How Friess Fosters Tuckers Out – Conclusion

We end this series as we began it: with the juvenile antics of Tucker Carlson, who leapt at his guest hatespeakership of the Sean Hannity show on Faux Nooz™, who have evidently minted the magick elixir that gives the old saw, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time,” much needful palliation and near-refutation with highly lucrative propagandistic propagation.

Faux’s Antics?

Fox Utterly Destroys Cable News Ratings Competition in 2010 —  The Nielsen numbers are in for 2010, and in the battle for cable news ratings supremacy, Fox News took the title for the ninth year in a row — bludgeoning the competition for another year…

Tucker’s Antics?

Sore Loserman (Tea Party Edition)

I guess Santa didn’t bring them what they wanted, and they’re crying their little eyes out.

Which seems odd, given their recent successes.

OK. First on the whiny list? Tea Party Express favorite Joe Miller of Alaska …

Christmas Cheer

Or something like that.

South Carolina’s Christmas Gift to the Nation

In 1860, South Carolina had a very special gift for the United States of America.

click photo to enlarge

On December 24, 1860, having declared Secession on December 20th, 1860, unhappy with the results of the November election of Abraham Lincoln (who would not be inaugurated for months), South Carolina explained why they were starting the Civil War, although that nomenclature would not be universally adopted to this very day, with Southern Revisionists calling it “The War of Northern Aggression” in their textbooks for generations, and thence to claim it was not about slavery, but, instead, States’ Rights and Tariffs. (They still talk about “States’ Rights” but not so much about tariffs.)

Great for those fine “Christian warriors” to dump this turd into the Punchbowl of History on Christmas Eve:

A Christmas Eve Story for the Whole Famn Damily

Pseudo-Rod Serling intro [for parody purposes only]:

Picture if you will: a man. A mall. A terrifying invasion. But there’s something different about this invasion, a difference that could only show up … in the [Copyright laws suggest that it is not prudent to name the tagline here, our counsel suggests vociferously, albeit sotto voce in mellifluous counselly tones, not quite dulcet and yet not ulcer'd. Butt soft, methinks animated bears are selling toilet paper on teevee ...]  [CUE MUSIC]

The Christmas the Aliens Came

Most of you remember the terror, and how it began. Sheerest chance that the invaders appeared at that time of year, or that they arrived at Pismo Beach, California at a shopping mall.

Most of it’s been declassified now, so I can fill in the spots you don’t know. I was working as a tech at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, so I know the whole story.

his vorpal Holiday Schedule

This is the dead zone of American journalism.

Which is why stuff like the Koch brothers’ purchase, lock, stock and barrel, of Georgia Pacific during the Christmas/New Year’s dead zone in 2006 never quite showed up on the radar. But, readership is at its annual low, and rather than do what every half-assed, lazy and worthless journalist in America is going to do — come up with a Top Ten [INSERT TOPIC HERE] of 2010, or rehash a historical narrative that they didn’t get at the time and still don’t get (only with bigger words), well, instead of doing that, I’ll tell you what I am going to do:

The Christmas RADIO Show!

Welcome to his vorpal sword‘s  Sixth Annual presentation of “The Saint Nick Case,” a Christmas radio play of approximately one-half hour.

Click for the radio play

For a special treat,  The KOPT Radio Theater Players in the 2005 production of “The St. Nick Case,” in wide-spectrum, full color stereo. The radio play was broadcast live on Eugene’s Air America affiliate KOPT-AM 1600 on December 23, 2005.

Mark Williams Channels The Dead

This promised post was bumped from Monday because of the Haley Barbour kerfuffle. (“Is Haley Barbour Lying … Again?“)

In late December of 2005, out of the blue, as noted Saturday (“Guest Blogger Mark Williams on CNN-Tea Party Express“), one of Mark Williams’ “diplomatic” emails arrived in response to my “Swift Boat Moms” series …

Is Haley Barbour Lying … Again?

Splattered all over the front page of Memeorandum, Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, chair of the Republican Governors and former Chair (Under Dubya) of the Republican National Committee is in trouble for another bit of revisionist Southern history. Matt Yglesias at ThinkProgress:

Haley Barbour’s Affection for the White Supremacist Citizens’ Council

Andrew Ferguson’s profile of Haley Barbour reveals that the guy is dangerously ignorant about the history of race in his state:

Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why he thought that was so.

“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”

In interviews Barbour doesn’t have much to say about growing up in the midst of the civil rights revolution. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” he said. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.”

Fortunately, it’s actually possible to look at the archives of the Citizens Councilnewspaper published right in Mississippi. Here’s a selection: [more]

But I covered this over eight months ago, and THEN, Haley Barbour claimed to have no knowledge of WHO the “Citizen’s Councils” were:

Death Two Years Ago Today Still Unexplained

A special story about Tea Party Express spokesmodel Mark Williams tomorrow. But today, a solemn anniversary must be observed.

And yet they expect US to obey their laws.

A year and a day ago, this interesting press release appeared on MarketWatch:

Guest Blogger Mark Williams on CNN-Tea Party Express

We get mail. Sometimes it’s interesting. Sometimes it’s friendly. Sometimes it’s weird. Sometimes it’s from Mark Williams (former spokesmodel for the Tea Party Express), who first wrote to me when I published “Swift Boat Moms in Winnebagos” back in 2005 (and never since).

And he resolves a mystery from yesterday that I had not realized about the Tea Party Express memo: I hadn’t realized who Lloyd Marcus was. This is him, from Mark Williams’ Facebook page (Note: I’ve tweaked the gamma to get everyone’s exposure reasonable. See original for original):

Original caption: Llyod [sic] Marcus aka (Black) Unhyphenated American

In this photo: Lloyd Marcus (photos), Mark Williams (photos), Amy Saylors Kremer
Added April 16

Which makes THIS section of the 17 April 09 “Tea Party Express” memo — dug out by Kenneth Vogel of Politico — suddenly make a different kind of sense [emphasis added]: