Sorry, I think I'd had a recent conversation by a Beck and faux fan too recently and my brain needed to be taken out and washed! :shrug I mean, Rupert Murdoch isn't even American, so everybody has a part in the nasty piece of business that calls itself "fox news-fair and balanced." On the other hand, we also have Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, and the rest of the lamestream media (if I hear that phrase one more time from someone I'm actually physically standing next to I won't be responsible for my actions.)
I did read a column recently from someone who made the claim that at every juncture when a large change was happening, civil rights movement, suffragette movement, etc., that the pushback from those who benefitted from the status quo was just like what it going on now.
The one thing that I think does make it different this time is fauxnoise. Hmmm, what would have happened to the civil rights movement if there had been an entire television network---I almost said 'news' then remembered who I was talking about---that spent hour after hour spewing nonsense and blatant lies about how bad and dangerous Negros (the label of choice at the time) were and how the country was never going to recover from letting those people eat at the same lunch counters or vote.
O'Reilly would have had Strom Thurman on explaining how 'they' couldn't go to the same schools as white children because they weren't smart enough to learn and it would only be a waste of time. Beck would have put things on his blackboard saying that Negros would poison the water if allowed to swim in white peoples' schools. Sarah Palin would explain how they weren't really Christians and that our founding fathers had founded this country on the biblical belief that Negros should remain slaves.
Of course, she'd be closest to being at least technically correct, considering that the bible extolled slavery. It doesn't specifially talk about black people and slavery, but it has some other pretty choice things to say about them, too, if you decide to take certain passages literally. And our fundie friends would have been quoting those passages day after day, hour after hour, ad nauseum.
Every time a civil rights worker was gunned down, the narrative would have been that they started it, were only trying to make the segregationists look mean, and it was all the Negros fault they got shot. And Beck would ponder the good points of maybe shooting all of them, not that he was trying to extol violence or anything...
Face it, if fauxnoise had existed during the civil rights era, black people not only would have never got the vote or equal rights, they probably would have either been re-enslaved or shipped back to Africa. Had they existed during the suffragette movement, women would not now have the vote or be allowed out of the home without a keeper.
I realize I tend to go on and on, but those of you who don't live in an almost completely republican, fundamentalist christian or catholic, red state with faux viewers outnumbering every one else 10-1 can't imagine what it's like. The dentists' offices all have TV's tuned to faux, the banks all have TV's in the lobby tuned to faux. Glenn Beck is considered the second coming and Bill O'Reilly the smartest and best infomed "newsman" whose ever existed. I work at a fucking newspaper and you'd think at least there peole would be better educated. Nope--god it gets old!
There are a number of anti-faux websites and facebook pages, and even here the network is carrying Beck because he's losing his sponsors here as well. Murdoch is in it for the money as much as the notoriety, though, and eventually even a star like Beck will have to begin carrying his own weight again.
I just read some interesting news on why Hannity isn't a rising star over there any more. I guess he was using his position to very openly not only get personally involved in politics, but was enriching himself behind faux's back doing so. So when the ethics violations hit, Murdoch and company realized that they were looking bad and facing charges from the FCC, and that they hadn't got a dime in the process. There are some things they just won't tolerate, and being cut out of the profits is one of them!
So there's hope for us yet, at least as long as Jon Stewart has viewers, and even though they do it in secret, I've discovered that there are nests of obama sympathizers even here...
