DistributorCapNY did a great public service by posting a list of the evil corporations advertising on Glenn Beck. Check it out!

Thanks to DCap for doing this.

By the way, it's important to boycott every Fox/Murdoch media outlet, entertainment or "news" because one subsidizes the other.

 

It's good to see that the pro democracy protesters in Wisconsin are too patriotic to buy the anti American propaganda pushed by the foreign propaganda network, Faux News. That network is part of a broader terrorist propaganda network controlled by the infamous Australian fascist, Rupert Murdoch.



(Hat Tip: Freak Out Nation)

Note: I had to replace the video.

 

Photo: trader_john

From a 7/17/10 post of mine on the gold bubble:

I'm sorry, but gold is not worth anywhere near $1200 per ounce.

Yet, despite a drop on Friday, gold was trading at the astronomical level of $1194. This is just plain crazy.

For decades, gold has been marketed to the gullible as a safe haven for currencies when paper (and now electronic) money fluctuate. However, if you remember the history, gold fluctuates much more wildly than currencies do.

Gold is now trading at well over $1300 per ounce.

Can you say "crazy"? I knew you could.

I'm sure if any gold bugs read this, phrases like "chicken little" will go through their heads. That's what people who wrote about the housing bubble were accused of being...until that bubble burst.

Meanwhile, Mother Jones has let us know that one of Glenn Beck's sleazy gold advertisers is in legal troubles.

Glenn Beck might, for once, be right: the government is coming for your gold. But only if you happened to buy it from one of Beck's *one-time advertisers, the Superior Gold Group. At the request of prosecutors from LA County and Santa Monica city who have filed a civil suit against the company, Los Angeles County judge has ordered that Superior Gold be placed into receivership and all of its assets—bank accounts, real estate, and presumably gold stored for customers—frozen. On Monday, a court-appointed lawyer actually physically seized control of the company, presumably to prevent further wrongdoing. The lawsuit alleged that among other things, Superior had defrauded its customers by overcharging them, fraudulently inducing them to buy overpriced collectors' coins rather than the bullion that they wanted, and taking customers' money for coins they never produced. The prosecutors hope that the lawsuit will provide restitution for all of the company's ripped off customers. The judge will hold a hearing later this month to decide whether the company's assets should remain frozen until the case goes to trial.

If the allegations made by prosecutors are accurate, then this company is overtly sleazy and dishonest. Any company that advertises with Glenn Beck has to be more than a bit disreputable.

However, we shouldn't lose site of the fact that the entire gold feeding frenzy industry is a sleazy effort to take advantage of novice investors who haven't followed historical trends on highly volatile commodities like precious metals and who really didn't grasp the dot.com or real estate bubbles either. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that gold is going to crash and big time in the near to mid term, leaving a lot of peoples' speculative frenzy empty and their futures threatened.

Evil NewsCorp CEO and Major Shareholder Rupert Murdoch

Supporting the Greedy Oily Pedophiles GOP may not be your intention, but any time you watch any of Rupert Murdoch's networks, you are helping to finance the Republican Party.

There was some controversy after Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp (the company that owns the Fox Networks and a lot of other crap) gave $1 million to the Republican Governor's Association so they can support politicians who will cut your government services. You can get a much more exhaustive list of Murdoch's personal campaign contributions at Newsmeat, the overwhelming majority of which have gone to Republican candidates and PACS.

Then, there is the de facto campaign contribution Murdoch is giving to past GOP governor and potential GOP presidential candidate Sarah Palin by using her as a contributor on Faux News, despite the fact that she has no skills or qualifications for doing any kind of analysis on anything.

Then, when you add in the constant barrage of GOP campaigning done on Faux News and the New York Post, among other Murdoch propaganda venues, you can see that patronizing Murdoch's Newscorp and supporting the GOP are completely intertwined.

Also keep in mind that the New York Post is a money losing proposition which is subsidized by the Fox Network, among other Murdoch media junk generators. The Post may be a shitty NYC tabloid, but it also has a significant readership in New Jersey and Connecticut, where former WWE CEO is trying to buy a Senate seat.

Here are some of the other programs that are part of the House of Murdoch: Cops, Family Guy, Fringe, House, Kitchen Nightmares, Master Chef, and the execrable American Idol.

Photos: World Economic Forum

fimoculous

 

Queers United recently ran a post which criticized a transphobic and homophobic episode of "Family Guy." The content of the post follows.

