Fox News is having a rough time. On Friday the network got caught publishing digitally altered and misleading photos on stories about Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).
As part of a package of stories Friday about the zone, where demonstrators have taken over several city blocks on Capitol Hill after Seattle police abandoned the East Precinct, Fox’s website for much of the day featured a photo of a man standing with a military-style rifle in front of what appeared to be a smashed retail storefront.
The image was actually a mashup of photos from different days, taken by different photographers — it was done by splicing a Getty Images photo of an armed man, who had been at the protest zone June 10, with other images from May 30 of smashed windows in downtown Seattle. Another altered image combined the gunman photo with yet another image, making it appear as though he was standing in front of a sign declaring “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.” …
… In addition, Fox’s site for a time on Friday ran a frightening image of a burning city, above a package of stories about Seattle’s protests, headlined “CRAZY TOWN.” The photo actually showed a scene from St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 30. That image also was later removed.
Fox News also was punked by a Reddit post that quoted lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, attributing them to a CHAZ self-appointed leader named Raz.
Fox News fell for a Monty Python joke on Reddit lmao pic.twitter.com/Yo34yuQvlD
— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) June 13, 2020
Fox promoted the Reddit post as a sign of dissension within the protesting ranks until an avalanche of Twitter posts clued them in to the joke.
Eric Wemple has a great critique of Tucker Carlson’s coverage of the George Floyd protests over the past several days. Carlson has been hyping violence. If Carlson were your only source of news, you might believe a large part of America was being burned to the ground by rioting leftists.
In November 2017, the Erik Wemple Blog documented this staple of Carlson’s misleading cable-news wizardry. The sequence routinely goes like this: A scandal of some sort breaks in Trump World or some organization that’s part of the Fox News ideological constellation; a backlash among liberals kicks up; instead of addressing the scandal itself, Carlson feasts on the most extreme fringes of that backlash. In the process, he apprises the audience that he’s “not defending” Trump or the police or whomever.
This framing explains all of the rhetorical jujitsu that Carlson has rolled out since Floyd’s killing.
Wemple then provides some examples of Carlson’s inflammatory coverage. But then the violence dissipated.
A change of gears, accordingly, was in store for “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” On Monday, he denounced the growing cultural influence of the Black Lives Matter movement: “America went insane over the weekend. … This was without precedent in the modern era, a small group of highly aggressive, emotionally charged activists took over our culture. They forced the entire country to obey their will. It all happened so fast and with such ferocity that virtually no one resisted it.”
Well, somebody seems insane, but not “America.” And then Tucker went on a long diatribe that ended with “This may be a lot of things, this moment we’re living through, but it is definitely not about black lives, and remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will.”
Exactly who “they” are was not specified. And this seems to be the speech that lost Tucker some of his advertisers, including the Walt Disney Co.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
ANTIFA! They’re everywhere they’re everywhere …
In other crazy news, read about the roofing company workers in Loveland, Colorado, who were mistaken for Antifa and held at gunpoint —
[Loveland Police Lt. Bob] Shaffer said that Gudmundsen called police, said there were two “Antifa guys” in the neighborhood and that, “I am going out there to confront them.” Gudmundsen told police in the call he was armed and wearing tactical gear, Shaffer said.
A second person also called police around the same time and said a man in fatigues was holding two people on the ground at gunpoint in the street. …
… When officers arrived in the 2400 block of Dawn Court around 6 p.m. Thursday, they encountered Scott Gudmundsen (pictured) – dressed in fatigues and holding two men on the ground at gunpoint, Shaffer said.
But the men weren’t troublemakers – they work for a local roofing company and were wearing blue polo shirts with the firm’s name on them, shorts, tennis shoes and white surgical-style masks, Shaffer said.
One of them is a Colorado State University football player who is 20 years old and works part-time at the roofing company. The student is a “man of color,” according to a statement from the university.
Gudmundsen was armed with a Glock pistol and another pistol that had been converted into something that looks like a carbine rifle, the news article said. No one was injured. Gudmundsen has been charged with felony menacing and false imprisonment. His family says he is mentally ill, but if that’s the case they might want to consider taking his guns away from him before he kills somebody.
This story is even better: A troupe of jugglers who travel around in a colorfully painted school bus were identified as Antifa in Columbus, Ohio, by the freakin’ police department.
[Update: I see that the Facebook post from the Columbus Police Department that I had embedded here has been deleted, so here is a screen shot.]
According to the Flow Art jugglers all these claims are bogus. On Facebook Digati said: “The ‘weapons’ that were found are tools. Axes for my wood stove, knives for cooking, etc. … The ‘riot gear’ was literally a child’s shoulder pads, elbow, and knee pads for sports.” Another member of the troupe chimed in: “Yeah, there’s a hatchet on the bus — with a bunch of wood sitting next to a wood-burning stove. Well, duh. The rocks were crystals and fossils. They emptied out a knife block [from the kitchen area] and said they found a meat cleaver.”
But the damage had been done. The Columbus police department post made the rounds as confirmation of the Antifa invasion rumors swirling around the country – seemingly first concocted by a faux “antifa” site run by white supremacists and possibly amplified by Russia bots.
Guess who else got involved?
Police in Ohio found a bus near protests filled with bats, rocks & other weapons. But I guess still “no evidence” of an organized effort to inject violence & anarchy into the protests right? https://t.co/NRR74Faym0
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) June 2, 2020
The FBI still says there is no evidence Antifa, not to be confused with traveling jugglers, is actually involved in the recent protests.
Trump at West Point
So Trump gave his stupid, lying West Point speech, for all the good it did him. There are fact checks at the New York Times and Juan Cole’s Informed Comment.
