My point was: It's not that I won't listen to the liberal POV. (Anyone who's watched booktv knows they focus on far more liberal authors than they do conservatives.)
Fox News is a blessing because there's finally a television source for news presented mostly by those who appear to share my point of view. (I'm an OpinionJournal.com/Best of the Web and SnappleFace.com junkie for the same reason.) ... But, that doesn't mean I automatically dismiss someone because he or she doesn't think like I do.
I do dismiss somebody, however, when I find the manner in which s/he presents those opinions to be offensive -- either because s/he cites faked information (the cartoon of the social security granny being pushed down the stairs comes to mind), or, in Julian's case, when he's spouting the liberal lines meant to set things up so that no matter what happens and what way Operation Iraqi Freedom played out, those of that mindset could say that President Bush had failed. (It didn't take those predicted weeks and weeks of house-to-house combat, so now it's back to failing to grant the military a fraction of the time to find WMD the liberals insisted we give the inspectors, harping about *our* failure at diplomacy, the preemptive consequences garbage, or insisting that a coalition of 50ish countries equals a unilateral action.)
I get fed up with anyone who is a party to the "repeat a lie enough times it becomes the truth" -- like the FORMER Pres. Clinton and "it was all about sex" mentality. Julian Phillips seems to me to be the type too lazy to do enough research to formulate his own opinions, so he repeats those lies and thinks that makes him profound.
Julian Phillips seems to me to be the type too lazy to do enough research to formulate his own opinions, so he repeats those lies and thinks that makes him profound. Agreed; and Fox is a blessing, for that very reason. I wasn't implying that you tune out simply because someone doesn't share all your views, at least not intentionally. But people, psychologically speaking, cannot comfortably listen to anyone whose viewpoint is diametrically opposed to their own, no matter how articulately presented. It's called cognitive dissonance: "A person who has dissonant or discrepant cognitions is said to be in a state of psychological dissonance, which is experienced as unpleasant psychological tension....If dissonance is experienced as an unpleasant drive state, the individual is motivated to reduce it."
Reducing it means taking some kind of action, i.e., changing the channel, justifying your own belief, looking for flaws in the "wrong" views listened to, or, ultimately changing your own previously held opinon. The problem with simply changing one's opinion, however, is that depending upon the importance of your previously held opinions (no matter how wrong, i.e., Julian's in this case), most people seek to justify their wrong opinions because to change an opinion means to admit one was wrong. The more important it is for someone to believe they are right, or their opinion is correct, the harder it will be for them to alter their erroneous beliefs. Therefore, people like Julian seek to justify why they're right.
But the honest, and logical, refutations by other Fox anchors/analysts have been pursuading many liberals to alter their illogical and unsubstantiated beliefs. Up against this logic, Julian's continued diatribes are exposed for what they are: foolishness.