Weapons Of Mass Stupidity - (Or only stupid people watch FoxNews - Barf)

Creative Loafing (Charlotte) ^ | June 4, 2003 | HAL CROWTHER

[TaxRelief]

Fox News hits a new lowest common denominator

...The wondrous blessing God bestowed on Gustave Flaubert -- and on America's own great chroniclers of contagious stupidity, Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken -- is that they lived and died without imagining a thing like Fox News. It's easy to laugh at Rupert Murdoch's outrageous mongrel, the impossible offspring of supermarket tabloids, sitcom news spoofs, police-state propaganda mills and the World Wrestling Federation.

Fox News is an oxymoron and Cheech and Chong would have made a more credible team of war correspondents than Geraldo Rivera and Ollie North. Neither Saturday Night Live nor the 1973 film Network, Paddy Chayefsky's corrosive satire of TV news, could even approach the comic impact of Geraldo embedded, or of Fox's pariah parade, its mothball fleet of experts who always turn out to be disgraced or indicted Republican refugees. If Ed Meese, Newt Gingrich and Elliott Abrams couldn't fill your sails with mirth, you could count on the recently deposed Viceroy of Virtue and High Regent of Rectitude, my old schoolmate Blackjack Bill Bennett.

With its red-faced, hyperventilating reactionaries and slapstick abuse of lame "liberal" foils who serve them as crash dummies, Fox News could easily be taken as pure entertainment, even as inspired burlesque of the rightwing menagerie. But the problem -- in fact, the serious problem - is that Fox isn't kidding, and brownshirts aren't funny.

Harper's reports that Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly became so infuriated by the son of a 9-ll victim who opposed the war -- "I'm against it and my father would have been against it, too" -- that he cursed the man and even threatened him off-camera. A Fox TV anchor, one Neil Cavuto, celebrated the fall of Baghdad by informing all of us who opposed the war in March, "You were sickening then, you are sickening now." If reports are accurate, these troubled men are neither bad journalists nor even bad actors portraying journalists -- they're mentally unbalanced individuals whose partisan belligerence is pressing them to the brink of psychosis.

[Buckeroo]

Keep in mind that GWBush begged the UN for war back in December and then GWBush pushed his dawg of war, Colin Powell .... to beg further for war.

The UN did not agree.

Yet the USA made a war for no reason after the administration begged the UN to create additional sanctions. Something is wrong ... America is not performing it's duties; begging the world .... while not upholding our national concepts.

[MEG33]

I understand.You need not convince me of your viewpoint.I hope you find a perfect country.

[Buckeroo]

Our republic is not about lies and scoundrels .... well, we hope so. When any president says it is while begging for democracy (as both Clinton/GWBush has performed) .... America is deep, doo-doo.

[Buckeroo]

You don't understand, at all. You just swallow the government's charge that, "we need more money."

[MEG33]

I won't reply.

[Fawnn]

But he is bashing every one else that I respect and it worries me that the college kids and gen x'rs soak this paper up.

This opinion piece of another example of style trying to pass for substance.

As for those college kids, they're already being spoon fed their history via books like A People’s History of the United States, a book that according to another opinion piece/book review posted on another thread here states that "[d]espite its scholarly pretensions, the book contains not a single source citation." That’s significant -- and a significant omission! To further their agenda, liberals pass along their interpretation of history as fact (which is why they don't bother to cite their sources because they're not interested in accuracy). To them, truth isn't important; their agenda is. That's why liberals choose to give those who don't share their opinion or agenda what they consider the ultimate insult: They consider them stupid -- and in doing so, let those impressionable college students or those (like the Hwood types) worried about status know they'd be stupid as well to even contemplate giving any credence to what "the other side" has to say.

Liberals then in effect let it be known that theirs is the "educated opinion." Our president, Dan Quayle, Ronald Reagan, Fox News and those who watch it, [fill in the blank] is or are stupid, and therefore the voice of the uneducated opinion. Look at the titles they give their books, using phrases like “big, fat idiot” and “stupid white men” when books trash the right and Living History when it’s a book by one of their own.

