Do not fuck with Jake Tapper. That's the message Bill O'Reilly learned today in what has to be the best public takedown of the loudmouthed conservative in years.  Perhaps in an attempt to remain relevant after he was booted out of Fox, O'Reilly figured it would be a good idea to ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Oct 19, 2017

We've been writing about Hillary Clinton a fair bit here at the Banter lately, not because she's done anything in particular, but because she remains the focal point of right wing ire. A crazed killer murders 60 people in Las Vegas using high powered artillery? Let's jump on ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Oct 12, 2017

The Wall St Journal is reporting that Fox News is finally about to dump Bill O'Reilly. After it was revealed that there were multiple reports about O’Reilly sexually harassing several colleagues, the network has been unable to stem the flow of advertisers leaving the nightly ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Apr 19, 2017

In the wake of a mass advertiser exodus from his show, it looks increasingly like the end is nigh for Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. From NYMag: Embattled Fox News host Bill O’Reilly announced tonight that he is taking a vacation. O’Reilly’s decision to go off the air in the midst ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Apr 12, 2017

It was almost exactly 12 years ago when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth published its book-length smear-campaign against John Kerry, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, during the 2004 general election. Before then, the Kerry-Edwards ticket had ...read more

• By Bob Cesca
  Nov 9, 2018

Update: According to CNN's Brian Stelter, everyone jumped the gun. Ailes is in talks to leave, but the deal isn't done just yet. He says the final announcement should be made soon. Meanwhile, Gabriel Sherman is reporting that Rupert Murdoch wants to pay him the $40 million but ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Jul 19, 2016

Last night Donald Trump went on another of his thin-skinned, juvenile Twitter rants against Megyn Kelly, calling her a "waste of an hour on Fox" and retweeting somebody who called her a bimbo. I wrote something about it here and explained how startling it was that legendarily ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018

It's Monday and so it's back to the grind with you, gerbils. Here's a couple of headlines and some assorted stuff from around the internet to get you through the day. 1. Gold Rush 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle cleaned up at last night's Golden Globes, while on the TV ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018

There were a lot of tweets fired off and articles written yesterday morning noting how it seemed during his nearly two-hour news conference like Chris Christie was going through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. At one point Christie himself even alluded to a process, saying that ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018

The Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove calls it, in predictably Grovian fashion, "a literary Pearl Harbor." But this was no sneak attack; the target of it has known for years what was coming and a defensive stance was taken in preparation, with every weapon in that target's formidable ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

On the face of it, President Obama and Fox News head honcho Roger Ailes have very little in common. Obama is a pragmatic liberal and Ailes a blowhard conservative. Obama is known to be a pretty nice guy in person, while Ailes is a notorious asshole. However, they do have one ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

I'll make this quick. When it comes to pointing out the ways in which the national news media have changed for the worse over the past 20 years, one of those examples I go back to again and again is Fox News's ruthlessly vindictive internal public relations department. ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Apr 4, 2016

If you've ever watched Fox News and thought to yourself, "Wow, Roger Ailes must be a sociopath or something," now you've got your confirmation. Interestingly enough, it's not coming from some tenuously sourced, barely newsworthy piece of bullshit reactionary agitprop splashed ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

I have to admit that in the few months immediately leading up to the presidential election of 2008, Sarah Palin provided me with some of the best material I've ever had the opportunity to write about and the result was some of the best political stuff to appear on my site, ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018

By Chez Pazienza: As evidenced by the one above this piece, it's never a good idea to trust a headline. Often, what you see in the headline of a piece of journalism isn't a fair descriptor of what you're going to get inside the story itself. That's because, often, headlines ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018

It seems even Fox News is becoming concerned with reality - at least for now, that is: Karl Rove's familiar 2012 presence on Fox News appears to be coming to a halt. New York Magazine reports that President Roger Ailes is limiting Rove and fellow contributor Dick Morris' ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 18, 2016

By Chez Pazienza: There's an old saying that I'm a big fan of: Never try to teach a pig to sing -- it wastes your time and annoys the pig. I think of this every time I get the urge to lash out at Fox News for some irresponsible, grossly unethical thing or other that the network ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018