Update on the Fox News Downfall

In addition to Bill O'Reilly's well deserved exit from Fox News, on Monday, the door slammed on now former co-President of Fox News, Bill Shine, amid a cluster of NEW law suits over both corporate sexism and racial discrimination.  Some of those stories include reports of black female employees being coerced into arm wrestling white female employees, for the gratification of their white male bosses.

Shein took over from sex crazed exec and office pervert (alleged) Roger Ailes, effectively the founder of Fox News.  It appears he did not do much if anything to change the toxic misogynistic and racist culture of the organization.

Further rumors that are credible say that Sean Hannity will be out by Friday, giving rise to rumors that Fox News may be on its way to a substantial decline or even a possible collapse.

We have another deplorable supporting the Fox News misogyny, Michael Reagan weighing in.
Another anti-women conservative, the son of the disastrous conservative president Ronald Reagan,
who tweeted in defense of Fake News, apparently ignoring that the dress of women on camera was dictated by the management:

"If women are going to wear low cut dresses that show cleavage don't be harassed when we men look. Or should we sue for sexual arousal?"

Apparently Reagan never got the memo or the upbringing that men and women are each of us responsible for our own feelings and reactions, and especially for unacceptable behavior.  The issue here is that unacceptable behavior, including unprofessional conduct. 

It is ironic that so many of the women of Fox News are now found on MSNBC.  Perhaps even more surprising is that there is an apparent friendship and mutual adration society that has quietly existed for a while now between Roger Ailes and MSNBC  super star Rachel Maddow.  The story goes that Ailes is a huge admirer of the work done by Maddow.  It is worth noting that as Maddow has gained experience she has surpassed the performance of Fox News, particularly in the more desirable demographics.

I found it ironic while posting the news of the departure of another figure from the right wing propaganda outlet, notorious for its factual inaccuracies and partisan malice, grotesque hypocrisy, racism and on-air sexism, that some of the more ignorant right wing trolls claimed that the worst thing that ever happened at Fox News was some slightly salty language.  They denied the findings of the law firm that Fox hired to investigate the charges against the company which found them to be true.  And credible journalism like the New York Times reported that the sexual harassment extended at times to women being intimidated into being groped, kissed against their will, and women being coerced to perform oral sex acts on executive in the Fox News offices during working hours.  The trolls were apparently a mixture of women and men on the right, among some of the most misinformed individuals I have ever encountered (based on their expressed beliefs appearing in comments), which argues well for the accuracy of Hillary Clinton that both sexism and misogyny were factors in her election defeat.

In other news supporting the contention that the radical right are members of an adult version of the Little Rascals' "He Man Women Haters Club" has been the news that Rep. Fisher in New Hampshire was one of the originators of a particularly toxic and noxious sub reddit, a type of forum / website, in which he makes the observation

..on The Red Pill made by one of Fisher’s alleged usernames in 2008 reads, “rape isn’t an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot. I think he’d say it’s quite good, really.”

...The Red Pill frequently normalizes rape, diminishes female intelligence and discusses the best ways to pick up women, including “negging,” a tactic in which men say backhanded compliments to women in order to lower their confidence and make them more open to sexual advances.

This is conservatism in the 21st Century.  Those who do not share these deplorable and repugnant views in how they conduct themselves are however far too willing to include in their party and their politics those who do act and think like this in devaluing and demeaning women.  This is the GOP that accepted TRump as a candidate and support him in his presidency.  This thinking is where the racist and the sexism in policy originates on the right.  And the Evangelical Right is smack in the middle of it, as are the far right white supremacists and other people Hillary Clinton correctly identified  as deplorables.  Just as Racism drove right wing hatred of Obama for being bi-racial, this misogyny drove the hatred of Hillary Clinton.  Neither was rational or objective. No one repudiates it on the right, no one drives out these people on the right.

Fox News and Republican candidates and Conservative polices all normalize the view of women as lesser, not equal.  This is true in opposing equal pay for women as much as in treating women as sexual objects or second class citizens without the same rights and true equality.  The right is attempting to make misogyny socially acceptable and to make other hate such as racism, religious intolerance, and hate and fear for the LGBT acceptable.  The opposition to so-called "political correctness" is just one facet of this effort to undermine women in society.

And in other news another Right Wing Extremist, a be able to have an abortion as the result of either.

From CBS News:

Mourdock, a Tea Party-backed candidate who beat longtime moderate Senator Richard Lugar in the state's Republican nominating contest earlier this year, expressed his view that "life begins at conception" and that he would only allow abortions in circumstances in which the mother's life was in danger.

