I have an aging relative who is struggling with the early phases of dementia, also known as Alzheimer. She spends her time watching the Fox News–and calling other relatives throughout the day with fearful/angry regurgitation of the latest manufactured Fox nonsense. In travels this summer I have spoken to many folks who also have such a relative–living more and more in isolation, watching Fox all the time, slipping into a state of constant fear and the lost of their cognitive abilities.
I was discussing this with one of my brothers the other day and at the mention of Fox he said: “Fox News. You know what that is? Nickelodeon for people with dementia.” That struck me as just about pitch perfect.
Cheers
Hunter Gathers
If it’s any consolation, SpongeBob SquarePants is eminently better written, produced and carries more entertainment value than anything on Fox News. And SpongeBob peaked about 7 years ago.
And if anybody questions the above statement, I have two words for you – Pat Back.
MikeJ
♫♪ Wake up the members of my nation♪♫♬
Redshift
Sadly, yes. One relative’s inability to notice that the old-style news-and-talk radio station she listened to had changed over to wingnut talk radio, and frequent announcements of “isn’t it terrible that…” which were in total conflict with her previous views was perhaps an early sign of the dementia which later became obvious.
Very sad. The one consolation is that they didn’t have cable and she’s always been technophobic, so she never discovered Fox “News.” That would have been a nightmare.
opie_jeanne
My mother-in-law did this when she lived in a board and care facility (we couldn’t lift her and she refused to walk; Alzheimer does that sometimes, makes you forget that you can do certain physical things).
The owner had the tv on Fox news day and night, and we visited her two or three times every week and would get the strangest stories from her about her life but we didn’t tumble that Fox was the source, and then the invasion of Iraq began and she became frantic, nearly in hysterics.
The adult daughter of the owner got her mom to turn the tv to something else, not to have Fox news on for the patients at all. We thanked her profusely.
The owner asked us one day just before the war began if we had our duct tape and plastic sheeting. We thought she was joking and laughed, but she was dead serious.
Original Lee
The Alzheimer’s facility where my dad was, despite being in deep red wingnut territory, refused to let residents turn the communal TVs to Fox. The nurses and aides said it upset too many people if they watched Fox too often. They would also keep track of the individual TVs and would change the channel if it was stuck on Fox News for too long. The communal TVs were almost all set to the Food Network unless there was a game on, and then one TV would be the game and the others would still be Food Network.
Comrade Javamanphil
Pretty much the perfect description of my parents although they still sprinkle Beck-isms in. Sigh. More wine, stat!
jwb
Fox News is just the leading indicator. Almost every bit of TV news—even a lot of regular programming—has a similar effect. Case in point: look at the Weather Channel. It’s coverage of Irene comes out of the same playbook.
walt
Fox News —> Alzheimer’s?
Jes’ askin’.
Zifnab
As an avid childhood fan of Nickelodeon, I will kindly tell you to go fuck yourself.
Bago
“hi mom!” he says.
Woodrowfan
One of the signs I remember seeing at Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” was a couple little kids there with their parents. The kids’ carried a sign that read something like “Glenn Beck: We Want Our Grandparents Back.”
Nylund
This is a bit different, but last week my elderly neighbor called me outside to point out the lack of birds. She said it was because a big storm was coming. Seeing how out here in Texas, we haven’t had rain in so long, I thought this was a good thing. She told me it wasn’t. This was going to be bad. There would be very strong winds and a lot of flooding. She was genuinely scared. I went inside and checked the weather on the internet, and it said to expect nothing except yet another week of 100 degree weather. I went outside to talk with my neighbor who then brought me inside her house. She was playing Fox News and they were doing the same Irene coverage that every other station was. For some reason, it struck me as really sad that she was in there watching TV, getting the crap scared out of her about a storm that wasn’t going to be anywhere near us. I felt sorry for her. I tried my best to explain that the storm was going to happen very far away. “But the TV says its coming tomorrow!” she replied.
And I couldn’t help but think that someone so confused about Irene was also going to vote. And given that we’re in Texas, I can assure you, she’ll cast her vote for Perry. And Fox News will likely scare her into doing that the same way they were scaring her about Irene…by making her worry about things that weren’t even really threats in her life, but she’s too old and too confused to be able to understand any of that.
