Late-night hosts pretend to flatter Trump after Kimmel’s removal from ABC 19SEP25

 

ONE has to wonder how long it took NOT MY pres drumpf / trump to figure out these people were  making fun of him! He really is an idiot you know. The fight to defend our democratic Republic continues! Check this out from late night Dutch TV. From the Washington Post.....

Late-night hosts pretend to flatter Trump after Kimmel’s removal from ABC

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers also proclaimed their support for fellow comedian Jimmy Kimmel and spoke about the dangers of threatening free speech.

September 19, 2025 at 5:07 a.m. EDTYesterday at 5:07 a.m. EDT

Jon Stewart usually only hosts “The Daily Show” on Mondays, with guest hosts filling in the rest of the week. But on Thursday night, Stewart made a special appearance.

“From Comedy Central, it’s the all-new, government-approved ‘Daily Show’ with your patriotically obedient host, Jon Stewart!” the announcer said at the top of the show. Stewart appeared at his desk, with the background of the studio transformed into a gilded gold space.

“We have another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show,” Stewart said, his eyes darting nervously around. He noted that the show was being broadcast from “the crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster! Like no one’s ever seen before! Someone’s National Guard should invade this place, am I right?”

This bit continued for the next 20-plus minutes as a response to Disney-owned ABC’s decision on Wednesday to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air indefinitely following conservative backlash over Kimmel’s remarks in his monologue Monday night. Kimmel, who has hosted the show since 2003, said: “We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Nexstar, the country’s largest owner of ABC affiliate stations, said it would not air Kimmel’s show and called the comments “offensive and insensitive,” while Sinclair Broadcast Group, which also owns local ABC stations, said Kimmel should apologize to the family of Kirk, the right-wing influencer who was killed last week. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr suggested that Disney’s broadcast licenses could be in jeopardy. An ABC spokesperson did not comment beyond saying that the show will be preempted “indefinitely.”

Trump, who has complained about being the target of Kimmel’s jokes, in a social media post congratulated ABC “for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.” Later, at a news conference, he said Kimmel was “fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else,” adding: “You can call that free speech or not.”

Reaction throughout the day Thursday included celebration from Kimmel’s critics and horror from those who see this as a government crackdown on censorship and a threat to free speech — and there was curiosity about what late-night comedians would say about one of their own. The hosts mostly had the same theme, mocking the idea that they can now only say nice things about the president.

Stewart kicked it off with his faux-flattery, showing clips of the president during his recent trip to the United Kingdom. “Father has been gracing England with his legendary warmth and radiance,” Stewart said, and then shouted: “Gaze upon him, with a gait even more majestic than that of the royal horses that pranced before him!”

TDS

He kept the same tone as the show played a video of a reporter who asked Trump about Kimmel and whether free speech is more under attack in Britain or America.

“How dare you!” Stewart yelled. “ … You may call it free speech in jolly old England, but in America we have a little something called the First Amendment. And let me tell you how it works. There’s something called a talent-o-meter. It’s a completely scientific instrument that is kept on the president’s desk … measured mostly by niceness to the president.”

If this “talent-o-meter” goes below a certain level, Stewart continued, “the FCC must be notified to threaten the acquisition prospects for billion-dollar mergers of network affiliates. These affiliates are then asked to give ultimatums to the even larger megacorporation that controls the flow of state-approved content, or the FCC can just choose to threaten those licenses directly. It’s basic science.” (Nexstar needs the FCC’s cooperation for its proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of another broadcast company, TEGNA.)

TTS

Meanwhile, on NBC, “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon — whom Trump just called on NBC to fire, along with the network’s Seth Meyers — said Kimmel is “a decent, funny, loving guy” and that he hopes his show returns. Fallon added that a lot of people are worried about censorship, but he was determined to cover the president’s trip to Britain like he normally would — leading to a segment where Fallon tried to talk, but an announcer kept interrupting him.

Fallon: “Well, guys, President Trump just wrapped up a three-day trip to the U.K. and he — ”

Announcer: “Looked incredibly handsome.”

Fallon: “As always, his tie was — ”

Announcer: “Exactly the right length.”

Fallon: “And his face looked — ”

Announcer: “Like a color that exists in nature.”

Fallon: “And his hair looked — ”

Announcer: “Better than Conrad’s from ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty.’”

