Pretty much like this.

By Alex Wukman

Two Weeks Ago:

“Where’d you get your information,” snarls the tanned, blonde late-20s guy with the popped collar polo shirt, cargo shorts and flip flops. We’re at Liberty Station drinking and talking politics, well I’m drinking and he was talking politics to his friends until I interrupted by telling him “Hitler wasn’t a Marxist, Leninist or a Socialist. He was a right wing fascist.” I tell him I got it from a history and government class I took in college.

“Pshaw,” let’s call him Broseph says. “University. More like liberal indoctrination factory.” He swivels in his bar stool to get a better look at me; all I can think is how I really want a cigarette right now, if only so I have something to do with my hands and a reason not to look at his maniacally grinning eyes. “Let me guess they read it to you from a book, written by other liberals?’

“I really don’t know if the author was a liberal and I think it’s unfair to assume…” I try to say before he cuts me off dismissively with a wave of his hand. “Dude, everyone knows most textbooks were written by liberals. Come talk to me when you get some real and unbiased information, bro.” I try to ask him where I might find some real and unbiased information but he has already turned back to his friends who are also tanned and blonde. I sit there nursing my beer while Broseph and his friends laugh and order another round of mantinis.

Real and unbiased information?

Today:

I decide to spend the next two weeks locked in a room with nothing but “real and unbiased” information, only coming out to get drunk and do podcasts. Since facts and reality both have a well-known liberal bias I decided to be objective and get my information only from Snapple caps and Conservapedia; places where facts and reality don’t matter. Then I  learned that Snapple is an iced tea brewed by hippies and distributed by a massive, faceless corporation. Simply too liberal for me. So I decided to look at World News Daily. I’ll attempt to recreate the things I learned by going into the No Fact Zone. The first thing I learned is that Conservatives appear to have a different view of popular media and seem obsessed with finding things to reinforce their own world view, so much that some of the most popular articles on Conservapedia are “The best or greatest conservative___”

Music

I don’t know If I’m deviating from my experiment to get “real and unbiased information” by using logic; but I am going to attempt to do so here.  If something is liked by liberals, or is interpreted as pushing a liberal point of view, then the creator must be liberal. Therefore: if something is liked by conservatives, or pushes a conservative point of view, then ip so facto (wait, is Latin liberal?) the creator must be conservative.  So, after making sure my anti-virus software was up-to-date and getting behind a few proxies, I cruised over to Conservapedia where I found their essay: Greatest Conservative Songs. Since I could only think of a few conservative songs, America the Beautiful and “Let the Eagle Soar” by John Ashcroft, I decided to check the list. And wow, just wow. Either way more musicians are conservative than I realized or Conservapedia has some pretty liberal criteria for what a constitutes a “conservative song.”

Apparently Tracy Chapman’s, a singer I always thought was a progressive lesbian, hit single “Fast Car” is about “Self-help, free market, division of labor, and a criticism of alcohol” and the White Stripes’ anthemic chart topper “Seven Nation Army” is about “the growing power of conservatism.” However, nothing is more surprising than reading that Pink Floyd’s song “wish you were here,” which I always thought was about Syd Barrett, is actually “a song about wishing that a conservative president would return back to office.” Even though the single was released by a British band in 1975, during the administration of Gerald Ford (a Republican), lyrics like “So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell/blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil?” certainly make me long for Calvin Coolidge’s steadying economic hand. Conservapedia lists Coolidge as the last conservative president before the election of Ronald Reagan.

I found it odd that  revolutionary socialist, anti-Vietnam war protest singer Phil Ochs’ satirical attack on middle class lefty liberalism “Love me, I’m a liberal” is considered a conservative song. However nothing is more confusing than Guns N’ Roses’ bass blaster “Anything Goes” from the seminal album Appetite for Destruction being considered “a blatant message about the dangers of premarital sex.” With lyrics like “Panties ’round your knees/With your ass in debris/Doin’ dat grind with a push and squeeze/Tied up, tied down, up against the wall” it’s clear that Axle was advocating abstinence only sex education.

Movies

Some of the films listed here aren’t really that surprising, Red Dawn and The Ten Commandments, but I had no idea that “Space Jam” was an allegorical tale about using the values from a simpler time in America to defeat an external threat. I though that the aliens were just an excuse to get Michael Jordan and Bill Murray playing basketball with Bugs Bunny. For some reason the 1973 film “Day of the Jackal”, which depicts an attempt to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle by terrorists, is considered an acceptable conservative film. I never would have guessed: what with all the adultery, murder and homosexual content. However, it seems that “Day of the Jackal” also “celebrates conservative values like honor and duty.” Who knew? Also who knew that the Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s meditation on the ‘Global War on Terror’ disguised as a summer super hero movie, was a “Christian allegory with message of not giving in to terrorists” ?

