Fox News

Keep It Classy, Fox News

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Here we go again.

Slate.com, in their critical role monitoring Fox News 24/7 so that the rest of us don’t have to, picked up on the fact that everyone’s favourite Fair & Balanced (TM) news network decided to mock recently-convicted whistleblower Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning’s decision to live the rest of her life as a woman, via the surreptitious medium of their “let’s go to commercial” music.

 

They report:

Fox News wasted little time weighing in on the Great Chelsea Manning Pronoun Debate. “I don’t do what Bradley Manning wants me to do,” America’s Newsroom host Gregg Jarrett declared last week, explaining why he had just repeatedly used masculine pronouns to describe Manning. But as you can see in the clip above, Jarrett’s friends at Fox & Friends took that stance to the extreme this morning by mocking the Army private by playing Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).”

It should come as no surprise to readers that the incident took place on that most highbrow and intellectual segment of the FNC’s lineup, Fox  & Friends. But the slowness of the mainstream media in responding appropriately to Manning’s decision is not limited to Fox. As Slate points out:

Setting aside the absurdity of that clip for a second, it should be noted that Fox News isn’t the only major cable network to decide that it won’t respect Manning’s wish to live out the remainder of her life as a woman. CNN says that it won’t make the pronoun switch because Manning has “not yet taken any steps toward gender transition through surgery or hormone replacement therapy.” (It’s unclear why announcing her wish to “begin hormone therapy as soon as possible” doesn’t count as such a step.)

But who can expect anything more from a so-called news network (CNN) that considers the twerking abilities of Miley Cyrus more newsworthy than the unfolding crisis in Syria?

Sadly, this is not the first time that this blog has felt compelled to cover the inexplicable need for US news channels to make their broadcasts more palatable to a dumbed-down audience by injecting them with lively, and (almost always) inappropriate musical excerpts. As I wrote last time:

Since CNN has probably already haemmoraged most of it’s wavering audience to Fox or MSNBC, why not quit catering to that tiny remaining sliver of their viewers who need their news to be lubricated with frequent doses of perky music, and just…y’know…report the news?

The world doesn’t need another Fox & Friends.

So no real progress, then.

Glenn Beck Analyses Reza Aslan

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

By now you have probably already watched the toe-curlingly, excruciatingly embarrassing car crash of an interview between Fox News host Lauren Green and her guest, the author and religious scholar Reza Aslan:

 

Every website, commenter and pundit has already said their piece, most to the tune of “what do you expect from Fox News, they are the unabashed mouthpiece of the religious, fundamentalist Christian right wing in America”. After awhile, watching and reading the variations-on-a-theme commentary became tiresome.

Until I discovered Glenn Beck’s alternative analysis on Reza Aslan and his book, “Zealot”:

 

Apparently, Aslan is a phony Muslim and a phony scholar. His true identity – of course – is that of a radical progressive. This is made clear by the fact that Beck sticks the logos of various liberal groups (and, of course, archvillain George Soros) tenuously associated with Aslan on his rotating blackboard:

Reza Aslan + Liberal Organisation Logos = Evil, apparently
Reza Aslan + Liberal Organisation Logos = Evil, apparently

Oh no! MediaMatters! The Center for American Progress! Beck has torn apart Reza Aslan’s shadowy liberal secret life in only nine minutes.

Because of course in Glenn Beck Land it is impossible to be a Muslim, a scholar and a liberal all at the same time. To acknowledge that fact would be to undermine his entire fear mongering, super profitable worldview.

On Defeating Terrorism

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

This is how to do it:

Image courtesy of Enid Alvarez/New York Daily News
Image courtesy of Enid Alvarez/New York Daily News

Today, the 10th of May 2013, the spire was added to the top of One World Trade Center, bringing the building to a symbolic height of 1,776 feet and making it the tallest structure in the western hemisphere.

The New York Post reports:

The silver spire topping One World Trade Center on Friday was fully installed on the building’s roof, bringing the structure to its full, symbolic height of 1,776 feet.

Loud applause and cries of joy erupted from assembled construction workers as the spire was gently lowered and secured into place.

“It’s a pretty awesome feeling,” said project manager Juan Estevez from a temporary platform on the roof of the tower where he and other workers watched the milestone.

“It’s a culmination of a tremendous amount of team work … rebuilding the New York City skyline once again.”

And this is how not to do it:

 

 

This is Fox News talking head (and supposed token liberal) Bob Beckel cowering like – well, a pathetic coward – and arguing that all foreign student visas for muslim students in the United States should be revoked, and no new visas issued for a period of five years, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing.