Family Guy's Transphobic Mother's Day Episode

Family Guy an animated television series on Fox aired an extremely transphobic episode on Mother's Day. The episode called "Quagmire's Dad" was about a big life change for his father, a recognized Navy war hero veteran. The episode is filled with homophobic and transphobic language and judgment.

It starts off with the father coming to town and Quagmire's friends commenting on how "gay" the father seemed, because he exhibited gay stereotypes including an (effeminate voice, desire to entertain, drinks Cosmo's, etc). When Quagmire confronts his dad he admits he admits he is not gay but really a woman trapped inside a man's body.

Quagmire asks for support from the Griffin's, the wife Lois offers that her husband Peter will go to the hospital for the sex change operation. Lois and Peter remark that the whole thing seems "pretty gay" but that it is "obviously weird" and Lois finishes off by telling the two men that they should "enjoy the circus" referring to the hospital visitation.

In the waiting room there is the talk of "he/she" and the "penis being chopped off" an obvious disregard of using correct pronouns and propagation of the myth that transwomen remove their penis.

When Quagmire's father transitions she takes on the name Ida and is invited over to the Griffin's for dinner. She brings a pie but Lois immediately tells her daughter to throw it away. This plays on the irrational fears of interacting with trans people. Over dinner Peter asks the inappropriate question "do you miss your penis?" and asks about the legitimacy of her "knockers".

When Ida meets the Griffin's dog, they develop a relationship. The dog (Brian) is thrilled at meeting a new and wonderful woman but gets disgusted and vomits when he finds out she is transgender.

Real issues came up during the episode which explored issues such as orientation & gender identity, coming out, surgery, and family and societal acceptance of transition. Unfortunately the show misrepresented facts about the transgender experience and instead exploited trans people for a few laughs.

Fox accepts feedback on their shows, please tell them transphobic material does not belong on the air and that they should pull the show.
askfox@fox.com

This post is typical of the faboulous queer activism that is done on the blog. What wasn't typical was the response. The post get over ten times the number of comments that usually show up on the blog. The difference was a torrent of anonymous postings defending the bigoted episode. The main talking points were that Family Guy makes fun of all sorts of groups (though the show does not make fun of people for being white, heterosexual, rich, Christian, or male) and that the blog's author should "lighten up."

It's been known for some time now that corporate PR people do post on blogs, usually failing to disclose their corporate connections. This is a rather blatant example of it, where PR people freeped a queer activist blog posting. However, it is important to be conscious of the possibility of more subtle corporate trolling, especially when a new commenter's statements don't pass the smell test.

Rupert Murdoch and his fascist media empire certainly is reprehensible, not only in its ideology, but in its tactics.

 

Photo: Mike_flemming

As you may know, the once trustworthy BBC has given a platform for the leader of the small, neo-Nazi organization in the UK, the "British National Party."

The BBC has a complaints form, and this is what I wrote:

Putting a Nazi like Nick Griffin on your network, giving him time to spew his filth, is a personal attack on American viewers of BBC America and people in my country who thought they could trust BBC as a news network.

Tens of thousands of Americans died in WWII defending the UK from Nazis like Nick Griffin. Putting him on your network is the moral equivalent of urinating on the graves of Americans who died fighting Hitler in WWII. You are such ingrates.

The BBC has lost a tremendous amount of credibility as a news network. You are becoming another Faux News.

When people don't do enough to combat fascist propaganda networks like Faux News, the once mainstream media start veering towards the nutty right wing too.

This demonstrates that the need for independent media gets stronger every day.

Update: Here's the relevant part of the BBC's canned reply email:

The BBC is obliged to treat all political parties registered with the Electoral Commission and operating within the law with due impartiality. There is evidence of electoral support after the British National Party won two seats in the European Elections so like any party in this position the BNP may appear on programmes like Question Time.

I wasn't dumb enough to fall for this. The Green Party of England and Wales got two seats in the same European Elections, yet they were excluded from the program with spokespeople from the political parties, including the BNP Nazis.

So much for "impartiality."

The BBC is lying through its teeth.

It's not uncommon for liberals and progressives to boycott a Faux News propagandist or the entire network. There's nothing wrong with doing this, but Faux News is part of a larger propaganda empire owned mostly by Australian fascist Rupert Murdoch. News Corp includes multiple cable networks, print publications, and websites. It all is part of a cohesive whole. The less overtly political parts of the conglomerate are used to subsidize the overt propaganda outlets.

