LTR follows the money

"Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in."

- Michael Corleone, as portrayed by Al Pacino, in The Godfather: Part III

I was hoping what I wrote last week would be the end of it. Every once in a while I just gotta get one of those things out of my system. And I thought I had said all I needed to say about Media Matters for America, George Soros and paranoid right-wing talk show hosts. But sure enough, another reason comes along to write something about it. Here we go again.

Bill O'Reilly of FOX Noise Channel hates Media Matters. I mean, he really hates them. So much that in the past, he's compared them to the likes of Mao, Castro, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Nazis. He called them "cowards" and "people who are afraid to answer any questions," yet will not allow anyone from MMfA to come on his show to spar with him. And now, MMfA must have really pissed O'Liely off, since he has trotted out his own personal doomsday device. His own neutron bomb. Yes, in his strange personal game of "six degrees of separation," he has a chart that links MMfA to George Soros' deep pockets. With this, he grasps at all the straws he possibly can in proving that, while Soros hasn't directly given money to the group, organizations funded by Soros have themselves sent money to MMfA. Oh the horror!

Only thing is, you'll never hear about why Soros is such a bad man on the "All-Spin Zone." Oh sure, you'll hear accusations of insider trading. Or that he's some kind of radical to the left of Abbie Hoffman. Or that he was a teenage Nazi back in World War II. Or that he's some kind of Dr. Evil, set on world domination (no doubt complete with laserbeam-fitted sharks and his mysterious Alan Parsons Project). Suffice it to say, O'Reilly's gone batshit crazy.

Now, here's a guy, Soros, who's a self-made billionaire, and in turn spent a lot of money fighting communism in Eastern Europe. One would assume that would make him a virtual hero to the right-wing of America. He sounds like a Reagan Republican's dream guy. Only one problem, though - he turned on the Bush Administration. A big no-no. Even after being buddy-buddy with the Bushes in Carlyle Group. Even after Harkin Energy, which Soros was part owner of, bailed out Junior's failed oil company, Soros soured on Dubya's economic and foreign policies. The war in Iraq was the final straw. First, he ran full-page ads in major US newspapers challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's rationale for the war. He also wrote a book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, which criticized the president's foreign policy. Then he pledged to spend up to $30 million to help defeat Bush in the 2004 election, donating nearly $24 million to various political action committees and liberal think tanks. The biggest beneficiaries of Soros' generosity were Americans Coming Together ($10 million), MoveOn.org ($2.5 million) and the Center for American Progress ($3 million). It's a rather small list. And no, Media Matters was not on that list. And neither was Air America Radio. Soros basically shot his $30 million load and left. But that $30 million is why the right-wing hates him so much. Or, they're scared shitless of the guy. So much that they're making up myths about this alleged bogeyman.

Michael Savage called Soros "a totally dangerous individual" who "doesn't miss an opportunity to attack this country" and "should be stripped of his citizenship." Right-wing activist David Horowitz, backed by quite a few generous right wing benefactors himself, has made ridiculous claims about Soros' campaign donations. O'Reilly called him "the big left-wing loon who's financing all these smear sites," and added, "They ought to hang this Soros guy." When Soros recently donated $2,100 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, O'Reilly put on his tinfoil hat, oblivious to the fact that Soros once donated the same sum of money to John McCain. He really lives in fear in his belief that Soros is waging a war against him via MMfA. In short, Bill O'Reilly is one big pussy.

But enough about Soros. As I claimed last week, Soros isn't the only one doing it. On the left, there's Progressive Insurance CEO Peter Lewis and a few others. But that's a drop in the bucket compared to the other side. See, on the right, there's a whole ton of people. Some of the names I mentioned in the past, such as cult leader Sun Myung Moon and Rupert Murdoch are pretty out in the open. They invest in blatant partisan media geared toward right-wing propaganda. Richard DeVos, founder of the Amway pyramid scheme, has long been one of the biggest contributors to the Republican Party, and his kids have followed suit.

Behind the scenes, though, are a wide variety of billionaires, families, corporations and foundations throwing obscene amounts of money at political action committees, think tanks, media watchdog organizations, lobbying groups, and various propaganda outlets. Many of them stay out of the limelight. In this group, you'll find families like the Coors in Colorado, the Bradleys of Milwaukee, the Olin Foundation and others. They're still giving. But the most effective sugardaddy of them all is in Pittsburgh. The man is Richard Mellon Scaife.

