New York Magazine columnist Frank Rich believes that the war on Fox News is over – and Fox News lost. His article published this week is titled “Stop Beating a Dead Fox,” and counsels liberals and media critics to retreat from the battle against Roger Ailes & Company because we have already won.
Rich is both right and wrong, but through it all he is clear-headed and thought provoking. But in the end his conclusion is faulty, and I will explain why along with some highlights from his article.
“The most interesting news about Fox News is that for some years now it has been damaging the right far more than the left. […] Democrats have won the popular vote five out of six times. You’d think they’d be well advised to leave Fox News to its own devices so that it can continue to shoot its own party in the foot.”
The fact that Fox has been a dead, stinking albatross around the wrinkled neck of the GOP is a point I made more than four years ago in an article with the understated headline “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” Finally, the mainstream media is catching up with me. Rich continues…
“The million or so viewers who remain fiercely loyal to the network are not, for the most part, and as some liberals still imagine, naive swing voters who stumble onto Fox News under the delusion it’s a bona fide news channel and then are brainwashed by Ailes’s talking points into becoming climate-change deniers. They arrive at the channel as proud, self-selected citizens of Fox Nation and are unlikely to defect from the channel or its politics until death do them part.”
This is another revelation I made when I exposed “The Cult Of Foxonality” five years ago and observed that “Fox viewers are married to the channel and couldn’t care less what’s playing down the dial.” The Fox audience are hardened partisans with a devotional attachment to their tele-church. And finally, Rich says that…
“Rather than waste time bemoaning Fox’s bogus journalism, liberals should encourage it. The more that Fox News viewers are duped into believing that the misinformation they are fed by Ailes is fair and balanced, the more easily they can be ambushed by reality as they were on Election Night 2012. […] we should start considering the possibility that it now works to the Democrats’ advantage that Fox News does manufacture its own facts.”
Here is where Rich and I part company. While there may be some entertainment value in watching floundering wingnuts desperately trying to make sense of a reality that contradicts their delusions, in the end it is bad for the nation to encourage ignorance. And even though the antics of Fox News have been proven to drive down the approval ratings of Republican politicos, we would still be better off if there weren’t a disinformation factory poisoning the minds of our friends and family and neighbors.
That’s why the need to be vigilant in exposing the lies and bigotry of Fox News and other rightist propagandists is still vitally important. It is crucial that the record be set straight because an unanswered lie can too easily become a perverse version of the truth. It isn’t a mission embarked upon out of concern that the Republican Party is getting its ass whooped in national elections. It’s out of love for those who do not deserve to be exploited and abused by the mouthpieces of corporations and nationless plutocrats. So laugh, if you will, at the dunces who spew their hate-filled rhetoric of greed and bigotry, but never surrender to it.
Frank Rich wouldn’t know real truth to power if it crawled up and bit him in the hindquarters. That column of his was worthless.
To Mark: your quote – ” we would still be better off if there weren’t a disinformation factory poisoning the minds of our friends and family and neighbors” I actually agree with that statement, but maybe you should read some of what you write about “our friends, family and neighbors” who watch Fox news – you’re just as nasty with the name calling and characterizations as anyone. Maybe you should start with your own writing by not engaging in the name calling – how many times are you going to refer to these “friends” as wingnuts or whatever other ignorant name comes to mind?
Do you even see the blatant hypocrisy in your post? Maybe Mark will stop the name-calling when you do. In fact, your name-calling is even more pernicious because it drips with arrogance and smug self-satisfaction.
There was no name-calling in Steve’s post. Try reading it next time.
I was referring to his previous posts and there are many examples of his pernicious name-calling and gross generalizations. Besides which, Scotty, I don’t think Steve needs your defense. Thanks for nothing, anyway.
I have some friends and relatives who only rely on Fox News for all their information. They are the most uninformed people in the world. When I have a different opinion, they are dumbfounded. When I just shred their arguments they just change the subject. Of course most of these are older people.
Yep, I’ve run into the same thing. The depth of knowledge on any subject seems to only go to one or two talking points, then. . .BENGHAZI!!!
Really? I had the same experience two years ago when a bunch of counter-protestors showed up at a Tea Party rally in downtown Portland. These lefties screamed the F-bomb every other sentence, called a black Tea Partier a house black, and they screamed and blew horns while the National Anthem was being sung. Rudest, most hate-filled crowd I have ever seen. When I shredded their arguments, they look confused and then screamed something about the Koch brothers.