Posted on 12/05/2011 5:18:54 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Fox Business News Calls Muppets Communist; Debate Goes Viral
A segment on the network was highlighted by Media Matters, reigniting a conversation about whether or not there are political messages in children's movies.
If you Googled news about “Muppets” on Monday you were treated to hundreds of news stories and blog items debating whether Disney’s lovable creatures were Communists or not. You can thank Fox Business News and Media Matters for that.
Eric Bolling of Follow the Money set the stage on Friday when he hosted a 7-minute segment that argued that The Muppets film – featuring bad-guy oilman Tex Richman -- promotes a left-wing agenda.
“We’re teaching our kids class warfare. Where are we, Communist China?” Bolling said.
That line – along with the rest of the conversation – irked Media Matters, the progressive watchdog group and No. 1 enemy of Fox News Channel and sister channel FBN. So on Monday it slapped its logo on a video of the segment and sent it around the Internet.
“Liberal Hollywood depicting a successful businessman as evil – that’s not new,” Bolling said while introducing his first guest, Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog organization.
“It’s amazing how far the left will go just to stop – to manipulate your kids,” Gainor said, “to convince them – to give them the anti-corporate message.”
“Is liberal Hollywood,” asks Bolling, “using class warfare to kind of brainwash our kids?”
Gainor answers in the affirmative and lists as examples Ted Turner’s Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Disney’s Cars 2 and Nickelodeon’s The Big Green Help.
“Ultimately, what they’re telling kids is what they told you in the movie The Matrix: that mankind is a virus on poor, old Mother Earth,” Gainor said.
Bolling’s next guest agreed. “It’s brainwashing in the most obvious form, right? I just wish liberals could leave little kids alone,” said Andrea Tantaros, co-host of The Five on Fox News.
The Washington Post picked apart the argument, as did the New York Daily News. The item got the most traction, though, at more partisan outlets on both ends of the political spectrum.
“Painting businessmen as evil isn’t anything new. And it would certainly fall in line with a liberal Hollywood message,” a writer at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze wrote.
“In Hollywood, daring to cast a Muslim character can be considered a hate crime, but repeatedly casting businessmen, Christians and Southerners as villains is enlightened,” says an item at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood.
The Blaze and Big Hollywood are both on the right. Examples on the left include:
Gothamist.com: “Oh, Fox Business News, never change. In one of those ‘if it weren’t real we would think it were an Onion story’ moments, Fox Business show Follow the Money recenty had a segment in which they warn that the new Muppets movie is going to ‘brainwash’ our children into socialist plushies.”
The Huffington Post: “It ain’t easy being green, but according to Fox Business, Kermit the Frog and his Muppet friends are reds…. The Teletubbies were unavailable for comment. Mahna-Mahna.”
Others weighing in on the hot debate were MSNBC, Perez Hilton, Entertainment Weekly and Slate.
I remember the day when I had to climb under my desk and croutch down with my head between my knees for the nuclear attack drill. Who was that bad guy that was going to bomb my region that had Boing Aircraft, Fort Lewis Army base and McCord Airforce Base? After the drill my sweet Sister Mary Aloysius did not mince words about Soviet Communism. With tears in her eyes she told how the first thing they would do is separate father from mother and brother and sister. She told how they would indoctrinate the children to renounce Christ and shoot the parents who refused the same. She told us that Communism was evil and ruled by Satan and did not want a nation with freedom and a people that believed in God. She rolled down the map of the world and showed how they planned to take over America. I will never forget her discussions about Communism.
These OWS people are ruled by Satan. Communism is alive and well through them. Communism has come to us just like Sister Mary Aloysius showed us on the map.
Huh? Jim Henson developed the Muppets, and he died quite a few years ago. I don't recall ever hearing about his politics, but he did build an empire.
Mark
If you didn’t hear about his politics, you weren’t listening.
I was going to take my 2 sons and two boys to go see the muppet movie over the break. Now I think I will find a local business and take my dollars eleswhere. Thanks for the post.
We got to fight back with our cash! The abolition of abortion and the destruction of the hollywood empire should be the 2 main goals of the tea party.
I’m a lifelong fan of the Muppet Show (the original TV show from the 1970s) and I’m also a Ron Paul supporter. A common theme on the TV show was that the Muppet studio was under constant threat of being shut down for one reason or another. The show is not communist. On the contrary, it leans very heavily in the libertarian/anarchist direction.
It was in the late 70s that I encountered the asshole.
Save your money, the movie really stinks! Aside from the groan-inducing oil baron cliché, the plot was plodding and the few actual gags fell flat. At the halfway point my three year old son told my husband “Daddy I’m all done with this movie!” Seemed to last an hour too long.
What a shame now, that my kids think the Muppets are boring; they brought my family so much joy in the ‘70s and ‘80s with the original Muppet Show.
Dude did he do something to you? Btw I think it’s hillarious about your definition of a muppet.
“Dude did he do something to you?”
He was just a loong hair creep that asked where the muppet metting was.
I had never heard of a muppet and thought the creep was drunk or high on dope and just responded what’s a muppet, a hairlip puppet.
He got real incensed and said he was the inventer of the muppets and I said well tough shit!
I still don’t know what a muppet is.
Lol
Marianette + Puppet = Muppet
What does that have to do with his politics?
I didn’t post the god damn stupid article!!!
You’re all class.
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