Recall last week when I claimed that Moon was the top fatcat for the New Right. In terms of total spent, he likely is. But Scaife is the one who got the biggest bang for his buck. It's very likely that people like O'Reilly will never talk about right-wing moneymen like Scaife who heavily fund ventures designed to attack the left. Of course he wouldn't. Otherwise, he'll sound like a complete hypocrite. Most wingnuts will never acknowledge the efforts of the Coors, the Bradleys and the Scaifes. Even the Radio Tranquilizer has been whining that they don't have their own Soros or Lewis. Evidently, he's either not doing his homework or there are some things he just refuses to tell his readers. They're just pissy because we're now playing the game on their turf. The usual B.S. you hear is that left-leaning donors are squashing the right-wing with their spending. But that's utterly ridiculous. See, I have decided to track where all that right-wing foundation money goes, and after taking a trip down the rabbit hole, was pretty damned shocked to see where it all wound up. In fact, I struggled like crazy in making a similar chart to the simplistic one that O'Reilly's people coughed up, just because it went in so many directions. Here's a partial chart of what I came up with:


It's time to follow the money.

Now, who is Richard Mellon Scaife? He's an insanely rich man living in Pittsburgh, with interests in banking, oil, uranium and newspapers. Unlike Soros, who earned his own way from a poor immigrant, Scaife made his money the old fashioned way - he inherited it. And while Soros kept reinvesting his money to make more money, in that grand ol' American tradition, Scaife used his money to gain influence, spending roughly a third of his fortune on various right wing causes. Scaife is a man that seems to lurk in the shadows. He's a bit reclusive. He doesn't go on FOX Noise and play pundit. He doesn't write op-eds in the paper. In the grand tradition of Hearst, Hughes and others, he stays out of the limelight.

Even for a newspaper publisher, he's not very media-friendly. When former Wall Street Journal reporter Karen Rothmeyer, denied an interview on several occasions, ran into him on the street and asked him about his donations, an enraged Scaife yelled "You f*cking Communist c*nt, get out of here." In the remaining five minutes of the interview, Scaife told her she was ugly and that her teeth were "terrible." He closed by saying, "Don't look behind you." Wow, now THAT'S unhinged!

"If a liberal politician doesn't toe the Soros line, he or she will be denied funding and brutally attacked. Just ask Senator Joseph Lieberman about what MoveOn and Media Matters did to him," claimed O'Reilly. Yeah, just like Scaife did when Brock was canned for not being mean enough to Hillary Clinton and severed ties to American Spectator when they gave a bad review to a book by one of his henchmen. Pot, say hello to kettle.

Scaife is the Kevin Bacon of the New Right, in that just about anything and everything neocon seems to have connection to him, within even fewer degrees. So, how much has he forked over to prop up the right-wing? By 1999, according to the Washington Post, Scaife's foundations have forked over $340 million dollars to conservative causes and groups. Again, this is just Scaife we're talking about here. Granted, Scaife isn't forking it over like he used to, but thanks to his past efforts, the groups that he's given to are the ones now paying it forward.

To start with, Scaife made a shady donation of $990,000 to the 1972 re-election campaign of Richard Nixon. Due to loopholes, he wasn't charged with a crime, but roughly $45,000 of that went to a fund linked to the Watergate scandal. Quite a beginning there, Dick!

What really got Scaife hot though was a semi-obscure Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton. Fearing that this guy actually stood a decent chance of beating Bush I in the 1992 election, Scaife brought out all the guns. He was a major backer of The American Spectator, a right-wing magazine that was planning an all-out smear campaign now commonly referred to as "The Arkansas Project." The purpose was to find out anything about Clinton, and if that wasn't good enough, just make stuff up. This is where stuff like Paula Jones came from. And later Whitewater, the suicide of Vince Foster (which they tried to paint as a murder), and whatever else they could pull out of their asses. The purpose was to force Clinton from office and endlessly dog and harass him and his family. This was with the help of Scaife's own personal attack dog reporter, Christopher Ruddy, who later founded NewsMax.com. In other words, lots of time and effort was spent in trying to topple a presidency, an act that could theoretically be considered treason. Scaife sunk a ton of his own money into these ventures, reportedly almost $2 million dollars (not counting money he gave to then-House Speaker and Clinton antagonist Newt Gingrich's various groups), giving Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr a lot to work with. Ironically (or not), Scaife endowed a new school of public policy at Pepperdine University, and Starr was named its first dean. A controversy brewed, and Starr turned it down, before accepting it again in 2004.

