Posted 1:02 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Posts
On the Amway and Moon blogs

Posted 11:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Jason Leopold on Mark "Thor" Hearne, the Bush-Cheney operative behind the voter-ID legislation being pushed in swing states. I had previously written about Hearne's phony front group, the now-defunct American Center for Voting Rights.

UPDATE: Brad Friedman has more.

Posted 10:43 AM by Scoobie Davis

An Evening with Henry Jaglom
Last night writer/director Henry Jaglom appeared at Rocket Video in LA. He appeared with Tanna Frederick, the star of Jaglom's Hollywood Dreams. Both had some thought-provoking insights on filmmaking.

I saw Hollywood Dreams in the theater last year and recommended it. It is now available on DVD.

Posted 10:23 AM by Scoobie Davis

Brushes With Greatness
I'm not a starstruck person but one of the best things about being in LA is meeting famous people. There are many events in LA in which there is the opportunity to meet famous people (e.g., at last month's LA Times Festival of Books, I met Howard Fineman and Cathy Silvers, the daughter of Phil Silvers who is best known for her role as Jenny Piccalo on Happy Days).

Also, because a lot of famous people live and/or work in LA, it's not uncommon to see famous people in one's day-to-day life. For instance, I bumped into Fabio at the supermarket and Miguel Ferrer outside a movie theater.

Yesterday, I went to get some coffee in Santa Monica and I met and spoke with actor Stanley Herman, famous (or infamous) as "Uncle Hank," the "ass-to-ass guy" from the acclaimed film Requiem for a Dream (though the montage that included the scene Herman was in was really downbeat, here are some amusing comments about the role on an Internet forum). I spoke with him for a few minutes; he told me about working with Darren Aronofsky on Requiem and Pi. He's a really nice guy.

Posted 4:15 PM by Scoobie Davis

I've Been Busy
Sorry about the dearth of recent posting but I've been very busy. There are a few long posts I have been meaning to do. I hope to have the time to do them soon.

Posted 11:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Obama's Stock is Spiking
Check out the latest on Intrade.com:
.

Posted 11:46 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Blog
I wanted to create a website that serves as a one-stop hub for informative and critical videos about Sun Myung Moon and the Unification movement. I created this video blog for this purpose. I will add new videos soon.

Posted 10:12 AM by Scoobie Davis

McCain Getting a Pass Regarding Watergate Felon "Old Friend"
Nick Juliano has the story. I touched on this in April.

Posted 2:15 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Howard Dean on Fox News: "Shockingly biased"

Blast from the past: Dean appeared on Fox News and told Sean Hannity about Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.

Posted 5:24 PM by Scoobie Davis

Comix Stuff
1. It's Free Comic Book Day.
2. Jack Chick's anti-evolution comic tract "Moving on Up!" is out.
Sorry for the brevity but I'm busy.

Posted 10:47 AM by Scoobie Davis

Busy Busy Busy
In case you haven't seen it, check out my YouTube video.

Posted 1:23 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Robert Greenwald on Terry McAuliffe's praise of Fox News. Want to know what happens when we sing FOX's praises?:

Posted 5:32 PM by Scoobie Davis

Barack Obama and Fox News
The other day I learned that Barack Obama would be interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Senator Obama has made it a point of his campaign to reach out to people who wouldn't ordinarily vote for a Democrat. No problem, so far.

However, I am concerned that an appearance on fox News will accord legitimacy to Fox News; Fox News deserves not one iota of legitimacy. That doesn't mean that Senator Obama simultaneously marginalize Fox News and reach out to Fox News viewers. In fact, I wrote about the subject a few months ago:

. . . The idea that by marginalizing Fox News and appealing to Fox News viewers are mutually exclusive is a prime example of a false dichotomy. Let me explain by first discussing the difference between loyal and casual Fox News viewers.

The Casual Fox News Viewer Versus the Loyal Fox News Viewer
Let's forget about appealing to the loyal Fox News viewer. As a group, they voted for George W. Bush over John Kerry by 88 percent to 7 percent. They are the "30-percenters" who think that George W. Bush is doing a good job. They are hopeless.

On the other hand, there are the casual Fox News viewers. These are people who are not particularly politically informed (that's not necessarily a bad thing). They get home from work and surf the channels for interesting shows, regardless of the channel. They watch Fox, but they also watch legitimate journalistic outlets. They don't pay enough attention to know about Fox News' agenda and lack of journalistic legitimacy.

I have a friend who is typical casual Fox News viewer. I told him about Fox News and he was shocked. He had previously thought of Fox as similar to CNN or MSNBC. He was outraged and vowed to take anything he saw on Fox with a grain of salt.

