"A Sad Farewell to My Friend, Deborah Yesner" (my pass-along)

"Exhausted, frustrated, underpaid, she’d come home and -- how she found the energy I don’t know other than to say that it was a testament to how much she believed in what she was doing -- she’d monitor Bill O’Reilly; The Factor. (Can you imagine doing that after a hard day’s work?) . . . (ChrisBG, another member of our group, figured it out at one point: we were bringing in roughly 6¢ an hour for the hours we worked.)"

-- from "A Sad Farewell to My Friend, Deborah Yesner"

This post -- written by someone I don't know, about someone whose name I didn't even know while she was alive -- reached me through the common online pass-along route we're all familiar with. I'm not sure why it hit me so hard, but I think I know why I want to pass it along to you. It's a reminder of how many people are doing their share, or maybe more than their share, to do something about all the crappiness we see in the world around us. Goodness knows, they don't do it for recognition or praise. Somehow the loss of someone like Melanie's friend Deb demands some kind of acknowledgment, even celebration, even if it has to come posthumously. I wish I had something consoling to say to her family, except that their wife and mother isn't forgotten, least of all by them. -- Ken

A Sad Farewell to My Friend, Deborah Yesner

December 24, 2009

In January of 2004 I sent an email to Robert Greenwald, then an independent film producer, now the head of Brave New Films. That email changed my life; it resulted in me becoming one of eight researchers on Robert’s film, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.

From there, we eight -- outraged at what we learned during the making of Outfoxed -- established the blog News Hounds in June of that year.

Among us we watched thousands of hours of Fox “News.” During the summer and fall of 2004 we watched in horror as Fox led the charge in the SwiftBoating of John Kerry and Kerry’s refusal (or inability, or whatever it was) to fight back. After the election, we were exhausted.

It was hard to get back on the horse but we all essentially committed to keep going; to keep exposing Fox for what it was — anything but “fair and balanced.” We hoped Democrats -- particularly Democrats who had a say in things -- were noticing what an amazing and well-oiled propaganda machine Fox was. Still don’t know if they were or are.

Deborah Yesner was one of us; one of the original eight. She taught special needs kids in her real life. She worked all day -- five days a week -- at that thankless job. Exhausted, frustrated, underpaid, she’d come home and -- how she found the energy I don’t know other than to say that it was a testament to how much she believed in what she was doing -- she’d monitor Bill O’Reilly; The Factor. (Can you imagine doing that after a hard day’s work?) She’d spend an hour watching the show and then an hour or three posting about it -- for four years -- for no pay mind you, other than the pittance in donations we’d split among us every quarter. (ChrisBG, another member of our group, figured it out at one point: we were bringing in roughly 6¢ an hour for the hours we worked.)

Then, in October of 2008, after suffering from very bad headaches for several days, Deborah -- Deb as we called her -- suffered a ruptured aneurysm in her brain. For the past year+ her husband and daughter have cared for her as she suffered infection after infection; was moved in and out of the hospital, back home and then to a nursing home and back to the hospital. On and on. The hospital took care of her physical needs, but the nursing home that her husband’s insurance would pay for was unequipped to care for her medical needs as well as provide the physical therapy required to give her a fighting chance to recover to the fullest extent. A facility like that was a step or ten above what his insurance would pay for and he couldn’t afford the out-of-pocket expense. (One can only imagine -- $10,000 per week?)

On Tuesday I learned that Deb had contracted a very serious infection. The doctors said there was nothing more they could do. Her husband and daughter decided to put her on a morphine drip and make her as comfortable as possible. Today her devastated and heartbroken family had the strength to inform us that Deb died later that day.

Deborah Yesner was a fierce believer in freedom of the press and in the freedom of speech. But she did not think it was right that a “news” network that claimed it was “fair and balanced,” but in reality was the primary propaganda outlet for the Republican party, should be allowed to use that slogan.

Deb was a jewel. She loved her husband and daughter with all her heart and soul. She was a wonderful person and a cherished friend. Her death is an indescribable loss to me and to the world.

Good-bye Deb. Love you (but I can’t believe I’m writing these words).

