March 21, 2009
Posted by David Rothenberg on Tuesday, April 28, 2009
A couple of times each week, I tune into Fox News. It’s like getting the Post without paying 50 cents. I know that it will get my blood pressure up…but it’s important for me to understand or at least recognize the thinking of some citizens whose perspective I find baffling and often offensive. They are there and they always HAVE BEEN. Rush Limbaugh didn’t invent it. Before him there was Father Coughlin, Westbrook Pagler and a host of others.
Fox rarely disappoints. This week O’Reilly hosted a Black woman who defended Jackie Mason’s use of the word “Schwatza” during a comedy routine. She was probably the only Black woman in America who you could find to assume such a position, and O’Reilly found her. Another woman suggested that liberal feminists were responsible for the alleged domestic violence between Chris Brown and Rihanna. There is never time to elaborate…just to charge, accuse or sensationalize.
More significant, I was most fascinated at the relentless attacks on President Obama, particularly focused on his economic stimulus package. If you wandered in from another planet you would have no idea while watching Fox, that Obama inherited a fiscal nightmare from his predecessor. According to the Fox pundits, everything Obama is doing is wrong. They seem to have amnesia about the Bush years. I find it interesting that 60 days into his Presidency Obama is being held responsible for all that is awry in our economy.
And yet, to this day, the Bush partisans on Fox, declare that 9/11 which happened nine months into the Bush-Chaney regime, was the failure of the Clinton administration. They accept responsibility for nothing. Everyone on Fox seems clear that the government programs instituted by FDR did not end the depression. It was World War II, they all seem to agree. No matter what time of the day you tune in, there seems to be a party line charted each day. The irony, of course, is that during the Bush years there was a war AND a financial collapse. Taxes for the wealthiest were cut, regulations were fading into the dust, and amid war, we have had economic decline. Curiously, the professionals on Fox make no connection between the war and recession under Bush…but look at FDR’s inheritance of Republican excesses as a failure, salvaged only by war.
I don’t think it is possible, at this early date, to measure the effectiveness of the Obama stimulus bill. It will take time. What it doesn’t need are Republican legislators undermining it and Fox cheerleaders rooting for failure. We are talking about saving the nation and they seem preoccupied with saving face.
You won’t hear about it on Fox…but the economy aside, some notable things are taking place with the new administration in Washington. He has reversed the attitude about science with which he hopes to develop a partnership…to explore new technologies, to conquer the climate and diseases. After 8 lost years, we can begin doing stem cell research. His appointment of Dr. Margaret Hamburg to head the Food and Drug Administration is notable and the President said that his administration’s priority is to protect the health of Americans. In naming Dr. Hamburg, the President noted that in the past only five percent of food storage bins were inspected and that was not satisfactory to protect our nation’s health. Obama’s approach to global warming also indicates that science – rather than mythology – will be the guiding force. It is ironic that the creationists, those opposing the President, seem acceptable to the Internet, cell phones, television and air-conditioning, but mock science when it comes to the future of the planet. God is selectively inserted into their weak arguments.
The announced closing of Guantanamo has prompted worldwide cheers – in every corner of the globe short of Dick Cheney’s habitat…and the plans to bring the troops home from Iraq from a war created on lies are other drastic changes emanating from the White House.
Certainly, we will keep an eye on the President. We are concerned about the economy...about which direction he will lead the country concerning Afghanistan…but safety regulations for miners will save lives just as food inspections will limit epidemic outbreaks. None of it will be perfect, we need to be hopeful and a participant in his efforts to take the nation on a new route.
Fox will be challenging every step of the way. But if defending Jackie Mason’s bigotry is where they are, then Fox is in bigger trouble than the economy.
I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb!
Fox rarely disappoints. This week O’Reilly hosted a Black woman who defended Jackie Mason’s use of the word “Schwatza” during a comedy routine. She was probably the only Black woman in America who you could find to assume such a position, and O’Reilly found her. Another woman suggested that liberal feminists were responsible for the alleged domestic violence between Chris Brown and Rihanna. There is never time to elaborate…just to charge, accuse or sensationalize.
More significant, I was most fascinated at the relentless attacks on President Obama, particularly focused on his economic stimulus package. If you wandered in from another planet you would have no idea while watching Fox, that Obama inherited a fiscal nightmare from his predecessor. According to the Fox pundits, everything Obama is doing is wrong. They seem to have amnesia about the Bush years. I find it interesting that 60 days into his Presidency Obama is being held responsible for all that is awry in our economy.
And yet, to this day, the Bush partisans on Fox, declare that 9/11 which happened nine months into the Bush-Chaney regime, was the failure of the Clinton administration. They accept responsibility for nothing. Everyone on Fox seems clear that the government programs instituted by FDR did not end the depression. It was World War II, they all seem to agree. No matter what time of the day you tune in, there seems to be a party line charted each day. The irony, of course, is that during the Bush years there was a war AND a financial collapse. Taxes for the wealthiest were cut, regulations were fading into the dust, and amid war, we have had economic decline. Curiously, the professionals on Fox make no connection between the war and recession under Bush…but look at FDR’s inheritance of Republican excesses as a failure, salvaged only by war.
I don’t think it is possible, at this early date, to measure the effectiveness of the Obama stimulus bill. It will take time. What it doesn’t need are Republican legislators undermining it and Fox cheerleaders rooting for failure. We are talking about saving the nation and they seem preoccupied with saving face.
You won’t hear about it on Fox…but the economy aside, some notable things are taking place with the new administration in Washington. He has reversed the attitude about science with which he hopes to develop a partnership…to explore new technologies, to conquer the climate and diseases. After 8 lost years, we can begin doing stem cell research. His appointment of Dr. Margaret Hamburg to head the Food and Drug Administration is notable and the President said that his administration’s priority is to protect the health of Americans. In naming Dr. Hamburg, the President noted that in the past only five percent of food storage bins were inspected and that was not satisfactory to protect our nation’s health. Obama’s approach to global warming also indicates that science – rather than mythology – will be the guiding force. It is ironic that the creationists, those opposing the President, seem acceptable to the Internet, cell phones, television and air-conditioning, but mock science when it comes to the future of the planet. God is selectively inserted into their weak arguments.
The announced closing of Guantanamo has prompted worldwide cheers – in every corner of the globe short of Dick Cheney’s habitat…and the plans to bring the troops home from Iraq from a war created on lies are other drastic changes emanating from the White House.
Certainly, we will keep an eye on the President. We are concerned about the economy...about which direction he will lead the country concerning Afghanistan…but safety regulations for miners will save lives just as food inspections will limit epidemic outbreaks. None of it will be perfect, we need to be hopeful and a participant in his efforts to take the nation on a new route.
Fox will be challenging every step of the way. But if defending Jackie Mason’s bigotry is where they are, then Fox is in bigger trouble than the economy.
I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb!
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