Reaching out to Casual Fox News Viewers by Marginalizing Fox News
By marginalizing Fox News, we can get the word out to the casual Fox News viewer that Fox is a pro-GOP political operation masquerading as a news outlet. This will turn many casual Fox News viewers into a non-Fox News viewers--leaving Fox News with a rump viewer demographic almost entirely composed of true believers, which will further marginalize Ailes and company.

Posted 3:53 PM by Scoobie Davis

My Open Letter to the Anti-Scientology Movement
On the Moon blog.

Posted 10:56 AM by Scoobie Davis

Fox News Democrat Tammy Bruce's Racist Cartoon
As I have written, there are two kinds of Democrats that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes likes to have on Fox News: 1) The "domesticated," non-threatening type--e.g., Susan Estrich, Kirsten Powers, Alan Colmes, Morton Kondracke, and Juan Williams; and 2) The type of Democrat who has nothing nice to say about the Democratic Party. Examples are Pat Caddell, Zell Miller, and Tammy Bruce.

Tammy Bruce is especially egregious member of the second variant of the Fox News Democrat. She even uses the pejorative term "Democrat [sic] Party." As I pointed out, in Bruce's book The New American Revolution, Bruce unceremoniously lumped DNC head Howard Dean with Ward Churchill and attorney Lynne Stewart who was convicted of aiding and abetting terrorists. In the book, she gives plaudits to Roger Ailes, David Horowitz, and Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times.

Recently, on Bruce's blog, she addressed the Mexican official who was caught stealing Blackberries from White House staffers. She did the post with a Jpeg of the Frito Bandito, the former cartoon mascot for Frito Corn Chips. The Frito Bandito was an offensive cartoon stereotype who spoke broken English with a thick, exaggerated accent. Frito-Lay dropped the Bandito in 1971 after protests from Hispanic groups. The first sentence of Bruce's blog post: "Stealing our stuff and taking things that don't belong to them apparently isn't limited to Mexican illegal aliens, it's also the preferred activity of Mexican government officials. Scum."

This isn't the first time Bruce has endorsed anti-Mexican bigotry. A couple years ago, I wrote about Bruce playing the Frito Bandito theme song on her radio show and supporting the candidacy of Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist for a congressional seat (as a member of the American Independent Party) Gilchrist is considering running for president this year as a member of the far-right Constitution Party.

Posted 9:28 AM by Scoobie Davis

Poisoning Young Minds: Miami University of Ohio Honors Discredited Former Moon Operative
Read my post on the Sun Myung Moon blog.

Posted 2:15 PM by Scoobie Davis

Fox News and Terrorism
In my previous post, I quoted Clinton campaign chairman and former DNC head Terry McAuliffe's kind words for Fox News. I just found out that Fox news analyst Newt Gingrich has some kind words for Democrats:

Speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News Friday night, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the conservative pundit that "the left wing of the Democratic Party, frankly, kind of admires American terrorists."

Quick note: back in the 1980's, Gingrich's fellow Fox News analyst Cal Thomas wrote a newspaper column concerning a rash of arson fires of women's health clinics. I couldn't find the column but the gist of it was that Thomas informed people that he was pro-choice concerning that particular form of terrorism.

Posted 7:09 AM by Scoobie Davis

Last Night's Quisling Moment
Clinton campaign chairman and former DNC head Terry McAuliffe: ""You were the first ones to call it for Hillary Clinton. Fair and balanced Fox--you beat them all." Here's the video.

What a contrast McAuliffe is with current DNC head Howard Dean who here punks Sean Hannity and Foz News.

UPDATE: It didn't take long for Fox News to turn McAuliffe's plaudits into a promo:

Posted 6:51 PM by Scoobie Davis

Laughing about Scaife
(Updated below)
On Countdown yesterday, Keith Olbermann asked Hillary Clinton about her recent chumminess with Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire who funded various dirty tricks operations against the Clintons during the 1990's. Hillary laughed off the question and told the host that she believes in "redemption" (videos of Hillary laughing and Olbermann's befuddled response to the laughter are here).

For my own part, when it comes to megalomaniacal billionaires, Scaife is far less entertaining than Sun Myung Moon or Rupert Murdoch. Hillary might be amused that Scaife is financially backing the the neo-conservative think tank The Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a right-wing group that seeks to reduce the influence of mainline protestant denominations such as the United Methodist Church of which Hillary is a member. The Institute is involved in a particularly ugly lawsuit against the Methodist Church that will effectively take away funds that go to the church's efforts to feed children in developing countries. That's a little hard to laugh off.

UPDATE: It wouldn't take a cynic to suspect that the motives behind Scaife's support for Hillary is similar to Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos," an effort to cause massive infighting in the Democratic Party by buoying Hillary's quixotic campaign so that Obama will be, in Limbaugh's words, "bloodied up" for the general election. As Steve Benen noted, the endorsement of Hillary in Scaife's vanity newspaper, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, used the term "Democrat [sic] Party," a pejorative used only by wing-nuts and Fox News Democrats such as Tammy Bruce. for more on Hillary and Scaife, check out my previous post, "Notes of a Former Clinton Defender."

