nancy pelosi

Progressives cheered when it was announced Wednesday that Glenn Beck would be "transitioning" off his Fox News show. Beck's not gone for good, of course, but his daily screeds against the likes of Van Jones and Frances Fox Piven will be somewhat more limited -- perhaps to radio. That news aside, though, it's been a rough year in media. NPR and PBS are under attack, newspapers and magazines are still struggling to make ends meet, and with a new war, hundreds of anti-woman, anti-union, anti-immigrant bills popping up around the country, the progressive independent media is stretched thin as a pancake. Distributed by Tubemogul.

John Boehner took charge of the House of Representatives with a bang -- a really big bang, from a really big gavel. Also a few tears, of course, and a dramatic reading of the Constitution -- though Nancy Giles notes that the Republicans might be surprised as to what they find in there, as they tend to treat it more like a game of Mad Libs. Meanwhile, the contest for who's going to lead the Republican National Committee seems to come down to who has bigger guns, and people are discussing excising the N-word--yes, that one--from Mark Twain's classic, Huckleberry Finn. Nancy, a contributor to CBS's Sunday Morning, joins us to discuss all this and more.

Bart Stupak is retiring. The man who earned the enmity of pro-choicers across America with his grandstanding over the rights of women in health care reform has decided not to run for reelection, stating as his reason that the bill he did his best to kill got passed. Is it time to celebrate? Rep. Stupak, from upper Michigan, represents a chunk of rural residents who tended, before him, to elect Republicans. He's now found himself in the unenviable position of being hated by women's rights advocates AND the criminalization crowd. In terms of gains for Democrats, Michael Moore has noted that Stupak hasn't been all bad -- he's supported gun control legislation, taking on the NRA -- Moore calls him a “decent guy.” Now he's politically defunct. Stupak, in other words, is the most prominent face of a big problem for progressives within the Democratic party: what to do about the conservadems? They may snatch a seat from the GOP, but what's the good, if they spend most of their time in office fighting against the party and wearing down the supposedly Democratic agenda while they're at it. The good news in this case, is there's no longer any reason for Democrats in Michigan not to support prochoice former schoolteacher Connie Saltonstall for Stupak's seat. But the bigger question's this. What's politics? If you're a party that claims to have beliefs, do you go to where the voters are, perfecting the art of the easy road to a graspable majority? Or is politics, rather, the effort to shift opinion towards what you believe is right? The worst outcome of all is Stupak's -- falling victim to a bit of both. The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com. Distributed by Tubemogul.

The right wing's favorite political football, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has announced that it will be closing down. What brought down the once-strong force for justice for low-income Americans? Concerted attacks from the right were the main cause, but, Jim Naureckas notes, inaccurate reporting by the nation's major news outlets didn't help. Naureckas is the editor of Extra!, the magazine put out by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the media watchdog organization, and he joins Laura to talk about the problems with the newspapers' accounts of the ACORN saga. The most oft-asked question after the historic passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as the health care bill, is "How does this affect me?" While we can't answer all your individual questions in a 30-minute show (or a week of 30-minute shows), we thought we'd pull in some experts to lay out what's in the new law. Jacob Hacker, Yale professor, is known as "The Father of the Public Option," and Maggie Mahar is the author of Money-Driven Medicine and editor of HealthBeatBlog.org, and they join us to break down the pluses and minuses of the biggest social reform legislation since the Johnson era. What does FOX News have to do with the demise of ACORN? According to this segment from our friends at Brave New Films, quite a lot. FOX's lead sent other news outlets scurrying after the non-story of James O'Keefe's infamous "pimp and prostitute" video, and kept up a steady drumbeat that saw the organization stripped of funds and forced to close its doors.