News that George Zimmerman’s lawyers have bailed on him, allegedly because he hasn’t been in contact with them for a few days, comes right as we find that Z’s been chatting up the right-wing media stars, in a move that would give his former attorneys headaches were they still representing him.

Now, did the lawyers bail because he’s an idiot who won’t shut up, or is his not shutting up a result of his lawyers bailing on him because he has no money, honey?

Attorneys of my acquaintance are of the belief that Zimmerman’s attorneys left once it became clear that he was broker than broke — hence his website fundraising efforts. But I can’t help but wonder if his inability to keep his lips zipped is a factor as well. (UPDATE: Now it appears that Zimmerman is on the run, even as it appears that he’s about to be charged in Trayvon Martin’s shooting death.)

Speaking of money, isn’t it interesting that, for all the right-wing media promotion of Zimmerman as misunderstood Everyman hero, not one right-wing sugar daddy has, as far as we know, stepped forward with cash in hand to aid Zimmerman in his plight? If every conservative talk-show host or website proprietor who has defended Zimmerman verbally had backed up those verbal defenses with cold hard cash, I suspect Zimmerman’s lawyers would likely still be with him today. I have a feeling that they like Zimmerman mainly as a club to use against anyone they think is a liberal.

A new poll was released showing what previous poll after previous poll had shown: that the more Americans learn about Occupy Wall Street, the more they like it – and that they like it a lot more than they like the Koch-Armey-run Tea Party wing of the GOP.

This may be why the One Percenters and their media and security servants are stepping up their smear campaigns.

For instance: FOX trumpets this story: “‘Occupy Oakland’ Radical Hit By Car After Refusing to Let Driver Leave”

Here’s what really happened. From the Oakland Tribune (which is by no means liberal): Read the rest of this entry →

Jon Kyl

There’s an old Bill Cosby routine, called “Shop”, on the album Why Is There Air? that is quite apposite to the events of the past two days. In it, Cosby describes how his junior-high-school shop teacher tricked the guilty party into tacitly confessing to having put a bullet in the shop class furnace — and without directly accusing the kid or even so much as saying his name. With the right-wing attacks on Pima County, Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, we’re seeing something rather similar play out.

Just as Cosby’s shop teacher didn’t directly accuse any of his students of being the one who put the bullet in the furnace, Sheriff Dupnik, without naming persons or ideologies directly, blamed the political climate in Arizona for making possible the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several others. And, just as the kid who put the bullet in the furnace inadvertently revealed himself — “I didn’t put the bullet in the furnace, and stop talking about my mother!” — the attacks by conservatives on Sheriff Dupnik, who never once said the words “conservative”, “Republican”, “Tea Party”, or “right-wing” when discussing the creation and creators of the climate of bigotry and prejudice, stand as a tacit admission that they know full well they are responsible for having created it.

First off, we have the nuttier of Arizona’s two nutty far-right senators, Jon Kyl, who said this on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday morning:

First, I didn’t really think that that had any part in a law enforcement briefing last night. It was speculation. I don’t think we should rush to speculate. I thought that the report that we just saw from Tucson seems to have it about right: We really don’t know what motivated this young person except to know he was very mentally unstable as was pointed out in the piece.

It’s probably giving him too much credit to ascribe a coherent political philosophy to him. We just have to acknowledge that there are mentally unstable people in this country. Who knows what motivates them to do what they do? Then they commit terrible crimes like this. I would just note Gabrielle Giffords, a fine representative from Tucson, I think would be the first to say don’t rush to judgment here.

Um, except the sheriff didn’t do any of what you claim he did, Senator. Unless you’re going on the record as approving of Arizona’s becoming the capital and mecca for prejudice and bigotry?  . . . Read the rest of this entry →

Dear Sarah Palin:

Since you’re so invested in defending your FOX buddy Juan Williams and his bigoted remarks, would you care to address this little sexism eruption of his:

Washington Post Magazine reporter Juan Williams said yesterday [November 1, 1991] that the newspaper has disciplined him for what he called "wrong" and "inappropriate" verbal conduct toward women staffers and he apologized to his colleagues.

[...]

Williams’s letter came several hours after about 50 female employees met with Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and said they objected to The Post’s refusal to say how the paper had resolved allegations of verbal sexual harassment against Williams. The newspaper’s management has maintained that such personnel inquiries must remain confidential.

[...]

The disclosure came five days after a Williams column on The Post’s op-ed page in which he said that Anita Hill had "no credible evidence" for her allegations of sexual harassment by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, but that Hill was "prompted" to make her charges by Democratic Senate staffers. The Post’s personnel inquiry had begun more than two weeks earlier, but the column angered many women in the newsroom, and several came forward to say that they had also had problems with Williams. Post editors say they decided to make a public statement after WRC-TV aired a report on the controversy.

[...]

Seven women said in on-the-record interviews yesterday that Williams had repeatedly made hostile and sexually explicit comments to them, in some cases over a period of several years. All of them said they believed the comments were meant to embarrass them, not an attempt to date them, and most said that Williams persisted despite their protests.

Jo Ellen Murphy, art director of the Weekend section, said that "he was obsessed with my sex life and that’s all he wanted to talk to me about . . . . I raised my voice at him and said, ‘Just don’t talk to me again.’ "

It was speechifying like this by sexists and sexism enablers like Juan Williams — and the climate of fear and intimidation this engendered against women, such as Thomas’ then-girlfriend Lillian McEwen, that kept them from speaking out to stop Thomas — which helped slide Clarence Thomas into a Supreme Court seat for which he was manifestly unfit.

In 1991, Williams got off for his sexually harassing behavior with a slap on the wrist that in no way hindered his increasingly lucrative career path. Now, having exercised his bigotry yet again — this time against Muslims — he is rewarded by his pals at FOX News with a few extra million.

UPDATE: And guess what? Juan Williams just got caught lying about the insane and sexist bigotry he’s been directing at our First Lady, Michelle Obama:

Read the rest of this entry →

Fox News spreading race-baiting garbage is old (and all too often ignored) news. So is their spreading Breitbart disinformation. So is their getting caught at it. So, unfortunately, is people reacting to the original smears without waiting to see if or when they’re debunked. But what’s new now, in the latest big-time Fox-promoted, Breitbart-originated conservative disinformation scandal, the smearing of Shirley Sherrod, is that one of the defenses Fox and Breitbart’s people are deploying sounds a lot like something out of the 1970s comedy Animal House. That’s right, gang, it’s the Stratton Defense — "You f—ed up! You trusted us!"

Honestly, check this out from Breitbart’s blog (h/t Mediaite and Pensito Review):

BIG GOVERNMENT BLOGGER: If this story is true, and there is no reason to doubt her, it shows the extent that Breitbart, Fox,and the Tea Party have gotten under the skin of the White House. Rather then to think it through they overreacted and forced Sherrod to pull over on the side of the road and resign without telling her side of the story.

And here’s the Fox version thereof, courtesy of Media Matters:

Doocy on Sherrod: "What
was the big hurry for them to condemn her in the first place?" On the July 21 edition of Fox & Friends, Dana Perino and Steve
Doocy falsely

asserted that, in Perino’s words, "before the news even broke, she had
resigned." Perino then stated that "everyone’s nerves are raw and exposed on
these racial questions, and I think we should all look before we leap." Doocy
then stated: "What was the big hurry for them to condemn her in the first place?
I don’t get it, because the totality of what she said was out there."

Rosen: "Did the White House
essentially railroad an innocent woman in this?" On the July
20 edition of Fox News’ Happening Now, James Rosen reported that
the additional context from Sherrod’s speech "appeared to corroborate" her
statement that she was telling the story of "how she came to see beyond race,"
and then asked: "Did the White House essentially railroad an innocent woman in
this because they are on edge themselves because of the Van Jones controversy,
the Black Panthers Party case, and other controversies?

Yes, the NAACP, the USDA and the White House shouldn’t have been so quick to jump when Fox and Breitbart told them to. But one mustn’t forget who told them to jump in the first place.