The Collected Thoughts and Musings of an Aspiring Political Philosopher

Monday, October 12, 2009

White House vs. Fox News: Distraction,
or the Most Important Battle Facing Our Country?


Image from the Facebook group "Quarantine Fox" (link here: must be a Facebook member to join)

A friend of mine recently expressed frustration that the White House is calling out Fox News for that they are: a propaganda mill for the right. She called it a "distraction" to keep people's minds off the "important issues". I can see her point, but is it really a distraction?

For one thing, I'm rilly-rilly liking me some fight-back against Fox... FINALLY!.

For another thing, who's distracted? It's not the folks who really care about these issues, and for everyone else, they could care less. And besides, one of the biggest targets for me IS Fox News... they need to be, because they're our main enemy in these fights; without them, hardly anyone outside of Minnesota would have ever heard of Michelle Bachmann and her crackpot ideas, or Glenn Beck, or Hannity. They would be reduced to what they are... sideshow cranks... without Fox to amplify their idiocy and give it "credibility". With Fox, EVERYTHING we need to get done in this country is 1000 times harder.

Every time people say "quit with the distractions", it seems to me they're kind of missing the reality of things in America. To most of the rest of the American people, honestly, healthcare reform, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, etc. etc. ARE the distraction, sadly enough. They just want to find out what their team did to win the big game, or are concentrating on just struggling through the recession (without really caring about all the economic infighting going on... even the Stimulus Packages only get moderate attention, because it has something to do with jobs).

I was sitting in a bar with my wife a few weeks ago, waiting for a to-go order to arrive. As we sat there, I listened to the conversations around the room. I heard folks talking about sports, about their work, about their kid's school, about the opposite sex, and lots more. You know what I didn't hear, in the 25-30 minutes we sat there in a room with maybe 30 people chatting? Not a word about the speech our President had given about healthcare the day before, in which Joe "You Lie" Wilson gained his fame. Not a peep. The "You Lie" heard round the world, not to mention any subject pertaining to politics or healthcare at all, ever came up that I could hear (and you could hear almost everything). Now this may have been a fluke, but what it made me realize is that MOST OF AMERICA IS JUST GOING ALONG, GETTING ALONG, and don't really care about all the "big issues". They're sheeple, or worse, they're apathetic. It was a big wake-up call to me.

It's only the few of us who really care about these issues that do the political work and write the articles and keep it alive as political issues that really matter, sadly enough. The majority of the American public is already completely distracted, and barely even know most of this stuff is going on. When EVERY EPISODE of Dancing With The Stars gets more audience than all of President Obama's speeches combined (except maybe the acceptance speech), then you gotta know that we few are the only ones who are going to get anything done... and we can't afford to worry about "distractions".

If you care about these things, these truly important things, you won't get upset by "distractions" because you'll be so focused on getting stuff done, a nuclear bomb going off right next door wouldn't phase you. As for the Fox thing, personally, THEY are part of the reason we are in such a mess today, so by all means, have the President call them out for what they are... propagandists and tabloiders. Confine them, make them irrelavent, make sure anyone who "runs" with one of their manufactured "stories" only does it with a clarification that it came from Fox News and therefore is suspect. Make people know that Fox is exactly the opposite of "Fair and Balanced" and that they, and "hate radio", are promoting an agenda that is dividing this country and creating havoc and hardship not only for all the rest of us, but even for the very folks they attract for an audience.

If we do this, we stand a chance to finally take back our country from the hatriots and fear-mongers and crazies. If we do this, then soon enough that particular Fox will be what it deserves to be... roadkill.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Couldn't have said it better. Except that I would like to sterilize them all - including their children.