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.

[Stopislamnow]

This canned response is perfectly proper.

The left is in the throes of a meltdown due to Rush, Fox News, and internet forums like Free Republic.

Just because it's a commonly used response doesn't make it less true.

Rupert Murdoch, Rush, and JimR have done a great service for our country. They deserve our praise and support and some kind of recognition nationally. Maybe Congressional Medals of Freedom.

[dark_lord]

It is all part of a coherent plan.

1st, continuously run down Fox News (and any other nonliberal media) so that the "faithful" don't even bother switching channels. Thus they "know" that Fox News is just what this guy claims. Not that they ever watch it, of course, since they already know that it is bad, right?

2nd, try to restrict access to Fox News (and any other nonliberal media) to population areas that do not currently have it. That means trying to keep it off of the cable channels where ever possible.

Finally, we can expect to see more and more lawsuits against web sites that are conservative in nature whenever they post anything from a liberal media organ (for copyright violation). The leftists haven't really caught onto this game yet, but over the next 5 years I predict that we will see more and more of that. The goal will be to sue out of existance forums like this one.

[xm177e2]

I don't think Crowther bashes Mark Twain. And, he is right about O'Reilly and Geraldo. Other than that, he's full of it.

[The Wizard]

this is just a hit piece because everyone watched Fox news and not CNNABCNBCetc.

[Blue Collar Christian]

I smell something like fish bait. You know, for trolling.

[Buckeroo]

You are lucky .... I guess.

But I will say this, I laid piles of articles here from 1999 until 2001; some of the best articles dealing with individual liberty, freedoms and rights as a function of natural conditions from our creator and based upon the US Constitution.

I don't swear by any political party .... even the cheapshots that call themselves "republicans" ... political party of Abe Lincoln: mastermind of the Great War between the North and the South.

Does that tell you something about me?

[Reagan Man]

You misunderstood my post.

I didn't call anyone a liberal. The point being, we don't need to post this liberal crap on FR and we don't need to give someone like Hal Crowther any space on the foremost conservative website around, so he can spew his gutter rhetoric.

Take it somewhere else.

[mylife]

But the scariest thing about Fox and Rupert Murdoch, the thing that renders them all fear and no fun in a time of national crisis

Does this strike anyone else as ironic?? Is there anybody that describes better than the Libs? The Sky is falling..The Sky is falling!

[Huber]

But do you feel assured about GWBush being a conservative? I mean wasting one trillion US taxpayer dollars going after OBL and Saddam and not one thing has turned up, yet. BTW, where are those WMD, promised by GWBush?

IMHO, SH's WMDs (n/i MCLs) are AWOL in Iran so we're SOL for now unless we get there PDQ, OK?

:->

[ladyinred]

Hee! It is almost fun sometimes to listen to the misery of the leftists! Now they know how we felt for 8 years. The only difference is, we had a real reason to suffer, their's is just imagined, and totally political!

[kstewskis]

This guy is a great example of Sowell's "Vision of the Annointed". Only the leftist elite is qualified to make decisions for the mentally impaired masses!

excellent book!!

[Calpublican]

"Weapon of Mass Stupidity?"

Sounds like he meant the New York Times.

[KCmark]

It's a copout. Not just on this issue, but everytime it is used. Period.

Fox is more entertaining, but not very accurate as far as I can tell. CNN still has the best reporting infrastructure.

[Blue Collar Christian]

Yes it does. You're of Libertarian concept. Close the borders, pull all our military back to the US to guard the borders, isolate ourselves from the rest of the world like an ostrich's head in the sand and grow pot.

If you want to be more clear, I'll can the streotype, as I'm sure you are not what I described above.

[chasio649]

Piece of Shiite!

[optimistically_conservative]

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I laid piles of articles here from 1999 until 2001 ...
Does that tell you something about me?

---

I've looked over some of your posts, they do say much about your cynicism and ability to critically reason.

I'll take the wager on the number of troops deployed overseas vs. immigration since your position is based on a false pretense to begin with - and I'll wager on WMD in Iraq based on international intelligence over numerous partisan administrations and UN inspection reports.

[TaxRelief]

You are right, he isn't bashing Twain. My misread.

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.

[magglepuss]

Am I wrong, or are home satellite dishes illegal in Canada?
I heard this and found it hard to believe.

[Buckeroo]

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"IMHO, SH's WMDs (n/i MCLs) are AWOL in Iran so we're SOL for now unless we get there PDQ, OK?" -- Huber

---

Are you saying that you are another complacent, bleating sheepeople bleating about their corral with the government sticking you with electric prods to pay the piper? I guess thats the first step to recovery ... believing government, no matter which political party is in charge.

[mylife]

Am I wrong, or are home satellite dishes illegal in Canada? I heard this and found it hard to believe.

thats what I understand, has somthing to do with green laws..they think its an eysore