News from the Front


Glenn Beck Finally Admits During Interview with Rep. Massa: I Have Wasted Your Time

Glenn Beck, the pundit who has responded to questions about his inept fact-checking by simply claiming he is a “commentator,” not a journalist, hoped to bring Rep. Eric Massa onto his show for some hard-hitting revelations about the Obama Administration. Instead, Beck could only muster an admission from himself that holds true of much of his programming when he said, “America, I’m gonna’ shoot straight with you. I think I’ve wasted your time.”

Massa has had a host of problems attached to his resignation this past week, so it was unsurprising that Beck thought Massa would offer a juicy interview. Massa had initially discussed not seeking reelection due to health concerns, but the story quickly changed to that of him resigning in advance of the 2010 elections due to ethics complaints from a male staffer who said he felt “uncomfortable” in interactions with Massa. Massa had no intention of fighting the allegations, telling a newspaper, “I am guilty,” and opting to resign. In a radio appearance, he went on to say, “My difficulties are of my own making, period,” and that “during long car rides in the early hours of the morning and late at night and always in private, I know that my own language failed to meet the standards I set for all around me and myself.”

What really excited Beck and other conservatives came from a later part of that radio interview where Massa fairly transparently accused the Obama Administration of orchestrating the fiasco when he claimed, “I was set up for this from the very, very beginning. If you think that somehow they didn’t come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the healthcare bill, then ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what is going on in Washington, D.C.” For Beck, bringing on Massa would either mean talking to a Democrat about ethics violations that Massa clearly accepted or the possibility of gathering evidence of the administration strong-arming members of its own party, if not both.

The interview Beck actually obtained, though, would leave him whining long after it had finished about how it ruined his week. Massa did respond to allegations about groping a staffer fairly candidly. As he said, “Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday.” Talk of tickle fights proved hardly the stunning, exclusive admissions Beck the “commentator” wanted from someone who had already conceded telling a male staffer, “What I really ought to be doing is fracking you.”

Furthermore, Massa appeared to walk back some of his accusations regarding the administration trying to force his vote, or at least standing by no specifics other than one where Massa claims a nude Rahm Emanuel confronted him in a gym shower over a vote. In light of the already awkward discussions of tickling his staffers, coupled with his resignation and acceptance of personal culpability, Massa’s gym shower story is hardly new ammunition for Beck against the administration or the Democrats at large.

The FOX host’s inability to elicit a more revelatory interview from Massa — from whom Beck should have not expected a sympathetic interview since Massa previously called for the firing of FOX personalities — led to Beck’s telling admission. “I think I’ve wasted your time,” said Beck. “I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time, and I apologize for that.” Indeed, he did waste the time of his viewers, pretending to be a trustworthy source of information cloaked in the description of “commentator” to excuse his lack of any journalistic integrity and ultimately having nothing of substance to show his audience for it.

Of course, while Beck grew irritated with Massa for not going far enough in the interview, Beck himself stopped short of the full admission he should have offered not only for the show he put on that night, but for the ones he puts on every other night. It’s time for viewers to accept that Beck’s transparent anger over a paucity of evidence to support his radical theories against the administration shows just how little time he ever warrants — and choose to Turn Off FOX.

Please send in tips and success stories to turnofffox@gmail.com, look out for us on Twitter @turnofffox, and join us at BuzzFlash in the Campaign to Turn Off FOX News. And please forward this article to a friend. You can drive the message home by obtaining a Turn Off FOX Bumper Sticker. Just Click Here.

Glenn Beck’s Campaign Against Christianity: Leave If Church Teaches Social Justice

It was probably just a matter of time before Glenn Beck starting making accusations that would put him at odds with Christianity as a whole. Based on statements from his radio program and his FOX show, he has willingly endeavored to do just that.

Attempting to incite his audience into mass action, Beck decided to warn his listeners and viewers to beware churches that preach about the need for social justice. He pleaded, “I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.” To ensure that no one misinterpreted Beck’s call to action, he followed that immediately by saying, “Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

Indeed, Beck, under the guise of a concerned Christian, unconvincingly compared calls for social justice with extremists from both ends of the political spectrum and demanded people leave their churches over the topic. “Communists are on the left, and the Nazis are on the right,” said Beck. “But they both subscribe to one philosophy, and they flew one banner… But on each banner, read the words, here in America: ’social justice.’ They talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly, democracy.”