MonkeyBoy
Except Nickelodeon isn’t designed to scare people and get them dependent on Nickelodeon as a trusted source that isn’t afraid to tell the scary stuff unlike the the other channels that are part of a conspiracy to hide the scary stuff.
RossInDetroit
It’s like Hearst and Pulitzer on Spain, but on a global scale, 24 X 7.
Bubblegum Tate
@Woodrowfan:
That is perfect
RossInDetroit
Some older people seem to be immune. My 94 year old grandmother watches a little Fox, reads the paper daily and hates Republicans with as much passion as a lady born in 1917 will permit herself.
OTOH, I have in-laws in their 30s and 40s who consumer every bit of Fox and believe it all.
Cat Lady
Wait til Perry is the nominee and has to double down on Social Security is unconstitutional and Medicare is soshulist. Good luck, Fox, polishing that turd. Popcorn!
trollhattan
@Hunter Gathers:
I’ve come to love SpongeBob. The Crusty Crab corporate training video is a must-see for all office drones.
If I come to love Fox News I’ve left instructions on how to best brain me with an Acme(tm) Anvil.
Elliecat
So the answer is to change the channel?
This is why progressives are totally screwed. Because we get more worried that we have an isolated elderly relative watching Fox than the fact that we have an isolated elderly relative who has nothing better to do than watch Fox.
Maybe if we spent as much time getting involved in our communities and with our families, getting to know the people around us and connecting with and interacting with them, as we do crying “We’re doomed! We’re doomed!” Fox wouldn’t have such a captive audience. At least those people who watch so much would have some real world experience with liberals and progressives who aren’t the demons Fox et al. makes them out to be.
ETA: “as”
gnomedad
This thread is triggering some interesting ads.
RoonieRoo
It’s not just the elderly. My family has essentially lost my sister and her entire family. She is an intelligent woman that owns her own veterinary clinic she built from the ground up. But she believes everything and anything that Fox news says – hook, line and sinker.
At family events, we have to wait for her, her husband and her children to not be anywhere within hearing distance to have ANY conversations regarding … well… anything. She has transformed from a brilliant, kind and compassionate person to an angry, hateful and terrified person.
So pretty much everyone in the family thinks very hard about seeing her or inviting them. We have to all agree that the only conversation we will have is talking about her kids or her. You can’t have any other conversation because the most innocent seeming topic or sentence will send her off into pure rage that relates to something Fox News or Beck or Limbaugh has said.
It’s bizarre.
arguingwithsignposts
@jwb: I note your point, but as I did in the previous thread, I would encourage you to read Charles Apple’s piece on the Monday front pages about Irene “hype.”
ETA: As to FOX, at least the Murdochs will soon be going before the high court in the UK under oath to answer for their shenanigans.
jl
I heard that roller derby ran into a similar problem, which is why it eventually lost TV coverage. Is that true, or is it an urban legend?
Anyway, I guess we can hope.
Also too, I did suggest awhile ago that Fox could be considered a form of elder abuse. Maybe something could be done on that front.
Tom Hilton
@opie_jeanne:
Did you report them for elder abuse?
Snark, yes, but a legitimate issue. See, e.g.:
@Original Lee:
I don’t have any direct experience with this, but it certainly fits what I would expect–given that Fox programming is designed to make people upset and anxious. Which, yeah, for Alzheimer’s patients is (not snarking here) pretty goddamn close to elder abuse.
mk3872
Does that make Firedoglake the Nickelodeon for progressive whiny-babies?
Tom Hilton
@Elliecat:
That’s more than a little glib, considering that a lot of people with relatives in that situation simply don’t have the time or resources (much less the emotional bandwidth) to hang out with them all day every day.
dmilligan
Oh, yeah. Nailed it.
Hunter Gathers
@trollhattan: That show contains my favorite line from any teevee show or movie of the last 20 years – “You had to kill him. The boy cries you a sweater of tears…….and you kill him.”
Woodrowfan
@RoonieRoo: It’s more than a little cult-like, isn’t it?
jeff
http://vimeo.com/8326375
The Flaming Lips: ‘Spongebob & Patrick Confront The Psychic Wall of Energy’
artem1s
the fuckers stole the last few years of my dad’s life. turned someone who genuinely loved learning and science into a psycho who blamed everything on university professors brainwashing students. the hate faux news fad can’t pass fast enough for me. but like everything it will pass.
