johnny dollar's archive: mar-apr 2009

For an exemplar of the Fox Haters noise machine in its full glory, one need look no further than this week's smear of Glenn Beck. The "hook": the killing of three Pittburgh police officers on April 4. The architects of the slander? The usual sources: Media Matters, and various other blue blogs and Fox haters serving as cyber echo chambers.

Consider Eric Boehlert's latest screed, supposedly about FNC as "militia media" but actually a crafty bit of character assassination against Mr Beck:

He felt entirely comfortable pondering whether the federal government, under the auspices of FEMA, was building concentration camps to round up Americans in order to institute totalitarian rule.

That appearance on Fox & Friends was to promote his discussion of the issue later that day on his own program. And if you watch the video that Mr Boehlert links to, Beck says nothing about the alleged camps' purpose being "to round up Americans in order to institute totalitarian rule".

Next, the actual discussion later that day that Mr Beck had been promoting. Here we get another dose of Boehlony, as he tries to link that discussion to the Pittsburgh killer:

Poplawski uploaded a video clip of Beck ominously referencing the FEMA camps on Fox News.

When you check out the link provided, it's a report from the ADL where we learn Poplawski didn't upload the video at all. He posted a link to it on the neo-Nazi Stormfront website. And the video itself turns out to have been a discussion between Beck and Rep Ron Paul.

And how about that special Boehlert touch: "ominously referencing FEMA camps"? Oddly Mr Boehlert doesn't link to the video. Wouldn't that be even more shocking to his credulous audience? Not exactly, because the video segment in question isn't as "ominous" as Mr Boehlert would have you believe. In fact, just 30 seconds in, Beck proclaims:

I don't believe in the FEMA prisons.

Wow. Sounds pretty ominous there Eric. What other ominous things does Beck say?

I am not willing to bring something to you that is half-baked. If these things exist that's bad and we willl cover it. If they don't exist it's irresponsible to not debunk this story. We have an independent group on this program looking into it, turning over every stone.

Hundreds of sites trumpeted the existence of this video, describing it not as "Glenn Beck doesn't believe in FEMA prisons", or "Glenn Beck promises investigation into truth of FEMA rumor"... but simply as Beck "talking about" or "promoting the idea of" FEMA prisons. Without mentioning that he doesn't believe in them.

Max Blumenthal, posting at The Daily Beast, had his own description of this exchange:

The alleged killer posted a YouTube clip to Stormfront of top-rated Fox News host Glenn Beck contemplating the existence of FEMA-managed concentration camps. (“He backed out,” Poplawski wrote cryptically beside the video.)

How "cryptic" could that comment possibly be, when in the first 30 seconds Beck says he doesn't believe in FEMA prisons?!? Did Mr Blumenthal even look at the video he's talking about? Or did he just take Eric Boehlert's word that it was "ominous"?

We have one final bit of Boehlony to address. Mr B does admit that Beck has used his program to thoroughly debunk the whole FEMA camp rumor, but has to falsify the truth to protect his premise:

It wasn't until this week that Beck was finally able to "debunk" the FEMA conspiracy theory.

Beck did do segments with Popular Mechanics debunking the FEMA rumors on April 6 and April 7. However, the first segment was not this week but was back on March 27--a week before the shootings in Pittsburgh.

Why is Mr Boehlert not telling the truth about this? Is it to make it look like Beck only started the debunking after the shootings? Does he not want you to know that if the shooter believed in FEMA camps, then--contrary to the Boehlert/Fox hater theory--he probably didn't like Glenn Beck at all?

We would ask Mr Boehlert to correct his falsehoods, but he apparently doesn't believe in that sort of thing. fox news mm ac eb