Foxy News

I’ve never been a fan of Fox News or the Fox Network. It’s been apparent to me that it leans so far right that it’s not even funny. Except for their tag line - “Fair and Balanced.” Now that’s laughable.

Anyway a video was recently put up on the blog “Pharyngula” by P.Z. Myers that was in response to a piece that Bill O’Reilly did some time ago about the Netherlands. Seems, according to O’Reilly, the Netherlands was shutting down some prostitute houses and curbing pot use. The point O’Reilly and others were making was that all this liberal business by the Dutch was leaving the country in a “cesspool of corruption”(1) according to conservative talking head Monica Crowley, Ph.D. Again according to these Fox Network folks, the Netherlands was where every criminal, crack head and whore were going. However the video countered with some interesting stats like the percentage of people who ever used cannabis in the US is 40.3% while in the Netherlands it’s 22.6% and a more telling stat was that the homicide rate per 100,000 in the US is 5.6 while it’s 1.2 in the Netherlands. Of course remember that America is a good Christian country loaded with guns and while the Dutch are not!

What concerns me with this story is not the blather that O’Reilly and others at Fox News put out but the fact that most who watch this network don’t bother to check the facts or even care about the facts. Fox News and the various programs they broadcast are little more that a bunch of biased right wing yoyos who spout garbage and inanities while their loyal audience just eats it up without question. In my opinion Fox News is developing a group of Americans who buy into what ever is said on their network that supports their beliefs, whether it’s true or not. The fact that most of their viewers see what they say as the “truth” is very worrisome. Fox News is not even journalism – it’s a forum for who ever want to speak their mind regardless of the facts. A case in point is Glenn Beck, another Fox yoyo, who recently said that Obama has a “hatred for white people.”(2) Fox News will say that Glenn Beck is not a journalist but a commentator, but their viewers don’t know the difference.

We need, as a country, to have citizens who that want to dig for the truth, that don’t buy into what one person may say without hearing from others, and who hold belief until they make a careful analysis of all facts. I fear that that’s not going to happen. It’s a lot like the Sunday preacher who tells his sheep, excuse me, congregation to believe even though it doesn’t make sense. Perish the thought that believers would want to question things. That’s heresy!!!

[1] “Well, in the Netherlands their experimentation with social tolerance, free love, free drugs, clearly has backfired. Amsterdam is a cesspool of corruption, crime. Everything is out of control. It's anarchy. And as you point out, you know, one of the great magnets for tourism in Amsterdam was this, except it has now crossed the line and gotten totally out of control.” Monica Crowley on the O’Reilly Report, December 9, 2008

[2] “This president has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture, I don't know what it is.” Glenn Beck on video posted on “Crooks and Liars” July 28, 2009