Matt Yglesias

If you can spare the time to read the above blog post (which will change nothing in the world) then you can check out our new website, http://www.TeachMeNow.org or sign our petition! http://www.petitiononline.com/ideapowa/petition.html

Imagine all the people…

Oh, and it’s non-profit. Suck it, Morgan.

To me it seems much of Beck’s rise has come at the expense of Sean Hannity.

And folks like Rachel Madow don’t lie to gullible liberals about what’s happening in America? Similarly, during the the Bush years weren’t liberal commentators in political terms creating a paranoid and misinformed base that was not helpful?

From the article in question

“Conor Friedersdorf remembers what a pain it was to live with a liberal roommate who watched Keith Olbermann every night, and would subsequently sulk around in a pissed-off mood. Friedersdorf too got a negative contact buzz from the show. He writes: “It seems to me that Olbermann’s show often brought out the worst impulses in people: petulance, self-righteousness, and blind anger at “the other side.””

From the article in question

“Conor Friedersdorf remembers what a pain it was to live with a liberal roommate who watched Keith Olbermann every night, and would subsequently sulk around in a pissed-off mood. Friedersdorf too got a negative contact buzz from the show. He writes: “It seems to me that Olbermann’s show often brought out the worst impulses in people: petulance, self-righteousness, and blind anger at “the other side.””

You guys really do live in an alternate reality.

We’ll see. If the FOX-watching base generates more Sharron Angles and Sarah Palins, they could cause some harm.

But so far FOX has mostly generated a lot of people who are unusually angry at Obama and the Democrats and unusually likely to turn out and vote for Republicans.

Most likely what will happen is that FOX will become more critical of visibly crazy Republican candidates and spend more time pumping electable ones, and the paranoid gullible base will continue to work out nicely for them.

I dunno, maybe it’s just that old people want drama, and fox gives it to them.

Hi young’uns.

As a bona fide old people type I’m proud to announce the formation of a new grassroots organization I have named “Geezers for Yglesias”.

Our motto is “He’s not always right but mostly left”.

Watch for our web site.

Let’s take back our elderly!

I was thinking about the rise of FOX last night, and it occured to me to put it like this:

1. For decades, conservatives complained about liberal bias and slant in the media. Supposedly they wanted objective coverage — the elimination of bias.

2. Roger Ailes instead offered a channel with indisputed conservative bias and slant in its coverage. (I would say that it shows far more bias than any other media source, but tat’s not necessary for the argument at hand and complicates my position needlessly.)

3. These same anti-bias conservatives love FOX News.

The conclusion is either that they a) still hate bias and think FOX is unbiased, making them delusional or b) really love bias and just want their own views catered to, making them hypocrites.

A principles anti-bias crusader would not settle for — much less fully support — a news channel that just flattered the biases of the crusader. And if your complaints about liberal bias weren’t driven by a concern over bias, but just liberal bias, you’re just a joke for all your preening about objectivity.

So I’m not really concerned about the effects of FOX News, because anybody who caterwauled about bias until FOX served up their kind of bias can’t be hurt by manipulative media. They’re complicit: they wanted to be manipulated by their media.

really love bias and just want their own views catered to, making them hypocrites.

You’re half-right. They really do love a conservative slant, but they’re not hypocrites, per se. They just don’t like anything that in any way might make conservatives look bad (ie, reality). So they’re against the “liberal bias” of reality and simply want something that doesn’t have that.

There are no anti-bias crusaders on the right, and never have been. Nor did they ever claim to be.

I was going to post a rude, snotty reply (calling you a blog-whore, etc.) but since you took the time to tell Morgan to suck it, I’ll go ahead and click on your links instead.

Really? You are going to go with a Rachel Madow/Glen Beck analogy? Madow is biased as hell, sure, but she is nothing like Beck. Beck is a charlatan; an illusionist who invents new battles in his make-believe culture war from out-of-context video clips and wild misinterpretations; and he is paid by gold companies to do gold infomercials, and then pimps gold constantly during his show. Show me the Rachel Madow equivalencies – I am dying to see them. With baited breath, I tell you.

“Frank Youell remembers what a pain it is to live in the knowledge that brown people are nearby.”