Posted 12:40 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Glenn Greenwald on William Kristol

Posted 3:07 PM by Scoobie Davis

Questions for George Stephanopoulos to Ask John McCain This Sunday
(Updated below)
On Sunday, John McCain will appear on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Cliff Schecter, author of the forthcoming book The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't, keenly aware of Stephanopoulos' behavior at last Tuesday's Democratic debate, has picked some really good questions for Stephanopoulos to ask McCain (Schecter's request to Stephanopoulos is very reasonable considering the advice that Stephanopoulos took for the Democratic debate).

Schecter has an impressive list of questions. Two of Schecter's questions are particularly relevant to me: Question Number Five "Doesn't your flip-flop on Jerry Falwell being an 'agent of intolerance' show your opportunistic pandering to the religious right?" and Question Number Twelve "[I]f Barack Obama must account for everyone he has ever passed within a 100 square mile radius of, then here are some associations you might want to explain, with the indicted, the white supremacists and the downright corrupt: Rick Renzi (indicted), Terry Nelson (racist ads against Harold Ford in 2006), Trent Lott (pining for a Strom presidency), The Wyly Brothers (corrupt), Bob Perry (Chief Swift Boater), Richard Quinn (white supremacist), Rev. Richard Land (homosexual hate), Ken Blackwell (Ohio election suppression), Charlie Black (lobbyist and according to John Gorenfeld's new book, Bad Moon Rising, Reverend Moon lover)."

One thought: Jerry Falwell, who mentioned in Question Number Five should also be listed in Question Number Twelve for various noxious actions such as his using the Bible to justify Jim Crow laws (Falwell's argument was that blacks were stricken with the "Curse of Ham" and thus were meant to be the servants of whites); Falwell blaming the 9/11 attacks on his fellow Americans (despite an initial apology, Falwell later stood by his original denunciation); Falwell's support of terrorism (Falwell's Moral Majority awarded a plaque to notorious Salvadorian death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson--know by friends and enemies as "Blowtorch Bob" for his favorite implement of torture); and anti-gay hate (Falwell once said that AIDS was God's way of "spanking" homosexuals).

UPDATE I: Keith Olbermann has more questions. I didn't realize that McCain has been associating with a radical like G. Gordon Liddy. I read Liddy's book Will. The man is completely deranged and is completely unrepentant about his role in the Watergate burglary. Liddy also advocated the shooting of federal law enforcement agents in the head and the crotch (Liddy later backpedaled on his statements). If the media is going to rake Barack Obama over the coals about some very tenuous associations with William Ayers, then McCain deserves scrutiny for chumming it up with the likes of Liddy:

UPDATE II: Americablog has more.

Posted 1:18 PM by Scoobie Davis

Do The Evolution, Baby
I keep seeing commercials for Ben Stein's upcoming documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. John Rennie and Steve Mirsky of The Scientific American have some concerns about the film.

In other Creationism/Evolution news, I received Chick Publication's 2008 catalog. On the cover of the catalog was the promo for a new Chick tract that will be released May 1. It an anti-evolution tract called "Moving on Up?" One of the favorite tracts with fans is the classic "Big Daddy?"

UPDATE: Two people in Singapore are facing some severe penalties for distributing the anti-Muslim Chick tract "The Little Bride," an inflammatory comic book that addresses Muhammad's nine year-old bride Aisha.

Posted 2:37 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Glenn Greenwald on narrative politics.

UPDATE: Salon.com has an excerpt of Greenwald's just-released book Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

UPDATE II: Watch Greenwald discuss the theme of his new book in the context of last week's Democratic debate.

Posted 2:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

Sign of the Times
I love to go to thrift stores. The books I find there that are just a few years old are either outdated (such as almanacs from previous years) or books that are an embarrassment (e.g., in the early 1990's, I noticed that a lot of thrift stores had copies of Ravi Batra's bestselling book from the late 1980's The Great Depression of 1990). The other day, I was in the Salvation Army and found a copy of David Frum's 2003 book The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush (the back cover has an excerpt: "George W. Bush was hardly the obvious man for the job. But by a strange fate, he turned out to be, of all unlikely things, the right man" and the paperback edition has a cover photo of Bush in his flight suit).

Posted 7:23 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Moon Blog
It's about Moon's top aide Chung Hwan Kwak

Posted 2:31 PM by Scoobie Davis

Thanks
Since I let people know about my new YouTube video on Sun Myung Moon last Wednesday, about 1000 people have viewed the video. Moon has billions of dollars of ill-gotten money to line the pockets of politicians and members of the mainstream media. Critics of the Unification movement have considerably fewer financial resources than Moon (to say the least). However, we have the truth so it's a fair fight.

You can help out by doing one of the following things:
1. E-mail the video to friends, associates, and people whom you think might be interested in the content. You can either use your email account to send people the URL of the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAAgzAL7QBw) or you can go to the video and use YouTube's "Share" function A(right below the video screen).
2. Counter the Unification Church's YouTube ratings manipulation by getting a free YouTube account and giving the video a good rating(I broke the story on the Unification Church's efforts to game the YouTube ratings system). What this does is to push this video closer to the top of a keyword search for information on the Unification Church on YouTube.
3. If you have a web site or blog, please link to it.
4. Place the URL on a bulletin board or discussion group

Thanks in advance.

Posted 9:42 AM by Scoobie Davis

Posting later today

Posted 10:25 AM by Scoobie Davis

My YouTube Video
"The World's Most Powerful Cult":

Posted 9:33 AM by Scoobie Davis

Notes of a Former Clinton Defender
Using this blog, I have had considerable success addressing many of the right-wing operatives were responsible for some particular noxious smear campaigns against Bill and Hillary Clinton during the 1990's. I challenged Matt Drudge about his libel of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. I had an on-air confrontation of Bill O'Reilly about his boss Roger Ailes' attempts to implicate the Clintons in Vince Foster's death. I confronted Rush Limbaugh about his lies about Al Gore. I turned the tables on Sean Hannity's attacks on Bill Clinton's sex life and also used Hannity's radio show to address Jerry Falwell's dirty tricks against the Clintons. I have successfully engaged in "hacktivism" against Fox News, Fox News operatives (click here, here, and here), as well as against anti-Clinton Scaife operatives, Christopher Ruddy and Joseph Farah, who were major players in what journalist Trudy Lieberman called "the Vince Foster Factory." I exposed Ann Coulter's book Slander as a literary fraud. I know all about the anti-Clinton right's mendacity and wild conspiracy theories.

During the past several years, particularly during the 2008 primary campaign, Hillary and her campaign has begun to work with many of these operatives as a part of her "kitchen sink" strategy to win the Democratic nomination:

• Hillary recently had a meeting with the editorial board of Richard Mellon Scaife's vanity paper Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. During the meeting, Hillary sat next to Scaife, the billionaire crank who bankrolled the Arkansas Project and who was a believer in the "Clinton Body Count" which posits that the Clintons are responsible for the murders of dozens of people. Scaife funded various operatives, namely Joseph Farah and Christopher Ruddy, who were propagating the various Vince Foster conspiracy theories. Also, Scaife's Tribune-Review continued to carry white supremacist Samuel Francis' column even after the Washington Times dropped it.


• Bill Clinton appeared on Rush Limbaugh's radio program right before the Ohio primary. Limbaugh has been a major Vince Foster conspiracy theorist who has spewed hate on his radio program (Limbaugh has continued to suggest that the Clintons will kill those who get in their way years after those theories were discredited). Limbaugh has a parody song on his radio show that mocked Vince Foster's death. Currently, Limbaugh is encouraging listeners to vote for Hillary in the primaries as a part of "Operation Chaos," an attempt to cause massive infighting within the Democratic Party.


• The Clinton campaign used the Drudge Report to circulate the picture of Obama in traditional Somali garb (Drudge has previously libelled former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, spread the false rumor that then-Enron CEO Ken Lay slept in the Clinton White House, spread the rumor started by Moon's Washington Times that Bill Clinton blamed 9/11 on America, and helped to popularize the Bill Clinton/Black Love Child rumor).


• The Clinton campaign has been distributing an article from the American Spectator that makes highly questionable accusations about an Obama adviser. The Spectator was subsidized by Scaife to publish the phony Troopergate story (the story led to the Paula Jones lawsuit and impeachment). Also, the Spectator libeled Anita Hill.


• Hillary and her campaign have been close to Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. Hillary has been close to Murdoch in recent years. A few days ago, Clinton campaign surrogate Ed Rendell complimented Fox on its "balanced" and "objective" reporting. Not only is Fox News a political operation, but its CEO and chairman Roger Ailes had spread conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's death and was the producer of Rush Limbaugh's television show that portrayed then-13-year-old Chelsea Clinton as the White House dog.


• Hillary recently endorsed Sun Myung Moon's Universal Peace Federation. Not only has the depraved cult leader exploited his followers financially, psychologically, and sexually, but Moon has used his ill-gotten money to engage in dirty tricks against Democratic presidential candidates.


• As I pointed out last year, Hillary had previously approached one of Sun Myung Moon's top operatives, Josette Sheeran Shiner, and cajoled Shiner to carry her syndicated column on the editorial pages of Moon's Washington Times.

Why are the Clintons and their campaign consorting with this assortment of lowlifes and paranoids? I can only speculate. One of the ironies of this is that Hillary unwittingly gives credibility to the paranoid rants by Limbaugh and company that she will do anything to gain power.

What Hillary and her people have done is unconscionable. I realize that in practical politics, it is sometimes necessary to associate with some unsavory characters but couldn't the Clinton people at least think back to what these people put Vince Foster's family through during their time of mourning?

Not only is it unconscionable but from a strategic standpoint, it's horrendous. Hillary's campaign got chummy with these right-wing operatives because they believed that they would help her win the nomination. It ain't gonna happen. Anyone who knows elementary math knows that Hillary's chances of garnering the nomination have been close to nil for the past few weeks. Hillary receives nothing by becoming chummy with people who have run roughshod over the American political process, destroyed lives, victimized people in mourning, encouraged the undermining of American elections, and debased American journalism. On the other hand, these bottom-feeders have benefited immeasurably by having a Democratic presidential campaign accord them legitimacy. The point is that any progressives who think they can work with the likes of Scaife, Ailes, Limbaugh, and Moon are kidding themselves. They are people who need to be discredited, marginalized, and defeated.

Posted 7:05 PM by Scoobie Davis

Huge Post Tomorrow

Posted 11:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

Karl Rove in Trouble?
Larisa Alexandrovna thinks so.

Posted 12:09 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Pure Love Studies Major
The scoop on the Moon blog.

Posted 9:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Sean Hannity and Hal Turner
(UPDATED BELOW)
Buzzflash interviews Max Blumenthal, the author of the 2005 article in The Nation about Hannity's relationship with violent white supremacist Hal Turner, about the recent revelations concerning their quiet but extensive ties. I have more about this in my recent post on how the media have covered stories on racial and religious bigotry in recent weeks.

What Blumenthal says about Hannity's links to Turner and the white supremacist movement is revealing. It's no wonder, as Blumenthal tells the interviewer, that Hannity doesn't want to respond to the allegations.

UPDATE: Newshounds has more.

Posted 12:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

Posting Soon
I've been busy the past few days.

Posted 11:38 AM by Scoobie Davis

Film and Video
I received a screener copy of the David Hoffman's historical documentary Sputnik Mania (view trailer here). The film mixes interviews, stock footage, and a good CGI dramatization of the orbit of the world's first artificial satellite. I recommend it.

Yesterday, I found a video I thought I lost years ago. Spike Jonze, director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, has directed music videos and commercials (e.g., Nike's famous post-apocalyptic Y2K commercial "The Morning After"--see addendum). A few years ago, I found a VHS demo tape of Jonzes' commercial work for Wrangler jeans (his Wrangler campaign was called "Amarillo by Morning"). The tape is a series of interviews of some hardcore rodeo people. Jonze interviews cowboys, former riders, rodeo groupies ("buckle bunnies"), and people who view it as a way of life. Even though the interviews were done for commercial purposes, the footage is a revealing ethnography of American rodeo people and culture. It's a shame that it's not available online.

Addendum: Spike Jonzes' "The Morning After":

Posted 7:00 PM by Scoobie Davis

Busy Busy Busy
But a link to a great video on the Moon blog.

Posted 12:10 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Washington Times and the Passport Scandal of 1992
On the Moon blog.

Posted 10:00 AM by Scoobie Davis

Racial and Religious Bigotry: An Overview of Recent Events
(UPDATED BELOW)
Sean Hannity and Hal Turner
Last night I noticed that this site received a lot of traffic because of Google searches of "Sean Hannity Hal Turner" (the Google search links to my post from this blog that has the transcipt of my radio conversation with Hannity about Republican sexual hypocrisy; at the end of the post, I have a list of Hannity links, including one to a Nation article by Max Blumenthal about Hannity's extensive relationship with violence-prone white supremacist Hal Turner titled, "Hannity's Soul-Mate of Hate").

I later found out by doing a Google Blog Search that on last night's Hannity and Colmes, Malik Shabazz, of the New Black Panther Party, was the guest because his group endorsed Barack Obama (an endorsement that Obama rejected). When Hannity brought up Jeremiah Wright's associations, Shabazz countered with accusations about Hannity's extensive ties with Turner (the video is here) Initially, Hannity--against all evidence--denied knowing who Turner was. In fact, Hannity allowed Turner to use his radio show as a medium to broadcast his hate-filled rants; Max Blumenthal and journalist David Neiwert extensively examined how Hannity helped to launch Turner's career. I also documented how Hannity was an unapologetic defender of former Senator Trent Lott's endorsement of Strom Thurmond's pro-Jim Crow Dixiecrat presidential run in 1948.

Wright Versus Parsley
People have been asking why the inflammatory racial remarks by Obama's former preacher Jeremiah Wright have received so much attention but the outrageous remarks by John McCain's "spiritual adviser" Rod Parsley have largely been ignored by the media. The quick answer: members of the sectarian right have been involved in the political game for close to 30 years and they are media savvy. Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed may be a crook but he's nobody's fool; in the 1990's, when people like Michael Lind began exposing Pat Robertson's paranoid anti-semitic conspiracies in his book The New World Order (see Addendum), Reed and others devised the strategy of accusing the critics of the sectarian right, not matter how justified their criticisms, of being the religious bigots (Reed and others used the term "Christian-basher" as a catch-all term to describe critics. It didn't matter if the critic was pointing out Jerry Falwell's support of Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson, Reed and others such as William Bennett played the religious card. It was no surprise when I confronted Sean Hannity about Falwell's fleecing of his flock and Robertson's desire to prevent the immigration of Hindus to the United States that he accused me of fomenting "hatred toward Christian conservatives." It also worked for Sun Myung Moon when he was convicted of tax fraud and conspiracy; he and his supporters made wild charges of religious and racial bigotry.

Michael Savage Tackles Racial Bigotry
Yesterday I also was going through the stations on my radio and briefly heard Michael Savage criticizing Obama for having Wright as his minister. Savage was outspoken in his opposition to racially intolerant language. A few years ago, I had the unfortunate experience of reading Savage's book, The Savage Nation. I wrote a review of the book. What struck me about Savage was that he went out of his way to make noxious and bigoted statements against blacks, Middle Easterners, Hispanics, and Koreans (click here and scroll down to "Savage Racism").

Addendum: When William F. Buckley died a few weeks ago, he was largely credited with purging the conservative movement of kooks and anti-Semites, most notably the John Birch Society, from the ranks of respectable conservatism. This is based on a selective memory of Buckley. Certainly, he did what he could to expel some cranks from the movement--especially when they were relatively small groups like the Birchers (whose membership has never been more than 100,000).

However, Buckley was expedient; he offered support if the cranks in question had large constituencies. In Michael Lind's thought-provoking book Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America, Lind notes his disillusionment with Buckley and other prominent members of the right who turned a blind eye to crackpot conspiracy theorists like Pat Robertson. Lind notes how Buckley applauded Pat Buchanan's divisive speech at the 1992 Republican convention. It was soon thereafter that Lind became familiar with the anti-semitic conspiratorial theories in Robertson's book The New World Order (the book recycled the theories of anti-semitic cranks like Nesta Webster and Eustace Mullins (who as of 2005 writes for Holocaust revisionist and publisher Willis Carto). Robertson's worldview is far more extreme and paranoid than Robert Welch and his associates in the John Birch Society. Lind wrote several influential denunciations of Robertson and the book in the early 1990's and expected that his conservative colleagues would ostracize Robertson from the conservative movement.

The reaction to the questions Lind raised was swift and unequivocal. Buckley's National Review falsely informed its readers that "the liberal establishment" had gotten Lind "to do a hit on Pat Robertson." Buckley and other prominent members of the American right defended Robertson and went as far as to denounce a report by the Anti-Defamation League that documented Robertson's anti-Semitic writings and sources.

Buckley and his National Review had also turned a blind eye to the extremist and anti-democratic agenda of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Buckley and the National Review have accorded legitimacy to Moon's Washington Times, whose editorial board has fostered neo-Confederate and white nationalist views (also here). I have noted that National Review publisher William Rusher had praised a book whitewashing Sun Myung Moon's activities.

UPDATE: Buzzflash interviews Max Blumenthal about Sean Hannity and his relationship with Hal Turner:

Posted 10:09 AM by Scoobie Davis

Obama's Speech
I thought it was good. Currently Intrade indicates that Obama gained three percentage points regarding the Democratic nomination (InTrade investors are currently giving Obama a 75 percent probability of becoming the nominee).

Posted 4:29 PM by Scoobie Davis

Media Appearance
Today I appeared on Dave Congalton's San Luis Obisbo (CA) radio show (920 KVEC) to discuss David Horowitz. More details on the HorowitzWatch blog.

Posted 1:36 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Deconstruction of a Fox News Segment
(UPDATED BELOW)
On Sunday, the Fox News show America's Election HQ had a segment on faked memoirs (the reason for the discussion was the recent discovery that author Margaret Seltzer's memoir of a South LA gang-banger was forged. Host Bret Baier interviewed James Hirsen of NewsMax about the controversy. Hirsen said that the spate of forged memoirs by Seltzer, James Frey, and Misha Defonseca were a reflection of the "moral decay" in contemporary American society. Hirsen pointed out the the journalistic hoaxes by Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair as evidence that literary and journalistic fraud are major problems.

To the casual observer, this exchange seems fairly innocuous; it isn't.

By deconstructing and analyzing this segment, it is possible to see why this segment is a microcosm of Fox News' war on journalism:
1. First things first: The name of the Fox News program is America's Election HQ. I have previously written about how Fox News and other have attempted to co-opt the "America" brand.
2. I found it highly ironic that someone from NewsMax would discuss the issue of literary and journalistic fraud. NewsMax was founded by Christopher Ruddy, a journalist whose reporting on Clinton white House counsel Vince Foster's death was so sloppy that the Murdoch-owned tabloid The New York Post fired Ruddy, an indignity that writer Michael Tomasky called "a pretty good working definition of embarrassing." Even right-wing pundit Ann Coulter characterized Ruddy's subsequent book on Foster's death The Strange Death of Vincent Foster a "conservative hoax book." As I have pointed out previously, journalistic misconduct by reporters like Blair, Glass, and Janet Cooke is innocuous compared to operatives-posing-as journalists like Ruddy whose shoddy reporting on Foster's death was a flagrant attempt to inflict damage on the Clinton administration (current Fox News CEO and chairman Roger Ailes also spread baseless rumors about Foster's death).
3. NewsMax has been the source of other journalistic hoaxes about Hillary Clinton (here and here).
4. This isn't the first time that a NewsMax operative appeared on Fox News posing as an impartial observer. I gave an example during the 2006 election season of a NewsMax operative covering for Senator George Allen.

Moral decay, indeed.

UPDATE: Media Matters has more on Baier.

UPDATE II: Not surprisingly, yesterday NewsMax posted an article on its website by Ronald Kessler that falsely claimed that Barack Obama attended a July 22, 2007 sermon at his church in Chicago in which the pastor, Jeremiah Wright made incendiary comments (Fox News analyst William Kristol cited the article for his March 17 New York Times column). As it turns out, a quick Google search would have revealed that Obama was on his way to Miami and not in Chicago. This episode is another case study of how disinformation in the fringe media is recycled in respectable journalistic outlets.

UPDATE III: Kristol acknowledged the error.

UPDATE IV:Terry Krepel of ConWebWatch has more on Kessler.

UPDATE V: More on Kessler

Posted 2:19 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Barack Obama, "On My Faith and My Church"

Posted 11:20 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must See
Robert Greenwald at his best:

Posted 9:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

Former President Bush and Sun Myung Moon's "Holy Wine" Ceremony
Yesterday, I linked to a video of Sun Myung Moon's bizarre rant at the Washington Times' 15th Anniversary dinner party in 1997 (quick note: the expressions on audience members' faces is priceless). On the Sun Myung Moon blog, I have a post with a video of Unification Church president Michael Jenkins explaining to UC members how Moon ordered his subordinates to have former president Bush unwittingly participate in the cult's "Holy Wine" ceremony.

John Gorenfeld broke the Bush/Holy Wine story in his book Bad Moon Rising.

Posted 10:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must See
John Gorenfeld has the video of Sun Myung Moon's barely coherent rant at the Washington Times' 15th Anniversary Dinner Party. Concave and convex, indeed.

Posted 10:08 AM by Scoobie Davis

Announcement
This blog is 100 % Eliot Spitzer-Free

Posted 5:14 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Posts
On HorowitzWatch and the Sun Myung Moon blog. Note: last month, I was having a little trouble with the table comparing Moon and Barack Obama. I fixed it; check it out.

Posted 3:15 PM by Scoobie Davis

Cleanup and New Blogs
Over the weekend, I did a cleanup of my links--removing dead links and blogs that haven't posted in a long time. I hadn't added any new blogs recently so I'm looking to add new links. The other day I added three blog links: Political Realm, Washington Interns Gone Bad, and Politicky Bitch

Posted 9:24 PM by Scoobie Davis

Green Day

Posted 1:31 PM by Scoobie Davis

I've Heard It All: Karl Rove on McCain's "Black Love Child
(Updated below)
I was at lunch and was flipping through the radio stations and heard Karl Rove being interviewed on Sean Hannity's radio show. It wasn't a very interesting conversation until near the end. Rove complimented John McCain and his wife Cindy for their family values (more on that later). He mentioned Cindy's "love and devotion" for the ill three month-old infant she rescued from a Bangladeshi orphanage (the McCains later adopted the child).

Let's go back to the 2000 election. Rove was behind a whisper campaign right before the South Carolina primary (right after McCain trounced George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary). Among the rumors spread by Rove and company were that Cindy McCain was a drug addict and that the Bangladeshi child they had was McCain's black "love child."

On the subject of family values, McCain is slated to speak to the shadowy dominionist group, The Council for National Policy (CNP) and receive their blessing. Dominionism seeks to replace democracy with a nation ruled by biblical law. This involves punishment (often the death penalty) meted out to pagans, incorrigible children, homosexuals, blasphemers, and many others.

