“Moral Troglodytes”: Still Crazy, Fox News Gang Owes Hillary Clinton An Abject Apology
To most Americans, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s sudden hospitalization is an occasion for compassion, concern, and urgent wishes for her full recovery. But for her perennially obsessed adversaries on the far right, the former First Lady’s illness is a moment of deep embarrassment – or ought to be.
Until Sunday, when Clinton entered New York Presbyterian Hospital for treatment of a blood clot caused by a concussion she suffered a few weeks ago, her most irresponsible critics were suggesting that she might be faking the injury. The supposed reason for such a diplomatic illness, according to John Bolton, the Fox News personality and former UN Ambassador, was so that Clinton could avoid testifying on Capitol Hill about the Benghazi terrorist attack that left three State Department personnel dead, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Now that Clinton has been admitted to one of the nation’s premier hospitals for treatment with anti-coagulant medication, it is worth reviewing the false suspicions that Bolton, other Fox News personalities, the New York Post, and assorted reactionary bloggers tried to arouse about her. The anti-Clinton mania of the 90s – which infected mainstream media as well as right-wing propagandists – remains latent but highly contagious among certain Republicans. And it remains just as reliant upon misinformation and deception now as it did back then.
On December 17 – two days after Clinton’s doctors issued an official medical report through the State Department about her continued suffering from a stomach virus that had left her extremely dehydrated and caused her to faint – Bolton mocked her for feigning a “diplomatic illness.” She did not wish to testify about security at the Benghazi consulate, the subject of a critical State Department review that she had commissioned, and therefore had contracted “a diplomatic illness to beat the band,” said Bolton sardonically.
Bolton was not alone in uttering these unfounded claims. They were echoed on The Five, a Fox News chat show featuring four dim commentators and Bob Beckel. Monica Crowley, another regular Fox clown, likewise suggested that Clinton’s virus had “impeccable timing.”
Ten days later, Bolton again insinuated in an op-ed article for the New York Post – also owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp – that Clinton was attempting to avoid testifying about Benghazi. While accusing her of using “a series of excuses” to evade testimony, Bolton’s article didn’t specify the “diplomatic illness” charge again, prompting Washington Post press critic Erik Wemple to ask whether he was withdrawing that canard. In an email to Wemple, Bolton made feeble jokes but neither repeated nor withdrew the accusation. Meanwhile, wingnut bloggers claimed that Clinton was carousing at a resort in the Dominican Republic — just as she was being sent to the hospital in New York by her physicians.
With Clinton in the hospital, it should now be obvious even to the most addled hater that the repeated statements from the State Department about her medical condition have been accurate, that she is innocent of any deception, that she fully intended to testify in January as promised, and that she indeed took full responsibility for the Benghazi tragedy, even though she deserved no blame. It should also be obvious that she deserves an apology from Bolton, a figure who has brought ridicule and shame on the US government more than once in the guise of public service.
The first reactions from the Republican right were not promising, alas, as alarming symptoms of the same old sickness showed up instantaneously on Twitter. Nor was it reassuring that the Los Angeles Times gave credence to the charges in an online poll inquiring, “Did she fake it?”
“If anyone has mastered the victimhood complex it is Hillary Rodham Clinton,” cheeped a GOP activist from New York. “She plays it brilliantly. Has for 20 yrs.”
You see, it doesn’t matter whether Hillary is actually the victim of speculation, slur, and slander. It never has and – for those moral troglodytes – it never will.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, December 30, 2012
“I’m Not Holding My Breath”: Will Republicans Apologize For Accusing Hillary Clinton Of Faking Concussion
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital to undergo treatment for a blood clot, a potentially serious condition stemming from a concussion she suffered earlier this month. Aides say that Clinton, 65, is currently being treated with blood thinners, and that further action may be required to prevent the clot from worsening. In a worst-case scenario, the clot, if located in the head, could cause a brain hemorrhage.
