Fox News asked me to contribute to a round up of network contributors’ takes on the vice presidential debate. Here’s my take:
Thursday night, Vice President Joe Biden channeled the frustration of the American people desperately trying to nail down the details in Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s plan for America. From turning Medicare into a voucher system to cutting taxes for millionaires and billionaires to how a Romney/Ryan administration would allegedly handle matters differently with Iran and Syria, Paul Ryan repeatedly failed to provide details for voters to know where the Republican ticket stands and decide how to vote accordingly.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan can’t keep running as the anything-but-Obama ticket — and tonight, Joe Biden made clear that he and President Obama will hold the Republican’s feet to the fire and make sure the American people get facts, not fiction from the Romney/Ryan campaign.
Joe Biden performed strongly in the debate, but the clear winner was the truth — which, despite every Republican attempt to suppress it, is finding its way to the light. And the more voters learn the truth about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s agenda, the more voters support President Obama and his specific and proven plan to keep America moving forward.
You can read the full round up of other Fox contributors here.
About 24 hours after my piece refuting Paul Ryan’s RNC speech went up on the Fox News website, I tweeted this:
Wow, Internet, thanks for an awesome 24 hours. Glad to know truth can go viral.
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) August 31, 2012
It appears that my article “Paul Ryan’s Speech in 3 Words” which I wrote for the Fox News website went viral. I’m still trying to keep up with it all, but here are some of the places where it’s been cited, shared, etc. All I can say is: Wow. And thanks.
And second, for the record, no I do not get paid for my writing for Fox News. So if you’re inclined and want to help keep me off the stripper poles in Tampa, feel free to make a tax-deductible donation via my fiscal sponsor the Grassroots Policy Project in order to support my work. I’d be grateful.
Here’s the clip from the Colbert Report:
The Atlantic Wire’s Serena Dai named by article one of the five best columns of the day, alongside the great Maureen Dowd and Bill Keller of the New York Times.
Reuter’s columnist and social media editor Anthony De Rosa tweeted:
The best thing you’ll read about
@paulryanvp‘s speech comes from@foxnews by@sallykohn fxn.ws/Txn1UY— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) August 30, 2012
A Huffington Post story about my piece by Bonnie Kavoussi has so far been shared over 21,000 times and received over 10,000 comments. And there are a bunch of other stories just about my essay — in the Houston Chronicle, PolitiScoop, Daily Kos, Truthdig. Syndicated columnist Pat Cunningham wrote a blog post about my article that was posted on more city and small-town newspaper websites than I can count. And Michael Musto wrote about my column at the Village Voice.
Henry Blodget quoted me in his post about Ryan’s speech on Business Insider. So did Gabrielle Levy in a UPI story, Dylan Byers in Politico, Aviva Shen at ThinkProgress, Alex Hern in the New Statesman, Kevin Spak in Newser, Michael Arceneaux for NewsOne, John Aravos on AmericaBlog, Raf Sanchez in the UK’s Telegraph, Laura Matthews in the International Business Times, Latifah Muhammad on Hip Hop Wired, Sarah Wolfe for Global Post, Rekha Basu in the Des Moines Register, Tod Robberson in the Dallas Morning News, and the magazine The Week.
I hope all these folks have their Google Alerts set and know I appreciate being included in their stories.
And my piece was included in the post-speech rounds ups of The Atlantic’s James Fallows, David Pinar’s list in the Tucson Citizen and this list by Grist’s Philip Bump.
I’m sure I’m missing some but that’s a good start.
Then, for fun, there the tweets from famous folks. Here are a few:
@sallykohn Thanks for being unbiased in your news coverage. The american public needs the TRUTH to be reported going into this election!— octavia spencer (@octaviaspencer) August 30, 2012
Here’s a FOX News article for your dad: foxnews.com/opinion/2012/0…
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) August 30, 2012
Interesting read
@sallykohn “Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words | Fox News” fxn.ws/OzkZ8f via@fxnopinion— Dulé Hill (@DuleHill) August 30, 2012
Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words | Fox News fxn.ws/OzkZ8f via
@fxnopinionRyan couldn’t even get FOX NEWS to believe him.— Harvey Fierstein (@HarveyFierstein) August 30, 2012
For an unbiased review of Ryan’s speech take a look at what this Fox Reporter says fxn.ws/OzkZ8fI couldnt agree with him more
— Suze Orman (@SuzeOrmanShow) August 30, 2012
Then a correction:
Oh my it was written by a womanhttp://twitter.com/sallykohnSo sorry Sally.Kudos to you for having the guts to tell the truth.
— Suze Orman (@SuzeOrmanShow) August 30, 2012
@sallykohn Very good piece!! Thank YOU!— Morgan Fairchild (@morgfair) August 30, 2012
Anyway, keep sharing the original article here. And for those looking for somewhere to post a comment, feel free to do so on this post — including if you want to point out any links or mentions that I’ve missed. And thanks.
Update
First, thank you so much to all of you who have donated to support my work! Words cannot express how touched and grateful I am. Feel free to tell your friends!
Second, here are some more mentions and links.
New York Times columnist Charles Blow quoted me in his column today.
Apparently, Bill Maher mentioned me on Real Time, but I don’t have the clip yet.
Comedian Andy Borowitz referenced my piece in a post for the New Yorker.
Andrew Sullivan cited my essay in his article for Newsweek’s Daily Beast.
Fox News asked me to write the liberal response to Paul Ryan’s GOP convention speech last night. So I did. I described it in three words: Dazzling, Deceiving and Distracting.
Here’s a sample:
On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.
Do read the entire piece here. It’s making quite a stir.
It was even tweeted by comedian (and voice of Remy the rat in my kid’s favorite movie, Ratatouille!) Patton Oswalt:
Wow.WOW.FOX News calls bullshit on Ryan’s lie-packed speech:fxn.ws/OzkZ8f
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 30, 2012
…. which was way cooler than Paul Ryan’s speech. Lying ain’t very presidential.
UPDATE: And now a tweet from Rob Delaney (guess the comedians are loving me today):
Here’s a FOX News article for your dad: foxnews.com/opinion/2012/0…
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) August 30, 2012
My latest column for Salon, about the hurricane that threatened the Republican National Convention:
The fact that Hurricane Isaac is threatening the Republican National Convention is not, as some Democrats have argued, evidence of karma. But it is evidence of climate change — undermining the best efforts of Republicans to deny that it even exists.
The evidence of climate change and its links to stronger and more frequent hurricanes is undeniable:
“There is no doubt that climate has changed,” IPCC’s Christopher Field told the Senate’s environmental and public workers committee. “There is also no doubt that a changing climate changes the risks of extremes” — such as the more extreme temperatures, droughts and wildfires we’ve seen quickly increase in this year alone. And yes, according to a study published in the journal Nature and James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, climate change is responsible for the lengthening of the hurricane season in the United States and increasing the severity and frequency of hurricanes
And yet, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and virtually every speaker at the RNC are climate change deniers. How can that be???
In my latest Salon column, I write that no matter how much conservatives try to deny it, Republicans indeed launched a war on women:
Despite the fact that our nation is climbing out of a historic recession and struggling with still-too-high unemployment and other serious challenges, the Republican leaders of the current, 112th Congress have declared passing anti-choice legislation a “top priority.” In fact, the third bill introduced in the Republican House of Representatives was not a jobs bill or a bill to rein in foreclosures but legislation to ban federal funding of abortions. Overall, the current Republican House has held eight votes on choice issues — the highest number since 2000.
And Mitt Romney’s hands are anything but clean. In the essay, I also detail how Mitt Romney flip flopped to become more conservative on women’s issues — and chose Paul Ryan as his running mate in no small part because of Ryan’s own extreme anti-choice record.
This evening, I joined guest host Laura Ingraham and fellow progressive Tara Dowdell to discuss the fall out from Todd Akin’s extremist anti-choice comments and the fact that the mainstream Republican Party has heartily embraced the ideas behind his remarks.
“They want to tell women who are raped that they have to have the baby of their rapist,” I say in the segment. “That’s not a war on rapists!”
And note the part where I call out Mitt Romney for flip flopping repeatedly on this issue — telling Mike Huckabee in October 2011 that Romney wishes there were no legalized abortions in America and supporting an extremist “personhood” amendment to the Constitution, and now walking back those statements and saying he supports exceptions for rape and incest. This after Romney, as a gubenatorial candidate, said he believes abortion should be safe and legal. He etch-a-sketched Huckabee, he etch-a-sketched Republican primary voters and now he’s trying to etch-a-sketch the American public. How can we ever know for sure what Romney thinks?
Here’s coverage of the segment on Fox News Insider and Mediaite.
What are your thoughts?
In my most recent column for Fox New’s opinion page, I explore why Paul Ryan may be a popular choice with the conservative base — but is a disastrous choice for mainstream voters and America. Here’s an excerpt:
Paul Ryan is clearly intended to appeal to the conservative Republican base. As the activist Ilyse Hogue put it, Ryan is most likely to be “voted prom king at Tea Party High.” Conservative leaders still chafing about Romney are practically giddy about Ryan. Glenn Beck called his selection “tremendous news.” Rush Limbaugh said, “We now have somebody on the ticket who’s us,” alluding to Ryan’s right wing authenticity.
And yet, with this choice, Mitt Romney has fully wrapped his campaign’s arms around Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney previously praised and called on the Senate to adopt. And while the conservative base may be thrilled at the prospect of gutting government to fund more tax breaks for billionaires and oil companies, ordinary Americans are not.
You can read the entire piece here, including details of the Romney-Ryan plan to raise taxes on 95% of Americans to pay for even more tax breaks for the rich.
Republicans are desperately trying to varnish their new vice presidential nominee with the re-written legacy of Ronald Reagan. But Paul Ryan just doesn’t fit the mold. I discuss Paul Ryan’s record — and Reagan’s! — on America Live with Megyn Kelly, video courtesy of Fox News:
In my latest column for Salon, I examine the life of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan — whose own story of success doesn’t quite match up to his anti-government politics:
When Paul Ryan took to the stage in Mooresville, North Carolina, as Mitt Romney’s running mate, he attacked President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark about the role of government in supporting private innovation. But while Republicans have been clamoring to make this election a false dichotomy between the private sector and the public sector, Paul Ryan — heir to a private fortune made by building public highways — is a gaping pothole in that plan. Paul Ryan is a living, breathing GOP example of how public infrastructure and private entrepreneurship work hand-in-hand.
Want to know about how Ryan’s family got rich off government contracts? Read the full piece here. And please use the buttons on Salon’s page to spread the story around.
UPDATE: My piece got a nice mention in a Mediaite story here.
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