Tag Archives: MSNBC

When LA Fitness Chooses Far-Right Propaganda Over Customer Service

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Any private business obviously has a free speech right to play Fox News on their television(s). But the majority of Americans who voted against Donald Trump, and/or just want better news coverage, also have the right to speak out against those Fox News propaganda pushers.

I know it’s a heavy lift to try to change the world one business TV set at a time. But not trying is too depressing a life for me to live. So yeah, I’m afraid I’m that “that guy.” Not “the PC police.” Not a “cancel culture cop.” Just a guy who isn’t going to remain silent when being force-fed right-wing proselytizing at bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, and health clubs.

After all, Fox News is propaganda, not the “fair and balanced news” it claims to be. As several studies cited by the Washington Post found, Fox is not only unfair and unbalanced, it’s been demonstrably dangerous during the pandemic era:

In April, Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and Dolores Albarracin of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign published a peer-reviewed study examining how Americans’ media diets affected their beliefs about the coronavirus.

Administering a nationally representative phone survey with 1,008 respondents, they found that people who got most of their information from mainstream print and broadcast outlets tended to have an accurate assessment of the severity of the pandemic and their risks of infection. But those who relied on conservative sources, such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories or unfounded rumors, such as the belief that taking vitamin C could prevent infection, that the Chinese government had created the virus, and that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exaggerated the pandemic’s threat “to

These findings held even after controlling for viewers’ political affiliation, education, gender and age.

That doesn’t seem to be the kind of information a health club would want to be promoting during the most deadly pandemic in a century.

My Adorable Little Crusade

So when I returned to my health club after the pandemic died down, I was disappointed to see that MSNBC had been dropped from the channel selections on TVs attached to treadmills, ellipticals and step machines, while Fox News remained. I wasn’t too upset, though, because I assumed it was a small oversight that would be easily remedied.

So I politely asked the local manager to add MSNBC as a progressive option for the mouth-breathing masses.  I asked them to either include both Fox and MSNBC in their channel selections, as they did pre-pandemic, or have neither MSNBC nor Fox News. 

I was simply requesting balance. I thought that was darn reasonable, especially since this club is located in a county that gave Biden 71 percent of its vote, compared to just 25 percent for the Fox News poster child. So, I frankly expected them to quickly agree to such a minor and reasonable request.

Surprisingly, the LA Fitness/Esporta manager has refused, and his rationale is absurd.  He claimed the CNN option they were offering in the channel selection was the leftist equivalent to Fox News. 

Earnest wonk that I am, I shared this non-partisan media bias analysis finding that CNN was left-center (“Skews Left” as they put it), and therefore not ideologically comparable to either “Hyper-Partisan Left” MSNBC or “Hyper-Partisan Right” Fox News.

Beyond his CNN argument, the manager also asserted that the availability of WCCO-TV (CBS affiliate) and KSTP-TV (ABC affiliate) stations satisfied their obligation to balance off “Hyper-Partisan” Fox News, so MSNBC wasn’t needed.  He seemed to conclude that any TV news that wasn’t Fox News was progressive, and therefore those local affiliates should somehow count as being a progressive counter-balance to Fox News. 

This claim is also absurd. I pointed out that 1) the vast majority o of the local affiliate stations’ programming was entertainment, such as The Bachelor, NCIS, and NFL football, not news; 2) the local stations’ news was almost entirely focused on weather, sports, crime, pop culture, and local events, and therefore wasn’t comparable to the kind of hard core national news featured on Fox News and MSNBC; and 3) the brief 30-minutes per day of hard national news on those network stations was at best left-center like CNN, and therefore not close to comparable to “Hyper-Partisan Left” MSNBC.

By the way, while I am a commie, I don’t adore MSNBC. It brings some guests, views, and analysis that other stations don’t, so I do tune in. But the cutsieness, pettiness, and long-windedness of Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell are difficult for me to take.

But if Fox News’s far-right commentary is going to be pushed out to club members there should be something comparable with leftist commentary for the rest of us in this deep blue county. I just wanted a mix of stations that is “fair and balanced.”

After dazzling Manager-guy with this logic and data, I reiterated my simple, fair suggestion: Either include both Fox News and MSNBC, or offer neither. 