The concussion forced Clinton to cancel weeks’ worth of engagements, including scheduled testimony before Congress on the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. Republicans have been highly critical of President Obama’s response to Benghazi, with many suggesting that the administration tried to cover up the incident. Clinton’s illness prompted several conservative commentators and prominent members of the GOP to speculate that she was faking her concussion to avoid testifying. John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, described Clinton’s condition as a “diplomatic illness.” Ousted Rep. Allen West (Fla.) said, “I’m not a doctor, but it seems as though — that the secretary of state has come down with a case of Benghazi flu.” Charles Krauthammer, the influential conservative columnist, told Sean Hannity of Fox News that Clinton had likely come down with “acute Benghazi allergy,” which led Hannity to respond, “Let’s see the medical report on that.” Other conservative news outlets also demanded a medical report.
Now that Clinton’s condition has taken a more worrisome turn, will these Republicans offer their apologies? “I’m not holding my breath,” says PBS’s Jeff Greenfield. The fake Clinton concussion will probably join a long list of conservative conspiracy theories that, despite overwhelming evidence to contrary, continue to thrive in certain corners of the GOP (see: Obama was born in Kenya, the polls are skewed, et al.). Indeed, it’s just as likely that the fake Clinton concussion will morph into the fake Clinton blood clot.
By: Ryu Spaeth, The Week, December 31, 2012
“The Choir Preaching Problem”: The GOP’s Lost Year In The Fox News Bubble
Suffering an election hangover after having been told by Fox News that Mitt Romney’s victory was a sure thing (a “landslide” predicted by Dick Morris), some Republicans have promised to break their addiction to the right-wing news channel in the coming year. Vowing to venture beyond the comforts of the Fox News bubble, strategists insist it’s crucial that the party address its “choir-preaching problem.”
Good luck.
This grand experiment of marrying a political movement around a cable TV channel was a grand failure in 2012. But there’s little indication that enough Republicans will have the courage, or even the desire, to break free from Fox’s firm grip on branding the party.
For Fox News chief Roger Ailes, the network’s slash-and-burn formula worked wonders in terms of catering a hardcore, hard-right audience of several million viewers. (Fox News is poised to post $1 billion in profits this year.) But in terms of supporting a national campaign and hosting a nationwide conversation about the country’s future, Fox’s work this year was a marked failure.
And that failure helped sink any hopes the GOP had of winning the White House.
From the farcical, underwhelming GOP primary that Fox News sponsored, through the general election campaign, it seemed that at every juncture where Romney suffered a major misstep, Fox misinformation hovered nearby. Again and again, Romney damaged his presidential hopes when he embraced the Fox News rhetoric; when he ran as the Fox News candidate.
Whether it was botching the facts surrounding the terrorist raid on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, parroting the Fox talking point about lazy, shiftless voters who make up “47 percent” of the electorate, or Romney’s baffling embrace of reality TV show host-turned Fox News pontificator Donald Trump, the Republican candidate did damage to his chances whenever he let Fox News act as his chief campaign adviser.
Fox viewers didn’t fare much better. Fed a year’s worth of misinformation about the candidates, and completely misled about the state of the race (all the polls are skewed!), Fox faithful were left crushed on Election Night when Romney’s fictitious landslide failed to materialize.
“On the biggest political story of the year,” wrote Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, “the conservative media just got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media.”
Indeed, Fox’s coverage of the campaign has been widely panned as an editorial and political fiasco. The coverage failed to move the needle in the direction of its favored Republican candidate, and the coverage remained detached from campaign reality for months at a time. (Megyn Kelly in July: The Obama campaign is “starting to panic.” That was false.)
Following another lopsided loss to Obama, Republican strategist Mike Murphy urged Republicans to embrace a view of America that’s not lifted from “Rush Limbaugh’s dream journal.” (The Fox News dream journal looks nearly identical to Limbaugh’s.)