Ironically, Scaife indirectly helped fund MMfA, since founder David Brock was a top writer for American Spectator at the time of the Arkansas Project, and was paid handsomely to lash out at the Clintons with various ridiculous claims. Following an eventual change of heart and his brave decision to publicly declare his sexual orientation, Brock drifted toward the other side and founded MMfA, obviously using some of the money paid to him from the Spectator's coffers. We can thank Scaife in part for that.

Like many other conservative sugardaddies, Scaife sunk money into other ventures. The American Enterprise Institute was another big benefactor, and they in turn helped prop up the epicenter of neo-conservatism, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), as well as the Federalist Society, which could be seen as the starting point for conservative trash-talker Ann Coulter. Coulter's scating columns have since been published in various Scaife media ventures.

And while O'Reilly and his ilk constantly charge that Soros funds MMfA, several conservative-leaning media watchdogs have stuck their hands in Scaife's cookie jar. Directly. The Center for Media and Public Affairs is one, and the ironically-titled Accuracy in Media is another beneficiary. You remember AIM, right? They were out front in the whole Vince Foster conspiracy. But the most well-known of these watchdogs is the Media Research Center (MRC), headed by Brent Bozell, complete with a $6 million annual budget and 60 staff members. And they've even branched out, starting their very own news organization, the Cybercast (formerly Conservative) News Service (CNS). They were the ones that claimed they had proof of Saddam Hussein's WMD's. In addition, the MRC started up a MMfA-type blog, Newsbusters.org. MRC's affiliate, the Parents Television Council (PTC), is similar in nature. The MRC has also helped encourage the efforts of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose purpose was to dog John Kerry with lies and vague accusations during the 2004 presidential campaign. And unlike MMfA, the MRC/PTC has actually taken their fight against liberalism to the government, in the form of various complaints to the FCC.

Scaife has also thrown money at right-wing news organizations. Besides his ownership of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, he presently has an ownership stake in NewsMax.com. He donated to Heritage Society and Moral Majority founder Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation, which in turn started an ill-fated conservative TV network, National Empowerment Television (later America's Voice), a venture that turned out to be a financial sinkhole that nobody watched. He also sent $330,000 directly to the Western Journalism Center, which helped start Joseph Farah's WorldNetDaily.com.

Scaife sent money to the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a group founded by former Marxist-turned-right wing activist David Horowitz. Horowitz in turn started FrontPageMag.com, Discover the Networks, which tracks funding to and from left-leaning causes, and most curiously, the Matt Drudge Defense Fund, which supported him in a lawsuit a few years back. Needless to say, Drudge knows who his sugardaddy is.

Lately, Scaife has been a buyer of buyer of books, in mass quantities. Ever wonder about those high rankings on the New York Times bestseller lists for conservative books? Or those conservative book clubs offering titles for ridiculously low prices? Thank Scaife for that, since he buys in bulk. Particularly titles from Regnery Press, which publishes the work of Michelle Malkin, David Limbaugh and most famously, "Unfit for Command," which helped jumpstart that "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" thing a few years back. Ah, yes - another connection to the Swift Nuts!

And Scaife also contributed money and resources to the Council for National Policy, a secretive networking group that counts among its members a who's-who of the New Right, including Bozell, Moon, DeVos, Pat Robertson, Donald Wildmon, Jerry Falwell, Grover Norquist, disgraced congressman Tom DeLay, Senator Trent Lott, Tommy Thompson and others. Whew!

Needless to say, Scaife gets around. And it's not just him either. The names of Coors and Bradley also pop up here and there. But for head marionette status, nobody can top Scaife. Sure, he didn't make much financial return on these investments, but for overall influence and power, he most certainly got his money's worth. So when people like O'Reilly piss and moan about the right wing being horribly underfunded, we can all laugh at him. Or when Brian Maloney whines on his fact-lacking blog about the lack of a Soros or Lewis on his side (that is, when he's not writing ridiculous entries about Sheryl Crow and toilet paper - which is a fitting topic for him, since he is kind of an asswipe anyway), then we can point him in the right direction and he can stop begging his readers to send him money. So consider this a helpful tool for the right. That's right, I'm providing a service here. Because, if you get all your news from Rush Limbaugh, the FOX Noise Channel and AM radio, you'll likely never know about the Coors, or the Bradleys, or the John M. Olin Foundation, or Jeremiah Milbank, or ExxonMobil, or Lockheed Martin, or any of the other 'philanthropists', foundations, corporations or other sugardaddies and fatcats.

