Jon Stewart On Fox's Fake "Common" Controversy: "It's Almost Impossible To Express How Ridiculous...You All Are"
May 12, 2011 6:23 am ET by Media Matters staff
On the May 11 edition of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart highlighted the absurd hypocrisy in Fox's manufactured controversy over the White House's decision to host rapper Common at a poetry event. As Stewart pointed out, Fox has celebrated musicians with far more violent lyrics, including hosting Ted Nugent--who once told President Obama "to suck on my machine gun"--multiple times. From The Daily Show:
Previously:
MSNBC Notes Hypocrisy Of Fox's Attack On Rapper Common
Making Sense of Fox News' Common Freakout
Hypocrisy (Music Lyrics Edition): Fox Attacks Rapper Appearing At White House
So why did his Poem call for everyone to be so insightful?
I just Heard "Easy-E" was invited to George H. W. Bush's White-House.
The "NWA's", The "N" Words with Attitudes? To me Easy-E is by far the Bigger Louse.
Speak truth to power.
Mr. News
Though the thought was appreciated, his or her poems gave me the blues.
The meter was wretched,
And the rhymes were... um... stretch-ed.
And they always seemed to end with an uncomfortably long final line that did less to convey an interesting idea in a poetic form than to confuse.
Speak truth to power effectively.
-Vysotsky
Call it ridiculous and hypocrisy, but it's really just demographics.
Common [Sense] is not only an African-American man, but he's urban and even hip (hop). Fox's demographic is neither. I don't mean that Fox is playing the ratings game or that they're catering to their own audience's fears and prejudices. They're playing politics and catering to the suspicions and prejudice and ignorance of a much wider American electorate. This is a perfect opportunity for Fox to remind their audience (and the American electorate) yet again that the President is not a white man, instead he's of a color similar to Rev. Wright (and Louis Farrakhan for that matter), and Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod, and those maniacs outside the polling station in Philadelphia (also a few recent NBA maniacs that I'm surprised Fox isn't obsessing about), and now we have this Common [Sense], the President is of a similar skin color to him too.
The President isn't of the same exact skin color as Palin and Gingrich and Huckabee, or most importantly of Mitt Romney (your next President), and he's not the same color as ted nugent either.
It's demographics, there's a racial divide in America as large as Texas and Florida and Ohio and Western Pennsylvania and Southern Illinois and Missouri and Oregon and Arizona all put together (can you see those places on an electoral map), and add in all of California north of Los Angeles and south of San Francisco, and you have one massive chunk of the American electorate, and as far as Common [Sense] goes, when they see him, they see mostly just one thing...
Which is the same thing Fox wants them to see when they see their President.
It's just demographics is all.
Meanwhile, somehow, you do not mention a single deep south state (to me, Florida is its own bizarre planet once you pass Jacksonville) or even any of the "militia attitude haven" states (such as Wyoming, Kansas or Idaho).
His stereotypes were wildly off, that's MY matter to his comment. I am not disagreeing with the essential gist that FNC is a complete joke catering to nutbags. But I have clearly demonstrated in very few words that his geographic characterizations leave a whole hell of lot to be desired from a factual standpoint.
So... since, I clearly have not disputed anything other than the geographical claims and I am attempting to offer facts, what exactly is your problem with it anyway?
It's no mere coincidence that 'conservative' pundits and presidents have been A-OK with the violent rhetoric from lily, white boys - which COULD be hand picked and lifted from Mr. Cash's lyrics, then interpreted like Common's words to pose a threat and which simply can't be ignored from a loud mouthed, thoughtless, reactionary like Nugent!
AND, we must remember that for some strange reason, there's hardly a right wing racist alive today who won't deny it to his dying day!
Pretty broad strokes you're taking there.
You buncha sexists!!! Downgrading my opinion just coz I'm a man!!!
Just kidding. But still... what the what?
BTW ...how awesome was that slamming by Stewart?
You gotta love that guy..he's got more insight and common sense than most media pundits...if I find it on youtube it's straight to my favorites.
It was great stuff.
Stewart/Colbert is my ticket for 2016....:)
Ah, sorry. My eyes are watering too hard after the comedy bit in there about "Mitt Romney (your next President)" to continue reading.
Ah, President Obama would get a chuckle out of reading that in his second term.
Apologies for this picking of nits, but this is actually relevant to your point.
You wrote "would" (future conditional, indicating something that may or may not become true), where you meant to write "will" (future indicative, indicating something that will become true):
"Ah, President Obama WILL get a chuckle out of reading that in his second term."
Carry on.
If I said: Al Quaeda thinks that bin Laden was not a terrorist, but rather, he was a hero, deserving of unending accolades. I think they are full of sh*t, he was a terrorist, plain and simple.
