Al Sharpton Uses Radio Show To Fight Back Against WSJ Piece
THE SELL-OUT
Sharpton Defensive Over Allegations He's Too Cozy With Obama
For many Americans, the controversy must seem puzzling: a public flap over Al Sharpton's increasingly-visible role as Defender-in-Chief of Barack Obama. Weren't they always close?
Most likely, the answer is yes, but Obama campaigned as a mainstream figure who supposedly wasn't taking orders from Jesse Jackson, Sharpton and other inflammatory, polarizing individuals. Until African-American callers began to use the Reverend's program to air grievances with the president, little attention was paid to this downplayed relationship.
So whose side is Sharpton taking, that of Washington's elite establishment, or street-level activists elsewhere who've long formed the backbone of his political support base?
Here's Sharpton's defensive on-air response to the Journal piece:
SHARPTON (12:57): I woke up this morning, the Wall Street Journal has a front page story about me and the President saying I’m his new friend, that I’ve been defending him against some attacks from some blacks and I thought it was interesting.
I have said that we need to solve our problems and not expect the President to advocate to himself for us. We’ve got to do that, which we have done with our meetings with him and the Congressional Black Caucus and all.
And it’s interesting to me that some people don’t understand that to try and make the President do certain things will only benefit the right wing who wants to get the President and us.
Clearly, Sharpton's learning the hard way that one can't have it both ways: accepting a new role as elitist insider with special White House access means leaving past allies behind.
The bigger question: did Al sell out his friends further back than anyone might believe in exchange for upward mobility in Washington? Finally, will supporters buy his defense, or has the brand been tarnished?
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Rosie Prefers Taxpayer-Funded Abortion As Cheaper Alternative To Living
ROSIE THE EXTERMINATOR
Why Let Children Live When Disposal Is Cheaper?
Who knew Rosie O'Donnell was so concerned about public spending?
During her satellite libtalk program yesterday, O'Donnell made clear why taxpayer-funded abortions are necessary (as part of the ObamaCare bill): to avoid wasting money on "half a million" children in foster care, all apparently "unwanted".
Here's a partial transcript and clip with more context:
JANETTE BARBER (executive producer) (sarcastically) (1:44:29): Church and state has really, really been separated.
O'DONNELL: So sad, and it's so scary, but we can pay for all of the unwanted kids and the half-million of them in foster care.
I'm for a woman's right to choose. I'm not so sure that I would be able to choose that, but I'm for a woman's right to choose.
BARBER: That's what it's about. It's not about making anybody do something that they don't feel is morally right for them. It's about choice.
To really capture the soulless, callous and cold-hearted nature of O'Donnell's comments, try listening to her words several times. Only at that point does Rosie's cruelty truly become clear.
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Talk about a stubborn mule: three years after her televised 9-11 conspiracy theories misled the public, Rosie O'Donnell is at it again. Without the benefit of The View to espouse her thoroughly-debunked nonsense, Rosie is taking up an increasing amount of radio airtime on her satellite program to push the agenda.
O'DONNELL (54:19) (after Barbara Walters has described Ventura's claim that 9/11 was an inside job as 'a terrible accusation'): Is that such a terrible accusation? I don't know.
JANETTE BARBER (executive producer): You have to look at the truth! Remember that guy [Richard] Clarke? He wrote [that] in January [2001], before 9/11 they were talking about war in Iraq.
O'DONNELL: There was a whole lot of meetings where people said there needed to be a Pearl Harbor-like incident to rally the support of the Americans. Those are facts you can look up.
BARBER (56:39): It's perfectly patriotic to say, 'I think our government is a liar. I think our government did it [i.e., 9/11]. We are supposed to own our government.
O'DONNELL: What I think I'm trying to put out is [that] you're allowed to say [that] the official story defies the laws of physics.
We're also allowed to say that O'Donnell knows a lot less about physics than the folks at Popular Mechanics. Stop beating a dead horse, Rosie.