And certainly not Richard Mellon Scaife.

In an ironic footnote, the Scaife Family Foundation is now under the control of his daughter Jennie, and the focus has changed quite a bit. Much of the money currently goes to nonpolitical projects such as medical programs, drug treatment and animal welfare. They also send money to Planned Parenthood, though against her father's wishes. Hey, at least there's still all those other donors, foundations and think tanks, provided they haven't jumped ship already. But thanks to the infrastructure provided by the likes of Scaife, they can all sail on autopilot for a long time to come.

Attack of the conservative crybabies

It certainly hasn't been a good week to be a conservative.

For a movement that endlessly exclaims from the highest perches to 'support the troops', they certainly don't walk the talk, especially considering that the Bush Administration allowed the top military hospital in the country to descend below care facilities in third world countries. This week, we found out what their idea of 'supporting the troops' really meant, as a scandal involving Walter Reed Hospital resulted in many heads-a-rolling. Yes kids, 'supporting the troops' is much more than waving flags and listening to country music.

Then Annthrax Annie Coulter's childish schoolyard antics at last Friday's Conservative Political Action Conference created such an outcry that even the most strident supporters of the 'Minister of Hate' have practically abandoned her. And advertisers on her website pulled out. It's rather telling that they supported her attack on the 9/11 widows and her call for death sentences against Muslims and liberals, but an immature schoolyard taunt looks to finally drive a stake through the heart of the beast.

A few days later, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., close aide to Vice President Cheney fell on his sword for the sake of the administration and was convicted of four felony counts related to the administration purposely blowing the cover of former CIA agent Valerie Plame. Tsk, tsk. Of course, this does not bode well for the rather shaky foundation on which the Bush Administration currently sits. Cries for impeachment are getting louder and louder, and even Bush's Iraq boondoggle could come to a quicker end, since the Democrats in Congress are close to setting a deadline for withdrawal. For once, the buck just may stop at Bush's desk, as Plame is set to testify before Congress, and more and more roads are increasingly leading to the White House. Sucks to be Dubya right now.

Former House Speaker and perrenial hypocritical Republican scumbag Newt Gingrich, who led the witch hunt against former President Bill Clinton in the '90s over his extramarital dalliances, admitted to Focus on the Family's James Dobson (who usually seems way too concerned about focusing on everyone else's families) what the whole world already suspected - he was having an affair of his own while bashing Clinton over his. In the understatement of the year, he confessed, "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards." Evidentially, Gingrich assumes that coming clean in this fashion would help bolster his already dead-in-the-water presidential bid. Well, hate to break it to you Newt, but you have no standards. You dumped your first wife on her deathbed, for cryin' out loud!

And the wingnuts' favorite whipping boy, Air America Radio, looks to have a new lease on life. Of course, this being a blog about liberal/progressive talk radio and alternative media, the focus of this entry was originally going to be about reaction to the changing of the guard at the network, particularly the reaction from Air America's harshest critics. I started this article a few days ago and let it sit and ferment with age. And a few other articles here in the past few days got tons of attention and took away some of my time, including one quickie entry about Air America's webstream problems and one I wrote about John Edwards' boycott of the FOX 'News'-sponsored Democratic debate this summer. Buzzflash took note of my FOX 'News' article and linked it prominently on their front page (they had done previously last month with an article I wrote about Thom Hartmann). Needless to say, this link placement generated roughly 1,500 more hits on this site. Thanks guys!

Since there are other blogs that cover Annthrax Annie's antics and the Libby Trial much better than I possible could, I'll stick to what I know. So, Air America has risen from the ashes, and of course the wingnut blogs are talking about it, though not as much as the bankruptcy filing a few months ago (they really hate good news). Still, the usual gang of idiots weighed in with their predictable responses.

