Fox News Porn
I guess I'm not the only one who's noticed that Faux News has a certain affinity for lurid sex stories. I think I realized this after their third or fourth hard-hitting expose on Spring Break.
Here are some of their more amazing moments (NSFW! Music starts up immediately, too) via Metafilter.
What never fails to send me into paroxysms of laughter is the transparently sick nature of all of this--hyper uptight middle-aged guy in a suit, filled with mock outrage piously pretending that he's conveying actual news while covertly drooling over the whole thing. It's like something out of The Onion or The National Lampoon.
If the right could just work out its psychosexual problems, we'd all be a lot better off.
I guess I'm not the only one who's noticed that Faux News has a certain affinity for lurid sex stories. I think I realized this after their third or fourth hard-hitting expose on Spring Break.
Here are some of their more amazing moments (NSFW! Music starts up immediately, too) via Metafilter.
What never fails to send me into paroxysms of laughter is the transparently sick nature of all of this--hyper uptight middle-aged guy in a suit, filled with mock outrage piously pretending that he's conveying actual news while covertly drooling over the whole thing. It's like something out of The Onion or The National Lampoon.
If the right could just work out its psychosexual problems, we'd all be a lot better off.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:13 AM
11 Comments:
Well observed, WS---exploiting what you condemn. A cardinal rule of showbiz, and I've noticed them doing it too.
Lenny Bruce once said he'd rather his kid watch a porn than violence, (LINK, about 1/4 of the way down the page) and there's a certain wisdom in that.
So, over on the lefty channel, PMS-NBC [well, if you're gonna go with "Faux" News] they fill their programming downtime with murders and sex crimes.
What a mixed-up world.
I know, I know...it's axiomatic that the left is worse.
I know.
So, Tom, are you committed to the ideology that nothing can ever be said to be actually better than something else, or is it only with respect to certain things, like politics?
In other words: are you a total relativist, or just a political relativist?
Just wondering.
Political relativist, I reckon, in the American context. We Merkins are far more alike than different. We're good, we suck, whatever. "Neo-liberal" cuts a nice swath.
Robert Redford was appalled when Bill Frist came up to Ted Kennedy at a DC dinner and gave him a neckrub, and Teddy was digging it.
So let's get real, and not let them set we the Great Unwashed all against each other. That's their game and how they make their living.
I've got that thousand-yard stare. President Hillary Clinton will not end the republic, and neither did Cheney-Bush. Neither did Richard Fucking Nixon.
Now, me & Mao got some serious differences...
Some big problems, tho:
"Ending the republic" is the wrong criterion.
a. The republic won't end all at once. It'll be in stages. That means those who do things that significantly weaken it/undermine its principles deserve disapprobation.
b. Consequently, if you focus just on whether Smith does or does not end the republic, you'll miss *literally* *everything* important.
c. employing that criterion, then, every normal act of political badness, and every bad, wrong politician, up to and including Richard fucking Nixon, is immune from criticism.
Nobody thinks that Bush himself is ending the republic. But many of us think that that's setting the bar for o.k.-ness rather low.
You may just set the bar really low for such things--every president is an o.k. president unless he personally ends the republic. Seems wrong to me...
But I'm wondering whether you really would really apply such a standard in the case of, say, a liberal president. As I've said before, one always *can* throw up defensive arguments to defend *any* politician. Even Nixon was far from universally reviled when he left office. But since one *can* always do this, it means that at some point one has to exercise judgment about when to say the defensive arguments have finally become too strained, too implausible. The arguments will never go away...they'll just become increasingly lame. Seems to me that we reached the relevant point with regard to Mr. Bush long ago...
I found your blog through a series of clicks back through which I'm sure I couldn't trace. I've read some of your "past posts that don't suck." It's a breath of fresh, if dense, air. Almost enough to lift me out of my funk, devolving from a general sense of a country overtaken by and smothered by stupidity. On the other hand, I still despair that such well-reasoned and well-crafted arguments (which by their nature are non-stupid and therefore non-welcome) will make a difference. Still, I plan on coming back. May as well taste chocolate while I drown.
Yo, Sid.
Thanks for the kind words.
WS, the controversies of the current administration are well within historical parameters. The only difference is my thumos meter only goes to 6 or or 7 and yours is set at 10. Eleven.
The republic is in no danger, as evidenced by the administration's record in the courts, where they've won a lot more than they've lost.
There's also an election coming up, where we the people will decide if we want the pendulum to swing back the other way. We might, but it's far from certain.
And it was entirely proper to note the irony of the lefty cable news station featuring violence and murder in its off-hours.
I only brought Bush up in response to a question. I agree that intelligent conversation on the subject is not possible between us, for equal and opposite reasons.
The notion that there are "lefty" cable news networks is absolutely laughable. I mean, are there cable news networks run by people who think are pro-choice and pro-gun control and don't got to church? Yes. But "lefty"? Not if that term has any meaning. But, then again, it really doesn't any more, since most people don't even know there's a difference between liberals and leftists in the first place.
What term does have meaning? Red and blue teams? Duke vs. North Carolina? Is it as elemental and meaningless as that? Are we just unwitting dupes of some grand entertainment?
As far as I can tell, there's one "lefty" news show, Countdown. There are also a couple of "lefty" fake news shows on the Comedy Channel, though the Daily Show has stronger journalistic integrity than most of cable news.
On the other hand, I could have missed LNN entirely, since I gave up on TV news years ago.
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