Save Shep Smith Now

Oh good. Another black eye for the GOP. Here's the story line. Fox fumes about the DHS daring to warn of right-wing extremism. Calls it "partisan lies". Joe Scarborough laughs uncontrollably, calls it a joke. "This is really funny."

Twice in two weeks, right wing extremists strike. Shep Smith owns up to the fact that apparently DHS was right. All of America, doubly shocked by the murders of the last two weeks are then treated to the spectacle of "the right" trying to oust a reporter for noting something that appears to most people to be accurate.

Thanks for the post and the suggestion, Pete.

Shep is the only semblance of "fair and balanced" that Fox has.

But, as I have said before, I am afraid his days with Fox are counted.

That network can not tolerate free speech and independent opinion, no matter how much they tout it.

It is exactly because Shep Smith dives into certain story lines without a basis in fact that conservatives want him removed.

By slipping into the mindset that von Brunn was a “right wing extremist”, Smith showed that he is no better than the blow-dried buffoons who inhabit CNN and MSNBC. How would Fox maintain their credibility if it allowed people to run off at the mouth without being able to back up their assertions with facts and reason?

“Women, children and liberals can be careless but not men and conservatives” – Don Corleone (with help from jwest)

Let this bumpkin give his opinions along with David Shuster on MSNBC. Their style and regard for the truth are the same.

I tried sending an email from that Reader Comments site you linked to, Pete, but I keep getting error messages.

jwest - How would Fox maintain their credibility if it allowed people to run off at the mouth without being able to back up their assertions with facts and reason?

Seriously? Like Hannity? That guy's only existence is to be against the Dems period, facts be damned.

jwest,

Let's see... the following were commonly understood even prior to the shooting:

Aryan Nation = right wing extremism
Birthers (people who question Obama's birth certificate) = right wing lunatics
KKK = right wing extremists
Stormfront = right wing extremists
Freepers = right wing extremists
People who violently protest taxation and the Federal Reserve board = definitely right wing extremist.

Von Brunn shared their ideas, traveled in their circles, and was posted on their websites. Anyone, who is not in really deep denial, would call a person like this a right wing extremist. Seriously.

I'm so glad I have pretty much avoided watching teevee deliberately for, oh, around thirty years as a rule.

"By slipping into the mindset that von Brunn was a 'right wing extremist', Smith showed that he is no better than the blow-dried buffoons who inhabit CNN and MSNBC."

Actually, von Brunn was a right-wing extremist. A moment's thought about the one alternative at hand explaining his behavior (seeking suicide in the form of "death by cop" by threatening or shooting one of them in a group) could easily be discounted because there was no need to go to the Holocause Museum to do this.

As to Shep Smith, he is loud-mouthed like everyone else on the network, and Fox is notable for being the niche player going "against the grain" among the networks (the rest are liberal to flirting at times with left extremism), but what little I've seen of network as well as other programming (including things like Discovery and History channels) is that not only is the content vapid to very poor, but along with blow-dried buffoons the programming is full of gimmicky graphics, stupid sound effects, abrupt jerking changes in camera angles aimed at those with a toddler's attention span, abrupt images and stupid sounds when changing news stories, the occasional "leg" shots of women for the soft-porn seasoning, and nowadays the idiotic deliberate use of _fast_motion_, yet another graphical gimmick of the most childish and stupid kind. What little I have seen is almost exclusively stupid programming for stupid people -- by stupid people, it also seems.

Jchem,

You know Hannity has an opinion show, not a news program like Smith or Bret Baier.

If you are giving people the news, you don’t bang on the table, you don’t jump to conclusions, and you give the facts. Smith decided that a guy who hated George Bush, Dick Cheney, neocons, the Weekly Standard, who thought 9/11 was an inside job, who hated capitalism and promoted socialism as the only answer for the country was a “right wing extremist”.

Even though the Republican Party has lost some of its members, we don’t need people this stupid aligned with us.