But after waiting a few weeks, the manager has, of this writing, refused to add MSNBC. So, Fox News remains the only “hyper-partisan” channel choice for this health club in a deep blue county.

My conclusion is that one of two things is at play with LA Fitness’s refusal to add MSNBC as one option for members.  Either they have far-right wing leadership committed to evangelizing dangerous right wing drivel to their captive audience, or they just don’t give a shit about customer feedback and service. 

Whatever their motivations, their decision is shameful. And I do not suffer in silence.

Let’s Move to The Avenatti Model

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As promised and on schedule Michael Avenatti has dropped another bomb on Brett Kavanaugh’s crater-filled road to the Supreme Court. Regularly tut-tutted over and dismissed as an ambulance-chaser non pareil Avenatti’s latest client — who is not anonymous — is prepared to tell the most lurid story yet of the young and entitled Mr. Kavanaugh’s sexual misadventures, in this case gang rape.

Avenatti popped up on Rachel Maddow’s show a couple of nights ago hinting at what was to come and vowing he would deliver “within 48 hours”, which he did. Again.

Mainstream, Big “J” journalism’s aversion to Avenatti is understandable, in normal times. Who hasn’t rolled their eyes and endured the righteous (righteous, I tell you!) indignation and oozing self-promotion of well-paid lawyers … performing in front of a TV camera? But at some point the bona fides of even the worst self-aggrandizer build up to the point where guys like Avenatti have to be taken seriously.

When you’re right, you’re right.

I mean, come on. TV in particular is clogged with regular players who either A: Have nothing new or significant to say, or B: Parrot whatever the network in question wants to hear, (so they’ll be asked back), or C: Are so far past their expiration date they’re like a straight-to-video sequel to “Weekend at Bernie’s”, (eg: Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum).

So someone — Avenatti — who is demonstrably in on the action and accurately forecasting what’s coming next should have much higher standing, credibility-wise, than “the usual suspects.” And he does, if you just count CNN and MSNBC, where it seems he has a cot in the corner for easier access to the pundit desk.

But, Big “J” journalism? Not quite so much. Avenatti’s Monday night vow on Maddow’s didn’t create much more than a rustle in big city newspapers, caution toward self-aggrandizers being a primary default for “serious journalists” and anxious politicians, normally for good reason. But after a good year on the scene and a batting average Ted Williams could only dream of, it seems Avenatti is still on a “wait and see” with the self-proclaimed adults in the room.

I think of Avenatti every time I hear someone ask (in solemn theological tones) what Democrats should do if they regain power in DC?

Should they go full payback on Republicans, pulling every foul and miserable trick Mitch McConnell, Devin Nunes, Chuck Grassley and on and on and on have been pulling for the last 20 years? Or, should they hew to the proper course of, you know, “regular order” and follow time-honored (and now regularly violated) standards of civility toward the opposition while seeking to “reach across the aisle?” (Personally, I’ve reached the point that whenever I hear or read someone urging any liberal to “reach across the aisle” I stop listening or reading … right after I gag.)

Implicit in the question is that there is only a binary choice. Democrats can either adapt all the ham-fisted, nefarious, nakedly bullshit tactics McConnell, Nunes and crew have resorted to, or they can be the same earnest chumps they’ve been played for since  Republicans decided winning is “the only thing” and dialed nefarious to 11.

That’s dim thinking.

The Avenatti Model, if we dare call it that, is not nefarious, illegal or unconstitutional. But it is shamelessly aggressive. You isolate a key weakness (illegality) in the opposition and you zero in on it with full prosecutorial energy and zeal. You make the opposition pay a very high public price for nefarious activity. You use every tool at your disposal, which means exploiting Big “J” journalism, punditry and the entertainment industry. And you keep at it until the offense the opposition has committed becomes a permanent stain on their brand. In other words, you make them own their deviousness and bullshit.

(If the concern is you could over-play your hand — like McConnell et al — you’ll hear about it fast enough from the liberal base.)

No matter what happens during Thursday’s hearings, The Avenatti Model would move Christine Blasey Ford and every other woman prepared to speak out against Kavanaugh up to the next level of the court of public opinion. Namely, a coordinated series of TV interviews with — oh I don’t know, Oprah, “60 Minutes” or any of the gal hosts of the morning chat shows — and let the public get a full sense of who these women are and the credibility of their stories.

