Conspiracy Theories

Until very recently, those of us who follow the routine instances of journalistic malfeasance committed at the Associated Press only thought that its writers are so enamored of the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency that they simply accept her campaign's spin as the gospel truth and willingly dress it up as "objective news." That's obviously bad enough. But Monday night, that all changed for…

In Wednesday’s installment of the Lyons family saga, Lucious (Terrence Howard) explains why he lied about his mother's death. And he blamed former President Ronald Reagan along the way for the fact that his mother was out of a mental health facility.

Hey, remember that fat, oafish, obnoxious filmmaker Michael Moore who makes liberal fantasy propaganda pieces but labels them documentaries? You might not; he hasn’t had a noteworthy film in over a decade. But ABC’s Scandal is trying to relive his glory days by bringing back one of the many, many, many debunked conspiracy theories in his infamous 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11. In this case, it’s the…

Those who have noticed that the Associated Press, even to this day, tends to be sympathetic towards leftist causes, leftist protesters, leftist and totalitarian governments, and even terrorists in its coverage of domestic and world events won't be surprised by what follows. Others who still believe that the AP has always at least tried to be a paragon of objectivity will be stunned. The UK…

The latest episode of Scandal, “Wild Card,” was full of its typical bed-hopping among the political elite. Nothing new there. What was interesting, though, was how they used the liberal view of right-wing stereotypes to make Republicans look bad.

Stop me if you’ve heard this storyline before: a pious Catholic turns out to be an evil hypocrite. Yes, this tired trope was seen once again on TV last night, this time in The X-Files episode “Founder’s Mutation.” Sadly this is the second time in a row The X-Files has used conspiracy theories to impugn the right and it's getting old.

While interviewing Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz for the Wednesday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight, Republican campaign correspondent Tom Llamas demanded Cruz explain how he could “be a president and hate the Democrats and hate the culture of Washington so much and be effective.”

According to David Roberts, activist conservatives are “bending the political system to their will” not by scoring policy victories but by taking their cues from “fever dreams” (i.e., conspiracy theories). In a Thursday article, Roberts suggested two reasons why conservatives generally are more inclined than liberals to buy into CTs. One is that for conservatives, not trusting “the political…

I suppose it is both fitting and proper that on a night when liberal candidates reinforce the fact that they never, ever move on from anything that Fox’s Scream Queens would resurrect one of the most tired and lame liberal talking points of the early 2000s. In an episode titled “Pumpkin Patch,” Hester Ulrich (Lea Michele) explains to her nerdy friend how she plans to control and manipulate the “…

On the latest episode of Blindspot, the protagonists find out that every major disease outbreak of the past half-decade has been the result of an intentional security breakdown at the CDC. Ebola, SARS, MRSA, Typhoid fever: they were all delivered directly from a secret CDC lab to infect innocent populations around the world. For once, however, the culprit isn’t some heinous government plot.…

New York Times reporter Jada Smith celebrated "Justice or Else," an ominously named protest marking the 20th anniversary of the "Million Man March," led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the preacher notorious for his anti-Semitic and paranoid ravings: "Echoing Calls for Justice Of Million Man March, But Widening Audience." This year's version latched on to the harder-edged tone of the…

With college football games airing Saturday on ABC, CBS, and NBC, none of the three aired their evening newscasts for viewers in the eastern or central time zones, but the CBS Evening News was shown in the western U.S. and featured another segment hinting at a link between the Planned Parenthood baby parts video scandal and a string of recent fires at their facilities. 

When it comes to fake news stories, if anyone's an expert it's Dan Rather . . . The disgraced former CBS News anchor has a new twist on the vast right-wing conspiracy. Instead of plotting against poor innocents like Bill and Hillary, those conspiratorial conservatives are now creating phony feuds among themselves!  On Rachel Maddow's show tonight, Rather declared himself "suspicious" about the…

Eagerly clawing around for a wedge issue with which to split the Republican Party, the New York Times used the controversy over mandatory vaccinations to smear the GOP as opposed to "modern science" and "established science" in "Measles Proves Delicate Issue to G.O.P. Field," a front-page story Tuesday.