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.

[TaxRelief]

It is called "venting", I believe. LOL

[F.J. Mitchell]

Isn't that really the partically shaved face of an ape?

[nutmeg]

FoxFan ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent FoxFan list.

[anncoulteriscool]

Only goons and moron read creative loafing!

[anncoulteriscool]

That 911 son was an absolute creep...O'reilly was right to do what he did.

[nutmeg]

Fortunately, the PC wordworks has coined a new euphemism to replace the ugly word "retarded." It's "intellectually disabled," and we have it just in time. How else could we describe a majority that accepts the logic of "supporting the troops"? Protest as I might, a local columnist explained to me, once the soldiers are "locked and cocked" I owe them not only my prayers for their safe deliverance but unqualified endorsement of their mission, no matter how immoral and ill-advised it may seem to me.

According to this woeful logic, whoever controls the armed forces in the country where you live owns your conscience and your soul. It mandates unanimous civilian support for King Herod's soldiers smashing Hebrew babies against doorposts. It holds our soldiers hostage to silence our common sense, independent judgment and moral autonomy -- the foundations of each thinking individual's self-respect, not to mention the foundations of every theory of democratic government.

Unbelievable.

[nutmeg]

This has to be one of the most despicable, venomous screeds by a liberal I've read in a long time. Note: You don't have to be a Fox News fan or even watch television to "appreciate" this one.

[Jay D. Dyson]

I'll bet you're a big hit down at the schoolyard too.

No way I could top you, especially considering that your reptertoire consists of you jumping up and down, screaming...

Look, sport...you were amusing at the start. Now you're just being petulant and shrill.

Do yourself (and the rest of us) a favor: get a clue, get a life, or get out.

-Jay

[Grampa Dave]

This is good news.

Whenever the lunatic left calls GW, Fox News, Rupert Murdock and us stupid, we win.

[Reagan Man]

Now that you're done opining and whining, I have a few suggestions for you. First, invest in a dictionary and then take several classes in debating technique from a legitimate source. From what I've seen, your knowledge of words is poor and your ability to hold a rational debate is weak. Btw, the first thing you learn in debating, is personal insults are never a viable alternative to intelligent and honest disagreement.

While your at it, stay away from liberals, keep those emotions in check and grow up already.

[TaxRelief]

After I recovered from the "jist" of Crowther's words, I began a little exercise in psychotherapy, although technically I know nothing about the field.

My analysis: He spews hate, abhors authority and depersonifies the "little people". Diagnosis: Anti-social and manic.

He reminds me of the Unabomber -- I hope his liberalism includes a distaste for weapons.

[dixierose]

I'm from Savannah too, and I started to read that article you are referring to; but I couldn't stomach it.

[laredo44]

I mean wasting one trillion US taxpayer dollars going after OBL and Saddam and not one thing has turned up, yet.

Liar.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[Publius6961]

I don't watch American TV; I would rather get my news by reading Pravda.... at least Russia is struggleing to become laizzez-faire.

Excellent!

Now, if you would just limit posting to Canuck Socialist chat sites, you could raise the IQ of discussions in both countries.
Don't let the door hit ya...

[TaxRelief]

LOL!

[nutmeg]

Don't miss this one!