Right-wing media’s overheated response to warming bill

You knew it would happen. But Fox News and talk radio have become a big unhinged over House’s vote Friday in favor of the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

It’s a Wall Street conspiracy. It’s a commie plot. It’s treason. Every year, it’ll cost each family 500, 750, 1,500, 3,000 dollars.

Sometimes, the talking points are a bit inconsistent. But that’s what makes them entertaining … in a slow-motion train wreck kind of way.

Media Matters, the left-wing watchdog site, has steadily pushed out clips of the talking heads, which I’ve annotated for your viewing convenience.

Fox’s Glenn Beck (June 29) issues a “Wanted for being a cap and traitor” poster for eight Republicans who voted for the bill:

More clips after the jump.

Rush Limbaugh (June 29) compares Waxman and Markey to Bernie Madoff and figures the whole thing was Goldman-Sachs’ idea:

Fox’s Brian Kilmeade (June 29) uses his crystal ball to come up with a new number for the cost to families — “we know,” he says, it’ll run $1,241 per family per year:

On Fox, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol (June 28) confuses $175 per family with $175 per person and calls the bill a “ludicrous piece of legislation”:

On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan (June 27) worries that it’s a “hoax” designed to revive that old threat of a “one-world government”:

Fox’s Sean Hannity (June 26) complains that the rest of the media wasn’t alerting people that the bill will eliminate 2.5 million jobs and cost every family $3,000 a year. His guest, political consultant Dick Morris, explains that the “the people that get the money [from cap-and-trade] are in Africa”:

Beck (June 26) slices a watermelon in protest:

Kilmeade (June 26) teases the idea that the bill could “double unemployment numbers” — but doesn’t follow up with any evidence or discussion of that bombshell:

For more examples and updated clips, go to Media Matters’ Global Warming page. They’re like informational news clips — except without the “informational news” part!

UPDATE: Fox’s Monica Crowley (June 30) explains that the bill is really about “the government taking more and more control of your life.”

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