The Bigots And Heath Ledger

By Cernig

Rupert Murdoch's News International gets a little schizo whenever it plays to different sensibilities on both sides of the Atlantic. It's very different stances on the war in Iraq (US- good, UK - bad) show this to good effect. But so does its playing to its customer base when it comes to gay issues.

Exhibit A, John Gibson of FOX radio and cable TV in the US:

comments made by Fox host John Gibson on his radio show, soon after the death of actor Heath Ledger, that appeared to hint that the actor was gay.

Gibson used the occasion of the 28-year-old actor's death to crack jokes about the actor and play clips from his most notable film, Brokeback Mountain. The remarks from the radio host seemed to make insinuations about the actor's sexuality.

"Maybe he was a weirdo, I'm thinking about it right now," Gibson said on his show.

Gibson also played a memorable line from Ledger's most notable film, Brokeback Mountain, and said, "Well, he found out how to quit you.

"Heath Ledger died, and I'm sure people will be upset," Gibson continued. "All you "Brokeback Mountain" fans who want to give Christine a call, she'll be happy to talk to you."

Exhibit B, Sky News, the UK's version of FOX, reporting on plans by Westboro Baptist Church to show up at memporial services for Ledger in the US:

A controversial church described as a "hate group" has said it will protest at Heath Ledger's memorial service because he played a gay character in Brokeback Mountain.

The Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church - which has previously said they wished a million people had been killed in the London terror attacks in 2005 - issued a statement saying the Australian actor was "now in hell".

"WBC will picket this pervert's funeral, in religious protest," the group said.

"God hates the sordid, tacky bucket of slime seasoned with vomit known as Brokeback Mountain and He hates all persons having anything whatsoever to do with it.

"Heath Ledger is now in Hell, and has begun serving his eternal sentence there."

...The Westboro Baptist Church has been classified as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors extremist activity.

It is the same church which Sky News investigated in 2005.

They revealed to Sky's US correspondent Robert Nisbet their views on the London July,7, 2005 attacks.

Clearly, they know their demographic - and in the US at least it's a very prejudiced one. But one wonders whether the homophobes on the Right will manage to condemn Phelps' nutters as they should or whether in this case they will look the other way, tacitly agreeing with a man who has said similiar things about killed US servicemen.

Fox is struggling with this

by shamanic

It's a really tough evening for Fox News. They're genuinely struggling with the news that their ultimate bugaboo, Hillary Clinton, not only lost but placed third. They keep trying to explain that Edwards and Clinton are in a "virtual tie for delegate equivalence", but their crawl misspells equivalence as "equivalents".

In other words, they've developed a euphemism to keep Hillary in second place but it's so convoluted they can't even spell it right.

Michael Steele is now explaining to Republicans that Hillary will be fine. They really need for her to be fine, because Obama will crush them like bugs.

Ooh! Fox News makes a funny!

by shamanic

First of all, who knew that one in three Canadians maintain a secondary refrigerator as a "beer fridge"? I thought one of the joys of living in Canada was that for much of the year, you could just put the beer on the porch to keep it cold.

Well, apparently waiting for Montreal winters doesn't work for many Canadians, who have retained older model fridges in their garages at an energy cost of some 3500 million kWh each year. Researchers suggest incentives and buy-back programs to remove the inefficient models.

Fox News, perhaps predictably, approached this story with tongue planted firmly in cheek. I found it through Memorandum, and actually ended up looking through the Fox main page to see if this was categorized in some kind of 'humor' or 'oddity' section. Why? Because of the general tone of the piece, sure, but mostly because of this:

The problem is that the beer fridges are mostly decades-old machines that began their second careers as beverage dispensers when Canadians upgraded to more energy-efficient models to store whatever Canadians eat besides doughnuts and poutine.

Fox also name checks Labatt's and Molson in the lede. Okay, good jokes, and whoever wrote them surely felt pretty nifty when they survived editorial, but the article is in the SciTech category over at Fox.

Poorly done, but a terrific display of the kind of dismissive humor used to close off discussion of actual issues.