Wednesday, June 14, 2006

God Bless the US of A

If you thought Jeremy Paxman was a rottweiler, think again. Click HERE.

39 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahh, Faux News... Got to love their take on news reporting. That woman was clearly flustered by the woman she was interviewing- surely she could have done it with a bit more decorum?

I've read about that particular movement for a while now. I'm glad we don't have them here... yet.

Anonymous said...

I saw this on Fox and was in hysterics! Only in America...what a nutter.

You wouldn’t get that kind of interview with the BBC. She was obviously invited in just so they could have an argument.

Well it keeps Americas Fox News viewers entertained.

Swordsman said...

Makes Paxman look like an amateur. So much for "Faux News".

dizzy said...

wow!

Croydonian said...

Those Westboro 'types' are vile, but then again we already knew that.

Paul Burgin said...

As a Christian, I thought Ian Paisley was embarrasing enough!
That said, as I mentioned elsewhere the anchor should have kept calm and remembered that revenge, or in this case slamming forward a giving-as-good-as-you-get argument, is best served cold. Unfortunatley that woman interviewed will have probably gone back to her so-called Church and claimed verbal martyrdom

Anonymous said...

Julie Banderas might also have mentioned that, before the war, Fred Phelps and his band of nutjobs went to Iraq as human shields to support Saddam Hussein.

She also might have mentioned that the Baptist church has renounced any ties with Fred Phelps and his congregation.

It's fascinating how anti-war passion has brought the extreme left and the extreme right together. Cindy "Mother Moonbat" Sheehan drew praise from Klan leader David Duke. And if you read Stormfront-dot-org, the website of the American Nazi party, you read precisely the same "Bush stole the election, this war is for oil, get out of Iraq, theocon oil cabal" paranoid ranting you would read on DailyKos or Democratic Underground.

Anonymous said...

Best advertisement for the European Union I've seen in a long, long time.

Anonymous said...

As an American who watches "Faux" News Channel occasionally, let's be clear on one thing. While it would be completely unprofessional on a *news* show to lose her cool like that, this is a show called "The Big Story" which is the TV equivalent of the editorial page. This interview did not appear on their regular newscasts. The interviewer should be compared more to Oprah Winfrey--who does put her interviewees in their place--because that's the sort of show "The Big Story" is. Had this occurred on "Special Report" or on their regular evening progress, I think the criticisms aimed at the interviewer would be fairer.

That said, I find it interesting that "Faux" news is seen as being too rabidly right-wing yet here we have a FoxNews interviewer chewing out some crazy right-wing lunatic.

Anonymous said...

Trey,

I see Fox News here in the UK and I get the impression that its the TV equivalent of the editorial page in every show from Hannity to the Factor

But when your brought up on UK news, which has to be impartial by law, I suppose anything other than this looks crazy.

You can’t deny that fox news isn’t a right wing outlet (nothing necessarily wrong with that), it owned by Murdoch for starters. I remember in the run up to the US election Hannity kept introducing the show with "only XX days until Americas best ever President is re-elected"! You just couldn’t get away with that in the UK. O'Reilly is in his own war to destroy all Liberals and goes mad with his all of his guests. Just look at Tony Snow - he now works for Bush!

Its slogan Fair and Balanced isn’t really justified. It sees the rest of the media as being too liberal, so its idea of balance is to put up two republicans for every democrat it interviews.

It’s like a TV version of The Sun here in the UK, except Fox supports the Conservatives. I know it’s a biased book, as it’s written by a democrat, but I found “Outfoxed – Murdochs war on journalism’ a very interesting read, and the movie was worth a watch too.

Paul Burgin said...

Thats what makes it so fascinating. Normally I take a strong dislike of Fox News's politics, attitude, and style,it has now, albeit very marginally, gone up in my estimation

Paul Evans said...

Those people are first-class whackjobs, but I’m glad our newsreaders don’t conduct themselves like that either!

Anonymous said...

