Lese-majeste

You can get a pretty clear idea from the Sunday morning homepage what the master story of the universe is at Fox. It's a hat trick of lese-majeste (1, 2 and 4):

A group of Hollywood elites, progressive groups and social activists are planning a “People’s State of the Union” as a “public alternative” on the eve of President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be attending President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday. Instead, she will be at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, for a talk that was announced in August, the Providence Journal reported.

President Trump responded Sunday to recent criticism from rap mogul Jay-Z by citing joblessness for black Americans under his administration, before asking that somebody “please inform” the hip-hop star about the record-low unemployment.

So if you're not a eee-lite making light of (or being responded to by, or being worshipful toward, otherwise interacting with) the president, you need to be either a Clinton or a random tragedy involving white people if you want to land on the Fox front.

If you're wondering why the world in general (Iran and Afghanistan, to name two parts of it) is only a story when Mr. Trump is angry about it, or why school shootings are only news when the president blesses them with thoughts and prayers (or responders rush to the scene to make strange discoveries), this is partly why. News itself -- the timeliness and prominence of it -- does play a role: 12 hours on, the top two stories are about the Grammy awards, but the lead, "Dialed Up Activism," is exactly what you'd expect, as is "Red Carpet Statement."

I suppose there's more to say, but I need to go do other stuff for a while.

This week in Fox Is Scared Of Girls

It's time for another installment of The Week in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Scariest Person on Planet Fox! This week brings some interesting role variations and renewed salience for some other very scary people, but let's get right to the main question: How long did it take for Ocasio-Cortez to be the foxnews.com lead story on Monday? Answer, until about 10 a.m.:

Patrick Moore, the co-founder of the environmentalist group Greenpeace, ripped into New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the weekend as a “pompous little twit,” saying the Green New Deal plan she’s advocating is “completely crazy.”

She's a lead story again Monday evening, with two variations Tuesday morning as Fox tried to figure out how seriously to take its latest scandal-for-hire:

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti, the progressive firebrand's multimillionaire chief of staff, apparently violated campaign finance law by funneling nearly $1 million in contributions from political action committees Chakrabarti established to private companies that he also controlled, according to an explosive complaint filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and obtained by Fox News.

Here's how things looked Tuesday, at about 7:30 and again at about 9 a.m.:

And she rates the lead position for two more stories on Tuesday. Around 1 p.m., we're foreshadowing one of the week's main themes -- turmoil in the enemy camp -- by rehashing another story from the previous week:

Moderate Democrats are fuming over New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s closed-door warning last week that Democrats who vote with Republicans are "putting themselves on a list" – a comment interpreted as a primary challenge threat.

Ocasio-Cortez has since downplayed her comments, made in the wake of 26 Democrats joining Republicans to vote for a provision requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be notified if illegal immigrants attempt to purchase guns.

And by evening, she's in a slamming match with her betters again:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. got into a sparring match on Twitter on Tuesday over a comment he made about the congresswoman at CPAC last weekend.

By Wednesday, the stage is getting crowded. More of the "Dem frosh" are being called on the carpet, others are committing the sin of lese-majeste, Fox's concern with the challenge to the Democratic leadership is growing, and it's still 2016 at Planet Fox:

Let's take a bit of a detour here, because it's not just 2016 all over again, it's 2000 all over again. Here's the Tuesday lead story:

Bill and Hillary Clinton are facing fresh accusations of nepotism and revenge politics after a Democratic foreign policy adviser claimed they tried to obtain a scholarship for Chelsea Clinton’s boyfriend, and later punished the adviser for backing then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

... Tn the book, Vargo claims that in 2000, Mitchell told her that then-President Bill Clinton called him to say he was "very unhappy" that Chelsea’s boyfriend was not on the shortlist for the grant -- despite a letter from the White House.

And one from last Sunday evening, when -- one might think -- more salient things were happening in Alabama:

Former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton offered a stark view of the country on Sunday, comparing the current “crisis in our democracy” to the turbulence that occurred amid the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Speaking during a reception in Selma, Ala. to mark the 54th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday” and to receive the International Unity Award at the Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast, Clinton said that the United States is facing a "full-fledged crisis in our democracy."


And, of course, the former senator is frontpage news (also Tuesday) when she indulges in a little lese-majeste herself:

President Trump on Tuesday said his former opponent Hillary Clinton would “be sorely missed” from the pool of contenders vying for the Oval Office in the 2020 election.

