February 20, 2012
I haven”t had a sip of alcohol in thirty years and I”ve never been fond of hanging out with retarded people, but if one is foolish enough to establish any presence whatsoever on social media, it’s mathematically impossible to avoid people who act drunk and retarded.
One is undeniably afflicted with an extra chromosome if they ever argue on the Internet, so color me a chronically recidivist Mongolian idiot for recently arguing online with a standup comic who can”t see the irony in throwing his flabby bulk behind the OWS movement, which I see as basically a huge crowd of hecklers.
He has simultaneously accused me of “preaching anarchy” as well as being a “fascist” and a “libertarian.” To be fair, he also wrote, “Not everything has to make sense””good thing for him that it doesn”t. He quotes lyrics from The Clash amid political discussions and also appears to have a psychedelic painting of Che Guevara above his computer. I”ve recently discovered he describes himself as a “revolutionary socialist,” but the only time I ever met him”a 2005 party in Death Valley”my general impression was that he’s a “drunken boob.”
Like the boundlessly patient and intermittently forgiving man I am, I repeatedly asked him to explain his murky allegations that the OWS protesters are “oppressed,” and he repeatedly avoided the question. At one juncture during our repartee he brought up Fox News, at which point I informed him I don”t watch Fox News. I again asked him to explain his comment about oppression. He disappeared for ten days and finally came back with this:
Not really sure what you’re trying to do really. Your writing seems clever but the bottom line is I can get the same point of view from FOX.
Since I hate team sports and don”t classify myself politically, when someone accuses me of deriving my opinions from Fox News”or even that my opinions reflect those of Fox News”it comes off like a Christian telling an atheist, “You must read the Koran.” I”d previously endured this inane accusation 999 times, but since the possibly drunk and retarded standup comic was the thousandth one to make it, the bells went off, the confetti and balloons came falling down, and I decided to do this article about a relatively new logical fallacy I”m calling argumentum ad Fox Newsem.
I spend much of my online time skeet-shooting at similar lazily tossed memes: that if you criticize the government or public unions you”re a willing livery driver for plantation-owning oligarchs, or that if you cast the slightest aspersion at one side you by default belong to the other side. So let’s examine the latest tard-meme in the assembly line: If you say anything that offends progressive zombies, you must be a Fox News zombie.
The Fox News (or “Faux News” or “Faux Noise”) cable channel was established in 1996, but it seems like only the past three or four years that self-identified leftists, liberals, and progressives held a secret meeting and collectively decided that the magical phrase “You must watch Fox News” effectively shuts down any argument and renders the person accused of watching Fox News the loser.
It’s also a sneery smarmo-snarky putdown, as it seems to imply that the accused is an empty vessel incapable of arriving at any opinions without having them pumped into their skull by a corporate TV fiefdom. This sort of passive gullibility may be true of most people, but it’s also true of those who unquestioningly swallow liberal TV propaganda.
