What I learned from Fox News

Lebensborn Fox Ladies

Surreal as it may seem, watching Fox news can be fascinating.


For one thing, I have the historical perspective of reading American newspapers from the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when newspapers were unabashed about being the voice of political parties. There was no pretense of objectivity; the staff of these papers were making their case, and the language, the cartoons, the images were every bit as bad, and worse than what we see on Fox or in the Trump universe.


Rush Limbaugh in 1830 would have been just another blowhard in the storm.


NPR interviewed a former managing editor of the Washington Post who said nobody who worked on the reporting (journalist) side of the paper was allowed to have a bumper sticker for any political candidate and was forbidden from even making a contribution to any political campaign.  And I thought, "what a self important moron." He said he did not want any of his staff having in their mind a point of view, but he wanted them to remain objective and clear headed, as if a human being is incapable of separating his own opinion or inclinations from the imperative of seeing the other side. 


Did he not know that lawyers and debaters are trained to argue either side of a debate, and that is considered essential training? You arrive at the debate on Roe v Wade and you don't know which side you'll be arguing until a minute before the debate.


This whole idea of the sanctity and purity of journalists as the ultimately objective human beings, who are not sullied by a point of view was jarring. As if a gynecologist should not be able to have sex with his wife, for fear this would contaminate his relationship with his patients. He might not be able to see his female patients with objectivity and dispassion, if he harbored passions for any woman.

Lebensborn circa 1936

But watching Fox this morning was enlightening because it so clearly showed what it looks like when all pretense of objectivity is jettisoned. What this looks like is intriguing, as every story takes on a political hue.  A story about a white policeman in North Carolina who was shot in the arm by a Black man he was trying to arrest was presented as just another example of why "Black Lives Matter" is an anathema. This was followed by a video of a female police officer who was pummeled by a man she was arresting because she was afraid to shoot him because she knew the liberal media would be all over her if she shot the man.  So Fox has a point of view:  Police are the good guys. The liberal media is vilifying the police and by doing so is putting their lives at risk. The police are all that stand between us and the next Willie Horton.

She's got it.

The next segment was all about how the liberal media in cahoots with the Clinton campaign distorted Donald's Trump assertion that he will not automatically accept the results of the November 8 vote, when all he was doing was what Al Gore did in the 2000 campaign, when Gore did not concede until the re counts and the Supreme Court ruled.  That's all Donald Trump was saying; he wants to be able to protest if things are close and if things look fishy.

Lebensborn: Born to Breed Aryans

This was followed by stories about how Democrats in Texas have been going to nursing homes where they search out demented residents, where the Dems go door to door in Hispanic communities where "nobody speaks English" and in poor communities of illiterates, carrying absentee ballots and getting these demented, illiterate and non English speakers to sign these ballots, which the Dems submit.


"Well, if that isn't fraud, I don't know what is!" says one of the blondes helpfully--they are nearly all blonde on Fox--just in case the viewer at home missed the point.

Hold that Smile! Oh, Roger loves it.

Next was an "expert" who analyzed Hillary Clinton's statement from the debate in which she avowed her plan would not add a penny to the deficit and he informed his viewers that Donald Trump would get the economy going by cutting taxes on the rich and on businesses and on "everybody who pays taxes" and this would cause an economic boom, which, after a year of correction would ultimately wipe out the deficit. This professor was especially authoritative because he had a British accent.

Ms. Hoover, could fit right in on Fox

Then I flipped over to CNN, where they were interviewing a blonde, pretty woman, a Ms. Margaret Hoover, a Republican, who would have looked right at home as a Fox news woman, but she was brighter and she did not show all her teeth in the Fox grimace cum grin which all females on Fox seem to cling to as if they all had tetanus.  Alisyn Camorata interviewed them as if she did not loathe Trump (which she clearly does) and then asked the reply from a Clinton supporter, in a scene, which at least superficially looked more "fair and balanced." It was more balanced because the Trump side did get some time.

So what did I learn? I learned that if you have got as far as high school, you would recognize the Fox News as an extended infomercial for right wing views, not much difference from Rush Limbaugh, who was shown in several clips attacking the liberal media over its coverage of the Trump proclamation of not accepting the vote, unless he is the winner. But the CNN program was actually more persuasive because it at least waved in the direction of honest debate, even if it wasn't.

Uh, oh, that upper lip is beginning to droop

I might also have learned where all those "blonde" jokes come from--the ones which suggest women with blonde hair have empty heads.  I learned it is possible for a woman to stare into the camera and show an entire mouth of teeth and to hold that pose for fifteen seconds, which might not sound like a long time, but just you try that with a mirror and see how your mouth feels.