This isn’t the first time he’s gone off the deep end with emotion by not finding the facts first.

Zzzzz,

Let’s go through the list:

Aryan Nation = right wing extremism
Birthers (people who question Obama's birth certificate) = right wing lunatics
KKK = right wing extremists
Stormfront = right wing extremists
Freepers = right wing extremists
People who violently protest taxation and the Federal Reserve board = definitely right wing extremist.

Aryan Nation? Is there some reason you believe conservative/Republicans are prejudice against blacks? Is it because we oppose affirmative action? We do that because we believe blacks are just as capable as whites (not 20 points stupid). What is racist about that?

Birthers? You don’t think people have a right to know if a presidential candidate was born a U.S. citizen? If Obama had given been open and forthright from the beginning, there wouldn’t have been a question.

KKK? Is Robert Byrd a conservative/Republican? The KKK is a group of National Socialists (read Democrats)

Stormfront? I don’t even know what this is.

Freepers? Are you talking about the Free Republic, a center-right website? If not, I don’t have a clue what this is.

People who violently protest taxation? What? Who? When?

Violence is almost exclusively done by deranged leftists due to their depression over their failed lives.

Pete, do yourself a favor....shut off the computer and get out of the house.....real soon. Head over to Schnuck's, talk to some shoppers in the produce department and then maybe head over to the AB Center and take in a soccer game.......talk to the other fans around you. Elevating the blogosphere noise into a slice of reality is taking things a bit too far.

All politics notwithstanding, a couple of bloggers removing a celeb with very impressive almost prime time Neilsens is not real world. Imagine Stickings and Dewind joining forces and going after Brian Williams........just ain't reality, man, in terms of getting anywhere.

jwest, yes I know that Hannity's is an opinion show, but he makes such an easy target. Plus, the guy just drives me bonkers.

I have to agree with opinions supporting Shep being thrown overboard. He is supposed to be a news anchor, not an infotainment host, and whether I agree with his opinion or not (sometimes, sometimes not) the point is he's not supposed to give us one.

Huh, ethos? A news anchor should be barred from noting that 2 right wing attacks in 2 weeks lends credence to a report from the Dept of Homeland Security warning of such attacks? Damn. Sounds like news to me, not "infotainment." I suppose it was out of bounds for news anchors to note the warnings about Al Qaeda attacks prior to 9/11 too? Not sure what kind of vapid news you want, but I think both are newsworthy items. Especially because the "right" had made it news in the first place. Fox reported (you decide) that warnings of right wing extremism were preposterous. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condi ALL said "no one could have predicted" what in fact the security agencies had specifically warned about.

It's legitimate news, and I want to hear it.

Smith wasn't giving us information, he was making a personal comment that has no place in a hard news program. He reported on the DHS report when it came out. He reports on the happenings (museum shooting, etc) when they occur. He is not supposed to go back and decide there is a connection between them for his viewers. That's actually your job as a consumer - or if you want people to perform analysis for you, watch one of the opinion shows. MSNBC is covering the connection every couple of minutes so you'll find no shortage of coverage there.

Nah, you're really stretching, Ethos. It's extremely common for hard news to reference reports from the past. For example, there was endless coverage during the financial meltdown of numerous reports, predictions, legislation and weeks of analysis of "what went wrong." Airplane crashes often reference prior incidents, service records and reports from NTSB, all of which had been reported contemporaneously. Ditto for every news story from Vietnam to Iraq, from the Challenger to oil prices. Trying to characterize this as something that only MSNBC does is, in the words of Fox News, "preposterous."

It's fine to reference a prior report as a part of the story, it is not fine to reference a prior report as a part of your own personal commentary as a news anchor. This is a fine line, but it does separate reporting the news from commenting on it.

