Someone crowdfunded a movie (trailer above) about how talk radio crawled inside her father’s brain like one of those hideous sandworms in “Wrath of Khan” and transformed her dad from a mild-mannered Kennedy Democrat into a crabby, resentful, sludge-spewing ditto-head. And then Fox News came along to reinforce his new asshole world view.
The aspiring filmmaker found that many others shared a similar experience. The film will link it back to the source, Roger Ailes, who plays Darth Vader to Rupert Murdoch’s Emperor Palpatine (mixing sci-fi metaphors, but you know what I mean). The film also asks if it’s possible to deprogram individuals who have been brainwashed by Fox.
Anyhoo, TPM has had several posts on the topic, as pointed out by valued commenter JPL. Have you seen the Fox Effect among your friends, relatives and acquaintances?
My dad is a born wingnut — the majority of Southern white males of his generation (born shortly after WW2) are. But Fox has definitely armed him with talking points and reinforced his biases. We get along fine since we have an agreement not to talk politics, but that wasn’t always the case.
Do you think the Fox Effect can be reversed? I have my doubts; I suspect talk radio and Fox just give voice and encouragement to latent assholery rather than creating it from scratch.