So I guess this is a good news, bad news scenario. Fox News is suffering, (that's a shame) but the Trumpers have simply turned the dial to Newsmax TV and OAN, news stations so whacko that they make Fox News look like NPR. It's not like the Fox viewers all started watching MSNBC and CNN because they saw the light. But apparently some did because CNN's ratings are doing so well so that's more good news. Or is CNN doing well because Newsmax TV and OAN is syphoning off viewers from Fox News? It's all so confusing but one thing is clear. The fact that Fox is failing to newbies Newsmax and OAN says that there are around 40% of America that completely lack critical thinking skills and empathy. The real story is that Rupert Murdoch figured out that there are people in the world, especially in this country that would gravitate to this type of a news outlet like flies to shit. So if Fox News dies a slow and painful death, good riddance. But there will always be a conspiracy network to feed these depraved and dangerous people stories that align with their narrow minded beliefs. These folks will believe this election was stolen till the day they die and consider this. There are people today who really believe that in 1947 an alien spaceship crashed in Roswell, New Mexico and that the government covered it up, the same government that these folks often criticize as inept. There is of course, not a shred of tangible evidence to support such an outlandish story. The claim that a massive conspiracy, orchestrated by thousands down to poll workers, stole this election from Trump is an extraordinary claim. The great Carl Sagan said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And like Roswell, none exists. But I digress, have a great weekend all!
I will venture to say, Carl Sagan was correct. The problem is, those who are uniformed are that way to the point they don't even know how to find, nor research "real evidence". Blame school, blame environment, I don't know. I just know the "truth is out there", they just don't know how to find it.
Your reference to Never Trumpers brings up a couple of points.
One is that republicans actually have been engaged in a coup for more than half a century. We have a through line of Nixon sabotaging the peace talks in 1968 and then his extralegal activities, Cheney and Rumsfeld basically claiming omnipotence under both Ford and Bush II, Reagan and Bush with Iran-Contra, Bush II with Florida and the now seemingly forgotten US attorneys scandal, and of course simply opposing anything that Clinton or Obama proposed. The Never Trumpers might be forgiven on the grounds that it's hard to know you're in a hurricane when you're in the eye of it.
Another is that Democrats aren't going to be able to save the country until they save themselves. By which I mean that we have moderate and conservative Democrats still thinking it might be possible to work with an opposition that is openly treasonous, and liberals who think that only they have the solutions to the world's problems.
A related one is the media failing as usual. A good example is the upset over Biden not appointing enough people on the left. The left sees this as meaning that he will run a conservative administration. The media play it up without stopping to think: republicans have destroyed the federal government. When you have to rebuild something, you want to make it better, but you start with people who actually know how to build in the first place.
Everything you said. I don't believe The Left is acting in good faith. They have their own agenda which is inimical to the Democratic Party, one of the few institutions standing between a functioning Republic and full blown fascism and the only real political party left. I foresee an "alliance" between them and the Rethuglicans especially in the media. Speaking of which, I eagerly await media's newfound infatuation with CoVid statistics now that they have a Democrat to blame for the disastrous pandemic not being fixed. And I mean all the media, not just Fox and its toxic spawns.
I think the left MEANS well, but I'll say this: I lost a lot of respect for AOC as well as Abigail Spanberger in the wake of the election when both of them made total horses rears of themselves. Neither one understands the other. My modest proposal is that the DNC should call in AOC and maybe someone like Spanberger and say, ok, we're going to let you prove a point. We're going to run a moderate or conservative in an AOC-like district with a +30 Democratic advantage, and we're going to run an AOC type in a split district. Whichever side loses shuts up forever. And if they were held to it, I would be willing to bet more money than I have that the AOC side would have to shut up.
THAT said, I have found it interesting that a lot of the left is just as racist and sexist as the far right in their own way. By which I mean, they are all for civil rights, women's rights, etc. But if you are a Black or a woman and want to run for office, either you agree with them completely or you're useless. How the Bernie Bots treated Elizabeth Warren, and how the left treated Hillary Clinton, are two examples, though there are many more. That doesn't mean I would be surprised if Joe Manchin agreed with everything Ted Yoho said to AOC.
We'll have to agree to disagree about them meaning well. I found it interesting that straight out of the box Justice Dems were going to primary CBC members of Congress. And the media love nothing more to push their Dems In Disarray themes so they constantly adopt the framing of the "dissenters". It's sickening and it's toxic.
I think the left is incredibly intolerant of disagreement. Then again, I don't see a lot of people in politics these days who aren't.
As for the media, Brother Boehlert and some others have made clear that Democrats are far less divided than republicans, and the real issue for republicans is that all of them should be indicted for sedition.
