Day: 1/25/2018

A Graphic Lesson in How Fox News Perverts Even Their Own Skewed Polls

Posted by on January 25, 2018 at 3:48 pm. 1 Comments :

The recent shutdown of the government was the subject of controversy in the media for a couple of weeks. Both sides were spinning furiously to place the blame on the other. It should have been a simple task to figure out who was most responsible for the leadership vacuum considering that Republicans are in control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House. But when you’re dealing with a Republican Party that isn’t interested in the truth, and is led by a world-class liar, nothing is as easy as it seems.

Fox News Trump

Following the agreement to keep the government open for another three weeks, the press set about to determine where the American people stood. They conducted polls asking which party was most responsible for the shutdown. Fox News was among those media outlets conducting such surveys. And when they were ready to release the results, they made sure that their preferred political prejudices were front and center.

Rather than disclose the most relevant information, the crack Fox News creative department prepared a graphic that they immediately put on the air. The image contained partial results from the poll that put Republicans in an undeservedly positive light. Here is the tweet Fox News posted of the story that they broadcast:

Wow. So the American people think that Democrats were most responsible for the government shutdown? Not exactly. The survey question actually gave respondents another option. Donald Trump received thirteen percent of the poll’s votes. That means that the combined total for the GOP and Trump was thirty-seven percent, which exceeds that of the Democrats. Never mind that the built in biases of Fox’s poll likely undercounts the Trump votes. It was a deliberate tactic to divide the right-wing options and then only report one of them to insure that the number would be lower. Notice that they didn’t ask whether Democrats or Chuck Schumer were responsible, just the Democrats. And that’s after Republicans made a full court press to cast the blame on the so-called SchumerShutdown.

Remember, this is a Fox News poll that Fox News is distorting. It demonstrates the lengths they will go to in order to protect their lord and overseer, Donald Trump. For the record, every other poll decisively reports that Trump and Republicans were to blame for the shutdown (see this, and this, and this). There isn’t any real dispute on that question. So Fox News had only two options. They could report the news honestly (OK, stop laughing), or they could whip up a phony graphic that distorts the truth and makes their side look like winners. Guess which option they chose.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Asked to Borrow a Van Gogh From the Guggenheim, They Offered a Gold Toilet Instead

Posted by on January 25, 2018 at 1:35 pm. 3 Comments :

Once again it is the art world that contributes the most poignant insights into human culture and condition. The state of the American and world economy is teetering on the brink of collapse due to the inequality and massive differential in wealth. The gap between the rich and the poor is at a historically wide level. It was recently reported that the richest one percent in the world possess eighty-two percent of the world’s wealth.

Donald Trump Toilet

Emblematic of that disparity, the United States elected an alleged billionaire to its highest office. Donald Trump represents the worst of this elitist class by his gross worship of materialism and his pandering to his upper crusty friends of the penthouse society. He exudes a sense of entitlement and undeserved reverence, despite his failure to display any knowledge or experience that would warrant even a modicum of respect.

The Washington Post is now reporting that Donald and Melania Trump asked the Guggenheim Museum in New York to loan them a Van Gogh painting for their private residence in the White House. It reeks of the selfishness you’d expect from the Trump family that they would want to remove such a treasure from public view for their exclusive pleasure. But fortunately, the Guggenheim declined the loan and offered something else far more appropriate: An 18K gold toilet. According to WaPo, the museum said that…

“We are sorry not to be able to accommodate your original request, but remain hopeful that this special offer may be of interest.”

This unique extravagance is the work of Maurizio Cattelan, and is a fully functioning bathroom appliance that was installed at the Guggenheim for nearly a year before the exhibit closed last September. The museum described it as a “sculptural performance of interactive art.” Their website further states that:

“The gold toilet – a cipher for the excesses of affluence – was available for all to use in the privacy of one of the Guggenheim’s single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms. More than one hundred thousand people waited patiently in line for the opportunity to commune with art and with nature.”

Trump’s notorious opulence has been on display in his nauseatingly gold-plated Manhattan apartment. And now, if he accepts this offer, he can enjoy the same gauche tastelessness in his White House quarters. Plus, it will give him a place of luxury to pound out his morning tweets (a golden Tweet Seat), which have pretty much the same value and stench of whatever else he pounds out.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.