Faux Journalism at Neo-Hampshire

Fake news sites on the internet have been a Republican staple (0.00 / 0)

for some time.  Talon News, the outfit Jeff Gannon supposedly worked for, was essentially an electronic version of the direct mail industry, collecting "live" addresses to put into lists and sell to whoever is willing to buy them.  Talon wasn't long-lived but the parent, World Net Daily, is still going strong.
In South Dakota Senator Daschle was targeted by political operatives posing as bloggers.  They developed "stories" that were then picked up by the regular press to spread false information.  Their activities have now been formalized by consultants creating fake grass roots groups--i.e. astroturf.  Issues advocacy provides a steadier stream of revenue than electoral politics.

Media relying increasingly on press releases make it easy to promote a biased agenda.

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by: hannah @ Sat May 02, 2009 at 18:47:08 PM CDT

The thing about Hynes' story: (4.00 / 3)

Would the DNC really strip NH of the primary in retaliation for: not legislating gay marriage?

So then they would move the primary to, say Michigan, and tell them: "Just enact marriage equality then print the ballots."

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by: elwood @ Sat May 02, 2009 at 18:53:02 PM CDT

It was another topic, but.... (4.00 / 1)

Bob Hebert has a great column in the NY Times today about the shrinking Republican Party. Here are a couple of lines that are right on the money:

It's not a party; it's a cult.

Voters who hadn't sipped from the Kool-Aid themselves couldn't help but recognize that the G.O.P. was bizarrely detached from the real world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05...

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Sat May 02, 2009 at 19:16:01 PM CDT

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Channeling Andy Rooney: (0.00 / 0)

Can we lose "drink the Kool-Aid" as a metaphor? (Not aimed at Kathy, or at Bob Herbert.)

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by: elwood @ Sat May 02, 2009 at 19:20:29 PM CDT

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Not until you give us something better. (0.00 / 0)

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by: This Was The Moment @ Sat May 02, 2009 at 19:54:22 PM CDT

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You can dress it up (0.00 / 0)

as "news," but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, etc...

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by: Dean Barker @ Sat May 02, 2009 at 19:30:16 PM CDT

Neo-Hampshire (4.00 / 1)

I rather like that; better than my clumsy-on-purpose Red Now Hampshire.

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by: Dean Barker @ Sat May 02, 2009 at 19:31:30 PM CDT

Maybe something better (4.00 / 5)

What about No-Hampshire?  

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Sat May 02, 2009 at 20:05:15 PM CDT

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Truth? We don't need no stinking truth. (4.00 / 3)

And this is the point about the "bathroom bill" and Barack Hussein Obama. They don't care if this is the truth or not any more than Will cares about global warming. If you just keep throwing this crap out there, some of it becomes part of "general knowledge" and encourages the atmosphere where there is no truth, everyone does it, and since they lied about us, we can lie about them. Jamb it down their throats says I. Arrrrrrgh.

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by: xteeth @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 06:25:27 AM CDT

not to mention... (0.00 / 0)

...it's a great way to keep reinforcing those who want any reason to hate obama, true or not.

--we are making enemies faster than we can kill them

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by: fake consultant @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 23:19:04 PM CDT

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The DNC Can't "Strip" New Hampshire... (0.00 / 0)

The DNC nor the Republicans can "strip" New Hampshire of our First-In-The-Nation Presidential Primary.  We have a 1975 law protecting our lead-off status.  Our Primary in 2012 and beyond will be "...7 days or more..." before any similar election, and since we pay for it, we can hold it when we want, and the candidates will come.  Both parties have tried to get rid of us, but they have always failed.  

And as all of us know, and which John Dad Sununu and the new Republicans on the scene in New Hampshire and nationally are finding out day by day and on issue to issue, Ray Buckley is quite capable of beating them all at their own games.  They might as well give up.  Ray works in mysterious ways, and usually with his ideals intact, and almost always figures out a way to out-maneuver his opposition.  

And all this phony nonsense.  Poor Republicans and their cohorts.  They always find a way to put their feet in their mouths.  

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by: Rep. Jim Splaine @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 07:44:28 AM CDT

I might also add.. (4.00 / 2)

Yes, we in the General Court did get a lot of pressure from all sides on this issue... mostly from in-state but some from out of state.  But, the national Democratic party apparatus was quite silent on these issues.  And, the Democratic caucuses in the two houses of the US Congress haven't been doing anything on gender-rights issues (not that they would much have time in the first 4 months of the new year to work on those issues anyway.)

The DNC (although it became much more aggressive and much more effective under Howard Dean's leadership) gets WAY too much credit from the right.  The wingnuts view the DNC as being right up there with ACORN, George Soros and the United Nations: but really the DNC per se isn't all that powerful.  Yes, liberalism is on the ascendancy, but the DNC has very little to do with this.

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by: TimothyHorrigan @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 09:47:27 AM CDT

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that is so true (0.00 / 0)

Indeed, it seems that much of the party apparatus (both major parties at least) tends to miss the ground shifting under their feet that's evident in hindsight. Party Republicans in the 80s were probably a bit cowed by the legacy of the New Deal/Great Society consensus, and grassroots conservatives were no doubt calling their reps "cowards" at a time when they could see the rise of conservatism. It's only the last couple of weeks, really since the Iowa equality decision. that we've seen any suggestion (from party and media folks) that marriage equality is anything but an electoral winner for the GOP. The idea that national Democrats would push this forward is pretty ridiculous—it's the activists that push the parties, on both sides.

