Lured by Fox News

I always knew if Fox News was permitted to get away with it, without being exposed, our society would have had it.

Fox News, the Voice that Destroyed America

Fox News has been softening us up for fascist totalitarianism for a quarter of a century now. They’ve left the American electorate punch-drunk.

The Fox News “journalistic principle” is a simple one: everything the Democrats do is wrong, and nothing the Republicans do is wrong (even when it's the same thing).

Listen for when Fox News spokesmodels utter the phrase, "Some say." It will be followed by whatever propaganda lie they have been instructed to push today.

It is news media misinformation, spearheaded by Fox News, that has done the country in.

That's 'Kill' as in 'Kilmeade'

Fox News has been softening us up for fascist totalitarianism for a quarter of a century now. They’ve left the American electorate punch-drunk.

Fox News vs. Superman

The scripted Republican attacks on Superman 2025 don’t seem to be working. It’s cleaning up at the box office.

“He’s creating a moat of woke, enlightened opinion around him. He’s got a woke shield,” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld whined as an on-screen graphic proclaimed that the “Superwoke” movie embraced “pro-immigrant themes.”

Fox News has always peddled such ugly fascist trash propaganda aimed at destroying empathy and decency. Previously, Fox News called Captain America, Wonder Woman and Superman “un-American,” while describing the children’s gentle champion Fred Rogers as “evil.”

In its constant quest to gaslight its willing victims, Fox News uses panic mongering, character assassination and ad hominem arguments, psychological projection and flipping, the rewriting of history, scapegoating, conflation of violence with power, bullying, confusion, populism, invocation of the Christian God, saturation, the disparagement of education, guilt by association and diversion. 

Fox News’s most basic propaganda technique is simply to lie about facts, and it does so constantly.

Fox News is where Phineas Taylor Barnum meets Paul Joseph Goebbels.

USA RIP

In 2001, I feared that unbridled lies disguised as journalism on Fox News, coupled with the corruption of the GOP and the excuse of 9-11 terrorism, could lead to a fascist dictatorship in America and the death of the Constitution. 

Well, despite the best efforts of many of us, here we are. 

What now? 

What next?

I guess we can only hope that on some finer day in the future, the words “Republican Party” will be greeted with the same visceral, historical loathing that the term “Nazi Party” inspires.

The Fox News Reality-Reversal Machine

How can Republicans possibly offer such uniformly low-grade, corrupt and often ignorant candidates for the highest office in the nation? 

Because they have developed a corporate media propaganda echo chamber/fog machine so high-grade that it’s capable of conning any number of citizens into believing that black is white, government is evil, invasion is liberation, poverty is freedom, health care is luxury, stupid is smart and contemptible is heroic.

If you have sufficient propaganda power over the news media, you can launch and sustain just about any horror. You can, for example, demonize an unarmed boy who had committed no crime, and make a champion of the man who stalked and killed him.

When the GOP Dial Got Stuck

I wrote this: “The problem is that at least half the country is being fed a largely fictional narrative, every day, and accepts it to be true. That’s the Fox News Effect.

“I realized 20 years ago that if lying propaganda could be substituted for news, this country’s ruin would follow in short order.”

And I got this thoughtful reply from Mouse Detective on the Washington Post website: 

“Same here professor. Believe it or not, I grew up in a Republican family, and used to listen to Rush Limbaugh every day. I remember during the first Gulf War, he was always enraged at CNN, and wanted them muzzled for reporting what happened, and whined about the “liberal media,’ 

“I remembered what Ben Franklin had written about an informed electorate, and felt uncomfortable. It took me awhile to leave but I have never looked back. 

“That was before Fox ‘News,’ but it was universally accepted by Republicans that the media was biased in favor of liberals. I thought that was BS, and that you had a rich buffet of choices from both extremes to the middle. But I think that was a time when many Republicans began to choose only far right sources. AM radio was loaded with Rush wannabes and I think that’s when my generation got stuck. There, but for the Grace of God go I! I don’t think I’ve voted for a single Republican since about 1995...”

'Succession' Dramatizes a Death Knell

I do like the fact that the concluding chapters of HBO's Succession are honing in on how a sufficiently corrupt “news” channel can, almost casually, destroy a democracy. 

Too bad this dramatic warning didn't air a quarter-century ago when we had a better chance of survival.

CNN Bellyflops into a Moral Sewer

On Wednesday night, ratings whore CNN actually PROMOTED a man who tried to violently overthrow American democracy. 

Their lack of even a pretense of journalistic ethics disgusts me. Nd I’m not alone. Journalists inside and outside CNN called the event a “disaster” and “CNN’s lowest moment.” Meanwhile, on Twitter, the hashtags and phrases BoycottCNN, DoneWithCNN and ByeCNN were trending.

With its latest “Trump Town Hall,” CNN did nothing but provide millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity to a nakedly fascist politician, the Republican rapist president. 

And that was the channel's intention all along. 

CNN is so desperately eager to dive into the Fox News sewer.

I’ve been expecting this kind of thing under CNN CEO Chris Licht. CNN’s new “non-ideological” policy is this: fire any reporters who might confront Republicans with verified facts, and sponsor lavish mob events to promote Republicans.

Donald Trump spewed a firehose of factual lies while CNN’s hand-picked audience of Trump sycophants laughed and cheered. CNN selected a hapless moderator as its “journalistic” fig leaf, knowing she’d be sacrificed to the pro-Trump mob they’d so carefully selected.

As a friend said: “My ‘Do Not Watch Ever Again’ List just grew. CNN is in good company on that list with 60 Minutes for interviewing Marjorie Taylor Greene. I refuse to be manipulated into viewership on ‘provocative’ alone. That never works. Don't they know that by now?”