Trump struggled a bit to get down a ramp from the speaker’s platform. The walk down the ramp has gotten more coverage than the speech. I looked at the video; I’m not sure it’s that big a deal. I understand Trump wears lifts in his shoes to make himself look taller (why he tends to lean forward sometimes), and that might make walking downhill a little tricky.
He also had to use one hand to steady his other hand to take a sip of water. Hmm.
Yeah, Maybe We Do Need to Dismiss All the Police and Start Over
You probably heard that another black man was shot and killed by police in Atlanta Friday night. Rayshard Brooks’s crime was that he fell asleep in his car in a Wendy’s drive-through line. This would seem to require waking him up. Instead, the police were called, and somehow the encounter went sour as the police put Brooks under arrest and Brooks was killed.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta announced on Saturday that the city’s police chief had resigned. Early on Sunday morning, Sgt. John Chafee, a spokesman for the Atlanta Police Department, said Officer Rolfe had been fired and Officer Brosnan put on administrative leave.
Police dashboard and body-camera videos show that Mr. Brooks was compliant and friendly with the officers when they first approached him and for some time after that, and the encounter turned to a struggle when the officers tried to handcuff him.
Maybe instead of arresting Brooks they should have just bought him a cup of coffee.
First, I suggest a Pullitzer for the journalist who asks Trump if the lifts in his shoes were the cause of his difficulty walking. And when Trump denies, ask him to take off a shoe for inspection. For extra points, ask him to step on a calibrated scale.
Second, tempers are running high after the most recent execution by cops. Rioters defeat their just cause with arson.. Wendy's didn't do anything except report a suspicious parked car. I'd have done that if I was the manager. You do it to protect your employees, some of whom are black, female and have to cross that parking lot to go home.
The difference between most-right wing news/blog outlets and most left-wing news/blog outlets is that the right will print anything even if it's false – as long as it supports the narrative. That's almost ALL the Antifa stories. MOST (not all) on the left will check (or try) before they post because credibility matters to us. If they deliver something damaging and it's false, it's just a bullet that missed. No big deal.
Antifa isn't an organization in the US anymore than it was 'organized' while fighting fascism in Europe in WWII. It's a philosophy of resisting by whatever means, including murder. Fascist right-wingers made the suggestion that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. Trump retweeted it. The statement was made by a GOP County Commissioner in NM. If a MAGA makes good on that, it may be open season on any armed 'militia' in the open. Antifa isn't offering a shootout – it will be a head shot from a deer rifle from a hundred yards out.
The KKK-type domestic terrorists can't intimidate in secret – they have to wave their guns around to establish 'dominance.' A half-dozen active snipers could paralyze the brown-shirts who may want to be Trump's extrajudicial executioners. They've long planned to be domestic terrorists in the spirit of the Night Riders. That worked when the victims weren't armed. They are.
I'm non-violent and I'm no marksman but you couldn't seat me on the jury of an Antifa sniper if fascists in MAGA hats start hunting Democrats.
OT. It's official. Treasury refused to release a list of who got how much of the bailout money. It will go to court and Trump is counting on stalling through appeals past the election. That means the distribution of funds was/is a liability at best, fraud possibly, and crime to prosecute in 2021. Can anyone verify if the fail-safe in the federal email system prevents deleting messages and other records? If Trump is going to lose the election, the entire WH staff may look like the SS incinerating records in Berlin before the Allies and Russians got there.
I am thrilled that Wemple dissected Tucker's rhetorical schtick. I of course can't stand Tucker, but I am fascinated by his particular style of confusing nonsense, that makes him seem almost reasonable, almost open-minded. It’s kind of a Jedi Mind Trick
Exactly who “they” are was not specified.
He doesn't have to be specific, everyone knows it's the same they that are sending their drug dealers and rapists.
The Dumbya administration was storing all emails on a RNC server and wiped it when they left, IIRC. It was never pursued. I expect similar with Trump. Emails will be on private computers and servers, and they will leave DC just ahead of subpoenas.
Bill, what I understand and would like to confirm is that anything from or to a dot gov is archived and out of reach of a 'delete' key. A bunch of stuff came out in the Ukraine hearings that Trump would have deleted if he could.
The reason for using a private server and/or private email is to circumvent the archival. The sender will have a copy of what he sent to the personal address, so systematic use of a personal email may be established. When HRC used a private server, it was grounds for the death penalty according to the GOP. BTW, I'm not sure the decision by HRC was accidental or benign. What she covered, we may never know. Trump doesn't have her touch – he will have left a trail as deep as the Grand Canyon.
"Deride and conquer" I always say.
Perhaps the shoe lifts are for treating bone spurs. I notice in that picture the Washington Monument appears to be leaning a bit also!
Ole Priapus Trump is hung like a Kentucky race horse* so naturally he's going to have to shift his center of gravity to maintain his balance. So when he waddles down an incline the compensation for balance is going to be greatly exaggerated. I'm sure Trump just didn't want to boast on his endowments so he used the slippery incline ruse to hid his modesty.
* according to his own account.
Interestingly, the trees don't seem to be leaning, though!
IIRC Trump, even back around his election, was very cautious going down steps but his shuffle down the ramp at West Point is at least an order of magnitude more worrying. Combined with the two handed grip on the glass and his increasingly erratic and disjointed verbal behaviour, this suggests a sick man.
Fox News has a new scoop: there's a restaurant where everything on the menu has Spam in it.
The cops in Columbus Washington stopped a bus full of wandering DFH circus performers because they believed they were Antifa agitator's?
I'd have thought clowns would know jugglers when they saw them!
If these cops were around in the mid-'60's, they'd have probably shot Ken Kesey and his real DFH crew on sight if they drove through town on their "Electric Kool Acid Test" tour!
BTW – tRUMP doesn't wear lifts on his feet to make him look taller.
He wears lifts on his tit's 'cause they sag! They're called bra's.