The president, using the nickname he gave Clinton during the campaign, reacted to news earlier this week that the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate would not be making another go for the White House.

“'(Crooked) Hillary Clinton confirms she will not run in 2020, rules out a third bid for White House.' Aw-shucks, does that mean I won’t get to run against her again?” Trump tweeted. "She will be sorely missed!"

Seemingly in response to Trump's comment, Clinton tweeted a "Mean Girls" movie reference. 

But back to the main event -- Rep. Pelosi's loss of control over her rank and file -- for Thursday:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is "taken aback" by the growing dissent and anger among rank-and-file Democrats over a possible resolution to formally condemn anti-Semitism, a Democratic source told Fox News on Wednesday -- highlighting Pelosi's tenuous grip on control over the House and underscoring the growing power of the party's nascent far-left progressive wing.

Though -- look out, Indy! -- the evil ones are still coming for Your Favorite President, and there's another commentary to remind us that all Democrats are hypocrites.

And Fox's favorite newly minted ethics watchdog group is back on the email case from two weeks ago:

EXCLUSIVE — A conservative group that filed a complaint with the FEC alleging Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign may have illegally funneled thousands of dollars through an allied PAC to boyfriend Riley Roberts on Thursday lodged a fresh complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics.

But the main story of the day is still the Omar resolution, and Fox lets the mask slip a little for that:

As it does again on Friday morning, to the point of defending a member of the McCain family:

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was apparently unmoved Thursday by Meghan McCain's tearful remarks about her on "The View."

McCain had become emotional during the ABC talk show, discussing Omar's recent criticisms of Israel and its supporters. She said Omar's remarks were hurtful to many of her Jewish friends.

... But instead of responding directly to McCain, Omar retweeted a post that criticized McCain for "faux outrage" and referred to past statements attributed to McCain's late father, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who died last August at age 81.

By early afternoon, Omar has reached that unusual stage at which she can be represented in the main hed by just a pronoun (note the three witches dealing another blow to their aging leader's grip on power in the No. 2 position):

Rookie Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, fresh off igniting an intra-party uproar with comments widely viewed as anti-Semitic, took a swipe at former President Barack Obama, saying in an explosive interview the 44th president's message of "hope and change" was a "mirage" and blasting his administration's drone and border detention policies.

Another commentator reminds us of the radical takeover on Saturday, even as Fox finds a way to keep the Obama story alive:

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s attempt to shame a news outlet for misquoting her blistering attack on former President Barack Obama backfired after she released audio of the interview that only served to confirm her remarks.

Yet another commentator checks in Saturday night to keep the campaign finance issue alive:

An investigation is needed to determine if socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the media magnet on the far-left fringe of the Democratic Party, has broken federal campaign finance laws. If convicted of criminal conduct, she could get up to five years in prison for each violation.

And by Sunday, there's fresh outrage as "far-left AOC" goes after everything in sight:

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed political moderates at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas, calling their views “misplaced” as she defended her progressive politics in a room full of supporters.

“Moderate is not a stance. It's just an attitude towards life of, like, ‘meh,’” the New York Democrat said Saturday during an interview with Briahna Gray, senior politics editor for the Intercept. “We’ve become so cynical, that we view ‘meh,’ or ‘eh’ — we view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude, and we view ambition as youthful naivete when ... the greatest things we have ever accomplished as a society have been ambitious acts of visions, and the ‘meh’ is just worshipped now, for what?”

Despite stern competition from the both the old guard (in the form of Clinton) and her fellow newcomers, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez managed to be the lead story at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network four days out of seven. Tune in again next week for another installment of Fox Is Scared Of Girls!

Lese-majeste

Another installment in the occasional series of Perfect Fox Front Pages. Collect them all!

In the first and second spots, we have two cases of Massster calling "fake news" on the librul media.

At No. 3, ghastly foreigners foiled! (Third paragraph, first sentence: "President Trump went to Brentwood in July and vowed to crush MS-13, while pledging a tougher approach on immigration.")

At No. 4, black people behaving badly! (Second graf, first sentence: "Brittany Covington, 19, entered her plea in a case that received national attention because it involved an 18-year-old disabled white man and four blacks who taunted him with profanities against white people and President Trump.")

The lese-majeste triumph, though, is the causal implication of the No. 5 story:

Skiing star Lindsey Vonn suffered a back injury during a World Cup super-G race in Switzerland Saturday, two days after she criticized President Donald Trump in an interview about next year's Winter Olympics..*

Let's skip to the ninth graf:

... The two-time Olympic medalist told CNN in an interview that aired Thursday that she would "absolutely not" visit the White House if the United States Olympic team gets a traditional post-games invitation.


You can check out the reader comments yourself, if you're wondering what one buys into as a Fox reader.


* (sic), if you're scoring along at home

Is Fox News scared of girls?

What do you suppose is the second-most-important story on this last day of the year for the Fair 'n' Balanced Network?

Incoming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., pledged to voters she would be a far-left outsider who would push her party toward adopting “democratic socialist” policies, including universal health care and free college tuition. So far, she has kept her promise.

OK, fine, anybody could leave the "opinion" label off a rant from the Dearborn Institute. But you still might be wondering what propels some topics to the top of the agenda so often at (ahem) certain outlets. On the front page* yesterday, for example:

Or blaspheming the Gospel According to Fox as the lead story on Dec. 26:

Or Dec. 22, reprising her regular summertime role as "Dem darling":

Demonstrating that librul sense of entitlement (twice) on Dec. 20:

Committing that librul hypocrisy with big scary eyes on Dec. 19:

Coaxing her hapless followers to assault the Constitution on Dec. 13:

Striking the same pose to lead the War On Our Economy on Dec. 10:

Committing lese-majeste all over Trump Jr.  on Dec. 7:

Raising the spectre of first-year macroeconomics courses on Dec. 4:

Raising the spectre of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire on Dec. 3:

Offending Fox's sense of history on Dec. 1:

Offending Lindsey Graham's sense of history as the lead story on Nov. 26:

The "compares" stories are Fox at its most Foxlike: not lying about a specific set of facts, but bullshitting about the sort of story the facts are allowed to form. Here, for example, is the bit about the caravan** to which Graham "fires back":

“Asking to be considered a refugee & applying for status isn’t a crime. It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany. It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rwanda. It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted late Sunday.

... "I recommend she take a tour of the Holocaust Museum in DC. Might help her better understand the differences between the Holocaust and the caravan in Tijuana," Graham tweeted.

Ocasio-Cortez seems to be talking about the policies surrounding refugee status, not the conditions any particular group might have been fleeing, so it's hard to see why she needs a tour of the Holocaust Museum any more than Lindsey Graham does.*** But angry old men do have a habit of bringing out the history stick when the young and the uppity need to be brought back into line. It's fine for Ronald Reagan to boast of setting out to change a country, but let the usurping Kenyan test-drive that idea and see what happens.

I think that's part of the reason for Fox's six-month-long panic over this particular 0.23% of the next House of Representatives. It's always possible that Ocasio-Cortez used to beat Fox up on the playground and steal its lunch money, but the real reason seems less fanciful: Fox is scared of girls. Actually, Fox is scared of lots of people who don't look like Tucker Carlson, especially when they articulate original ideas, demonstrate regular flashes of wit, and bump right back if you bump them while they're going to the basket. But mostly, Fox is scared of girls.

* Y'all didn't flop the picture just to get her looking in the right direction, did you?
** Even by Fox standards, the homepage hed is pretty stupid. On the story itself, the hed is "Ocasio-Cortez compares members of migrant caravan to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany."
*** If they'd like to have a nice talk about refugee policy in paranoid times, here's a photo of a refugee family being separated, next to a story about an autocratic leader who wants to purge some officers and says his country won't be pushed around anymore (Washington Post, 1A, June 5, 1939):

Keep opinion to self

Couple examples Ripped From Today's Headlines -- OK, Wednesday's headlines, but time has been at a premium this week -- to illustrate the damage a stray modifier can do.

This isn't a call to get rid of adjectives. As the good folks at Language Log note, you can't even say "Omit needless words" without 'em. But it is a call to use them carefully. Modifiers are particularly prone, in some cases, to being needless:

She clutches a white coffee cup and twirls a strand of brown hair that has fallen loose from her twisted updo. The gesture makes her appear slightly nervous.

We don't learn much about coffee cups (or the Artisan or Pippa) from this. All we gather is that somewhere, the writer internalized the idea that news writing is turned into feature writing by putting adjectives in front of nouns. But that doesn't mean adjectives themselves are evil.

