November 19, 2007

Sexual Hypocrisy Complaint: “Fox News Porn”

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Robert Greenwald, the man behind the film “Outfoxed,” has produced a montage of some of the sexually explicit footage that Fox News has shown while promoting a “family values” agenda:

If you didn’t know that Fox News uses sex to get you to keep watching, you haven’t been paying attention. I’m reminded of a great Slate slide show by Jack Shafer about “TV’s Aryan Sisterhood.” The last slide is a discussion of “what people inside the industry call ‘Fox lips.'”:

They are worn by Fox’s Laurie Dhue, Fox’s Gretchen Carlson, and MSNBC’s Rita Cosby, three top blondes. Achieved in the makeup room in a procedure that sounds one step this side of cosmetic surgery, I’m told that powder, pencil, and paint can turn even the weakest mouth into a juicy vagina dentata.

Now that’s family values.

Via Larry Lessig.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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