TV Shows

Unlike the other media categories on Conservapedia, there seems to be far fewer great conservative TV shows. Surprisingly, TV shows from the 1950s and early 1960s, the era when black people lived in a different universe than middle class white people, are no where to be found. Instead of the idyllic community of Mayberry, the home spun wisdom of Ward Cleaver or even the easy going charm of Father Knows Best or My Three Sons Conservapedia contributors look to the 1960s and 1970s, with one exception Dragnet which started as a radio show in the late 1940s. It seems that there was no good conservative programming on television prior to the start of the culture wars of the late 1960s. Some of the shows, like the Waltons and 24, are not surprisingly included. However, it’s strange to see The Prisoner, a late 1960s psychedelic spy series most known for featuring a giant balloon as a character, on the list. Apparently the village that Patrick McGoohan is sent to is supposed to represent “the collective.”

And for some reason King of the Hill is considered a debatable conservative show. It apparently “shows the struggle of a hardworking, traditional American family against “alternative” modern cultural movements.” A struggle perfectly epitomized by this clip:

Shopping

If World News Daily is to be believed conservatives are very interested in deals. Every day WND posts another “Deal of the Day” or a “Special Offer” on its front page; they seem to generally want to help their readers save money on everything from spices that claim to cut blood sugar, to gold and ‘real silver’ for $3, they’re even giving a special offer on the second coming. In fact the first link on their directory is to the WND superstore where I can buy books on the satanic influences in Karl Marx’s poetry, how the holocaust was carried out by homosexuals and how all the gains American women have made over the last 40 years have been because of men.

Sex

Unlike Chris Hansen, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about pedophilia. I don’t really wake up every morning thinking about adults having sex with children. I don’t really lose sleep over whether or not pedophiles are being mainstreamed into our society. Maybe that’s my fault, for wearing my liberal blinders and not thinking about the children like WND readers do. And they really seem to think about adults and children having sex alot. In one day three articles and a deal of the day about pedophilia were uploaded.Whether it was a book alleging that famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey based his research on “trained pedophiles” or articles explaining how psychologists want to destigmatize pedophilia; WND was overflowing with musings and reports from the child love war.

Today:

Now that the experiment is over I’m having a hard time determining if it was successful. I don’t know I was able to get real and unbiased information; but I did get a new appreciation for Anything Goes.

By Alex Wukman

On the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, a few hours after a downgrade of the US credit rating, a train filled with pastors and protestors went one stop past a station decorated with images of dragon curves and embryogenesis to a prayer rally organized by a governor who appoints creationists to head the State Board of Education. Upon arriving at the monolithic football stadium, the passengers were greeted with a plane towing a banner, paid for by the Freedom From Religion Foundation,  asking The Governor to keep church and state separate. As one passenger, a Middle-aged Man from Kingwood who said he occasionally attends the most mega of Mega Churches, left the station and walked toward the stadium he commented that the governor wasn’t there as The Governor but “as a private citizen.” He conveniently ignored how The Governor used “his office’s prestige, letterhead, Web site and other resources to promote” the event. Another passenger, an attractive woman in her late 30s or early 40s wearing a yellow shirt emblazoned with the City’s seal on the front and the word Chaplain on the back, prostelytized about the “Gospel of Grace,” the idea that everyone who believes in Jesus goes to heaven, to those trekking in the triple digit temperatures.

When asked about the Prosperity Gospel, the idea that Jesus wants his followers to be rich, the Chaplain laughed.

“Nowhere in the Bible does it say to take a vow of poverty,” said the Chaplain. She went on to say how she counseled someone who had taken a vow of poverty. “I told him that was stupid. I said ‘Jesus wants us to help people and the poor can’t help anyone and the middle class can’t help a lot of people.”

“Jesus was probably rich. He had all those disciples.”said the Middle-aged Man.

“The one who betrayed him, what was his name?” asked the Chaplain

“Judas,” said the Middle-aged Man.

“Yea, Judas. He was their treasurer,” said the Chaplain. “The vow of poverty isn’t Biblical it’s religious.”

“It was created by the Catholics,” said the Middle-aged Man.

Neither the Chaplain or the Middle-aged Man seemed to be familiar with the Book of Matthew, where Jesus discusses being homeless, describes wealth as “thorns that choke the word of God,” tells a rich young man to sell all of his possessions and follow the Lord, and famously says “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the gates of heaven.” But the Chaplain and the Middle-aged Man weren’t the only ones who seemed not to have read parts of the book.

