This just in: Last Friday (8/25), I decided to go for 30 days without watching any political news station other than Fox. This post is my first one covering how I feel about it thus far.
The first show was hosted by Greg Gutfeld. He started by saying Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswami reminded him of his Uber driver. I was 1 minute into my first episode of Fox and already saw a racist joke.
Over the weekend, my overall sense was that Fox is the place to go if you want to be mad about something. For example, they had a 15-minute segment on how Joe Biden is attacking small businesses that make fans because Biden wants the fans to be more energy efficient. Shockingly, up to 10% of small fan manufacturers may go out of business.
This was a typical segment. Let’s break it down a bit. First, I guess that Joe Biden has no idea that there is legislation in the works about fans. As president, he does not make laws or assign spending. These jobs fall to Congress which, by the way, has a House that is controlled by Republicans. Secondly, note the term “may” when referring to a possible outcome. This is akin to a software company that says, “You may save up to 10% using our software.” Pure speculation without evidence. And finally, there was no coverage of any possible “upside” to the legislation. I guess that its part of a larger program to reign in energy consumption but I don’t know because they never said.
This morning, Monday, things got even worse.
Let’s start with the scandals…
Apparently, someone on Jack Smith’s staff met with a lower level White House legal person sometime in March. Fox is outraged that this is apparently evidence that Biden is using the DOJ to file criminal charges against his opponents. WTF?
Next, the ousted Uranian prosecutor is claiming Joe Biden, in 2016, took bribes and helped his son get deals in Ukraine. Fox News is outraged at this complexly corrupted President. They left out that this was investigated by a Republican-led senate who found no wrongdoing. Here is a link. This is old news about a disproven issue. Still, combine this with the fan-gate and a meeting of unknown substance in March and you start to feel that Fox viewers are being influenced by a massive inundation of unimportant nuance that will leave them feeling as if “something must be up.”
Then comes mask-gate. Covid is making a predictable comeback due to the fall season and the very nature of a highly contagious virus. Fox made 2 points using an “expert”. First, there is no evidence that masks have any impact on the spread of the virus, and second, masks contain substances that make you sick. I found this interesting so I typed in “Are masks effective against COVID?” Response #1: Mayo Clinic says “Yes”. Response #3: Johns Hopkins says “Yes”. Response #3: CDC says “yes”. I found no evidence that masks make you sick although the FOX host said, “Yes, I don’t feel well when I have to wear a mask.” Join the club. That doesn’t mean the masks are making you sick. It means you are a normal human being that doesn’t like wearing masks.
Noticeably missing is any commentary on Trump.
It’s still early on Monday morning so I’m sure there is more to come.
Thus far, my finding is that FOX news is where you go to be sold anger by grifters.
Time to save the world.
Up, up and away…
Jim