Watching Fox “News” go down in flames is exactly how 2020 was supposed to end. Republicans flocking to Newsmax means the GOP has officially become a fringe group and everyone knows it now. This downslide will continue to get worse. But the real bellwether will be the 2022 elections.
Yep. They’d probably be better positioned if they go more to the middle to take their audience back from CNN, while making Newsmax the crazy fringe-right, instead of trying to get even crazier themselves. But do they do that? Nope. It’s like Fox is suddenly lost in the woods with no direction, because they don’t know how to or simply can’t do the right thing or be normal. It’s hilarious.
Fox's predicament calls attention to inner/other directedness. The journalist is trained to report truth, circulation be damned, while the pretender focuses on tribute in various forms. From the beginning, when Fox offered up the slogan "we report - you decide," I decided not to watch. No regrets.
While there's a big part of me which is experiencing delicious schaudenfreud over this, there's another part of me that's really scared because Newsmax and OANN are even worse than Fox in terms of the disinformation, propaganda, and straight-out lies they spread. They're having a race to see which one of them can become a modern-day Der Sturmer. Added to the more than 100 GOP Reps who just added their names to an amicus brief for that Texas-led lawsuit against the swing states, and we really are at the fascist stage. I don't know where we go, as a country, from here. How do we get back to a point where everyone (or at least most everyone) accepts facts? I can't really see the end of this. Does it end when Trump goes to jail? If he dies?
Advertisers need to pay a price for funding this anti-democracy propaganda. They care about their profits so we need to know who they are and boycott them. This requires a very public campaign to shame any company that advertises on these networks.
I don't want to say, "Thoughts and prayers," but thoughts and prayers. Newsmax has a chance to be a player if some moneyed right wingers buy it and rebrand it Trump TV. If they can anchor the network with a big name from Fox (Hannity would be the perfect one), then they have a chance to really compete. OAN is just plain awful - I mean, REALLY bad. They have people on the air who are one notch above podcast level - who the hell is Alex Salvi? I mean, I saw one segment where some "expert" was basically doing a screenshare from his home computer live on the air. Seriously?
All is not lost for Fox. I'm sure the upcoming Fox Weather will be a stellar edition to their brand, filled with people who can't even rate being on Fox Business.
Just remember how fox pivoted from worshiping Dumbya to sticking every shiv they could into Obama. They will double the shivs they will stick into Joe and Hunter.
Depending how crazy they want to get, they can always hire Liz Wheeler (formerly on OAN). She out-crazies and out-angries Laura Ingraham by a longshot.
One way the non-authoritarian-friendly media can help with this is to go against their definition of news and, say, a year from now, write the story "A year later, still no evidence of voter fraud, and no cases brought," complete with angry "no comment"s from Rudy Giuliani and his gang.
I don't know whether it will shame conservatives into becoming Americans -- probably not. But if we're focused on what the media can do, that's it.
I am going to say, they know when a lie is being spoken in public. How about they stop covering all these nonsense news briefings, speeches, rallies. They have a duty to be at least honest warriors out there on the road or at the WH. Stop giving airtime, period.
I agree 100%. Stop giving air time to the nonsense. If they cannot monitor and make immediate corrections to what is being said, then no coverage. They cannot do their jobs, properly. Walter Cronkite must just be rolling in his grave with the way news has gone off the deep end.
They were more than crazy way back in the 90s when they held multiple investigations of Bill Clinton supposedly murdering his close friend Vince Foster. After three investigations had ruled that Foster had indeed committed suicide, Brett Kavanaugh convinced Ken Starr to let him conduct a fourth. He made sure to assure his colleagues that he actually believed Foster had killed himself, but why waste an opportunity to win political points with his right wing masters, right? It eventually paid off handsomely.
It doesn’t get more extreme or more anti-democracy than that. Mainstream Republican leaders were acting just like leaders in banana Republics. There was no outrage from “principled” Republicans. Worse there was no outrage from the mainstream “liberal” media.
Just wondering...still remember back in 1998 over 100 editorials called for Bill Clinton to resign over a stained blue dress.
Note how silent those editorial boards are right now...and none of them have called for Trump to resign.
More proof that there is no such thing as a "liberal" press.
