While I certainly don't know him personally, I'm quite familiar with Bill O'Reilly going back to his days as a local anchor for a tabloid-style news station in Boston where I'm from. Even then, O'Reilly's prickly personality was too overbearing and among the reasons he didn't last very long around here. However, based on his current network's viewer profile, it comes as little surprise that O'Reilly, the cable channel's biggest star, has finally found a successful niche with Fox News.
The same may apply to Geraldo Rivera; he of "Al Capone's vault� �� � infamy. Was anyone really shocked, given Rivera's pre-Fox profile as a journalist that he wound up on that network? Does anyone truly believe that he will ever again work for any of the big three networks? Or, that his move to Fox has revived Rivera's credibility? What about John Stossel? Has the former ABC newsman's move to Fox in any way re-animated his credibility as an investigative reporter?
As for Beck, we've all witnessed his direful transformation from bunker-mentality demagogue on CNN to budding megalomaniac on Fox. And what of Dobbs who, at this writing is in fact, reportedly set to jump to Fox. Would that defection restore his journalistic stature? It seems quite unlikely. From this vantage point, Greta van Susteren stands as perhaps Fox's only politically-neutral news personality even if -- with her often-tiresome focus on missing white girls -- pretty much all she does is provide a reasonable, less screechy alternative to HLN News' Nancy Grace.
Nevertheless, it remains obvious that from the onset, the bosses at Fox News have been aware that flag-waving works well with the "easily-swayed-by patriotic-appeal" conservative and Republican-voting viewers it covets. Among the many early indicators of the network's pro-Republican passion happened on election night 2000, when Fox News prematurely announced that Bush won Florida, causing other major networks to follow suit. Since that obvious breach of Election Day coverage standards, Fox News has gone on to establish an irrefutable reputation as avidly pro-Bush/GOP and, unlike most major news organizations, a reliable font of unfeigned pro-America nationalism.
"Reverse" patriotism?
There is a bit of irony in the fact that for all its flag-waving hyper-patriotism during the Bush years, today, in the era of Obama, Fox very often comes off as firmly un-American as any member of the old Weather Underground or the ACORN lefties it loves to skewer. The network's persistent advocacy of the failure of the Obama administration and by proxy, the nation, stands in sharp contrast to its behavior during the Bush era, when -- by spreading the � ���"Bush Doctrine� �� � in a fashion reminiscent of the way the old TASS news agency spread Soviet propaganda -- Fox News represented perhaps the closest thing to state-run television since American Forces Network.
Meanwhile, today, in the era of Obama, Fox News, like the GOP, seems positioned to function as a resistance force against American progress by further turning up the heat on its relentless promotion of political and cultural polarization. In recent months, the network has helped generate opposition to health care reform and financial bail-outs, expressed disappointment over the President's Nobel award, and has gone to great lengths to undermine Obama's Olympic bid by portraying Chicago as a violent, mob-infested American city, then following up with a shameless show of elation over the failure of the President's bid.
It appears, by these and other acts, that the logic of Fox News and its devoted supporters now stems from an evolved concept of "reverse patriotism" which holds that to be anti-the President of the United States -- even if in a time of war -- is truly the act of a pro-American patriot.
As one pro-Fox viewer pointed out in a New York Times story about Fox: � ���"I started watching Fox News a while back and love it. The appeal to me personally is that it is an � ���"American� �� � station that is proud of that. What caught my eye was a little American flag that waves in the corner of the screen most of the time, simple, but effective.� �� �
Effective is perhaps putting it mildly. Much in the way a tiny, sparkling trinket enraptures impressionable infants during joyous excursions in toy land, Fox News' eye-catching flag ploy has done a remarkably thorough job of enthralling millions of self-proclaimed "real Americans" who, like many Fox News personalities, demonstrate their patriotism by "wearing it on their sleeves."
Obviously, it matters little to these patriots that the network's owner, Rupert Murdoch, was not born an American. But, what the heck? Their beloved network's owner could be a giant Chinese Panda for all they care, just as long as "Tai-Shan" keeps waving "Old Glory" and continues telling them what they need to hear.
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