They’re now the official network of the Tea Party.
There was a time when Fox “News”, as per any worthwhile propaganda operation, would’ve backed any establishment Republican to death over the slightest slight to his/her character. Anybody, be they Democrat, Republican, conservative or liberal, would've been lashed publicly by the falafel-speckled tongue of Bill O'Reilly for doubting that George Bush could walk on water.
It was just last April when Sean Hannity was pulled from the Cincinnati Tea Party Rally (that came with a hefty admission fee) because Rupert Murdoch and Fox executives were jittery about being perceived as Tea Party rallyers. This objection that came down from on high stood in stark contrast to Fox “News” supporting Tea Party events. All they needed to do was provide buses to them (although, Tea Party turnouts being what they usually are, they could’ve gotten off cheaply since a VW minibus could’ve provided all the transportation).
Because a year before this, in early April last year, before Barack Obama had memorized where all the smoking areas were in the White House, something even weirder than usual was beginning to develop at Fox. Without anyone outside the network consciously realizing it, they were becoming the Tea Party’s official network.
Bill Kristol, in the wake of the Hannity scandal, even ludicrously tried to make us believe that the Tea Party’s “Contract From America” was mainstream. Hell, Karl Rove in the first few seconds of the lead video is even the first to say that the Tea Party is not mainstream or “establishment” (neither is he, for that matter, according to Rove himself).
But a lot has changed since last spring, especially since whackjob Christine O’Donnell won the GOP senate primary in Delaware. Now, they had no qualms about sending John Stossel to a Tea Party event just last week. After all, the sons of Rupert Murdoch know what side their bread is buttered on.
It really all started late August 2008 when John McCain stiffly threw a dart into a national map and happened to hit Wasilla. The minute Sarah Palin opened her lipsticked mouth and made sleepy Republican voters cum in their pants, they knew they'd struck gold in the Klondike. Not long after the election, the Tea Party, bolstered by corporate influence, sprang up like herpes sores all over the country and screamed for the impeachment of a president who'd hardly had the chance to do anything good or bad. It was just enough for them to know that he was black.
So which came first, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party, the headless chicken or the rotten egg? Who cares? The fact is this tiny splinter faction of the grassroots conservative movement is now influencing elections and places like Fox "News" (and, to a lesser extent, all the major networks) are making them look bigger than they really are. Any more of this and we're going to start feeling sorry for the very same establishment Republicans who voted the USA PATRIOT Act into law and gave George W. Bush every penny he wanted and then some to fight terr'ism in nations that largely didn't have terrorists.
Now, they have no problem throwing their fellow Republicans under the bus, as we saw with the O’Donnell-Castle race in Delaware. Karl Rove shrinks from being called an "establishment" Republican. This would be the equivalent of some arch liberal network suddenly embracing Socialist policies, if there was such a thing as an arch liberal network.
Imagine a television network with hundreds of anti Howard Beales screaming the most batshit insane pronouncements simply for ratings and you have the current Fox "News" in a nutshell.
Paddy Chayefsky was a prophet. What was satire in 1976 is reality in 2010. WIKI: In one impassioned diatribe, Beale galvanizes the nation with his rant, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" and persuades Americans to shout out their windows during a lightning storm. Soon Beale is hosting a new program called "The Howard Beale Show", top-billed as a "mad prophet." Ultimately, the show becomes the highest rated program on television, and Beale finds new celebrity preaching his angry message in front of a live studio audience that, on cue, chants Beale's signature catchphrase en masse: "We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore."
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WIKI:
In one impassioned diatribe, Beale galvanizes the nation with his rant, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" and persuades Americans to shout out their windows during a lightning storm. Soon Beale is hosting a new program called "The Howard Beale Show", top-billed as a "mad prophet." Ultimately, the show becomes the highest rated program on television, and Beale finds new celebrity preaching his angry message in front of a live studio audience that, on cue, chants Beale's signature catchphrase en masse: "We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore."