And while you're at it, score another for the self-proclaimed "Most Trusted Name in News." To any purported news organization that views evidence-based journalism as a terrifying conflict of interest, such a ruling is -- as Joe Biden would probably say -- "a big fuckin' deal!" Damn right it is! It's like granting the owner of Kinkos the legal right to print and spend counterfeit money. Meanwhile for Fox, the moment that ruling was issued, the familiar " we distort; you decide" taunt of its critics became far more unequivocal.
The "Booby-Prize"
For progressives, it's possible to interpret the emergence of the Fox News Channel as the booby prize won by an assortment of mixed wing-nuts who, in 1985, failed to consummate a long pent-up desire -- gaining control of CBS. Why CBS? It was, according to the late Sen. Jesse Helms, to become "Dan Rather's boss." Quite a strange desire, no?
But the more somber realities are the broader implications of what being "Dan Rather's boss" would have undoubtedly involved. Based on the journalistic approach under which present-day Fox operates, most likely it would entail mandating how or what the iconic veteran journalist could or could not report and pre-describe to Rather what is and is not news. If so, would this be based on typical wing-nut folklore about a level of insight beyond that of anyone not smart enough to be a conservative?
To have watched Fox for any length of time over the past 18 years, one might think so. In addition to being a place where even hard news is routinely overwhelmed by the intertwine of anti-liberal rhetoric, Fox is also where Americans are constantly told who is and is not a "real" American; what Americans want and don't want; what Americans like or don't like; and what Americans need or don't need.
All of which brings us back to the Pity Pageant. The thing is -- and it doesn't matter whether Fox has been your personal Videodrome for the past 18 years, or if you sometimes tune in for the few moments it'll take to willfully murder a few million brain cells as you star-gaze Geraldo's sh*t-eating Snidely Whiplash grin -- you'll never have a complaint about a lack of complaining over at Fox. It's a grievance factory. Who on Fox's payroll actually needs a mandate by upper management to willfully slant negative on liberal issues? The network's on-air personalities and guests appear completely incapable of self-suppressing the pettiest of anti-liberal grievances or anti-Obama muckraking.
But pointing this out is just as fruitless as it is shopworn. Doing so will just get you even more complaining from die-hard Fox News flunkies who'll simply ratchet it up -- responding with further complaints to you about your complaints to them about their complaining.
No doubt part of their reaction relates to terminology. Considering the strong likelihood that a typical Fox viewer defines "complaining" as something fertile, shoeless housewives do, I can envision a complaint that challenges the premise that what they do is "complaining." The preferred term seems to be "outrage," a beefier word that carries an underlying promise of an eventual response. In the end though, it's all semantics. Be they complaints, beefs, or outrage; at Fox, there's plenty to be ginned up.
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