For weeks now, Pacifica Radio's been on a mad, self-righteous and ultimately self-defeating tear.
A rash of shootings across the country led various talk show hosts -- some who masquerade as journalists -- to load their verbal guns and go hunting.
The obvious choice for a target was, of course, the Republican Party.
Pacifica has, after all, spent the bulk of Barack Obama's two terms as president pretending everything is the fault of the Republicans. What THE SIMPSONS played for fun ("Days of Future Future), Pacifa Radio treats as 'reality;'
Bart: Isn't your mom eighty-seven?
Nelson: With Social Security a thing of the past, she can't afford to retire.
Bart: I don't know how that happened in a Senate with 99 Democrats.
Nelson: That one Republican is great at getting his way!
Worse than their never ending whoring for the Democratic Party was the efforts to blame the violence on free speech.
For those who don't know, Pacifica Radio was created, by Lew Hill, to be the home of free speech.
So it was really something to hear the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting blamed on speech -- and to hear it from Pacifica Radio.
The worst? A difficult call, yes, but we'd go with the Monday, November 30th broadcast of WBAI EVENING NEWS hosted by Linda Perry. (Perry-Barr? She bills herself as "Perry" on air these days.)
Shameful and disgusting, Perry wanted to use terms like "morality."
We always cringe when that words tossed around to justify positions being fully familiar that the victims of the "morality" argument has historically been lesbians and gays, all women, all people of color, the challenged and the poor.
"Morality" arguments have (a) prolonged slavery, (b) justified sterilization, (c) justified imprisonment and institutionalization.
"Society needs to find its moral center," Linda Perry insisted a woman said before playing the woman speaking -- the woman who never said "society needs to find its moral center."
We have no problem making ethical arguments but we're fully aware that those who huff with puffed out chests about "morality" are usually very, very stupid and unable to make an argument any other way.
Linda Perry certainly lived up to that as did the guests she featured who couldn't seem to decide whether the issue was a shooting, abortion rights or racism.
"Keep your guns away from women's health!"
That would have been a great slogan.
Especially compared to the crap a tiny group of protesters offered. ("Women are not incubators! Fetuses are not babies!")
Sunsara Taylor was quoted and she was all over the map and (". . . police murder and terror, it's all one attack, the attacks coming down on Black people . . .") and may have been responsible for the chants.
If she was, here's a clue.
If there's a shooting, you don't use that to argue abortion.
Why argue it?
It's legal.
Why go to a defensive posture?
Instead argue that this is an attack on women's health.
"Before ROE V WADE, I had an illegal abortion," insisted one woman on air.
Who the hell cares?
Stop turning this into an abortion issue when it's a women's health issue.
Isn't Planned Parenthood's role more than abortion.
But isn't Cecile Richards the president of Planned Parenthood?
Someone inform Linda Perry who referred to her on air as "Cecile Roberts."
At least Perry noted that Planned Parenthood was providing fetal tissue for research.
That's more than COUNTERSPIN could do.
Speaking with Jodi Jacobson on Friday's broadcast, host Janine Jackson ignored that reality as she and her guest insisted that the tapes from right-wing activists were not true, were illegal, were this and were that.
But they ignored the fetal tissue issue.
Supposedly, five Planned Parenthood centers around the country donate fetal tissue (whether they are paid or not, who knows). Cecile Richards says it is only five.
Five is too many.
The role of Planned Parenthood is women's health.
Abortion -- which we support 100% -- is controversial enough for some without bringing in the issue of fetal tissue.
You can chant "Fetuses aren't babies!" all you want, when you're taking tissue from fetuses, you're going to offend a number of people.
It is not worth risking women's health for this.
It never should have happened but if Planned Parenthood had a functioning president, once exposed, the program would have been immediately ended.
Right wing activists lied or overreached?
As leftists, that doesn't surprise us.
But equally true, you can't sweep under the carpet Planned Parenthood handing over fetal tissue for research.
Well, you can sweep it under the carpet if you're cheap, lying whore like Janine Jackson.
The laughably named FAIR produces COUNTERSPIN which claims to be a media watchdog but which avoided Elise Labott on Friday's show.
This was strange for a number of reasons including
THE DAILY MAIL reporting:
Suspended CNN reporter
Elise Labott has come under fire again, this time for allegedly
coordinating her coverage of a 2013 Benghazi hearing with a former Hillary Clinton spokesman to attack Senator Rand Paul.
A new batch of State Department emails that were released to Gawker on
Tuesday appear to show that Labott took direction from Philippe Reines,
a top Clinton aide in the State Department, when crafting tweets
concerning the January 23, 2013, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
hearing.
COUNTERSPIN didn't.
To be clear, neither the program nor Janine Jackson is averse to covering Labott -- at least not when they're rushing to defend her.
Labott -- a reporter and producer -- was suspended for a Tweet slamming the House GOP on a vote. Jackson was outraged by this.
How unfair it was, to Jackson.
So she devoted a few minutes to it on COUNTERSPIN two Fridays ago.