It should not surprise Beck that social justice, the term coined by Jesuit priest Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio to promote compassion and humanitarian efforts for fellow individuals, would include calls for stronger democracy. It began as an effort to help others in a practical manner, such as promotion of democracy or clothing the naked and caring for the sick. In fact, social justice has become so ingrained within the Catholic faith that it bears mentioning in the Catholic Catechism. Being raised Catholic, Beck surely understood the gravity of simultaneously conflating the Catholic Church with both Nazism and Communism. Still, he may not have recognized how wide a swathe of Christians his baseless attacks also opposed, including members of the Mormon faith he purports to agree with.

Then again, Beck’s theological aptitude led him to conclude that God would not support the right to an education. He must see no need for anyone to read the Bible or any of the books Beck so famously shills on his program; the acquired ability to read would, after all, necessitate some form of education. If Beck does not want to promote the ability to read even the book at the core of Christian faith, would that not mean he opposes the faith altogether, as well?

Beck’s crusade against humanitarianism, or “social justice” as it sometimes is called, proves how little he cares about others, even his unfortunate viewers and listeners. In his zeal to fear monger about movements of Nazis or Communists, he successfully alienated Christian churches around the world, though he claims to be a Christian himself. Perhaps it also illustrates that Beck has a better understanding of social justice than he lets on. The movement began as a worldly way for Christians to fulfill their spiritual compulsion to help others. Beck simply inverted and corrupted the equation, letting his worldly desire for infamy and money lead him to vilify any spiritual compulsion or actions intended to help anyone but him and his preconceived message.

The time has come to send a message to Beck to quit his misguided attempts at a warped theology — one that actually takes aim at Christians everywhere — and choose to Turn Off FOX.

Please send in tips and success stories to turnofffox@gmail.com, look out for us on Twitter @turnofffox, and join us at BuzzFlash in the Campaign to Turn Off FOX News. And please forward this article to a friend. You can drive the message home by obtaining a Turn Off FOX Bumper Sticker. Just Click Here.

Sarah Palin, Healthcare Hypocrite, Went to Canada for Care

With President Obama working hard to take his message of healthcare reform to the people and health insurers looking to raise rates, it appears rather telling about the larger debate that Sarah Palin, FOX contributor and one of healthcare reform’s most public opponents, has been such an overt hypocrite about the topic.

Reminiscing about her childhood, Palin recently told a group in Canada about how she and her family used to cross the border to receive healthcare in Canada. It indeed proved an “ironic” admission, as she called it, though Palin left it unclear if she realized in what way. This same woman has denigrated healthcare reform efforts in the U.S., which aspire to move the nation closer to the rankings of the far more successful Canadian system, as “downright evil.” Even now, years after she and her family reaped the benefits of Canada’s universal healthcare, Palin had the audacity to criticize that system for needing to allow a “private sector takeover” as if that model has always served her well in the past.

Palin’s story reveals more about how much of a joke she is, and not just because of her stand-up performance on Jay Leno. The interview with Leno had her actually parroting FOX’s motto in demanding “that there needs to be the fairness, the balance in there. That’s why I joined FOX.” Surprisingly, she did not appear to make that utterance in good humor, perhaps unwilling to test the audience too much. As one member of the audience and author of the Going Rouge coloring book noted, Palin’s humor appeared to fall flat and require a laugh track to make it presentable. She may have had better luck eliciting laughter if she tried her line defending her incredibly hypocritical telepalmer incident by claiming that God does it, too.

No wonder Palin so regularly denigrates the media, of which she is a member, and tries to exclude others from her events; the jokes that she makes intentionally hardly have the desired effect, but the real humor and insight into her values come from Palin’s attempts to be serious. For the adequately informed, Palin makes for an unwitting jester. Unfortunately, for a number of people willfully ignorant of Palin’s hypocrisy, the views she pretends to hold could harm the progress of the concerned citizens who would rather not have to cross the border for healthcare. They should ask for the the would-be comedian to be pulled from the stage — and choose to Turn Off FOX.