I have to agree with Anthony even though I don’t understand why Peaceniks are prone to suck the cock of dicators like Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak.

George Bush and Conservatives wrecked our economy. I just read the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s report and it’s just bizarre how the Democratic and Republican commissioners came to different conclustions. The Republicans do dwell in an alternate reality. Where Democrats were culpable, like Bill Clinton’s reappointment of Alan Greenspan, it was because they were acting like Republicans.

If the economy keeps improving however slowy, Obama will be re-elected and the Rightwing will rage.

FOX has certainly ruined my mother in that it politicized her into a fairly consistent Republican. She went from being a moderate independent that voted a bit erratically to someone who pretty consistently mouths ridiculous stuff directly from Fox.

One elderly person I worked for had FOX blasting all day. I almost quit during the “Countdown to Iraq” but she died of a stroke so I didn’t have to. She was an interesting lady who had an interesting life. I enjoyed her company when I could get her to talk about herself, but it was difficult because she was angry a lot and she seemed worried that she’d miss something on the news. It seemed a real shame for her to spend her final years like that—pissed off and looking forward to seeing a lot of Iraqis murdered because she was certain that Saddam was behind 9/11 and every Iraqi was a terrorist. Perhaps FOX hastened her departure. Seems a lot of loneliness and fear is being hijacked and channeled into FOX outrage and hatred.

It actually seems as though many of them are delusional, rather than hypocritical.

Hey, dumbass, when your mommy was packing your lunch she forgot to add your evidence.

But they’re hypocrites because they went on and on about bias and slant for decades, only to turn around embrace a deeply biased media source.

And I disagree that people on the right never claimed to be for objectivity and crusading against bias. The political argument against the mainstream media was that it needed to be less biased, not that somebody should offer other biased media so as to cure slant with more slant. Of course, that’s exactly what happened, because that’s where the money is. (Again, FOX is far more biased than any other modern news outlet ever was — it’s run like an official state news channel — but demonstrating that isn’t necessary for my argument.)

He don’t need evidence. He’s got Glenn Beck!

I’d welcome the snotty reply! Arguing can be a fun game. People pay attention to conflict anyway, when they need to be paying attention to our website instead.

We also have a witty twitter feed! @teachmenoworg

Me too, but mine’s better than theirs.

http://www.teachmenow.org

Me too, but mine’s better than theirs.

http://www.teachmenow.org

Reminds me of a joke from PeterK:

“What do you call 100,000 dead foreigners?”

“An assassination attempt!”

I’m pretty sure this actually appears on Glenn Beck’s business card.

Yeah, my dad has always had pretty right-wing views, but since he retired a few years ago and started spending a lot of time sitting at home watching Fox, he’s really started to spout a lot of hateful/insane stuff. The guy now thinks there should be literally no government except police, courts and military. He spent his whole career as a civilian employee of the federal government, which allowed him to retire at 57 and ride off into the sunset with a great pension and health benefits. I wish I was joking.

My condolences. Seriously.

…in political terms creating a paranoid and misinformed base is not helpful.

Depends on how far down you can depress turnout. Delivering 100% of a rabid, crawl-over-broken-glass-to vote 30% of the electorate may well be good enough to win.

It is common knowledge that younger people are more liberal while older folk skewer conservative. I guess the bias gets more pronounced (at least for the older side) when taking about white middle class/upper middle class people. However, Glenn Beck is an enigma. Somehow older people of all color gravitate to him. I know many grannies (Asian ones at that) who could be best described as Glenn Beck groupies. Bad news is that they are all over 55.

Re: But they’re hypocrites because they went on and on about bias and slant for decades, only to turn around embrace a deeply biased media source

Are you so sure that the acknowledge that Fox is biased? Seems to me that a lot of Fox viewers think that Fox News is just reporting the truth which the rest of the media distorts or suppresses. (I am talking news, not Glen Beck and the rest of the rant-club.)

I tend to agree this is going to end badly for the GOP, but one has to admit it remains to be seen. The obvious question is whether they can pivot quickly once it is clear this strategy is a dead-end. I tend to think younger people won’t forget so quickly and that the primary electorate will be so sparse that the craziness will stay in place for several bad electoral cycles, but they will likely still have the media propping them up, in part because the Chamber of Commerce types will try to make sure there is some sort of conservative party still around to at least slow down the Democrats, so you never know.

I’d focus less on Fox’s evening lineup, and more on its daytime programming. I get the “Fox geezer” experience when sitting in the chair at the barber’s, and the Megyn Newsbynt stuff is vastly different from what either CNN or MSNBC is putting out at that time.

(Beck’s 5pm scheduling isn’t accidental, though.)

Seems to me that a lot of Fox viewers think that Fox News is just reporting the truth which the rest of the media distorts or suppresses.

I feel that Fox News viewers know that Fox serves as a cheerleader for the right, and this is what they want. “Fair and Balanced” == “Providing a counterweight to the left.” Their complaints about “liberal bias” is just that they don’t think anyone should do anything but cheerleader a cheerleader for the right. So I don’t see them as hypocrites at all.

Seems to me that a lot of Fox viewers think that Fox News is just reporting the truth which the rest of the media distorts or suppresses.

I feel that Fox News viewers know that Fox serves as a cheerleader for the right, and this is what they want. “Fair and Balanced” == “Providing a counterweight to the left.” Their complaints about “liberal bias” is just that they don’t think anyone should do anything but cheerleader a cheerleader for the right. So I don’t see them as hypocrites at all.

My parents sit watching CNN and MSNBC (and ridiculously stupid reality TV) all day. I feel like I have to be their parent and tell them that they’re only allowed 1 hour of TV a day. They are rotting their brains. They were never particularly savvy media consumers to begin with and old age has made them even less able to evaluate or question anything they hear.

My parents sit watching CNN and MSNBC (and ridiculously stupid reality TV) all day. I feel like I have to be their parent and tell them that they’re only allowed 1 hour of TV a day. They are rotting their brains. They were never particularly savvy media consumers to begin with and old age has made them even less able to evaluate or question anything they hear.

They were never particularly savvy media consumers to begin with and old age has made them even less able to evaluate or question anything they hear.

I definitely think that this is a side-effect of age, which makes me think that’s it’s imperative to do as much done while you’re young as possible: not only do you become “set in your ways” when you’re older, but you’re obviously more likely to be taken advantage of because your critical reasoning abilities have atrophied.

They were never particularly savvy media consumers to begin with and old age has made them even less able to evaluate or question anything they hear.

I definitely think that this is a side-effect of age, which makes me think that’s it’s imperative to do as much done while you’re young as possible: not only do you become “set in your ways” when you’re older, but you’re obviously more likely to be taken advantage of because your critical reasoning abilities have atrophied.

It is common knowledge that younger people are more liberal while older folk skewer conservative.

But that’s relative, not absolute. Older folks with beliefs that were quite liberal in their young days have views that are considered staid and conservative, today: conservatism of course being the cliched veneration of yesterday’s radicals, after all.

It is common knowledge that younger people are more liberal while older folk skewer conservative.

But that’s relative, not absolute. Older folks with beliefs that were quite liberal in their young days have views that are considered staid and conservative, today: conservatism of course being the cliched veneration of yesterday’s radicals, after all.

“He says what he thinks” is the praise you hear from the FOX geezers. Ask them if they want to hear what you think, you can say what you think too, and they will likely intuit that they don’t want to hear it.

“He says what he thinks” is the praise you hear from the FOX geezers. Ask them if they want to hear what you think, you can say what you think too, and they will likely intuit that they don’t want to hear it.

I think the power of television is at work, also. I have never watched television much. Someone gave me one out of misguided pity once and I never plugged it in. I gave it to another friend. In 97′ I bought a television and watched it because I found that I often had no idea what people were talking about. If you go a year or so without watching television at all, and then watch it, you’ll see how weird it is. Television has it’s own “logic”. I really do wish America would kill its television and radio.

Oh—I watched some television after three weeks in the hospital and was stunned by the drug ads. It is trippy to watch pastoral scenes while listening to a host of side effects and warnings.

BTW, I’ve known people in their eighties who suffered no deficit in critical reasoning ability. They watched very little television.