Across from the stadium a man holding a sign commanding everyone to “Trust Jesus” condemns a man wearing a sandwich board proclaiming Jesus a fictional character to burn in eternal hellfire while inside a man who called a TV show host the anti-christ takes up the gauntlet of Corporate Repentance, one of the four main prayer segments of the rally, and begs God to “judge the economy, judge the marketplace [and] judge the media.” A male TV reporter applies his make-up while hundreds of fasting rally goers queue up in front of the concession stand. The soft-rock praise band comes in creating a spoken word/jazz fusion. Ministers and singers come in and out like rappers dropping guest verses; the audio is modulated and manipulated by the stadium’s cavernous interior. Only bits and pieces can be deciphered. The phrase “if the church has fallen it’s the pulpit’s fault,” bounces off a column. Moments later a young woman prays that Jesus “help us end abortion and create a culture of life in this country.” The band follows her up with a Jacuzzi jazz joint about abortion.

Outside two men patched with Hardcore Bikers for Christ colors stand on the third story ramp smoking cigarettes and smirking at the 45 or 50 protestors. “We’ve got more people taking a break than they do in their entire mission,” says one before flicking his cigarette. His reverie is interrupted by punctuated shouts coming up from the protests. “I’m Joshua and I’m an addict,” says the curly haired guy in his mid 20s with the microphone.  He goes on to say”We’re better than the people inside because we let the Christians speak even if they’re wrong.” Joshua then begins an extemporaneous harangue of all those inside the stadium.

As Joshua is in the middle of accusing a 67-year-old grandmother who drove down from Killeen with her 10 and 12-year-old granddaughters of destroying the planet by fracking for natural gas, increasing offshore oil drilling, executing innocent people and supporting hate by stopping the spread of GLBT rights; the Hardcore Bikers for Christ saunter off down the ramp. A boyish looking blonde haired kid prancing around the protest in a Santa costume attracts the attention of a mid-40s buxom blonde woman standing on the ramp. She blows him a kiss, he rubs his nipples. She turns away blushing. Joshua thinks this is the greatest thing ever. “I love you all. Jesus loves you. I love Santa rubbing his nipples,” he says.

Joshua passes off the microphone to a mousy looking woman in her early to mid 20s who describes how her parents, both retired veterans, have to work at Wal-Mart because they lost their pensions. She tries to describe the difficulty she faces trying to get financial aid to go to college, but her story of hardship and the disappearing middle class dream is drowned out by the throaty rumble of a heavily modified Harley Davidson as the Hardocre Bikers for Christ roll up to the intersection. They rev their engines, waiting for the light to change; the protestors stand dumbfounded, those on the ramp snicker, while inside a man who leads a group that thinks gay people “want to recognize pedophiles as the prophets of a new sexual order” says that we must turn everything over to God because “there is no human remedy to the problems we face as a nation.”

KTRH's new news team

By Alex Wukman

I’ll admit it, I’m a news junkie. I’m so much of a news junkie that I watch the BBC while reading the AP on my phone. My love of news has put me at odds with people in the past, I was one of the few people who supported UH buying KTRU because I’m selfish and wanted more NPR. And I especially love news radio, both the format and the brilliant sitcom. Listening to KTRH’s headline recap while riding around with my father during hot Houston summers is one of the few good memories I have of him from my childhood. So it saddened me to read today that a station I grew up listening to and relying on, a station that once promised “give us 30 minutes and we’ll give you the world,” has completed it’s transformation into a right wing mouthpiece. This morning Clear Channel announced that J.P. Pritchard and Lana Hughes, who have anchored KTRH’s drive time newscast for 27 years, have been terminated.

Pritchard and Hughes who kept readers informed of local and national matters in an even handed non sensational manner during the hellish morning commutes will be replaced by former Ohio talk jock and Tea Party darling Matt Patrick. Patrick, who has been in radio since 1979, came to national attention last fall after he claimed that Michigan State head football Mark Dantonio suffered a divinity induced heart attack after using a fake field goal to beat Notre Dame in overtime last fall. Patrick is not shy about his conservative leanings, even stating in his resume that it’s his job to “engage, entertain and discuss local and national events from a conservative viewpoint.”

To their credit Hughes and Pritchard recognize that their termination is not personal and that they are just the latest casualty as old media tries to adapt. Sadly, the case can’t be said for KTRH’s AM operations manager Bryan Erickson who told Fox 26, KRIV, that his station has “serve our listeners by being informative and entertaining.” And to accomplish the task of creating drive time infotainment KTRH’s parent company Clear Channel has decided to embrace the always insightful and informative model of Fox Friends.