Melanie

Thanks to Melanie -- and to the other friends who passed this piece along till it reached me -- for sharing this remembrance on her Say It Ain't So Already blog. (Check the original of this post for links.)

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The Fox Noisemakers couldn't get away with their propagandistic BS if their viewers weren't begging to be beaten into submission like rabid dogs

Next thing Plato knew, rumors were running wild about, and commentators demanding a full investigation of, his relationship with that radical troublemaker (and suspected prevert) Socrates.

"While FOX made sure that viewers knew Obama's report was not prepared by “independent investigators,” the “We report. You decide” network did not think it worth mentioning that its own scrutiny was not being provided by an independent analyst.

"Rove announced that he saw no problems in the report. But then he launched into a series of 'take-aways' that suggested there was something sinister being covered up."

-- from News Hounds' report on "Fox News contribuor" Karl Rove's contributions to a discussion of the Obama report on involvement with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich

by Ken

As promised, we have a report from Ellen at News Hounds (their motto: "We watch FOX so you don't have to") on some jolly hi-jinks at Fox Noise. It's probably par for the course for the propagndists and mental midgets who keep the fires burning at Uncle Rupert's Lie Factory, but it's an eye-popper all the same. I have some thoughts, but let's look at the report first:

FOX News Teams Up With Karl Rove To Baselessly Suggest An Obama Report Cover Up In Blagojevich Scandal

The release of the Obama team's report wasn't just not good enough for FOX News but they trotted out Karl Rove, without disclosing either his Republican partisan activities or his own questionable role in Republican scandals, to raise unfounded suspicions that sinister facts had been concealed. Rove never found any actual evidence that any damning evidence existed but that didn't stop him from wildly speculating that something (he never offered up what, exactly) was amiss. With video.

In a 12/23/08 discussion on Hannity and Colmes, the suspicion-mongering began in the scripted introduction which baselessly suggested that Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, may have been connected to the bribery: “It's also worth noting that from the report it appears that Emanuel did have several conversations with the governor's chief of staff about the open seat and even suggested names... (such as) Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. You will remember that it has been suggested that Jackson was one of the candidates whose supporters may have tried to bribe the governor. Jackson has denied that but his own attorney admits that the Congressman was indeed the so-called Candidate Number 5 named by the federal prosecutor.”

Nothing further was presented to indicate Emanuel had any improper ties to Jackson nor even that Jackson had committed any wrongdoing.

The introduction also stated, “It's important to remember that this report was not prepared by independent investigators but by the Obama transition team, themselves.”

The only guest for the discussion was Republican operative Karl Rove, disingenuously presented as a “FOX News contributor” who would provide “analysis.” So while FOX made sure that viewers knew Obama's report was not prepared by “independent investigators,” the “We report. You decide” network did not think it worth mentioning that its own scrutiny was not being provided by an independent analyst.

But FOX News was not just being disingenuous but cynically partisan in the extreme by putting forth Rove as a champion of ethics and transparency in government. It was a choice that can only be described as - well, Rovian.

Rove announced that he saw no problems in the report. But then he launched into a series of “take-aways” that suggested there was something sinister being covered up.

“First of all, Barack Obama was more involved in this process than he let on two weeks ago in his news conference,” Rove said. “On the 9th of November, he has a meeting with people in which they agree upon a list and he directs Rahm Emanuel to give that list to Blagojevich. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing unethical. But I wish that he'd sort of laid that out to the American people at his first news conference.”

Rove implies that Obama said otherwise. But, in his press conference, Obama stated, “In terms of our involvement, I'll repeat what I said earlier, which is I had no contact with the governor's office. I did not speak to the governor about these issues. That I know for certain. What I want to do is to gather all the facts about any staff contacts that I might -- may have -- that may have taken place between the transition office and the governor's office. And we'll have those in the next few days, and we'll present them. But what I'm absolutely certain about is that our office had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat. That I'm absolutely certain of.” This is consistent with what Obama said in his briefer previous statements.

There is nothing in Obama's statement that contradicts the later report and there's nothing in the report to suggest that Obama's statement was in any way misleading. Instead, it was Rove doing the misleading.

This is disconcertingly similar to the attack methods used against the Clintons during Whitewater, as Media Matters' Jamison Foster noted in an excellent post discussing the similarities in the ways the media inflated the two scandals.