Oh—I watched some television after three weeks in the hospital and was stunned by the drug ads. It is trippy to watch pastoral scenes while listening to a host of side effects and warnings.

BTW, I’ve known people in their eighties who suffered no deficit in critical reasoning ability. They watched very little television.

Well, Beck is a lower bid.

“conservatism of course being the cliched veneration of yesterday’s radicals, after all.”

That doesn’t map well to our recent history.

I really don’t think that holds up. Today’s mainstream economic conservativism is pretty libertarian in its thinking: expanding healthcare coverage is bad, we should “audit” and destroy the Fed, we should turn SS into a defined contribution system, and tax increases are usually self-financing; they’re good even if they’re not. Mix in a lingering hostility/anxiety with regard to parts of the CRA that impinge upon the purported liberties of racists, and you’re talking about something that isn’t all that relatively liberal compared to two generations ago. Sure, perhaps on the CRA, but not on anything else. And frankly even the CRA was above criticism from reasonable liberals two generations ago.

Oh, and it’s non-profit.

Oh, just what the world needs– another guy with a useless non-profit and a dream. Did you go to some do-gooder college where your big dream was to “break out” of the middle class hellhole you grew up in to “change the world” by working in some underpaying non-profit sector doing absolutely nothing of value?

Suck it, Morgan.

Now this is something I can get behind!

Here’s a column from todays’ WP documenting fuckface goat fucker sying son of a bitch Glenn Becks’ antisemitism and Jew baiting. As the columnist puts it, Beck the dreck is todays’ version of Father Coughlin.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/28/AR2011012802776.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

*tax cuts, not increases

Until you stop referring to Barack Obama as “Osama” I wish that you a) wouldn’t speak to me and b) wouldn’t talk about anti-Semitism, because engaging in sleazy anti-Arab racism and Muslim-baiting really really undermines the seriousness of your charges of anti-Semitism. You’d do more for Jews and for Israel by shutting the fuck up rather than presenting concern for anti-Semitism as this easily discredited cartoon.

The “Old people = conservative, young people = liberal” cliche is only true in some generations.

The Greatest Generation, which grew up during the Depression was the most liberal generation we’ve ever seen, until perhaps the current “Millennials.” They continued voting strongly Democratic even under the Reagan administration.

The Baby Boomers were famously politically divided, and Generation X was strongly conservative.

Old people were Walter Mondale’s strongest group, and voters under 30 voted overwhelmingly for Reagan.

Jon, my first comment says “that they a) still hate bias and think FOX is unbiased, making them delusional or b) really love bias and just want their own views catered to, making them hypocrites.” I think plenty of them don’t believe FOX News is biased. The last time I was subjected to it, it was running a multi-hour history of conservatism, complete with hagiographic recollections from people like Norman Podhoretz. If you think FOX shows this sort of program because it wants to deliver you the news, you’re deluded.

Oh I think we’ll get along just fine! I have worked with non-profits from MovedOn to NARAL. I prefer non-profits to actual government organizations – I’m sure you do too.

I Imagine we’ll find out. We’ll see how you respond to open sourcing all public school teachers classrooms (via cameras) under “work for hire” rules.

I realize the English language is not so rich in person endings on its verbs as many other languages are, but I do think my post above yours is unambiguously written with third person referrents. How do you get out of it that I am someone who thinks that Fox is unbiased?

Yes. Hannity was ready to be the next Limbaugh, only to see Beck coast by as the historian and godfather to the tea party. Hannity is just a hack, he doesn’t have Beck’s inventive flair or industriousness. He’s written what, 1 book since Obama’s election? Beck has shat out at least 6. His attempts to keep up with the sheer craziness of Beck are hilariously sad.

Matt says: ” creating a paranoid and misinformed base is not helpful.”

I am thinking more beck is merely consciously pressing the buttons of an already paranoid and misinformed base.

Paranoid and misinformed is a natural state of mind to perhaps 20% of the population.

Beck just augments and propels the pre-existing based of paranoid and hysterically minded americans.

A good read is John Dean’s “Conservatives Without Conscience.”

IIRC, Glenn Beck’s ratings were halved over the last year.