RoonieRoo
@Woodrowfan: Yeah, it really is. I never thought of it like a cult but that actually makes sense when I think about how my sister acts. She’s a freaking atheist, like my whole family, and she became obsessed by the “War on Christmas” several years ago. My elder sister’s reaction was to say “Well, there goes another ‘safe’ topic.”
Woodrowfan
@artem1s:
My father died over a decade ago and I miss him, but I know that were he alive today, we wouldn’t be able to talk because he’d be absorbing everything Faux told him. My Mom is still alive, and although she’s starting to show signs of dementia and has always been easily worried and scared, she hates Fox news. I think she the only Democrat in the retirement home where she lives (way down south) except for the non-white staff.
YoohooCthulhu
@Elliecat:
Often the elderly being isolated is their own choice, particularly with “ruggedly individualist” fox viewers who don’t want “charity” from their kids/grandkids. Just sayin’
Elie
@YoohooCthulhu:
Our culture/society has made lifestyles for the elderly a real hard thing…
Financially, many elderly are just hanging on and their children are not well enough off to make up the difference. Add to that, unlike many other countries, we have these weird nuclear families without a whole lot of social connection not only for the elderly, but young Moms and children.
We havee socio-economic ice floes for the elderly — and signficantly for ourselves also. People watch tv rather than connecting with each other in social networks. Our networks are not supportive, but made up of carting kids to activities and parents connecting through their kids, and very very rarely through mixed networks of all ages. I think formal religious affiliations can address that — if that is one’s preference, but their used to be a lot more card playing, bowling and bridge clubs. Without that and having to drive everywhere, you are pretty alone by the time you get to be a senior citizen..
Just my thoughts
Frankensteinbeck
@Hunter Gathers:
Agree on all counts.
kd bart
I work in a Federal office building and most of the TVs in the elevator areas are tuned to Fox. I always ask why would you want to watch a network that deems you the enemy and wants to deny you your means of employment and a respectable retirement? Every time I pass the one on my floor I turn it off.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: The point is not whether Irene was a bad storm—it certainly was—but the melodramatic rhetoric of the coverage. It’s a tragedy when someone dies in an accident, but that’s not why for TV news, if it bleeds, it leads. And as with Irene, the selling of the event on TV diminishes the actual suffering, which comes to seem only the backdrop for the melodramatic reporting.
Elie
@kd bart:
Can’t you ask to have it tuned to something else?
Good job! Turn it off.
You didnt say which Federal agency but we are just two years past the Bush administration and they had a single mind to stock the agencies with their nitwits (who are still there). It will take years to get those folks out.
gelfling545
@trollhattan: Is that the one that says “If you understand POOP, you understand your place in our company”? As an older person who watched this some years ago with a now teenaged granddaughter I can say it is a delightfully honest alternative to FOX.
ruemara
You seriously debase Nickelodeon with this comparison. And Spongebob. Otherwise, you are correct. It is the babysitting the elderly channel and that’s terrifying, because they vote more than the younger set.
Zelma
This hits close to home! Several years ago, my husband was probably in early stage dementia and watched Fox News all the time. Already anxious, he became fearful and irrational. I finally banned Fox News from my house and lo, my husband calmed down and even regained his liberal leanings which had be snuffed out by talk radio and Fox News. Now he watches MSNBC and is a much more pleasant person. He gets very angry at the Republicans, but interestingly, he’s not fearful and is much more rational about politics.
The media is amazingly powerful and Fox News is a power for evil. It’s that simple.
Alison
Just today I heard that my grandfather was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s. Thank crap he’s a lifelong Democrat who I don’t believe would even *think* of turning on Fox no matter how far the dementia goes. Even if he tried, my grandma – riddled with cancer and fatigued to the max at all hours of the day – would leap up from the couch and slap him upside the head in a split-second.
Roy G
This was an issue in my family as well. My adoptive mother had lifelong mental health issues that she resolutely swept under the carpet, because she couldn’t bear to have a psychotherapist delve into her issues, and she preferred to keep the finger pointed elsewhere. FOX Newz exacerbated her condition and worldview, to the point where when I announced my engagement to my Lebanese wife, here immediate response was ‘Don’t you know we’re at war with them?’