Rove's second and “most interesting” “take away” was that Emanuel suggested Obama-friend Valerie Jarrett for the Senate seat before talking to Obama. “Why is Rahm Emanuel recommending Valerie Jarrett (before Obama had officially approved the recommendation)? Is he advocating her? Did he check with Obama? Was he trying a get a erstwhile competitor within the White House on a separate track to become a United States Senator?”

Other than Rove's ominous inference that something may have been amiss, there is nothing in that bit of transition team trivia that even remotely smacks of anything improper or even significant. OK, so Emanuel spoke out of turn. So what? It's not like he did any harm like – oh, I don't know – outing a CIA agent as a result.

Rove's “third interesting thing” was, “Where did Rod Blagojevich get the idea that he was only gonna get appreciation only if no one had a discussion about some quid pro quo?”

Once again, who cares? Maybe it was because, as had been previously leaked, someone from the governor's office asked Rahm, “All we get is appreciation, right?” in return for naming Jarrett to the Senate. Rahm is reported to have answered, “Right.” Or maybe it was because the governor knew, from the obviously ethical behavior of all his Obama contacts, that there would be none?

It was another non-issue that Rove tried to conflate into “quid pro quo.” And yet even Rove acknowledged that the evidence shows there was no quid pro quo. He could not even find any evidence to suggest that anyone on Team Obama discussed a quid pro quo, much less became involved in any way. All he could do is raise a passle of unsupported suspicions.

Alan Colmes commented, “All that interesting analysis, Karl, but obviously, the real issue here is whether or not there was a quid pro quo - whether or not one was offered. Certainly, we know that one was not accepted.”

“We know that right from the beginning,” Rove agreed. But then he continued his spurious, suspicion-enhancing speculation, this time suggesting that Obama might be involved in the scandal in some other, unknown way. “Where did Blagojevich get the idea that he was gonna get nothing from except appreciation if there was no discussion of a quid pro quo? There's other characters who have entered into this... and there might be others that are not involved directly in the Obama operation but nonetheless seem to be taken by (unintelligible).”

Rove added that the Obama report “goes out of its way to say... explicitly there was no discussion of a quid pro quo or any personal benefit for the governor but if the governor's over on one side and having all kinds of conversations with his own people about what he wants out of this and what we get out of the report is that nobody had a discussion about a benefit and yet Blagojevich is saying, 'Hey, they're gonna give me nothing but appreciation, where did he develop that sense?”

And other than casting suspicion on Obama, this would be significant - why? Rove never said.

Now, it should go without saying that this crude exercise in smear-style propaganda is journalistically appalling, and about as far from either "fair" or "balanced" as it's possible to get. It's just an old-fashioned hatchet job. Which might not be so bad if it weren't being fobbed off as, you know, fair and balanced.

Still, easy as it is to jump on the Fox heavies, they're just giving their viewers what their trained instincts tell them those viewers want. Of course folks like Karl Rove and Fox News puppetmaster Roger Ailes, having been in the forefront of the modern American right-wing propaganda putsch, have had a lot to do with training Americans to want to hear this alternate version of reality, but even that groundwork was laid based on insights into the kinds of story lines, and the kinds of heroes and villains, their target Americans crave.

I think commentators have tended to underestimate the continuing success of this kind of mind manipulation. I have no studies or statistics to back me up, but I'm going to pick a number out of a hat and venture that the nonstop campaign of slime, innuendo, and free-floating hate against the Democratic candidate was responsible for a swing of 5 percent in the final voting. I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that 47 percent of the electorate could have agreed with the views of Young Johnny McCranky, if only for the obviousl reason that it would have been impossible to ascertain the views of Young Johnny McCranky.

I wish I understood better why so many people choose to believe in the mostly nonexistent reality that they do. Maybe Rove and Ailes could explain it, or then again maybe they couldn't -- they just understand it and know how to exploit it.

I guess what I'm saying is that all those awful people who toil for the cause of untruth on Fox Noise aren't so much the problem as a symptom. A dreadful, gut-wrenching symptom. And if people truly don't want to be less stupid than they are, I have no idea how to treat the symptom.

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