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]

I don't think you understand that I understand your perspective. I remember you several years ago against Clinton. Now, I see you take up the torch for GWBush and sympathetic newstreams, like FOXNEWS. It's like you don't understand the problems with government in America.

The problems of America are not about political alias; the problems are the major political parties controlling us which have no care about our individual freedoms. The political parties are stealing us blind creating a perpetual motion machine, called government .... it's all filled with hot air by politicians while they burn the Constitution.

And you are paying for it, no matter which major political party your believe in.

[Reagan Man]

>>>All ya gotta do is hit report abuse..

Normally I would have, but I decided to see how this trash developed and who would step forward to post a reply. =^)

[Buckeroo]

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

[TaxRelief]

For the record, I posted this thread for three reasons:

1. To make the people, like myself, who have young people whom they are trying to influence aware of what is being pushed on our kids.

2. To share my disgust at this type of rant.

3. To gloat over the liberal media's distress at Fox's success.

I am surprised at the negative reaction and I will keep it in mind for future posts.

[TaxRelief]

"Gormless twits"? Do I detect a British upbringing?

[hopper4]

The Creative Loafing paper here in Savannah featured an article after the war cautioning everyone not to forget that not all soldiers are necessarily heroes. He reminded his readers of Tailhook and the possibility that those flying our jets over there could be past or future rapists. Anything to tear them down...
We have a big art college here.

[baseballfanjm]

nor the 1973 film Network

First off, Network was in 1976. If you can't get the year right, don't bother. Anyway, FoxNews never fails to show both sides, yet is evil. This article shows ONLY an extremist liberal point of view, 90% of which is the author's opinion, and the argument is supposed to stand up? Lying hypocrite.

[bellevuesbest]

==>I don't watch American TV<==

Good! Thank you!

[Reagan Man]

>>>Do I detect a British upbringing?

Not at all. Just a traditonal conservative, living in colorful and magnificent Colorado, by way of NYCity.

[Buckeroo]

How is GWBush a "conservative"? Because he claims to be a "republican?"

[Jay D. Dyson]

Conservatives are well aware what's going on.

True...and that is because they are apprised of the rubbish coming from the Left, not because they ignore it.

There's absolutely no point in posting this trashtalk that I can see.

There's loads of points to it. First, it gives you a bird's eye view into the bird-brained Left. Second, it's sublime political humor (in its own twisted way). Third, it provides useful and ample fodder by which to shoot the triple-L's (Local Leftist Looneytunes) down with their own ammunition.

I don't like giving time and lending credence to the mindset that creates this garbage.

I appreciate your point. There are days in which I see these "BARF ALERTS" on the current topic lists and I think to myself, "Aw geez, not this **** again." But then I have my better days in which I see loads of possibilities in how I can better confront such nonsense.

PresBush understands and appreciates the old adage of keeping one's friends close and one's enemies closer.

Yup. And the way I see it, he has to deal with a lot of this tripe on a daily basis. It only makes sense that we at least make an effort to take it on as well, even if only to enhance our empathy for W's daily trials and tribulations in dealing with the Lunatic Fringe.

-Jay

[Buckeroo]

GWBush wakes up every morning and looks down at his boots and wonders how to make more government to spitshine his boots. Think about it..... the guy never cites anything about the US Constitution concerned with individual liberty and dignities unless that issue is contained within somefaroff war, around the world that he created based upon false pretense.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Hey, Mr. Crowther! You all are losing! Yeah, that's right, you're losing. You're pathetic, gun-grabbing, ivory-tower-marxist ideology tanks in the polls! Please, spare the American public your worthless drivel! You are a first-class loser who hates the freedom bestowed upon the Iraqis and Afqhanis! GO HOME (to whatever planet you came from)!

[Reagan Man]

There are better examples aorund, then this article, that conservatives can use to expose liberals for what they are. I don't believe conservatives need to revert to posting leftwing trashtalk and ridicule aimed at best leadership and institutions.

Obviously you find something worthwhile in this junk. I do not. After 35 years of political involvement, I've seen it all. I don't need to be exposed to endless reminders of the liberal agenda and I think JimRob's remarks I posted earlier on this thread, supports that idea.

[Reagan Man]

correction:

... aimed at our best leadership ...

[Reagan Man]

You're right Buckeroo. Algore would have made a better president then George W.Bush.

NOT!!!

I've read your bogus rhetoric for years on FR. You're an impractical idealist, living in a complicated world and you don't understand how to deal with it.

[Buckeroo]

Is that within our Constitutional restraints upon government or your deceit to manage despair about your political bias?

[Reagan Man]

As usual, you make no sense at all.

[Buckeroo]

Impractical ... yeah ... trillions of tax payer dollars chasing after warlords everywhere around the globe that created the situation (HERE) in America upon 9/11.

Impractical ..... tell me more.

[Buckeroo]

Our federal government is supposed to guard and defend our borders .... where were they on 9/11? Donut shops? Letting illegals infiltrate our nation because it is an "economically sound policy good for the world and good for the American People" -- GWBush, kissing Fox's ass.