...Republican candidate Richard Mourdock suggested that pregnancies resulting from rape are "something that God intended to happen,"

His assertion, lacking internal logic, that nothing happens without the will of God would then presumably extend as well to murder or crimes against humanity.  Because nothing can happen without God's will making it so -- which should include abortion, giving the majority of conceptions do not implant or otherwise naturally terminate, so.......approved by God. This is the same mindset that gives rapists custody of their children conceived from criminal acts, and the same mindset in other parts of the world that see no crime in rape, if the victim subsequently marries the rapist, because then "all good".

I have to wonder if Murdock were raped, but did not get pregnant, if he would still find that an Act consistent with the approval of God? I'm betting absent the accident of pregnancy he would not.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Mythbusting right wing revisionist history

The conservatives in the United States have a problem.  That problem is that they are consistently on the wrong side of the arc of history.

So they make up their own fake history, on such a large scale that it becomes an alternate delusional, ideological reality.  In that regard, conservatism is a form of mental illness, of a break with reality.

Gen. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State under Dubya, called out the GOP for racism.  At the same time we see the same old same old lies from the right trying to claim credit for and solidarity with the accomplishments of King and the other civil rights activists of the day. 

At the same time they try to distance themselves from the conservative violence, the conservative opposition (BOTH Republican and Democractic) to civil rights legislation, and the attempts to disrespect the legacy of King after his assassination -- by a conservative.

Here's the problem with the right wing scenario:  It is not true, not even a little bit.

The civil rights legislation of the 60's was first proposed by liberal democrats, notably our own 'happy warrior', Senator - then-Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who promoted civil rights for minority Americans as far back as the 1948 Democratic convention when he wrote a civil rights plank for the party, passed over the votes of conservative Democrats (mostly from the deep south).

Liberal Democrats wrote the civil rights legislation and the voting rights legislation, notably with considerable input from Hubert Humphrey.  It was passed by a majority of Democratic members of Congress, with support from liberal members on the Republican side.


If you look at the list of those who voted against that landmark legislation, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE VOTES CAME FROM A CONSERVATIVE.

In the later 60's through the 70's and 80's, the great switcheroo took place, with conservative Democrats, both voters and pols, changing sides to align with Republicans.  Liberal Republicans began their migration to the Democratic side.

WHY does this matter now?

Here's why, via ThinkProgress:

On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Colin Powell condemned the GOP’s “dark vein of intolerance” and the party’s repeated use of racial code words to oppose President Obama and rally white conservative voters.
Without mentioning names, Powell singled out former Mitt Romney surrogate and New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu for calling Obama “lazy” and Sarah Palin, who, Powell charged, used slavery-era terms to describe Obama:

POWELL: There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that that they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that?
When I see a former governor say that the President is “shuckin’ and jivin’,” that’s racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow. He was tired. He didn’t do well. He said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with that. The birther, the whole birther movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?

And here's also why, via Salon:

The right’s grossest race lie: Delusional conservatives and the truth about MLK
Post-Ferguson and Staten Island, the right's again claiming MLK would be on their side. Let's put the lie to rest
Paul Rosenberg

The right's grossest race lie: Delusional conservatives and the truth about MLKBill O'Reilly, Martin Luther King, Jr., Sean Hannity (Credit: AP/Horace Cort/Fox News)

“It didn’t cost the nation one penny to integrate lunch counters. It didn’t cost the nation one penny to guarantee the right to vote. But now we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without thenation spending billions of dollars and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King, speech while organizing the Poor People’s Movement [From Citizen King.]
Conservatives have a decades-long history of deeply divided views on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On the one hand, there’s the traditional “most dangerous Negro in America” (per J. Edgar Hoover) view that dominated their thinking while King was alive, and even up to the time his birthday was made into a national holiday.
On the other, there’s a long-standing attempt to kidnap King ideologically and reinvent him as one of their own. This effort often revolves around the only line most conservatives seem to know King spoke—something about “the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”
By ripping that line out of context, imbuing it  with their own odious character narratives, and ignoring virtually everything else King said or did in his life—much less what conservatives at the time said about him—they have invented a fantasy figure, closer to Santa Claus than to the real Martin Luther King. And that Santa figure exists for one purpose: to make them feel good about themselves—I mean really good about themselves—when the real Martin Luther King would fill them with shame and humiliation, if not outright self-disgust.
The conservative kidnapping of King is a perverse example of mythos—meaning making—as opposed to logos—empirical knowledge about the real world, which helps to explain why no amount of facts to the contrary will stop conservatives from indulging in it. But we can certainly make it difficult for them to spread this calumny without being met with waves of richly deserved ridicule whenever they repeat it.

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