The effect would be to set the stain on Kavanaugh and his Republican handlers so deep it won’t how Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins eventually vote.

Oh! Not polite and collegial?

Screw polite.

 

 

 

 

This Just In: Bill O’Reilly Full of [bleep]

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterMaybe the strangest thing about the still unfolding “Bill O’Reilly is a bullshitter!” story is that anyone with their wits still about them ever thought he wasn’t.

It is ridiculously entertaining to read David Corn’s Mother Jones piece, and now yesterday’s howler about Bill knocking on the door of a key JFK assassination figure at the very moment the guy inside blows his head off with a shotgun. Gripping stuff if not for the recordings of O’Reilly on the phone … from 1200 miles away. I mean, there’s a hilarious Ron Burgundy aspect to O’Reilly’s uber-manly tale of dragging an injured colleague to safety amid a murderous police rampage in Buenos Aires when in fact the “riot” was barely more than a routine demonstration, no one was killed and no CBS employee reported so much as a twisted ankle or required any level of medical attention.

I’d add that this is the stuff of full-on parody if it weren’t for the fact that Stephen Colbert built a career doing exactly that. (Can you imagine the delirium Colbert’s writers would be in with this run of red meat?)

Comparisons to Brian Williams’ self-immolation miss the central difference here pretty badly. Williams was employed with the explicit understanding that he was credible, trading only in the facts as best as NBC could report them. Bill O’Reilly is the key mouthpiece in Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes’ enormously profitable political campaign masquerading as a news organization. Williams’ viewers were justifiably disappointed to learn of his bizarre embellishments. O’Reilly’s viewers, I strongly suspect, do not care in the least what he has embellished or flat-out invented, as long as he continues to attack Murdoch and Ailes’ and their designated enemies.

With that in mind it’ll be easier to understand why FoxNews not only isn’t going to “investigate” O’Reilly’s superhero imaginings, and is instead gleeful at a fresh opportunity to attack the “guttersnipe liberal media” and threaten straight news pinheads with bodily harm. It plays directly into the fascinating psychology wherein ardent zealots confronted with information that unambiguously contradicts their beliefs double down on their erroneous thinking rather than concede and align themselves with reality.

Prediction: O’Reilly’s ratings will spike over the next month.

This incident brings two things back to mind.

1: Liberals take FoxNews far too seriously, and I fully admit my complicity on that point. For years I’ve fulminated myself into apoplexy at Fox’s shameless absurdity and cynicism, convinced that the network was an aggressive form of cancer soon to terminate all higher brain function among the credulous masses. But somewhere after the 2012 elections, when all of Fox-think was revealed to be astonishingly incompetent at both campaigning and campaign analysis, I settled down. Their bona fides, such as they are, are all but completely limited to an old, embittered demographic of rapidly diminishing electoral significance.

Here’s Frank Rich not long ago on the topic.

I suspect the irrelevance of FoxNews to the 300 million Americans who are not lapping it up 24/7 has something to do with Jon Stewart bailing on “The Daily Show”. FoxNews as a punchline is a settled, cliched commodity.

2:  Blogging colleague Joe Loveland passed this on yesterday. It’s the annual Pew survey on America’s most and least-trusted broadcast news operations. In the realm of what we’ve come to expect the survey’s authors write:

“Fox News is both the most trusted and least trusted name in news. 35% of Americans say they trust Fox News more than any other TV news outlet, followed by 14% for PBS, 11% for ABC, 10% for CNN, 9% for CBS, 6% each for Comedy Central and MSNBC, and 3% for NBC. It leads the way because of its continuing near total support among Republicans as the place to go for news- 69% of Republicans say it’s their most trusted source with nothing else polling above 7%.”

Think of that. 69%. Pretty well proving Murdoch and Ailes’ show biz genius at giving their people the campaign message they want.

But in the context of Bill O’Reilly’s naked bogus-ness, it also explains why he’ll suffer no reputational damage. Fox’s world is designed as an “us v. them” battlefield. O’Reilly is the high profile field marshall under constant attack from common enemies. To support Bill without equivocation is to be a loyal soldier.

Contrast that, as Joe pointed out, with the dismal all-in loyalty liberals have to their alleged message-bearer, MSNBC.

