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Salon: I was a teenage Fox News robot
...An example: If you asked me in 10th grade (the time of the 2004 election and the height of my conservatism) what my political alignment was, I’d have answered, “I’m an American.” Then I would’ve espoused neoconservative dogma, telling you that’s what a Real American™ believes and if you don’t think terrorists should be waterboarded and carted off to Gitmo without a trial, then you hate freedom.
As bad as that is, here’s a worse example of how badly Fox News had taken over my brain: I had to do a Photoshop project in 10th grade art class. I took the faces of George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney and plastered them over the faces on Mount Rushmore. But that wasn’t enough. Because Fox News had taught me to fetishize the American flag, I put the whole picture on an American flag background. The teacher, a young liberal, laughed in disbelief when I handed it in.
In English class, I sat in the back so I could read Sean Hannity’s “Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism” without the teacher bothering me. I remember sternly nodding my head and pumping my fist when, in one chapter, he argued for illegally assassinating foreign heads of state. I cheered when Bill O’Reilly likened the ACLU to a terrorist organization. I believed he was one of a handful of Americans truly looking out for the rights of the common people. I thought the War on Christmas was a real thing. I would’ve purchased Ann Coulter’s “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” if I hadn’t forgotten my wallet that day. I swooned when Arnold Schwarzenegger called the Democrats “economic girly-men.” I watched “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity and Colmes” constantly. The latter show was my favorite because it allowed me to convince myself Fox News was “fair and balanced” since they let a liberal have a few minutes of screen time. Though how anyone could legitimately believe what the left wing espoused legitimately puzzled me.
I know this all sounds like a joke 10 years later, and in some ways it is because I was so far to the right, but it’s a serious matter. Fox News didn’t necessarily make me uninformed, but it made me informed about a political, social and economic reality that borderlined on fan fiction. I was fortunate in that I eventually liberated myself from my red, white and blue ideological shackles — but what about those who didn’t? What about the baby boomers whom Fox News turned into conservative curmudgeons who continue to breathe life into outdated, sexist, racist notions? What about the generation of Americans Fox News turned into this...
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/07/i_was_a_teenage_fox_news_robot_sean_hannity_destroyed_my_childhood/
As bad as that is, here’s a worse example of how badly Fox News had taken over my brain: I had to do a Photoshop project in 10th grade art class. I took the faces of George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney and plastered them over the faces on Mount Rushmore. But that wasn’t enough. Because Fox News had taught me to fetishize the American flag, I put the whole picture on an American flag background. The teacher, a young liberal, laughed in disbelief when I handed it in.
In English class, I sat in the back so I could read Sean Hannity’s “Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism” without the teacher bothering me. I remember sternly nodding my head and pumping my fist when, in one chapter, he argued for illegally assassinating foreign heads of state. I cheered when Bill O’Reilly likened the ACLU to a terrorist organization. I believed he was one of a handful of Americans truly looking out for the rights of the common people. I thought the War on Christmas was a real thing. I would’ve purchased Ann Coulter’s “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” if I hadn’t forgotten my wallet that day. I swooned when Arnold Schwarzenegger called the Democrats “economic girly-men.” I watched “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity and Colmes” constantly. The latter show was my favorite because it allowed me to convince myself Fox News was “fair and balanced” since they let a liberal have a few minutes of screen time. Though how anyone could legitimately believe what the left wing espoused legitimately puzzled me.
I know this all sounds like a joke 10 years later, and in some ways it is because I was so far to the right, but it’s a serious matter. Fox News didn’t necessarily make me uninformed, but it made me informed about a political, social and economic reality that borderlined on fan fiction. I was fortunate in that I eventually liberated myself from my red, white and blue ideological shackles — but what about those who didn’t? What about the baby boomers whom Fox News turned into conservative curmudgeons who continue to breathe life into outdated, sexist, racist notions? What about the generation of Americans Fox News turned into this...
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/07/i_was_a_teenage_fox_news_robot_sean_hannity_destroyed_my_childhood/
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