Clayton Morris -- a former host of Fox & Friends -- was part owner of Oceanpointe, a company that sold turnkey landlord services in Indianapolis to investors who could send Oceanpointe money, which the company would invest in properties that they would repair and rent out. Read the rest
**UPDATE** Joel Rubin has said the cut was legit.
It was a legitimate commercial break. They had me on again after the break. https://t.co/2jjoVsELld
— Joel Rubin (@JoelMartinRubin) April 28, 2019
Fox News abruptly cut off former assistant secretary of state Joel Rubin for explaining that Trumpism led to today's shootings in Poway.
I was watching Fox coverage of the synagogue shooting in Poway.Former assistant secretary of state Joel Rubin was making a point.Joel, Joel, Joel the announcer said.Then the control room took the commercial for the Salonpas pain relief patch.This is what I saw: pic.twitter.com/ztFsxA7esh
— Glenn Kubish (@Kub64) April 27, 2019
Building on her excellent work in 2017's Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer takes to The New Yorker with a deeply researched, lively and alarming 12,000-word longread on the radical shifts at Fox News that have taken place since the Trump election, as #MeToo has claimed the organization's senior leaders, leaving it rudderless and under the nominal command of an ailing Rupert Murdoch, whose main management contributions have consisted of purging the minor dissenting voices at Fox, leaving behind a kind of Hannity-and-Co version of Lord of the Flies. Read the rest
Fox has been ordered to pay $179m to profit participants on the longrunning TV show Bones; the judgment includes $128m in punitive damages because the aribitrator that heard the case found that Fox had concealed the show's true earnings and its execs had lied under oath to keep the profit participants from getting their share of the take. Read the rest
In the 1950s, Soviet zoologist Dmitry Belyayev began selectively breeding wild foxes based on how friendly they were. The result is a semi-domesticated red fox, five of which now live in California. Read the rest
Non-disclosure agreements were designed to protect trade-secrets, but they've morphed into a system for covering up misdeeds, silencing whistleblowers, and suborning perjury -- often at taxpayer expense. Read the rest
Fred Rogers is the subject of a documentary and a biopic starring Tom Hanks, both out later this year. Though most Americans assume he's a national treasure, he's widely loathed by conservatives who center him in their myth of "participation trophy" culture.
I remember one columnist describing him as a saccharine man whose job was to help the education industry tell stupid children they were special—one of the more enduring impressions I got of American conservatives after moving here in the 2000s. (Another: turning on the radio to hear someone muttering, barely in control of his rage, about how much be hates bisexuals, intoning the word "hate" over and over. At first I thought it was a theatrical performance, a character in a radio play, but it turned out to be The Michael Reagan Show.)
Anyway, here's Fox and Friends complaining that young people are entitled and useless because Fred Rogers stressed the importance of love and its absense in their lives. The veneer of mirth makes it seem ironic, humorous even, but even that has a stone-cold purpose, as explained here by a less moderate right-winger, Andrew Anglin:
While the world was agog at the news that President Trump had leaked sensitive, classified information to a Russian diplomat, the rightosphere was going bonkers over an old, dumb conspiracy theory that Seth Rich, a young DNC staffer who was murdered in DC, had been assassinated in retaliation for leaking DNC emails to Wikileaks. Read the rest
Former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, kicked out last month over sexual harassment charges, has been advising GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump, as the self-described billionaire candidate prepares for the fall presidential debates. Read the rest
Peter Serafinowicz does another hilariously femme Donald Trump dub. Remember, these are always Trump's own words. Read the rest
Content warning: sexual assault. 20th Century Fox put out a brief today that Roger Ailes has resigned as CEO of Fox News Channel. Ailes departs the conservative television news empire after multiple women accused him of sexual assault.
Twenty-First Century Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch will take over as chairman and acting CEO of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network until a suitably demonic, bulldog-jowled, elderly white male replacement with testicles that look like hamburger meat can be found. Read the rest
For days, Fox insiders have been leaking that boss Roger Ailes is out, then Fox promptly denies it. The Daily Beast says that it briefly got Fox to "confirm Drudge's report"—that's he's getting $40m to piss off—but Fox called back to walk it back. Soon! Sooooon! Read the rest
There's something different about Fox News's coverage of Alton Sterling, killed by Baton Rouge cops who held him down and shot him in the back.
Can't quite put my finger on it. Read the rest
Like many right-wing commentators, Sean Hannity likes to invoke conservative legends such as William Buckley. But he doesn't actually know much about them, as demonstrated by this exchange on Twitter:
Listen you shill.Stop disingenuously invoking William F. Buckley to defend Donald Trump, or I'll sock you in your g https://t.co/T0pvuPwlZC
— John Tabin (@johntabin) April 1, 2016
A threat asshole? https://t.co/J7nerCgDls
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 1, 2016
The "sock" line is, of course, Buckley's own. Here he is promising to plaster Gore Vidal after the latter mocked him as a "crypto-nazi":
"Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered," said Buckley.
Hannity's a bit like Trump, in this respect: strangely, blithely ignorant of conservatism except as abstraction and ideal. Buckley, here, becomes a prop for Hannity's own dumb and joyless narcissism; far too boring to have ever been enjoyed alone.
Also, someone should introduce Hannity to punctuation.
Don't sign your tweets. https://t.co/tuAx47sbFH
— Big Sexy Jeb! Lund (@Mobute) April 1, 2016
The National Geographic magazine has been a nonprofit publication since inception in 1888, but that ends today. The long-running American publication becomes very much for-profit under a $725 million dollar deal announced today with 21st Century Fox, the entertainment company controlled by the family of Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch is a notorious climate change denier, and his family's Fox media empire is the world's primary source of global warming misinformation. Which would be no big deal here, I guess, were it not for the fact that the National Geographic Society's mission includes giving grants to scientists. Read the rest
The $750m deal places the legendary nonprofit under 21st Century Fox's control.
Read the restThe first edition of National Geographic was published in 1888, the same year that the National Geographic Society was founded. An note in the first issue said the publication would help spread the research of others, “so that we may all know more of the world upon which we live.”
But things have changed since 1888, and the Society said Wednesday that selling its publications to 21st Century Fox, which has partnered with the non-profit in owning and operating its television channels for almost 20 years, was the best bet for survival in the modern media market.
In his new book Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires, NPR's David Folkenflik details how Fox News employees maintain dozens (and, in at least one case, over 100) different message-board accounts that they use to flood the comments of blogs that criticize Fox. Read the rest
