FOX-TV So Rabidly Pro-Bush They Should Be On The Campaign Payroll

By Charley Reese

6-25-3



Watching Fox News is like watching an electronic adolescent that has appointed itself the strident, belligerent defender of the Bush administration and its foreign policy.

As a result, Fox got its nose quite out of joint when the British Broadcasting Corporation recently ran a program based on an international poll that showed a majority in many countries don't like President George Bush.

Well, so what? I don't imagine Hillary Clinton or Tipper and Al Gore are all that fond of him either. Certainly Jimmy Carville isn't. So what is the big deal about a poll? The BBC poll, by the way, showed practically the same thing that an independent poll showed earlier. Nobody complained when the earlier poll results were reported.

It isn't the job of any journalist or pretend-journalist to defend the president against political criticism. He pays people well to do that, and President Bush's flacks are quite competent. Journalists are supposed to represent the common folks by just telling them what's going on, good or bad, with no regard whatsoever for the partisan political consequences, if any, of the news they report.

Maybe I feel so strongly because at one time I was a political flack. It paid very well. So I damned sure am not going to flack for some politician on a journalist's wage. What the folks at Fox News ought to do, if they like the president so much, is try to get on his campaign payroll. I'm sure the campaign pays better than Fox.

I have developed a theory about contemporary American politics, which is, in essence, that people don't pay much attention to the facts. They decide they either like or don't like some politician and that's the end of it. Don't try to confuse them with the facts.

I'm quite certain that if it were proven beyond a doubt that President Bush lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, it wouldn't affect his popularity any more than Monica Lewinsky affected Bill Clinton's. American politics today is all perception and emotion. Maybe, and I emphasize maybe, 5 percent of the people would change a political opinion based on the facts. The rest are attached to their favorites like movie fans. They just stare at them with goo-goo eyes and squeal on cue.

I realized this when Jimmy Carter made his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in 1976. The camera showed a close-up of a young woman with tears streaming down her face and a look of rapt adoration. Now, if you've ever heard a speech by Jimmy Carter, you know he is not even close to being a great orator. He was a droner, worse even than Al Gore. The normal human response to a Carter speech was, "When is this going to end?" Nor was he what a normal person would call adorable. Even "likable" would be a stretch. Yet that young woman looked like a teeny-bopper at a Beatles concert.

President Bush has his allotment of adoring fans, and nothing the BBC broadcasts is going to change their minds. Whomever the Democrats finally decide on will have his or her fans, and the great popularity contest will be off and running.

The days of great politics and great politicians are behind us. You have to go back to Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman to find any original and informed thinking in a political speech. Today's candidates are mass-marketed with committee-written speeches and clever sound bites and photo ops.

Despite all that, though, politicians often aren't in control of their own destiny. If the people believe the economy is bad, they will tend to blame the incumbent whether he had anything to do with it or not. And, conversely, if they think the economy is good, they will give the incumbent credit whether he had anything to do with it or not.

That tells us one thing: In October 2004, the Bushies at Fox News will be telling us how great the economy is even if we are all unemployed and half-starving.



© 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20030625/index.php

Fox News is to the US what the Pravda was to USSR.

Except that Fox started as an entertainement channel and stayed an entertainment channel.

You definitively have something to hide when you keep relentlessly bombasting your audience with the "fair and balanced" motto, begging people to trust them. Pathetic.

You may as well have news entirely sponsored by the UAW or the Women's lib, the coverage fairness would be about the same.

The Russians must be laughing their asses off...

Hey, Charley! Don't let Fox News get your nose all out of joint. If you don't like it, then don't watch it. What any station broadcasts in a free country should not be of any concern to you.

...the Bushies at Fox News will be telling us how great the economy is even if we are all unemployed and half-starving."

And the Left will be telling us how the fascist, genocidal NeoCon regime has shredded the Constitution and Bill of Rights, rounded up all the dissenters and interned them in concentration camps, and built a vast, world-spanning empire on the corpses of little children even if we all are enjoying a level of personal freedom and opportunity unrivaled in history.

Everything my government tells me.

I know i've never read that 90% of the news broadcast comes from the DoD, but why would they lie to me?

What do they have to gain?

Iran contra never happened

Enron never happened

Cia overthrow of Iran never happened

We never trained those Afgan freedom fighters

Why would they lie.

I love Big Brother....

and he loves me.

Enjoying personal freedoms and prosperity.

Pleassse! Put the crack pipe down. Try telling that horseshit to the millions of people who have lost their jobs. The American economy has lost a record number of jobs since Bush has been in office.

And I'm sorry but with new laws like the patriot act even the librarians are up in arms about the loss of civil liberties, not to mention what they are doing to imigrants. I don't care how many hacks on Fox or attack dogs on talk radio try to spin this mess were in,

People are not stupid and they will vote with their wallet.

Oh and we won't even go into the disaster that is Iraq or this fachist foriegn policy of do what we say or we'll

Bomb your country to the stone age and put in one of our corporate pupet dictators

...davemoron no longer denies that the Bush Junta has been waging War against the Constitution and Civil Rights.

No - instead in order to divert from it he charicatures the legitimate objections to the Bush Junta's violations of the constitution.

Number of logically valid arguments: 0

Conclusion: PsyOps/PR Shill. (As if it was not already obvious.)

BUSH LIED, AND CHILDREN DIED. It really is that simple.

Ann Coulter on Hannity and Colmes last night? She ate Allan Colmes lunch, I'll tell you that!

And, in her new book "Treason", she totally debunks the long standing lie of McCarthyism put forth by leftist trash.

We should all rush out and by that book as soon as it hits the stands. I'll bet any liberal here that Ann's new book will bump Hilliary's right out of the top selling slot on the best sellers list.

"Reading comprehension and you are polar opposites."

What a coincidence! INTELLIGENCE and you are polar opposites.