I tried to compare MSNBC to FOX News
and this is what happened.
Call me a downer, but lately I’ve been glued to the two great opinion-based news networks; MSNBC and FOX News. Yes, both. I’ve begun to wonder just how much they live up to their respective slogans. MSNBC’s jingle, “Lean Forward,” seems pretty appropriate. It makes me think of interesting discussions, progressiveness and all that Obama-esque “hopey-changey” shit. At the same time, the Fox News war cry ”Fair and Balanced” could also be called an apt trade mark, especially if you take a very close look at how fair and balanced it is when their hosts interrupt people who don’t agree with them and put words in their mouth. If you think that’s an exaggeration, then I invite you to Youtube to watch the leader of our country get interrupted 48 times by Bill O’Reilly.
In fairness to Fox News, according to Pew research, it has more hard news reporting than its counterpart, MSNBC. However I don’t need to see percentages to understand which station is more revolting. When I watch MSNBC, even though I see a collection of progressive hosts to counter the Fox News conservative line up, I certainly don’t hear bitterly oversimplified judgments, like my favorite Sean Hannity line; “Obama is the most radical president in history!” Right Sean, because when I reflect on Obama’s presidential endeavors I can’t help but compare them to Japanese internment camps, the Civil War, and holding the federal government hostage so it can be used as a bargaining chip because sore losers didn’t get they’re way (like your future president, Ted Cruz!). MSNBC, on the other hand, is noticeably more tame, objective, and lacking in the amount of sensationalism it takes to frighten, enrage or confuse me.
When I watch Fox News, I’m consistently overwhelmed by a curious sensation that can only be described as a cross between nausea and feeling like my heart is about to explode. If I didn’t know better I’d think that their conservative pundits have the ability to predict the future, since much of what I hear are things that haven’t even happened yet, all of which seem very scary and have something to do with us electing Obama. It feels as though I’ve wandered into another universe where TV doesn’t go down very smoothly and pompous, inflammatory, half-cocked assertions have a way of overriding objective explanations. However I think there is a way to make Fox News much less abrasive; become an ultra-conservative, Civil War reenacting, Christian who gets hard from plugging elk and telling women in a free country that having babies is God’s decision, not theirs.
Deep down, I figured out that when some of the more popular stuffed-shirt Fox News hosts are in front of me, I find myself asking; “Is this even a real person? Or just an antiquated, divisive work of art created by tribalism, mythology, and the unconscious delight that comes from excluding others and looking down on them? ”When I watch certain Fox News hosts in the presence of what I would call a regular person, its not uncommon for me to hear them point out in disbelief; “This is a grown man.” Yes, it is a grown man, but for some reason, when I put in on mute it looks like they’re shouting “my dad is better than your dad!” The other thing I notice is that a lot of these guys are ridiculously white, almost to the point of seeming fictional. If these people were anymore of a stuffy, crusty, cookie-cutter caucasian they would be in George Jefferson’s living-room. They don’t sound like they should be commentating in the new millennium, they sound like they should be handcuffing Fred and Lamont Sanford. It seems like they would be much more at home in the fifties, which I suspect is their fantasy.
The reason for such suspicion is that they rigidly promote an ultra-conservative agenda, and by “conservative” I mean an aversion to innovation and a bitter attachment to the status quo, however archaic it may be. The problem I have with the conservative movement is that there is no movement. It’s 2013, what are you conserving, powdered wigs? Progressive ideas have helped shape and liberate our country. If we’d been 100% conservative, a guy like Obama couldn’t get near the White House unless there was a plantation there. Since evolution is essential for survival, it might be a good idea to foster some much needed resilience by admitting that things have a funny way of changing.
This year, Bob Dole, lamented what his party has become, calling them nothing more than idea-free obstructionists, which was hardly an off-the-cuff remark. When you hear people say that Congress is in constant gridlock, what they mean is that Republicans have become addicted to attacking practically any idea that originates beyond their conservative incubator. In our nation’s history, 168 Presidential nominations have been blocked by filibustering, 82 of those have been in the 5 years since Obama took office. So basically, combine the number of times that all the other presidents in history have been blocked and it will pretty much equal the amount of times it’s happened to this president. Yet when I flip it to Fox News, suddenly it’s Obama who is the iron-fisted, militantly partisan, uncooperative tyrant who’s constantly dragging his feet.
Now, don’t get me wrong, Obama and his crew screwed up big-time on the healthcare launch, especially since his promise of “keeping your plan” wound up not applying to 5% of Americans. Yet somehow, just screwing-up wasn’t rabble-rousing enough for the Fox News bubble, who instantly made it sound like Obama was caught telling intentional lies. If Obama had planned on 5% falling through the cracks, how was he planning on getting away with it? I mean it’s not exactly an easy cover-up, unless of course they all had Alzheimer’s. He’s a black man, not the “Men in Black.” It’s not a scandal, he didn’t get caught, he just fucked up, there’s a difference. Most importantly, the insurance companies didn’t exactly play ball either, since they had an option to improve the grossly sub-standard plans in the individual care market in accordance with ACA requirements and chose to just cancel them instead.
Only a belligerent mutant of a network could take a guy who’s clearly trying to improve peoples lives and turn him into the new Hitler. If Tea Party sympathizers get to call Obama Hitler, then I think the rest of us should get to call Fox News Goebbels. The reason I say this is because if I only watched Fox News, I don’t think I would be able to avoid the insidiously inevitable fantasy that the only way to be a patriot, is to want the country to stay exactly the way it is. So if you call the President names like “Socialist” just for wanting our healthcare to catch up to the rest of the developed world, so that less fortunate people can get the help they need; you’re not a traditionalist, your just a dick.
Now I know that “dick” is a strong word, so allow me to define it. Dicks like to yell, call people names, point fingers, bully others for being different, throw fits when they don’t get their way (e.g. the government shutdown), cope with their pain by spreading it around, do everything they can to instill fear, freakishly oversimplify things and make anyone who isn’t a business-man feel like a bottom-feeding parasite. I would love to point out to some of these inflated, self-congratulating ultra-capitalists that “there are people who work full-time and still need government assistance because they’re being exploited by bombastic, high-minded, bloated aristocrats like you.” As the judge in Caddyshack said, “the world needs ditch diggers too!” So if you don’t want every CEO to have to get a second job, I wouldn’t be in too big of a hurry to guilt everyone into becoming an entrepreneur, unless you want Papa John delivering his own pizzas.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes points out that the difference between his network and Fox News can be seen by comparing the men who run the networks, pointing out that Roger Ailes of Fox News “is a lifetime, hard-right, conservative ideologue and Republican partisan. He worked in politics. He helped get Nixon elected. This is his vision. If he wasn’t doing this, he probably would be doing something else that would be furthering those goals.” On the other hand, MSNBC “is run by someone who worked in TV. And he wants to make a TV network that performs well, that gets viewers, that attracts advertisers, that lives up to certain standards. There’s such a big difference in that.”
MSNBC may be just as slanted as Fox News, but their analysts are clearly smarter, and the way I can tell is because they deliver details, rather than a magic act full of grotesquely simplified black and white verdicts. MSNBC doesn’t speak “declaration,” so when I flip to their channel after an outrageously confusing hour of Fox “News,” within minutes I find all the missing pieces of the puzzle. Maybe this is why I constantly hear people calling our current leader “the worst president ever!” If you’re able to call Barrack Obama the worst president ever, right after the guy who started a second war just to turn taxpayers into Halliburton’s personal cash machine, maybe it’s because you’re too busy calling propaganda “News.”
“You’re putting words-in-my-mouth. The same way you put artificial facts in your head.” -David Letterman to Bill O’Reilly
“Once upon a time, you and I actually thought journalism was a calling.”-Ted Koppel to Bill Oreilly
taylorlemon 
Discussion
No comments yet.