And I was quoted as having said: bin Laden was not a terrorist, but rather, he was a hero, deserving of unending accolades.
Technically, I have been correctly quoted, right? After all, I DID say exactly that. So are the people cutting off the start and end of my statement being dishonest, or are they simply playing to their demographic?
There are 2 types of lies -
- lies of commission - which are fabrications
- lies of omission - which distort meaning by what they leave out, in this case, the lead-in and ending of your quote.
Technically, you could put together strings of words from Hannity - in various contexts - forming a statement of undying support and admiration for President Obama.
Shame the Founders weren't as omniscient as some of these yahoos would like to believe. If they had been, that clause about the press would have included something about truth.
No surprise there; they Make Masses of Money for their white owners, and they (within limits) know their places.
Fox -- and their demo -- loves them some PoCs like that.
The president just can't win no matter what he does the MSM is content to cover their ears and eyes while Fox and Right do whatever they deem fit to smear this administration.
Unfortunately, calling Fox racist will only give them the publicity they want and they will accuse Obama of playing the race card. Its annoying how self righteous they act whenever someone calls them out on their racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.. They trump themselves up crowing about how big their ratings are, then denigrate anyone criticizing them. Everyday, in and out, they give the biggest soapbox in the world for any hateful nut like Nugent, Beck, Corsi, Geller, Taitz, Hagee, Bolling, et. al. to spout their hate without question. Simultaneously they claim defamation whenever they are called out on their hateful reporting.
This democracy is doomed until we can completely remove outside money from the elections. The corporations have acquired a domination of this government that will not be removed even with considerable effort. I think a good historical date for the demise of the American democracy and the ascension of American Corpocracy is about January 21st, 2010 or earlier on January 20th, 1980.
Probably the most important reason why this key problem of bribery continues is that the mainstream evening TV newscasts don't focus enough attention on it. Most Americans know their political system has been corrupted, but to fight back they need SPECIFIC INFORMATION about who is giving how much money to whom. The MSM have so far failed to give the public this necessary info.
"This democracy is doomed until we can completely remove outside money from the elections."
Your first point contradicts and outweighs your second.
I cannot prove this to be true with citeable figures, but I'd bet Very Big Bux that the impact of corporate $ on ad buys is as nothing compared to the impact that the control that corporate ownership has over the media confers for manipulation of the news.
I would further bet that even the most powerful and iconic of political ads ("morning in America;" "daisy;" "where's the beef?") are as nothing compared to the power to not only affect the perception of reality that corporate media ownership confers, but the power to create the reality itself.
It's not campaign ads that have Americans thinking their taxes are up (when they're down); that the economy is still shrinking (it's been growing for about two years); that Obama's causing gas prices to rise (ME turbulence and speculators are); that Saddam's Iraq not only had WMD but was behind 9/11 (please).
Given the choice, I'd let the corp's buy all the damn ads they want, as long as we own and operate the newsrooms.
Course, we're not given the choice -- they own both.
And little will really change until that's no longer true.
Unions contribute to elections as much as corporations do. In fact, contributions from the AFT and the AFSCME went 100% to democrat candidates.
I agree, get rid of outside money.
Judging from their discussion, it's another long whinefest about how Liberals are unfairly denigrating the wonders of Capitalism. Of course, the author had to get in a couple of digs at the Obama Administration and its "hostility" toward capitalist ideals.
It was really sickening; I thought for a moment that I was watching FUX & Fiends.
They used to at least try to come up with some convincing bullsh*t, some lies that might take a little effort to expose. Now they ( media and internet trolls) seem to have settled on preaching to the choir, just targeting the cult.
I don't know how many times I have Googled after a Fox clip and in a fraction of a second have thousands of hits exposing their lie. It's always been too easy. Darn that Google!
(btw, this thought didn't orignate w/me)
Fox pretty much invents this BS, the rest of the mainstream media tiptoes around it, presenting the BS as a viable opinion, frightened of appearing too "liberal" by calling it what it is. It's only a couple of comedy shows who seem to have the balls to say, straight out, " Hey. This is BS".
OT : I think I got to a Nugent-related thread before Worrierking for once. Nice job by MMFA keeping him out of the headline. Yay!
I don't understand how anyone can not see the hypocrisy. I'm not that familiar with Common's work, from what I've read, it pales in comparison to a draft dodging, pants crapper's antics. And he looks kind of common and probably doesn't smell all that bad, not like a certain antiquated, rednecked pantload who will remain .. oh what the hell, I'm talking about Ted Nugent.
Some patriot this guy is.
Ex-friggin-actly. The friggin was for emphasis(in Homer Simpson voice)
I doubt seriously he was brave enough to DO it, but he had the stones to SAY it. Of course, hippies are usually pacifists as well, so maybe he WAS brave enough to do it.