“It’s interesting that while Fox News and MSNBC are often thought of as equivalent, Fox News is by far and away the most trusted source of GOP voters while MSNBC is only tied for 4th among Democrats.”

The underlying point here is that liberals and conservatives affiliate with and consume partisan messaging in vastly different ways. Other psychological studies note conservatives’ far higher levels of trust in authority, e.g. Bill O’Reilly, and liberals’ elevated levels of skepticism toward leadership/herd thinking. One group embraces the minister-to-parish relationship. The other tolerates it in small doses.

Second prediction:  Bill O’Reilly will soon reveal that it was he who shot Osama bin Laden and to thunderous applause will vilify any left-wing guttersnipe who says otherwise.

Debate Over The Debate: Judge v. Jury Verdicts

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Groucho Marx once observed “I was married by a judge.  I should have asked for a jury.”

I am having a similar reaction after browsing the coverage of last night’s final Presidential debate. Continue reading →

Whatever Happened to Firebrand Franken?

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When Al Franken announced in 2007 that he was running for the Minnesota U.S. Senate seat then held by Norm Coleman, I was worried whether he could sell in the land of Minnesota Nice.  Like others, I had an image of what I expected to see in Senator Al Franken. I expected to see a wise-cracking, fire-breathing, attention-seeking political hack who was constantly making mild mannered Minnesotans roll their eyes during an endless tour of contentious cable TV and talk radio appearances.

In other words, I expected Senator Al to be a lot like the Al that appeared on Air America Radio, and in books with titles like “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.”  I expected him to be, well, Michele Bachmann.  And Bachmann doesn’t sell statewide.

Last night, I was reminded once again  how wrong I was.  During MSNBC coverage of the Democratic Convention, host Rachel Maddow, Al’s former Air America Radio colleague, became positively giddy when the network secured a very brief, non-substantive interview with Franken.  Maddow repeatedly noted that Franken doesn’t give interviews to national media outlets, even to liberal outlets, even to outlets populated by his pleading friends and former colleagues. As Senator, Franken apparently has gone cold turkey on cable.

Moreover, what Franken said last night in the MSNBC interview was telling.  He repeatedly tried to put the national spotlight on his fellow Minnesotans, not just himself.  And frankly, he was only mildly funny, and pretty boring.

I have to imagine this is all by design.  Underexposed by design.  Locally focused by design.  Only mildly humorous by design.  Dispassionate by design.   Franken and his team have successfully navigated the evolution of Firebrand Comedian Franken, a national figure, to Thoughtful Senator Franken, a Minnesota figure.

And in Minnesota, it’s working.  Here is what a recent Public Policy Polling survey found about Franken’s political strength at home:

 Al Franken’s proven to be a stronger than might have been expected Senator. 50% of voters approve of him to 36% who disapprove. Democrats have ended up being pretty universally happy with him (85/4) and he’s strong with independents as well (48/33).

Franken leads hypothetical contests with Minnesota’s three leading Republicans. He has a 51-41 advantage over Norm Coleman, a 52-41 one over Tim Pawlenty, and a 57-35 advantage on Michele Bachmann. It’s impossible to say what the political climate will look like in 2014, but at least for now Franken finds himself in a strong position.

In 2008, Franken defeated Norm Coleman, now a Super PACman, by the slimmest of margins.  Now, polls show he would defeat Coleman handily, as well as the state’s other leading Republicans.

The lesson?  Al is minding his Minnesota manners, and it matters to Minnesotans.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in the Politics in Minnesota Morning Report “Best of the Blogs” feature

How Liberal Wonks Like Me Are Inadvertently Making the Conservatives’ Case

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There is a recurring pattern in modern political discourse that goes like this:  Republicans make a ridiculous charge about President Obama being a socialist on Issue X, which is outrageous because Obama has been blocked by Republicans from being even somewhat liberal, much less socialist.

Outraged liberals then come to the rescue!  We start spouting data proving that Republicans are overstating their case.  But to the casually involved public, the liberals’ rebuttal sounds a lot like liberals are asserting that “Obama is actually a conservative.”  More conservative than Bush, for instance.

With both sides sounding like they are claiming to be conservative, the public concludes that the conservative position must be the good and right position.

The pattern repeats over and over.  Here are specific examples: Continue reading →