I’ve been watching Fox News for a bit of late and the entire experience makes me feel dirty. The channel is littered with people I wouldn’t trust for five minutes with my child, my home or my wallet.
Bill O’Reilly ran a piece during his show about “San Francisco”. I put that in quotes because what he showed made for wonderful theater. I’ve been to San Francisco many times including fairly recently. What he showed he represented as the everyday experience of the city and it was ridiculous. According to Bill’s reporter you’d be inundated with pot smoke, gay antics, crime and homeless people. The only part of that that I can partially agree with is the explosion of homeless people walking the streets downtown. I’ve yet to see anyone smoking pot on the streets (they made it out like you couldn’t avoid it) and the only gays I’ve seen were nice couples walking along like anyone else minding their own business. I also haven’t seen any crimes unless you count allowing Fisherman’s Wharf to fall apart.
On Hannity & Colmes I endured the always-annoying Dick Morris. This is one of the dirtiest, sleeziest pundits out there. The guy owes his success to the Clintons and yet can’t do anything but rip these people at every turn. Asked about the possibility of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State he, of course, had a litany of reasons why it was a horrible idea. The one I loved was when he said that Hillary is a master of getting deals done with anyone to get what she wanted. I guess he totally missed the parallel of that being a great asset for the job in question.
He then decided to continue on with the lunacy of calling the drop in stocks the “Obama Recession” and supported it by saying how smart the market is because when John McCain was showing a resurgence in the polls that the market was up. The problem was that the dates he gave (Friday, Monday and Election Day) were all dates when these same people were saying McCain was doomed and that it looked like it might be an Obama landslide! This guy’s moral center is in hell. He has never had anything positive to say about a Democrat in any segment I’ve ever seen him in.
Sean Hannity, always a tool of the administration himself, won’t stop saying that Barack Obama isn’t for change because 31 of his appointments so far have some tie to the Clinton administration. What a surprise that the President-Elect would reach back to tap people from the last Democratic administration for insight on how to handle the transition. Where was Hannity when George W. Bush was appointing virtually all the key players from his father’s administration? W. had tied himself to the “Change” phrasing as well.
Then later on the show they ran some footage of a dozen Obama voters answering questions incorrectly. This was put forth as indicative of the intelligence of Obama voters. Co-host Alan Colmes, thankfully, tried to point out that this could be done with any group and, of course, the guy responsible for the video wouldn’t have any of it. Hannity chimed in supporting the view saying, “It’s frustrating to me how ill-informed people are that can cancel out our well-educated, well-informed votes.” Forget that I’ve seen this same approach done for voters of all parties. Forget the woman that said to McCain that Obama was an Arab.
More to the point Hannity then listed a poll that was a total joke. 56% couldn’t say that Obama started his campaign in William Ayers house. 88% couldn’t say that Obama wants to eliminate the coal industry. Sean, the reason so many couldn’t say either of those is that they aren’t true! That you want a majority of people to buy into your rhetoric is your own failing and it’s the reason you belong on one of these very segments.
I want to put partisan politics behind me but this kind of experience just makes that impossible. You cannot allow people like this to rule the message. It’s clear that they’ll do whatever is necessary to distort the truth trying to keep everyone in fear so that they fall in line and keep the money train rolling along their routes.
