From bow-tied neocon to flannel-clad conspiracist, a once-talented writer becomes a promulgator of MAGA bilge.
Roger Ailes
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Right-Wing Media Machine Was Built to Destroy People Like Christine Blasey Ford
They’re more aroused by destroying lives than Donald Trump was by Stormy Daniels.
Posted inPolitical Animal
Channeling Rage: Trump and Fox News
Here we stand Remote control buttons In our sweaty little hands As one man We’re lining up and waiting For someone’s command… TV rules– Pretty soon you won’t be able To turn it off at all! All you fools Then it will turn you off— Your back’s against the wall! —“T.V. Age,” Joe Jackson, 1982 […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Generation Z Must Take the Media Back
It’s the only way to keep this moment–and this momentum–going. When the nationwide youth demonstrations against gun violence in the wake of the February 14 massacre in Parkland, Florida, began, I must admit that I actually had a cynical reaction: how many of these teenagers, I wondered, would abandon their social conscience twenty-five years from […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Media is the Message
I didn’t think the Fox News Channel could give us anything funnier than Laura Ingraham’s desperate attempts to garner ratings by insulting LeBron James, but the news that Fox has given another unlistenable wingnut radio host, Mark Levin, his own show—which begins tonight—is more hilarious than Redd Foxx in his prime: As previously announced, the […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
A Golden Age for Progressive Media?
30 years after the contamination of our public airwaves via the national syndication of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program–and five years after the unfortunate demise of Al Gore’s Current TV–it’s good to see some progress in the fight to ensure that the non-wingnut perspective has a solid platform in American media. Last year, the New York […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
No One’s Out to Get Al Franken
So, can we finally knock it off with suggestions that Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) was the victim of a right-wing hit job? If Franken legitimately believed that the allegations against him were either completely fictional or somewhat exaggerated, he would have immediately said so. It beggars belief that Franken, who went through legal hell in […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Deaf to the Truth, Blind to the Facts: Those Divorced from Reality Don’t Care About Michael Flynn
It’s almost as though it didn’t happen. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Michael Flynn affair is the harsh reality that a significant portion of this country simply does not care about Flynn’s acknowledged amorality and Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. They’re addicted to “news” outlets that are downplaying or denigrating the […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Fox News Drops Claim to Be Fair and Balanced
Fox News was never ‘fair and balanced,’ and they might not be ‘most watched’ for long, either.
Posted inPolitical Animal
“The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them”
About thirty years ago, the Long Island Regional Poison Control Center ran a semi-famous ad campaign encouraging children not to treat prescription medicine as candy. The spot featured blue pills singing the following: This is serious! We could make you delirious! You should have a healthy fear of us– Too much of us is dangerous! […]
