They’re back with their “star” witness (as noted yesterday).
Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post
Fox News Aired Nearly 1,100 Benghazi Segments Across 5 Programs, Study FindsNEW YORK — Benghazi is back in the spotlight this week, as the House on Wednesday begins its select committee hearings on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks. But given that conservative media have claimed for more than two years that the Obama administration orchestrated a cover-up of critical information about the attacks, it’s not like Benghazi ever really went away.[icopyright one button toolbar]
Fox News, which has led the cover-up charge in conservative media, aired 1,098 evening television segments on Benghazi between the night of the attacks and the formation of the select committee in early May of this year…
Yes, as I began to get into yesterday, the whole “Sharyl Attkisson scoop” is for a story more than a year old (May, 2013) that added nothing, but hyped the Issa House Hearings and was the subject of a Faux Nooz kaffeeklatsch this morning on something called “Outnumbered.”
Once a reporter, Attkisson is now a paid shill for Rupert Murdoch
When they went to the all-women-and-one-bald-guy couch yak, it was FIRST noted that “Sharyl Attkisson broke this story,” which is, of course, a bald-faced lie. Attkisson, was, at BEST, acting as a Darrell Issa/Faux Nooz press flak, hyping the upcoming Kangaro0 Court. As I noted, even the “poems” she quotes from the ‘whistleblower’ were already covered by Josh Rogin in The Daily Beast on May 20, 2013.
But in case you wondered whether Sharyl Attkisson — publishing her “tell all” book on CBS not covering Benghazi via Rupert Murdoch’s Harper books — is in cahoots with her new employer, wonder no further. This was as coordinated as any Rose Parade, albeit less colorful and tediously MUCH MUCH longer.
From mid-August:Already selling “collectible” autographed copies
of a book that isn’t even out and may not even be finished.
How much “integrity” does that take?
But look at the fixity of the propaganda:
Fox News aired 244 segments suggesting “the Obama administration did not initially refer to the attacks in Benghazi as ‘terror’ or a ‘terrorist act,’” according to the study. The truth is that Obama referred to the attacks the next day as an “act of terror,” a fact Republican nominee Mitt Romney seemed unaware of during a famous presidential debate exchange in October 2012.
[…]
The reality is that journalists covered the Benghazi attacks on the ground in real time and in the immediate aftermath. A number of journalists even reached the prime Benghazi suspect before the U.S. government did. The New York Times conducted a months-long investigation of the attacks, and other news organizations contributed reporting that advanced the public’s understanding of what happened that night….
And The Daily Beast covered the “whistleblower” and blew some big holes in his story of victimhood long before Sharyl Attkisson’s report, released on The Heritage Foundation’s fake “news” blog, along with her new BS title “Investigative Correspondent.”
The Daily Signal is a wholly-owned subsidiary “news” outlet of
Jim DeMint’s new, aggressive version of The Heritage Foundation
The REASON that the polls aren’t moving is, quite frankly, the Faux/GOP machine has created a self-referential narrative in which the viewer/reader is constantly enj0ined from reading, viewing or listening TO ANY OTHER POINT OF VIEW OR NEWS OUTLET.
This is, of course, the sign of a cult. A political cult, of course, but a cult nonetheless, as is the continual need to engage in personal attacks and destruction of the reputation of all persons with whom the cult of GOPpiness disagrees.
The truth can always stand questioning. The Faux Nooz/GOP approach is that their truth MUST NEVER BE QUESTIONED.
To any thinking person, or anyone concerned about the health of the Republic, that ought to be extremely disturbing. And, to any thinking person, or anyone concerned about the health of the Republic, that is old disturbing news.
To paraphrase Joe Biden, the GOPs increasingly form all their sentences with a noun, a verb and “Benghazi.”
But, having conditioned so many dogs so lovingly for so long, Rupert Pavlov and his minions HAVE to ring that bell.
The bell in this case? “Benghazi!”
The rationality of the charge, even after so many dead Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq and, perhaps, Iraq again, is questionable.
The necessity of creating this smoke screen to mask the utter failure of the GOP in the arena of governance is also clear.
Judicial Watch, like the Republican Congressional Campaign
MAKES MONEY off the literal corpses of the dead Americans
But THAT’S OK? Right. Some “patriotism.”
But, in the face of a propaganda machine to rival anything Joseph Goebbels ever dreamed of, the fact that the p0lls remain stuck in utter contradiction to Americans’ approval of this, our WORST congress in history, is a damning testimonial to the effectiveness of that propaganda machine.
Benghazi “hearings” start in a couple of daze. [sic]
I’m planning on not watching.
More intellectual and less fake than the House Committee hearings
I’ve already got professional wrestling on my television package, and wrestling, by comparison, is far fairer and much less manipulative, even though, like Benghazi off-Broadway, the outcome is also pre-determined.
Courage.
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Mr. Williams has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.