Please send in tips and success stories to turnofffox@gmail.com, look out for us on Twitter @turnofffox, and join us at BuzzFlash in the Campaign to Turn Off FOX News. And please forward this article to a friend. You can drive the message home by obtaining a Turn Off FOX Bumper Sticker. Just Click Here.

FOX’s Megyn Kelly, Poorly Masking Bias, Airs Attack on President Obama Appointee

Occasional past attempts by FOX News to deflect the criticism of bias have most famously resulted in their differentiation between opinion programming such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity with straight news programming from the rest of the network. Roger Ailes certainly hopes that the claim of differentiated programming helps to lend his network credibility, but to disabuse someone of the notion that FOX can handle unbiased coverage, viewers need look no further than the midday centerpiece to FOX’s “news” programming, Megyn Kelly.

Of the many things FOX might criticize the president for having, one would expect his faith-based council advisory board to be last on the list. Yet FOX has maintained an opposition to the appointment of Harry Knox to said board, and Kelly played her part in that narrative. She illustrated her willingness to cover the full breadth of the story by introducing the story of GOP opposition to the appointment by quoting John Boehner as calling Knox a “Catholic bashing bigot.” Then to further that notion, Kelly brought in Laura Ingraham to discuss the issue, Ingraham a commentator so far right that Bill O’Reilly called her an “ideologue.”

The closest thing to a counter to Ingraham’s attacks about Knox would presumably come from Kelly, but her strongest volleys came in the form of saying, “It isn’t a huge shock that President Obama would have a guy like this advising him,” something that comes across as just a further indictment of the President than a defense of Knox. Ingraham also asked Kelly, “Megyn, do you think he’d survive on this administration’s faith council if he said something similarly insulting about the Prophet Muhammad?” Kelly opted against deflecting the irrelevant hypothetical and rather endorsed it by smilingly responding, “That’s a good question.” Kelly continued to offer little interjection while Ingraham voiced her rage about the “great disrespect to the Holy Father” and complained about how people needed to “show some respect to the people of this country who do take their faith seriously,” an unbelievable demand coming from a woman who openly mocks the sick for political gain. Kelly and Ingraham obviously agreed, regardless of how much that meant taking a biased stand on a news story.

Kelly’s blatant bias would surprise more if not for her long history of exhibiting just that. As Jon Stewart pointed out with ample detail, Kelly and her staff only air interviews that agree with their preconceived opinion, such as those with opponents of healthcare reform. For support, Kelly cherry-picks poll numbers to illustrate an overwhelming opposition to reform, ignoring those that show majority support of reform. Then she tells viewers something like she did in October 2008 regarding Obama’s success in the polls: “Don’t trust the polls; with all due respect to our pollsters, they might not tell us anything.”

Viewers should not be fooled by the purported news and opinion programming differentiation at FOX. Most of the FOX personalities are likely to push the same conservative agenda regardless of time slot. If anything, the “news” programming occasionally aims at subtlety, but not much else. People should ignore shows like Kelly’s midday dose of unqualified conservative propaganda — and choose to Turn Off FOX.

Please send in tips and success stories to turnofffox@gmail.com, look out for us on Twitter @turnofffox, and join us at BuzzFlash in the Campaign to Turn Off FOX News. And please forward this article to a friend. You can drive the message home by obtaining a Turn Off FOX Bumper Sticker. Just Click Here.

Help “Squash Glenn Beck” Get More Facebook Fans than Real Glenn Beck

Help Squash Glenn Beck get more fans than the real Glenn Beck.

He's better looking too.

Let’s embarrass the real Glenn Beck by making his vegetable effigy more popular on Facebook.

Not only will Squash Glenn Beck be more popular, but his Facebook Page will help share information about the offenses of real Glenn Beck.

Now is the time.  Glenn Beck is weakened by lack of advertising. We need to act as one.

So please, go to the Squash Glenn Beck page, become a fan, and suggest it to your friends with the link below his picture.

We will Squash him together.

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