TDS:
As someone who doesn’t watch Fox news, ever, the little clips of Doocy and those other clowns are just terrifying. They really talk like that? With those odd, over-exaggerated mannerisms and weird tones? If I didn’t know any better, I would think it was an SNL clip mocking them. But it’s real.
kindness
Yea who was it last week that was saying Jon Stewart wasn’t any good as a political commentator and Colbert was the only one that Comedy Central had that mattered?
I disagree. Jon is the TV mediums Charles Pierce.
gogol's wife
John, I have the same reaction whenever I watch Stewart. It’s the only time I see these Fox people, and it just boggles my mind that anyone would ever take anything they say seriously.
JPL
How can anyone take Fox News seriously?
JPL
@gogol’s wife: Next time I’ll type faster but obviously I agree with you. Maybe it’s time to buy stock in Kool-Aid…
Mickey
Maybe we should just give up and let the GOP run everything eh cup half empty Cole? That’s your solution apparently.
Hill Dweller
@kindness: Stewart is way too Broderesque to be Pierce’s equivalent. That’s not to say Stewart isn’t great at time, but his forays into ‘balance’ are very annoying, and almost always falls flat.
As an aside, Pierce’s take on the media’s completely opposite reaction to the Nugent and Rosen comments were spot on.
BGinCHI
Atrios’s Wanker of the Decade really ought to be Ailes or just Fox News generally.
Fucking assholes.
trollhattan
It’s true, I’d never see or hear any of the Fox drivel if it weren’t for TDS and Colbert. They’ve always been at their best when skewering media, and especially the Fox brand of…I’ll call it news for lack of an accurate noun. At some point Fox could have their Rush moment, where decent people are forced to realize how awful they truly are. It’s obviously going to take a lot.
O/T TBogg is in TBogg Heaven.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/04/17/the-cuervo-gold-the-fine-columbian/
Jennifer
The Vagina Manger was hysterical (hey, that works in the original Greek, too!)
(And also – if you switch the order of the words in “Vagina Manger”, it means something totally different in French!)
Joel
Jon Stewart is good on issues near and dear to his person, I’ll give him that.
J.W. Hamner
Wow, are they really that pissed off about the “War on Women” framing? That’s good news.
gogol's wife
What was Janine Turner from “Northern Exposure” doing on there pontificating for a nanosecond or so?
Ash Can
@Hill Dweller: Fortunately, the guys who really matter aren’t pooh-poohing Nugent’s remarks — someone has earned himself a little Secret Service scrutiny. What’ll you bet he pisses himself when he gets that call?
Tony J
@trollhattan:
If TBogg has proven one thing to the satisfaction of all reasonable people it’s that there’s never, ever a wrong time to showcase Shakira’s wonderful shaker-maker.
MikeJ
@gogol’s wife: She’s a wingnut.
arguingwithsignposts
Shouldn’t that be The war on women ISREAL!?
Jennifer
@J.W. Hamner: It’s reflexive. Liberals are saying it, so it must be wrong, and even if it’s not, we will make it wrong by saying so.
The hilarious thing about this is…how many women out there watch Fox? First off, probably none that aren’t white, secondly, virtually none that are single, thirdly, just a handful that are under age 60. Basically, they’re eating up airtime preaching to their choir of old white men about how women can’t be the real victims, because of course they – white men – are. How that’s supposed to help Republicans close the chasm they’ve worked so assiduously to create with women, no one knows.
gogol's wife
@MikeJ:
I think I vaguely knew that, but why would anyone be interested in the political opinions of the semi-star of a (admittedly, great) television show that went off the air at least ten years ago?
Roger Moore
@JPL:
It tells them what they want to hear. That or brain damage. Take your pick.
BDeevDad
On a related note, Fox News Wins Pulitzer for Fiction
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@trollhattan: The word you’re looking for is propaganda.
John M. Burt
@gogol’s wife: Why would anybody care about the opinions of a former star of a former TV show? Because they have to take what they can get, obviously.
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife: Republicans are acutely aware that they have a glamor deficit relative to Democrats, so they latch on and promote via concerted effort their own cluster of Hollywood dissidents. That way they can say, see, we have one too! We’re not all a bunch of frightened oldsters and Lego-headed preppy douchebags!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, I have always had the feeling about Fox, they come across as clearly lying by their body language. Fox’s influence over people utterly eludes me.
