Paul Waldman at The Sanctuary (crossposted at DailyKos)
If your only source of news is cable during prime time, you might be among those who believe that the U.S. government and American society are groaning under the weight of undocumented immigrants. You might believe that there is a terrifying crime wave attributable to illegal immigration. You might believe that undocumented immigrants feast on a cornucopia of social services, while avoiding paying taxes. You might also believe that they are voting illegally in large numbers, and that they bring with them all sorts of diseases. You might also believe that there are secret plans afoot to give away American sovereignty, as the United States joins with Canada and Mexico in a North American Union similar to the European Union. You might even believe that there is an enormous “NAFTA Superhighway,” running all the way from Mexico City to Toronto, in the works as we speak.
All of these ideas are false, but you might believe them if you watch prime-time cable news. We at the Media Matters Action Network have documented the spread of this kind of misinformation in our latest report, Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News, which focuses on the three cable hosts most responsible for spreading misinformation and fostering fear and anger about undocumented immigrants: Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck. Read on…
Filed Under: Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Immigration, Lou Dobbs, Media Bias
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Please accept my invitation to enjoy a period of rest and assimilation. You can return later for another round of pure intensity.
McCain Pastor: Islam Is a ‘Conspiracy of Spiritual Evil’
Pastor Rod Parsley describes Islam as “anti-Christ” and Mohammed as “the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil.” Of course, John McCain eagerly sought the endorsement of Parsley. Will the MSM step up and ask McCain to denounce Parsley or will they ignore it (again)?
As your lawyer, I advise you to turn off your T.V.
If I listened to and believed what the three men mentioned in the article say, I might be an idiot. But I don’t, so I’m not.
Symon @ 3:
But what will we do without “content”?
if it weren’t for PBS i would have shot my tv years ago. a highway 400 yards wide is ludicrous. just do the math.
Every election year we have to find a boogieman. Four years ago it was the homosexual. This year it’s the immigrant. Who knows? Four years from now it might be the homosexual immigrant.
ccf @ 6:
In barrels of oil?
nothing like a regular heavy dose of racist, misanthropic xenophobia to keep the old juices flowing, eh?
Could someone please explain to me how Glenn Beck is allowed to be on the air? Seriously. This is a guy who barely graduated high school, is clearly insane, and is a complete moron. I’m not a hateful person, but I despise this man.
He’s just a propaganda machine.
the reality is people like that O’Reilly and Beck and their supporters … pathetic
good people and networks have grown
… has the wacko right wing GOP in a spiral…
…historic vote on the GI Bill. After last week’s victory in the House of Representatives, today the bill passed the
Senate by an overwhelming vote of 75-22. Click here to see who voted for it and who voted against it
http://www.senate.gov/legislat.....vote=00137
….good to see.
good people are uniting and care about what is happening to our country..
and doing something about it…
____
_(____)_
___ooO_(_o__o_)_Ooo___
Politics as usual. SANFU
Geno in Ptown @ 10:
Thats why he has a $50 Million a year contract. Buying people willing to sell out is expensive.
The Smiths @ 11:
It’s a start. Knowing the decider though he’ll probably reject it.
L.A. Confidential @ 13:
LA Confidential, tell me you’re joking. Beck is getting paid $50 mil a year? I just do not believe that…
My TV is for watching classic and independent films. It does not show cable news.
You know, you’re right about all the anti-immigrant rhetoric which exists… I’ve come across well meaning people who genuinely believed that immigrants didn’t pay taxes before. I didn’t know where they got that idea.
BUT
I’m afraid I’ll need more convincing that there is not a plan to create the North American Union.
Like Telecom Immunity, or Network neutrality, or Electronic Voting, or (in Europe) the Constitution Treaty… some things will just KEEP coming back, regardless of public opposition, because those in power want them implemented.
It may not be until 2020, but I really think the Amero is coming.
cnn, the new foxnews
but, really, this is what the establishment needs. dobbs, oreilly, beck, etc. serve a definite purpose is pointing to illegal immigrants as the source for all our woes.
mostly b/c our woes are due the economic policies that these fools served as cheerleaders for.
i am not surprised, the neoliberal/corporate policies have proven to be detrimental to our own future, yet the corporations and the rich are still making buckets of money. thus, they need to distract and confuse the people with faux issues, when, really, the biggest problem facing our country, and the world, is the ruling class–the corporations, the rich, and their water carriers, like dobbs, beck and bile-o
Yes, the “journalists” shown in the video here are, to varying degrees, whacked.
But, regardless, the costs of illegal immigration are nevertheless very real.
So, are we to believe that illigal immigrants are NOT having a negative affect on blue collar wages and benefits?
Illigal immigrants are not taking jobs that Americans don’t want, they’re accepting low wage and no benefit offers.
Illigal immigrants aid the rush to the bottom and that DOES have a negative affect Americans.
It’s one thing to be liberal, but let’s don’t be stupid.
Man, that was scary. Through Dobbs, Beck, O’Reilly, I hear the ghosts of a time when similar hate was said about people like me…..draped around the American flag of course.
Americans should just shut their damn TVs off, and become more like Canadians.
Sorry but from my view here in Texas, the super highway is in the works, and anyone who goes to our local hospital you will see a lot of services being done in illegals. You need to get out more in this part of the country and not just look for ways to back up your ideology. I’m for Obama and a long time liberal but this issue is one that I side with Lou on as do most in my part of the country, we are paying for it all the time down here. It is you people that are trying to cover up what is going on.
It’s an election year and warm weather is around the corner.
This can mean only ONE thing …
The Republican Slime Machine is kicking into HIGH GEAR !
Yes, they will create their customary boogey men, straw men and other bull-caca.
Only this year, they will have to completely ignore all and every issue taht is important to the American people because, well, they just dont have a good track record on any of them.
You have to hand it to them in that they are very well coordinated in their feable mission. Sadly for them, they do not yet realize that the American people have already been fooled by this old tactic and it wont be working for them anymore.
So Billo, Dobbs, Becky and any others ….. BRING IT ON !, You’re just adding yet another nail on the GOP coffin.
Didn’t anyone see former Mexican President Vicente Fox on Larry King Live the other night?
He confirmed the existence of a plan (conceived with President Bush) to create a new regional currency in the Americas. Check the transcript on CNN (if it’s up yet).
Just because you say “it’s a conspiracy theory!” doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Christian#23 …
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=4032
Calm down bud.
“…you might be among those who believe that the U.S. government and American society are groaning under the weight of undocumented immigrants. You might believe that there is a terrifying crime wave attributable to illegal immigration. You might believe that undocumented immigrants feast on a cornucopia of social services, while avoiding paying taxes. You might also believe that they are voting illegally in large numbers, and that they bring with them all sorts of diseases.”
AND YOU WOULD BE RIGHT.
Just try being a schoolteacher in Southern California and see what you have to deal with when it comes to the illegal’s kids…talk to ANY teacher that is not some rose-colored glasses wearing bleeding heart and you will hear tales that will curl your hair. Talk to any realist, and I don’t care what their political affiliation is, they will tell you the truth. Get out of your gated communities and white-flight enclaves, climb down off your high horses and ivory towers and try being a college or high school kid attempting to get a low paying job. Try to be a woman and get through the harassing gauntlet of day workers at Home Depot. Walk through the crack vials outside your local bodega. Try and get someone in a kitchen that can speak your nation’s language. Oh, it isn’t the immigrant’s fault that they are here, I know all of that, they would not be here if it were not for the predatory employment practices that prefer them to legal workers. We have to prosecute the employers and the illegal immigration problem WILL dry up, over night.
The solution is simple, the will to do the simple solution is simply not there.
Remember this, just because you have a generally liberal viewpoint, you don’t have to hop on the bandwagon and wave the flag for every single so-called “liberal” issue out there. Sometimes even an A-hole like O’Reilly or a curmudgeon like Dobbs, or an idiot like Beck can actually be right.
And…sometimes you can be wrong.
Live in a place where these immigration issues are a very visible, tangible REAL daily problem and your opinions will change, I guarantee you.
Canuknotusa @ 22:
You mean live indoors for six months out of the year?
There’s NO WAY Glenn Dreck is making 50 mil per year. Limpballs makes a “mere” 28 mil.
I had that dang fever once but advil took care of it.
Samdog:
So when you moving out ?
Not only do illegals pay taxes (contrary to popular myth), they also contribute billions of dollars a year into a Social Security system from which they will never be paid back. And Glenn Beck has the balls to blame illegals for the problems with Social Security? What an idiot!
Geno in Ptown @ 15:
On November 5, 2007, The New York Times reported that Premiere Radio Networks was extending Beck’s contract. Two sources with knowledge of the deal said the five-year contract was valued at $50 million.
Media Matters Network needs to start its own cable network. Or maybe the People of the United States need to start one.
I think they strayed from the point by bringing up the whole NAFTA super highway issue. Which I think is unrelated.
One answer to the illegal immigration problem is to make it so sucky to live here that they want to stay home…hmmm.
Christian @23: I too live in Texas and do not see the problem of illegal immigrants
with the same, narrow view as you. Read the article and stop watching Lou, O’Liely, and Beck for some facts and not the posturing and pandering preformed
by those three clowns.
26 samdog Says: “Sometimes even an A-hole like O’Reilly or a curmudgeon like Dobbs, or an idiot like Beck can actually be right.”
are illegal immigrants THE problem or are they a symptom of a more systemic economic problem?
