I rarely get a chance to watch Fox News. Maybe it’s a good thing.
I read the ratings, lots of people watch Fox News. The odds are that many of them agree with the on-air personalities. They can’t all be idiots however, even though the content of the presentation is certainly idiotic.
That’s the viewers. Many of them watch like I do, either for amusement or out of a fascination with the grotesquery of it all. The Fox on-air personalities, and their guest performers, cannot escape so easily. They have a much more certain diagnosis.
One of my favorite movies is “Starship Troopers,” and one of my favorite devices in that movie is the clips of news from a TV station of the future. (Here I’m repeating myself. Regulars may know this already.) The show in the movie juxtaposes two “experts” with opposing views on a split screen and they shout each other down, weird caricatures of academics, bug-eyed, in eccentric professorial outfits. All of them appear to be slightly crazy, and nowhere near as smart as they think they are. The overdrawn characters from this movie have been fully realized on Fox News, without the entertainment value.
Fox News is a constant parade of lazy eyed, slack-jawed losers with bad hair cuts, pontificating ad nausuem according to a script that is designed to get them more air time. It’s hard to tell who’s worse: the Fox personalities or the so-called experts. Who is crazier? Who is stupider? Who is more delusional? Who is more perfectly bonded to the agit-prop agenda set by their corporate sponsors? Make no mistake. This is not all about ratings and money, there is a sub-text of reactionary fervor. Fox News itself is aligned with the forces that wish to, and are, you might say, restoring the ascendency of the super-rich, and destroying all of the progress that our society made during the Twentieth Century.
Sometimes there is a perfect storm of political misdirection. I happened across an interview of Rupert Murdoch conducted by Neil Cavutto. It was the perfect circle jerk of all time, a symphony of corporate-crypto-fascist talking points.
These Foxettes, all nicotine and gravy, these hyper-caffeinated, over gelled, boiled dry morons, struggle desperately to suck whatever tit presents itself in their desperate attempt to achieve the new American dream: Celebrity Unencumbered By Talent Or Achievement. Unathletic, not particularly smart, and non-entrepreneurial, they chose Right Wing Media as their avenue to success, and, of course, money. Not one of them believes a word they say.
I may be deranged about Fox News, but that’s all in good fun. Fox News is deranged, and it’s hurting the country we love. So bear that in mind when you watch Fox News.
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2 comments:
Fred,
I would strongly advise that you get the wife and kids out of the country as soon as possible. I'm sure you are receiving updates on a regular basis. It's too late. Liberals and progressives are now considered fascists, and authoritarian conservatives are now considered our only possible saviors. On that note: Happy New Year.
I often say that the Sixties were like "Tale of Two Cities," ". . . the best of times . . . the worst of times." The Twentieth Century was like that too.
In the Sixties, we got great music, good drugs, fast cars, and more sex, but we also got racial conflict, the Cold War, and the Vietnem War. In the Twentieth Century, we got huge societal advances pushed through by Liberal and Social Democrat politicians, advances that improved life for most people, but we also got almost incomprehensibly terrible wars, Communism, Fascism, the Holocausts, there were a few, and Disco.
We'll always live with the accrued horror, but it looks like the benefits are going the way of all flesh.
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