And as SirCharlie said, “Why give Hitler a second shot at a Nuremberg rally? What could go wrong? Does a zebra change its stripes? Shame on CNN. Shame.”

“Putting him onstage, having him answer questions like a normal candidate who didn’t get people killed in the process of trying to end the democracy he’s attempting to once again run, normalizes what Trump did,” DC police officer Michael Fanone wrote. “It sends a message that attempting a coup is just part of the process; that accepting election results is a choice; and that there are no consequences, in the media or in politics or anywhere else, for rejecting them.”

As Umair Haque observed, “The Dems are seriously underplaying the danger of an entire media ecosystem basically being swung to the furthest right. That’s a gigantic warning sign of democratic implosion.”

When even Fox News attacks CNN for its lack of journalistic ethics, irony is officially dead, buried and rotted.

Fox News Staffers Pick Bad Day to Stop Sniffing Coke

Bingo!

Lies Are Fox News' Most Important Product

In its constant quest to gaslight its willing victims, Fox News uses panic mongering, character assassination and ad hominem arguments, psychological projection and flipping, the rewriting of history, scapegoating, conflation of violence with power, bullying, confusion, populism, invocation of the Christian God, saturation, the disparagement of education, guilt by association and diversion. 

Fox News’s most basic propaganda technique is simply to lie about facts, and it does so constantly. For example, which political party a politician belongs to isn't a matter of opinion. It's a fact Fox News lies about.

Fox News suddenly identified disgraced Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina as a Democrat on the very day he admitted his philandering.

A coincidence? But Fox News also suddenly changed Congressman Mark Foley's party affiliation from Republican to Democratic the very moment it was inescapably confirmed that Foley was sexually soliciting teenage male pages in Congress.

Every “mistake” Fox News makes manages to falsely malign Democrats and/or shield guilty Republicans. 

Odd, isn’t it?

Only Sometimes Am I Understood

I wrote this on a Washington Post thread: “Fox News propaganda is fogging up American reality with hateful lies, carefully building to a future of unimaginable violence in this country.”

Naturally, the remark drew a sneer from some brain-dead Republican. But another reader decided to explain.

OnlySometimes replied, “George, read the sentence for comprehension. The first part, ‘Fox News propaganda is fogging up American reality with hateful lies,’ this means that content put out by Fox News is fogging up its viewers’ sense of reality with hateful lies. This is a fact made clear by the Dominion Voting lawsuit that shows without a doubt that the ‘news’ team at Fox News puts out content based on what they think will generate ratings — not based on facts or truth. 

“Fox News has determined they get better ratings and therefore make MORE MONEY when they give their viewers content filled with garbage about how Dems are coming for guns, immigrants are coming to rape, teachers are trying to groom kids to be gay, the list goes on.

“The Fox News people telling their viewers this crap don’t believe this s#it. They know their viewers crave this worldview and know they make TONS of money off them. It’s GREED. 

“Now, the second part of the sentence, ‘carefully building to a future of unimaginable violence in this country.’ This means the result of this careful feeding of misinformation to Fox’s viewers will inevitably lead to unimaginable violence, whether that’s the intended consequence or not. “If you are a Fox News viewer and you trust their presenters/ opinion-ers, then you believe the lies they tell you, so of course you’d be afraid, angry and ready to take up arms to protect what you think is being stolen from you.

“Can you see the problem here? Fox News has viewers all worked up over imaginary bogey men. Dems aren’t coming for their guns — just sensible safety regulations. Immigrants aren’t coming to rape — they just want a chance to work hard and provide for their family in a country that’s not buried in corruption, or at war. Teachers aren’t trying to groom kids — they’re trying to educate kids to be kind to others, be knowledgeable citizens, to teach them to read and think for themselves so they can make up their own minds about the issues of the day.”

Tippy-toeing around Stupid People

“The ideal subject[s] of totalitarian rule …[are]… people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” ― Hannah Arendt

Factor long-term exposure to Fox News and its ilk into the equation, and you do the math. 

Why Hannity Rhymes with 'Insanity'

Fox News displays its open contempt for facts because it is a right-wing authoritarian propaganda machine, and I mean that literally. Fox News does not practice journalism. It SUBVERTS journalism. 

It is the Fourth Estate's Fifth Column. 

Where Barnum Meets Goebbels

After seeing a show yesterday, Bart took me for an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen. And what should be playing on the TV but Fox News?

Turns out that ALL the news in America during the time we sat there was about how rotten Democrats are. Who knew?

Bart wisely sat with his back to that knuckle-dragging trash.

Fox News is where Phineas Taylor Barnum meets Paul Joseph Goebbels.

The Doctor on the Facts of Life

Lies such as those told on Fox News do have this advantage: they can be fashioned to perfectly suit the audience’s most ridiculous fantasies and ugliest prejudices. The truth does not. It is merely absolutely necessary for survival.

Here's Why Fox News is Never Exposed

 

This is the way the dirty game is played between the GOP fascists and the cowardly corporate news media.

Why Is Fox's Fascism Forgiven?

You can measure just how bad the latest exposure of Republican corruption is by observing the length of time it takes Fox News to come up with lies to justify it. Their extended silence always speaks volumes.

Fox News Trips Over its Own Forked Tongue

For some odd reason, Fox News hosts pleaded with Trump to stop "tourists" from going to the White House.

Fox News: It Really Is Scary

Fox News: That channel where all the vaccinated spokesmodels warn their audience about how much they should fear vaccines.