The Foxification of OpEdNews and other “Progressive” Betrayals

by Scott Creighton

OpEdNews owner, Rob Kall, has weighed in on the "von Brunn/domestic terrorist/extremist" topic. Instead of defending the First Amendment, he takes the Fox News game plan of turning this horrible event into justification to attack liberal dissenters on the web.

Snake oil salesman and charlatan extraordinaire, Rob Kall, has weighed in on the "von Brunn/domestic terrorist/extremist" topic.

Do you think this "progressive" leader of a "liberal" website would have come down on the side of free-speech, the constitution, and pointing out the government's using this situation as a catalyst for the passage of the very Homegrown Terrorism bill that Rob himself opposed a year ago?

You think he would stand up for the right of freedom of expression just so long as that expression doesn't call for violence? Do you think he would call for the need of a "well informed population" for the preservation of a free and open democracy?

You think Rob Kall, biofeedback snake oil peddler and motivational speaker, would take a stand against the targeting of some of the very people that helped him build his website empire? These same people that he just happened to kick out of the site they helped him make just days before all this "extremist violence" started happening?

Hell no.  Kall is selling us out faster than Geithner with a new Bailout Plan at a banker country club Meet-and-Greet.  And in the process, Kall is calling us "mentally ill", dangerous, and in need of being "cleaned up" and taken completely off the internet.

That's right, "Pay-Go" loving Rob Kall is taking the Fox News game plan of turning this horrible event into justification to attack liberal dissenters on the web, and spinning the exact same message just from the DLC/Obamalove side of the coin. He is, in effect, inviting Team DLC Obama™ Brand to "come on in" and sweep up the "lefty extremists" in their "preventive detention" drag nets.

Rob is labeling us dissenters as mentally ill "radicalized extremists" and seems to be supporting the notion that our voices must be silenced on the internet.

The extremist left wing blogosphere... composed of anarchists, extremist libertarians and conspiracy theorists rails about Zionist plots... And these people are also interested in their gun rights and fighting.... it's clear they are extremists.

Unfortunately, more than 5% of the population has emotional or mental illness. Rob Kall

Now, go back and read Rob's opening lines in his article and you will understand what he is doing...

Last week, a right wing extremist known to be mentally ill murdered an abortion doctor, who Bill O'Reilly repeatedly called "Tiller the baby killer." Rob Kall

That's Rob Kall; a "progressive, tough, liberal" demonizing tens millions of Americans (actually it is the majority of Americans) who question the official story of the events of 9/11 (like 41 counter intelligence officials (that link from Rob's own website) and 689 Architects and Engineers and even former members of the 9/11 Commission "at some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened" John Farmer ) as told by Philip Zelikow (Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission Report and creater of the strategy of the Global War on Terror).  The same Rob Kall who is also calling for a "clean up web" campaign...

In the late '90's, Tipper Gore campaigned to get Musicians to clean up their lyrics act. Perhaps it's time for another campaign. Rob Kall

This is Kall's "Ode to Gatekeeping".

No longer satisfied with simply applying this type of behavior to his Op Ed News ("progressive, tough, Liberals" - what a joke) now it seems that Rob Kall is helping sell the party-line to his readers so that it will be more easily accepted when this kind of censorship takes place all across the world wide web.  And he's not just talking about preventing sites from calling for violence, he's actually talking about preventing them from addressing certain types of information.

A climate in which the idea of talking about the problem raises the risk of exacerbating that problem is dangerous.  Rob Kall

So according to Rob Kall, even talking about the problems is dangerous and must be stopped, I guess for our own protection.  Silencing people who have informed yet "dissenting" opinions about what is happening in our country is the best policy for the "tough liberal" Rob.

Perhaps that is why he purged regulars who hold "extreme" viewpoints from his website just a few weeks ago.  Yes, in what must have been the "luckiest" move of his career, Rob just "happened" to ban several regular contributors, writers, and even members of his staff right before all of this "radical extremism" started unfolding.

We were saddened by the extreme position Rady took. Rob Kall

So maybe Rob just got lucky when he purged all the "extreme" people from his site a few weeks ago... or maybe he had a little "heads up" from his new boss...

A government source told me, "continued media coverage only perpetuates the problem." Rob Kall

I would be curious to know who is "government source is and just when they had that little conversation...

Bottom line is that Rob Kall's attempt to help usher in a government censorship of the web is disgusting. He is exposing himself once again, as the party-line sycophant we have all come to know.

Less offensive, but still pretty despicable, are several little memes he throws into his diatribe such as the notion that people don't really have a reason to be angry in this country right now; dismissing their legitimate feeling of anger over what is happening with the economy, jobs,  and the bailouts (this obvious war on the middle class that the current administration is waging).

But of course, that is "extremist" talk in the insulated hired shill land of Rob Kall.

Quite frankly I don't see why any self-respecting liberal writer would want to submit anything more than a grocery list to Op Ed News for publication. All they are doing is putting money in Rob's pocket and giving him more viewers to read his conformist crap.

If it were only Rob and his DLC/rightwing Democrats (usually featured on Fox News) writing for Op Ed News, he wouldn't get as many hits as the average WordPress site, and that would be the end of Rob's Golden Microphone days.

But Rob Kall does get one thing right.

If we want to keep his brand of "extremist" unconstitutional censorship promoting sites from infecting the average "progressive" reader out there, we have to completely ignore them and stop supporting them with submissions and page views.

We should call on his more enlightened contributors (Cindy Sheehan, David Swanson, George Washington to name a few) to suspend their support of his site entirely and that means no visits and more importantly, no articles for Kall to profit from.

For without their work giving him credibility, the readers on Op Ed News would certainly see through Kall's apologist propaganda campaign that much quicker.

And time is something we are quickly running out of.

Especially since the "progressive tough liberals" are selling us out as fast as they possibly can to the same people that write the daily talking points for Fox News. (I wonder if they email them, or if Steve Leser just brings them home to Rob pinned to his lapel next to his little American flag).