It's a shame Ash is going to get beaten with a stick from all angles now...

Whilst there are hints of bias in news reporting here in the UK, it isn't as prevalent or enduring as Faux News.

My main issue with that segment was how amateurish the interviewer was. She seemed incapable of holding the discussion without bursting into tears like a hyperactive five year-old, particularly when it came to interrupting her guest virtually two seconds into a reply.

Ross said...

Fred Phelps was a long time associate of Al Gore, he even got invited to the 1997 Clinton/Gore inaugeration.

Anonymous said...

"It's a shame Ash is going to get beaten with a stick from all angles now..."

I dont get what yuor getting at James, i have said little different from others on this site.

Anonymous said...

OOOPSSS I JUST NOTICED MY MISTAKE IT SHOULD HAVE READ

You can't deny that fox news IS a right wing outlet

NOT

You can’t deny that fox news isn’t a right wing outlet

WHOOPS!

Anonymous said...

What about these nasty bigots is right-wing, exactly? They're pretty much single-issue religious fundamentalists - I don't think you can sensibly place them on any kind of left-right scale.

Anonymous said...

To all those who say that Fox is too right wing, please cite examples from news shows, not the shows where the on-air personalities are paid to give their opinion. I watch Special Report most nights. Brit Hume is nothing like O'Rielly and Hannity. Hume's show isn't as far to the right as Olbermann on MSNBC is to the left.

Anonymous said...

'Centre left' politics I'd say begins with a sense of injustice. A dislike of the world as it is combined with a strong desire to put things right, whatever the cost.

'Centre right' is an acceptance of the flaws of the world and a pragmatism to work with those inadequacies in order to try to put things right, but within limitations, and with an acknowlegement that we can only do so much.

The woman in that video is neither, she deserves scorn, pity, and ridicule...probably all three.

Anonymous said...

Yes the woman being interviewed is obviously a nut, but the interviewer should have been more professional. This is rather similar to the Griffin-Dimbelby interview in the election. We might sit back and say what a nutter, but people who are inclined to have those views will only have them reaffirmed by a media that comes across as moral Nazis.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
Best advertisement for the European Union I've seen in a long, long time.

10:51 PM

Why? You didn't give us the arguements for the EU. In what way was this a good argument for the EU? Tell us what it is about the EU that would flatten out this kind of commentary. Don't you think the EU is bland enough? I just am not getting your comment.

Anonymous said...

Hannity has blamed the Left for two of Westboro's protests already. Asshole.

Anonymous said...

US citizen here. This isn't a regular news show. It's more like Larry King or your David Frost.

The interviewee has picketed and caused great grief in my part of the country - the Middle West. She's a lawyer for her father who started all this in Topeka, Kansas. I am a lawyer in Illinois and also sing in a church choir. We recently sang for a young serviceman's funeral and there was a lot of concern about these folks showing up. Luckily, there had already been a funeral service at the base where his body had been returned and the Kansas idiots didn't show.

This is a big story around here because issues of free speech and "fighting words" etc. are involved. The courts are trying to deal with these idiots the best they can.

I wish Ms Banderas had not lost her cool, but these hateful people are causing a lot of folks' blood to boil. Your English "Stiff upper lip" stance just doesn't do it cut it here.

This crazy lady was not brought on FOX for the hell of it. The main stream media is headquartered in New York and DC and doesn't pay much attention to what is happening out our way - that is why you haven't seen anything about it on NBC, CBS or ABC, much less PBS. FOX does pay attention to the Mid-West. At least 2 of their daytime folks are from Kansas and talk about it frequently instead of pretending they were born in Massachussets.

BTW The BBC does not appear to be neutral at all to most Americans.

Anonymous said...

Me again. You must not watch much American cable TV. Try CNN Prime Time and MSNBC for lots of confrontational shows like you see on FOX.

Pretend neutrality doesn't work. You get a better sense of what's happening by watching CNN, PBS and FOX,etc.- the same way you would read several newspapers instead of relying only on one.

