OBAMA = BAD
Right-wing media check up: still crazy [after all these years]
The right-wing media hasn't learned anything from its failures in 2012. It's the same-old 'Obama is evil' conspiracy theories.
Ana Marie Cox
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 May 2013 11.30 EDT
It's an internet truism to distrust any pronouncement made with the caps lock key engaged, so maybe I'm not supposed to take the headlines on The Blaze, Glenn Beck's contribution to the growing field of self-identified conservative news aggregators, seriously. Certainly, the story that topped the homepage Thursday seemed to come less from current events and more from the Right-Wing Outrage Generator. You know, the one built by Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh in a Palo Alto, California garage in the 90s. "DID AN IMAM REALLY USE ARABIC PRAYER TO COVERTLY DAMN FALLEN SEAL TEAM 6 MEMBERS TO HELL DURING THEIR FUNERAL?"
I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that the answer to that question is "no". Although there was an imam at the funeral of the fallen Navy Seals, he said a prayer in Arabic. The parents of three of them did hold a press conference, but The Blaze story veers widely into gossamer web accusations and paranoia that centers on the kind of claim that would normally be where the reporting process starts rather than ends: "If this translation is valid…"
With that single phrase, The Blaze leaps over the journalism crucible intended to burn away stories that don't actually inform anyone of anything, but rather wrap around the grit of previously held beliefs. You roll your mind around enough in that stuff and gossamer becomes shellac, and your worldview hardens to the point of impermeability. Truth can't find a purchase.
(More here.)
The right-wing media hasn't learned anything from its failures in 2012. It's the same-old 'Obama is evil' conspiracy theories.
Ana Marie Cox
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 May 2013 11.30 EDT
It's an internet truism to distrust any pronouncement made with the caps lock key engaged, so maybe I'm not supposed to take the headlines on The Blaze, Glenn Beck's contribution to the growing field of self-identified conservative news aggregators, seriously. Certainly, the story that topped the homepage Thursday seemed to come less from current events and more from the Right-Wing Outrage Generator. You know, the one built by Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh in a Palo Alto, California garage in the 90s. "DID AN IMAM REALLY USE ARABIC PRAYER TO COVERTLY DAMN FALLEN SEAL TEAM 6 MEMBERS TO HELL DURING THEIR FUNERAL?"
I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that the answer to that question is "no". Although there was an imam at the funeral of the fallen Navy Seals, he said a prayer in Arabic. The parents of three of them did hold a press conference, but The Blaze story veers widely into gossamer web accusations and paranoia that centers on the kind of claim that would normally be where the reporting process starts rather than ends: "If this translation is valid…"
With that single phrase, The Blaze leaps over the journalism crucible intended to burn away stories that don't actually inform anyone of anything, but rather wrap around the grit of previously held beliefs. You roll your mind around enough in that stuff and gossamer becomes shellac, and your worldview hardens to the point of impermeability. Truth can't find a purchase.
(More here.)
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