Huffington Post and irony

Huffington Post has published an article so bad that I had to check to make sure that it wasn’t a parody. Turns out it isn’t a joke and the author is the son of the ill fated Bobby Kennedy. The article is full of falsehoods, misinformation, and overly combative rhetoric. This would be fine (well not fine but normal) if the article wasn’t an attack on Fox News for publishing falsehoods, misinformation, and combative rhetoric.

Honestly this article is so full of irony and pure wrongness that I laughed several times while reading it. The actual premise of the article is factually wrong. Bobby states that Fox News couldn’t possibly enter Canada because of our strict laws forbidding lying on broadcast news. This completely ignores that Fox News is already available in Canada.

Just try and read this with a straight face I challenge you.

Here is the article with my comments inserted:

Regulators Reject Proposal That Would Bring Fox-Style News to Canada

As America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades [Nice way to open with a hyperbole. How exactly are public sector unions the whole of the middle class?] -- against various Koch Oil surrogates [how dare rich people have opinions] and the corporate toadies at Fox News [Says the union toady. See I can call people names too.] -- fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice [I like all those things!] can take comfort from a significant victory north of Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all [CRTC approved Fox News in 2004. If only Bobby knew how to use Wikipedia]! The reason: Canada regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right wing Prime Minister [see funny eh], Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news. [Actually Harper had nothing or little to do with the proposal to soften the draconian laws. The proposal came out of a Parliamentary committee that was made up of mostly opposition MPs. Also the proposal was to amend the law not repeal it.]

Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast....any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada [there are no right wing talk radio in Canada?] and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom [well Canada does do better then the USA on the Economic Freedom of the World index]. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism [this may be merely a personal preference but I go to US news outlets for my international news and I find they have much better investigative journalists] that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987 [like everything else, it is Reagan’s fault]. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism [yes Canada is the media utopia, give me a break] that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act [to be fair if he read the Toronto Star I understand why he might think this is true], Canadians rose up to oppose him [did I miss a general uprising? Damn it I always wanted to participate in one of those.] fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news [*cough* Toronto Star *cough*] would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio [or MSNBC and Huffington Post]. Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North." [Actually Canadians call it Sun TV News because that is what it is called. Only certain cranky media personalities and their supporters call it Fox News North. But go on thinking that Canada is a homogeneous society]

Harper, often referred to as "George W. Bush's Mini Me," [I don’t remember anyone serious ever calling him that] is known for having mounted a Bush like war on government scientists [well…], data collectors [umm…], transparency [okay…], and enlightenment in general [not sure exactly what that last one means but he may have a point with the rest]. He is a wizard [OMG did he go to Hogwarts?] of all the familiar tools of demagoguery [not really]; false patriotism [how does he know it is false?], bigotry [what bigotry?], fear [maybe a little but every party does that], selfishness [not sure what he means by that] and belligerent religiosity [I bet you the average Democrat references God a lot more than Harper].

Harper's attempts to make lying legal on Canadian television [sigh] is a stark admission that right wing political ideology can only dominate national debate through dishonest propaganda [do you see the irony yet?]. Since corporate profit-taking [profit-taking? Does he mean productivity and wealth creation?] is not an attractive vessel for populism, a political party or broadcast network that makes itself the tool of corporate and financial elites must lie to make its agenda popular with the public. In the Unites States, Fox News and talk radio, the sock puppets of billionaires [who bought the Huffington Post recently?] and corporate robber barons [yes he actually used “corporate robber barons” in a sentence without sarcasm] have become the masters of propaganda and distortion on the public airwaves [or the blogsophere, much like yourself Bobby]. Fox News's notoriously biased and dishonest coverage of the Wisconsin's protests is a prime example of the brand of news coverage Canada has smartly avoided. [Oh right, because people must never hear contrary perspectives]