Murdoch's hateful media empire is experiencing difficulties. News Corp is closing down The London Paper, a free tabloid which has lost money for a long time. This is part of broader problems in the house that hate built. Earlier this year, News Corp reported a $6.4 billion quarterly loss.

Every time you patronize any of the businesses in Murdoch's megacorporation, you are feeding the beast. Why do we finance someone who relentlessly propagandizes for extreme right causes? It is way past time for us to take our business elsewhere. I've included some of the higher profile News Corp media properties here in the US. If you are tired of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, or the relentless sleaze and hate in the New York Post, why are you helping to pay for that nonsense?

Liberals and progressives should do our part to turn News Corp into News Corpse.

All of these are wholly owned or majority owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp media empire. There are plenty of other smaller properties as well as media outlets outside of the US. In the interests of keeping the post from getting excruciatingly long, they are omitted. You can find them on Wikipedia or other websites.

Major Newspapers:

- New York Post
- Wall Street Journal
- Barron's

Movie Studios:

- 20th Century Fox (and related studios)

Websites:

- AmericanIdol.com
- AskMen
- Beliefnet
- Marketwatch
- MySpace
- Rotten Tomatoes
- Scout
- Spring Widgets


Broadcast TV Networks:

- My Network TV
- Fox Network

Cable TV Networks:

- Fox Business Network
- Fox Classics
- Fox Movie Channel
- Fox News Channel
- Fox Sports Net
- Fox Reality
- Fox College Sports
- Fox Sports International
- Fox Soccer Channel
- FX Networks.
- SPEED Channel
- FUEL TV
- Big Ten Network
- National Geographic Channels
- Real Estate TV
- BabyTV


Local FoxTV Stations (owned by News Corp):

WNYW-5 New York, WWOR-TV-9 New Jersey, KTTV-11-5 Los Angeles, KCOP-13 Los Angeles, WFLD-32 Chicago, WPWR-TV-50 Chicago, WTXF-TV-29 Philadelphia, WFXT-25 Boston, KDFW-4 Dallas, KDFI-27 Dallas, WTTG-5 Washington D.C., WDCA-20 Washington D.C., KMSP-TV-9 Minneapolis, WFTC-29 Minneapolis, WJBK-2 Detroit, WAGA-5 Atlanta, WUTB-24 Baltimore, KRIV-26 Houston, KTXH-20 Houston, WTVT-13 Tampa Bay, WRBW-65 Orlando, WOFL-35 Orlando, KSAZ-TV-10 Phoenix, KUTP-45 Phoenix, WHBQ-TV-13 Memphis, KTBC-7 Austin, WOGX-51 Ocala

 

TV and radio critic Bill Mann has an excellent Huntington Post article which exposes a largely unknown practice that explains part of why Rush Limbaugh is syndicated in so many markets.

It's because -- ready for this? -- Rush's show was, and presumably still is, given away for free to many local radio stations.

This shocker is because of a little-known practice in broadcast syndication called a "barter deal." (Barter deals were briefly mentioned in Michael Wolff's first-rate recent piece on Rush in Vanity Fair).

Here's how a barter deal works: To launch the show, Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks -- the same folks who syndicate wingnut du jour Glen Beck -- gave Limbaugh's three hours away -- that's right, no cash -- to local radio stations, mostly in medium and smaller markets, back in the early 1990's.

So, a local talk station got Rush's show for zilch. In exchange, Premiere took for itself much of the local station's available advertising time (roughly 15 minutes an hour) and packed the show with national ads it had already pre-sold.

Think Gold Bond Medicated Powder.

It's a very sweet deal for local radio station owners, explained Bill Exline a respected radio broker (he helped people buy and sell local stations). "Not only does the local station get three hours of free programming," Exline explained, "but that's one less local talk-show host on staff they need. It makes small- and medium-market radio properties more profitable and attractive by cutting down staff expenses."

When you have an massive corporation behind you, it's easy to do well. And, if you think that massive corporate support like this would go to a liberal talk show host, you haven't paid much attention to how corporate power has pushed a far right agenda. Even at MSNBC, things only seem so "liberal" because there is one token liberal, Rachel Maddow, and one token moderate, Keith Olbermann. The rest of that network is dominated by conservative and rightist anchors with low profiles in addition to Tweety, a conservative Phonycrat, and the fringe right Joe Scarborough. (BTW: what really did happen to Lori Klausutus?)

