FOX Ratings Fail: November Increase For CNN, MSNBC Double That Of FOX News

Confirming the ratings slowdown of Fox News post-election, the November ratings show Fox with a comparatively small increase for November 2012 over their numbers for the same month in 2011. While all three networks rose due to this being an election year, Fox’s unimpressive 55% bump was barely half the leap of either CNN or MSNBC.

Fox News Ratings Nov 2012

Perhaps this what you get when you deceive your audience by leading them to believe that their lame candidate was actually in contention despite all the objective evidence to the contrary. Prior to election day Fox hyped notably partisan polls like Rasmussen, and famously idiotic pundits like Dick Morris, who confidently declared that Romney would win in a landslide.

Then, on election night, Fox continued the charade by hosting Karl Rove, who refused to accept the reality of Romney’s defeat. The spectacle that played out on live television had Rove arguing with Fox’s election desk. This caused Anchor Megyn Kelly to ask Rove “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?” Only on Fox would someone seriously ask their own paid contributor if what he was saying was real.

Since the election Fox News has struggled to make sense of a world they had tried so hard to pretend did not exist – a world where a socialist, Muslim from Kenya could prevail over the richest presidential candidate ever put forward by a major political party. What has America come to?

The flagrant fallacies tendered by Fox were insufficient to topple Obama from his pedestal. Not his trysts with commies like Bill Ayres, nor his scandalous Fast and Furious gunrunning, nor his sordid embrace of gay soldiers, nor his lack of a birth certificate, and not even his culpability for a devastating hurricane, could prevent the President’s reelection. And since all of these would-be scandals were propagated by Fox News, it’s possible their audience is no longer willing to accept what they say at two-faced value.

It’s still too soon to make any predictions about the future rankings of the cable news market. The Fox audience may yet prove to be as gullible and prone to deception as ever. But for the time being there is a glimmer of hope that the marketplace will make purveyors of faulty products pay a price.

If anyone bought a pair of shoes that were as poorly constructed and uncomfortable as most of the stories on Fox News, that shoe company would quickly go out of business. Now we have just to wait to find out if a significant number of Americans are willing to bear the pain of walking another mile in Fox Shoes.

Glenn Beck Dunks American Flag (And Obama) In “Urine”

This may be one of the most asinine stunts Glenn Beck has ever engaged in. Apparently he was mocking an art exhibit that featured a painting of President Obama with his arms outstretched and a wearing a crown of thorns. That’s not a particularly original concept as I did a similar work years ago featuring Beck:

Glenn Beck Messiah

When I did my artwork portraying Beck as a Messianic figure it was in response to Beck’s own behavior and his wailing about being the subject of attacks. He wept and hollered and whined that he was being persecuted. Obama has never done any of those things.

Beck’s lame attempt at satirizing Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was really just a big waste of time – which makes it no different than anything else Beck does. On this occasion he dropped a toy Obama doll into what he said was a jar of his own urine. Beck asserted that he was only defending the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression, but there was really nothing of substance that he had to say about either the artwork or the Constitution. He just seemed to be getting an excessive amount of personal pleasure from his childish prank that was really nothing more than a desperate attempt to get publicity.

Glenn Beck Urine

The pretend artwork that Beck introduced in his pretend French accent was placed up for auction on eBay and generated bids in excess of $11,000 before eBay removed it. That says something about what his followers find valuable. What he seemed to have missed entirely, however, was that he was also submerging an American flag in the jar of pee. How patriotic of him.

And there was more craziness emanating from Beck yesterday. He delivered a sermon about his search for a plan to save the world. It was a disturbing display of a psychosis that should be troubling to anyone concerned about his mental health. In the course of the sermon he lamented that God was trying to tell him what he should do, but there was just so much that he was overwhelmed.

How can one guy with a video blog reform politics, culture, the economy, education, family, media, and the faith of a nation? Beck looked into the camera and lamented that he had no idea of how to do all of this – yet. But he was getting close to figuring it out. And he had diagrammed his draft of the solution on a giant chalkboard. But it looked like the scribblings of someone in the midst of a schizophrenic seizure, or peaking on LSD, or both.

Glenn Beck Chalk Wall

Seriously, this dude needs help. It’s really too bad that the people in his life are too dependent on his cash generation to intervene and get him into therapy. When he goes off it is going to be messy.