Nah, he is a pant-cr@pping coward who thinks that war is good as long as he doesn't have to participate other than to cheer about sending someone else to die.
Don't paint the men who went with the same brush you'd paint the government's policies in South East Asia. We sent three and one half million men to hell with no choice of opting out.
Except for people like Nugent, who wants to be today's judge of anything and everything manly. Since he's now to old to serve, he supports all of our overseas "adventures". To me that's the sign of a coward.
And for every guy who found a way to weasel out, someone else had to go. And many of those guys, having lived it, would think twice before sending someone else to war.
"I strongly condemn both Nugent and Common."
Of course, to do this you'd have to haul out the old false equivalency argument and pretend that their message was equally offensive. But hey, you have to play the cards you are dealt the best way you can.
Your welcome.
House of Lords or House of Commons?
This is a prime example of dog whistle bigotry spewed by Roger Ailes and his crew of bloviating FOX (it's only in our name) NEWS teleprompter-reading, editing-for-distortion, hate and fear mongers.
The only thing that's changed about Roger Ailes in the last 40 years is the amount he has to pay his microphone mercenaries.
Dittoheads only listen to Fatso and faux viewers dare not watch or listen to opposing viewpoints . .
We've all seen the videos of the teabaggers - faux rules
Sad for our country . .
Sean Hannity: "Some (Brit Hume's senile uncle) say Amabo is an ancient African word meaning, 'America sucks, yo!'"
Bill O'Lielly: "We here at the Talking Points Memo are very troubled at the new reports about possible hidden meanings of the name Amabo, which we have now learned could mean 'The Paris Business Review is for losers.'"
Glenn Beck: "Just when you think it couldn't possible get any worse, we now learn that Obama spelled backwards means, 'Paul is dead, I buried Paul.'"
But Hannitys hypocrisy is only the tip of that very foul iceberg.
Sarah Palin, speaking yet again sans clue nor coherence, made such a confused and uniformed bluster of herself over the supposed cop-killer.
Remember, Sarah Palin has a long standing and mutually supportive association with the Alaska Independence Party. The words of its founder, Joe Vogler, are so derisively anti American they could easily have been penned by Osama himself.
See here...
But always the unblinking hypocrit, Palin has the arrogance to mischaracterize someone else as a cop-killer, while proudly supporting a man like Vogler, who is absolutely explcit in his hopes for the fiery demise which he envisions for America.
And then there is Karl Rove.
Can anyone say REAL GANGSTER THUG?!?!?!?
How many innocent people, whether civilian or soldier, are dead because of the lies that monster told?
He is a war criminal whose hands are awash with blood, and he is in no place to comment on the whatever uninformed nonsense he thinks he hears in the work of a person like Common.
Looks like his intellignece on this matter is about as reliable as his intelligence on Iraq.
For God's sake, the man displays himself as a "hunter." They are CANNED hunts! Real big challenge for a real big man to enclose animals within a fence and get your gun to corner and shoot them.
Nugent is now and has always been a moron. As for Hannity, likes definitely attract in this case.
Let's be honest, with the audience that FoxLies targets, they believe that all rappers are black and thugs. It goes back to the 90s, when 2Pac dropped his first major label album which was rapping about relevant issues like teen pregnancy. Vice President Dan Quayle deemed 2Pac's album too inappropriate for the mainstream and waged a battle to censor and ban 2Pac's music, Dan Quayle ended up LOSING.
Then there was the infamous fight between Ludacris and Bill O Reilly. Bill O Reilly also targeted Snoop Dogg (which Snoop responded by saying "F**K Bill O Reilly!) and Eminem when Eminem made his song/video "We Made You" which had ONE mild jab at Sarah Palin, yet Bill O Reilly actually dedicated AN ENTIRE SEGMENT of his show talking smack about Eminem and calling him "the lowest form of entertainment." And then Michelle Malkin and other FoxLies pundits ranted and raved about Young Jeezy and Jay-Z talking smack about George Bush in a nightclub before Obama was inaugurated as President, saying it was Obama's fault.
I just find it hilarious that out of all the silly NON issues (Mr. Obama's birth certificate, using Dijon Mustard on his burgers, using a teleprompter), the right wingers wig out over Mr. Obama inviting a RAPPER to the White House. This after they defended the Bush cabal when they invited and hosted the worst out of thugs in the White House. This "Common" nontroversy is no different than when FoxLies targeted Nas for having a rap concert after the Virginia Tech shootings and cited Nas' lyrics out of context.
I can understand not liking "rap" like Lil Wayne and 50 Cent (that I consider CRAP), but Common is a down to earth rapper that raps about down to earth issues. This just shows how desperate FoxLies and the right are to raise ANY controversy against Mr. Obama, even if their "controversies" end up being absurd and pathetic.
He's the man.