My personal Fox News nightmare: Inside a month of self-induced torture
One October evening, in the midst of the 2013 government shutdown, I watched Bill O’Reilly work himself into something of a state. He sat at his desk, his hands palms upward, fingers slightly curved, as if cupping something in them. “I want Hagel.” he said, staring into the camera. “I want Hagel. I want him.” A casual observer might interpret this moment as O’Reilly expressing his fierce but tender desire for Chuck Hagel, the Secretary of Defense. More experienced O’Reilly viewers, however, will recognize it as a signal that the unfortunate Hagel had plummeted downward in O’Reilly’s estimation from pinhead to evildoer. (There are only three kinds of people in Bill O’Reilly’s world: good hardworking Americans, pinheads—people who are not actually malevolent but who are too stupid to understand the way the world really works—and evildoers.)
I know these things about O’Reilly because, for the entire month of October, I watched Fox News for approximately three hours every day, while at the same time strictly abstaining from any other sources of information about current events. The reason I engaged in this self-induced Fox News torture was that it had become clear that the right-wing media in general, and Fox News in particular, were constructing an alternate reality than the one I live in. Fox is, of course, a great driver of public opinion.
On this occasion, in which the government shutdown had resulted in death benefits not being paid to the families of soldiers killed in action, the problem was so egregious to O’Reilly that it could not possibly result from pinheadedness. No, instead there must have been heinous forces at work, and one of the devil’s minions was Chuck Hagel.
Bill O’Reilly, it should be noted, is a man whose mind is entirely undarkened by doubt. I have seen him refuse even to consider the arguments of a Notre Dame theology professor who took exception to his interpretation of the life and message of Jesus. When Juan Williams told him that Jonathan Gruber from MIT had calculated that 80% of American citizens would find their health insurance unchanged under Obamacare, O’Reilly responded, “I don’t believe that for a second…That’s what some pinhead says. That’s not a fact.”
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/28/my_personal_fox_news_nightmare_inside_a_month_of_self_induced_torture/
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kicking around in my head for years now and I feel the need to express it here... about the name "fox" and the implications many might not recognize about the meaning in some cultures that might be revealing.
In Native American and other older cultures around the world the natural world was observed and applied to the mannerisms of humans. Some might liken this to the assembly of zodiacal signs and features attributed to each sign although there are far more animals and plants used in these systems of defining human nature as we would call it now.
Fox in some indigenous cultures on this continent and others represents the deceiver, deception, cunning and unseen intentions behind a facade. One who creates a major distraction to deflect detection of the others in its family. Also one who has the ability of the chameleon who changes color to represent its surroundings... camouflage.
All of these attributes fit the FuxNooze model... telling the truth is not what they are about and everyone should learn this lesson. They lie, and restructure the truth to fit their argument of how they see things and fashion the reality to confuse and redirect one's gaze from what their intentions are... to deconstruct the America we have been promised and have been working for all of our lives, for those who want to own it and us.
It's good that you wanted to investigate and came away with this understanding, but for your own mental health, I would suggest you never do that again!
