The Grating Communicator

October 21, 2009 6:11 pm Eastern

The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston's Playgirl spread and Carrie Prejean's breast implants.

That's understandable. But I think the administration should have picked someone other than David Axelrod to deliver the claim that Fox News is "not really news," inasmuch as Axelrod was behind the leak of scurrilous allegations in Jack Ryan's sealed divorce papers when he was running for a Senate seat against Obama. Talk about vicious personal gossip.

Now that Fox has been branded an untouchable, the teacher's-pet media are jubilant.

In Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg wrote a column saying liberals should refuse to appear on Fox News, pointedly concluding, "And no, I don't want to come on 'The O'Reilly Factor' to discuss it." Considering that Weisberg is a 107-pound weasel with a speech impediment, this is on the order of Weisberg's announcing that he's not interested in appearing in the next "Ocean's Eleven" movie with George Clooney.

The strangest thing about all the invective against Fox is that it is happening in a world that contains MSNBC. At least Fox News prime-time hosts, and many of their guests, know something about politics. MSNBC's prime-time lineup presents an array of people who sound like earnest college kids who just walked up to a Common Cause table, and the sum-total of what they know about politics is what they read in the brochures.

In the past week, both Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have rolled out the Willie Horton ad, claiming that it marked the beginning of vicious personal attacks in politics, as opposed to what it was: The most devastatingly relevant campaign commercial in all of American history.

You can always astonish college kids by telling them the true story of Willie Horton. Among the jaw-dropping facts are:

In the '80s, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a prison furlough policy had to be extended to convicted murderers, who were ineligible for parole.


Even the Massachusetts Legislature, which contained about three Republicans, realized this was insane, and quickly passed a bill excluding first-degree murderers from the weekend furlough program. But in a desperate bid for the ACLU's Brain-Dead Liberal of the Year Award, Gov. Michael Dukakis vetoed the bill.


Horton, who was later released under this program, was in prison for carving up a teenager at a gas station and then stuffing his body into a garbage can. (He had already been convicted of attempted murder in South Carolina – through no fault of his own, the victim survived.)


Even after Horton used his Dukakis-granted furlough to rape and torture a Maryland couple in their home for 12 straight hours, the Greek homunculus issued a statement reaffirming his strong support for furloughing murderers.


The Bush campaign commercial about Dukakis' furlough program never showed a picture of Horton. In fact, the actors playing "criminals" passing through a revolving door in the ad were all white.


Voters considered it relevant that a candidate for president was so beholden to the ACLU that he backed an idiotic furlough program that released first-degree murderers.
Every informed student of the 1988 campaign knows that the Bush ad didn't show Horton's picture. And yet in Keith's discussion of Bush's allegedly vile, racist use of Willie Horton, he used a phony version of the ad, doctored to include a photo of Horton.

I don't blame Keith personally for this blatant distortion: He gets all his research material from Markos Moulitsas and other left-wing bloggers, so he can't be held responsible for the content of his show. Keith's principle contribution to the program is his nightly display of self-congratulation and pompous douche-baggery.

Remember, Keith, like his MSNBC colleague Contessa Brewer, majored in "communications" in college, not a research-related field, such as political science. In his coursework, he learned such skills as: Dramatically Turning to Camera, Hysterical Self-Righteousness, Pausing Portentously and Gravely Demanding Apologies/Resignations From Various Public Figures.

Given this background, it's understandable that Keith will make errors. As viewers witnessed recently, he can't even pronounce the name of prominent American economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell. (Although he did spend three weeks at a Berlitz course in Arabic honing his pronunciation of "Abu Ghraib" to razor-sharp prissiness.)

The bloggers and Keith bring different skill sets to the game. They provide the tendentious half-truths, phony opinion polls and spurious social science, while Keith provides his booming baritone, gigantic "Guys and Dolls" suits and gift for ridiculous, fustian grandiloquence. Keith is far better equipped than, say, the pint-sized, girly-voiced, Frito Bandito-accented Markos Moulitsas to deliver the party line.

But here's the fly in the ointment: Keith has once again been victimized by left-wing blogs into thinking that the 1988 Bush ad showed Willie Horton's picture, when in fact, Horton's race was deliberately scrubbed from the ad.

Again, in fairness to Keith, he's never been a "content guy." He was a communications major. (The agriculture school Keith attended offered a degree in this field.) He lifts the material for his show from liberal blogs, overwrites it, and throws in his trademark smirking and snorts. But that's all he does because, again, he was a communications major.

2009 Ann Coulter

Guess who first used the "murderers getting prison furloughs" issue against Dukakis in the 1988 New York Democratic Primary?

Al Gore... whose ads named Horton, but didn't include his picture.

Communications majors. Hehe, when I went to school this was the easy way out. I had a buddy (a talented photographer) who despised the pretentiousness of the communications majors, and he laughed at them b/c were all artsy but couldn't handle the rigors of getting an art degree.

(10-21-2009 08:57 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Communications majors. Hehe, when I went to school this was the easy way out.

Right behind Sociology, Political Science, and General Studies.

(10-21-2009 09:00 PM)Rebel Wrote:  

(10-21-2009 08:57 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Communications majors. Hehe, when I went to school this was the easy way out.

Right behind Sociology, Political Science, and General Studies.

No, ahead of sociology.
But behind underwater basket-weaving.
Just ask Joe Namath (actually, his comment was about journalism; probably not a lot of difference).

(10-21-2009 07:58 PM)SumOfAllFears Wrote:  The Grating Communicator

October 21, 2009 6:11 pm Eastern

The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston's Playgirl spread and Carrie Prejean's breast implants.

That's understandable. But I think the administration should have picked someone other than David Axelrod to deliver the claim that Fox News is "not really news," inasmuch as Axelrod was behind the leak of scurrilous allegations in Jack Ryan's sealed divorce papers when he was running for a Senate seat against Obama. Talk about vicious personal gossip.

Now that Fox has been branded an untouchable, the teacher's-pet media are jubilant.

In Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg wrote a column saying liberals should refuse to appear on Fox News, pointedly concluding, "And no, I don't want to come on 'The O'Reilly Factor' to discuss it." Considering that Weisberg is a 107-pound weasel with a speech impediment, this is on the order of Weisberg's announcing that he's not interested in appearing in the next "Ocean's Eleven" movie with George Clooney.

The strangest thing about all the invective against Fox is that it is happening in a world that contains MSNBC. At least Fox News prime-time hosts, and many of their guests, know something about politics. MSNBC's prime-time lineup presents an array of people who sound like earnest college kids who just walked up to a Common Cause table, and the sum-total of what they know about politics is what they read in the brochures.

In the past week, both Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have rolled out the Willie Horton ad, claiming that it marked the beginning of vicious personal attacks in politics, as opposed to what it was: The most devastatingly relevant campaign commercial in all of American history.

You can always astonish college kids by telling them the true story of Willie Horton. Among the jaw-dropping facts are:

In the '80s, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a prison furlough policy had to be extended to convicted murderers, who were ineligible for parole.


Even the Massachusetts Legislature, which contained about three Republicans, realized this was insane, and quickly passed a bill excluding first-degree murderers from the weekend furlough program. But in a desperate bid for the ACLU's Brain-Dead Liberal of the Year Award, Gov. Michael Dukakis vetoed the bill.


Horton, who was later released under this program, was in prison for carving up a teenager at a gas station and then stuffing his body into a garbage can. (He had already been convicted of attempted murder in South Carolina – through no fault of his own, the victim survived.)


Even after Horton used his Dukakis-granted furlough to rape and torture a Maryland couple in their home for 12 straight hours, the Greek homunculus issued a statement reaffirming his strong support for furloughing murderers.


The Bush campaign commercial about Dukakis' furlough program never showed a picture of Horton. In fact, the actors playing "criminals" passing through a revolving door in the ad were all white.


Voters considered it relevant that a candidate for president was so beholden to the ACLU that he backed an idiotic furlough program that released first-degree murderers.
Every informed student of the 1988 campaign knows that the Bush ad didn't show Horton's picture. And yet in Keith's discussion of Bush's allegedly vile, racist use of Willie Horton, he used a phony version of the ad, doctored to include a photo of Horton.

I don't blame Keith personally for this blatant distortion: He gets all his research material from Markos Moulitsas and other left-wing bloggers, so he can't be held responsible for the content of his show. Keith's principle contribution to the program is his nightly display of self-congratulation and pompous douche-baggery.

Remember, Keith, like his MSNBC colleague Contessa Brewer, majored in "communications" in college, not a research-related field, such as political science. In his coursework, he learned such skills as: Dramatically Turning to Camera, Hysterical Self-Righteousness, Pausing Portentously and Gravely Demanding Apologies/Resignations From Various Public Figures.

Given this background, it's understandable that Keith will make errors. As viewers witnessed recently, he can't even pronounce the name of prominent American economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell. (Although he did spend three weeks at a Berlitz course in Arabic honing his pronunciation of "Abu Ghraib" to razor-sharp prissiness.)

The bloggers and Keith bring different skill sets to the game. They provide the tendentious half-truths, phony opinion polls and spurious social science, while Keith provides his booming baritone, gigantic "Guys and Dolls" suits and gift for ridiculous, fustian grandiloquence. Keith is far better equipped than, say, the pint-sized, girly-voiced, Frito Bandito-accented Markos Moulitsas to deliver the party line.

But here's the fly in the ointment: Keith has once again been victimized by left-wing blogs into thinking that the 1988 Bush ad showed Willie Horton's picture, when in fact, Horton's race was deliberately scrubbed from the ad.

Again, in fairness to Keith, he's never been a "content guy." He was a communications major. (The agriculture school Keith attended offered a degree in this field.) He lifts the material for his show from liberal blogs, overwrites it, and throws in his trademark smirking and snorts. But that's all he does because, again, he was a communications major.