According Michael Harrison publisher of Talkers magazine, who was quoted in the Chronicle, this new Steve Doocey-esque morning show will be “a more philosophical, conservative approach to morning conversation.” There are a lot of words I’d use to describe Fox and Friends but “philsophical” isn’t one of them. While it is true that Gretchen Carlson did graduate Stanford with honors, attend Oxford and could be considered a violin virtuoso she sure seems to enjoy playing the role of someone who is recovering from a frontal lobotomy.

This would be too easy to make fun of

The one saving grace out of this asinine decision to take a once good news organization and turn it into a wall-to-wall bastion of right wing talk that’s only interrupted by Astros games is that, for once, we can’t blame Michael Berry for fucking up Houston radio news. Although I’m sure we could if we try hard enough.

One of the doctored photos King Street Patriots released last year to show voter fraud. It would have been more believable in they'd shopped the sign in helvetica.

By Alex Wukman

Unless you are a regular reader of right wing sites Pajamas Media and Big Government you wouldn’t have known that t Houston based ‘election integrity’ group True the Vote held its first annual summit Saturday, March 25, and Sunday, March 26.  For anyone not familiar with True the Vote; they, and their parent organization King Street Patriots, gained attention after allegations of voter intimidation and misinformation surfaced last fall. The allegations led to a voter intimidation lawsuit being filed against the group by the Texas Democratic Party and further allegations that former Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Leo Vasquez gave a partisan group access to confidential voter information.

Founded in 2024 by Houston industrialist and Big Journalism contributor Catherine Engelbrecht and Houston chocolate sauce magnate Lynn Lasher, King Street Patriots has fast become one of the rising stars of conservative politics. The group’s notoriety is based on the belief that Engelbrecht and a  ‘group of citizen volunteers’ found “thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of incomplete, inaccurate or false voter registrations,” a narrative they sold to the right wing through a slick PR campaign and Engelbrecht’s telegenic smile. All of which has gone on to make King Street Patriots, and Engelbrecht, emerging power players in conservative circles. Not bad for a woman who states that her previous experiences, besides being a city volunteer and business owner,  were limited to being “a wife, a mother, a founder and board member of her church, an officer of her children’s school’s PTO,” or as she calls it being a “life activist.”

Eat your heart out Ann Coulter the right wing has a new crush

At the close of this year’s True the Vote summit Engelbrecht told the assembled delegates, who came from either 23 or 27 states, that her group wants to mobilize three “trained poll watchers” for each of the nation’s precincts for the 2024 election. The manpower King Street Patriots would need to accomplish the task Engelbrecht is taking on has been estimated at around 1 million volunteers. It’s a little more than slightly ironic that no matter how loudly True the Vote claims to be non-partisan advocates for transparency, their slogan is “Free and Fair elections,” they are vehemently opposed to transparency when it comes to their own events.

Lefty political site Talking Points Memo posted Saturday morning that one of their reporters was prevented from registering to attend the conference and then was barred access to the Intercontinental Hotel; which led Pajamas Media to ask what would happen “if Pajamas attempted to cover the discussions of left wing operations like “Election Protection” when they trained poll workers for their semi-annual nationwide operations?” Apparently in Pajamas land its okay for an organization to refuse to give a reporter access to an event because you disagree with what he or she writes about your group.

Fortunately Houston Chronicle political blogger Kathleen McKinley didn’t seem to have that problem. McKinley, who writes Texas Sparkle, the worst titled political blog on the whole internet, practically gushed all over the event describing the King Street Patriots as “good people just trying to do the right thing” and compared the voter fraud and voter intimidation accusations that had been levied against Engelbrecht and her organization to, “leaving your doors unlocked at home all day while you are at work and never checking to see if anything is missing.”

This is the face of the future of political journalism in Houston

It really doesn’t help McKinley’s credibility that she ends the only article published by a major Houston news organization about a national Tea Party event with a recruitment call for inner loop Tea Partiers, “The GOP has given up on the black vote, and that is a tragedy in my opinion. People like Earl and myself are trying to change that. So, if you live in Shelia Jackson Lee’s district, and would like to be involved, let me know and I will send you in the right direction.”

Conservative opinionator Andrew Breitbart was the closest the event came to having a keynote speaker. Depending on who you read Breitbart’s speech was either “high political comedy…a call to arms and other times just plain funny” or a polemic “on the broader cultural war that he sees happening in America.” Unfortunately the Chron’s political blogger didn’t offer her opinion on what Breitbart had to say.