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Rush Limbaugh Propels Forgotten Composer To Number One In Music
THERE'S WALDO!
Dead Since 1977, Argentine Composer Rockets Up The Charts
As a long-forgotten Argentine composer rocketed up today's music charts, the power of talk radio was once again underscored.
All it took was the airing of a brief selection during Rush Limbaugh's radio program yesterday (and a subsequent mention today) to propel Waldo de los Rios into first place at Amazon, ahead of new releases by Jimi Hendrix and Sade.
Previously, de los Rios works were ranked 130,000 or lower and most titles aren't even in print, forcing his label to "rush" a fresh pressing for the sake of Limbaugh listeners.
De los Rios took his own life in 1977 and his work has attracted little attention since, but retains a cult following. He's best remembered for fusing together classics and pop music, soundtracks and some film work.
Reacting to the sales surge (Serie de Oro, a 2003 re-release of his work, did not reach number one until after today's program), Limbaugh himself expressed amazement:
RUSH: You know, this really is amazing. I very seldom am impressed by anything I do. I've become used to it. But this, this that's happened here with Waldo de los Rios at Amazon is mind-boggling. Now, listen to this been played Waldo de los Rios, Mozart Symphony 40 G minor yesterday, right after the third hour of the program began. I played it because people asked me what I was playing the air violin to here on the Dittocam.
So yesterday at the time we played Waldo de los Rios on Amazon, the CD that we played the song from ranked in 136,000th place. At the moment, Waldo de los Rios is in 31st place. He is up 439,000%. With that song being played one time yesterday, mentioned by me one time on this program. In addition to that, Waldo de los Rios is now number one on Amazon in the Classical Music Imports Latin Music category. After playing the song one time through the flamethrower setting of our Aphex MK-2020, hot dog compressor. I mean, up 486,000%. Stunning! And they sit there and they talk about Oprah.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Folks, this is incredible here what's happening with Waldo de los Rios. Yesterday I played Mozart symphony 40 G minor one time. Yesterday the CD containing the tune at Amazon was in 136,705th place. Twenty minutes ago it was in 31st place. Right now it's at 19th place. It is up 719,400%.
Now, you gotta figure here, Waldo de los Rios passed away to the great conductor's pit in 1977. He's gotta have family. His record company, "What the hell is happening here?" And, in fact, there are three Waldo de los Rios CDs that are number one, two, and three at Amazon's Movers & Shakers in music, all categories, after playing that tune one time. And now people that didn't hear it yesterday: "Well, what is it?" Pot it up, Brian. I got it playing behind me right now, here's a little sample of it. We're going to play it out of my computer from iTunes so let 'er rip. Right at the top here, from the beginning -- no, it's the end. The end sounds like the beginning. Hear that compression, suck up that beginning.
Consider this another reminder of the power of talk radio's audience. When sales departments claim they can't sell controversial programming because of advertiser fears, it's simply an excuse for poor performance. A devoted listenership supports its favorite hosts financially.
This also obliterates the assertions of a Boston station that recently lost the rights to Limbaugh's program, only to claim in the press it was their own idea to "cancel" him. That outlet was built around its airing of Rush and will struggle to survive without him.
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Saving Beck so far is the unwillingness of many key conservatives to condemn Beck for fear of a backlash from his fans. Will that pattern soon end? Yesterday's debacle certainly opened the door.
Just as important is whether our state-run media friends who've spent so much time creating the image of Beck as conservative ringleader will now work to bring him down and hope for accompanying damage to the movement.
Massa had come on Fox to out-Beck Glenn Beck. Armed with the very same weapons — a deep sense of victimhood, outrage at the powers that be and remarkable personal candor — the Representative delivered a dizzying confessional. He admitted to sexless groping and tickling of his staff, sending inappropriate text messages and otherwise failing to behave like a Congressman should, all as he made his case that his fellow Democrats had really gone after him because of his previous no vote on health care reform. "I can't fight this. I can't fight cancer," Massa announced, in a classic stream-of-consciousness ramble. "I can't fight the White House. I can't fight the Democratic Party." (See TIME's cover story "Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?")
