DOES ANYONE ON FOX NEWS READ RED STATE?
Maybe reading conservative blogs is too time-consuming for Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck, but Sean Hannity told Erick Erickson that he reads Red State every day. Surely, out of all the staff and interns on all the shows, someone regularly looks at blogs such as Red State?

I’m a penniless scholar and I’ve offered to help anyone for free. It really disturbs me to see the same misquotes about George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, or to see a long-debunked old wives’ tale about the origin of the word “lobbyist,” misinforming millions of viewers.

Won’t anyone at Fox simply respond?

ORIGIN OF LAMESTREAM MEDIA (NOT COINED BY BERNIE GOLDBERG)
On Monday’s The O’Reilly Factor (I don’t see that the video is available), Bill O’Reilly pointed out that lots of folks are picking up on Bernie Goldberg’s term, “lamestream media.” Goldberg was proud of his coinage.

Goldberg didn’t coin “lamestream media” in the last year or so.

As I wrote on my website (here in part), the term has been used steadily since at least 1999:

18 December 1999, Waukegan (IL) News-Sun, Other Points of View:
Why is one fact repeated over and over again in the “lamestream” media while the other virtually ignored?

The Wall Street Journal
EVENTS TRANSCRIPTS SEPTEMBER 12, 2000, 12:45 A.M. ET
Voices Events With… Tom Weber
(…)
Anochka: How important will e-publishing be for authors to escape New York publishing “gate keepers”? Will e-books be taken seriously? Or will authors with non-mainstream views or with unfashionable stories to tell still be easily silenced by the status quo, lamestream media?

GLENN BECK MISQUOTES GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THOMAS JEFFERSON
Both are from Friday’s show.

On the opening segment, Glenn Beck said: “Progressives coddle kids. They’re destroying the fabric of what Thomas Jefferson called the meritocracy.” The word “meritocracy” was coined in 1958. The statement is on the video from 10:30 to about 11:30, but not on the transcript.

In the next segment (no transcript available?), Beck told his millions of viewers that George Washington called our country “a nation of laws and not of men.” There is no evidence that Washington ever said this. John Adams wrote “a government of laws, and not of men” in 1774, surely borrowing James Harrington’s “an empire of laws and not of men” (1656). Beck has used this misquote several times before: 3-31-2009: George Washington made it very clear that we are a respecter of laws, not of men, 4-2-2009: Quite frankly, Washington was very, very clear that we are respecter of laws, not of men; and 1-13-2010: Washington told us this was the secret of the republic: We are a nation of laws, not of men.

If Glenn Beck receives this message, he uses the quote again and correctly credits John Adams. It’s that simple.

Fox News, try reading Red State! We’re your viewers!