One of the good things about traveling is being exposed to the inevitable Fox News broadcast in the lobby during breakfast. I'm convinced that about a third of Fox's ratings "audience" is derived from bars, hotels, and retail establishments required, either by contract or courtesy of the ideological biases of the proprietor, to broadcast its unique brand of reality to helpless customers. Given that I was in South Carolina, the odds of watching something other than Fox and Friends during breakfast were about as good as my odds of winning Powerball.
Fox and Friends is special. If you've ever wanted to watch three spray-tan mannequins with gummy worm lips exchange "witty" "banter" about Hannity's talking points for the day, this is as close as you're going to get. Unsurprisingly, their deep concern for free speech and the tone of our public discourse was piqued by the recent incident at UC-Irvine in which Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was shouted down by the Muslim Student Union. What a bunch of uncivilized brown people. Can you imagine such behavior in a public forum?
I mean, aside from the people Fox has been hailing as the Great Patriots of America for the last year.
The best job in Rupert Murdoch's media empire has to be the Guy Who Rationalizes Obvious Hypocrisy. I mean, even the average shit-for-brains who watches Fox and Friends and listens to Neal Boortz is going to have some cognitive dissonance (despite being unable to spell or define either of those words). Either interrupting a public speaker by screaming at them is Patriotic or it is undemocratic and reprehensible. Can someone please rationalize how this is acceptable behavior among some (white) people and not among other (dark) people?
Hellz yeah we can.
"In the past year, Ambassador, we've seen a lot of, 'vocal' meetings with the town halls and the Tea Parties and stuff like that. That, that's spontaneous. You know. Whereas this, it appears as if…the Muslim Student Union out there, they had coordinated it."
So that's it. If it's "spontaneous" – i.e. if you have absolutely no control over your emotions and can't help lashing out in murderously uninformed rage at anyone who says something with which you disagree – you're golden. If said interruption is planned or coordinated in advance you're the enemy of free speech. Good thing teabagger meetings are neither planned nor coordinated in advance, nor are any agreed-upon talking points disseminated among a group of people who couldn't possibly construct their own ideas.
Thanks, Fox and Friends. You made what passes for breakfast at a Hampton Inn in Conway, SC downright nutritious, at least for my brain. No word yet from the Friends on that other "controversy" from the UC system. Funny, that.
Zeb says:
Spot on, Ed. I love Gretchen Carlson's face when she's speaking… it's so righteously outraged!
Speaking of Fox, can you demolish their official pollster, Frank Luntz, some time? He's the guy who runs all their "focus groups," which, coincidentally, come out exactly as the Fox bosses want. He's also a 'word doctor,' devising the inane catchphrases used by Republicans (eg "the death tax").
Denise says:
Sorry you're having such a crappy time in what has been dubbed "The South's Sluttiest Sexytime State".
And thanks for not mentioning the Conway Horse *ucker. And Mayor "We Don't Want No Stinking Bikers Here" Rhodes.
Ooops.
Hazy Davy says:
Is it possible it has less to do with "brown people", and more to do with "being rude in support of our position is excusable, but not when you support the opposition"?
It's hypocritical.
And the "sponeneity" argument is bullshit. (Especially given, the money and time spent organizing folks into a teabagging orgy…)
But the simplest argument is that they don't really care about civility, they care about the position.
Marc says:
I'm glad my only exposure to Fox & Friends is through the mocking filters of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I just couldn't stomach that garbage, even though it should make me laugh.
Delphine says:
I like your ratings padding theory. I took my mom to the bank last week and Fox was on a little TV in the lobby. And of course the treadmills at World Gym watch it 24/7/365.
(found your blog looking for a synonym for "renegade." Very glad I did)
Kulkuri says:
You forgot to mention airports, seems like every TV is tuned to Fux Spews. Sometimes I think about getting a universal remote that will shut off any and all TVs. If the remote is in the room with the TV in the motel breakfast area and it would be possible to change the channel to a higher intellectual level like the Cartoon Channel.
Someone had an interesting comment on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this weekend. The comment was about Tea-Baggers. Don't they realize that once tea bags are used, they are thrown away. Of course that is if the Tea-Baggers are intelligent enough to figure out they are being used!!
Johnnyboy says:
Please, Ed, don't ever make me read the names Neil or Boortz together again. Ever.
MarilynJean says:
Ed, please stop being right all the time.
Seriously, though, it is some serious hypocrisy going on here. The foaming-at-the-mouth outbursts that characterized most town hall meetings were packed with patriotic Americans. How is this student group any different? Oh wait.
I'm not even saying I agree with the Muslim Student Union's perspective. I think they were doing what most student groups have done for decades: get all up in The Man's face. And, like you said in your previous post, they may have consequences to their free speech. I wonder if the University has done anything to address this "incident".
jazzbumpa says:
I was going to to post a spontaneously enraged comment here, but wound up over-thinking it.
Does that make me a Muslim, like President Hussein?
Anyway, nothing has changed.
WASF,
JzB
Crazy for Urban Planning says:
In regards to Fox News being in so many locations, it speaks to how effective the noise machine is: they tell businesses to play their network all day long or risk having an advertisement of a competitor played on CNN or some other crappy network. Therefore they tailor programming for each large corporation and sign long range contracts. I wonder about the title of this program, "Fox and Friends," it says, lets all be folksy and sing Kumbiya together, even when we are actually making negative judgments about anyone who happens to disagree with us. In any case, Fox News is a place where people can go to never hear a challenging thought or a word they disagree with. It must be quite re-assuring for people of that propensity.
moonbat says:
I never watch FOX unless I happen to be temporarily stuck in the kinds of business/public spaces you mentioned. I can't imagine a show like "Fox and Friends" – mannequins actually riffing on Hannity's schtick? There needs to be an prequel to "Idiocracy" that includes stuff like this.
"FOX" numerologically equals 666.
These sad postcards from the alternative reality of the conservative hinterland – when are you returning to normalville? I live in a big megalopolis on the left coast and always get a bit nervous when my travels take me into the outback.
Sator Arepo says:
Kulkuri:
"You forgot to mention airports, seems like every TV is tuned to Fux Spews. Sometimes I think about getting a universal remote that will shut off any and all TVs."
I've got a ball-peen hammer you can have for $3.50. Aw, fuck it: I'll just give it to ya. (Perhaps this is a marketing opportunity for that oft-neglected bit of hardware.)
Prudence says:
As tyrannical as this may sound, one of those keychain remote controls (Skymall!) is a handy sanity-saver when in American airports. I don't know who chooses the tv channels in airports, but I am more than happy to hit "mute" or off altogether when the idiot shriekers on Fox News reach a crescendo.
joel hanes says:
In my experience, most bartenders/keepers of the remote are not heavily committed to Faux News, but think that their customers are, and are quite willing to switch to "the game" if you ask them politely "could we watch the game instead of this stuff?"
So I always ask.
MonkeeSage says:
It's great how "white" and "dark" are pitted against each other, as if none of the uproarious protesters at the tea parties were "dark"–only "white" people watch Fox News, or attend tea parties. And all Muslims are "dark." Way to go with that "progressive" thinking, there, associating ideology with skin color. You might as well say "Black people are thieves", or "Mexicans are lazy", while you're at it.
As another comment points out, their real hypocrisy is in accepting behavior that promotes Fox's agenda, while condemning the same behavior when it detracts from their agenda. It has little, if anything, to do with race or skin color.
It is equally hypocritical on your part to play the race card while you make sweeping generalizations about people based on their race or social status.