I read this at my new favorite blog, No More Mister Nice Blog. If you like liberal rants as much as I like liberal rants, then you’ll find much to love about Steve M’s sharp, witty writing.
The context here is Steve’s contention that FOX News seems oddly intent on making it very, very difficult for a nationally electable Republican to get the party’s nomination because the network seems more interested in profitably pandering to their freedom loving patriots scooter-riding senior citizen wingnut viewership than continuing to be a reliable partner of the Republican party.
We call it “the right-wing noise machine” because we see it as an efficient, mechanized generator of propaganda that predictably steers the country rightward and regularly puts government in the hands of Republicans. But the Murdoch part of the machine is operating in such a way that the GOP is much less likely to win in 2012. Why?
Either the folks in Murdoch Land are supremely confident that they can move the country not just to the right but that far right—as far as Cain and Palin and even the birthers—or they don’t really care anymore about being the Republican Party’s propaganda wing, because catering to the needs of drooling ultra-extremists, even at the GOP’s expense, is such good business (and fits the personal predilections of rage junkies such as Roger Ailes).
Which means that Murdoch’s media properties may be harming the GOP right now—and may be helping to guarantee Obama’s reelection.
FOX News has really been floundering lately. Did you watch the clip of Jon Stewart on The O’Reilly Factor last night? He was being nice and he still wiped the floor with Bill O’Reilly on his own show. The Osama bin Laden hit left FOX’s talking heads discombobulated. It scrambled their predictable anti-Obama talking points. What do they have without them?
The notion that FOX News itself might be helping to reelect the president is one pregnant with irony, I think you’ll agree!
On the other hand, a just as valid argument can be made that it is now FOX News that runs the Republican party and not the other way around.