Fox "continues to addict countless millions, like cheap beer or drugs"

[Cell Whitman]

That should read "Murdoch's empire" doing the addicting but that wouldn't fit in the headline. heh This article ties in the Murdoch factor with the PBS coup. Several deluxe lines in this one...including..

The Fox networks and the Bush administration each fulfill a need in the other: to the Fox Television shareholders, the benefits are obvious. For the administration, the skewering of reality enables it to proceed in ignorance and willful blindness.

When do you think the "Christan" right will realize they are being herded around like the cult they have become?

___

http://www.newstatesman.com/Life/200505160011

Having frightened the mainstream press, and networks such as CBS, into compliance with its right-wing agenda, the Bush administration now has public broadcasting in its sights. By Andrew Stephen

If you visit the White House these days, you find that the television screens scattered throughout the building are tuned to one station: the Fox News Network, the far-right news channel with the slogan "Fair and balanced", which has become the official voice of the Bush administration. This choice reflects a similarly jeering, insincere cockiness among its own members. They now have their very own nationwide television station that beams out nothing but their preferred versions of reality, and believe they are therefore free to dispense triumphalist V-signs at the rest of the world.

Not so long ago, this attitude extended only to newspapers and magazines. Broadcasting was still sacrosanct. I once went into the vice-president's office to see Dan Quayle - and, ludicrously, the only thing I could see on his desk was a copy of that day's Washington Times, a gruesomely bad, far-right newspaper owned by the Moonies that has never had more than a tiny circulation.

...

That, I think, is probably the most dispiriting feature of this right-wingisation of American life. The mainstream media lie down quiescently before the right-wing onslaught, accepting the agenda as an irresistible force laid before them. It is, somehow, an acknowledgment that the right is stronger and tougher than them, able to tear down lives and jobs at the mere whisper of a word of disapproval from the likes of Rove, Tom DeLay, or Tomlinson; if there is the slightest concession from the far right that Fox is championing their views in the guise of news, the response is always that the "liberals" have left-wing equivalents like the New York Times and Washington Post.

Never far away from all this, I feel, is the destructive figure of Rupert Murdoch - doubtless smirking with pleasure over the demise of public broadcasting in both the UK and US, and the simultaneous (and hardly coincidental) success of his soaraway Fox channels. The output from his empire continues to addict countless millions, like cheap beer or drugs; and, inevitably, that is always cited here as the justification for its existence in the first place - that it is meeting an unmet proletarian demand.

What was hardly predictable was that the lowering of standards and integrity would have such visible, unashamed champions in the White House; hitherto, compliant politicians had been furtive in their positioning, in the manner of a Thatcher or a Blair. Now it is out in the open. The Fox networks and the Bush administration each fulfil a need in the other: to the Fox Television shareholders, the benefits are obvious. For the administration, the skewering of reality enables it to proceed in ignorance and willful blindness. Which is why those White House TVs are tuned, day in, day out, to just one station.
_________________

Learn who tilled the field for Murdoch and all the theofascist farmers.


http://cellwhitman.blogspot.com/

[Chomp]

1. That is a .....

...really depressing article.

(Terffifc magazine the New Statesman BTW)

[sendero]

2. I resent...

.... the unfair comparison to cheap beer or drugs.

At least they don't turn you into an ignorant fool :)

[DeepModem Mom]

3. That's been my observation, listening to (or overhearing)...

Fox viewers talk among themselves. Not only are they totally convinced that what Fox gives them is reality, they are clearly entertained as they are propagandized.

On edit: And they think they are in the know, cool, and superior to losers who haven't latched on to the Fox screw-everybody-else 'tude.

[Cell Whitman]

4. 1984 is here - I just posted this in the FDR image change thread but it

fits here also.

We are 1984. http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

from part 3 chapter 2

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984_c20.htm

'There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,' he said. 'Repeat it, if you please.'

'"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,"' repeated Winston obediently.

'"Who controls the present controls the past,"' said O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?'

Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.

O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Winston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?'

'No.'

'Then where does the past exist, if at all?'

'In records. It is written down.'

'In records. And --?'

'In the mind. In human memories.'

'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?'