Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Poor Have It Way Too Good

When Fox News isn’t bitching about how President Obama has fouled up the economy and caused severe hardship for the American people, they switch over to their completely contrary view that there isn’t really any hardship and that the poor in America are luxuriating in a virtual paradise.

Fox Nation

To hear Fox News tell it, the real problem with America is that the greedy poor have too much and the long-suffering rich have too little. Consequently, the poor should lose benefits that assist them with trivialities like food, housing and education, while the rich should get more tax cuts, subsidies, and relief from regulations that protect everyone’s air, water, and safety.

That’s the position taken today on Fox’s community web site, and truth mangling, Fox Nation. Their article on the state of Americans living in poverty suggests that being poor is like a pleasure cruise with all the amenities included. Their source is an article on CNSNews, a subsidiary of the uber-rightist Media Research Center. The article cites data from a 2011 census report showing that most households living below the poverty live have non-essential extravagances like phones and refrigerators. The presence of these opulent goods is evidence that poor people are enjoying prosperity at the expense of the hard-trodden wealthy.

A deeper look at the details of this alleged abundance reveals that, in most cases, appliances like refrigerators, stoves, washers, dryers, and air conditioners, come with apartment living and are owned by the landlords, not the tenants. Cell phones and microwaves are inexpensive items that hardly connote wealth. Yet the Fox Nationalists begrudge low-income working people for having access to things like televisions that they might have bought years ago, before the Bush meltdown.

This is typical of the Fox mindset. They regularly report this same fallacy with minor updates. Last April they hosted Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation analyst, who whined to the addled-brained Fox & Friends crew that the poor “have no hardship whatsoever,” and that poverty measurements are just “an advertising tool for expanding the welfare state and for spreading the wealth by pretending there’s a massive amount of hardship that really doesn’t occur anymore in our society.” Well, I feel better already.

Rector has been spewing that nonsense for more than a decade, and Fox has been helping him to promote it. They generally leave out pertinent facts such as that the people they are disparaging are not the recipients of welfare who they routinely characterize as moochers. They are working people who are struggling to provide for themselves and their families in the face of adversity. And Fox ignores the obvious when they assume that just because you reside in an apartment that has a stove and a laundry room, that you also have enough money to buy groceries, clothes, medicine, and other necessities.

This is a perfect representation of the insensitivity of selfish elitists in the media and the GOP (Greedy One Percent) who recently removed food stamps from a draft of the Farm Bill, but retained the hundreds of millions of dollars that goes to wealthy agribusiness interests. In their world the rich are always unfairly put upon, and the poor are lazy scam artists. It’s a perverse and twisted version of reality that keeps good people down.

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14 thoughts on “Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Poor Have It Way Too Good

  1. The GOP has always had contempt for the poor, or at least “certain kinds” of poor, usually minorities. Strip away all that “bootstrap” bullshit and what you have are a bunch of Social Darwinists who believe that the poor are a sub-human species.

  2. We are living in an Ultra-Reactionary time in which the Plutocrats have believe they are exempt from taxes and that government is owned of them, by them and for them.

    • This is the progressive government you so happily fight for… what is the problem? Don’t like the result – too bad. You guys always wanted a giant, all powerful government that will fix all the problems and you got it. Not what you thought it would be is it? Who do you think controls organizations, in this case government, with that much money – the poor? dumb asses. What a bunch of suckers you all are. Now we all suffer – the poor, middle class, everyone.

      • Generalize much? Your comment is so idiotic that I don’t know where to begin. It’s no wonder that nobody here cares what you think.

      • Steve, your active ignorance is only matched by your ignorant arrogance. This is the Government of Reagan and the Neoliberal Plutocracy. It’s the one your kind wildly cheer when steak-eatin’ young bucks are demonized because the “blah people” are getting all the money. The Government are just the hired hitmen for the 1% and the 1% have willful slaves like you who happily afix the chains of wage slavery on all of us.

    • You may find this interesting in your rich guy bashing – living on the east coast, I get to see a lot of revolutionary era towns and have taken tours of the historic points. I’ve noticed that all the “leaders” of those times had one thing in common – they were all rich. Annapolis Maryland (lots of rich guys there), Mt Vernon (Geo. Washington house), Monticello, etc. – try visiting a bunch of those some time – you’ll see the common thread I noted. Why are you so surprised at who controls things – it’s been that way for as long as this country has been in existence. Maybe the character of those people was better, but when you see their properties, there is no doubt as to the wealth they had. The rich ran things then and they run things now – an the more government you and all of us allow to be created, the more power they get.

