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Someone's got to stand up for the bigots and leave it to Caribou Barbie to use this as an excuse to get herself back in the spotlight again. I hate to break it to her, but those who want to boycott Chick-fil-A are exercising those freedoms she claims she's so concerned about as well.

Here she is on Greta Van Susteren's show Tuesday evening:

VAN SUSTEREN: But first, the sizzling political controversy over a fast food chain. Chick-Fil-A is at the center of a political storm. Why? Well, the company's president openly opposes gay marriage, Dan Cathy saying gay marriage invites God's judgment on our nation.

And then came the responses, mayors of several cities recently banning Chick-Fil-A. There's also an on-line petition to boycott the chain. But now the counter-protest begins, some conservative political leaders urging people to support the restaurant chain, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin even tweeting photos of herself and her husband, Todd, at a Texas Chick- Fil-A. [...]

Let me start with this Chick-Fil-A and the picture of you and Todd. I'm curious, are you jumping into this because of the cause or because of the response by some, and most notably some mayors calling for a boycott?

PALIN: Well, that calling for the boycott is a real -- has a chilling effect on our 1st Amendment rights. And the owner of the Chick-Fil-A business had merely voiced his personal opinion about supporting traditional definition of marriage, one boy, one girl, falling in love, getting married. And having voiced support for kind of that cornerstone of all civilization and all religions since the beginning of time, he then basically getting crucified.

I'm speaking up for him and his 1st Amendment rights and anybody else who would wish to express their not anti-gay people sentiment, but their support of traditional marriage, which President Obama and Joe Biden, they both supported the exact same thing until just a few months ago, when Obama had to flip-flop to shore up the homosexual voter base.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, there's nothing like a controversy to draw sort of unusual allegiances. Whoopi Goldberg, for instance, agrees with you on -- not on the gay marriage issue, but on the 1st Amendment issue, and she objects to calling for people to boycott it. So it's always interesting how controversy draws interesting people together.

PALIN: Well, anybody who is a protection -- somebody who wants to protect our Constitution, all of our constitutional rights, including that freedom of speech, should speak out on behalf of this individual, whose business is being harmed by those who are intolerant and are bigoted and are hypocritical because they don't agree with this man's personal opinion and the sentiment that he shared and they want to see him shut down and shut out of some communities.

That is the most narrow-minded and intolerant view that they can take, very hypocritical. So those who protect the Constitution, all of our rights, I would think, would stand up and be proud Americans and say, Thank God we have our 1st Amendment rights.

Of course, we've known for a long time that Palin is deeply confused about what the hell the First Amendment actually says. But then, what can you expect from a self-proclaimed "constitutionalist"?

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During his Fox Business special, Bad Speech which reaired on their sister network, Fox News this Saturday, John Stossel highlighted several incidences which he called "assaults on speech," the first of which was the firing of Pat Buchanan from MSNBC.

Apparently both Buchanan and Stossel are terribly upset with Van Jones' organization, Color of Change, for exercising their own free speech in protesting the kind of hatred Pat Buchanan had been peddling for ages now. Here's their petition which Stossel read part of to Buchanan:

Below is the message we'll send to MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC News President Steve Capus on your behalf. You can add a personal message using the box on the right.

I'm writing to demand that you fire Pat Buchanan immediately. Buchanan has a long and consistent history of peddling white supremacist ideology as legitimate political commentary, on your network and elsewhere. He recently went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book -- which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the "End of White America."

Pat Buchanan has the right to express his views, but he's not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions. If MSNBC and NBC want to be seen as trusted, mainstream sources of news and commentary, you need to fire Buchanan now.

Stossel only read the portion where they said he peddled white supremacist ideology and his response was to say he didn't know what that means. Stossel also read part of the list from this post by Think Progress: Why MSNBC Dumped Pat Buchanan: His 10 Most Outrageous Statements:

3. Claimed Jerry Sandusky’s atrocities are because of “Homosexual marriage.” Buchanan appeared on a right-wing radio show on November 15 to make some convoluted comparisons: “Let’s take this Penn State thing…these horrors, there’s an organization that marches in the gay pride parade in New York called—used to—called the North American Man Boy Love Association, which advocated voluntary sex along the lines of exactly what was going on at Penn State. Many of our political icons have marched in that parade right behind that NAMBLA float […] This is now, homosexual marriage is now the civil rights cause of the decade.”

Buchanan's response was to just start laughing and deny he made the statement. Stossel didn't bother to point out that the link goes to a Media Matters post with the audio of the interview, so people could go listen for themselves and hear what he said.

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Fox just hates boycotts... or at least they do if they're aimed at the likes of Rush Limbaugh, or the American Legislative Exchange Council, otherwise known as ALEC. Then they really hate anyone interfering with their favorite right wing flame thrower, or with these corporations' "freedom of speech," or their freedom to intervene in our legislative agenda to keep their profit margins up.

Now that it appears Coca-Cola has decided to leave the organization after pressure from Color of Change and other progressive groups, Fox News is out there doing some damage control for ALEC.

What I find humorous about this is I'm pretty sure Fox would prefer that no one even knows who ALEC and their organization are. I'm fairly sure they'd have preferred, as would those who are working for the Koch brothers funded organization, that their name, their agenda or how they operate would never be mentioned in our corporate media. They're worried about some real fallout if they're finally resorting to putting a spokesperson on air.

Here's more from Media Matters on Kelly's interview -- Fox Rushes To Defend ALEC After Coca-Cola Cuts Ties With Group:

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After first taking up for Rush Limbaugh and calling the campaign to go after his advertisers “fascist” Bill O'Reilly, with the help of Laura Ingraham decided to attack Media Matters as well for supposedly taking out of context what he said after his trip to Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem.

O'Reilly and Ingraham apparently are unaware that there are these things called recording devices where there's a record of what you actually said which can be played back later to prove you're lying.

O'REILLY: They did to me on this ahhh... I don't even remember but... I went to Sylvia's restaurant with Al Sharpton, I don't know, five or six years ago and we did the thing on the radio...

INGRAHAM: Ah... yeah.

O'REILLY: Where I said I was talking about my grandmother and how fearful she was of African Americans, because she never met one.

INGRAHAM: Right.

O'REILLY: My grandmother literally, not knowing African Americans... and I said no, I can take my grandmother into Sylvia's restaurant, where you see a top flight restaurant...

INGRAHAM: Right.

O'REILLY: …that's no different than any other restaurant, my grandmother might have been swayed if she did not have these very narrow opinions.

INGRAHAM: I remember.

O'REILLY: So I was trying to do a good thing.

INGRAHAM: Yeah.

O'REILLY: And at Media Matters, absolutely took it out of context, twisted it around and then tried to get me fired... tried to get the black community... but thank god they didn't rally, but tried to get me off the air, because of that!

Here's our original post when this first happened back in 2007 -- Bill O'Reilly Surprised At Civility Of Black Restaurant Patrons.

And here's the Media Matters post he was complaining about -- O'Reilly surprised "there was no difference" between Harlem restaurant and other New York restaurants. I don't see any mention of his grandmother in the transcript and O'Reilly conveniently left out any references to m-f-ing iced tea during this segment with Ingraham.

Here's the audio of O'Reilly's show where he claimed he was being taken out of context for anyone that didn't follow the link back to our post from '07.

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From this Monday's The Young Turks, host Cenk Uygur, David Sirota and our own managing editor here at Crooks & Liars, Tina Dupuy discussed the recent boycott of Rush Limbaugh's sponsors, Bill Maher's defense of Rush Limbaugh, concerns over those boycotts leading to censorship and where freedom of speech begins and ends versus the right to having your voice heard over the public airways.

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Saturday Night Live took their turn knocking Rush Limbaugh for the recent exodus of sponsors after his attack on Sandra Fluke, which at last count were at 98.

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As we've already discussed here, Bill Maher has become somewhat of a punching bag from both sides of the aisle over the last week or so, both for saying that liberals looked bad for not accepting Rush Limbaugh's "apology" and with the false equivalencies by the right, screaming that what he said about Sarah Palin is somehow the equivalent of what Rush Limbaugh did with his attack on Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke.

On this Friday night's Real Time on HBO, Maher addressed both, starting with his criticism from the left.

MAHER: Let me tell you something. I got crap from both the left and the right this week because... okay... let me address the left first, because I found this more disheartening. They were very mad at me because I tweeted that people like Rush Limbaugh, who I absolutely disagree with, I've never said a good word about him. I did a whole monologue on what an asshole he was only a week ago. But I said, I don't like it that people are made to disappear when they say something, or people try to make them disappear when they say something you don't like.

That's America. Sometimes you're made to feel uncomfortable, okay? I mean, can we put this in perspective? No one died. A guy made a bad joke, a bad joke because a., it was a disgusting sentiment that he was evoking and also because it wasn't even a joke. He's a stupid fat f**k whose not funny and it annoys me that... it annoys me that people people who cannot keep two disparate thoughts in their own mind, lump me in together with him and say I'm defending him. I'm not defending him. I'm defending living in a country where people don't have to be afraid that they might go out of the boundaries for one minute. Do we all want to be talking like White House spokesman?

Okay, fair enough on a few points like defending free speech and the fact that it's unfair to lump the two of you together. But I'll make a few points in rebuttal. First of all, you did not just say that you didn't like the idea of people pushing to get Limbaugh off the air. You said liberals looked bad for not accepting his apology. What Rush Limbaugh did was not an apology.

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Ed Schultz slams Hugh Hewitt for his article at the Washington Examiner: Just say no to Government Motors and Obamacars. Give 'em hell Ed!

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Keith calls out Bill O'Reilly and the Fox News Channel for the part they may have played in the death of Dr. George Tiller. He notes Frank Schaeffer's apology at the Huffington Post for the part he and his father played in radicalizing the anti-abortion movement. O'Reilly of course, thinks he bears no responsibility for his actions and his words.

Keith has a recommendation for all of us who disagree with the hate speech on Fox with how to deal with it:

So, what to do? Viewer boycotts mean little. You are already here. You are not watching Fox News channel. Advertiser Boycotts are of limited value. Most make barely a dent in a company. Besides which in this economy, an advertiser who found its sales boosted by association with malaria would start breading mosquitoes.

If there is a solution, it is perhaps an indirect boycott. It is probably your experience as it has been mine that stores, bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, often show Fox News on their televisions. Don't write a letter. Don't make a threat. Just get up and explain if they will not change the channel, leave the place and say calmly why it is you are taking your business elsewhere.

If you know a viewer of that channel, show them this tape, or just the tape of the attacks on Dr. Tiller that set the stage for his assassination. Fox News channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism. Not until its profits begin to decline, when its growth stops. So, not so much a boycott here as a quarantine, because this has got to stop.

Keith pledged to retire his imitations of Bill O'Reilly as part of the boycott but not criticizing his words.