Watching Fox News struggle to frame the demonstrations in Egypt is like watching a man with a split personality have an argument with himself.
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault on Truth
On the one hand, Fox is adamantly opposed to any expression of faith that is not devoutly Christian. They are particularly averse to Islam, which they regard, falsely, as an innately violent religion that is responsible for most of the world’s terrorism. So you might think that they would celebrate the fall of an increasingly dictatorial regime in Egypt that sprung from the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. And you would be right.
However, at the same time, Fox has reported on the ousting of Mohammed Morsi with a distinct negativity that conflicts with their broader worldview. The angle that Fox has taken is that the failure of Egypt’s new democracy is the fault of President Obama’s incompetent foreign policy. They manage to blame Obama for both the ascendency of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and for its downfall. That’s a thin line for Fox to walk, but they are used to it. They work very hard at characterizing everything Obama does as a disaster. If he eats a slice of apple pie on Friday he is promoting an unhealthy diet. If he doesn’t have a slice on Saturday, he is un-American.
Of course the reality is that foreign policy is a much more complex endeavor than Fox (or its viewers) can comprehend. Just one year ago, the Fox pundits unanimously condemned Obama for supporting the Arab Spring uprising that resulted in the nation’s first democratic elections ever. But today the same pundits are condemning him for not speaking out. What these simpletons fail to realize is that, if Obama were to more vocally advocate on behalf of the protesters, he would give the Morsi government ammunition to dismiss them as pawns of the Great Satan in the United States. So Obama has adopted a more diplomatic approach that allows the demonstrators to pursue their goals, while maintaining support for the role of democracy.
Another example of how the Fox Nationalists have misread these events is their criticism that Egypt’s new found aspirations for democracy have failed under Obama’s watch. First of all, let’s not forget that they blossomed under Obama’s watch. But more to the point, it is shortsighted and simplistic to pronounce them as a failure at this early stage of the game. Egypt has only been a democracy for one year. That is not a long time historically for new democracies to stabilize.
Take the United States of America, for a random example. They declared their independence from a colonial monarchy in 1776. But they didn’t secure their sovereignty until 1783, with the end of the Revolutionary War. Then, they didn’t have a functional constitution until 1789. The Bill of Rights was not ratified until 1791. For much of the next half century, only white, male, property owners were permitted to vote. And in 1861 a Civil War broke out dividing the new nation and taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of its citizens. By comparison, Egypt is doing way better.
Let’s face it, the only reason Fox is reporting on this (or any other) subject is to bash Obama. That’s why they so blatantly stuff inflammatory rhetoric into their headlines. And this one offered them an opportunity to associate Obama with the Muslim religion that they have tried for years to connect to him. In the end it’s just another attempt to revive the birther crap that has been such a big part of their Obama-hate campaign.