The hatchet job that passes as a journalistic opinion piece about which this thread is based is important for us to see. Conservatives weigh all sides. We prefer to discover the facts for ourselves, and then weigh the evidence and balance that evidence with our values to form our own opinions. The fact that liberals are crying that they’re underrepresented -- or being undermined by “stupid” news outlets -- means that conservatives are gaining ground.

The left doesn’t want anyone else but them to have free speech. (Look at the grief they gave Drudge at first!)

The left is AFRAID to have their hoards -- who only vote the party line and believe anything the DemocRATs spoon feed them, usually using taxpayer dollars to do so -- read or listen to any contradictory opinions. For years that wasn't a concern because there wasn't an easily accessible voice out there. Truthful information is the enemy of liberalism. They don't want people to think for themselves. (They certainly aren't teaching school kids how to conduct an effective debate. Once they encounter facts, this inability to debate is evidence by the speed at which liberals resort to name calling instead of discourse.)

If this were an essay, I’d try to come up with a more impressive way to wrap it up. Instead, please accept this post as my “first draft” opinion on this matter. Thanks!

[Nateman]

Today, America doesn't care about anything ....

I'm more optimistic. The cracking of the liberal stranglehold on TV,the emergence of home schooling and republican victories that continue to grow is evidence to me that the tide is turning if not already turned. The best thing for the rebirth of freedom I saved for last ,it  is right before your eyes: The internet.Its getting faster, better, and cheaper to get onboard the information highway everyday. Cheer up.

[Buckeroo]

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"I won't reply." -- MEG33

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I understand. I didn't intend or want to create a situation that you would be dragged down in a public forum, particularly as great as FR. But, I always ask this little question. Where is our dignity?

[Fawnn]

Where is our dignity?

We returned dignity to the White House -- and I thank God daily for that!

[Buckeroo]

How? And has "God" done you a favor here in America, really? Prove it. Show it. Suggest more than a sentence.

I wager, you can't.

[MEG33]

I agree.

[Fawnn]

How? And has "God" done you a favor here in America, really? Prove it. Show it. Suggest more than a sentence.

I wager, you can't.

You lose!

He saw to it that I was born in the most wonderful country in the world!

I'm not such a Pollyanna to pretend that all has been perfect in my life. Far from it.

However, since you seem to believe you're justified in asking for a longer than a one-sentence reply, I'll add that God saw fit to grant me the faith to find hope to continue, regardless of the circumstances, and He chose to do so by letting me make my home in the country that lets me freely state my opinions.

[Buckeroo]

So America's political future is about religious zealots? What about the zealots that created Salem, MA ... after that that stole our nation's FIRE about individual rights? What religion allows me to have dignity and rights?

[Fawnn]

Thank you. ;)

[Buckeroo]

Your faith in GWBush is worthless; just because you believe in madmen is worthless; just because you believe in voting upon our individual rights is worthless.

May God have mercy upon your soul.

[MEG33]

I think some times a get well soon wish is timely!I have thanked God for my birth in this country.I thank God for my ability to vote,my ability to dress without a code,I thank God I may speak freely,protest, and that this land is still the greatest nation on earth.I don't agree with all and hated the Clinton blot on the Presidency.I know there is always work to do.

[weegee]

Doofus needs to realize that the Nazis did have tv and did use it for propaganda.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000646UE/104-7365168-6907925

Television Under The Swastika: The History of Nazi Television

I have not seen this documentary but it was the first match I got on the terms Nazi and Television. Certainly I was aware of their efforts, unlike Doofus.

Meanwhile Viacommie controls radio, SeeBS news, eMpTyV, and Simonized Schusters publishing. They overdubbed the boos Hitlery received with cheers who also has her own brownshirt goonsquad?

What a maroon.

[Fawnn]

May God have mercy upon your soul.

I have faith that He does.

[Buckeroo]

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"I know there is always work to do." -- MEG33

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Is there way I could hold on to one of the dollars I make on the job without begging my government to throw my hard earnings around the world?

[MEG33]

I am also thankful I am free to worship as I choose.I am thankful one is free to be a believer or not.I am thankful that I don't have to believe what the state decrees.I know with my rights I have responsibilities.