Greetings from Countdown Online and the Worst Persons of the Day -- a special all-Fixed News edition.
The bronze, a tie between the Vice President of the quote “news organization” unquote, Bill Shine, and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
Governor Rendell said the recent expose on Fox’s news fraudulence in “New York” Magazine, quote:
“Strips away any thin veneer of impartiality that Fox may have, simply because it admits it was a proving ground, for presidential candidates.”
Rendell is right – so why is he on the list? Because during the Democratic presidential race of 2008 he had said, quote “I think during this entire primary coverage, starting in Iowa and up to the present – Fox has done the fairest job, and remained the most objective of all the cable networks.”
It was crap then, and it’s crap now.
Of course Mr. Shine responded to Rendell’s more recent and more **accurate** assessment of the Fox B-S Machine by saying, quote: “Governor Rendell didn’t seem to have an issue with our credibility or impartiality when he was trying to shake us down for more money before signing with MSNBC.”
Of course, since Mr. Shine did **hire** Rendell, this means, Mr. Shine, that you also didn’t have an issue with paying him to kiss Fox’s ass.
The runner-up: James Murdoch. As you may have heard my boss Al Gore say---
Incidentally, do you have any idea how nice it is to say “my boss Al Gore”?—
Anyway, Murdoch decided to impress Daddy by kicking our network, Current, off his cable system Sky Italia, long after his employees there had worked out a deal to keep the network on. You have to understand that in Italy, where an aging, debauched, corrupt media magnate – an Italian Rupert Murdoch – is Prime Minister, Current is the primary independent television news network.
It appears, and I’ll take Al’s word for this, that this was a preemptive strike by Murdoch and Fox…against **me.** Because we all know how well it worked out the last time for Fox, when Daddy Pirate fired me ten years ago this month, for reporting the truth about his negotiations to sell his baseball team, even though I had cleared that reporting with all of Rupert’s right-hand men.
Right, Jimmy Murdoch. **That’s** how to impress Dad: repeat his dumbest mistake and remind his greatest American foe to keep reminding everybody what threats the Murdochs and Fox are to freedom of speech, in Italy, in the United Kingdom, in Australia, in this country – and how Fox has become the enemy of American Democracy.
But the winner: it’s so nice to see Billo the Clown stepping up his game a little bit in anticipation of my return as his worst nightmare.
The Frank Burns of News went on the air the other night and cited a poll about the credibility of news people, conducted by Suffolk University.
Quoting: “By the way, according to the same poll, I, your humble correspondent, am the most trusted political TV guy in the country, by far. CNN’s Anderson Cooper is second.”
There’s always a caveat, and Billy always leaves it out.
The **real** winner for “most trusted political TV guy in the country” wasn’t O’Reilly, it was “I Don’t Know,” with 21 percent.
So O’Reilly was the runner-up, then?
Nn-nn. The runner-up was “None” – with fifteen percent.
O’Reilly was third – at nine percent.
“I Don’t Know” or “None” – 36 percent. O’Reilly, a quarter of that.
“I, your humble correspondent, am the most trusted political TV guy in the country…”
As Winston Churchill once said of his successor Clement Attlee: he is a humble man, who has much to be humble about.
See you on Current on June 20th.
