The Shirley Sherrod case further deepens Fox News Channel's credibility problem, which is good news for the Obama Administration.
Trust me on this one. Just as soon as a Fox News Channel political commentator announces that the earth is flat -- and one way or another, Fox will indeed "break" that story -- the first thing anyone in America who swears by Fox will do is instruct their children not to stray too close to earth's edge. Then immediately after, they'll unleash an attack on the conservative-hating egg-heads of the liberal media for ignoring the flat earth story in favor of all that reporting on the "global warming hoax."
Hyperbole? No doubt. But only if we're talking about the word many Fox News viewers would use to describe any report that warns of climate change. Still think it's a stretch? Well, consider the following:
Months after the passage of healthcare reform, aren't Fox viewers still deep into their belief in death panels? Don't many go bananas when someone suggests that water-boarding is a virtually useless torture procedure and not part of a set of potently-productive, yet people-friendly "enhanced" interrogation protocols? Is there a hard-core Fox upholder to be found who wouldn't wager his or her first born that we've elected a Kenyan as our current president?
Who among the network's true believers summarily rejects any notion that among presidents, Bill Clinton was a disaster; that Ronald Reagan was a savior; and that one day, Sarah Palin will become our greatest? Aren't most Fox News Channel loyalists adamant that the pervasiveness of the two-member New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia was sufficient to steal the election for Obama? Don't they insist that ACORN works alongside pimps in trafficking underage hoochies? Don't they still believe that Shirley Sherrod is racist?
By now, I think you've got the point. We're talking sub-intelligent design -- sedulously cooked up by Rupert Murdoch. At this juncture in Fox News Channel's history, who would argue that beliefs along such lines can be avoided by those who quench their thirst for knowledge with the steady stream of low-facts kool-aid served up at Fox? If you still believe that a human brain cannot be put on a diet, just keep your flat-screen tuned away from every cable network in the universe except Fox for a while. Become a disciple. Be a culture warrior like Bill O'Reilly. Set yourself up in the Fox trap for a spell and just feel the atrophy happen.
The No-Facts Zone
My basic view of the Fox News Channel's content -- particularly that delivered by its political commentators -- is best summed up as being both good and original. The problem is that the good stuff isn't original and the original stuff isn't good. In fact, much of it is embarrassingly mind-numbing. Which is why at some point a while back, I became obsessed with not viewing it on a regular basis. I'd become convinced that watching the Fox News Channel kills brain cells. Any attempt I made at post-broadcast pondering of an evening's worth of partisan pointlessness from the likes of Sean Hannity and most recently, Glenn Beck, had become far too overwrought; ending up in what seemed more like an unavailing exercise in senile introspection.
I'd put it this way: if facts were the wind, the Fox News Channel's boisterous segment of hard-core, wing-nut tea-baggers are the ones constantly spitting against it with no thought of the repercussions to themselves. This embrace by the network's core supporters of what seems a philosophy of anti-self-interest also seems part of Fox's nurturing process. The network's well-documented disdain for facts, apparent since virtually the moment of its inception in 1996, helps provide some insight into why a journalist with the character of the late Robert Novak -- who outside of network television made a name for himself on cable news pioneer CNN -- seemed particularly well-ensconced at the Fox News Channel.
During his pre-cable career in journalism, Novak, aka The Prince of Darkness, along with Rowland Evans, penned a syndicated column titled the Evans-Novak Political Report. Within some journalistic circles Evans and Novak were referred to as "Errors and No Facts" based on claims of shoddy journalism. Thusly, in 2005, when he became part of the Fox line-up, the ethics-challenged Novak discovered his natural habitat. Since Fox viewers have repeatedly demonstrated that hard facts -- just like deficits amassed under Republican administrations -- simply don't matter, Novak's success at Fox could have been easily pre-ordained.
Most recently, Fox's issues with journalistic integrity have been evident by the obvious cognitive tumult that pits the reality of Medicare as a government-run health program against the general attitude toward the government held by many regular Fox News Channel viewers. During last summer's healthcare Town Halls, many Medicare recipients who are members of the Tea Party issued the obviously superfluous demand that Obama "keep the government out of their healthcare." Since they knew not what they demanded, Obama of course, made no effort to give them what they were in effect calling for; the elimination of government support for Medicare. Instead, he oversaw an expansion of health care coverage to a wider group of Americans including perhaps, many of his critics' own sons and daughters, as well as to people just like many tea-partiers -- older non-retirees. Perhaps someday, they will thank him.
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