A media critic who doesn't understand that a reporter can't comment with personal opinions on the beat she covers is a media critic who's full of s**t.
And that brings up back to Elise Labott's latest mess.
The point no one wants to raise.
Not only was she coordinating coverage with the State Dept but she was also covering the State Dept.
And she was e-mailing Reines and he her.
And yet when it became news that Hillary (and eventually others) at the State Dept were not using government e-mail accounts, Elise Labott didn't say a peep about her e-mail exchanges with Reines -- or the fact that they didn't all come from his government e-mail account.
So not only was she taking dictation with Benghazi talking points, when the story (finally) broke of certain people at the State Dept circumventing regulations by using non-government e-mail accounts, Elise Labott covered for Reines instead of reporting.
Janine Jackson has become such a whore that FAIR should fire her -- but who else could they get to do her job? How many wives does Jim Naureckas have?
The lack of accountability has become the key feature of 'left' media in The Age of Barack.
And what's so amazing about their whoring for Barack is how they are people he probably wouldn't want to have a thing to do with.
And we're not arguing here that he's a snob to the great unwashed.
We are arguing that these whores who claim to serve him are beyond stupid.
Barack is currently under attack -- and has been for some time -- for refusing to say "radical Islamic" terrorists or what have you.
Why does he refuse to use those terms?
Because he's a secret Muslim!
That's what some foolishly argue.
But as stupid as that claim is, so are the idiots who try to defend him.
Take Fareed Zakaria who was a guest on CNN Monday morning (yes, he also hosts a CNN program) and was offering --
Well what was he offering?
If that's a defense, no wonder Barack struggles with messaging.
Let's step back for a moment to note that idiots like Robin Morgan and Linda Perry are among the Pacifica voices using the D-word to describe the Islamic State.
Last Friday, on WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER LIVE (it really isn't live), Robin was using the D-word and full of bitchery as she insisted that it was a slur and that's why she used it.
You would think, if only for
Jane Fonda's sake, Robin would put her inner bitch on a leash at least with regards to Arabs.
See, Jane's ROLLOVER has always been seen by some as highly racist (an attitude fostered by anti-Arab remarks Tom Hayden -- Fonda's then husband -- made at the time).
Jane, Robin and Gloria Steinem founded WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER (a front group for Democratic politics -- there's no independence at WMC) and they have a board.
Strange thing isn't it, how none of the women on the board are Arab?
Jane's going to have to deal with a film career that gets forgotten because Arabs are frankly tired of her.
She declared in January 2007 that she was not going to stop speaking out against the Iraq War until it was over.
But as Iraqi activists on all social media have repeatedly noted, once Barack was sworn in as president, Jane ran -- ran -- away from the topic of Iraq.
She's seen as a friend of Israel but an enemy of the Arab people.
Robin Morgan shooting off her big yap and attacking (a) Arabs and (b) Muslims last Friday may be Robin being Robin but it does reflect on Jane who may quickly discover she's the Merle Oberon of film.
Who?
Exactly.
Jane's not Faye Dunaway.
She has no films that are considered classics the way Faye or
Goldie Hawn does.
NETWORK, CHINATOWN, THE THOMAS CROWNE AFFAIR, even MOMMIE DEAREST are considered classics and those aren't Faye's only ones.
Faye will be remembered.
Now we would argue that Jane has made some classic films.
And we use this outlet, THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW, to rescue the work of women, to make the argument that women's art matters.
But, honestly, we'll walk away from Jane -- and focus on Goldie or some other worthy actress -- if it means that we're having to spend all of our time explaining how she's not anti-Arab.
She's got that reputation and remarks by Robin Morgan only make it worse.
Robin's also supposed to be a voice of feminism.
We can't imagine anything sadder than a feminist in an Arab area attempting to defend Robin Morgan to people who see her as hostile and hateful.
Robin and Linda think it's cute to use slurs.
But any one with a brain will explain to you that the growth of the Islamic State has to do with the persecution of the Sunnis.
In Iraq, for example, as many Sunnis have stated over the last years, they don't support the Islamic State but when the Iraqi government is attacking Sunnis, they don't have a dog in the fight either way.
In a time when people feel persecuted and powerless, why would you mock the Islamic State?
To feed into the image of bitchy and cruel Americans?
Congratulations, Robin Morgan.
Barack doesn't use the "radical Islam" terms because he is aware that, the minute he does, a whole group of people -- a very large group -- stop listening to him.
If he used the term, he's one more 'hater.'
Barack's smart enough to realize that.
It's a shame that Robin Morgan, Linda Perry and Pacifica Radio are too stupid to grasp it.
It's a bigger shame that 'independent media' has spent so many years now playing dumb and stupid. Imagine where the country might be today if we had a real independent media, one that practiced accountability?
Instead, and as
Cher once sang, "you better sit down kids," the reality is that the so-called 'progressive' media was much more progressive (and ethical) when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House and held the country hostage. We've lost ground. Not because the Republicans have fought or argued better but because we tossed aside our ethics to make every day about scrap booking and fan clubbing for a cult of personality that happened to be a Democrat.