And when did I say this was something "only MSNBC does"? I was giving you a source that provides the kind of news + analysis together on this particular issue that you seem to prefer. I've seen quite a bit of commentary from their hosts - infotainment and hard news show alike - concerning the DHS report. They're certainly not the only ones who do it.

Smith showed that he is no better than the blow-dried buffoons who inhabit CNN

John King, Candy Crowley, David Gergen and Ed Rollins are all ACLU card carrying Liebruls.

Edward John "Ed" Rollins (born March 19, 1943) is a Republican campaign consultant and advisor who has worked on several high-profile political campaigns in the United States. In 1983-84, he was National Campaign Director for the Reagan-Bush '84 campaign, winning 49 of 50 states. In December 2007, he was named the national campaign chairman for the Mike Huckabee campaign for President.[1]

David Richmond Gergen (last name pronounced /ˈɡɜrɡən/; born May 9, 1942) is an American political consultant and presidential advisor during the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. He is currently Director of the Center for Public Leadership and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.[1]

Please stop the mindless noise. CNN hasn't been a liberal MSM network since Ted Turner sold his interest in the network he founded. Compare the CNN of Turner to today's CNN - PLEASE.

"Aryan Nation? Is there some reason you believe conservative/Republicans are prejudice against blacks? Is it because we oppose affirmative action? We do that because we believe blacks are just as capable as whites (not 20 points stupid). What is racist about that?"

Aryan Nation is not conservative Republicans, or do you think they are? We do know that conservatives (Democrats back then, but many switched to GOP) opposed Civil Rights for American citizens who happeend to be black. Opposition to affirmative action would be more credible if it extended to all preferences, not just raced-based, such as legacy admissions to elite institutions.

Birthers? You don’t think people have a right to know if a presidential candidate was born a U.S. citizen? If Obama had given been open and forthright from the beginning, there wouldn’t have been a question.

Obama has a birth certificate good enough for ALL legal purposes plus a newspaper birth notice plus hundreds of witnesses to his life in Hawaii. Continuing to question it based on NO evidence is bad faith conspiracy theory.

KKK? Is Robert Byrd a conservative/Republican? The KKK is a group of National Socialists (read Democrats) The racists once had a home in the Democratic party, but since 1965 they left. Dredging up Democrat KKKers from nearly 50 years ago seems prettyw eak. Didn't David Duke run as a Republican more recently than that?

Stormfront? I don’t even know what this is.

Try Google. Find out.

Freepers? Are you talking about the Free Republic, a center-right website? If not, I don’t have a clue what this is.

Try Google, again. Free Republic is only "center right" to the extreme right.

People who violently protest taxation? What? Who? When?

A little research will show a considerable number of violent incidents involving tax protesters in past years. I do think that it's misleading to imply that the "Tea Bag" protests were in any way violent

Violence is almost exclusively done by deranged leftists due to their depression over their failed lives.

Actually, this year alone we've had several police officers, one abortion doctor and a museum security guard murdered by right wing extremists and one soldier murdered by an Islamist convert. No Left Wing murders recently. I do remember a time when stationed overseas when our anti-terror drills and precautions WERE aimed at Leftists, but that time has passed.

he he he. One of them didn't lie as he was expected to. he he he. Reminds me of that cheap lying lawyer politician from Illinois. Shock. He got elected President. uhoh Hey, how about we impeach this lying sack of shit for not ending the war crimes. Joe Biden sure isn't my idea of a president but the current lying sleazebag needs a real sharp painful reminder that he is not the senator from Illinois anymore and that the waiting for the sacks of money that rain down on successful Illinois politicians just may not happen before he gets his own private trial for war crimes. Sack of shit. He is good as public relations, it is just that the followup to positions really tends to suck. I need public relations, I want Ronald McDonald not some glib lawyer from Illinois. So Joe Biden to run the government, Ronald for ambassador and prison for asshole.

Now this isn't bat sh%% crazy wingnut rant. Only in office over 100 days and takes BDS to new levels.