So I guess this is a good news, bad news scenario. Fox News is suffering, (that's a shame) but the Trumpers have simply turned the dial to Newsmax TV and OAN, news stations so whacko that they make Fox News look like NPR. It's not like the Fox viewers all started watching MSNBC and CNN because they saw the light. But apparently some did because CNN's ratings are doing so well so that's more good news. Or is CNN doing well because Newsmax TV and OAN is syphoning off viewers from Fox News? It's all so confusing but one thing is clear. The fact that Fox is failing to newbies Newsmax and OAN says that there are around 40% of America that completely lack critical thinking skills and empathy. The real story is that Rupert Murdoch figured out that there are people in the world, especially in this country that would gravitate to this type of a news outlet like flies to shit. So if Fox News dies a slow and painful death, good riddance. But there will always be a conspiracy network to feed these depraved and dangerous people stories that align with their narrow minded beliefs. These folks will believe this election was stolen till the day they die and consider this. There are people today who really believe that in 1947 an alien spaceship crashed in Roswell, New Mexico and that the government covered it up, the same government that these folks often criticize as inept. There is of course, not a shred of tangible evidence to support such an outlandish story. The claim that a massive conspiracy, orchestrated by thousands down to poll workers, stole this election from Trump is an extraordinary claim. The great Carl Sagan said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And like Roswell, none exists. But I digress, have a great weekend all!
I will venture to say, Carl Sagan was correct. The problem is, those who are uniformed are that way to the point they don't even know how to find, nor research "real evidence". Blame school, blame environment, I don't know. I just know the "truth is out there", they just don't know how to find it.
I’d venture to say they don’t want to find it. Willful ignorance is a powerful drug.
Your reference to Never Trumpers brings up a couple of points.
One is that republicans actually have been engaged in a coup for more than half a century. We have a through line of Nixon sabotaging the peace talks in 1968 and then his extralegal activities, Cheney and Rumsfeld basically claiming omnipotence under both Ford and Bush II, Reagan and Bush with Iran-Contra, Bush II with Florida and the now seemingly forgotten US attorneys scandal, and of course simply opposing anything that Clinton or Obama proposed. The Never Trumpers might be forgiven on the grounds that it's hard to know you're in a hurricane when you're in the eye of it.
Another is that Democrats aren't going to be able to save the country until they save themselves. By which I mean that we have moderate and conservative Democrats still thinking it might be possible to work with an opposition that is openly treasonous, and liberals who think that only they have the solutions to the world's problems.
A related one is the media failing as usual. A good example is the upset over Biden not appointing enough people on the left. The left sees this as meaning that he will run a conservative administration. The media play it up without stopping to think: republicans have destroyed the federal government. When you have to rebuild something, you want to make it better, but you start with people who actually know how to build in the first place.
Absolutely THIS. Well-said.
Thank you!
Everything you said. I don't believe The Left is acting in good faith. They have their own agenda which is inimical to the Democratic Party, one of the few institutions standing between a functioning Republic and full blown fascism and the only real political party left. I foresee an "alliance" between them and the Rethuglicans especially in the media. Speaking of which, I eagerly await media's newfound infatuation with CoVid statistics now that they have a Democrat to blame for the disastrous pandemic not being fixed. And I mean all the media, not just Fox and its toxic spawns.
I think the left MEANS well, but I'll say this: I lost a lot of respect for AOC as well as Abigail Spanberger in the wake of the election when both of them made total horses rears of themselves. Neither one understands the other. My modest proposal is that the DNC should call in AOC and maybe someone like Spanberger and say, ok, we're going to let you prove a point. We're going to run a moderate or conservative in an AOC-like district with a +30 Democratic advantage, and we're going to run an AOC type in a split district. Whichever side loses shuts up forever. And if they were held to it, I would be willing to bet more money than I have that the AOC side would have to shut up.
THAT said, I have found it interesting that a lot of the left is just as racist and sexist as the far right in their own way. By which I mean, they are all for civil rights, women's rights, etc. But if you are a Black or a woman and want to run for office, either you agree with them completely or you're useless. How the Bernie Bots treated Elizabeth Warren, and how the left treated Hillary Clinton, are two examples, though there are many more. That doesn't mean I would be surprised if Joe Manchin agreed with everything Ted Yoho said to AOC.
We'll have to agree to disagree about them meaning well. I found it interesting that straight out of the box Justice Dems were going to primary CBC members of Congress. And the media love nothing more to push their Dems In Disarray themes so they constantly adopt the framing of the "dissenters". It's sickening and it's toxic.
I think the left is incredibly intolerant of disagreement. Then again, I don't see a lot of people in politics these days who aren't.
As for the media, Brother Boehlert and some others have made clear that Democrats are far less divided than republicans, and the real issue for republicans is that all of them should be indicted for sedition.
Yes. To the millionth power.