Fallon: “During the trip, protesters managed to project images onto the sides of Windsor Castle of Trump standing next to his good friend Jeff — ”

Announcer: “Goldblum.”

LNSM

On “Late Night,” Meyers, one of the more vocal Trump critics, employed a similar tactic: “I just want to say before we get started here that I’ve always admired and respected Mr. Trump,” as the audience guffawed. “I’ve always believed he was … a visionary, an innovator. A great president and even better golfer. And if you’ve ever seen me say anything negative about him, that’s just AI. I have been told there’s some clips of me on the internet making jokes about him from a few years back, those are obviously deepfakes.”

Meyers then played videos of Trump proclaiming he brought back free speech: “Trump promised to end government censorship and bring back free speech, and he’s doing the opposite. And it has experts worried they were rapidly devolving into a repressive autocracy in the style of Russia or Hungary much faster than anyone could have predicted.”

“It’s a privilege and an honor to call Jimmy Kimmel my friend, in the same way that it’s a privilege and honor to do this show every night,” Meyers added, calling this a pivotal moment in our democracy. “I wake up every day, I count my blessings that I live in a country that at least purports to value freedom of speech, and we’re going to keep doing our show the way we’ve always done it, with enthusiasm and integrity.”

Over on “The Late Show” on CBS, Stephen Colbert started with a parody of the “Beauty and the Beast” song “Be Our Guest” called “Shut Your Trap,” aimed at Disney’s TV networks: “The new rule at ABC / Don’t make fun of Donny T. … Or your show will scrapped / Shut your trap.” Then he briefly slipped back into his former character as host of the “Colbert Report,” declaring that he was the new “Late Show” ombudsman.

TLS

But he got more serious in his monologue and said he stood by Kimmel: “With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch. And if ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive, and clearly, they’ve never read the children’s book ‘If You Give a Mouse a Kimmel,’” Colbert said.

He called Carr an “individually wrapped hard-boiled egg that they sell at the airport” and pointed to how Carr described Kimmel’s comments as “some of the sickest conduct possible.” Colbert then showed the clip of Kimmel’s monologue and expressed disbelief: “Given the FCC’s response, I was expecting something more, you know, provocative. That’s like hearing that Playboy has a racy new centerfold and finding out it’s just Jimmy Kimmel.”

Colbert brought up the potential Nexstar merger with TEGNA, and pretended to be absolutely shocked. In June, CBS announced it was ending Colbert’s show next year and that it was “purely a financial decision”; though many wondered if it had to do with CBS parent company Paramount’s merger with Skydance that needed FCC approval.

“So a company apparently capitulating to the whims of the president, in order to ensure their merger goes through? Has that ever happened before?” Colbert asked and then looked off to the side of the stage. “What’s that? … Oh, I’m being told not to answer that question.”

By Emily Yahr

Emily Yahr is an entertainment reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2008 and has previously written for the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and the American Journalism Review

The Year of the Big Lie: 6 Outrageous Falsehoods That Took Flight in 2010 31DEZ10

Thank God for media organizations like AlterNet and Mother Jones and PolitiFact and Salon and Politico, organizations committed to truth in reporting, not afraid to challenge and report on the shenanigans of the left and right.

From Breitbart's smear of Shirley Sherrod to Glenn Beck's use of Mein Kampf to malign George Soros, right-wing and mainstream media embrace the Big Lie. 

 

 

In a political year dominated by tales of polarization, a flurry of themes emerged as I contemplated the year just past -- the year of the Tea Party, the year that psycho became the new normal (Glenn Beck), the year in which info leaks rocked the world (WikiLeaks), the year that saw accomplishments defying conventional wisdom (Obama). But at the root of all of these themes lies the Lie; all other themes speak to either its advancement or in its defiance.
In the politics of 2010, the Big Lie, in both its gigantic and more attenuated forms, was almost always deployed in the service of corporations. It may not be so obvious at the surface, especially when the Lie dubs the nation's first black president a racist, or labels a Jewish holocaust survivor an anti-Semite, but the ultimate aim of the Lie in these contexts is to discredit purveyors of ideas and policies that certain corporate leaders and shills find threatening to their quest for all the world's riches.
What follows is a mere sampling of some of the defining lies of 2010, not presented in any particular order of importance, for they're all of a piece.
The Big Lie
The Big Lie theory goes like this: A gigantic, audacious lie is more likely to be believed by the masses than a small one if it is repeated often enough. First articulated in the pages of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (who attributed the practice, of course, to Jews) and deployed as a tactic by Nazi master propagandist Joseph Goebbels, the Big Lie went mainstream in 2010, as its propagators on the Right were accepted by big media as respectable articulators of a legitimate point of view. These include Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and numerous other Republican officials and Tea Party leaders who, in our first Big Lie, refer to the 2010 passage of health-care reform legislation as "a government takeover of health care." The non-partisan PolitiFact.com named this assertion the lie of the year -- an award that will likely have no impact on the issue's framing, since media figures generally fail to challenge the assertion when it's made.
Sometimes Big Lies are personal, targeting a figure whose appearance or background plays to the prejudices of a particular constituency. An attempt to lay just one such Big Lie to rest finds Neil Abercrombie, the newly elected Democratic governor of Hawaii, seeking to release data on the birth of President Barack Obama in his state 49 years ago in an effort to appease birthers -- those who have bought into the lie that Obama was born in Africa, not America, which would make him ineligible for the presidency. Really, Abercrombie needn't bother: the Tea Partiers who doubt the president's birthright will never be satisfied with any level of proof. They're far too invested in the lie.
Perhaps that's why Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing Web site impresario, author of our second Big Lie of the year, thought he could get away with targeting an unknown U.S. Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, through the creative editing of a video taken of Sherrod's remarks to a local NAACP gathering.
Brietbart was ripping mad when the NAACP passed a resolution at its national convention that called on Tea Party leaders to repudiate racism within its ranks. The clip was edited to convey the opposite message of Sherrod's remarks, which addressed how she overcame her own prejudice against a white farmer she assisted in the course of her job duties. But before Breitbart's lie was exposed, the Obama administration fired Sherrod (who was later offered another job at USDA). The story immediately became about the video clip as Breitbart presented it, and Sherrod's firing. It wasn’t until the next day that the Lie was exposed.
Breitbart himself demonstrated little chagrin at having posted a distorted view of Sherrod's remarks -- after all, he had achieved much of his desired result: damage to the Obama administration. In rushing to fire Sherrod before an investigation could even begin, the administration signaled that Breitbart's Lie was truth.
In essence, Breitbart's Big Lie was of a particular sort: those designed to prove that one's opponent is guilty of the same sin of which your side stands accused. From the early days of the Tea Party movement in 2009, aided by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, there's been a concerted attempt to paint Obama as a racist, a black man with "a deep-seated hatred for white people," in Beck's words. As a representative of the Obama administration and a speaker at an NAACP event, the Sherrod clip, had it not been exposed as a misrepresentation, would have killed two birds with one stone. Yet, even thus exposed, Breitbart remains an influential figure, the incident simply plowed, in an oily heap, to the side of the highway of hatred he travels.
Glenn Beck, of course, is the master of the Big Lie. That each lie Beck tells is more outrageous than the next does nothing to impede his success: in fact, his outrageousness fuels his success. Just last month, marking Big Lie number three for our purposes, Beck falsely accused the liberal financier George Soros of being a Nazi collaborator during World War II, when in fact, the Jewish Soros is a Holocaust survivor. In a three-part series on Soros, Beck framed his attack in language drawn from Hitler's Mein Kampf, calling his series "The Puppet Master," and referring to Soros as a "bloodsucker." While this caused great consternation in the progressive media world, protests in the world of mainstream media were not sustained enough to force Beck from his perch at Fox News, where he serves as community organizer for Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, Fox's parent company.
Having made health-care reform his signature issue, Obama was ripe for this kind of attack from the likes of David Koch, the billionaire who founded Americans For Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which have actively promoted the Lie that Obama's insurance-company-friendly reform actually amounts to a government takeover of the health-care system. Like Murdoch, who is also a billionaire, Koch opposes government regulation of any kind -- be it of the health-care industry, the energy industry or the financial sector. Koch also happens to be a top executive at Koch Industries, the company founded by his father, a founder of the John Birch Society, that is rooted in the oil and gas sectors.
George Soros is also a billionaire, but one who favors government regulation, and puts his billions to work in the non-profit sector to fund organizations that support liberal efforts to regulate industry. So Soros became a prime target of the Big Lie.
The Little Big Lie
Perhaps the most pernicious outcome of society's resignation in 2010 to a media landscape blanketed by the Big Big Lie is the proliferation of smaller Big Lies which, taken in the context of enormous Big Lies, come to be seen as not such big deals. Take, for instance, Big Lie number four: the assertion by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, that Obama's recent trip to India was costing American taxpayers $200 million per day. Media dutifully quoted Bachmann's lie, some even noting that there was no evidence to support it. The media's interest sustained only as much as a 24-hour news cycle would allow. Just another instance of Bachmann being Bachmann.
Or take, for instance, the right-wing trope -- Big Lie number four -- that Obama cannot speak without a teleprompter, that he uses the teleprompter far more often than his predecessor, the verbally challenged George W. Bush. It matters not that Obama has proven, at news conference after news conference, that he does quite well answering questions off the cuff, or that his use of the teleprompter is on a par with that of previous presidents. In January 2010, Obama so deftly fielded questions lobbed at him by members of Congress at a Republican retreat that party leaders conceded it had been bad strategy for their side to allow the exchange to be televised. Yet Tea Partiers remain convinced that the black president is too stupid to speak without a machine scrolling text presumably written by white staffers.
And, coming in just under the wire for 2010 after having been an ongoing 2009 theme, thanks to Sarah Palin, is Big Lie number six: the notion that voluntary counseling for end-of-life care that is reimbursed by Medicare amounts to a government "death panel" designed to "pull the plug on Grandma."
The Media's Role
No Big Lie strategy can work without the dissemination of the Lie by mainstream media and in this regard, the media have been exemplary -- not in a wittingly conspiratorial way, but in a, gee-these-sensational-claims-will-really-boost-our-ratings kind of a way. After all, they too have corporate masters to serve.
The success of the whole Big Lie scheme, it seems, works here on something of a paradox. The rise of right-wing media, which is always the amplifier -- if not the creator -- of such claims, came to pass because of the distrust of mainstream media by a sizable chunk of the American public. However much that distrust existed throughout the history of the republic, it really picked up steam once network news was removed from its role, in the 1970s and '80s, as a public service provided by media entities that use public resources -- the airwaves -- as the vehicle for reaping profits, and news programs were made into profit centers by the corporations that owned the networks.
For their part, conservative personalities played on the jingoism of their adherents, especially during the Vietnam War, to claim that the media were hopelessly liberal in their bias, since they were reporting news that turned the American people against the war -- news, incidentally, that often exposed government lies about body counts and the ostensible success of the war. Daniel Ellsberg's historic leak of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times brought such falsehoods into brutal relief, much as WikiLeaks did earlier this year with its release of communications and classified video from the war in Afghanistan.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, mainstream news producers and editors have been on the defensive, always needing to prove they're not biased toward liberals. This leads many mainstream outlets to pick up and amplify the themes advanced in right-wing media, while giving little play to those advanced in progressive media. Aiding this process is the fact that the messaging shops of the Right are more adept at framing issues in pithy and emotional ways.
Take the term "death panels." I'll bet you're thinking, what's that doing in a 2010 year-end piece? That's so 2009. Think again. Just this week, the term resurfaced with a vengeance when the New York Times reported that the Obama administration, having failed to win inclusion of coverage for end-of-life counseling in the health-care reform legislation that passed in March (largely thanks to the Right's death-panel framing), is changing Medicare regulations so that doctors will be reimbursed for offering the counseling.
In a segment of "Anderson Cooper 360" that aired on CNN this week, the introductory piece leading into a discussion of the new rules included, in the course of less than four minutes, nine mentions of the phrase "death panel" by the guest host and in clips of politicians discussing the subject (h/t, AlterNet SpeakEasy blogger Linda Milazzo). The graphic for the story read: "'Death Panel' Resurrection."
Congratulations, CNN. You are an accessory to the Big Lie.
Note that CNN is owned by AOL/Time Warner.
And take the postscript to the Breitbart/Sherrod episode. Was Andrew Breitbart hounded out of the polite company of mainstream media? Hardly. He was hired by ABC News to provide commentary on the midterm elections -- a deal that was canceled only after public outcry from media watchdogs.
Note that ABC News is owned by the Disney Corporation.
Newspapers are hardly immune to the pressures of the Big Lie, which often turns up in nuanced ways. In the final days of the battle for health-care reform, USA Today ran a front-page story headlined "Health care law too costly, most say."
Pounded by right-wing messengers, the conventional wisdom in Washington was that there was no public support for an optional public health-care plan, despite ample polling showing that indeed a majority of Americans supported a public option.
In fact, the very USA Today/Gallup poll on which that poll was based revealed continued majority support for a public option -- a fact that was mentioned nowhere in the text of the piece, but appeared only in a tiny graphic that ran alongside the text. Without stating the reasons that two-thirds of Americans thought the plan too costly, USA Today reporter Susan Page never articulated the fact that many of those Americans likely thought the law too expensive in light of the fact that it did not offer a publicly financed health-care plan, thus reinforcing the right's Big Lie.
Note that USA Today is owned by the Gannett Co., Inc., which owns 100 media entities, including newspapers and television stations.
All of the corporations mentioned here as parent companies of media outlets are publicly traded -- hence the lack of accountability to anybody other than shareholders. The axiom at local news stations has long been, "If it bleeds, it leads." Murder and mayhem hold the attention of viewers. In the world of mainstream national news, there's a new axiom taking hold: "If it lies, it flies" -- as long as the Lie is sensational enough to keep viewers tuned in. And the Right is genius at turning out just those sorts of lies.
Because the Big Lie relies not on facts for its impact, but the counter-factual, it cannot be refuted by empirical data. If progressives are to thwart the momentum of the Big Lie's suffocating expansion, they must offer a viable counter-narrative -- stories that speak to people's souls, emotions and experiences -- something more than a raft of facts and policy solutions. We know the true story of our people. We must learn how to tell it.

Annoying Alan Simpson: The 310,000,001st Reason to Vote 27OKT10

Make no mistake: They're not just trying to roll back Social Security. They're trying to dismantle the entire New Deal, piece by piece. There are at least "310,000,000 Reasons to Vote," one for each and every American citizen. But there's also a 310,000,001th reason:
To piss off Alan Simpson.
That may not be the most high-minded motive for executing one's civic duty, but like they say: Whatever works.
Simpson is, as most people know by now, the co-chair of the Deficit Commission. He's the guy who's using the Deficit Commission platform to lead his own personal jihad against anyone with the temerity to claim (or expect to claim) the Social Security retirement benefits they've funded with their own paychecks. It's Simpson who famously compared Social Security to "a milk cow with 310 million tits." Most people didn't recognize the quote, but Simpson was probably attempting to channel H. L. Mencken's line about government itself, which Mencken called "a milch-cow with 125 million teats" (the population of the United States at the time).
That's right: Simpson was recycling a denigrating comment about the very institution of government. The swapping of "teat" (the commonly-used word for an animal's milk-giving gland) for the word that refers to a woman's breast was Simpson's own alteration, probably intended to disturb the female recipient of his comment. But Simpson real intent was to express his own deep-seated hostility to the very idea of government, a hostility shared by many of the politicians running for office this year. As for Mencken, he was rabidly anti-FDR, referring to him on more than one occasion as "the Fuehrer." Simpson was probably also telegraphing a similar loathing for the entire New Deal and the social programs that followed it.
Why rehash the Simpson flap about cow mammaries? Because it reminds us exactly what we're up against next Tuesday. Social Security is under attack by a well-funded and highly organized coalition made up of billionaires, ethically compromised news organizations, and patronizing members of a self-designated elite (with a few misogynistic misanthropes like Simpson thrown in for good measure). They're making terrific headway, too.
And this is just the beginning: If they succeed in rolling back Social Security, it will just be the first step. Once that's accomplished, every major social program in the country will be in their sights. That's why they've pulled out all the stops to accomplish this first goal. The Washington Post has turned part of its newsgathering function over to an outfit that's funded by an ideologically-driven anti-government billionaire. Well-paid pundits are luxuriating in the opportunity to give lectures on "sacrifice" to older working people struggling to get by, bathing in the glow of self-righteousness as if it were just another mud bath at their customary spa. Technocrats like economist Alice Rivlin are pretending that decisions about spending priorities are "technical problems" rather that political choices, as if the political process itself were some sort of virus that had infected their spreadsheet programs.
Spending priorities are never a "technical" issue, of course. They're statements about our priorities and values as a society. That means that, in a democratic society, they must always be decided politically. That's not a bad thing. It's called "democracy." And the decisions that Rivlin et al. would foist upon us are, by their very nature, political. They just like to pretend otherwise.
136 members of Congress have signed a pledge to "stand firmly" against any Social Security cuts, adding that "We urge you to join us in protecting and strengthening Social Security rather than letting it fall victim to a misguided attempt to reduce budget deficits on the backs of working families." Each and every representative of that pledge is up for re-election on Tuesday.
Now, as it happens, the pledge signers are all members of one political party. It shouldn't be that way in a representative democracy. Political one-sidedness on Social Security represents a breakdown of the democratic process, since three-fourths of all Americans oppose cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit -- including 77% of Republicans and 76% of Tea Party supporters! There should be a bipartisan drive to protect Social Security, an across-the-aisle effort to counteract the Inside-the-Beltway fixation on cutting it. Maybe someday there will be, despite the efforts of the technocratic ideologues and the billionaire media-influencers.
That's why there are 310,000,000 reasons to vote. That's one for each and every American who has paid into the Social Security Trust Fund through their payroll taxes, and who deserves to receive the promised level of benefits when they retire. There are 310,000,000 reasons to vote, one for each and every American born into a society where everyone was assured a minimum level of protection from privation and want when they're unable to work because of age or disability. There are 310,000,000 reasons to vote, one for every American raised to believe that government has a legitimate role to play in assuring the well-being, safety, and security of its citizens.
Then there's the 310,000,001th reason: To frustrate, aggravate, and otherwise annoy Alan Simpson, an already disagreeable individual who's likely to become even more so if he's thwarted in his lifelong quest to shaft older Americans (or "greedy geezers," as he likes to call them). Sure, that's not the best reason to vote - but, hey, it's a reason.
And if Simpson doesn't like the election results, then as the old expression goes: "Tough titty."
______________________________________________________________

Rachel Maddow Responds To Bill O'Reilly Over Shirley Sherrod, Ratings (VIDEO) 23jul10

GO RACHEL, GO RACHEL.......

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

PETITION TO CONGRESS: Save Net Neutrality! from PCCC 26MAI10

Unless you don't care if your ISP or phone company decides what sites you can view, or access with ease, you should be concerned about the threat to internet freedom posed by the major ISPs, corporate broadcasting and the telecommunications industry. Please sign this petition by clicking the header or copy and paste this link http://act.boldprogressives.org/act/petition_netneutrality_congress/?source=auto-e&referring_akid=1222.177676.2AFz20k , and pass on to family, friends, co-workers.



On Fox, Glenn Beck recently went on a rampage against Net Neutrality -- the "First Amendment of the Internet."
Net Neutrality prevents your Internet company from picking which sites open quickly and slowly on your computer...or blocking sites entirely. Phone and cable companies want to get rid of Net Neutrality so they can set up tollbooths on the Internet.
(Without Net Neutrality, Fox would have a huge advantage over independent news sites.)
Now, over 70 corporate-funded Democrats are joining Beck and most Republicans in opposing Net Neutrality.
Fortunately, Reps. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Jared Polis (D-CO) are fighting back. They're organizing colleagues to sign a pro-Net Neutrality letter to the FCC, which is in the middle of some important decision making on this issue right now.
Since yesterday (25 MAY 10), the number of House members signing the pro-Net Neutrality letter grew from 17 to 25 because of grassroots activism -- so please sign the petition and pass this email to friends to increase our impact.
On the petition page, you can watch Jon Stewart and John Hodgman (of "I'm a PC" fame) do a brilliant explanation of Net Neutrality. 
Then, pass this email to any lover of email, blogs, puppy videos on YouTube, Google, Craigslist, Amazon, independent media, LOLcats, or anything else that represents the innovation and ingenuity that has thrived on the Internet due to the existence of Net Neutrality.
Thanks for being a bold progressive -- and for helping to save the Internet.
-- Aaron Swartz, Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, Forrest Brown, Shaunna Thomas, and the PCCC team
Net Neutrality is under attack in Congress. Please tell your Representative to support Internet freedom

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PETITION: "I support Net Neutrality, the First Amendment of the Internet. Any member of Congress who doesn't stand up for Internet freedom shouldn't ask me for my money or my vote in 2010. House members should reject Rep. Gene Green's anti-Net Neutrality letter and sign Rep. Jay Inslee's pro-Net Neutrality letter." 

After you sign, you'll see your Rep's phone number. 

Net Neutrality -- In the words of the Daily Show

www.thedailyshow.com