Unfair and Unbalanced

August 28, 2009
I successfully made the sausage and peppers. Left them simmering for 2 ½ hours. They came out great! Now I know the new system.
I have been watching a lot of Fox News. This is new for me. I have not had cable for almost 15 years and even if I had access, it isn't the kind of thing I would normally turn on. But it has been interesting to watch the rhetorical devices they use in order to appear credible. Some of the people I have seen seem like they genuinely believe the stuff they are saying. For some of them, it all seems like a cynical ploy to make a few bucks. Either way, they engage in some pretty shady tactics. One guy in particular seemed like a lunatic. He spent a great deal of time yelling about a bunch of unconnected things, including communists. Are we still harping on that old stuff? Conservatives have been assuring us that the communists are coming for over half a century. They haven't shown up yet. For awhile, we were told to be very afraid of the terrorists, but they seem to be an afterthought now as they run terrified from the Obama administration, which is apparently teeming with communists. If you listen to Fox News for even a few minutes, you will get the impression that any minute now, we will be overrun with commies. It's all in the works right now, according to the conspiracy theorists on TV. At one point the guy had a chalkboard with a bunch of stuff written all over it and he was trying to make some point by writing “OLIGARH” across the top. He asked, “What letter is missing?” He didn't listen when I was yelling at him that he forgot the “C” because he insisted that the missing letter was “Y.” So he had “OLIGARHY.” OK. He probably goes on about immigrants learning English, too. He might want to try that sometime—learning English, that is. I mean, he didn't catch it, his editing team didn't catch it. I'm sure plenty of people in the audience are busy trying to figure out what an “oligarhy” is. Any credibility he had—which was admittedly microscopic—vanished at that little scene. In addition to being unable to spell, he spent a great deal of time in a hysterical diatribe against something that had to do with President Obama. Unfortunately his ability to accurately listen to and comprehend English was as bad as his spelling. He showed a clip of Obama talking about a “civilian intelligence agency.” As he ranted, there was a scroll at the bottom of the screen that talked about the “civilian security force.” Quite a different idea. After he had run that scroll for a few minutes he began to use that language in his rant as well. On a different evening he showed a clip of the diversity specialist at the FCC talking about Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, mentioning the “democratic revolution.” On the transcript they showed on the screen, the word they had instead of “democratic” was “dramatic.” Later, they had “incredible.” By the third time—when I bet many people had stopped paying much attention since it was so repetitive—he put up the correct word. So the basic structure of the show is that the guy starts out calmly and very apologetically talking about the bad news he is forced to pass on to the audience. No one has disputed anything he has said, except for a few minor details, though they have attacked him personally. He does not worry for himself about the forthcoming takeover of the airwaves by the communists, because he will be just fine, thank you. No, it is simply concern about his fellow countrymen that drives him. We should all be very scared. I am a little, but not for the same reasons as this nut. As he talks, he gets more and more agitated until he is almost foaming at the mouth. Then suddenly, he stops the rant and looks sincerely at the camera and says—and this is something they all did, the sane ones and the nuts—that this is not a partisan issue. It is not a Democrat or Republican issue. No, it is something we all must worry about. I find this pretense that they are not partisan interesting. Since people in this country are sick and tired of the divisiveness we've experienced over the past 8 years, that old crap doesn't work anymore, so they pretend to be genuinely concerned about everyone. It was almost humorous to watch guests from the Bush administration talking in serious tones about the dangers of having so much power consolidated in Washington (!) and the threats to personal liberty. Almost humorous, but not quite. I was not sure how they could sit there and say this stuff with a straight face.
I watched a woman attempt to play this game. She had one one person from each side. Before she began the interview I turned to my daughter and told her, 'You watch what will happen now. The woman in the red dress (the Republican, naturally) will be able to speak freely and without interruption. When the Democrat attempts to speak, she will be continually interrupted and not even allowed to finish a sentence.” And that is exactly what happened. I was told that many people on the station are lawyers. This explains their ability to use language in skillful ways that are not exactly honest. A totally different crew was showing clips of a congresswoman talking to her constituents. She mentioned that she'd met Fidel Castro and she found him to be one of the brightest leaders she'd met. When the commentators started talking, they twisted this all kinds of ways—she was a full supporter of Castro, she backed him, she basically agreed with everything he said. Again, this inability to understand English properly is pretty disturbing. Or they are deliberately twisting people's words on a regular basis (ya think?) because they know they can make it seem like people are saying things they are not. Because this happened on several shows at different times of the day, I must conclude that this is a deliberate strategy on their part. How else to whip people into a frenzy of fear? Because make no mistake, this is what they are (still) doing. I wonder how long it can work. How long will the conservatives spread fear far and wide and have people fall for it? They are going on and on about the “health care bill.” Never mind that there is nothing resembling a bill that is about to go to the White House for signature. There is a House bill. Everyone (or so I thought) knows that now the Senate needs to craft a bill, vote on it, and then IF it passes, get together with representatives from the House to hammer out a compromise. We are far from having “a bill.” But accuracy won't get them anywhere so they resort to falsehood and twisting the truth. And the thing that gets me is that they keep talking about what will happen, as though everything will stay the same even if we do get a health care bill passed. But this is short-sighted. One change leads to other changes. You don't make serious changes and expect other things to remain the same. It doesn't work that way. Maybe this is where the fear comes from. Because I do believe that underneath everything, this is what drives this—fear. People are terrified of change. At one point, one of the commentators said that Ted Kennedy's vision had not been fulfilled, so why the accolades? “We have never adopted the things he has wanted to do,” she said. And I so wanted to respond, 'Yeah, and look at where we are today. How's the status quo working for you people?” I guess for the people at Fox, they're working pretty well. They have nice jobs that require them to do very little. Thinking is not required. They can just rant and spout a bunch of nonsense and collect the paycheck. That's nice for them. Too bad for the rest of us.