It is really interesting that all these damn 1960′s hippies watch Fox News.

Maybe its not as conservative as you think!

Cohort effect >>>>> age effect. Meaning different generations just have different political leanings depending on the circumstances when they grew up and stick to them until they die.

Man with logic like that you could go far in the spam industry and make some LOCAL WEALTH.

That was the editorial “you.”

Yes good thing we still have conservatives who understand the difference between fact and fiction like Ramsey.

Who went on in that post to quote from a work of fiction referring to the fictional character named More as Thomas More. The actual Moor sentenced two people to be burned to death for heresy.

I think we learn something from the fact that a conservative complains about his mother’s weak grasp on reality by referring to a character in a work of historical fiction with the name of a really existing conservative whose desire to conserve Catholic doctrine lead him to kill people who rejected it.

The problem isn’t just Fox.

Now why I wonder did Ramsey quote an anachronistic fictional creation when he could perfectly well have quoted, say, Voltaire ? I think it is clear. He lives in a fantasy world in which conservatives are the true liberals.

I should google first and comment later. I checked on More and heretics. He had 6 burned not 2.

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/wood.htm

Beck is bad, but at least he hasn’t killed people for disagreeing with him yet.

Picking on PeterK, only because he’s the n’th person to use the meme: “…why Peaceniks are prone to suck the cock of dicators like Saddam Hussein…”

I contend that the “Peaceniks” grokked that SH was a gangster with the fig leaf of sovereignty, but made the calculation that the cost of blood and treasure to root him out was greater than leaving him in place.

Naturally, there are a percentage of this crowd that are utterly naive about the degree of evil they propose to leave in place in any one instance. On the other hand, the potential to make a major mess while taking out the trash is real and obvious.

Here’s some snotty for you: there’s nothing to pay attention to at your non-existent website, your petition is hopelessly vague, and your Twitter feed is not accurately described as “witty.”

However, I do hope you manage to improve all that.

My biggest complaint with the bloodthirsty monster PeterK is that it wasn’t his blood we were talking about – most of the people, by far, were innocent Iraqis.

I hope the end result from the protests is a more democratic and more free Egypt. I am always hopeful that such things will turn out well. Experience tells us this is not always the case and that making a hash of it is pretty easy.

My dad was in the service, but is headed the same ideological direction. Fortunately, my mom is an unreformed McGovern Democrat, and keeps him down to a dull roar.

Give Beck some time. After all, he’s strictly in it for the money, so it may take him some time to push the wrong button.

My dad was an independent to right-ish leaning libertarian and then Tom Delay gerrymandered him out of the district of an old friend (Dogget) and he’s voted straight democrat since. So there’s that.

edit: dont’ get me wrong, he’s still a rightish leaning libertarian but he’s a reliable vote for the democrats for the foreseeable future…

you mean colostomy bags ?all that cliched right wing fox news spews seeps through those senile fuckers like shit through inferior quality colostomy bags.

Point “b)” heartily seconded.

I respectfully disagree. It depends on how you define liberal or how you define conservative. Millions in the Greatest Generation sided with Dwight Eisenhower and opposed the integration of the armed forces in 1948 and opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Millions in the Greatest Generation also opposed liberal Vietnam War protesters, the creation of the EPA, forced busing and the desegregation of our schools, Title IX for women, gay rights, human rights as a priority for America’s foreign policy in Central America; and didn’t support the anti-apartheid movement supported by liberals to free Nelson Mandela.

The Greatest Generation is known however for being liberal when it comes to supporting Medicare and Social Security, for reasons that are obvious.

Baby Boomers (1948 – 1964) brought about tremendous change in our society, much to the chagrin of the Greatest Generation. I voted against Ronald Reagan in 1984 for a variety reasons: he kicked off his presidential campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, MS where civil rights workers were found murdered and buried in an earthen damn; he blamed poor black women and labor unions for the demise of our economy; he fomented the lie of supply side economics; he put a genial face on elite class warfare and on not giving a damn for the less fortunate.

I also voted against him because his environmental policies were horrible and written by the polluting industries, and his foreign policy in Central America supported death squads in El Salvador and funded the Contras in Nicaragua who murdered nuns.

