The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

I received the following comments on episode 15 of my podcast ( I Feel Snitty ), entitled, "Fox No News (part 2)": - "I love this, especially the bit with the women in Walmart fighting!" - "Your latest podcast had me in stitches! The Fox News hypocrisy was perfectly skewered!" You can check it out here: https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/e/fox-no-news-part-2/

The latest episode of my podcast ( I Feel Snitty ), entitled, "Fox No News (part 1)," is now available! Check it out here: https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/e/fox-no-news-part-1/ Here's a brief description of the episode: With the lone fair-and-balanced voice on the network which branded itself as such resigning, in Shepard Smith, I thought I'd take a look back at all the BS Shep has had to deal with through the years at the network formerly known as Fox News. Since there's so much of it, the show will be divided into two installments, starting in anti-Memento fashion, with part 1. Oh, sorry, spoiler alert...

If Benghazi were a woman, she would have filed a restraining order against Fox News a long time ago, and won. Fox seems more obsessed with Benghazi than the Chicago Cubs are about disappointing fans and meteorologists are about getting forecasts wrong. While CNN could probably change their name to MAN, or the Malaysian Airlines Network, Fox News could just change their name to BBS, or Benghazi Bullsh*t. It seems that regardless of the story at hand, Fox will find a way to link the story to Benghazi, or at least find an awkward segue. I imagine even after the anchors' programs end, they find ways to bring up Benghazi daily in the real world. While these following discussions may seem a bit far-fetched, sadly enough, watch Fox News for 15 minutes at any point throughout the day and you'll probably realize they're not that drastic of exaggerations after all. Event: Fox News program Anchor #1: "So, how about those Miami Heat? Coming off two straight NBA championships, ...

If there was any doubt that Fox News is a right-wing propaganda machine, Scientific American editor Michael Moyer recently placed those doubts to rest. Moyer was asked to discuss the future of science and technology on Fox & Friends . With regard to the experience, Moyer wrote the following in a blog published by Scientific American : "About the only interesting thing that the scientific community is sure will happen in the next 50 years is that climate change is going to get worse, and that we're going to have to deal with the impacts. So I put that as one of my talking points." He then claimed that a producer of the show told him to not discuss climate change during the segment. Moyer also stated this in his blog: "I found the tone and topics of coverage while I was sitting in the green room this morning to be not something that I wanted to be a part of in the future. I didn't realize that the drumbeat of conservative propaganda was so ubiquitou...

It's amazing to watch cable news channels when a significant crime or tragedy has struck a part of this nation. In light of the recent mass shooting in this nation's capital, MSNBC decided to report the shooter's name without confirmation, Fox News thought it was a prime opportunity to be partisan and racist, and CNN felt that any bit of news, even if it wasn't news at all, was important for everyone to hear. MSNBC leans left, Fox News leans right, and CNN leans whichever direction the wind takes them. Here's my slightly exaggerated version of how the three networks report on such events. Headline: A 25-year old African-American man attempted to rob a bank and is holding several people hostage Network: MSNBC "We're just getting word about an attempted bank robbery in Chicago, Illinois, where an African-American man is holding several people hostage. Apparently the man is about 25-years old, and do we have a name yet? We do? Okay, we just got confirmat...

Heard of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where people try to connect an actor with Kevin Bacon in six or fewer steps? It appears as if Fox News has been playing a condensed version of that game with regard to President Obama and Benghazi. I call it the Three Degrees of Benghazi. Here are just a few examples: Starting point: "Syria may have used chemical weapons against its own people." Fox News' next move: "Obama is looking very weak as a leader during this whole thing." Fox News' closer: "He's obviously doing this so people forget about his weak leadership during Benghazi!" Starting point: "A shooting rampage occurred in Washington, D.C. earlier today." Fox News' next move: "At last check, 12 people were killed." Fox News' closer: " That is only eight more than were killed in the most brutal attack on American non-American soil - Benghazi!" Starting point: "It's another record...

On Fox & Friends yesterday, Fox News health expert and man who thinks health is the opposite of heaven - David Samadi - said this with regard to his belief that men shouldn't pay as much as women for health insurance: "We only have the prostate. Women have the breasts, the ovaries, the uterus, they get checked in every part. Look, it's not bias, I'm not saying this as a man. [Women] go through a lot of preventive screenings, they give birth, they have the whole mammogram, the Pap smear. Guys, we don't like to go to the doctors, right?" Mr. Samadi is quite the expert indeed. "We only have the prostate. Women have the breasts, the ovaries, the uterus..." Yet, a fairly recent study shows that men are 1.5 to 2 times more likely to die from cancer than women. While there's approximately a 1 in 2 chance that men will develop cancer at least once in their lives, there's a 1 in 3 chance for women. So, as you were saying, Fox News health ...

