Fox News' Sean Hannity used to make a lot of noise about how President Barack Obama was responsible for a housing crisis that destroyed American families. All that while, through various shell companies, Hannity was cheaply buying foreclosed homes by the hundreds to profit handsomely from that selfsame crisis.
The records link Hannity to a group of shell companies that spent at least $90m on more than 870 homes in seven states over the past decade. The properties range from luxurious mansions to rentals for low-income families. Hannity is the hidden owner behind some of the shell companies and his attorney did not dispute that he owns all of them.
Dozens of the properties were bought at a discount in 2013, after banks foreclosed on their previous owners for defaulting on mortgages. Before and after then, Hannity sharply criticised Barack Obama for the US foreclosure rate. In January 2016, Hannity said there were “millions more Americans suffering under this president” partly because of foreclosures.
This news is fallout from last week's naked act of Hannitarian grotesquery in journalism: defending Trump legal advisor Michael Cohen at Fox News without disclosing that Cohen had also given him legal advice.
One of the oddities of Trump's GOP is how quickly those who resemble him in unseen ways are prevailing as its thought leaders. The griftarians on the right lack Trump's ability to hide specifics (what they do becomes more obvious in less time) but they all benefit from a new institutional conservatism that's tailored to their needs because it's tailored to his needs. Read the rest
danah boyd's SXSW Edu keynote, What Hath We Wrought? builds on her essay from 2017 about the relationship of media literacy education to the rise of conspiracy theories and the great epistemological rift in which significant numbers of people believe things that are clearly untrue, from climate denial to flat-earthing.
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After suggesting the New York Times cooked up its story about President Trump trying and failing to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Fox News anchor Sean Hannity was forced into a humiliating on-air backpedal. But then something magical happened: Hannity vanished from Twitter. Usually a vigorous, if barely-literate presence on the social media platform, Hannity's account no longer existed, and was therefore unable to receive the ridicule being heaped upon it. It was gone only for an hour, though, back up at midnight with the bizarre tweet: "Form Submission 1649 | #Hannity"
Hypothesis: Fox News (or Hannity himself) has merely created a custom Twitter app or interface and it's a bag of crap.
(Or, as one Trump supporter writes: "Make no mistake, Sean Hannity’s Twitter is down because he is extremely close to blowing up the whole deep state") Read the rest
Fox News host Neil Cavuto had a strong message for Trump last night, ending with the line, "Last time I checked, you are the president of the United States. Why don’t you act like it?”
Cavuto was fed up with Trump after this week's twitter tantrums about LaVar Ball and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Cavuto says it's not about players or senators.
"This is about you and respect shown to you. Constant praise shown to you, and gratitude bordering on groveling shown to you. As president of the The United States, doesn't that already come with the territory?"
When Fox News starts to call Trump out for what he really is (or isn't), you know things aren't looking pretty for POTUS. Read the rest
Who among us can say they have the self-control to go an hour without serving their vices? Or that their vice is not holding an ersatz cigarette in the corner of their mouth in the style of Burgess Meredith as The Penguin in the 1960s TV show Batman? Or that this is the closest to convincingly human that anyone will ever see them act on screen?
Previously: Hannity does not gargle piss. Read the rest
What hell hath Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker wrought?
The Fox News host Eric Bolling is suing social media star and Huffington Post contributor Yashar, who last week reported Bolling sent grotesque sexual messages to female colleagues some years ago. Read the rest
Fox News founder Roger Ailes was forced out of the company last year by his bosses in the Murdoch family after being exposed. He died last week at the age of 77. Then his teenage son, Zachary Ailes, honored the old man's memory by threatening his accusers at his eulogy with a quote from Tombstone.
Zachary pledged to fight to clear his father’s name after a series of sexual harassment allegations led to his ultimate ouster from Fox News.
“I want all the people who betrayed my father to know that I’m coming after them,” Zachary Ailes said during a speech at the ceremony, “and hell is coming with me.”
Hey, at least he knows where dad is. Read the rest
Vox’s Carlos Maza breaks down the ways in which Fox News spins Trump scandals and misleads millions of Americans in the process. Read the rest
Roger Ailes, the disgraced former Fox News chief and accused sexual harasser, is dead at 77. His wife, Elizabeth Ailes, released a short statement, as published by The Washington Post:
“I am profoundly sad and heartbroken to report that my husband, Roger Ailes, passed away this morning. Roger was a loving husband to me, to his son Zachary, and a loyal friend to many,”
Ailes founded the network in 1996, steering it to supremacy over cable TV rivals and providing conservative viewers with a sympathetic source of news and opinion. He was forced to leave last year amid the organization's still-roiling sexual abuse scandal, which has also claimed the jobs of his successor, Bill Shine, and star anchor Bill O'Reilly.
Update: Aaron Stewart-Ahn found a flattering photo of Ailes to remember him by. Read the rest
Donald Trump's white supremacist peanut gallery is scrambling to deny the reality of today's bombshell revelation the President shared highly classified information with Russian officials during a bizarrely timed White House visit the day after Trump fired FBI director James Comey. Read the rest
Say what you will about Sean Hannity, the beleaguered Fox News talking head. You can't say the man isn't capable of changing his point of view on highly sensitive topics like the NSA and surveillance, and national security. Read the rest
Fox News co-president Bill Shine has resigned, Rupert Murdoch told employees today in an email. Some of the sexual harassment lawsuits involving Fox News say Shine enabled Roger Ailes’s behavior. Read the rest
In a federal complaint against Fox News, former Outnumbered host Andrea Tantaros claims that after she filed a sexual harassment claim against the former CEO Roger Ailes, Fox News contracted with a psyops team to set up a "black room" to run a hate campaign that targeted her by cyberstalking her, implanting malware on her computer, and libeling her on "fake news" sites. Read the rest
What you will learn from watching Fox News:
The problem with America is that "we keep marrying other species and other ethnics. See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes . . . Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society."
Congresswoman Maxine Waters, "You saw what happened to Whitney Houston. Step away from the crack pipe."
If you are a black professor from Columbia University Bill O'Reilly will tell you that you look like a cocaine dealer.
If you are a civil right leader, Tucker Carlson will call you a hustler or a pimp.
Obama looks like a skinny, ghetto, crackhead.
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Sean Hannity, a pomaded wig perched atop a melting styrofoam head perched atop a pile of butter-soaked thrift store polo shirts, stands accused of making a "creepy" advance toward a guest on his show.
During a Friday interview with Tulsa, Oklahoma-based radio host Pat Campbell, former Fox News guest Debbie Schlussel accused Hannity of inviting her to his hotel room before and after a debate with a pro-Palestinian guest in Detroit. Schlussel said she rejected Hannity’s alleged advances and that she was never invited on his show again.
Schlussel and Hannity were scheduled to speak together at the Detroit show, Schlussel said. But before the show, Hannity allegedly invited her to an event at a nearby bookstore. The Daily Beast was not able to confirm whether the pair ever spoke at such a show.
“He had some event at a bookstore where he signed his book for people standing in line. He asked me to come meet him at this book signing,” Schlussel said on Campbell’s show. “So I met him there and it was very awkward. He had me up there with him while he signed books and I felt very weird. These people don’t know me and they didn’t come for me to sign their books. Then I left to get ready for the show, and he said, ‘Why don’t you come back with me to my hotel?’ and I said no, I have to get ready for the show.”
Hannity says she's lying and threatened her with legal action. Read the rest
To celebrate the abusive lying bastard's sacking by Fox News, let's once again enjoy this classic dance remix of his legendary meltdown from the "brown acrylic wig" era of his career.
The original:
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