“Ooooh, look at me! I’m Bill O’Reilly, friend of the working man and foe of government. Look at me fight with liberals and lay waste to the media establishment. Ooooohhhhh.”
Yea? Well you can suck it, Bill O’Reilly. Fox News is the devil.
Fox News was started about five years ago as Rupert “The bad guy in Tomorrow Never Dies” Murdoch’s answer to the merger that created MSNBC. Billed as “Fair and Balanced,” Fox has become “fair and balanced, if you belong to the Michigan militia.”
I became familiar with the top-rated network this summer as I interned at another national news outlet, one of Fox’s competitors. I had a television on my desk, so between Natalie Portman movies and “Behind the Music,” I watched much news.
(Best line from the Def Leppard Story: “But doctor! I’m a drummer!”).
Anyhoo, I came to know most of Fox’s on-air personalities, and often found myself mumbling in anger at the smallish T.V. on the corner of my desk. While this frightened the producers around me, I realized how much I loathed this network.
It’s not that their reporting is especially bad or that their graphics too intrusive, it’s that they’re so damn arrogant and misdirected. For all the criticism that “limousine liberals” endure for being too high-minded, Fox’s conservatism borders on being elitist. Their common-sense self-righteousness becomes almost belligerent.
Let’s run down the anchors:
Paula Zahn is probably the most talented personality on the network but sold out to Rupert Murdoch’s moneybags and has forsaken her legitimacy. She is doomed to a marginal John Stossel-like existence.
John Gibson looks like that Nazi evil-dude from Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail who drinks from the wrong grail and ages super-fast, then explodes. But he looks like him at the point between hair-whitening and skin-decomposing. So he’s annoying.
Bill O’Reilly hosts cable news’ highest rated program “The O’Reilly Factor.” The success lies in the fact that he brings up inflammatory race issues with liberal commentators, then seeks to destroy said pundits with the phrase, “Who’s for us? The working men and women of America?” Then he gets his million-dollar paycheck and goes home to the Hamptons. Sell-out!
Brit Hume looks like Droopy the Dog. (Side note: Can you think of any other names like this that combine an ethnicity and a philosopher? Congolese Kierkegaard? OK, I’ll stop.)
Neil Cavuto’s shirts don’t fit, and he wishes he didn’t have to talk about stocks all day. Sean Hannity is a bloated neo-conservative goober. Shepherd Smith is greasy, but I kind of like him because he answers callers-in to his show with “What’s up?”
The greatest sign that the network is seeking to destroy news is their misuse of supposed breaking news. Jessie Arbogast urinates in Pensacola hospital bag! Fox News Alert! Gary Condit has armpit stains! Fox News Alert! Man climbs Brooklyn Bridge and demands Heineken! Fox News Alert!
Now I don’t mind if their prerogative is a conservative one. What I do mind is the fact that they flaunt it, even if they are the liberal media’s anti-Christ. If anchors are pro-life, anti-McCain or for the tax cut, they don’t have to tell everyone about it. You don’t see Bernard Shaw telling viewers to call their senator and support patients’ rights, do you? Well, you don’t see Bernard Shaw in the first place, because he’s retired.
Fox is a self-absorbed network, pandering for ratings. Their anchors and talk-show hosts make Gordon Liddy look like the President of NOW. Watch CNN, MSNBC or any of the networks for the news. Or here’s an even better suggestion: read the newspaper, you sheep!