Beck, who is used to controlling the gravitational force of victimhood around him, kept interrupting to point out that he was a bigger target of even greater forces than Massa. "I have two unauthorized biographies coming out against me in the spring," Beck said at one point. Minutes later, Beck went even further. "Do you realize my family is at stake?" he said. "You've got a little scandal with your children in college. I've got one for all time now, because I am not going to resign. I'm not going to back down. I have come to a place where I believe at some point the system will destroy me."
But Beck could not compete with the oddity of the sympathy card Massa kept pulling. He appeared frustrated that Massa wasn't revealing any more sinister plots afoot in the nation's capital, and he got visibly annoyed when Massa tried to take some measure of responsibility for his actions and attempted to walk back some of his more heated rhetoric against White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
And to make things worse, when Massa turned from discussing his own woes to the machinations of Washington, he offered ideas that have no place in Fox News's tightly regulated framework. Massa suggested that Beck and other Americans demand "campaign finance reform" to curb the corruption on Capitol Hill. Beck, who has called such proposals a "huge mistake," put his hand over his mouth, as if he were holding back an upset stomach. Massa, who has opposed Obama's health reform because it is not liberal enough, told Beck that he should stop calling people names like "socialist" and "communist." "You can be a progressive and be a fiscal conservative," Massa then explained, as Beck lost control of his own program.
[...]
But in Massa, Beck found a sort of liberal doppelgänger, a mesmerizing train wreck of a man who was impossible to undercut in the classic fashion. To many conservative allies of Beck, it probably didn't come as too much of a surprise. In recent days, prominent Republicans like Bill Kristol had expressly warned Beck and others about coming to Massa's defense just because he was alleging dirty tricks by the Obama White House. "We shouldn't get into the business of being pro-Massa just because we are anti–health care," Kristol said on Monday on Fox. The ruling talk-radio king, Rush Limbaugh, spent much of Tuesday making clear that he would not be tied to Massa, after spending much of Monday praising Massa's revelations about Democratic Party politics. "Anybody who embraces this guy is in big trouble," Limbaugh said.
[...]
But Beck, who thrives on publicity stunts and controversy, could not resist engaging with Massa. On Tuesday morning, during his radio show, Beck compared the Democrat to both a mobster wanting to testify against John Gotti and a potential Soviet spy wanting to "cross over to our side." The conservative blogger Michelle Malkin called into the show to tell Beck he was making a mistake. "This guy deserves 60 minutes of our time, really?" Malkin asked.
Beck would not budge. But as those 60 minutes came to an end on Tuesday afternoon, the rabble-rouser seemed to recognize that he had fallen into a trap. The Beck big top has room for only one carnival barker at a time. "I think I have wasted your time," Beck said, staring into the camera at an audience he once spent weeks telling about fanciful FEMA prison camps. "I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time."
For the sake of the movement, key conservative leaders must break their silence and openly denounce Beck's distracting sideshow now before Beck is able to undercut gains in November's election.
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Libtalker Malloy Accuses 'Glenn Beck Fan' Of Pentagon Shootings
SMEAR FRONTLOADING
Lefties Master The Baseless Preemptive Attack
After years of refining their technique, lefties seem to have mastered the art of the preemptive smear. Now, political opponents are instantly to blame for virtually any tragedy that might befall the innocent, anytime and anywhere.
Although he had no connection to Bedell or the incident, lefties worked quickly to bring Glenn Beck into the mix. Sloppily, HBO's Bill Maher said he wished Beck had been killed at the Pentagon, while longtime libtalker Mike Malloy claimed the shooter was one of Glenn's fans:
MALLOY (04:01): So, a shooting at the Pentagon, uh, a Glenn Beck fan who obviously went beserk and decided to kill police officers at the, at the Pentagon and didn't succeed; at least neither officer is dead yet.
Um, and the perpetrator apparently is not dead yet either, so maybe they can, uh, when they fix him up, they can waterboard him a bit and find out what it was that Glenn Beck said that made him decide to open fire, uh, near the entrance of the Pentagon.
Jesus, God, Glenn, you better back off, seriously. You're pushing the nut cases in this country to the max. Well, that's what you're trying to do, never mind.
Of course, once the details have emerged and it becomes clear they're wrong, apologies are almost never offered. That's why frontloading smears has proven so effective: they're rarely held accountable when the truth is revealed.
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For "progressive" Democrats who can't imagine anything standing between them and endless spending opportunities, Senator Jim Bunning's lone crusade to turn the lights out on their wild party can only mean insanity on the Kentucky Republican's part.
MADDOW (00:56 in segment on Maddow MSNBC site titled "Paygo principle missing in Bunning's record"): It is not possible to report accurately on what's been a very bizarre term of events in the Senate without also explaining that Sen. Bunning has a history of bizarre behavior, behavior that's not just politically strong-willed, that's not just him having extreme opinions on issues, but rather we mean literally strange behavior.
To the point where even his hometown newspaper has at times questioned his mental fitness, saying 'Is his increasing belligerence an indication of something worse? Has [he] drifted into territory that indicates a serious health concern?'
Sure, intellectual honesty is a bit much to ask of Maddow, but why does she leave herself so easily vulnerable to such criticism?
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With his cable talk show preempted for Olympics coverage this week, MSNBC libtalker Ed Schultz is in desperate need of career attention. Does that mean we should ignore his most recent, hate-filled rant?
Not on your life, particularly as Big Ed crosses (perhaps for the first time) firmly into Mike Malloy territory, the extreme fringe of left-wing talk radio.
Just remember, Eddie, you asked for it, so no complaining if the blowback proves painful. From Wednesday's syndicated radio show:
SCHULTZ (01:59): I just want all of you to know that I get my entertainment through NewsBusters. (laughs, then in mincing voice)
How dare the Democrats make fun of Dick Cheney's heart problems and turn it into a political football. (back to normal voice, to the extent possible) I can just hear some little weasel who's writing that at NewsBusters. You're my entertainment.
Bozell, Bozell and his bozo crew. You're damn right, Dick Cheney's heart's a political football. We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him. I'm glad he didn't tip over. He is the new poster child for health care in this country.
SCHULTZ (04:38): And we want Shooter to make it. Hell, we hope he goes and shoots somebody else in the face. That was a helluva story way back when.
SCHULTZ (05:26): How come Dick Cheney's health care isn't being dropped? Do you realize that if you had five heart attacks, hell, you wouldn't get past two heart attacks and they'd dump you.
But because you're a war criminal and because you are on the take from Haliburton and you had these executive meetings in 2001 back in the, you know, the days of the rolling blackouts and executive privilege on how we're going to develop energy policy in this country, you do stuff like that, hell, you can get the best health care on the face of the earth.
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Where talk radio and politics collide: influencing the debate since 2004. From longtime host / analyst / rabble-rouser Brian Maloney, seen on FOX (including a number of O'Reilly Factor appearances), CNN, Court TV and elsewhere.
Most likely, the answer is yes, but Obama campaigned as a mainstream figure who supposedly wasn't taking orders from Jesse Jackson, Sharpton and other inflammatory, polarizing individuals. Until African-American callers began to use the Reverend's program to air grievances with the president, little attention was paid to this downplayed relationship.
Most likely, the answer is yes, but Obama campaigned as a mainstream figure who supposedly wasn't taking orders from Jesse Jackson, Sharpton and other inflammatory, polarizing individuals. Until African-American callers began to use the Reverend's program to air grievances with the president, little attention was paid to this downplayed relationship.I have said that we need to solve our problems and not expect the President to advocate to himself for us. We’ve got to do that, which we have done with our meetings with him and the Congressional Black Caucus and all.