2009 Ann Coulter

Man Coulter. Sorry, but I stopped reading when I read the line: "Considering that Weisberg is a 107-pound weasel with a speech impediment,". THat was uncalled for and not relevent to the comments. After reading that comment, I went to the end to read-to my surprise( ) that it was the dumb ***** wouldn't recognize the truth if it bit her on the ass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton

Here's the wiki... His picture WAS uesd in the Weekend pass commercial. Some things are disputed.

That is a different commercial. That was a PAC (the Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC)) commercial. The one Ann wrote about above was the Bush campaign commercial.

This is a nine minute compilation of Bush ads. The prison furlough ad is the first one. No Willie. As Ann correctly stated.

There are alot of stories like Horton, that would amaze College Kids and alot of adults if they knew the actual story.

Did you know Keith Olbermann has never had a Drivers License in his life? that is how in touch with the common man this clown is.

(10-22-2009 08:23 AM)GGniner Wrote:  Did you know Keith Olbermann has never had a Drivers License in his life? that is how in touch with the common man this clown is.

Without a brain, I can see how the test would be hard to pass.

(10-22-2009 08:23 AM)GGniner Wrote:  There are alot of stories like Horton, that would amaze College Kids and alot of adults if they knew the actual story.

And amazingly, when presented with the actual story of Horton, there are college kids and a lot of adults who choose to continue believing the fable.

(10-22-2009 08:23 AM)GGniner Wrote:  There are alot of stories like Horton, that would amaze College Kids and alot of adults if they knew the actual story.

Did you know Keith Olbermann has never had a Drivers License in his life? that is how in touch with the common man this clown is.

Oh, so a person has to have a drivers license to be "in touch with the common man"? What kind of idiotic thinking is that? Oh waoit, it is rightwing nutcase thinking. Well, you certainly don't need one in NY with all the cabs and mass transit.

(10-22-2009 01:17 PM)RobertN Wrote:  

(10-22-2009 08:23 AM)GGniner Wrote:  There are alot of stories like Horton, that would amaze College Kids and alot of adults if they knew the actual story.

Did you know Keith Olbermann has never had a Drivers License in his life? that is how in touch with the common man this clown is.

Oh, so a person has to have a drivers license to be "in touch with the common man"? What kind of idiotic thinking is that? Oh waoit, it is rightwing nutcase thinking. Well, you certainly don't need one in NY with all the cabs and mass transit.

With all the travel he did for ESPN, Fox Sports, etc. he must have rented a car at one time or another.

(10-22-2009 08:04 AM)Paul M Wrote:  That is a different commercial. That was a PAC (the Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC)) commercial. The one Ann wrote about above was the Bush campaign commercial.

This is a nine minute compilation of Bush ads. The prison furlough ad is the first one. No Willie. As Ann correctly stated.

Assuming that what you write is true (NSPAC commercial did have Horton's picture), then Ann is at best being cagey and purposefully deceptive and at worst has grossly distorted the record as well as wantonly mis-characterizing those that she accuses of fraud and "douche-baggery". If Horton is in the NSPAC commercial, then her accusation of fraud should be retracted. In addition, the wiki page asserts that there were three African American actors in the revolving door ad - that appears roughly correct to me looking at this video, making another one of Coulter's statements false.

Coulter could have taken the path of saying "so what about race or images - this was an effective campaign and the fact that the guy was a murderer abetted by Dukakis is much scarier than the fact that he is black" ... Instead, she seems to compulsively resort to distortion.

I remember seeing ads with Horton's picture - on the news if not during ad slots. With all of her invective, the assertion she is trying to disprove - that the Willie Horton ad was a hallmark of negative campaigning - remains basically true. That the ad may have been sponsored by a PAC and not the candidate himself is basically immaterial. IIRC, it was sometime after this campaign that the "I'm candidate X, and I approved this message" began to appear on ads.

(10-21-2009 08:17 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  Guess who first used the "murderers getting prison furloughs" issue against Dukakis in the 1988 New York Democratic Primary?

Al Gore... whose ads named Horton, but didn't include his picture.

Beat me to it. The irony is stunning.

didn't see one African-American in that ad, Wiki isn't credible anyway. Particularly on anything political

btw, negative campaigning got started a long time ago. See Jefferson/Adams

Let's not forget the Lyndon Johnson "Barry Goldwater will blow up the world" ads.

(10-22-2009 06:51 PM)Smaug Wrote:  Let's not forget the Lyndon Johnson "Barry Goldwater will blow up the world" ads.

IMO, one of the most effective Bush ads in 1988 was the video of Dukakis riding in the turret of a M1 Tank. Dukakis looked like a fish out of water.

Example #1 of how photo ops can blow up in your face. Just like Bush 43 landing on the carrier in 2003.

(10-22-2009 07:40 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  

(10-22-2009 06:51 PM)Smaug Wrote:  Let's not forget the Lyndon Johnson "Barry Goldwater will blow up the world" ads.

IMO, one of the most effective Bush ads in 1988 was the video of Dukakis riding in the turret of a M1 Tank. Dukakis looked like a fish out of water.

Example #1 of how photo ops can blow up in your face. Just like Bush 43 landing on the carrier in 2003.

Like Obama bowing to the Saudi King.