February 20, 2012
Although I initially told my verbal combatant that I”d never seen Fox News, upon a scan of the memory banks this has proved to be untrue. The only time in my life I”ve ever seen the channel on television was in a Honolulu hotel room in 2007. I thought Glenn Beck seemed somewhat chubby and Red Eye seemed somewhat funny. Beyond that, I can”t remember anything. Through the years I”ve seen a smattering of Fox News video clips online, usually in the course of researching an article. But I”ve never cited them as a source, and I can”t see how they”ve ever influenced any of my opinions, even the stupid ones.
So in real hours and minutes, I”ve seen the Fox News channel far less than I”ve seen progressive pod-peas lecturing the world that Fox News doesn”t deserve to exist. Have you noticed that those who reflexively accuse others of being brainwashed by Fox News always act a tad brainwashed themselves? The “You must listen to Fox News” crowd tends to be the sort of partisan-psychosis Media Matters automata who”ll toss blanket condemnations at the entire Fox empire simply because a couple audience members in a Fox-sponsored debate booed at a gay soldier or because a few commenters got all niggly with the racial epithets in Fox’s live feed of Whitney Houston’s funeral.
We are told that Fox News is funded by the rich and powerful, and although that is true, the implication seems to be that no other major media are. In dollars and cents, Fox’s News Corp. is hardly the most powerful when it comes to oligarchic media ownership.
Fox viewers are routinely depicted as dumb corn-shucking banjo-playing Swamp Caucasians, but a 2007 Pew poll found those who watch The O”Reilly Factor are roughly as informed as those who listen to NPR and watch The Daily Show. A recent Fairleigh Dickinson University study said that Fox viewers in New Jersey were less well-informed about current events than people who watch no news at all.
People who watch no news at all? That would be me. And, yes, I”d presume I”m more well-informed than your average Fox viewer, since I”m neither average nor a Fox viewer.
As far as I can tell, Fox News is mostly Irish guys and blonde chicks who say we need to fight Israel’s wars for them, so I wouldn”t say I”m generally sympathetic to their politics. So to settle the topic hopefully forever”although there are too many drunk and retarded people for that wish to ever come true”I don”t watch Fox News and don”t agree with most of their propaganda.
To me Fox does not seem “Fair & Balanced“ as their trademarked slogan claims. It’s transparently biased, but whether it leans toward “the right” would require a thousand-year marathon of defining that term, so I”d say they”re biased in favor of Republicans. I”ve never been a registered Republican, and the only time I”ve ever voted for a Republican was in a recent local election during a quixotic, ill-fated attempt to oust my mentally handicapped Congressman. And I made that decision based on Armed Services Committee footage of my mentally handicapped Congressman wondering whether islands can capsize, not anything I”d seen on Fox.
Last year as I was preparing to write about the Seven Ideas You Can Never Discuss on Television, one of the ideas I”d selected was that you weren”t ever allowed to question the Federal Reserve’s sanctity. But while preparing the article, Glenn Beck announced he”d be doing a whole episode of his show about the Federal Reserve, so I shelved that item because it seemed like it was a topic that wasn”t entirely banned from discussion. Only twelve days after that show aired (and after the “Seven Ideas” article was published), Fox News and Glenn Beck announced they”d be parting ways. So maybe you”re only allowed to discuss the Federal Reserve once on television, then you”re blackballed.
Recently after delivering what I found to be a rather stirring speech about the two-party fraud”it definitely had me nodding my head more than anything I”d heard from a politician in decades”Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show was canceled. It was originally speculated that the speech got Napolitano fired, but it turns out that the Fox Business channel had canceled its entire primetime lineup at once.
Rumor has it that Napolitano will be joining Glenn Beck on a new TV project.
Wait”a new TV network that’s openly critical of both the Federal Reserve and the two-party system? Forget about my aversion to television”how do I subscribe?
