johnny dollar's archive: mar-apr 2008

The last time Rachel Maddow, entertainer for the Air America radio network, guest-hosted MSNBC's Countdown, Keith Olbermann was forced to make a correction on the very next show. It turned out that Maddow had maligned a Republican Congressman based on an erroneous blog posting that she didn't bother to fact-check.

Tonight on Countdown, Maddow again shot from the lip, this time slandering not a Congressman but Fox News. While her phraseology is clumsy and garbled (perhaps if she slowed down a bit she could speak more coherently), she is trying to make a point that Terry McAuliffe should not praise Fox News, and cites FNC's final Democratic debate of 2004 as her evidence:

MADDOW: If you just think about the petty stuff that Fox News has done. The fact the last time they hosted a Democratic Presidential candidate campaign, they referred to all the candidates as Democrat candidates.

Where did Rachel Maddow get this idea from? She made it up! The Democratic debate hosted by Fox News, held in New Hampshire on January 22, 2004, was moderated by Brit Hume, and one of the questioners was Peter Jennings. Is Maddow trying to smear him too? Really, Rachel, that is pretty low. He is unable to defend himself. The transcript is clear: not once does Hume, or Jennings, or anyone else refer to "Democrat candidates". The same is true of the post-debate analysis. Uh oh. Has Rachel just been caught in another smear?

Well, maybe she was referring to the previous Fox debate, held October 26 2003 in Detroit. According to the transcript there was a use of "Democrat" as an adjective: by John Kerry!

Those aren't Bush Republican cuts, those are the Democrat cuts that we worked hard to put in place to protect the middle class.

But that was it. Nothing from the eeevil Fox News whatsoever. Things are starting to look really bad for mendacious Maddow but wait...maybe she was talking about the Fox debate before that one. The questioners included Juan Williams, Farai Chideya of ABC, and Ed Gordon of BET. And what do you know, there's a transcript online of this one too. Number of times "Democrat" was used as an adjective to describe any candidate? Zero. We even checked the Lexis/Nexis transcript of the post-debate analysis. Maddow flunked out there too.

So how about it, Ms Maddow? Are you going to retract your lie? Are you going to leave it to Keith Olbermann to clean up your mess again? Or are you and Keith going to let the lie stand, because deep down you believe that rules of honesty and journalism do not apply when it comes to smearing Fox News?

UPDATE: See 'Who's Petty Now'? foxnews rachel cd