Other cases are more of a threat to the craft, and those are the ones we're concerned about here. You'll even get a few tips on how to judge the appropriateness of adjectives in news writing (see? your subscription dollars at work).

One way to test whether an adjective is the beast you want is to reverse its valence (notice that's not really a property of "white" in "white coffee cup" or "brown" in "brown hair"). Here's a test case from the AP:

Two weeks before receiving a major assessment of the war in Iraq, President Bush on Tuesday delivered a ringing defense of the war effort.

Let's try it with a less enthusiastic adjective. Based on Mr. Bush's previous speech on the war effort, I'm inclined to suggest -- oh, let's go with "incoherent." President Bush on Tuesday delivered an incoherent defense of the war effort ... hmm, truth value aside, it does sort of suggest why the lede is not the place for the reporter's opinion of the speech, doesn't it?

Ready for another?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boldly declared Tuesday that U.S. political influence in Iraq is "collapsing rapidly" and said his government is ready to help fill any power vacuum.

Let's just use a simple semantic differential on this one. Would we say he "timidly" declared that U.S. influence was collapsing? Is the nature of the declaration really at issue here, or is it some sort of AP lese-majeste -- the gall of some damn foreigner, daring to suggest that U.S. influence might be collapsing? !?! Or ?!?!? I mean, how dare he?

Don't bar the door to adjectives and adverbs. Make sure they say something, and make sure it's something appropriate to say. And if you aren't ready to call babbling historical fabrications "incoherent," don't give the guy a pass with "ringing." (I don't know what's worse, the observation that news sites increasingly tend to post AP copy unedited or the clear evidence that both the examples above were seen and approved by editors.)

Fear and balanced: The week in AOC

It wouldn't be the Week in AOC without some AOC -- here's an especially nice double-dip from in which Fox changes its mind over a few hours about how best to illustrate Tuesday's investigative gem from the Daily Caller -- but the real story last week seems to be another candidate moving up in the Fear and Balanced rankings. Indeed, there was no AOC until Tuesday, because Monday was all Beto, led by the ever-popular "faces questions":

 Reuters is facing ethical questions after admitting that reporter Joseph Menn sat on an unfavorable story about media darling Beto O’Rourke until after his crucial Senate race against Ted Cruz.

... But the reporter, it turns out, knew about this history since 2017 -- and sat on it. According to Menn, members of the hacking group were protecting O'Rourke's identity and wouldn't confirm his affiliation unless the reporter promised not to write about it until after the November election. They apparently struck a deal.

We seem to have been over this one before, back in the days when Fox News still worshiped John McCain: When you get information by giving a promise, you have an obligation to keep that promise. You're welcome to your own view about how to weight that against other duties, but if you were expecting Fox to win a prize from the ethics division this year, you might want to keep waiting a while longer.

Anyway, former Rep. O'Rourke had two other appearances Monday: A fairly standard commentary and a reminder of why things aren't always as rosy as they seem:

Beto O'Rourke raised a whopping $6.1 million in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate, while drawing big crowds -- and a herd of reporters -- as he campaigned across Iowa and Wisconsin after launching his 2020 bid.

But despite riding a wave of media fanfare, the former three-term congressman from Texas has stumbled out of the gate with a string of apologies and clarifications.

Hang on for more about those apologies and clarifications; they're back on Tuesday as Beto has to share the front with other Democrats ("called out" is sort of a passive version of "faces questions"):

If you already thought the Democratic 2020 candidates were a frightened pack of cocktail weenies, get a load of Beto, a guy as sturdy as a gummy worm.

You want pathetic? Here's pathetic: He felt he had to apologize...over a joke he made about his wife.

Though clearly other Fox commentators take a different view:

 ... The usual cries of “white male privilege” and O’Rourke’s almost ritualistic admission of guilt make it easy to dismiss the issue as just another example of social justice warriors and the radical left overreacting with criticisms of every little thing any public figure says. But although I’m generally inclined to defend people who are under attack from the "PC police," I think O’Rourke’s liberal critics have a fair point.
On the bright side, Fox has found some reason to write about Elizabeth Warren besides channeling its masters' barely veiled racism. So that's something.

O'Rourke provides an especially striking lead story on Wednesday, though as usual some other outfit has done the legwork:

Beto O’Rourke didn’t eat crow, humble pie or even his words after losing to Ted Cruz. He ate dirt instead.

