Not Necessarily The News

Howdy --

In the recent past Ive written a few politically inspired posts and, at least, the majority of them have come off, probably intentionally, as anti-Republican. Or anti-friends-of-Republicans. This one will be the same since it deals with Fox News. Ahem, excuse me... Fox "News." I feel better now.

Before I do get into that, I feel the need to point out my political affiliation. Do I need to? No. But I choose to because I believe in full disclosure.
Currently, as of today, if I had to put labels on myself, Id probably say Im Liberal and lean towards the Democratic stance.
However, going back a few Presidents, I would have voted for Reagan, Bush #1 once, Clinton twice, Bush #2 once, Gore once, and then Obama. So of the last seven elections I would have voted for a Republican three times. Not bad for a "Democrat-leaning Liberal."

Anywho, lets move on.

As most of you know, theres a war going on right now. No, not the one in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Burma. Or Somalia. Or even the epic civil war in Ingushetia. The last one is real too, look it up.
No, what Im talking about is the violent, bloody, war going on between Fox "News" and the White House.
In my opinion, there is a level of bias throughout most news organizations. At least the major ones. There isnt supposed to be, obviously, and news is just supposed to be news, but I suppose its to be expected when you have humans with human emotions writing and reporting on events of the world.
However, what Fox "News" does goes far beyond bias and instead is firmly planted in the territory of misdirection, misquotation, exaggeration, and most evil of all... fabrication. News organizations report on events, not stage them, and yet Fox "News" has done that very thing. And then reported on them as if they naturally occurred.
ANY group or individual would get to the point where they just get tired of all the lies and attacks, and the White House has finally gotten to the point and called Fox "News" out for what they really are: "The reality of it is, Fox News often operates almost as the research arm, or the communications arm, of the Republican Party."
What Fox "News" should have done was say "Yeah, and...?" but instead they got their panties in a bunch and exaggerated that comment to the point where the White House is now (paraphrasing) "A Russian cabal intent on abusing their power to censor Fox News from pumping truth into the homes of the American people." Hilarious.
I always find it funny that the group - or person - yelling the most, throwing the most punches, and otherwise unfairly attacking someone else is ALWAYS the one that complains the loudest when they get punched back. Seriously, Rush devotes blocks of his radio program to his "attackers" while Fox sets aside hours of their "News" programming to theirs. This, despite the fact that their entire existences are to do the very same thing they claim others are unfairly doing to them.

Everyone knows what Fox "News" really is, including Fox "News", and so I wasnt even going to write a word about any of this. Not one. That is, until I saw what Fox "News" Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said: "Its astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming. It seems self serving on their part."
Yes, you read that correctly, the head of Fox "News" CLEARLY said that Fox "News" is... NOT... news! AND he blamed the White House for being too stupid to know this even though Fox calls its programming NEWS, they have the "Fox NEWS" logo on the screen, and the ONLY people you associate with Fox NEWS - "Fox and Friends", Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, Bill O'Reilly - are featured in their "Fair and Balanced" NEWS promos.
So let me get this straight... Foxs producers create stories which they can then have their - admittedly - NOT NEWS people report on, and then when they get called out for it say "Youre too dumb not to see the truth" and then turn around and have their - admittedly - NOT NEWS people cry foul because people are calling them NOT NEWS. How does that make ANY sense at all?! And why does my head suddenly hurt?

Anywho.

This past Thursday I was watching The Daily Show and Jon Stewart pretty much bitch slapped Fox "News" for the very same reason I was writing this post. And, admittedly, they did so using sound bites and video clips and were much funnier, and informative, than anything I could write here.
So even though I had intentions of writing more, and could possibly lay claim that I was going to write it first, anything else I can say would probably be plagiarization, so Ill just link to the clip and let yall watch Jon tell you what I was thinking. Enjoy.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-29-2009/for-fox-sake-

Til next time...

-- DBW --