Why taking on Fox Noise is a good idea (Michael Wolff)

[Are_grits_groceries]

Here’s what nobody seems to know: whether we’re a liberal nation or a conservative one.
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And then there’s Fox. For more than 10 years, Fox News, with its dedicated right-wing views, has been the only real success in television news. Partly because of our odd relationship to success (if you make money, you’re mainstream), and partly because Fox was so mesmerizing, so attention-seeking and attention-getting, we came to believe—still believe—Americans are a pretty grotty right-wing bunch.

As it happens, the Fox audience is, tops, only 2 million people, and yet, because of its flamboyance and success, it manages to convince the rest of the media that conservatism is the national mood.

And yet, yesterday, the Washington Post reported in a new poll that, actually, not only do a significant majority of Americans favor health care reform, but 57% want the public option—that most heated symbol of statism.

So I am revising my theory of what the Obama administration is doing in its frontal assault on Fox: I think they want us to take sides. Are you a Fox person or not a Fox person? And I think they want to identify Fox as the standard bearer of American conservatism. If you’re a conservative, you’re for Fox (ie, is that who you want to be?).
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Hence, Republicanism = conservatism = Fox = rabid opposition to an incredibly popular piece of legislation = hopeless marginalization = new liberal consensus.

I think they’re really going for it and that we may all turn out to be liberals.

http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/310/ive-changed-my-mind-on-the-obama-fox-showdown.html

I agree with him. Fox has a bully pulpit, and nobody in the MSM challenges them when they say something that is false and outrageous. A lot of the time the rest of the MSM seems to pick up on their crap, and then we see people scheduled who are able to spout away.

The anchors rarely call bullshit, and the ideas the loons present are given some credence. It would seem that the MSM would rather gin up the controversy to keep ratings going than beat down the inaccuracies. That is a great disservice to people who are watching.

I don't expect the MSM to be cheerleaders for the administration. However, I also don't believe they should passively pass along obvious cowpies without pointing out what they really are.

That huge silver balloon sailing across the sky with Schroedinger's boy inside is an apt metaphor. Huge balloons full of whatever ideas are unleashed every day and sail across the the teevee. The MSM just watches and breathlessly points them out and accepts what they are told is inside as gospel.

They never consider the source and then use other resources to help calculate what is really inside. The balloon lands, and there is no boy inside as they have been told. Then they get all het up because they were fooled. The damage has been done.

If they had stopped watching the damn thing and used some of the other information available to them, they could probably point out what is wrong before it lands.