Fox News Watchdog

I owe Sarah Palin an apology.

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Former Georgia governor Roy Barnes (D) won his party’s nomination for governor Tuesday, while former secretary of state Karen Handel and former congressman Nathan Deal qualified for an Aug. 10 runoff on the GOP side.

Democratic – Republican – Newt Gingrich – Politics – Sarah Palin

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On Larry King Live, The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition organizer Dana Loesch and conservative strategist Michael Reagan attempted to paint recently embattled Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams as an obscure, unimportant tea party member.  But as NY Daily News points out, Williams’ Tea Party Express–of which Williams served as the organization’s public face–”is one of the most influential in the conservative movement,” and has raised “$2.3 million this year.”

The right plays
dumb: “Mark Williams, who?”

Loesch: “I think
when I first heard about Mark Williams, I honestly thought Mark Williams
who?”
On the July 19 edition of CNN’s Larry King Live, Nationwide Tea Party
Coalition organizer Dana Loesch and conservative Michael Reagan tried to
disappear Mark Williams and the significance of the Tea Party Express from the
National Tea Party movement. Loesch claimed that Williams “is a legend in his
own mind,” who “never represented an entire movement.“

Michael Reagan:
“I don’t know how you found Mark Williams…they are pointing at Mark Williams
like he’s leading up some wing of the Tea Party movement.”
Reagan agreed with Loesch’s
characterization of Williams as being an obscure member of the tea party
movement. From CNN’s Larry King Live:

DANA LOESCH, ORGANIZER, THE
NATIONWIDE TEA PARTY COALITION: I think when I first heard about Mark Williams,
I honestly thought Mark Williams who? And I don’t, you know, I don’t want to get
all catty. I think this dude is a legend in his own mind. Why all this attention
is being given to like one person? He’s never represented an entire movement. He
is, I think, to himself perhaps, he thought he did, but never to me and never to
anybody that I know. And I just think that he says a lot of what he — I think
he says a lot of what he says for attention,
honestly.

[...]

MICHAEL REAGAN (CHAIRMAN, THE REAGAN
GROUP): I got to agree, I don’t know how you found Mark Williams. He’s been
floating through radio for 20 years. I know Mark Williams. He wrote it tongue
and cheek and everybody took it very serious. When they are pointing at Mark
Williams like he’s leading up some wing of the Tea Party
movement.

[...]

REAGAN: The fact of the matter is I
don’t know why you are taking Mark Williams so dog gone serious. Here’s a guy
who has had 37 radio shows in 12 years. And you are taking him like he is the
spokesman and the president of the United States of America. He’s not.
He’s Mark Williams. And you guys are taking him really too serious.

KING: Is he cooky?

REAGAN:
Yes, Mark Williams has been cooky. He tries to raise the level so people call
him. I’ll tell you right now he’s probably sitting at home laughing his butt off
that everybody is talking about Mark Williams.

In fact, Williams
was the spokesperson for the influential Tea Party
Express

Williams is the
spokesperson for Tea Party Express. The Tea Party
Express website lists
Mark Williams as its “Spokesperson.”

NY
Daily News: “Williams’ Tea
Party Express is one of the most influential in the conservative
movement.” In a July 18 article, NY Daily
News reported that Mark Williams’ Tea Party Express is “one of the
most influential in the conservative movement” and has raised “$2.3 million this
year”:

Williams’ Tea Party Express is one
of the most influential in the conservative movement. It has reportedly raised
$2.3 million this year, helped elect Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts and organized a rally in Nevada that featured a
rare Sarah Palin speech.

TPM: Tea Party
Express is “one of the most establishment-connected groups on the Tea Party
circuit,” Williams “was the highest-profile public face of the
group.”  In a July 19 report, Talking
Points Memo detailed some of the Tea Party Express’ influence –
including propelling Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle:
 

As the public face of the Tea Party
Express, which has helped propel candidates like Nevada Republican Senate
nominee Sharron Angle to victory this year, Williams represents one of the most
establishment-connected groups on the Tea Party circuit. Tea
Party Express was founded and is run by Republican operatives, which puts it on
par with groups like FreedomWorks.

Before it was cool for tea partiers
to publicly endorse Republican candidates, the Tea Party Express was doing it.
They’re no fringe group of grassroots acitivists — these guys are supposed to
be the professionals. The group was created by a team of high-level California Republican
consultants, and the Tea Party Express’ PAC — Our Country Deserves Better
– still boasts legendary GOP bamboozler and former Rep. Howard Kaloogian as
its co-chair, and veteran Republican political consultant Sal
Russo as its chief strategist.

Williams, a former conservative talk
show host and blogger, was the highest-profile public face of the group. But his
propensity to stumble — I guess accidentally — into racism on his personal
blog and in TV appearances has led to him being disavowed by his colleagues at
TPE. One such disavowal came after his classic “Allah is a monkey god” email back in May. And now, in the wake
of the NAACP calling on tea party leaders like Williams to disavow rhetoric of
the sort Williams has been using, Williams says other colleagues have again
called on him to cool it with all the — I guess accidental — racism
stuff.

In fact, after the firestorm over
Williams’ blog post, organizers of TPE are taking pains to make it clear that Williams’ official role in
the movement is not what it once was. Though he’s still the group’s
spokesperson, he resigned as Tea Party Express’ chairman in June — the change
wasn’t reflected on the group’s website until Williams’ comments came under
intense scrutiny.

CNN reported on Tea Party
Express-backed candidates’ successes in Republican primaries. In a June 23 post, titled “Another victory for the Tea Party
Express,” CNN’s Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser wrote that Republican
candidate for the Senate Mike Lee has the Tea Party Express to thank for his
primary win in Utah, along with Senator Scott
Brown’s Massachusetts victory, and candidate Sharron
Angle’s rise from obscurity:

One of the winners in Tuesday’s
primaries in Utah wasn’t on the ballot, and isn’t even
based in the state.

Republican candidate for the Senate
Mike Lee was victorious in the battle for his party’s nomination, but his win
can also be seen as another primary victory for the Tea Party Express, a
national Tea Party organization based in California.

The group, best known for its three
high profile national bus tours, endorsed Lee and launched a radio campaign and
a get out the vote effort to assist the candidate.

“We are so excited to see another
tea party candidate win a critical election, and the voters in Utah will be well-served
with Mike Lee in the U.S. Senate,” said Tea Party Express Political Director
Bryan Shroyer, in a statement.

Lee, a lawyer and one-time clerk for
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, was also endorsed by Freedom Works. The
nonprofit conservative organization that helps train volunteer activists and has
provided much of the organizational heft behind the Tea Party movement assisted
in the get-out-the-vote efforts in Utah for Lee.

[...]

Sen. Bob Bennett, who finished third
in the voting by delegates, was eliminated from advancing to the primary, ending
his chances of re-election for a fourth term. Bennett became the first sitting
senator to go down to defeat in a primary season marked by strong anti-incumbent
sentiment.

Earlier this year, the Tea Party
Express was among a number of conservative groups to actively work to defeat
Bennett. The organization’s third cross country bus tour included stops in
Utah in March,
where Tea Party Express leaders urged Republican voters to defeat Bennett in his
bid for re-election.

Lee’s victory is the second
statewide win for the Tea Party Express this month. They recently pumped more
than $500,000 into the fight for the Republican Senate nomination in neighboring
Nevada,
helping transform ex-state lawmaker Sharron Angle, once considered a long shot,
into an easy winner in the primary election.

The Tea Party Express also takes
partial credit for convincing longtime Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan not to run for
re-election this year. Stupak announced his decision in April not to make a bid
for another term, as the group was targeting the lawmaker with rallies in his
district during their most recent cross country bus
tour.

At the time, House Majority Leader
Steny Hoyer admitted that the protests and rallies by Tea Party activists across
the country were having an impact on lawmakers’ decisions about running for
another term.

“Do I think that negative atmosphere
that’s been created by the Tea Party and by others certainly goes into the
thinking of Members? I think it does. I think you honestly have to point out
that it does,” Hoyer told reporters at a weekly pen and pad session in the
Capitol.

[...]

The Tea Party Express also takes
some credit for helping Republican Scott Brown’s upset victory in January’s
special election for the seat of the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy. The group
endorsed Brown and put up television ads in support of the
candidate.

Fox News
has aggressively promoted the Tea Party Express tours. Continuing
its political
activism, Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Nation, and FoxNews.com have aggressively
promoted the Tea Party Express tours, going so far as to cheerlead for the protests and advertise the tea party
schedule so viewers “can be a part” of the events. Indeed, a Fox News producer
was even caught coaching a crowd to cheer during a stop of the Tea
Party Express. In turn, the
organizers of the Tea Party Express, The OCDB PAC, used Fox News’ coverage of
its Tea Party Express to fundraise in
a July 29, 2009, email.

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There’s a headline currently runnning here at the Huffington Post that made me do a double take the first time I saw it, and which led me to immediately check to see if it was something that had been filed under the comedy banner; it just felt — and feels — too much like the kind of dead-on satire I’d expect from Chris Kelly or Andy Borowitz.

It reads: “Bob Scheiffer Defends Himself Against Fox News on New Black Panthers Story.”

See what I mean?

I missed CNN’s Reliable Sources over the weekend, mostly because I reached my yearly recommended dosage of Howie Kurtz somewhere back around mid-February, but apparently Scheiffer felt as if he needed to address accusations being hurled at him in the wake of a sit-down he did with Attorney General Eric Holder. At issue is the fact that at no point during that interview did he hammer Holder about a 2008 case in which a couple of members of the so-called New Black Panther Party, one carrying a nightstick, reportedly stood around a polling place in a predominantly black area of Philadelphia and eventually had to be escorted off the property by police. The DOJ went on to file a federal injunction against one of the two — the guy with the stick — but wound up dropping it because it determined that there wasn’t enough to the case to make it worth pursuing.

And that’s where things get sticky. And by sticky, I mean predictably dumb.

Conservative media, particularly Fox News, have finally picked up on the item and are trumpeting it as another example of President Obama’s Machiavellian hand silently pulling strings behind the scenes to protect those groups who might have helped steer votes in his direction during the 2008 race for the White House. If this sounds familiar, that’s because you’ve heard it before — back when it was known as “The ACORN Scandal.” If you can’t immediately see what the members of the New Black Panther Party and the people who were generally helped out by ACORN have in common, you need to have your eyes checked.

For the record, the New Black Panther Party is a fringe group that’s actually been denounced by the original Black Panthers. Its leader, the artist formerly known as Paris Lewis who now goes by the amusingly generic hyper-African moniker “Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz,” is the kind of clownish caricature Fox News loves to trot out at regular intervals. This is because he’s guaranteed to say something mindlessly inflammatory that will scare the hell out of the network’s demographic of lily-white, middle-American doofs, confirming all their worst fears about the encroaching “Negro threat.” As former Washington Post columnist Dave Weigel beautifully put it, Shabazz is to Bill O’Reilly what the KKK or GG Allin was to Donahue: Somebody who makes for great TV and whom your core audience can feel comfortable disliking intensely.

If you haven’t been watching Fox News lately — and I can’t in good conscience suggest that you do — the Panthers “story” has been obsessively, breathlessly beaten into the ground by one network personality in particular: Megyn Kelly. She’s taken it upon herself, bless her little heart, to be the avatar for every freaked-the-fuck-out white Christian soul convinced that he or she is losing this great country to minorities or illegal immigrants or whatever, and that it all started with the election of the Great Kenyan Socialist Usurper. She’s like Elizabeth Hasselbeck with an actual associates degree and a shit-ton more professional ambition. Kelly is Fox’s rising star du jour, even going so far as to get an official canonization from none other than Sarah Palin via her overworked Twitter feed — and the reason for this is that she knows exactly when to crinkle her face into that lemon-sucking look of smug skepticism, and just what buttons to press and what open-ended questions to ask of her viewers.

And so she’s harped on the New Black Panthers meme with stalker-like intensity — and with the full understanding that it’s good for the network and therefore good for her career. Which is what caused her to “call out” Bob Scheiffer for supposedly shirking his journalistic duty by not asking the tough questions about the New Black Panthers bombshell when he had the chance.

Pay attention to enough partisan media these days — particularly on the conservative side, only because it has the largest megaphone in Fox News and the most impressive bullpen of bullies — and the patterns among the chaos really begin to stand out. As with ACORN, which was always a mostly bullshit story, the right created a controversy out of thin air, amplified and advanced that contrived controversy, and now is engaging in indignant political theater by pretending to give a damn that no one outside the echo chamber cares about the controversy it’s made deafening within the echo chamber. The problem, of course, is that thanks to its typical spinelessness in the face of any accusation of a liberal bias, the rest of the press is more than happy to let itself be suckered into the right’s vortex of largely fact-free crazy. The mainstream media allow themselves to be talked into seeing the same ghosts that Fox News is trying to scare the hell out of its audience with.

That’s what makes it so painful to watch Bob Scheiffer (a titan of the network news business whose reputation is just about bulletproof) feel like he has to answer to allegations made by Megyn Kelly (a yapping chihuahua who wouldn’t know journalism if it came in a bottle of peroxide).

The New Black Panthers Party “story” isn’t a story at all — certainly not as Fox News is selling it. It’s a Southern Strategy dog whistle designed to rile up more fear in an already angry and frightened white America. It’s one racist tool with a nightstick being used to confirm the inflexibly entrenched suspicions of a good number of other racist tools.