Anonymous said...

I laughed out loud at the comment about the Beeb being "impartial by law." If that is the case, the entire organization should be locked up and the key dropped in a deep well. The anti-American bias of the BBC is legendary, at least to those who know bias without it having to bite them on the butt.

It is a disfunction of those on the left to always see themselves as "middle-of-the-road". This is why they cannot bring themselves to use the word "liberal" to describe themselves-- the term has been all but supplanted by "progressive", at least among liberals. Conservatives, on the other hand, are proud of being called conservatives, and have been since Bill Buckley was knee-high to a grasshopper. Sure Fox is right-wing, and makes no bones about it. It's just that the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, et alia, et omnes alia, continue a pretense of impartiality that is without any basis in reality. This is patently dishonest.

Anonymous said...

"Outfoxed" was anything but an interesting read or film. It's a ridiculous hatchet job that can only make its point by quoting everything out of context and editing the crap out of the broadcasts to try to prove its point (ie the O'Reilly "I never lied" segment").

-Michael

Anonymous said...

I hadn't realised that Justin Hawkins, lead singer of 'The Darkness' had found God!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous,

Fair point, but American politics is definitely weirder than ours. Over here, everyone seeks to capture 'middle England'. The States is a land of such extremes that the parties need to be very broad churches indeed. The rise of Republicanism over the last forty years or so has been down to its ability to capture two main groups of Amercian voters - social conservatives (such as demonstrated here) and anti-Government conservatives (i.e small Govt/low taxes). Amercian politics tends to be about capturing as many 'factions' as possible.

Paul Burgin said...

Makes me smile though when sections of the Murdoch press attack the BBC. I just think of Fox News in comparison! ;)

Anonymous said...

Wow! I have hit a nerve with our American cousins! Sorry! I can’t claim to be an expert, I just say it as I see. Please bear in mind I have no other US cable news stations to compare with Fox, and I certainly haven’t watched Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. All I can do is watch Fox and compare it against what we have here in the UK, and there are big variations in the way world events are described and covered.


"The BBC does not appear to be neutral at all to most Americans."

Probably not if you watch how O'Reilly talks about it lol. But seriously i don't know what BBC World is like but in the UK the Beeb is supposed to be impartial by law, although there is often some bias in its reporting.(you can never be totally neutral)

"Sure Fox is right-wing, and makes no bones about it.
Well it should drop the Fair and balanced strap line and just be honest. It would get more respect.

"Outfoxed was anything but an interesting read or film. It's a ridiculous hatchet job."

Well as a Brit taking a look at American TV News I found it interesting. I knew when I first opened the book it was going to be biased when I saw it had been written by Robert Greenwald and supported by the Centre for American Progress. That didn't make it any less interesting. I think the Boston Globe (don’t know whether that’s left or right) described it as “a hardly fair, not especially balanced broadside that has the advantage of being correct”. Billy O described it as “Rank propaganda, the work of an ultra-liberal filmmaker”. To watch them argue over it was even more entertaining.

What you must remember is that to see editorial comment in TV news, for a Brit is nothing short of bizarre, we just don’t get this at home. ;-)

Paul Burgin said...

Except in the newspapers and periodicals. The rulings are different. Fox News only makes sense to those of us who are British if you compare it to a middle ranking British tabloid like, say The Express or The Daily Mail!

Anonymous said...

Dynamite - She's not a newsreader. She's an interviewer.

Michael Oakshott - I thought she was very professional. She was conducting an interview and she had taken a side because that is what the programme is about on this capitalist broadcasting company. Obviously, it's very different from anything The People's Broadcasting Company of Britain, with its mandatory subscription and its shrieking socialist agenda, would run. Interesting that right of centre people are always better looking and have a better dress sense than the lefties.

