critics display inability to control own bowels by suggesting this post may not be perfect

Regular readers will remember me complaining about difficulties with inspiration recently. Well, looking for material today, I took a grave short cut and headed to the Fox News website. I suspect one reason Fox has been so successful is that it can only be mocked so many times before the criticism becomes so banal (I genuinely hate this word, I think it's an elitist piece of mindfuck, but it's too perfect not to use here) that it's not worth mocking any more. Once it's completely unfashionable to hold Fox to account, it can unhinge its last tether to reality, and the war on Oceania begins!

That's why there are 8th rate hacks like myself, to keep the pressure on.

This will be nothing mind-boggling, especially, if you've seen Outfoxed. But here's the headline of a story on Fox ripped straight from Pravda:

Some say Bush's speeches show president is comfortable, self-assured and on a mission.

Compare to:

Critics say Republicans are using Terri Schiavo case to energize voters.

First, the obvious - if you're pro-Republican you're "some" but if you're anti-Republican you're a "critic". Goddam critics. I never did like those fuckers. How I dearly wish everything that "some" say was a story on Fox News. If so, there would have been a story after I saw the Bush story that was headlined, "Some say Fox News are a bunch of repressed, phony, sexist cowards."

This is fun, let's keep going.

Second, it's a great example of how information is controlled in a relatively subtle fashion. Remember, the important thing isn't your opinion on Terry Schiavo, it's that you talk and think about Terry Schiavo. No matter where you fall on the issue, how strongly you demand political action, processing that information will use up valuable resources that might otherwise be used to question issues like the distribution of wealth. So Fox looks (relatively) balanced by addressing "both sides." Ultimately, it's both sides of whether or not you liked the tie the guy was wearing when he was beating you with that lead pipe.

I'll wrap up with one last point, one that applies more broadly than just Fox. Why, when writing about Bush's speeches, do journalists forget that THEY ARE WRITTEN FOR HIM? They play into this bogus cult of personality - the Great Man theory of leadership. There was a great example of this on the Daily Show a while ago, where some two-bit congressperson was pushing a bill for bigger flags in the classroom. He said something along the lines of, "We want children to do the most with the freedom our country gives them." It is not leaders who give freedom, it is people who demand it. Keeping to the story that we owe any national success to noble leaders disempowers the individual, making them feel like they cannot contribute meaningfully to social change.

Fucking hell, how I wish I could have George Bush's advantages. Then, I could get reviews from academic journals that say things like, "Although his data was fake, his paper seemed comfortable, self-assured, and on a mission. That's good enough for me."