| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Not Optimal-Gate | ||||
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Funny, huh? Note that "not optimal" was Jon Stewart's phrase, not Barack Obama's. President Obama was just replying to Stewart's question. But that doesn't matter on
And then there's poor John McCain, turning himself into an even bigger political farce, by commenting on something he couldn't possibly have seen and heard for himself. But hey, it's Fox! Nothing helps a Republican more than appearing on Fox and saying whatever idiocy they want you to say.
As conservative David Frum once said, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we're discovering that we work for Fox."
But this is the kind of political 'journalism' we've got in America, because this is what works. Fox can lie like this, convince the gullible to vote the way Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes want them to vote, and make a boatload of money doing it.
And that's not even the worst part of this story. Even John McCain prostituting himself to the right-wing isn't the saddest part of this whole mess. Here's what's really shameful:
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Bulls#%t Mountain: Episode I - The Phantom Menace | ||||
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Hmm,... Baracktose Intolerance. Maybe that explains all the crap flowing from the right-wing...
But seriously, as Jon Stewart points out, this is how Bullshit Mountain works its magic. Fox 'News' constantly screams about the 'liberal' mainstream media, which seems to terrify real journalists enough that they repeat idiotic Fox talking points without explaining just how big a pile of BS it really is.
Hey, maybe they are liberal Democrats, given the Democratic habit of bending over backward to appease Republicans. Or is this just how reasonable people, desperate to get along, can be manipulated by the unreasonable?
Unfortunately, this Daily Show clip is garbled at the end, leaving out most of Jon Stewart's conclusion (and some of his examples from mainstream media). Here's what he says:
This is what brings us back to 'not optimal' and how Bullshit Mountain works its magic. Because as ridiculous and hyperbolic and unfounded as the pronouncements from Bullshit Mountain are, for some reason, other news networks can't resist its siren song.
That's the thing about Bullshit Mountain. You may not live on it, but whenever it rains, you get the mudslide.
And that's the worst part of all this. That's why Fox 'News' still has any credibility at all with sane people. The mainstream media, denigrated as liberal puppets on Fox (but, oddly enough, all owned by huge corporations, too), refuse to point out the bullshit.
And that's also why fact-checking is such an unimportant part of our political process. The mainstream media - for whatever reason - don't focus on the lies. I guess, if they actually pointed out the lies, Fox would really go ballistic, huh?
No, 'balanced journalism' these days means that you repeat the claims of both sides, whether they're easily-refuted lies or not, and that you keep your fact-checkers on the sidelines. Mainstream journalists aren't political propagandists like Fox, but they seem terrified of pointing out the political propaganda, even when it's demonstrably false.
So instead, they focus on the delivery. Yes, those lies were really effective, weren't they? Of course, maybe they wouldn't be so effective if our media were willing to report the facts, that they were lies.
And yes, Democrats lie sometimes, too. I'll never deny that. But they haven't made an industry out of it. They haven't created a whole media empire devoted to spreading lies. And they haven't built their entire presidential campaign around lies. So it's a false equivalency to just shrug and say that "both sides" do it.
This is what really makes me sad. This is what really makes me angry. It's not that Fox lies. Of course they lie! They lie because lying works for them. And it works because the rest of our media enable the lying.
I don't live on Bullshit Mountain, but I just can't avoid the runoff. Neither can anyone else in America, and that's destroying our country.
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