Freedom from Blog

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

FOX & Friends

This weekend Mrs. TMcD and I took a trip to rural SW Virginia for a family wedding (actually, a mainland reception for a wedding that had taken place in Hawaii, where my cousin and his wife are the reigning moderates teaching at a conservative Baptist high school). Since this is Jim Webb country, we enjoyed hearing some radio ads for the two campaigns. Webb's were quite good, in my humble opinion.

But the most entertaining political analysis I saw on the trip came from the TVs hovering over the continental breakfast bar at the La Quinta where we stayed on the drive home. Since I make it a rule never to turn on a television earlier than the evening news, I never knew that there was a show called "FOX & Friends." Wake up with your favorite right-wing nutbars! Just imagine a smug, dye-jobbed Bill O'Reilly-type and a weatherman playing with funny hats. The combination of ditzy banter and far-right agitprop is truly a synthetic marvel. And without precednet, I suspect. Can you imagine "Muffins with Mussolini"? "Nibbles with Nixon"? "Pinochet & Pals ;-)"?!

The morning I watched, the hosts had a really funny exchange about the effort of some GOP congressmen to make English the "official language" of the US. The female anchor put on her best dumb blond routine: "Hello!? Isn't English already our official language? You mean people want to speak other languages in public? This is America, Paco." OK, she didn't say "Paco," but you get the idea. Who would have thought I could get such entertainment at La Quinta, which I guess is "Spanish for 'Learn the Language, Paco.'"

2 Comments:

At 6:41 AM, Blogger Number Three said...

You've never seen "Fox and Friends" before? Man, you haen't lived. My favorite feature is that the show usually has three "anchors"--if someone as lightweight as these puffers can be described that way--and they put the female anchor, in a short skirt, in the middle. I don't think that that's an accident--clearly Fox wants viewers' eyes, at least male viewers', focused on the agitprop at all times.

Btw, my favorite agitprop show from the past was "Stalin and Bagels." Who can forget the episode where the on-screen talent became "non-persons" during a commercial break and the last thirty minutes of the program was just the empty anchor desk, with patriotic music?

If you've never seen "Fox & Friends," does that include not seeing "OutFoxed," the documentary? If you haven't seen that, you should effort that.

 
At 10:50 PM, Blogger Scott McD said...

Yeah, I find all of the morning news shows way too touchy-feely. My sole source for news is NPR (and, of course, FFB).

SM

 

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