It’s not clear from Beckel’s “sober and solemn” pronouncement whether he means to target anyone from outside the US who self-identifies as a muslim, or students from predominantly muslim countries (whether they self-identify as muslims or not), or through some other method of profiling. Probably because he hadn’t thought it through before going on live television and acting the part of a terrified little girl in the face of a lone act of terrorism.

So there we go. One case study in how to face up to and defeat terrorism, and another in how to cower in the face of terror.

An Angry Return To Blogging

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

I have been busy for the past several weeks, which when combined with my boredom with both the Republican and Democratic party conventions, and more recently my being struck down with appendicitis, has meant that Semi-Partisan Sam has not seen much new activity lately.

I remain confined to the couch and hopped up on painkillers, and though sitting up and typing on a laptop still causes considerable discomfort, I am doing it because would like to say the following to the hosts of “Fox & Friends” on Fox News:

SHUT UP WITH ALL THIS STUFF ABOUT A “POLICY OF APPEASEMENT”. DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND THE FREAKING POINT OF HAVING A DIPLOMATIC SERVICE? AMERICAN EMBASSIES AND CONSULATES ARE NOT JUST THERE TO SERVE AS MASSIVE MEGAPHONES THROUGH WHICH THE UNITED STATES CAN GLOAT ABOUT ITS SUPERIORITY, OR CHIDE THEIR HOST NATIONS ABOUT THEIR VARIED SHORTCOMINGS. DIPLOMACY INVOLVES BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER COUNTRIES AND FOSTERING PERSONAL, ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL TIES, AND GOODWILL, IN SERVICE OF THE NATIONAL INTEREST. HOW DO YOU PROPOSE THAT THE AMERICAN NATIONAL INTEREST WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER SERVED IF THE LIBYAN CONSULATE AND EGYPTIAN EMBASSY HAD SENT OUT MESSAGES SAYING “FREE SPEECH RULES AND YES, WE DO THINK YOUR RELIGION IS A BIT DODGY. NOW BRING IT ON!!” ?

Aah, why am I bothering? You’re all ignorant at Fox, save the increasingly orange Shepard Smith, the hard-to-define Juan Williams and the curious case of Gretchen Carlson, who holds degrees from Stanford and Oxford and just pretends to be dumb sometimes (“I looked up the word ‘czar’ in the dictionary, and it said…”).

And to Mitt Romney:

WHEN AN EMBASSY SENDS OUT A MESSAGE CALLING FOR RESTRAINT IN UNNECESSARY VERBAL ATTACKS ON OTHER RELIGIONS, IT IS NOT TRYING TO SUPPRESS FREE SPEECH. NOR IS IT SYMPATHISING WITH “ATTACKERS” WHO WOULD NOT BESEIGE SAID EMBASSY FOR ANOTHER SEVERAL HOURS. TIME, FOR OUR PURPOSES, IS LINEAR.

There.

That is all.

Fox News Reaches A New Low

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Eagerly snatching another opportunity to paint American conservatives as more patriotic than their liberal brethren, Fox News decided to jump on American Gymnastics gold medallist Gabby Douglas for showing insufficient national pride by wearing a pink leotard whilst competing:

 

Because, of course, the best way to demonstrate pride in and commitment to one’s country at the Olympic Games is not to compete to the best of your ability and bring home a gold medal, but rather to display the colours of your flag over a sufficient percentage of the surface area of your body.

I just can’t with this nonsense. I know it’s a personality trait in a lot of conservative-leaning people that I should perhaps try to understand (though as a conservative-leaning person myself I don’t think I have this tendency), that they place a great deal of value in reverence for institutions and symbols. There is certainly a time and a place for that. However, this need for all aspiring American politicians to wear a US flag lapel pin, and now this snide attack on Gabby Douglas for failing to show enough of the red, white and blue, is just ridiculous.

You don’t need to wear the modern day equivalent of an Uncle Sam costume to prove that you love America, and are proud of your great nation’s astonishing heritage and unrivaled accomplishments.

You don’t need to chant “USA, USA!” all the time if you don’t want to.

America became the great land that it is precisely because the people who made it great didn’t feel the need to talk about it all the time. They quietly got on and did it.

When nationalistic bombast is all you have left to display, then your country is in a bad place. America is not in that bad place, and God willing, it never will be. Fox News should focus on who will win the next Olympic gold medal for Team USA, not the clothing choice of their most recent champion.