AlterNet: Watching Them Squirm: Is Fox News Abandoning the Mob It Created?

[marmar]

Watching Them Squirm: Is Fox News Abandoning the Mob It Created?

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted November 7, 2008.

A huge schism develops between Fox's post-election attempts at "civility" and its pitchfork-wielding audience.



The first polls had just closed when the Republican Right's "Agony of Defeat" moment arrived. It was just after 8 p.m. -- right as Fox's "America's Election HQ" show returned from a commercial break, and Brit Hume welcomed viewers back to his "Fair and Balanced" network.

But something wasn't right: There was a strange lack of background banter, none of the golf-buddy joshing that comes with overconfidence. There was just Bergman-esque silence between every one of Brit Hume's dramatic pauses. The Fox cameras wandered over an incredible scene: the cream of right-wing/neocon punditry -- William Kristol, Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke -- were caught slumped in their chairs during the commercial break, deep in a state of hopelessness and depression. They didn't see the camera train on them, or maybe they were incapable of faking it, as if they'd been on a three-day Ecstasy roll at Burning Man, and now they were paying the horrible serotonin-deprived price. Kristol looked like he was suffering the worst: He was slouched over the table, his grotesque Stewie-shaped head sulking down to his navel, his glazed eyes staring down at the floor. He strained to lift his head when Hume called on him to comment -- and when Kristol spoke, it was in a raspy, slow voice, not his usual smirking, energetic arrogance. To quote a sympathetic right-wing blogger, "Will Collier e-mails to tell me that he hasn't seen Bill Kristol look this bad since his man McCain get stomped in S.C. by Bush in 2000."

I started my Fox News Election Day Agony Watch at 6:30 a.m. I was expecting a lot of last-minute shrieking about voter fraud, ACORN and Barack Hussein Osama terrorist-mongering, the climax to a vicious campaign that Fox had been promoting over the previous month or two, but what was so strange that day was the relatively subdued, quasi-civil tone that Fox was taking. They pushed those buttons on Election Day, but only halfheartedly. You'd have to have watched a lot of Fox News -- which I have, out of morbid curiosity -- to detect the tonal shift on Nov. 4. It was as if they had decided to pull their punches. Before the polls opened, Ann Coulter appeared for a few minutes to riff against the liberals, but the 47-year-old MILF-wannabe looked oddly desperate in her mini-miniskirt and knee-high boots, as if she stole her imaginary teenage daughter's clubbing outfit and wanted to show it off. The effect was wrong, a desperate eccentricity, like a neocon Michael Jackson. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/106234/watching_them_squirm%3A_is_fox_news_abandoning_the_mob_it_created/

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Sir Rupert Will Be Rearranging Things

He puts on the kneepads for whoever's in charge, and now it's the Dems.

[JohnyCanuck]

2. "As one commenter wrote, 'Watch Fox with the sound off and you will be LESS aggravated.'"

I tried that, it doesn't work for me.

[old mark]

10. Better if we just boycott Fox completely - there is little there of value, anyway,

and if enough Dems stop watching - and email them to let them know - Rupert will eventually take notice. They all do this for money, you know - fewer viewers = less money.

Boycott FOX and tell them.


mark

[tblue37]

12. I think you underestimate the RW moneybags' willingness to put their

money where their fascist principles are. I have often been frustrated at the way the RW deep-pockets types are so willing to provide well-paid careers for bright, talented young people of flexible morals and little conscience. David Brock himself, in his book Blinded by the Right admits that part of what lured him to the Dark Side was the opportunity to make money and have financial security. Eric Alterman, a writer on our side, tells about how he watched many of those he graduated from college and grad school with move into nicely financed sinecures, while he held on to his principles and struggled financially.

For some reason, the deep pockets on our side are not as willing to finance careers for bright young people, apparently assuming that liberals should be willing to volunteer their time and effort, with no expectation of reasonable remuneration--forgetting that even liberals have to pay bills and "put food on their families."

My son, whom I raised with my own progressive values, nevertheless imbibed a strong dose of money-grubbing values at his daddy's knee. At one point, when he tried repeatedly to volunteer his considerable skills to the Dem party in Chicago, he was not able to get a callback from them, because the Dem office had no money to have anyone manning the office regularly, or even often enough to return the calls he left on their voice mail several times.

Then, on a whim he contacted the Republican office, just for comparison. No voice mail. He got a live person on the first try. As soon as they heard about his qualifications (which are pretty impressive) they requested a resume. Then they called and set up an appointment and a paid staffer there took him out to a nice restaurant for lunch and delivered a recruiting speech, offering him a paid position with the Republican campaign. He was sorely tempted, since at the time he was a low-paid but highly talented PR agent and writer.

