The CNN event not only creamed Fox News in the ratings, nearly tripling its audience that night, but the debate set a new cable news mark for the most viewers ever to watch a primary debate.

In fact, of the 10 most-watched debates this election season, Fox has aired just two, compared to CNN's five. Of the 10 most-watched debates, six have featured Democrats; four Republicans.

CNN is virtually guaranteed another monster ratings win this week with a pair of high-profile debates staged in California -- the Republicans on Wednesday night and Democrats on Thursday.

No wonder CNN's so giddy these days. Here's the spin CNN president Jonathan Klein put out following its New Hampshire ratings win: "There's a freshness and exuberance to our coverage that the others just aren't matching. ... Fox almost seems downright despondent in their coverage."

So I'm not the only one who feels like Fox News coverage, especially of the Republican field, often feels like a televised wake. Or maybe that's just been Fox News' collective, subconscious mourning of the Giuliani campaign.

After all, Sean Hannity serves as Fox News' official ambassador to the Giuliani campaign; a campaign that Ailes and Fox News were hoping to ride back into the White House. Yet despite showering Giuliani with all kinds of laudatory coverage, both Hannity and Ailes have been powerless, as they've watched Giuliani's rudderless campaign go nowhere for months.

Even an all-out Fox News marketing blitz to label Giuliani "America's Mayor" never got traction. In fact, it ranked right up there with the launch of New Coke, in terms of branding success. (Watch this clip to see the Fox News absurdity up-close.)

In the meantime, the rise of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and especially Mike Huckabee, with his populist streak, has caused all sorts of consternation at Fox News. Even the conservative Weekly Standard took notice. The magazine recently wrote that "A lot of conservatives have problems with both Huckabee and McCain. Last night on Fox, for example, Sean Hannity could barely conceal his distaste for both pols."

And don't even mention Ron Paul's name to the folks at Fox News, who have stepped outside their role as journalists to try to kneecap the anti-war GOP candidate. The most blatant slap came right before the New Hampshire primary, when Fox News refused to include Paul in a televised GOP debate, despite the fact that just days earlier Paul grabbed 10 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus, nearly doubling the tally Giuliani posted.

Paul's Republican supporters became so incensed by the snub that they literally chased Sean Hannity through the New Hampshire night chanting "Fox News sucks!" and captured the scene in a homemade clip that really has to be seen to be believed. (To recap New Hampshire for Fox News: Hannity was pursued by a Republican mob, O'Reilly got into a shoving match with an Obama aide, and CNN grabbed more viewers. Now that's a week to remember!)

Oh, and we can't forget the wildly hyped launch of the Fox Business Network, which, News Corp. execs bragged, would dethrone longtime cable business news champ CNBC. Of course, that might happen one day. But the early ratings for Fox Business Network have been unbelievably weak.

After two months on the air, Fox Business Network, available in 30 million homes, was attracting, on average, just 6,300 viewers on any given weekday, according to Nielsen Media Research. That was good for a nearly invisible .05 rating. (By comparison, CNBC during that period was attracting 265,000 viewers.)

Making matters worse for Ailes was the fact that on January 22, as fears mounted about a possible global financial crisis, CNBC posted its best ratings in seven years, attracting 401,000 viewers that day.

The hurdle for Fox Business Network has always been simple: Why would investors and day traders in search of reliable business information turn from CNBC over to the Fox brand, which is so well-known for passing along one-sided information? News Corp. always assumed Fox News would help launch the business channel. But Fox News is taken seriously by so few people, it may be hurting the business launch.

After all, Fox News continues to embarrass itself with a type of journalism that nobody else in the industry would dare call professional. And for proof of that look no further than Major Garrett, who is supposed to be one of the channel's nonpartisan, serious journalists. He landed a recent scoop about how former advisers to Bill Clinton, Paul Begala and James Carville, were getting set to join Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Carville immediately shot the story down, telling Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent that very same day, "Fox was, is and will continue to be an asinine and ignorant network. I have not spoken to anyone in the Clinton campaign about this. I'm not getting back into domestic political consulting."