And San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll wondered if Romney’s defeat marked the end of a Fox News era:
You had to wonder about Fox. This is the third presidential election in which Fox has been a major player, and the Democrats have won two of them. A combination of big money and big propaganda was supposed to carry the day for Romney and the Republicans, but it didn’t. Could it be that the Fox model has played out?
Is the Fox model of a cable paranoia played out in terms of ratings? It is not. Is the Fox model of cable paranoia played out as an electoral blueprint? It sure looks that way.
Of course, conservatives should have thought that through before handing over the control of a political movement to Ailes and his misinformation minions. They should have thought twice about the long-term implication of having irresponsible media outlets like Fox supersede leadership within the Republican Party, and should have figured out first if Fox News had an off switch to use in case of emergencies.
It doesn’t.
Yet as Fox News segued into the de facto leader of the Republican Party, becoming the driving electoral force, and with Ailes entrenched in his kingmaker role, candidates had to bow down to Fox in search of votes and the channel’s coveted free airtime.
And Andrew Sullivan noted in January:
The Republican Establishment is Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, and their mainfold products, from Hannity to Levin. They rule on the talk radio airwaves and on the GOP’s own “news” channel, Fox.
There’s a reason New York magazine labeled Ailes “the head of the Republican Party.” And that’s why a GOP source told the magazine, “You can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger Every single candidate has consulted with Roger.”
That meant campaigns were forced to become part of the channel’s culture of personal destruction, as well as to blanket itself in Fox’s signature self-pity. (Here was Mitt Romney adopting the right-wing whine that the conspiratorial press was out to sink his campaign.)
Still, the right-wing bubble was a comfortable place to inhabit if you thought of Obama as an historic monster, or if you required to be reminded of that fact many time a day, every day of the year. The bubble is the place where followers for four years were fed the feel-good GOP narrative about how Obama’s presidency was a fiasco, that the Americans suffered a severe case of 2008 buyer’s remorse, and that the president’s re-election defeat was all but pre-ordained.
The one-part-panic, one-part-denial message may have cheered obsessive Obama-haters, but it didn’t prepare conservatives for the reality of the campaign season. And it cost the GOP a lost year in the Fox News bubble.
By: Eric Boehlert, The Hufington Post Blog, December 30, 2012
“Warped Childlike Minds”: An Abrupt End To Another GOP Conspiracy Theory
During a recent trip to Europe, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contracted a stomach virus, and two weeks ago, her ailments left her dehydrated. It reached the point at which Clinton fainted, struck her head, and suffered a minor concussion.
Except, many on the right refused to believe it. For Fox News and many other Republicans, Clinton was pulling a Ferris Bueller — pretending to have health trouble in order to avoid testifying on Capitol Hill about the September attack in Benghazi.
As Josh Rogin reports, Clinton is returning to work, and in the process, knocking down yet another silly GOP conspiracy theory.
Clinton’s ongoing recovery will still prevent her from flying abroad, but will allow plans to move forward for her to testify in open hearing on the Sept. 11 attack on Benghazi, testimony that she was unable to give — as per her doctor’s orders — on Dec. 20. Her return to a public schedule could also end the weeks of conspiracy theorizing and wild speculation about whether or not she was faking or misrepresenting her illness to avoid testifying.
“The secretary continues to recuperate at home. She had long planned to take this holiday week off, so she had no work schedule. She looks forward to getting back to the office next week and resuming her schedule,” Clinton aide Philippe Reines told The Cable.
And as part of that resumed schedule, Clinton has pledged to appear before both House and Senate foreign relations committees in January.
Referencing Rogin’s fine list, it’s unclear whether the New York Post, the Daily Caller, hosts on Fox News’s evening shows, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), the conservative website Pajamas Media, the Investors’ Business Daily website, conservative blogger Lucianne Goldberg, and others are prepared to apologize for spreading the so-called “concussiongate” nonsense.
