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Wednesday, June 18, 2003 |
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The men that American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth"
- - H. L. Mencken
JUNE 18th IN HISTORY:
1934 -- Indian Reorganization Act passed against virtually unanimous opposition of Native Americans, who felt they've already been reorganized enough.
1952 -- US Government denounces Soviet suggestion that it ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocol against bacteriological warfare.
RHINO HERE:
Today, RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE is an interview with political satirist and author (Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot), Al Franken. The piece covers his new book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right", the B.S. about the liberal media, and his thoughts on his recent sparing with Bill O'Reilly .
This Thursday, (6/19) the Senate Commerce Committee plans a vote on whether or not to send a bill to Congress designed to rescind important parts of the June 2nd FCC decision which will relax the few regulations concerning media ownership rules still on the books. Several web based organizations are providing quick and easy ways to click and send messages to your representatives urging them to do everything they can to overturn the decision. Here are the links:
True Majority
Members of Congress are now considering ways to overturn the FCC's decision. The Senate is moving first with a meeting of the Commerce Committee on June 19 to discuss the problem. We need to encourage every member of the Senate to tell members of the committee to put out a strong bill to overturn the FCC's vote. Tell your Senators to overturn the FCC's bad decision. GO TO:
Tell Your Senators
The Nation Magazine's FCC Action Alert:
http://capwiz.com/thenation/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=2596431
And check out a new website, co-founded by Nation regulars John Nichols and Robert McChesney, for extensive background on media reform, talking points, action alerts, a media activist calendar and a voluminous set of links.
The Media Reform Network:
http://www.mediareform.net/
Speaking of liars, here are a sampling of recent articles on House majority leader Tom Delay.
It's Time for America to Stand Up to Tom DeLay
Paul Krugman writes, "Last year I tried to illustrate just how far to the right America's ruling party has moved by quoting some of Representative Tom DeLay's past remarks. I got some puzzling responses. 'Who cares what some crazy guy in Congress says?' wrote one liberal economist, chiding me for being alarmist. Some crazy guy? Public images are funny things. Newt Gingrich became a famous symbol of Republican radicalism. By contrast, most people know little about Mr. DeLay, the House majority leader. Yet Mr. DeLay is more radical - and more powerful - than Mr. Gingrich ever was. Maybe Mr. DeLay's public profile will be raised by his success yesterday in sabotaging tax credits for 12 million children... Many of those who minimize the threat the radical right now poses to America as we know it would hate to live in the country Mr. DeLay wants to create. Yet by playing down the seriousness of the challenge, they help bring his vision closer to reality."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/13/opinion/13KRUG.html
Conyers Wants Probe of Westar Donations to DeLay and other Republicans
"The ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee asked the attorney general Friday to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate campaign donations to Republicans by a utility seeking a legislative exemption that could have saved the company billions of dollars. In a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan said only a special counsel from outside the Justice Department, 'with no ties to the Republican Party or the Bush administration,' can ensure a fair and impartial investigation. Internal Westar Energy documents raised the question whether there was an exchange of campaign contributions for legislative favors to help Westar, a Topeka, Kan., energy conglomerate."
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-brf-utility-donations,0,6145946.story
Tom DeLay's Shakedown of Westar is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
"Rep. DeLay's office has insisted that there was no quid pro quo between Westar's donations and the exemption. 'When people contribute to Delay or causes he supports, they are supporting his agenda, we are not supporting theirs,' a spokesman insists... 'We have no control over any fantasies they might have about what they might get for a campaign contribution.' Hmmm. Let's see. America's businessmen are the smartest in the world, DeLay no doubt believes, but they're dupes when it comes to investing $56,500 of their hard-earned dollars on some leading Congressmen? ... 'We're just following the old adage of punish your enemies and reward your friends,' DeLay says. He once told Congress Daily, 'Money is not the root of all evil in politics. In fact, money is the lifeblood of politics.' Clearly, money is Tom DeLay's lifeblood. Maybe, if the Justice Department can be moved to investigate this latest Delay scandal, it could be his downfall as well."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8086
7:23:08 AM 
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RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE
Al Franken and the Lying Liars
By Scott Vogel, BuzzFlash, June 13, 2003
During a recent panel discussion on media bias at Book Expo America 2003, Al Franken called Bill O'Reilly on his lies - and O'Reilly didn't take to it kindly. The heated exchange, which was covered by C-SPAN's Book TV, became the subject of media coverage around the nation. BuzzFlash interviewed Franken about his first round KO against O'Reilly - and about the larger issue of the media's right-wing bias, which Franken covers in his new book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right".
Author of the must-read "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot," the audio version of which won a Grammy Award, Franken has also penned "Why Not Me? The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency" and "Oh, The Things I Know!," a satire on self-help books. A 1973 graduate of Harvard, Franken performed stand-up comedy before joining Saturday Night Live. Between 1975 and 1980, Franken won five Emmy Awards, four for writing and one for producing. Franken returned to SNL for a 10-year run in 1985, during which time he created one of the SNL Hall of Fame characters, self-help guru Stuart Smalley.
On May 31, your appearance at a book exposition with co-panelists Molly Ivins and Bill O'Reilly was broadcast on C-SPAN's Book TV. At the event, you confronted O'Reilly about his lie that that he received the prestigious Peabody Award for his work as host of Inside Edition. Could you recap the story - which is kind of funny when you think about it, lying about an award that honors outstanding achievement in broadcast journalism.
AL FRANKEN: Well, it isn't just that Bill O'Reilly claims he won a couple of Peabody Awards. Whenever he was asked about Inside Edition and it being sort of a tabloid show, O'Reilly would indignantly say that they had won two Peabody Awards. Who says we're a tabloid show? And O'Reilly would offer as proof the Peabody Awards that Inside Edition had supposedly won. And he did this on a number of occasions. I got through watching him once on C-SPAN and then went researching on Nexis. I just followed it up because I couldn't believe that Inside Edition had won a Peabody. And I did the research. And, of course, they hadn't won any Peabody Award. I thought I would call O'Reilly, and that way he could stop saying the wrong thing, which any journalist would be embarrassed about. Instead of being grateful that I had called him, he just got angry. Well it turns out that Inside Edition had won a "Polk" Award a year after he left. And so he got very, very angry and said, "Go ahead - go after me, Al." And so I just thought that it'd be fun to do.
I gave the story to Lloyd Grove at the Washington Post, who called O'Reilly. O'Reilly sort of said, "Well, all I did was mix up a Polk and a Peabody, and Al has this jihad against me," et cetera. Now that's not necessarily worth writing about, but then I discovered that about a week later Robert Reno at Newsday decided to do a column about the fact that O'Reilly had claimed on several occasions to have won Peabodies and hadn't.
O'Reilly then attacked Rob Reno in the most vitriolic way, saying, basically "I never said I won a Peabody. This is a total fabrication. The man's a liar," et cetera, et cetera. And that sort of seems pathological to me, or Bill O'Reilly just felt that he could get away with it. It's sort of emblematic of him.
So I thought that was the example of his lying that I could use at the Book Expo, because my book isn't about him. It's about the whole right-wing media, and how it affects the mainstream media. I also focus on Bush and his administration - who do a lot of lying - and how a right-wing media has allowed them to get away with a lot of stuff that, in a different media environment, they probably wouldn't be able to get away with.
READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW AT:
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/06/12_franken.html
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6:14:44 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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