Begala did Carville one better and directly emailed Garrett to deny the story -- a story Garrett never bothered trying to check with Begala or Carville before it was broadcast. Garrett's response to Begala's blanket denial? Garrett told the Democratic operative that he would take his denial "under advisement." [Emphasis added.]

Garrett then went back on the air and repeated the same story, and added the fact that Begala had been on a conference call the day before with Clinton advisers, which was also false. And no, despite his earlier email exchange with Begala, Garrett never bothered to try to confirm the conference call story with him before reporting it on Fox News.

On his Fox News blog, Garrett did acknowledge the Begala email and claimed he'd be updating the fast-moving story soon -- which, he told readers, would likely be confirmed the next day when the Clinton campaign made the Begala/Carville announcement. But the next day when the story imploded, Garrett simply ignored the embarrassing gaffe.

Recounting the whole Kafka-esque charade at the Huffington Post, Begala wrote, "I've never had a more surrealistic day. If this is what one of Fox's best and most respected reporters is doing, what are the hacks up to?"

They're watching CNN capture the campaign ratings crown.

UPDATE: Fresh Nielsen numbers show Fox News' ratings woes continued over the weekend. During Saturday night's 8-10 p.m. ET coverage of the Democrats' South Carolina primary results, Fox News not only got trounced by CNN among viewers 25-54, but lost to MSNBC as well.

Fox News’ Hannity rails against Halloween

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13447.html

Fox News’ Hannity rails against Halloween, which ‘teaches kids to be liberals’
Posted November 2nd, 2007

Last week, The Onion, which is a satirical publication, ran a very amusing editorial cartoon, mocking right-wing attitudes. The cartoon asked, “Halloween: What is it teaching our kids?” It depicted a kid trick-or-treating with a bag that read, “Something for Nothing,” under the caption, “Everyone deserves hand-outs!”

Proving once again that today’s right is practically impossible to satirize, Fox News’ Sean Hannity actually made the same argument, on the air, in the hopes of labeling Halloween a “liberal holiday.”

On the October 31 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity claimed that “Halloween is a liberal holiday” and “is teaching our kids to be liberals.” Hannity explained that “we’re teaching kids to knock on other people’s doors and ask for a handout.” Co-host Alan Colmes responded by asking if that meant that Christmas is a “liberal holiday.” Colmes asserted that Halloween represents “the act of giving,” and asked: “Isn’t that a Christian thing, to give, to share with your community?” Hannity replied: “Not to teach your kids to beg for a handout.”

In all sincerity, I thought Media Matters was kidding about this, until I watched the clip. Hannity, apparently in all seriousness, said we shouldn’t teach “our children to beg for something for free.” He concluded, “You’re teaching your kids to beg for a handout.”

In the broader cultural context, I think a sea-change of sorts may be underway. The caricature of late has been that of a politically-correct, liberal intellectual going around denigrating the things “regular people” enjoy. I wonder if Hannity is helping push the pendulum in the other direction — all activities should be measured against a right-wing worldview. If they’re perceived as politically heretical, they should be dismissed.

Hannity, in other words, seems anxious to push conservatism away from the mainstream. If we’re lucky, he’ll keep it up.

Just out of curiosity, I checked out Focus on the Family’s take on Halloween, assuming that if any high-profile conservatives would hate the holiday, it’d be the Dobson crowd.

Here’s the official Focus take on Halloween:

Whereas it can be argued that Christmas is a Christian holiday with Christian origins that has suffered the effects of growing secularism, Halloween can be traced to distinctly pagan sources. It is reasonable, then, that many believers would find some aspects of its celebration disturbing. I agree with them in that regard.

The traditional emphasis upon the occult, witches, devils, death, and evil sends messages to our kids that godly parents can only regard with alarm. There is clearly no place in the Christian community for this “darker side” of Halloween.

Even here, however, there is a place for some harmless fun. Kids love to dress up and pretend. If the Halloween experience is focused on fantasy rather than the occult, I see no harm in it. Make costumes for your children that represent fun characters, such as Mickey Mouse or an elderly grandmother, and then let them go door-to-door asking for treats. This side of Halloween can be thoroughly enjoyable for the little ones.

Congratulations, Hannity, you’re to the right of Focus on the Family on a pagan holiday.