Fox: We report, you die

The Fox news channel blows my mind.

So why do you watch it then, huh, huh? Why do you...

Because it’s on TV monitors where I work out. Because I flip through channels and some horror grabs my attention like a carwreck grabbing the eyes of a passing rubbernecker. You happy now?

OK, Fox ... where was I? Why Fox freaks me out. OK.

Back when Pearl Harbor first came out, the talking heads on Fox started yapping about it on one of their morning talk shows. These bloviators weren’t bothered that this flick was a mega-million-dollar piece of steel-plated, steaming shit. What bugged ‘em was how this flick was retrofitted for Japanese sensibilities in its Japanese-release version. Some DJ called “Mancow” opining on this. “What do you expect from the criminal, liberal media?” sez Mancow.

”Criminal liberal media.” Cute little phrase, ain’t it? All it lacks is “who should be lined up against a wall and shot!”

Imagine an alternative news channel as far to the left as Fox is to the right. Some leftist DJ who says shit like “What do you expect from the criminal, corporate elite?” as a regular feature on a morning talk show. The People’s News Network! Imagine that.

Yeah, right. I can’t either.

So, last night, on earnest talkinghead show, Fox pitted some econut (I forget his name) they’d found under the skankiest, dankest, algae-covered rock imaginable against founder of the Guardian Angels, of all people. Econut’s argument: animals good; people bad; people should die. This walking, talking strawman was actually advocating the voluntary extinction of the human species, yep. We should all just quietly sterilize ourselves and leave the poor animals in peace. DeSilva, meanwhile, was coming on like Cheech. “No, man. Human beings is like good for animals. All those animals in zoos get like free peanuts and shit. I wish I was a fucking animal!”

Now, I know all you misanthropes out there are just lining up to say, “I agree with him! People suck, we should all kill ourselves.” Fuck that. Fuck death. It’s an idiotic argument. Kill your own damn selves and set a good example for others, OK? Let’s stick to the main point...

This chucklehead is not a representative of the “green” movement. Putting this fucker on television and seriously discussing his chucklehead ideas is the equivalent of my hypothetical People’s News Net having a debate on gun control where the guy taking the anti-gun-control position sez that all school children should be required to pack firearms in school, and also sez that the Second Amendment guarantees that every US citizen should have the right to stockpile tactical nukes.

Stacking the old deck, in other words. John Q. Public sez, “These people are nuts,” and that’s that.

What makes this cynical tactic so sickeningly abhorrent — to do it, you have to give high-end media coverage to deepfried lunatics. All the better to say “these eco-freaks want you to castrate yourself” to a mainstream audience, natch. But the price Fox pays for this smear is letting twisted loonies have their twisted say on a primetime national news channel. You’re spreading their fucking message — and legitimizing them at the same time. Whether you like it or not, a few pinheads will be saying “Hmmm...collective human suicide. This guy’s really on the beam!”

12 Monkeys, anyone?