Yesterday on the Fox News show Fox and Friends , hosts Steve Doocy (not to be confused with douchey), Brian Kilmeade, and Gretchen Carlson spent a full 13 minutes talking about a person in a video clip who took close to a half-hour to parallel park. Doocy then said, "It took a full 30 minutes for the driver to squeeze into the parallel spot. So who was behind the wheel? Well, it turns out, it was a woman." Douchey and Kilmeade then challenged Carlson and meteorologist Maria Molina to a battle of the sexes to see which pair could parallel park better than the other. Fox News never ceases to amaze me at how it degrades women. Would the bit have been fine if Sir Douchey and company simply talked and laughed about the video clip without drawing attention to the fact the driver was a woman? Yes. However, Douchey had to go and do just that by saying, "...So who was behind the wheel? Well, it turns out, it was a woman." I then read comments following the article fr...

Joe Muto - the former "Fox News Mole," who had been fired by the network after he posted some rather secretive information about it on the Internet, just recently had the following to say about the cable-news channel for whom he used to work: "The people at Fox are not stupid. They know when they have Dick Morris or one of these other pundits on predicting a landslide victory for Romney, the people behind the scenes know that it's all bluster. They know that this is sort of an entertainment. They know that a lot of these people are just hucksters ... we producers know that this is all a farce. The reason we don't step in and give a reality check to our audience is because that's terrible for ratings." As I've been saying since the network's inception, they are about as fair and balanced as Paula Abdul was stable and sober while a judge on American Idol . The cable-news channel should alter their slogan from "We report. You decide...

I criticize Fox News more than Rush Limbaugh eats at an all-you-can-eat buffet after smoking weed. However, there is one Fox News personality I like, who stands out from all the others and that's Shep Smith.  Often times, he comes across as the lone sane voice on Fox, that or a guy who has a fetish with playing devil's advocate and getting under his co-workers' skin (not literally, of course).  On Tuesday night, Shep was his usual non-Fox (meaning sane and reasonable) self, when he said, "Isn't it possible to say, 'We are better off?' I mean you could make that argument and make it pretty succinctly, couldn't you? I mean we were in a pretty bad free fall. I remember a day when we thought that the whole economy of the world was going to collapse and a lot has been done to improve things, hasn't it?" That's right - a Fox News personality defended President Obama as having improved things in this country over the past 4 years.  This...

I've never been a fan of Fox News, from Sean Hannity to Bill O'Reilly to Brit Hume to the morning crew and beyond (Shepard Smith being the lone exception), but Glenn Beck is another beast entirely. While Hannity and O'Reilly make me shake my head at their angry rhetoric and heavy slant, Beck simultaneously frightens me and makes me laugh. I laugh at the man and his show because the majority of what he says is so outlandish and ridiculous, his words and actions come across to me as over-the-top comedy more than anything. However, the fact that so many people listen to this guy and take his words seriously, that frightens me a bit. Beck is quite a fan of the chalkboard and using the chalkboard to connect the dots of people and events to form a conspiracy. He's drawn links between different Democrats and the likes of Adolf Hitler, Stalin, etc. There are times when there are so many different lines drawn on the chalkboard, connecting one person and event to another, it ...

So, the most watched cable "news" network, the network whom claims to be "fair and balanced" and carry with them the slogan, "We report. You decide.," committed yet another error the other day. It wasn't their first and certainly won't be their last. Why then have I decided to write about it, since it seems to be so commonplace? Oh, because not only was Fox wrong in their reporting, the disparity between their numbers and the actual numbers is staggering. Fox "News" reported that the Wisconsin protests will cost up to $7.5 million dollars or to write the longer version, $7,500,000. It has since been reported that the total costs will be around $350,000. That's a difference of $7,150,000. $350,000 is just 4.7% of $7,150,000. In other words, Fox was off by, oh, just 95.3%. If I took an exam and received less than a 5%, keeping in mind that a failing grade in college is 59% or 54 percentage points higher than my hypothetical score, cha...

Okay, I have to ask this, why do so many people trust "Fox News" as a credible source for news? Why? I'm not saying there aren't other biased news networks. MSNBC, especially in their late night programs, have an obvious slant to the left of center. However, they also carry with them Republicans Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan. That's not much, but that's still better than Fox, whom carries with them Shepard Smith and that's about it as far as "fair and balanced" reporting is concerned. Infotainment, as I like to call it, is huge in this day and age. It's like an extreme version of a creative non-fiction book, where an individual takes facts and adds attractive fictional elements to make it more exciting and entertaining. In filmmaking, we have Michael Moore, but even Mr. Moore can't equal the level of "infotainment" that transpires at Fox and does so in a very slanted fashion. There's: Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, Glenn ...

Okay, I'm going to give it a go. I've never been able to understand how Glenn Beck comes up with the ideas he does. So, I'm going to attempt to become one with Glenn Beck, crawl inside that noggin of his and see what I can come up with. Alright... ::closes eyes, takes deep breaths, listens to Metallica:: For my first connection, I will show you that without any hesitation, we can conclude there's a direct link connecting Hillary Clinton, Sean Penn and Mystic River. There's no mistaking which way Hillary Clinton leans on the political spectrum. She's a left-wing loony, much like actor Sean Penn. If you didn't realize this, Sean Penn starred in the film "Mystic River" and this means only one thing - Hillary Clinton drowned someone in a river! There should be a full investigation into this criminal act and I am going to be the one leading the way to her conviction and life sentence! How about if I connect four? Today I'm going to draw a li...