The Stony Brook Statesman was noticeably thicker this week, and not in a good way.

The October 8 issue was stuffed with a 12-page, full color supplement from the Human Life Alliance, a pro-life organization based out of Minnesota. The pullout is made to look like a magazine, with propagandist articles displayed under headlines like “The Long Term Effects of Abortion.”

The Statesman News Editor Lauren Cioffi responded to the ad, and clarified the paper’s policy on advertisements.

“Editors are never informed of the advertising that will go in the issue they are publishing, until after the general manager makes the decisions, and the issue goes to print,” she said.

“The News department and advertising department are two separate entities of the paper and do not work together. To reject or accept advertisements based on what the ad represents- thoughts, companies and ideas- is unlawful,” Cioffi added.

A pro-life pamphlet was distributed in thousands of copies of the October 8 Statesman.

Two student newspapers in Wisconsin refused to run the same supplement, entitled “icare…,” for fear of alienating students who might disagree with the message that the HLA sends. The University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point Pointer released a statement on the matter, saying, “we have a policy against advertising topics which have a tendency to cause conflict, shame or controversy among the student body.”

The leaflet covers every base imaginable. It attacks birth control as ineffective and dangerous; showcases testimonials from regretful teens; displays pictures of various stages of a pregnancy; it even tries to make a constitutional argument against abortions.

Most alarming, however, is the fear mongering conducted by the HLA. Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, one of the leaflet’s “experts,” argues that abortions are linked to breast cancer, an argument that has been rebuked time and again by the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and dozens of studies conducted over the last few decades which show that there is no link between either spontaneous or induced abortions and breast cancer.

The Statesman, like many other large-scale university publications, uses advertising agencies to gather ads for each issue. The Human Life Alliance likely used one of these agencies to target campus publications. Alloy, one such agency that works with hundreds of campus publications including The Statesman, offers freestanding inserts like the one HLA distributed, though it’s unclear from exactly where this insert came from.

Stay with THiNK for all the latest on this story.

Showing its support for the growing craze of paranoia and absurd conspiracy theories being touted by the right-wing, The Patriot has gone straight off the deep end in a section entitled “The One Party Classrooms” in which the author, (mysteriously named “the Patriot”) took it upon him/herself to root out nefarious left-wing propaganda in our school.

That's funny, I don't remember Mother Nature endorsing anyone in the 2008 electons.

In what can only be described as a strange fusion of McCarthyism and Michelle Bachman’s political ideology, the article attempts to find all the classes available this semester that “advance some sort of left-wing oriented agenda” by searching through the course catalogue and apparently picking any class that talks about racism, homosexuality, environmental science, multiculturalism, and history that happens to deal with Karl Marx (a historical figure) or Communism (a historical political system).

Besides the massive amount of Straw Man defeating going on at the Patriot on a regular basis, one has to wonder why The Patriot is so afraid of classes like “Weather and Climate,” and “U.S. Class Structure” being taught on campus. Apparently they are threatening enough to warrant an urgent warning to all the good conservatives on campus to avoid classes about scary things like “researched opinions” or “facts” or “undeniable scientific consensus that human beings pollute the environment, poison water, and are speeding up global warming.”

The most telling (and generally humorous) bits of information come from The Patriot’s little editorial paragraphs about how apparently even talking about inequality means that the teacher is a Marxist “stuck in the Bolshevik revolution” or that Stony Brook University is saying that “Capitalism BADD!! Money is the root of all evil!!”

Also, mentioning homosexuality gives a course a spot on the list, as “Intro to Queer Studies” is on here, but with no explanation as to why. Apparently learning about gay people is something only liberals would ever do. Conservatives learn all they need to know about gays from Glenn Beck.

Even more hilarious is how the Patriot summarily dismisses the class “Politics and Religion in Israel and the Middle East” with the great little one-liner “We can only imagine what goes on in here…” Then, to PROVE that the right wing is being downtrodden and defeated, they point out the “History of the American West” is cancelled, with the witty retort of “I wonder why…” I’m not entirely sure why this is a right-wing class, apparently information about Manifest destiny and guns is a good old fashioned “Real American” class, but alas! It was cancelled! Meaning that the cruel Liberal/Socialist/Fascist/Marxist establishment must have seen its support for real America and canceled it while laughing maniacally and taking away all our money to give to gay black crack addicts.

Of course, The Patriot never mentions why it was cancelled, and I couldn’t find out why either, but I would hazard a guess that it didn’t have enough enrollment, and not because of a vast Left-Wing conspiracy.

Finally I need to point out something that struck me. Every course on their scare list had a few things in common: one, they were bound to upset anti-science people, as evident in their labeling nearly all classes about the environment as anti-Capitalist, anti-Human propaganda. And second, any class encouraging diversity was immediately placed under suspicion. If a class even mentioned that race has had an impact on society in any way, it earned a spot on the list. If a class deals with homosexuality, it’s on the list. Any class that talks about multilingualism as a good thing earns a place as well. Care about “Sustainability of the Long Island Pine Barrens?” Congratulations, you tree hugging commie, you’re on the list too.

I am amused by this, but equally worried. When people are this terrified of opposing viewpoints, or in some cases any viewpoints at all about certain topics, its hard to imagine them being able to make informed decisions about anything. If The Patriot proved one thing to me, it’s that its biggest fear is information that it may disagree with, or information that dares to discuss issues like class or race in an inquisitive light.

The New York Post’s inflammatory Page Six staff staged yet another jihad on the “liberal media,” this time disguised as concerned Michael Jackson fans.

The charges were that liberal media personalities like Jimmy Kimmel, The New York Times’ TV critic Alessandra Stanley and celebrity gossip Perez Hilton had covered the death of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett with poor taste and “Dis-honor.”

As examples, the Page Six staff touted a joke told by Kimmel on his comedy show, a review by Stanley of an NBC special devoted to Fawcett, and a post by Hilton that questioned the legitimacy of the early reports of Jackson’s collapse and hospitalization.

A few things. A) Jimmy Kimmel is a comedian. He doesn’t “report” on anything. Perhaps the joke was in poor taste (judge for yourself…joke in question at 2:50), but that is hardly a violation of what the Post dubs “the first commandment” of not speaking ill of the dead.

B) Stanley’s review of the NBC special noted that Fawcett’s career wasn’t exactly marked with many critical successes. Few would argue with that summation, but apparently Page Six is one entity that does. And the Post didn’t stop there. Stanley’s review contained this:

“NBC…never made the public service point that, besides abstinence, the HPV vaccine is the most promising form of prevention against this type of cancer, which in most cases is sexually acquired.”

The Post took that quote and tried to convince readers that Stanley was somehow blaming Fawcett for contracting the anal cancer in 2006 that ultimately killed her. If you’re scratching your head wondering how, join the club.

And finally, C) Hilton, whom the Post describes as a “bitchy blogger,” made an arguably valid point that Jackson had staged medical emergencies in the past ahead of highly anticipated perfermances. And of course, once the news took a tragic turn, Hilton joined the rest of the world in publishing sympathies and tributes.

NY Post: "Wacko," "King of Popping Pills," "Don't speak ill of the dead." Seriously.

But what truly earns the Post a spot in the Mediacrity blog this week is their curious placement of the story, entitled “Dead Celebrities Dis-Honored,” on their website. As of Saturday morning at 10am, the story is placed just under a rotating banner of their top headlines. And what is their top story? “King of Pain,” the Post’s headline announcing Jackson’s death. Without so much as the click of a mouse, the Post calls Jackson “the king of popping pills” and “Wacko,” and simultaneously chastises the media for speaking ill of the dead.

And we haven’t even mentioned the times that the Post has spoken ill of the living.

On Sunday’s episode of Family Guy, Fox’s wildly successful animated comedy created by Seth MacFarlane, Lois Griffin takes a job at Fox News, where she discovers (surprise!) that they are only interested in forwarding conservative talking points.

The episode is just the latest in a series of rebukes against the television home of such conservative luminaries as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck by other arms of the News Corporation. During the elections, Family Guy went after John McCain’s campaign, and several prominent Fox executives, including outgoing COO Peter Chernin who was featured in this episode, have held generous fundraisers for the same Democrats that Fox News attacks on a daily basis.

Similar inter-company feuds have surfaced elsewhere, most recently between MSNBC and CNBC, two cable news channels operated by NBC Universal. But none exemplify the same stark contrast that News Corp. holdings do. The problem that Fox News faces is that its boss Rupert Murdoch is a businessman first and conservative second. Fox News has been a cash cow for Murdoch, but so has Fox Network and Family Guy: just last year, Murdoch locked down Seth MacFarlane for the network with a contract worth over $100 million.

How about that for some irony? A conservative news network, arguably the only successful one in the US, attacked ruthlessly by its own parent company because of free market principles.

Watch the episode in question right here!

Update 6:33p: Fox News has released a preview for tonight’s episode of The O’Reilly Factor, and it looks like Amanda Terkel’s segment will air tonight. As much as it may pain you, watch tonight and see what they report. We will try and get hold of Amanda later this week for her comment, and THEN you can decide.

Amanda Terkel, a blogger for Think Progress (which is a project of the Center for American Progress just like us), has been the latest victim of Bill O’Reilly’s thug producers.

Terkel wrote on the blog about the Alexa Foundation’s curious decision to invite O’Reilly to speak at a fundraiser last week. The Alexa Foundation is a support organization for rape victims, while O’Reilly has gone so far as to suggest that women who dress a particular way or consume too much alcohol should expect to be raped.

Apparently Terkel was ambushed by notorious sleazebag Jesse Watters, who has gone after other notable O’Reilly critics like Keith Olbermann,  Newsday editor John Mancini, and The New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg:

Read her account of how the interview went down.

Keep an eye out for the segment this week (see update above) on the O’Reilly factor, and note what they choose to air. We’ll be trying to get an interview with Terkel in the coming days.