Doesn't the CNP realize that when Jesus spoke about sexual sin, he only spoke out against two groups: adulterers and men who divorced their wives (Mark 10:11: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her." In case you didn't know, McCain started fooling around with Cindy while he was still married to his first wife, Carol, the woman who stood by him while he was in the Hanoi Hilton. Soon thereafter, McCain traded in Wife Number One for Cindy, a woman eighteen years his junior. Do you think the CNP agreed to the meeting so that they ambush McCain and then apply an old-fashioned biblical stoning to the adulterous miscreant? Just wondering.

UPDATE: Friday night, GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway was on Larry King Live and referred to the CNP as "cream-of-the-crop conservatives." Also, Rove made similar comments about McCain's daughter on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor.

Posted 9:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Pastor John Hagee's Right-Wing Bloggers
John Hagee is one of those people who, at least until recent years, avoided mainstream media scrutiny because he had operated in fringe circles (I only heard about Hagee in the 1990's because I watched him on the Trinity Broadcasting Network--run by Paul Crouch and his Tammy Fay wannabe wife Jan for ironic enjoyment of Hagee's bombast--see addendum; I have written about Hagee before he made the national news with the McCain endorsement--click here, here, here, and here).

When Hagee's anti-Catholicism, anti-gay hate, bigotry against Muslims, and warmongering were given widespread media exposure after McCain enthusiastically accepted Hagee's endorsement, one thing I noticed was that the right's blogosphere was uncharacteristically silent. This is in sharp contrast to when Hagee gave a speech at AIPAC a year ago. I was one of the only people to note Scott Johnson hilariously cloying response to Hagee's bellicose speech. Johnson wrote: "[Hagee's] speech had me crying." In his post on the Hagee speech, Johnson cites another right-wing blogger, Pamela Geller of the Atlas Shrugs blog. Johnson embedded a video of part of Hagee's speech on his blog and noted that Geller was the person who recorded it. She is also the person on the audio portion of the video who can be heard repeatedly shouting, "I Love you! Woo Hoo Hoo!"(below is the video in question). Also, if you go to around the 4:00 mark on the video, Hagee has a message for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "I have something to say to the president of Iran: 'Mr. Ahmadinejad, don't threaten America!" You can hear Geller shout in applause, "Yeah, baby! Woo Hoo Hoo! I love it! [in a redneck voice] Kiss my Grits![unintelligible]"



Addendum: Gone Camping Were it not for the fact that fundamentalist buffoons like Hagee, the late Jerry Falwell, and Hal Lindsey have been taken seriously by policymakers, they would be good fodder for camp enjoyment, much like crushed velvet paintings of The Last Supper found in Tijuana bazaars.

I realize that many of your reading it consider my intellectual slumming unattractive. It does seem kind of smug for me to have enjoyed Hagee's sermons for their unintentional hilarity. I acknowledge that mocking the uneducated is unseemly. But at least you know where I stand. Let me ask this: what is worse: an ironic, snarky hipster or someone with an Ivy League degree like Johnson who takes a dangerous extremist like Hagee seriously and gives him credibility.

Posted 5:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

More on Sun Myung Moon and the Bush Family
Go to the Moon blog and scroll down to the February 29th post and check out the update.

Posted 10:02 AM by Scoobie Davis

Scaife-Funded Group Is At It Again
A Scaife front group, The Center for Media and Public Affairs, which received widespread derision late last year for its "study" that found that Fox News was was fairer and more balanced in its news coverage that the major networks, has a new study that found, not surprisingly, that favorable coverage by the major network evening news programs for John McCain has declined drastically since January. This was noted on fox News by Brit Hume on his 3/4 "Grapevine" report. Hume did not disclose that S. Robert Lichter, the president of CMPA, is a paid consultant for Fox News.

Posted 8:31 PM by Scoobie Davis

What I've Been Reading
I just got a call from the bookstore telling that they recieved my copy of John Gorenfeld's new book Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom. I look forward to reading it.

I have recently read two very good books:

The first book is Jacob Weisberg's new book The Bush Tragedy. A couple weeks ago, I attended a book party for the book at Arianna's house (no, I didn't crash the party; I was invited). I got a chance to chat with Weisberg for a couple minutes. When I finally got the chance to read the book, I was shocked. I always knew the Bush clan was dysfunctional but they are giving the Moons a run for their money. George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst president; if you want to know why, read Weisberg's book.


I was saddened when Will Eisner died a couple years ago. His last major work was The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In graphic detail, The Plot tells the story of the creation of one of the biggest literary hoaxes in human history, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As in Eisner's other works, The Plot show that Eisner is a master of both form and content, giving life to a subject that is not particularly amenable to sequential art.

Posted 2:42