(Democrats, of course, just aren't very good at reaching one-note unison. Who was it arguing that Obama's beating the right-wing noise machine in part by keeping too many things in the air at once for the Mighty Wurlitzer to get going on any one thing?)

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by: Mormo @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 16:27:25 PM CDT

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I like the way Lauren Dorgan (4.00 / 3)

phrased it:

Patrick Hynes's conservative "news" site NowHampshire

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by: Dean Barker @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 10:39:12 AM CDT

More faux news (4.00 / 3)

Nohampshire is now breathlessly pushing a story that a lot of anti-equality money will be coming into the state, including tv ads, as a response to the out of state lobbying that turned the senate vote around.  Umm, that out of state money has already been flooding the state? Those dumb tv ads already ran here once.

It sounds like the next one may feature that Miss California contestant from the Miss Universe Pageant (the one that is not a scholarship pageant). Maybe it is just me, but there is something incongruous about a woman who is willing to pose in a string bikini showing off her new and improved breasts being touted as the voice of moral authority. I don't care if she wants to show off her surgically enhanced bod to the rest of the world, but to then go spouting off about "traditional" values?    

Well, that is enough of nhampshire for me - it is a site for the remaining five members of the NHGOP.

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 12:17:33 PM CDT

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Thanks for (0.00 / 0)

pointing at the silliness of pageants! I'm very aware of (and uncomfortable with) the privilege around male gaze, and it's good to see some attention to it out there!

They don't call them character pageants, or intellect pageants, or empathy pageants, after all...

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by: Mormo @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 16:31:45 PM CDT

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Oh, that wasn't my intent (0.00 / 0)

I don't have a problem with pageants per se; I had a friend who participated in Miss Manchester, and know a couple of very nice people who were Miss New Hamsphires. But that was part of the Miss America scholarship program.  My problem is that Miss California is being held out as a moral icon when she gained fame exhibiting her manmade assets in a bikini. My mind is boggled.

 

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 20:10:47 PM CDT

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nor I, per se (0.00 / 0)

and have also known some good people who've participated, also in the Miss America program. It's the pretense that pageantry is about (for instance) the causes, or scholarships. The money comes from the audience, which is to a very large extent looks oriented. What boggles my mind most is what you said, that Miss CA has been held out as some kind of person worth listening to thanks to...what? her good teeth? her quality plastic surgery, paid for by the pageant organization? her utter inability to come up with a coherent thought? Her "opposite marriage" remark was 98% incoherent, I think less coherent than S. Palin. And at least Sarah Palin was elected by some people....

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by: Mormo @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 21:17:04 PM CDT

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hmmm (0.00 / 0)

Just to be clear, it's amazing that the pageant org provided her with implants to improve her chances at winning Miss USA and then people expect us to believe that she's therefore got worthwhile things to say. Hello? She got artificial "enhancement" to her looks to help her in the contest to make her more prominent...

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by: Mormo @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 21:20:42 PM CDT

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if pageants were all that (4.00 / 1)

they say they are - they'd be for men, not women.

The fact that they are only for women tells you all you need to know.

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by: susanthe @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 22:12:36 PM CDT

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bam! (0.00 / 0)

I wish I had your gift for the short point!

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by: Mormo @ Mon May 04, 2009 at 07:47:34 AM CDT

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They are for men (0.00 / 0)

n/t

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by: JimC @ Mon May 04, 2009 at 08:32:17 AM CDT

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as colbert would tell you... (0.00 / 0)

...she may have made her comment...but the mnarket has not spoken...which essentially means she never said a word.

and that's truthiness in action.

--we are making enemies faster than we can kill them

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by: fake consultant @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 23:27:41 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

On the pageant thing I have to say (4.00 / 3)

That it certainly helps that Prejean is statuesque but I think that her rampant popularity right now isn't so much to do with anything she has said but is a sort of collateral damage because that Perez Hilton guy was genuinely being a total dick in the name of the cause.  It really would have been nice if he had not done that.

I don't care about the outcome of that pageant but trying to manipulate people into denouncing their political beliefs on stage in a non-political setting like that isn't cool, much less encouraging ideological standards for beauty pageant contestants.  And these are exactly the things he was doing - he literally said later on that contestants in the pageant shouldn't be allowed to say what she said and he was testing her to see how well she could dissemble (there was video of him saying this on CNN, I can track it down if anyone wants a citation.)  I think beauty pageants are dumb but Perez Hilton is dumb-squared for both being a beauty pageant judge and saying things like this in the name of marriage equality.

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by: Vis Unita Fortior @ Sun May 03, 2009 at 22:33:37 PM CDT

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Today: Faux News Goes After Sen. Larsen (0.00 / 0)

So Pat "Hatchetman" Hynes is off his rocker again, he and his side-kick Kevin Smith are losing their minds and desperately trying to rev up the base  by claiming Senator Larsen equated anti-marriage folks with the KKK. How sad that these boys feel the need to lurch from one lie to another, seriously, how pathetic. What's next boys?  

Democrats solve problems, Republicans sit and say no.

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by: Ray Buckley @ Mon May 04, 2009 at 15:34:42 PM CDT

Is Hynes getting paid? (4.00 / 2)

I would like it if a reporter asked Hynes if any of his business ventures are being paid by any organization with an anti-equality stance, whether the NHGOP, Cornerstone, or some other group. Given his failure to disclose these sorts of paid arrangements in the past, it is a very fair question that a real reporter could ask of No Hampshire.  

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Mon May 04, 2009 at 17:32:59 PM CDT

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