Ravenous Air America cheerleader Brian Maloney, aka the Radio Equalizer Tranquilizer is enthusiastic about the change, raving about new company president Mark Green's "bold vision." He continued, "You’re going to incorporate blogs, audio streaming and video clips into your website? Nobody’s ever thought of that!"

He also seemed rather enthusiastic about Stephen L. Green's purchase, and what it meant for his brother, "Hey Bro, thanks for the gig!" Of course, this statement from Maloney is quite ironic, since he should be the last person to get snarky about anyone's employment status (Green already has a successful career, BTW). He also pondered how liberal 'investors' have no real idea how a radio network should be run. Kinda like getting fired from a part-time radio gig and setting up an attack blog directed at your former employer, right? Gee, how professional. Remember, always question the source.

Maloney also lamented the loss of their affiliate in Burlington, VT. Also ironic in that it is quite unlikely he could actually find Burlington on a map.

He concludes with a tease that there will be "an elephant in the room," a veiled threat promise of new piles o' steaming hot Radio Tranquilizer silliness, soon to be delivered to the gullible readers of his blog, who will no doubt swallow every single nonsensical word. I'll bet he really, really misses Al Franken.

So, what exactly is this 'elephant'? Well, the very next entry on his blog contained perhaps the most earth-shattering development to have come thus far in the whole Air America affair. Something that will rock the network off its shaky foundation. And a development that could go so far as to disrupt the earth's axis. Yes indeed, someone at Mother Jones dissed Air America. Yawn. Not like its a big deal anyway. They don't like Air America and that's fine. And the ancient hippies folks at Mother Jones spend more time sucking up to the likes of Maloney than their own side. I say piss off to them. In the age of the internet, they've become a leftist relic of the past. So, in essence, this whole thing boils down to "yeah, what he said." Sheesh! No wonder why the effeminate-voiced Maloney can't move beyond 'whiny fringe part-timer' in radio. That and the squeaky voice, of course.

Of course, while Maloney and his ilk love it when people on the left devour their own, he's rather mum about a recent notable act of cannibalism on his side of the fence. Even his own buddy Michelle Malkin figures into this rather prominently. So, back to Eva Braun Annthrax Annie Coulter. Ol' Horseface, while playing her usual game of 'how low can you go,' referred to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards as a "faggot," proving once and for all that her education level had not progressed beyond fourth grade. Well, none of her ilk really said anything about her until the proverbial shit hit the mainstream media fan. And when it did, she started losing many friends. Maloney's partner-in-grime Malkin was one of those to blast her boorish behavior, saying Coultler "sullied the hard work of hundreds of CPAC participants and exhibitors and tarred the collective reputation of thousands of CPAC attendees." Funny, the Tranquilizer has been very, very mum about this backlash, as he has with Walter Reed, Scooter Libby and anything else not FOX 'News'-approved. In fact, in keeping with his typical fashion, he's really said nothing that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense. An article that, as is often the case with Your Radio Tranquilizer, is really about nothing. Ironic, since this incident has virtually exploded throughout the mainstream media, and even spilled over onto his beloved talk radio. Yet, nary a peep from Screech. Instead, we hear about how some nobody at Mother Jones is skeptical about the future of Air America. Hmm...

Let's be honest here, Maloney's a parasite. He needs Air America more than Air America needs him. They're still in business and everyone currently there still has a job, while he's still trying to hold together a career of infrequent radio fill-ins, ridiculous attempts at self-promotion, flogging cheese baskets via Amazon and trashing former employers in the media while trying to make himself into a very low-tiered pseudo-celebrity. He's merely a whiny attention whore, endlessly wallowing in misery to help prop up his ridiculously low level of self-esteem. In short, the guy's a complete loser.

Speaking of losers, further down the nutosphere we find Lone Wacko over at BoreAmerica, who has been blogging on the fringes and eating Maloney's scraps for going on three years, hovering around Air America since day one like a ravenous vulture waiting for his feast to drop dead. In another example of pure irony, BoreAmerica got shut down for most of Tuesday afternoon, replaced with a message demanding payment to the site's host. Guess he forgot to toss more quarters in the coin slot next to the hard drive, huh? So, the guy who blasts Air America for not paying their bills can't pay his own. I just can't make this stuff up! Anyway, he must have cleared a little room on the Visa card and got back on, with the first hasty post accusing Air America's new owners of trying to profit from the Iraq war. Interestingly enough, I have yet to see any mention of Halliburton on that site, but should I really be surprised?