Many of my friends supported Reagan because they didn’t understand US history, didn’t read US history, and were prevented from being adequately informed because American journalism pulled its punches and started its 30 year decline. MSM journalism feared being called liberal like the plague, as deregulation, cost cutting and media mergers became all the rage in the ’80s. (Especially after Jesse Helms threatened a hostile takeover of CBS.)

Walter Pincus from the Washington Post has said in interviews that his colleagues in the beltway media stopped confronting Reagan on his repeated falsehoods because the public didn’t like to see the press beat up on an “old man.” There are numerous books written on the Potemkin Village-ization of our ’80s DC press corps, I’d recommend “On Bended Knee,” aptly named to describe how the DC press became subservient to Reagan. Leslie Stahl has a famous quote where Michael Deaver scoffed at one of her reports on CBS News. The words didn’t matter in her report, what mattered were the pictures. With balloons and a smiling Reagan in a visual montage, Deaver told her the content didn’t matter at all. Atwater knew this, as did Deaver and the others in the GOP. The MSM gave up, thus a generation of young people in the 1980s never had a chance to see a vigorous press corps challenging governmental authority the way it did in the 1960s and 70s. We saw this in the 2000s with Dubya and the trend continues to this day.

Contrary to your comment, I’d argue Baby Boomers were famously political….. period. They protested and forced an end to the Vietnam War and segregation in America. Those were two major accomplishments millions in the Greatest Generation opposed, which is why they like to watch FOX News and listen to talk radio.

Generation X was and is pro gay rights and pro environmental protection. While Gen X, may have been pro tax cuts and deregulation, now that they’ve either lost their jobs, I bet they’ve changed their minds. Now that they’ve also lost their homes, and much of their 401k after the dot com and financial crashes, they may be much more liberal on a strong safety net.

Sometimes numbers, like politicians and bankers, lie.

I respectfully disagree. It depends on how you define liberal or how you define conservative. Millions in the Greatest Generation sided with Dwight Eisenhower and opposed the integration of the armed forces in 1948 and opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Millions in the Greatest Generation also opposed liberal Vietnam War protesters, the creation of the EPA, forced busing and the desegregation of our schools, Title IX for women, gay rights, human rights as a priority for America’s foreign policy in Central America; and didn’t support the anti-apartheid movement supported by liberals to free Nelson Mandela.

The Greatest Generation is known however for being liberal when it comes to supporting Medicare and Social Security, for reasons that are obvious.

Baby Boomers (1948 – 1964) brought about tremendous change in our society, much to the chagrin of the Greatest Generation. I voted against Ronald Reagan in 1984 for a variety reasons: he kicked off his presidential campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, MS where civil rights workers were found murdered and buried in an earthen damn; he blamed poor black women and labor unions for the demise of our economy; he fomented the lie of supply side economics; he put a genial face on elite class warfare and on not giving a damn for the less fortunate.

I also voted against him because his environmental policies were horrible and written by the polluting industries, and his foreign policy in Central America supported death squads in El Salvador and funded the Contras in Nicaragua who murdered nuns.

Many of my friends supported Reagan because they didn’t understand US history, didn’t read US history, and were prevented from being adequately informed because American journalism pulled its punches and started its 30 year decline. MSM journalism feared being called liberal like the plague, as deregulation, cost cutting and media mergers became all the rage in the ’80s. (Especially after Jesse Helms threatened a hostile takeover of CBS.)

Walter Pincus from the Washington Post has said in interviews that his colleagues in the beltway media stopped confronting Reagan on his repeated falsehoods because the public didn’t like to see the press beat up on an “old man.” There are numerous books written on the Potemkin Village-ization of our ’80s DC press corps, I’d recommend “On Bended Knee,” aptly named to describe how the DC press became subservient to Reagan. Leslie Stahl has a famous quote where Michael Deaver scoffed at one of her reports on CBS News. The words didn’t matter in her report, what mattered were the pictures. With balloons and a smiling Reagan in a visual montage, Deaver told her the content didn’t matter at all. Atwater knew this, as did Deaver and the others in the GOP. The MSM gave up, thus a generation of young people in the 1980s never had a chance to see a vigorous press corps challenging governmental authority the way it did in the 1960s and 70s. We saw this in the 2000s with Dubya and the trend continues to this day.