But as long as credible guys like Bob Scheiffer allow Fox News and Megyn Kelly to set the narrative — to browbeat them into submission, into having to defend their own news judgment — this kind of thing is going to happen again and again. Kelly isn’t pushing the Panthers meme because she believes its an important story; she’s doing it because she knows it’s exactly what her viewers want to hear, believe anyway, and will never be convinced otherwise of.

Which means that any attempt by the media to indulge it will not only play directly into Fox and Kelly’s hand, furthering each’s goal, it won’t win them one convert from the audience it’s unnecessarily attempting to defer to.

Read more: New Black Panther Party, Fox News, Megyn Kelly, Malik Zulu Shabazz, Megyn Kelly New Black Panthers, Media News

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On Larry King Live, The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition organizer Dana Loesch and conservative strategist Michael Reagan attempted to paint recently embattled Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams as an obscure, unimportant tea party member.  But as NY Daily News points out, Williams’ Tea Party Express–of which Williams served as the organization’s public face–”is one of the most influential in the conservative movement,” and has raised “$2.3 million this year.”

The right plays
dumb: “Mark Williams, who?”

Loesch: “I think
when I first heard about Mark Williams, I honestly thought Mark Williams
who?”
On the July 19 edition of CNN’s Larry King Live, Nationwide Tea Party
Coalition organizer Dana Loesch and conservative Michael Reagan tried to
disappear Mark Williams and the significance of the Tea Party Express from the
National Tea Party movement. Loesch claimed that Williams “is a legend in his
own mind,” who “never represented an entire movement.“

Michael Reagan:
“I don’t know how you found Mark Williams…they are pointing at Mark Williams
like he’s leading up some wing of the Tea Party movement.”
Reagan agreed with Loesch’s
characterization of Williams as being an obscure member of the tea party
movement. From CNN’s Larry King Live:

DANA LOESCH, ORGANIZER, THE
NATIONWIDE TEA PARTY COALITION: I think when I first heard about Mark Williams,
I honestly thought Mark Williams who? And I don’t, you know, I don’t want to get
all catty. I think this dude is a legend in his own mind. Why all this attention
is being given to like one person? He’s never represented an entire movement. He
is, I think, to himself perhaps, he thought he did, but never to me and never to
anybody that I know. And I just think that he says a lot of what he — I think
he says a lot of what he says for attention,
honestly.

[...]

MICHAEL REAGAN (CHAIRMAN, THE REAGAN
GROUP): I got to agree, I don’t know how you found Mark Williams. He’s been
floating through radio for 20 years. I know Mark Williams. He wrote it tongue
and cheek and everybody took it very serious. When they are pointing at Mark
Williams like he’s leading up some wing of the Tea Party
movement.

[...]

REAGAN: The fact of the matter is I
don’t know why you are taking Mark Williams so dog gone serious. Here’s a guy
who has had 37 radio shows in 12 years. And you are taking him like he is the
spokesman and the president of the United States of America. He’s not.
He’s Mark Williams. And you guys are taking him really too serious.

KING: Is he cooky?

REAGAN:
Yes, Mark Williams has been cooky. He tries to raise the level so people call
him. I’ll tell you right now he’s probably sitting at home laughing his butt off
that everybody is talking about Mark Williams.

In fact, Williams
was the spokesperson for the influential Tea Party
Express

Williams is the
spokesperson for Tea Party Express. The Tea Party
Express website lists
Mark Williams as its “Spokesperson.”

NY
Daily News: “Williams’ Tea
Party Express is one of the most influential in the conservative
movement.” In a July 18 article, NY Daily
News reported that Mark Williams’ Tea Party Express is “one of the
most influential in the conservative movement” and has raised “$2.3 million this
year”:

Williams’ Tea Party Express is one
of the most influential in the conservative movement. It has reportedly raised
$2.3 million this year, helped elect Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts and organized a rally in Nevada that featured a
rare Sarah Palin speech.

TPM: Tea Party
Express is “one of the most establishment-connected groups on the Tea Party
circuit,” Williams “was the highest-profile public face of the
group.”  In a July 19 report, Talking
Points Memo detailed some of the Tea Party Express’ influence –
including propelling Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle:
 

As the public face of the Tea Party
Express, which has helped propel candidates like Nevada Republican Senate
nominee Sharron Angle to victory this year, Williams represents one of the most
establishment-connected groups on the Tea Party circuit. Tea
Party Express was founded and is run by Republican operatives, which puts it on
par with groups like FreedomWorks.