Later on, it became even worse, when we’d visit and she’d have FOX on all day, and pepper us with questions like ‘don’t you know Nancy Pelosi is the most hated women in the country?’ (we live in SF), and was absolutely up in arms over ‘death panels’ during our last visit 2 years ago. FOX definitely exacerbated her right wing paranoia, which was especially ironic since she was a teacher, and had a good pension package and benefits because she taught in a Democratic state.
While I believe FOX is definitely the worst offender, CNN isn’t far behind, and also include most mainstream news shows and publications like USA Today in this trend. I think they realized a long time ago that their audiences were trending older, and that the younger generations weren’t susceptible, so they fish wrap their shows to pander to their audiences, viz the execrable ‘FOX and Friends’ which leavens its hateful message with friendly faux folkiness. Ugh.
k488
My mother-in-law just passed away, and we witnessed the onset of her dementia in April, when she reacted to the killing of Bin Laden by echoing a particularly nasty anti-Obama meme she had heard on her radio late at night. It was not like her, and truly unworthy of the woman I’ve known for more than 20 years. When this summer she moved into a rehab clinic where she was unable to tune into these horrible fear-mongers, she became much calmer and like her old self. I think it is terrible that people in a potentially fear-inducing stage of their lives (she knew she was failing) are further tormented by cynical opportunists. I’m attending her funeral this weekend, and I hold real bitterness towards those who added any unnecessary unhappiness to her last years.
DonkeyKong
Fear, in fact, is precisely what Ailes is selling: His network has relentlessly hyped phantom menaces like the planned “terror mosque” near Ground Zero, inspiring Florida pastor Terry Jones to torch the Koran. Privately, Murdoch is as impressed by Ailes’ business savvy as he is dismissive of his extremist politics. “You know Roger is crazy,” Murdoch recently told a colleague, shaking his head in disbelief. “He really believes that stuff.”
“I’m not only the Fear Club President, but I’m also a client.”- Roger Ailes
El Cid
Fox Business host gets frustrated at guest Bill Nye for confusing his viewers with science when he talks about how you can’t yet just dismiss any connection with Hurricane Irene and global warming, and how Al Gore is on to something when he characterizes anti-AGW ‘arguments’ as dedicated irrationality, and Gore used the example of how racist arguments used to dominate.
PK
Does Fox News make people crazy or do crazy people watch Fox News. A whole bunch of people believe what they choose to believe regardless of the evidence. Fox News is for these personality types.
Elie
@k488:
Bless you and I am so sorry that she experienced that – well, evil.
Thank goodness she had family who were aware of what was going on and helped her back to her own dignity before her passing…
Hawes
Fox should go ahead and hire Patrick Buchanan.
Then they can really have their Crabby Patty and eat it, too.
birthmarker
@DonkeyKong:
The Terry Jones thing was particularly ridiculous. The guy is a nobody. Did you notice how Fox flipped from the mosque story to Terry Jones as soon as the media began to report that Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal is one of New Corps’ major shareholders? And the tone of the Jones story was one of disapproval. I figure a phone call was made.
MissBetsy
You really hit a nerve. Brother in law, living in our guest room, failing from liver disease and getting more and more demented. Would have nothing on but Fox. Even in his last dying days the only thing that would comfort him was the drone of Fox news…it was horrible. I tried to turn it to anything else but he got very upset until it was turned back. It was like an addiction. It was on when he died. Something very sick about all this…….
Derf
The good news is that most won’t be around to vote for much longer and there aren’t nearly enough new recruits to replace them.
JD Rhoades
@kd bart:
Which raises the question: why do so many public spaces (diners, doctor’s offices, etc) where there’s a TV on pick Fox News? I thought it was just my conservative area, but I’ve heard this from friends all around the country.
Derf
@JD Rhoades: More importantly, why do you give these places your business? Why do you not complain to them?
Kay Shawn
I have always assumed that in cases of airports or big buildings, cabs or newsstands, there were payments involved to play Fox News, as there are in placing products in supermarkets and the like. How can we find this out?