      • So why don’t you give them all blowjobs?

      • Indeed, the revolutionary leaders were rich, white, male, landowners, and they crafted a country for themselves.

        Despite the progress we’ve made in the direction of equality and freedom, you and the Tea-publicans want to take the country back – to the 18th century. That’s why they are trying to suppress the votes of minorities, subjugate women, and elevate wealthy corporations to human status.

        • No shit! Back then it was a pure meritocracy. If you weren’t a rich white dude then not only were you subject to laws you couldn’t vote on, (the very thing we revolted against), but everything FUCKING SUCKED FOR YOU. Women? NO RIGHTS. They could barely speak out for themselves. Minorities were subhuman. We had a republic meritocracy then, and shit was far from fuckin perfect. Democracy was not something the founders wanted, they thought it was an extreme that needed to be avoided. I mean, women and minorities and poor people VOTING?? That would have made them throw up!! It was a different fucking PLANET back then. Arguably the meritocracy was the beginnings of the American aristocracy, barely above feudalism. Which is a goddamn shame because people like Abigail Adams would’ve been a force of nature.

          Yet another conservative arguing for the multi-centuries old status quo. What a fuckin surprise. You, Steve must be a HUGE Ron Paul supporter.

  3. Yeah!! They have like 8 or 9 things!! They aren’t poor!! Man, being poor sounds fucking sweet the way they put it. I’m gonna quit my job and be poor so I can live the shit life…I mean the high life…wait…

    Trying to convince people that the poverty line is too high because poor people own furniture and communication services. They don’t even like the poor when they think they’re not poor!! Think about that, this shows resentment toward the poor for being ‘not truly poor’. They hate the poor even more because they argue they’re not really poor!! I mean Jesus Christ!! It’s all about having a second class citizenry to look down on, to be better than. What other purpose is there to be rich with status symbols etc. if not to simply be better than you? They can’t help but allow their vices to dictate their politics, hatred, cynicism, social detachment, hubris, ignorance, and passionate irrational distrust of anything that challenges their belief systems. It’s amazing that the party that identifies as overwhelmingly Christian can argue against helping the poor so often. It’s almost like they use religion to get the people who care/know about nothing else to manipulate votes out of them.

    Because all poor people just do it to themselves. Because being poor and on assistance is just so fucking sweet. Because these aren’t people, they’re poor people. As of you couldn’t become friends with one if you talked to them. As of they don’t have a story. As if they aren’t sins and fathers and neighbors and brothers and uncles and grandparents. ‘Nah, fuck em. They have couches and stoves and a tv. They aren’t poor, cause I know. I say they aren’t poor cause I know.’

    The have everythings telling me that the have nots have it oh so sweet is absolutely infuriating. They show their uber greed, they need it all….how much money did he make telling me that poor people aren’t poor and that poor people suck, I wonder?

  4. It’s designed to help you feel better about hating or the party platform of doing less for poor people. This embodies manipulative propaganda. There is no better example.

  5. This line of bs coming from the small govt. conservatives is something we’ve been hearing from them for years. Remember Reagan and his welfare queen, driving a Cadillac convertible from one welfare office to the next to pick up her checks. For good measure he made her black to get the racist angle in as well. There was a major problem with this story though, this person didn’t exist and was nothing more than an urban legend. The largest recipients of welfare are the corporations but corporations are people my friend and they need a helping hand. Privatize profits and socialize losses goes their mantra!

    • Small government conservatives don’t believe it’s the role of the government to “fix” poor. You do your best and that’s it. If we could get to the genuine victims and those who truly don’t have a way to move forward, fine, but all others – forget it.
      We do have an area of agreement though – and that is over corporate “welfare”. But if you’re going to confiscate wealth from people and corporations, a few loopholes are inevitable. A review of the entire tax system is needed.

      • A new tax system is, indeed required. The corporate welfare that we pay for and a tax system skewed in favor of the rich is a major contributor to the economic inequality that we are seeing. It started in the 1980’s and things have just been getting exponentially worse for the have nots. That includes the middle class as well as it is shrinking.

        As far as what small gov’t conservatives think the role of the gov’t is or isn’t, progressives don’t think our gov’t should “fix” them either. As an evolved society, we do believe helping needy fellow citizens is a noble cause and worth the cost of a very small percentage of people who game the system. Small gov’t conservatives seem to indicate by the way they vote, that they are okay with unnecessary suffering if they can prevent anyone from gaming the system.

        I don’t like the idea of people getting something they don’t deserve but don’t want to punish those in need in the process.

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