RalfW
John, I went to a high school in a rich, mostly white suburb of Houston in the 80’s that was heavily populated by teen versions of Gretchen Carlson. Literally hundreds of photocopies of Gretchen, year after year graduating from suburban GOP moron-mills.
They are prime mommy-shoppers now and no doubt eat up her awfulness as confirmation of all their own personal, pinched prejudices.
Cargo
The absolute screams of outrage from the right about the war on women is a sign that for once, the framing is working in our favor. keep it up. that 16 point gap among women can be a 20 point gap by the election. D landslide.
butler
I hope Democrats don’t tuck tail and run from this Rosen nontroversy. Its such an easy bit of rhetorical judo for them if they just reach out and grab it:
“Being a mom is the most important job? We agree, that’s why we think all moms should have access to health care”
“Motherhood is hard work? Great, so let’s expand daycare credits and Head Start and not cut food stamp eligiblity which so many poor mother’s depend on.”
And so on…
FlipYrWhig
I do think that the prevailing tone of Fox News is that of a second grade teacher singling out the weird kid so that all the rest can laugh at him. It’s all baby talk, rubber faces, and finger-wagging.
Raven
@RalfW: But do they. . . nevermind.
cathyx
Men suppressing women. Do you feel more manly now?
dww44
@JPL: Sadly, I know lots of folks who do, both relatives and friends, including my otherwise sane dentist/peridontist who installed a TV high up on the wall in his very teeny waiting room after the 2009 Election. The TV, of course, is permanently tuned to Fox News.
Roger Moore
@cathyx:
I’m sure many of them do. Beating people up is manly, and only slightly less impressive when they’re half your weight or have their arms held behind their backs.
kideni
Glad to see Glenn Grothman getting two shout-outs in there. No one but a man in his mid-fifties who’s never married or raised a child, and who still lives in his mother’s house, could possibly provide greater insight into what it’s like to be a woman or support a family.
trollhattan
@RalfW:
I’m intrigued/horrified by the idea of a Gretchen Carlson mill, in equal measure. Can I invest?
trollhattan
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Probably gets closest. Can I use “turbo-propoganda” for proper emphasis?
Seanly
@gogol’s wife:
She’s an extreme Christian.
Steve in DC
@John Cole
I don’t find those odd or over-exaggerated all that much. There is a good portion of the population that acts like that. Namely white people in the 100k+ or more income level, lives in suburbia. As doofy as it seems, that sort of bubbly, friendly, “may or may not be pumped full of prosiac and coked out of their mind” is a feature of certain suburbanites. Namely when they are laughing dismissively at people who aren’t as educated/don’t make as much money/don’t think like/don’t follow them same trends as them.
Though I tend to associate that type of jackass behavior with the latte sucking yuppies around here.
Joey Maloney
@RalfW:
It’s actually much worse than that. Ms. Carlson is in reality very highly educated – valedictorian of her HS class, studied at Oxford, graduated cum laude from Stanford.
She has to be perfectly aware of what she’s doing. Evil, not stupid.
Steve in DC
@Joey Maloney
Being educated doesn’t make you smart or any less of a vapid “oh, hahaha, life is all roses” sort of twit. That sort of laugh, the mannerisms, all of that, pretty much sums how most of the yuppies in areas around here are. It’s an entitlement thing. Life is all fun, they are all highly educated, very liberal, but all highly obnoxious jackasses that live in a completely different world.
Joey Maloney
@Steve in DC: Yeah, but she pretends to be an idiot on camera. What was that perfectly ordinary word that she claimed she had to Google one time? Stewart called her on it. There is no possible way she, or anyone, could get through Stanford and come out the other end with that much ignorance intact.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: That’s a new product line from the folks at the Stepford Wifeworks, right?
gwangung
@Hill Dweller:
Mainly because the Democrats don’t seem to shit the bed as often as the Republicans.
Jennifer
I got into quite the argument the other day online with a bunch of Fox-suckers. The first was a military guy (I hate facebook logins) who I said, ok, so you get your news from a network that “reported” to its viewers that the Taliban was training monkeys as soldiers to shoot American troops? And who used a photoshopped image of a monkey with a gun for the “story?” The only thing separating that from the Weekly World News is that Fox told their viewers it was a photoshop, because they didn’t have an image of an actual monkey soldier with a gun. So you’re putting your trust in a “news” organization that told its viewers that a monkey could do your job?