O’Rourke, who came up short in his bid to unseat Sen. Cruz, R-Texas, despite raising $80 million for the Senate push, told the story of his earthy snack in a sprawling 3,000-word profile published by The Washington Post.

He also rates another commentary and manages to get in a little lese-majeste against one of Fox's most important friends:

PLYMOUTH, N.H. - Beto O’Rourke is taking aim at embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming the steadfast ally of Republican President Trump “has openly sided with racists.”

The Democratic presidential candidate and former congressman from Texas – on the campaign trail in New Hampshire – also criticized negotiators ostensibly trying to end the generations-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Right now we don’t have the best negotiating partners on either side. We have a

prime minister in Israel who has openly sided with racists,” he charged.

Given that AIPAC has said more or less the same thing about Netanyahu's preferences in coalition-building, you'd think Fox would want to tone it down a bit. Then again, lots of things about the fractious Near East seem kind of new to Fox:

... O’Rourke once again called for a “two-state solution” between Israel and the Palestinians to achieve peace in the Middle East. “I believe in peace and dignity and full human rights for the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. The only way to achieve that … is a two-state solution,” he emphasized.

He's back to the lead on Thursday, with some friends (and a Clinton story below, in case anyone has forgotten who the Main Enemy is):

 ... but Fox can't pass up the chance for a "mockery on social media" moment for a lesser-known Democrat:

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a 2020 presidential candidate, is facing blowback on social media for sharing a video of herself working out during a return campaign visit to Iowa.

The clip shows Gillibrand, 52,  lifting weights at a gym in the Hawkeye State, wearing a shirt that reads, “Just trying to get some ranch.”

... On Wednesday, Gillibrand’s tweet was the subject of mockery on social media, with some Twitter users accusing her of trying too hard to “relate to the average American.”

And the apologies are back on Friday!

Pretty impressive week for O'Rourke there, but Fox also made space for AOC. In addition to Tuesday, she made the front page Wednesday by being the subject of a Republican ad:

Less than three months after taking office, New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose favorability numbers have plummeted in some recent polls, is already front and center in a GOP congressional candidate's upcoming campaign advertisement.

Actually, that'd be one "recent poll" (the link is as provided by Fox), and it found that her "favorability" had risen by 7 points against a similar pre-election poll, but that's just Fox lying about other people's statistics again.

AOC has three appearances on the frontpage Friday, starting with a lead:

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., appeared on a late-night comedy talk show Thursday night but was stone-cold serious in her defense of the Green New Deal, the cornerstone of her progressive agenda.

When asked by “Late Night” host Seth Meyers if President Trump’s claims that “cows farting” and “hamburgers” would be outlawed were true, Ocasio-Cortez firmly answered “No.”

The same program is good for another story later:

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., compared President Trump to a worm during an interview on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on Thursday -- but you'd need your dictionary to know that.

The 29-year-old congresswoman used an obscure term to take a swipe at Trump toward the end of her appearance, when Meyers asked her about winning the second-place prize as a teen in her high school science competition.

“Science was my first passion,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “I studied microbiology and the impacts of antioxidants on a model organism known as the C. elegan, which is of the nematode family.”

Meyers compared Ocasio-Cortez’s interest in science to that of Trump, interjecting “I think he did that, too.”

“Because he’s a nematode?” she retorted while the crowd roared in laughter, comparing the president to the roundworms found as parasites in animals and plants.

And, of course, illustrating a story about her party's Stalinist tendencies (as is often the case, she's not mentioned late -- here, the eighth paragraph).

The Green New Deal is back on the front Sunday, which also features the return of arch-villainess Ilhan Omar:

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar faced hundreds of protesters Saturday outside a Southern California fundraising event for the local chapter of a major advocacy group representing Muslim-Americans.

“Burn the Quran!," “Ilhan Omar, go to hell!” and “Shame on you, terrorists!" were among some of the messages shouted outside a Woodland Hills hotel where the Minnesota Democrat spoke at a fundraiser for the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of Greater Los Angeles, according to a report. The town is about 25 miles northwest of downtown L.A.
 
Weird. You'd think Fox might have other stuff to worry about on Sunday besides reminding everybody that Islamophobia is its favorite indoor sport. To each his own, one supposes.

You have to call this a pretty good week for young O'Rourke, though AOC is still looking like the consensus Rookie of the Year. And some ideas start to suggest themselves for narrowing down the primary field at debate time. Maybe they could all just sit around and watch Fox slideshows until they fall over laughing.