Fox News
Posted on August 4, 2006 - Filed Under Politics |
I watched Fox News for about an hour last night, and I must say I was rather amused. Once you abandon the notion that it’s even slightly balanced in its coverage of events then it really becomes quite entertaining.
The first topic they dealt with was the current Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The anchorman, while speaking to the correspondent in Beiruit, kept emphasising how dastardedly Hizbullah were for launching rockets indiscriminately into Israel (which, in fairness, is pretty dispicable) and contrasting this approach with the compassionate Israeli one of reducing entire (populated) suburbs to smouldering rubble in ‘carefully targetted’ airstrikes.
Next up was a stout defence of Donald Rummsfeld after Hilary Clinton’s withering attack on the Bush Administration’s handling of Iraq. The anchorman tried to spin it so that it looked like the villains of the piece were the Iraqis themselves for being such bad sports and getting into a civil war just after America had liberated them, and Hilary Clinton herself, for not coming up with any ideas as to how Rummy could sort out the mess he’s made for himself.
Being an American channel, Fox News is interupted every 3 minutes for an ad break. However, the advertisers make the ads so that they seem like news items. There was some sort of ‘national safety council’ type feature last night warning kids not to play with lawnmowers, and featuring the harrowing tale of a boy who almost lost his foot when his sister drove over it with a tractor lawnmower when they were both about 6 or 7. Call me naive, but I would have thought it pretty obvious that children of that age should not be playing with lawnmowers, especially since the kids in question appeared borderline retarded. At the of the ad the boy-who-nearly-lost-his-foot’s voice shouted, in a painfully spasticated manner, ‘Don’t play with lawnmowers’, as the safty council logo (or whatever it was) flashed across the screen.
Next up was the notorious O’Reily Factor, being hosted by someone else it seemed last night. In one of the segments he had a Republican adviser/party member/etc… and a Democratic adviser/party member/etc… on the show to debate the current Middle East conflict. The Republican was basically criticising Bush for not been far enough to the right of Ghengis Khan, while also saying that, essentially, all Muslims were evil, and the Democrat spent the whole time pinning all America and the world’s problems on the Bush administration. During this ‘debate’, the host kept wading in on the Republican’s side while enthusiatically cheerleading Israel’s invasion. The whole thing was a disgrace, and of course after 3 or so minutes they ran out of time, without even addressing each other’s points, or even the topic under discussion.
About the only good thing I saw on Fox was when Bill O’ Reily himself took a pro-imigration advocate to task over some of the cretinous remarks she made while addressing a student rally. She had claimed that “all Republicans hate Latinos” and that “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us”. Whatever about the first one (which, of course, is not true), the second is clearly total bollocks. When Papa Bear (as Colbert calls him) O’Reily asked her is she favoured an open borders arrangement for the whole of North and South America, which was what she was advocating, she tried to fudge the issue with a convoluted answer that couldn’t have fooled even the stupidist viewer.
Thank goodness there’s Euronews. I know it’s strongly tilted in a pro-European direction, but so am I.
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2 Responses to “Fox News”
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What’s wrong with an all-American open borders policy? It would do away with illegal immigration. Some legend on youtube has uploaded the entire first season of Colbert (32 episodes) sheer brilliance, check it out. Going to Ormond’s BBQ? Haven’t seen you in a while. Text me.
I watched fox for a while the other day. The best thing I saw:
A republican and a democrat are talking about israel doing “our dirty work for us” (killing terrorists and civilians)
Republician: And the UN wants us to stop.
Democrat: When do we ever listen to the UN?
R: A whole bunch of democrats love everything the UN says.
D: (Defensive tones) No we don’t! We do not!
God bless those who think listening to the opinions of other people is a weakness.