As for the larger context, we can also add this absurdity to the lengthy list of Obama administration conspiracy theories that the right took seriously but which never panned out.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 28, 2012
“Conservatives Get Glum”: Republican Are Very Worried About Whether They Can Break Out Of Its Fox Bubble
A look around the web today makes clear that the crisis of American conservatism in general, and conservatives’ relationship to the media in particular, is clearly our topic. First, none other than William Kristol, the very axis about whom the Republican establishment spins, is extremely worried about what has become of his movement:
And the conservative movement—a bulwark of American strength for the last several decades—is in deep disarray. Reading about some conservative organizations and Republican campaigns these days, one is reminded of Eric Hoffer’s remark, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” It may be that major parts of American conservatism have become such a racket that a kind of refounding of the movement as a cause is necessary. A reinvigoration of the Republican party also seems desirable, based on a new generation of leaders, perhaps coming—as did Ike and Reagan—from outside the normal channels.
There are elements of that racket on both sides of the aisle, but conservatives are particularly adept at fleecing their own people. Part of the problem the conservative movement faces now is that they’ve given so much power to media figures like Rush Limbaugh and the crew at Fox News, but those people’s primary interest is in making money, not in helping the GOP. Which is why Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins finds a bunch of Republican operatives who are very worried about whether their party can break out of its Fox bubble, both as a psychological and practical matter. Here’s my favorite part:
One Republican official recalled working earlier this year to get a potentially damaging story about a Democratic candidate into The New York Times — only to have an impatient colleague leak the scoop to a conservative website. The story shot through the online right, but failed to gain mainstream traction.
“I was like, great, we made the people who were already voting for us even angrier,” the official snarked to BuzzFeed. “Mission accomplished.”
Obviously, the politicians can start speaking more through non-conservative media outlets on their own initiative; John Boehner can just decide that he’ll do Meet the Press and Face the Nation, not just Fox News Sunday (and the idea that he’d get impossibly difficult questions on the first two is laughable). But might the conservative media themselves ask whether they can do anything to broaden their audience’s perspective so they don’t create such a reality-denying bubble? Harold Pollack, hoping against hope that there are people on the right as reasonable and fair-minded as he is, urges them to come up with their own version of MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes, a program that would feature lengthy, substantive, interesting discussions between people who actually know things, as opposed to just “strategists” trading talking points:
What strikes me is the dearth of conservative-leaning shows built on the same model. Most FOX discussion shows are virtually unwatchable—not because they’re conservative, but because they offer so little intellectual nutrition to their core audience. Sticking to our home topic of health policy, legitimate conservative experts such as James Capretta and Tevi Troy are drowned out by less honest or reputable figures such as Betsy McCaughey and Dick Morris. The typical conservative FOX viewer is thus fed Pravda-style misleading information about what the Affordable Care Act really entails. The typical non-conservative FOX viewer—to the extent non-conservatives tune in at all—have no way of knowing what reputable Republican or conservative policy analysts are really thinking, or, indeed, who these experts really are.
The first thing you’d need for such a program to be created is an audience that would watch it. After all, MSNBC doesn’t air Hayes’ show as a public service. The people who produce the show are trying to create the best program they can, but the network’s bottom line is its bottom line. If it wasn’t making money, it would get cancelled (the show’s ratings are pretty good if not spectacular).
That doesn’t mean, however, that every potentially lucrative market niche is exploited. There might well be an audience waiting for more intelligent conservative programming, but as long as Fox is still the number-one cable news network (which they are) and is making money hand over fist (ditto), there’s little reason for them to go looking to change what is for them an extremely successful formula. And don’t forget that a Democratic president is great for their business; it gives them an endless supply of things to get mad about, which means more viewers.
Since the conservative media is unlikely to change, maybe there’s little people on the right can do but wait around, as Kristol says, for a new generation of leadership to come along and change things.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 11, 2012
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