I think the only thing that saved him was that the campaign he was offered a job with was the one against Obama when he ran for the US Senate. Ever since Obama's 2004 keynote speech at the DNC, Obama has always been a personal hero of my son's, and he even had a chance to shake Obama's hand and tell him so when he encountered him at the Chicago airport during his Senate campaign. But I suspect that if anyone else had been running on the Dem side, my boy would have been sorely tempted to jump to the Republican campaign, especially since he genuinely hated the job he had and wasn't making enough money to live on without regular help from me, and he was being offered a career, a long-term position with the Republican Party, not just a position for the duration of the campaign.

How many fine young people have we lost to the Dark Side because wealthy people on our side are so much less willing to finance liberal efforts over the long term? The RW moneymen have been looking to the future. They started financing think tanks and media organs 40 years ago, providing well-paid jobs for an army of bright, talented people, many of whom would undoubtedly have been willing to help us if they had had a chance to earn a living doing so.

I was recently reading an article about a couple of RW billionaires who have run into trouble, one even declaring bankruptcy, partly as a consequence of pouring so much money into RW causes.

I know I tend to go on at way too much length, but my point in a nutshell is this: Murdoch (and those like him) isn’t just about making money. He has plenty of money. He is about gaining and retaining power and about trying to ensure that the political powers in Australia, the US, and Great Britain are of the sort that will look very favorably on his shenanigans and create a political climate that will enable him to amass even more money and power. If he thought for a minute that a liberal political establishment would do that for him, he would be a liberal.

He doesn’t care if one of his many business ventures makes less money or even loses some. He has enough money-making ventures to pick up the slack.

[old mark]

15. I take your point, but it might not hurt to try - who can stand to

watch that shit long term, anyway - think of it as a vacation for your mind.


mark

[wellst0nev0ter]

20. Nice Summary Of What's Wrong About Our Side For So Long

Democratic leaders were spoiled into thinking that they could operate purely with volunteers or near-volunteer staffers. And the Democratic moneymen are stingy when they come to money, only financing "sure things" instead of (forgive the pun) spreading the wealth and seeing what grows.

[Cirque du So-What]

3. Another terrific piece

So sweet that saner elements within the repug party are attempting to make nice with the incoming Obama administration - driving the batshit loons over the edge. You can lead a freeper to the truth, but you can't make him think!

[marmar]

5. "You can lead a freeper to the truth, but you can't make him think!"

:thumbsup:

[laststeamtrain]

4. K & R-- This was fun to read. n/t

[malaise]

6. A superb article

:popcorn: I want to see them descend to cannibalism on air. :rofl:
I'm putting your thread on another thread.
K & R.

[formercia]

7. I just had this vision of Kristol stewing in a big Iron pot

like some 19th century missionary. :rofl:

[peacetalksforall]

8. Is there a video clip of this scene described?

P.S. - everytime I seel Ann Coulter - two words cross my mind. Family Values.

[Princess Turandot]

9. It may have been the exit poll data..

the news media got that around 5PM EST.

On CNN, Bill Bennett looked like something that had sat for a week in an unplugged refrigerator in Death Valley.

[Fumesucker]

11. The surest sign of a bully is that they cower before the upper hand.

What was going on? It was as if the Fox News execs were nervous, so they came up with a Plan B approach. Gone was the usual mob-incitement chest-beating that has made Fox News such a hit in Middle America. It seems that the craftier vanguard of the Republican right-wing mob got together and decided that this was the craftiest position to adopt. Just before the elections, Kristol published a New York Times column that threw his entire 20-year divide-and-quagmire playbook out the window in favor of a new pseudo-gracious "hey, we're all friends, liberals and conservatives, and isn't it a wonderful country we live in?" mantra.

Edited to add..

:popcorn:

Lots and lots of :popcorn:

[chimpymustgo]

13. I watched a lot of FOX election night and day after. Fun stuff.

[arikara]

14. Pajamas Media??

... and they have a columnist named Moran? You couldn't make this stuff up.

I bet they have a correspondent named Gannon too.

:rofl:

Pajamas Media.

:rofl:

[crispini]

16. Sweet schaedenfreude.

Mmmm. Tasty!

It is an incredible spectacle to behold: the Republican elite abandoning a 20-year narrative at the snap of a finger just to make sure that it is positioned well in the new Obama dynamic. The Republican elite has clearly decided that the "Real America" mob it had exploited had become a liability, but still it's amazing how seamlessly and quickly it can throw its own audience overboard. Witness the smear campaign against the right-wing mob's heroine, Sarah Palin, who is now being taken down by none other than Bill O'Reilly.

[Quantess]

17. Good read. That was a great article.

K & R

[DCKit]

18. Let Faux call for investigations into election fraud.

We'll never see another electronic election, a whole bunch of Republics will end up in prison and we might find out Obama actually DID win in a landslide.

They wouldn't dare.

[Quantess]

19. Actually, that would be great.

"a good thing" in Martha Stewart speak.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

21. Obama DID win in a landslide even as it's reported now. >2/3 of EVs.

The 375 number is not the only definition of landslide, it's kind of arbitrary.