And with his Air America-attack blog looking to buy the proverbial farm, Lone Wackjob is directing his energies elsewhere, attacking Wikipedia for (get this)... bias. He's even been spamming the comments on Tranquilizer's blog to pimp this ridiculous endeavor. Guess he didn't get the memo that anyone can edit Wikipedia, including dumbasses like him. Duh! Well, let's just hope he can pay the hosting bill. If not, he could always go to Conservopedia, a new wiki that should be a bit more friendly to his ilk. Where else can you find out that dinosaurs and man coexisted? Remember, never let something as simple as facts get in the way of anything!

And of course, there's the gang over at liberal message board Free Republic. They're so optimistic about the changes at Air America that they chime in with their own business advice:

If this was a business under the same roof the only hope they would have would be arson to collect the insurance money, then go under.

He is going to end up with a small fortune on Air America, by starting out with a large fortune.

...and just what he go for his money and assumed liabilities?

I've got some good advice for him if he wants to turn a profit: Book conservative talk shows.

Ahhh... you can just feel the love!

If you prefer your commentary bordering on the absurd, mentally-challenged wanna-be toughguy and lower-tier blogger Leather Penguin Idiot gets in his own two cents, once again demonstrating his complete lack of knowledge of the radio industry:

Yes, Virginia, the firesale WAS about finding that moron Markie a job:

Skippy? You’re paying WWRL three mill per for a shit signal… and have outstanding debts that will keep you in court for years. You netlet don’t currently control morning drive on your alleged “flagship.”

You’re hosed.

In full disclosure, last fall, I threw a bone to this guy, adding a comment that politely corrected some very, very wrong information that could flat-out embarrass him (as if he needed any additional help in that regard). Needless to say, the Penguin lost it completely. The best he could muster was "blow me." I'd print the rest, but I'm trying to keep this thing somewhat short, and to keep this as kid-friendly as possible (hey, I'm tryin').

Funny thing is, around the time of the exchange, I checked his readership stats. For all that work, he was pulling in less than 50 readers a day. And it certainly hasn't changed much either. Lotta work for no readers, don'tcha think? How 'bout less South Park, more maturity?

Elsewhere, there are still some wingnuts that have fully convinced themselves that Air America is no longer in business. Take this guy, Steve Yuhas, who even titles his op-ed, "If only liberals still had Air America..." Ironic , since his station, KOGO in San Diego, is right down the freaking hall from KLSD, a station that carries... Air America Radio! One would think he'd realize this, even with his one-hour Sunday evening show. And this nut actually thinks they're out of business as well! Lesson to be learned: Being on the left means never having to make shit up.

And conservatives should grow thicker skins and stop acting like crybabies.

Conservatives find humor in terror scare

It all started with a gossip column in the New York Post:

POWDER PUFF SPOOKS KEITH

September 27, 2006 -- MSNBC loudmouth Keith Olbermann flipped out when he opened his home mail yesterday. The acerbic host of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" was terrified when he opened a suspicious-looking letter with a California postmark and a batch of white powder poured out. A note inside warned Olbermann, who's a frequent critic of President Bush's policies, that it was payback for some of his on-air shtick. The caustic commentator panicked and frantically called 911 at about 12:30 a.m., sources told The Post's Philip Messing. An NYPD HazMat unit rushed to Olbermann's pad on Central Park South, but preliminary tests indicated the substance was harmless soap powder. However, that wasn't enough to satisfy Olbermann, who insisted on a checkup. He asked to be taken to St. Luke's Hospital, where doctors looked him over and sent him home. Whether they gave him a lollipop on the way out isn't known. Olbermann had no comment.

Of course, Olbermann did not tell anyone about the scare. The police advised him not to, and he complied. He went in, got some Cipro as a preventative measure, and went on his way (and no, he did not get a sucker for his trouble). However, the Page Six author, Paula Froelich, obviously got the information somehow, and inadvertently messed up an investigation just to get a cheap laugh. And of course, help to encourage the lunatics who do this sort of thing.

And rightly so, there was outrage. Editor and Publisher thought it was extremely tasteless to make light of a major media figure being the target of a terror scare, or at the very least, a cruel prank. Especially since the anthrax scare that rocked several media outlets, including the National Enquirer, NBC News, AND the New York Post five years ago.