Before it was cool for tea partiers
to publicly endorse Republican candidates, the Tea Party Express was doing it.
They’re no fringe group of grassroots acitivists — these guys are supposed to
be the professionals. The group was created by a team of high-level California Republican
consultants, and the Tea Party Express’ PAC — Our Country Deserves Better
– still boasts legendary GOP bamboozler and former Rep. Howard Kaloogian as
its co-chair, and veteran Republican political consultant Sal
Russo as its chief strategist.

Williams, a former conservative talk
show host and blogger, was the highest-profile public face of the group. But his
propensity to stumble — I guess accidentally — into racism on his personal
blog and in TV appearances has led to him being disavowed by his colleagues at
TPE. One such disavowal came after his classic “Allah is a monkey god” email back in May. And now, in the wake
of the NAACP calling on tea party leaders like Williams to disavow rhetoric of
the sort Williams has been using, Williams says other colleagues have again
called on him to cool it with all the — I guess accidental — racism
stuff.

In fact, after the firestorm over
Williams’ blog post, organizers of TPE are taking pains to make it clear that Williams’ official role in
the movement is not what it once was. Though he’s still the group’s
spokesperson, he resigned as Tea Party Express’ chairman in June — the change
wasn’t reflected on the group’s website until Williams’ comments came under
intense scrutiny.

CNN reported on Tea Party
Express-backed candidates’ successes in Republican primaries. In a June 23 post, titled “Another victory for the Tea Party
Express,” CNN’s Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser wrote that Republican
candidate for the Senate Mike Lee has the Tea Party Express to thank for his
primary win in Utah, along with Senator Scott
Brown’s Massachusetts victory, and candidate Sharron
Angle’s rise from obscurity:

One of the winners in Tuesday’s
primaries in Utah wasn’t on the ballot, and isn’t even
based in the state.

Republican candidate for the Senate
Mike Lee was victorious in the battle for his party’s nomination, but his win
can also be seen as another primary victory for the Tea Party Express, a
national Tea Party organization based in California.

The group, best known for its three
high profile national bus tours, endorsed Lee and launched a radio campaign and
a get out the vote effort to assist the candidate.

“We are so excited to see another
tea party candidate win a critical election, and the voters in Utah will be well-served
with Mike Lee in the U.S. Senate,” said Tea Party Express Political Director
Bryan Shroyer, in a statement.

Lee, a lawyer and one-time clerk for
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, was also endorsed by Freedom Works. The
nonprofit conservative organization that helps train volunteer activists and has
provided much of the organizational heft behind the Tea Party movement assisted
in the get-out-the-vote efforts in Utah for Lee.

[...]

Sen. Bob Bennett, who finished third
in the voting by delegates, was eliminated from advancing to the primary, ending
his chances of re-election for a fourth term. Bennett became the first sitting
senator to go down to defeat in a primary season marked by strong anti-incumbent
sentiment.

Earlier this year, the Tea Party
Express was among a number of conservative groups to actively work to defeat
Bennett. The organization’s third cross country bus tour included stops in
Utah in March,
where Tea Party Express leaders urged Republican voters to defeat Bennett in his
bid for re-election.

Lee’s victory is the second
statewide win for the Tea Party Express this month. They recently pumped more
than $500,000 into the fight for the Republican Senate nomination in neighboring
Nevada,
helping transform ex-state lawmaker Sharron Angle, once considered a long shot,
into an easy winner in the primary election.

The Tea Party Express also takes
partial credit for convincing longtime Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan not to run for
re-election this year. Stupak announced his decision in April not to make a bid
for another term, as the group was targeting the lawmaker with rallies in his
district during their most recent cross country bus
tour.

At the time, House Majority Leader
Steny Hoyer admitted that the protests and rallies by Tea Party activists across
the country were having an impact on lawmakers’ decisions about running for
another term.

“Do I think that negative atmosphere
that’s been created by the Tea Party and by others certainly goes into the
thinking of Members? I think it does. I think you honestly have to point out
that it does,” Hoyer told reporters at a weekly pen and pad session in the
Capitol.

[...]

The Tea Party Express also takes
some credit for helping Republican Scott Brown’s upset victory in January’s
special election for the seat of the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy. The group
endorsed Brown and put up television ads in support of the
candidate.

Fox News
has aggressively promoted the Tea Party Express tours. Continuing
its political
activism, Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Nation, and FoxNews.com have aggressively
promoted the Tea Party Express tours, going so far as to cheerlead for the protests and advertise the tea party
schedule so viewers “can be a part” of the events. Indeed, a Fox News producer
was even caught coaching a crowd to cheer during a stop of the Tea
Party Express. In turn, the
organizers of the Tea Party Express, The OCDB PAC, used Fox News’ coverage of
its Tea Party Express to fundraise in
a July 29, 2009, email.

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