His response was the usual “you’re insulting the troops!” and I said, no, I’m not, I know how ludicrous the idea of “monkey soldiers” is – Fox is the one who insulted you by reporting that a monkey could do your job.
At this point some dumbass girl waded in with “well, they were just reporting what an obscure Chinese newspaper reported!” So I’m off again, this time with, oh, so just repeating any insane thing you’ve heard is “reporting?” Well, how long until they start featuring Elvis sightings and telling us about the space aliens endorsing Romney for president? Don’t you expect a legitimate news organization to tell you when something reported elsewhere is untrue by using facts and stuff? Her response was that it’s up to the viewer to figure out that things like the monkey soldier story are ludicrous bullshit. I said, well, if they’re “reporting” ludicrous bullshit without commentary to debunk it, why do you assume there’s any validity to anything they report? Why are you so eager to get punked? Finally I just conceded that she was too stupid to respond to further and didn’t bother checking back to see where it went from there.
These are seriously stupid people, and they’re fine with people lying to them even when it’s proven that they’re being lied to. That matters less to them than being told what they want to hear, true or not.
Steve in DC
@Joey Maloney
One can be highly educated and an idiot. In fact, most of the grade A morons I know are all fairly well educated. No matter where on the political spectrum they fall (though, due to where I live most of them are liberals) there is a certain type. Girls who were daddies little angel growing up. Almost invariably all white, often blond. Always have a college education, often post graduate. And all of them married to a well off guy, so much so they don’t really have to work.
And they all act exactly like that. Same mannerisms and freaky stuff as well. Almost as they are constantly just off the first line of coke and glass of champagne.
I don’t think she’s acting at all. That sort of behavior is a genuine thing.
Calouste
@Joey Maloney:
Dubya went through an Ivy League school. He came through with his ignorance intact, if not enhanced.
bemused
@Jennifer:
Wow, just wow. They were more upset with you pointing out Fox reported a ridiculous, laughable story as news than that Fox thinks they are stupid enough to believe it. Fox fans aren’t always dumb but they all cling to Fox as if it were the only lifeline they have.
slag
@Joey Maloney:
I remember that. And it’s even worse that she poses like that and then pretends that Republicans don’t have an issue with women.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
The brain damage cause has not been determined to come from watching or that it was there prior and allowed the watching.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jennifer: You’re working to hard with them. Fox news was BSing them and they fell for it. The word for that is “sucker”, that’s all there is to it. Taliban monkey soldiers, ye gods, only a complete idiot would by that.
BillinGlendaleCA
@dww44: I’ve got a tablet with an IR blaster and a remote app. I can take care of the TV tuned to Faux Noise.
geg6
@gogol’s wife:
She’s a wingnut.
As for Stewart, I don’t watch him and haven’t in a long time. He thinks he’s David Broder or Bill Keller or something and I have no use for assholes who think that way. Yeah, he gets it right sometimes, but so do stopped clocks.
catclub
@slag: I think it was ‘czar’.
Cris (without an H)
“ignoramus”
AA+ Bonds
They just talk like TV preachers, John; you ever watch CBN/700 Club “news” because that’s where Fox got that business
AA+ Bonds
Incidentally this is also how Wall Streeters talk if they think anyone who might promote them or demote them or file a lawsuit is listening or watching – all hostile sunshine, bouncing around on their hips and waggling their eyebrows and shit
sparrow
@Steve in DC: I agree that a degree/higher ed doesn’t mean you aren’t a moron. I’m in a physics program and I ran into a guy WITH A PHD in physics who didn’t understand basic, basic physics. I’m talking 2nd-year electromagnetism. I have no idea if his advisor wrote his papers or what, but it was shocking to me that he had gotten a degree. I have long been convinced of “the myth of meritocracy”…
dww44
@BillinGlendaleCA: Now, I know that I need to be more technologically with it. I would love to be able to do that to that TV and them never know it. The staff acts all nervous when I question what’s being shown.
dww44
@AA+ Bonds: Exactly!!!. Never thought about that cause I hate all those religious channels of which we have far more than our share. Between them and Fox and talk radio, I genuinely wonder if and when the worm will finally turn. That is, when will the American voter wake up?
joel hanes
@dww44:
No need to be a techie to deal with inacessible TVs stuck on Fox. You need this wonderful product, which fits in a pocket or purse.
Paula
@kindness:
Inevitably, Pierce will pen some piece opining on some random act of stupidity performed by the left and get flamed for desertion too.