Mm. More than just ‘predatory employment practices’ are driving immigrants here. I dig what you’re saying, samdog, but life’s a mess, isn’t it? roughly 100 + years of messed-up foreign policy towards the lands to the south are finally bearing fruit, and here’s the real rub… folks trying to get paid more than a few dollars a day have found the only real solution here in the good ol’ US of A. Exploitative economic policies towards our neighbors South… cheap bannanas and coffee?… are driving folks here, and I say God bless ‘em.
Strain on social services? Too fucking bad.
These are people, not ‘immigrants’… and WTF is written on the statue of liberty’s base, anyway? Shit, we were all immigrants, those of us not aboriginal to this continent. The current wave of immigration, and here’s the kicker, was seeded by US ‘property rights’ to the entire fucking western hemisphere south of the Texas border. It’s OUR FAULT, dig? These folks would be much happier at home… only problem is we fucked their homes up enough to make living there virtually impossibly unsustainable… and now they’re here. God bless ‘em.
Strain on social services? Too fucking bad. Fix it. These folks are Americans now. The only reason they’re ‘illegal’ in the first place is that our immigration laws are so restrictive now. These people are basically refugees of the economic ‘warfare’ we’ve visited on our South for the last 100 or so years.
So fix it.
Don’t blame them. Blame the assholes who caused them to be refugees in the first place; blame the assholes who won’t fix it.
False!?! Does the poster really believe that the presence of millions of illegal aliens in this country who will work for low wages and no benefits does not impact the American workers’ standard of living?!? C’mon, you don’t need Dobbs to show you this is a simple matter of supply and demand… You start with no illegals and the wages are above minimum… Then you introduce millions of people for which the minimum wage in the USA is 10 times what they made back in their home country… The flood the market because, until very recently, there has been no workplace enforcement… What happens to those above-minimum-wage-jobs? They are gone… Oh, and the employers of these illegals also stop providing heath care to their workers… Why, because illegals use the emergency room like taxpayers use their personal physicians… and because the laws are the way they are the hospitals can’t refuse treatment… So when they bill comes due that ain’t no one to pay and it gets past onto the taxpayers… That might explain why dozens of medical care facilities in S. Calif have gone out of business in the last decade… They are overburdened by non-paying illegals… WHAT A BUNCH OF MIS-INFORMED HOG-WASH THIS POSTER IS TRYING TO SELL… Keep up the good work Lou (Dobbs), without you the spin this poster is trying to sell would be believed by too many people…
Chico Hussein @ 30:
Funny, I usually get this “If you don’t like it, you can leave Amuhrkuh” stuff from righties. If I COULD leave, I WOULD go, but then…I’d be an illegal immigrant sponging off of someone else’s nation, right? I’ll wait until I can do it legally…maybe Ireland…maybe Canada…maybe even China…?
O’Reilly: “Hey…these folks, these immigrants, they want to take your motherf@#&ing iced tea away from you and your jobs”….like I told Geraldo…we were here first
Reality: Actually Bill…the various tribes of the indigenous native Americans were here 1st.
Dobbs: “I think we need to have Blackwater U.S.A. round them all up and deport them”
Reality: Lou….just quit CNN and go join the minutemen already, oops I forgot you Corporate Media whores just talk big so you can fatten your wallet, instead of taking the issue seriously and coming to a compromise for all.
Beck: “Immigrants, they’re behind the Global Warming myth! Al Gore is secretly working with them to steal my magic underwear and conspiring with Penguins to kidnap my 4 kids from two different marriages and make them watch Happy Feet! Oh did I mention, I never did the 12 steps like ‘W’….”
Reality: Glenn, you’re crazier than Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, & ten other celebrities that you spend half of your shows railing about… Enjoy your terrible ratings while you can and here’s hoping CNN has some semblance of backbone & integrity left and finally cancel your failed right wingnut telethon…
Samson- @ 37:
Read on, i clearly said they are a symptom. I said we should prosecute employers.
Vexed@39: Get real. Did you even take the time to read the Media Matters
article? I doubt it; instead you shoot from the hip as do Lou, O’Liely and Beck.
The proof is in the pudding, as someone once said…so open you eyes and mind
and don’t let these three goofballs continue to feed you hogwash.
Or as A. Einstein once said: “Only two things are infinite, the Universe and
human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. “
Do these three pundits *believe* anything other than making whatever outrageous, false claim they can to help elect leadership who will lower the capital gains tax rate?
I admit that I have no answers to this complex problem. But whenever I listen to that fat fuck Lou Dobbs and his lynch mob inspiring show, I know I will never side with Dobbs.
While I’m sure the Mexicangovernment and those crooked banks, businesses, and politicians who profit from illegal activity appreciate MMFA’s help, it’d be nice if I could expect more from this site. For instance, consider the NAFTASuperhighway. In their report, MMFA admits that it exists. They point out that Dobbs sometimes refers to it as major construction project to be performed and other times as more of an idea.