Of course, the Post is owned by News Corp, which in turn owns FOX News, a constant target of Olbermann’s barbs. Nonetheless, to poke fun at someone who received a legitimate scare is very bad journalism (if gossip columns are indeed ‘journalism’). To do this after the paper got it’s own scare years earlier is unconscionable. And to interfere with a pending federal investigation is appalling.

And yes, Olbermann did make mention of the incident later that evening on his show, “Countdown”, but only because he was backed into a corner:

The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, The New York Post, may have just impeded an FBI investigation into terroristic threats.

I know this because I was a recipient.

I still cannot confirm many of the specifics -- again in order to make the jobs of the FBI and the New York Police Department a little easier. But I find it necessary to respond to the genuinely shocking tone with which Murdoch's paper reported the event, and the string of factual errors they made either through negligence or a premeditated disregard for the truth.

“Powder Puff Spooks Keith," reads the headline. The article then gives the details of the event which we were asked not to divulge.

Olbermann was not going to make any mention of the scare, because the authorities asked him not to. But since the Post decided to publish it, he felt he had to set the record straight.

…a New York Post reporter attempted to gain access to me by falsely identifying herself as a friend of mine.

And, most relevantly, the New York Post never called NBC News or MSNBC seeking any comment. They would have been told that the FBI had requested we try to keep this quiet.
But of course that would have interfered with the New York Post making fun of a terror threat.
It's almost melodramatic to ask why the New York Post would choose the side of domestic terrorism, rather than choose the side of the FBI…

(snip)

…Murdoch's newspaper did not even make the single phone call that could've told it the potential damage it was doing.

One way of telling that a person has hit the big time is when that person gets his own attack blog. And Olbermann Watch, for lack of a more substantial blog, is it. But OW doesn’t think this scare is a laughing matter. Or do they?

And then there’s THIS asshole. Yep, Brian Baloney, the Radio Tranquilizer, the failed part-time talk show host who has created what loosely passes for his current blogging career by eliciting fake sympathy over the loss of his Sunday afternoon radio gig. Two years ago, he cried like a baby, claiming KIRO in Seattle canned him for badmouthing Dan Rather. In fact, he played this whole crybaby fest across the country! KIRO management, probably not used to fired weekend jocks throwing temper tantrums in the national media, replied that they were expanding Seattle Seahawks programming, and that the other Sunday shows were better than his. In other words, he was the weakest link.

Of course, instead of sucking it up and taking his dismissal like a man, Maloney became the first weekend jock drama queen, begging for sympathy from gullible freepers across America. And who better than to take out his vendetta on – Yep, you guessed it – THOSE DAMN LIBRULZ!!! So, anyone who has had more success in radio than him (well, that would be everyone, I guess) felt the Baloney Pony’s wrath. Even if he had to make shit up (the Gloria Wise thing was blown up to ridiculous proportions, and he missed many of the facts). You’d think that he was secretly in love with Al Franken considering how many times Baloney writes about him, or how many Photoshopped pics he has of him. Note to Maloney: You sucked in radio. That’s why you were on Sunday afternoons, when nobody was listening. Then you got fired because you couldn’t cut it. That’s life, get over it. I worked in radio. And I got fired once. Life sucks, get a helmet.

But I’m getting off track here. ‘YOUR Radio Has-Been’ took the NY Post route and decided to accuse Olbermann of being a drama queen. In his words, “...we'd never put it past Olbermann and his lefty friends to try and score partisan points over such a story.” Ironic, in that just the day before, he reported on another white powder scare, this time at the studio of his former employer, KSCO, a conservative talk radio station in Santa Cruz. The owners of KSCO, rabid conservatives Michael Zwerling and his mother Kay, also own KOMY, which airs a couple programs from Air America Radio. By coincidence, I had pondered writing an entry about this station the other day, but shelved it out of respect for what happened. The article is totally unrelated to the powder scare, but it’s still an interesting story, and I’ll eventually put it up, but not now. Nonetheless, ‘YOUR Radio Dramatizer’ certainly didn’t accuse the Zwerlings of playing the victim for brownie points, did he?


Technorati fun: Keith Olbermann MSNBC New York Post anthrax terrorism Brian Maloney Radio Equalizer KSCO