Gus
@Tom Hilton: Aside from the content, the constant noise, both visual and aural is disorienting. My dad was a Fox victim at the end of his life. Fortunately, my mom seems to have been immune.
cynn
Fox News is not analagous to Nicolodeon because it has no sense of irony, satire, or any other useful trope. It’s pure peanut butter served on a Hi-Ho.
RossInDetroit
I’m TV phobic and I notice Fox everywhere. If a set is on in a public place and it’s not sports the next most likely selection is Fox. I don’t think anyone actually pays attention to this ambient audiovisual grime, but that may not be the point.
For some reason I can’t stand to have the haunted fish tank in view unless I’m paying close attention to what’s on it, which is very very rarely. Otherwise it’s just too distracting and prevents me from being able to think. The same thing with TV audio and speech on the radio. Intolerably distracting. I have no problem with instrumental music on the radio for some reason.
I might be mentally defective. Or I might be normal and everyone else might be crazy.
Spaghetti Lee
Sounds like I’m lucky two times over. My grandpa just turned 83 and he’s more liberal than he’s ever been. Voted Obama in ’08 (first Democratic vote in his life, I think) and Alex Sink in 2010, and thinks Rick Scott is the devil incarnate. Bill Young is his rep, and he thinks it’s time for Young to retire already.
And this thing about Fox being on all the public TV’s, I don’t know, maybe I’ve just never noticed it. The doctors/dentists I go to don’t have TVs, at restaurants it’s mostly sports, the gym has on CNN and HLN (not much better admittedly), and the newspaper I used to work at had CNN. And this is pretty red territory, suburbs west of Chicago.
MikeJ
@Spaghetti Lee:
I changed barbers because my last one played Fox. In Seattle.
RalfW
Some awful burger chain in SW Utah (en route to Zion Nat’l Monument) had Faux on in the “dining” room. There was a comment box, but no forms. I had to ask the assistant manager for a form (he scowled but got some) and I said that I regretted spending my money in their shop and would not return if Fux was on. I suggested that the Weather Channel was a much better idea for an Interstate/touristy joint like theirs.
I’m sure id did fuck-all, but I felt better.
arguingwithsignposts
@jwb: no offense, jwb, but fuck you. ppl who had Irene coming in through winds or rains don’t give a shit about the coverage. Their lives are fucked up. Lots of power outages, lots of dead people, at least 30. Fuck off, comfortable one.
KCinDC
I remember Slacktivist had a blog entry about how Fox News was stealing elderly people’s remaining years, keeping them in a state of continuous fear and anger and preventing them from getting enjoyment out of family, friends, or any other aspect of life. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find it despite extensive googling.
Ruckus
At the dentist today TV over each chair, no faux on though. And I remember why I don’t get cable/over the air TV, netflix only. I feel like I’m having corn syrup laced with jalapeño poured down my throat. Faux is the jalapeño without the corn syrup.
opiejeanne
@Tom Hilton: We moved her to another facility. She was happier after the daughter made her mother turn off Fox, but she was much better after we moved her, even though it was farther away from us, but we made the trek two or three times every week. We showed up one day kind of early at the new place and she was singing. I had never heard her that happy.
opiejeanne
@Spaghetti Lee: It seems to be on in the breakfast area of a lot of hotels.
opie_jeanne
@Spaghetti Lee: It seems to be on in the breakfast area of a lot of hotels.
debbie
Jeez, this describes my mother, who was in a nursing home the last six months of her life. Fox on every waking moment. It was interesting to sit there with her, watching the Terry Schiavo coverage. She knew what they were saying was wrong — that she was living the nightmare they were ignoring — and yet she couldn’t bring herself to admit that they were wrong. Her strongest reaction was just to say nothing.
RossInDetroit
There’s a gas station conveniently located by one of my work sites and I sometimes drop in for drinx & snax. They always have Fox playing on a big TV with the sound cranked to max. I can hardly think with all the racket going on. I’m sure the owner likes it that way but I’d need ear plugs to shop there for more than 30 seconds. This is partly my problem with ambient noise distractions, but it does seem rather rude to customers.
If I’m alone in a waiting room and TV is on I’ll lower the sound myself or ask them to turn it down. If I can’t I just huddle as far away as I can & concentrate on ignoring it. For some reason talking on TV and the radio are intensely distracting to me.