Watching Fox “News” go down in flames is exactly how 2020 was supposed to end. Republicans flocking to Newsmax means the GOP has officially become a fringe group and everyone knows it now. This downslide will continue to get worse. But the real bellwether will be the 2022 elections.
watching Fox News try to react to the backlash is also very telling. they've made a belated U-turn on the "stolen" nonsense
Yep. They’d probably be better positioned if they go more to the middle to take their audience back from CNN, while making Newsmax the crazy fringe-right, instead of trying to get even crazier themselves. But do they do that? Nope. It’s like Fox is suddenly lost in the woods with no direction, because they don’t know how to or simply can’t do the right thing or be normal. It’s hilarious.
Hannity, Ingraham and Carlson are all white supremacists. They’re too far to the right to pull in the CNN viewers.
Fox's predicament calls attention to inner/other directedness. The journalist is trained to report truth, circulation be damned, while the pretender focuses on tribute in various forms. From the beginning, when Fox offered up the slogan "we report - you decide," I decided not to watch. No regrets.
While there's a big part of me which is experiencing delicious schaudenfreud over this, there's another part of me that's really scared because Newsmax and OANN are even worse than Fox in terms of the disinformation, propaganda, and straight-out lies they spread. They're having a race to see which one of them can become a modern-day Der Sturmer. Added to the more than 100 GOP Reps who just added their names to an amicus brief for that Texas-led lawsuit against the swing states, and we really are at the fascist stage. I don't know where we go, as a country, from here. How do we get back to a point where everyone (or at least most everyone) accepts facts? I can't really see the end of this. Does it end when Trump goes to jail? If he dies?
true and true. the whole conservative movement seems to be unraveling before our eyes
Advertisers need to pay a price for funding this anti-democracy propaganda. They care about their profits so we need to know who they are and boycott them. This requires a very public campaign to shame any company that advertises on these networks.
I don't want to say, "Thoughts and prayers," but thoughts and prayers. Newsmax has a chance to be a player if some moneyed right wingers buy it and rebrand it Trump TV. If they can anchor the network with a big name from Fox (Hannity would be the perfect one), then they have a chance to really compete. OAN is just plain awful - I mean, REALLY bad. They have people on the air who are one notch above podcast level - who the hell is Alex Salvi? I mean, I saw one segment where some "expert" was basically doing a screenshare from his home computer live on the air. Seriously?
All is not lost for Fox. I'm sure the upcoming Fox Weather will be a stellar edition to their brand, filled with people who can't even rate being on Fox Business.
I think Fox News is going to become even more anti-Dem insane during Biden years — to prove to the right-wing swamp that they're still on team Trump.
Just remember how fox pivoted from worshiping Dumbya to sticking every shiv they could into Obama. They will double the shivs they will stick into Joe and Hunter.
Depending how crazy they want to get, they can always hire Liz Wheeler (formerly on OAN). She out-crazies and out-angries Laura Ingraham by a longshot.
If you think OAN and Newsmax are bad, check out the Epoch Times. They're just as bad, only with the added influence of Falun Gong.
Epoch Times keeps stuffing our mailboxes with their propaganda. I put it right in the trash where it belongs.
It would be nice if Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg launched a hostile takeover bid for Fox...
One way the non-authoritarian-friendly media can help with this is to go against their definition of news and, say, a year from now, write the story "A year later, still no evidence of voter fraud, and no cases brought," complete with angry "no comment"s from Rudy Giuliani and his gang.
I don't know whether it will shame conservatives into becoming Americans -- probably not. But if we're focused on what the media can do, that's it.
I am going to say, they know when a lie is being spoken in public. How about they stop covering all these nonsense news briefings, speeches, rallies. They have a duty to be at least honest warriors out there on the road or at the WH. Stop giving airtime, period.
I agree 100%. Stop giving air time to the nonsense. If they cannot monitor and make immediate corrections to what is being said, then no coverage. They cannot do their jobs, properly. Walter Cronkite must just be rolling in his grave with the way news has gone off the deep end.
Try Robin and Linda Williams' version of Mary Had A Baby. Also very nice.
They were more than crazy way back in the 90s when they held multiple investigations of Bill Clinton supposedly murdering his close friend Vince Foster. After three investigations had ruled that Foster had indeed committed suicide, Brett Kavanaugh convinced Ken Starr to let him conduct a fourth. He made sure to assure his colleagues that he actually believed Foster had killed himself, but why waste an opportunity to win political points with his right wing masters, right? It eventually paid off handsomely.
It doesn’t get more extreme or more anti-democracy than that. Mainstream Republican leaders were acting just like leaders in banana Republics. There was no outrage from “principled” Republicans. Worse there was no outrage from the mainstream “liberal” media.
At one point this year, Faux couldn't get out of its own way. They may lose viewers today, but tomorrow the next generation will pick it up..