Anonymous says: "Best advertisement for the European Union I've seen in a long, long time." You're welcome to it. Give me the freewheeling capitalism of America anytime! You actually like state broadcasting, do you?

dynamite: I didn't see her reading the news. Did you? She is not a newsreader. You'd rather have Barbara Plett breaking down in tears as she reported on Arafat's coffin passing, would you? Or Orla Guerrin reporting from Palestine with a catch in her voice?

James - I watched it again and didn't see the interviewer burst into tears. In fact, she held the reins with remarkable determination. The entire point of this show is, it's confrontational.

Jonathan Limebrook - I too laughed out loud at the notion that the BBC is "impartial by law". Go to biased-bbc.blogspot.com. Readers send in hunders of examples PER DAY of BBC biased reporting.

Julia, thank you for your comments. As a Brit who lived in the US for a number of years (and love it) I shrivel with embarrassment at so much ill-informed, provincial, smug criticism from people who think the BBC - Britain's own Pravda - is somehow a world standard of broadcasting. The BBC is toxic, funded at the point of a gun and is run as a fifth column.

- Anonymousette

Anonymous said...

Anonymousette with an attitude like that im glad your in America, dont rush back will you.

"People's Broadcasting Company of Britain with its shrieking socialist agenda"....my a**e. You have been watching Mr Oreilly to much.

Anonymous said...

I have noticed that many Britons do take it quite personally whenever an American points out BBC anti-Americanism or bias. It's understandable that they do not recognize it as easily as we Yanks do. And no I'm not trying to defend Fox which is equally as bad.

Anonymous said...

to anonymous who's glad I'm in the United States. Errr, I'm not, actually.

As I stated, I did live there for a number of years, though, and have great respect for America and Americans.

Such defensiveness, though, tells me that you have never been exposed to free market broadcasting (none of Britain is free market because the tone is set by the 50,000 ton gorilla). If you sincerely do not see that the BBC pushes an anti-free market, socialist/communist agenda, then you have never been exposed to the vigour of the real free market. The reporters on the BBC are openly prejudiced. Matt Frei, and a couple of other US correspondents, hates America. Barbara Plett and Orla Guerrin and John Simpson hate Israel.

Yes,a lot of American broadcasting is puerile. So is a lot of the BBC's output, and it is also biased and tilted to the hard left. It baffles me that any Briton would be proud of being forced under threat of imprisonment to have socialist propaganda drip fed into his brain.

I have no idea who Mr oreilly is.

- Anonymousette

Anonymous said...

"I have no idea who Mr oreilly is."

Are you sure you live in the US. He presents the most popular program on cable news.

Anonymous said...

anonymous says, in response to my post: "Are you sure you live in the US."

I would ask in return: "Are you sure you can read?"

In the first two sentences of the post to which you were responding, I wrote: "to anonymous who's glad I'm in the United States. Errr, I'm not, actually."

In my first post, I stated that I had lived in the United States for a number of years. In my second post I stated categorically that I no longer live there.

I used short, uncomplicated words.

You then ask me if I'm sure I live in the United States. For the third time: No. I am absolutely certain that I do not. And I still have absolutely no idea who Mr oreilly is.

Feel free to feel like a drooling idiot.

- Anonymousette

Anonymous said...

One can only imagine what would happen if these fuckwits appeared at a British soldier's funeral.

I suspect that some colleagues from his regiment would pay a visit to the "church" in question and engage the congregants in some theological discourse of their own.

I'm only surprised the same hasn't happened in the US. Perhaps Americans have a higher tolerance for the right of free speech even for fuckwits.

RM

Anonymous said...

The Brits on here aren't the only ones to think fox is biased, its own ex-reporters tell all in these clips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLthBfWnHlA&search=OUTFOXED

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg3Hi2mN1fI&search=OUTFOXED

hey this may just be put together to look worse than it is but the movie trailer is quite funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hOZxgip9b0&search=OUTFOXED

May be hatched together but these show Billy O at his best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJo4erfBNTo&search=O%27Reilly

Call that Fair and Balanced?