Contrary to your comment, I’d argue Baby Boomers were famously political….. period. They protested and forced an end to the Vietnam War and segregation in America. Those were two major accomplishments millions in the Greatest Generation opposed, which is why they like to watch FOX News and listen to talk radio.

Generation X was and is pro gay rights and pro environmental protection. While Gen X, may have been pro tax cuts and deregulation, now that they’ve either lost their jobs, I bet they’ve changed their minds. Now that they’ve also lost their homes, and much of their 401k after the dot com and financial crashes, they may be much more liberal on a strong safety net.

Sometimes numbers, like politicians and bankers, lie.

No kidding. They really were setting Hannity up as the next hero of the average american, weren’t they? It really felt like they were getting ready to sit him in Rush’s chair at some point.

But Fox has been too successful, I think. They have so re-defined the news environment that you can have a Glenn Beck, who is sort of a Frankenstein’s monster. He might get the whole village burned down…

No kidding. They really were setting Hannity up as the next hero of the average american, weren’t they? It really felt like they were getting ready to sit him in Rush’s chair at some point.

But Fox has been too successful, I think. They have so re-defined the news environment that you can have a Glenn Beck, who is sort of a Frankenstein’s monster. He might get the whole village burned down…

Very good. The TV generation of American journalists basically sold their integrity to keep their million dollar jobs. A subtle process, but at this point, even the honest reporters, like Howard Fineman, are part of the “village” social circle and are in the business of rationalizing corrupt and supporting power. Even when they want to be anti-establishment, they aren’t very good at it. It would mean turning their backs on a lifetime of social connections.

Tom Delay, in one of those interviews that should be more famous than it is, stated it plainly. If millions of people are driven out of political involvement by anger and stridency, that’s all to the good. “His people” will always vote. The moderates and cynics won’t, and his side will win.

Wow, this is SO similar to my situation with my father, who quotes Fox News claims without question them. It’s good to know I’m not alone. Let’s form a support group.

Wow, this is SO similar to my situation with my father, who quotes Fox News claims without question them. It’s good to know I’m not alone. Let’s form a support group.

I feel like the whole Fox News phenomenon relies on the existence of people who have spent their lives watching The News on TV, and hence are inclined to trust what they see and hear because, well, it’s The News, so it must be true. But younger people don’t do that, and have never done that. Consequently, the Fox News model is doomed to collapse as that last generation of trusting-TV-news-watchers slowly dies off. The next wave of retirees aren’t going to be so spectacularly gullible as this group tends to be.

You have to admit though that they do a pretty good job of reporting on the ongoing menace of shark attacks.

Maddow has misled and hosted others who have, but what’s funniest/saddest about her is what she hasn’t done with the teapartiers. Instead of simply calling them on their fringe economic ideas in *mainstream* ways, she’s mostly played to her fringe base and called them names.

The partiers are extremely vulnerable to a good argument, yet the Leading Intellectual Powerhouse of The Left can’t make it:

24ahead.com/s/tea-parties

I’m a bit older (over 45) than Richard Ramsey and had the same difficulty with my late father who passed about 8 months ago. He was always a bit of an extreme conservative – and the end of the fairness doctrine and consequent birth of what I call “hate TV/radio” fed into that conservative streak and worked him up into a lather of anger.

The thing is – My Dad was NOT sitting around watching the boob tube all day. Even though he was fighting cancer for three years and nearly 80 years of age – he would get on the train and commute to his office 3-4 days a week as a practicing lawyer. There was a disconnect between his pragmatism as an attorney and his background as a Marine Veteran. The Marine Captain in him created a kind of extremist “patriotism” with second amendment overtones that was alarming. The point being that I think FOX feeds into extremism generally – not specifically. I’ve seen a lot of younger conservatives as blindly mesmerized by FOX propaganda as much as older people just “sitting at home.”

A good lie is like a well-crafted cocktail: Mix with enough truth that you barely tell the lie is even there.

Mmmhmmm…delicious conspiracies…