The Fox News Death Panel of Experts

Today I posted an image called "Fox News killed my mother." Because it did. It was the most widely circulated image I've ever posted. But, after about and hour I could no longer read any of the comments. Still can't. And some of you have messaged me to say you can't see it. So here it is again. This time, my explanation will be in the first comment instead of here. Basically my mother fell and refused to go to the doctor because she was afraid that "Obamacare" would get information about her and use it in their "death panels." Since then several of you shared identical experiences. This is how their fear mongering is killing our nation, one person at a time, one lie at a time.
-Tracy Knauss, Facebook

"FOX News is killing America one lie at a time, one life at a time. I know this personally," Knauss wrote in her comment. "FOX News killed my precious mother, Hallie. She watched FOX religiously. And when she fell ten days before she died, she refused to go to the doctor because, 'I don't want Obamacare to get all of my information!' she declared, recalling the warnings from FOX News 'anchors.' She was emphatic. She was not going to consort with the Muslim enemy. As she made out her will she told her lawyer, 'I don't want any of my money going to the Muslim Brotherhood!' And her last protestation dealt with 'Obama's death panels.' Mother died just days later. I hold FOX News responsible for my mother's death."

It seems the real death panel here is the panel of "experts" (otherwise known as "PR flacks") on any given Fox News program. This is the danger that not only Fox News presents, but the entire rightwing "news" industry and the Republican Party: when you lie to people about healthcare, bad things happen. It's really no different than being a snake-oil salesman -- except, for some reason, you aren't held responsible for the damage you cause.

But I'd go further here. Yes, Fox is the worst of the mainstream media -- followed by talk radio on the second tier and the wingnut blogosphere at the lowest -- but the supposedly "unbiased" media sources share a lot of the blame as well.

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Right Pounding the Panic Button Over Limbaugh

We start the day with yet another Rush Limbaugh post, mostly because the reaction of the rightwing blogosphere to his slut-shaming scandal is just so fascinatingly wrongheaded. I'm sure all of these people consider themselves "experts" in the field of politics, yet their approach to this problem of theirs is comprised entirely of weak spin, obviously false equivalencies, and laughable attempts to play the victim card. It's like a case study in how to completely blow crisis management. They're going to dig in, damn it, and if that doesn't work, they're going to dig in deeper.

A big part of the problem is that they're used to dealing with low-information types. It's easy to fool people who don't know anything but what you tell them, but it's quite another to convince everyone else. For example, the aptly-named Jammie Wearing Fool reported the shocking revelation that Sandra Fluke wasn't just some random Georgetown student grabbed off the street to testify before congress, she was an activist (I guess you're supposed to gasp here). There's a lot of rooting around in her past to uncover this secret information, but they could've saved themselves the trouble and just looked at the transcript of her testimony.

My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.

(Applause)

We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.

Keep in mind that Jammie Wearing Fool reports this as some secret info that's been uncovered through relentless Googling. Yet these were literally the first words out of her mouth in her testimony. They also reveal that she's a 30 year-old and claims that previous reports put her at 23, but a trip through Google News shows that the only people mentioning her age as 23 are citing the JWF report. Why it would make any difference anyway isn't clear. But it appears to be an entirely made-up talking point. This argument is lame beyond words.

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There's Only One Pledge that Should Matter to House GOP -- And It's Not Grover Norquist's

The head of the anti-tax taliban, Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist, just blinked.

Washington Post:

WITH A HANDFUL of exceptions, every Republican member of Congress has signed a pledge against increasing taxes. Would allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled in 2012 violate this vow? We posed this question to Grover Norquist, its author and enforcer, and his answer was both surprising and encouraging: No.

In other words, according to Mr. Norquist's interpretation of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, lawmakers have the technical leeway to bring in as much as $4 trillion in new tax revenue -- the cost of extending President George W. Bush's tax cuts for another decade -- without being accused of breaking their promise. "Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase," Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn't violate the pledge? "We wouldn't hold it that way," he said.

Norquist later walked his statement back a hair. "Any changes in taxes should be kept separate from the budget deal," he said on MSNBC this morning. It's not extremely clear why it should be kept separate from debt limit negotiations, other than the fact that Norquist sensed he'd given away too much. Still, if doing away with Bush's high-end tax cuts doesn't violate the pledge, it doesn't violate the pledge.

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