Syndicator chicanery of the variety exposed by Mann is only part of the problem. The other issue is the role of advertising. Advertisers, for the most part, are huge corporations with rightist Republicans as CEOs and major shareholders. Even worse, most privately held corporations are owned entirely by Gopper nutjobs.

A lot of liberals were disappointed by Al Franken's show on Air America. His centrist politics, including conservative pro war views were certainly out of step with most of the network's listeners. (I think that is why he avoided taking callers, which usually is a staple for talk radio.) Yet, even he had trouble getting advertising, even in markets where he was beating Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Really.

The sad reality is that centrist and liberal talkers don't just need to beat rightist nutjobs like Limbaugh in order to be more profitable. They have to obliterate the Goppers in the ratings just to keep up.

That's why we should laugh when Limbaugh claims that his success shows that his views enjoy gigantic popularity. Yes, Rush and his clones at Faux News may be benefiting from anti-Obama feelings on the right, but that cannot obscure us from seeing how the whole corporate media system is as fixed as pro wrestling.

 

I've had mixed feelings about John Edwards during this campaign. His rhetoric this time out has been refreshingly honest and surprisingly progressive. However, he ran as a conservative Democrat in 2004 and had a conservative record during his term in the Senate.

However, he has accomplished something big and admirable recently, putting a major focus on the national shame of so many veterans being homeless.



Of course, Bill O'Reilly deserves credit for unintentionally publicizing the issue by foolishly denying that there are 200,000 homeless veterans in this country. O'Reilly made a jackass of himself as usual, but the controversy he generated is making many face a problem that often has been avoided. The folks at FoxAttacks.com deserve credit for the above video publicizing the controversy, and more importantly, publicizing one of our most hideous national failure.

Robert Greenwald has posted this video plus text commentary on the Fox Attacks web site. They summed up the Faux News coverage of the "Betray Us" hearings as follows:

To laugh at the ridiculousness, to scream at the outrageous or to... Well fox went to new lows in their analysis of Petraeus' testimony last week. When our friends at Media Matters let us know that they had 7 to 1 analysts in favor of escalation, it was hard to believe, even for FOX! 22 minutes supporting the escalation and only 3 and half against it. They went to such great lengths, they even cut away to Ann Coulter when Democrats questioned Petraeus!

Faux News is hardly alone in pro-war bias. All of the corporate news broadcasts propagandize for the war on a consistent basis. The main difference is that Faux News beats you over the head with it, leaving any subtlety to its competitors.

The most repugnant aspect of the video to me is that Faux used fanatical homophobe and white-supremacist, Ann Coulter, supposedly as an analyst. (I've yet to see the Coultergeist actually analyze anything.) She claimed that people who don't want our troops to die for a bunch of crooked corporations and Christian religious extremists "hate our troops."

Of course, Coulter gave us some unintentional humor when she said that people who disagree with the war "want us to lose." The fact is that the Bush regime already has lost the Iraq war. It doesn't matter whether anyone wants the Bush regime to win or lose. The outcome already has been decided. Yet, it is taboo throughout the corporate media to actually acknowledge this fact.

Hillary Clinton's political alliance with far-right bigots is getting more disturbing as the details come out. Rupert Murdoch held a major fundraiser for Ms. Clinton and NewsCorp executives have donated over $20,000 to her campaign in this election cycle alone.

Rupert Murdoch is the founder and major shareholder in the secretive NewsCorp., an Australian media giant that owns all the Fox Networks and studios, including the viciously homophobic, sexist, and racist Faux News. That corporation owns the New York Post and a multitude of bigoted, right-wing propaganda papers around the globe. Murdoch's empire also includes cable and satellite television providers, including DirectTV.

The bigotry of Murdoch's media empire is reprehensible, as its insistence that its mouthpieces lie to the public about the news.

Ms. Clinton has a responsibility to reject Murdoch, his corporation, and the dishonesty and bigotry that they represent and promote. It is past time for her to return the dirty money and to promise to never take any more contributions from NewsCorp executives again.

Please contact her campaign and let her know she should do just that.

Faux News is in trouble for its lies on the environment form the Sierra Club, MoveOn.org, and Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films. Faux News is extremely homophobic as well.

There is a petition asking Home Depot to stop running ads on that network.

Sign the Petition

See the video from Brave New Films: