Old Fox News

This is an excerpt from a post on January 11, 2011. It’s still true that I only see Fox in hotels, but I’m traveling less than I used to. I still find the absence of any information or news on Fox a bit shocking, and the over-coifed and overcaffeinated news readers are still pushing the same evil agenda in their opinion pieces. That agenda would be that conservatives are good, peaceful people who only want what is best for America, and anyone left of about the seventy-yard line is an evil socialist who wishes to do terrible, violent harm to America and Americans. You’d think people would be tired of it by now, but you’d be wrong.

Okay, here’s the old blog quote:

“Fox News is always entertaining, especially if you enjoy getting very angry. This weekend the big news was the shooting in Arizona of a congresswoman and lots of other people. Boy, that was one talented shooter right there, what a score he ran up! If he had practiced reloading more diligently, he could have set some kind of record.

“He’d been complaining about the whole “Big Government” thing on the Internet, bitching about immigrants and “ignorance,” Jews, and “them.” He belonged to some kind of organization, “American Renaissance” or something. Where have I been hearing stuff like this for years?

“Fox News immediately went into heavy damage-control rotation. The kid, they said, was obviously a lone nut job who could not have been influenced by political rhetoric because of his insanity. Geraldo called the shooter a “drug-addled lunatic,” based on the fact that he had failed a drug screening when he tried to join the Army. It was reported that he had attended a rally for the congresswoman in 2007, offered as proof that he could not have been influenced by the last two election cycles. With their best straight faces on, the Fox news readers reported that “the Left” was trying to make political capital of the incident by claiming that “Conservatives” were somehow to blame.

“This painfully obvious deluge of exculpation only drew attention to the connection between this shooting and things like, “lock and load,” targets superimposed on politician’s faces (including that of this congresswoman when Sarah Palin targeted her for defeat by a Tea Party candidate), “don’t retreat, re-load,” and the nonsense about Second Amendment remedies. Not to mention the lurid conspiracy festival that is Glen Beck, et al.

“I’m glad that I don’t have daily access to Fox News, but it’s okay sometimes to be angered by them. The faces they make! So earnest, so heartfelt, so desperate to appear intelligent. If it weren’t all so dangerous, it would be funny.”

Back here in 2019, I’m glad to see that Gabby Giffords is still getting around okay, reassuring to see that her husband is still at her side, and interesting to note that her husband, Mark Kelly, is running for John McCain’s old senate seat. I wish them both well.