Original Lee
@RoonieRoo: I’m sorry to hear about your sister. I have a very dear friend who has dissolved the very same way. A very intelligent woman, she has a Master’s in Social Work and is one of the most competent and organized people I know. But since 2008 she has been in this spiral of hate and has recently started posting on her blog the most virulent, racist anti-Obama stuff I have ever seen. Given that she’s on Social Security due to not being able to work after a bout of Lyme disease and her husband works for the federal government, plus her kids go to extremely good public schools, you would think she would notice the mental disconnect between her Ron Paulist rants and her actual life situation, but I have totally stopped commenting on any posts that are not directly related to her children because even the most innocuous comments set her off.
R-Jud
@Alison:
My Dem-since-FDR grandmother’s a little further down the road than your grandfather probably is, and I can report that this summer I watched her get up, grab her cane, march over to the nearest nursing home aide, and demand that Fox News be turned off a communal TV. “I’d rather watch dirty movies,” she said.
(She also said that it was fun to date sailors while she was stationed in Hawaii during WWII, because “once you got tired of them, they were re-assigned somewhere else.”)
DC Fem
I lost my dad to Alzheimer’s disease. The easy way to combat having a relative watch garbage that only makes their symptoms worse is to block the channel. They have lost the ability to understand (much less use) the parental lock mechanism on their tv so use it for them. Losing your cognitive abilities is scary enough. Don’t run the risk of making someone even more scared and fearful than they already are.
Woodrowfan
Last year I got into a loud argument with a man in a doctor’s office because he demanded that the TV be turned onto Fox instead of Good Morning America. When I asked him not to (and suggested ESPN as a compromise) the argument began. one old woman was very confused telling me “I never meet anyone who doesn’t like Fox news!” It was if she met someone with two heads and green skin-totally beyond her comprehension.
I confess I did goad him a bit after it started. After some smart ass remarks about Obama I told remarked “boy, you guys just can’t stand having a black president, can you?” oops. (evil grin) off he went into rage land.
joel hanes, sp4
public spaces … pick Fox News
In my experience, if you ask the person who has the remote, about half of these will change the channel to something else.
So I ask.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JD Rhoades:
In all of the TV markets which I have personal experience with the local Fox affiliate is Channel 2. That is the initial channel selected when a cold cable box is powered up, so Fox is the default. This combines with the fact that in a public space, if they care at all about the electric bill, somebody is probably turning the TV off at the end of the day and somebody else is turning it back on at the start of the next day’s morning shift. So Fox it is, unless somebody makes the effort to change the channel. Most employees are probably too busy to worry about something as trivial as what channel the TV is tuned into, especially when starting up in the morning, and most customers aren’t going to be assertive enough to change the channel themselves, especially if they don’t know where the controls are and have to ask somebody who works there to do it for them.
Fox wasn’t stupid when they grabbed that crucial piece of real-estate at the start of the channel list. Location, location, location…
ETA: the American Empire RIP, because nobody could be bothered to change the TV channel makes a nice epitaph.
Paul in KY
@RossInDetroit: Does your 94 year old granny have dementia? Sounds like she doesn’t (which is great, you’re a lucky grandson).
Paul in KY
@kd bart: If you are a GS employee with civil service protection, you should mention it to your bosses.
tkogrumpy
@trollhattan: Priceless! Could you send me a copy?
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
My experience with Fox News (extremely limited, I will confess) reveals pretty blonde bobbleheads, smarmy and deceitful male pundits who express great dismay and condescension with their magical eyebrows (Hannity, e.g.), and big doses of “verwy, verwy scarwy things happening in our world!”
LanceThruster
My sister is a 50+ year old virgin anti-gay marriage xian cat lady FAUX Noise viewer in the mold of Ronald Reagan (i.e. personable in a 1-on-1 but otherwise having very hateful and regressive politics).
She totally leapfrogs the debate by declaring she’s “tired of being told she doesn’t have a right to her opinion.”
I reply that is not at issue, but rather the fact that she bases her opinion on elements that are demonstrably false. She responds by reasserting her non-sequitur.
When I ask her who she supports from the current field for GOP presidential nominee, she says Chris Christie (knowing he’s not running yet but realizing all the others are too much of an embarrassment – though she has attempted defenses of Sarah Palin in the past).