Here's another one from Daily Kos:
This seems a bit far afield, even in the Kremlinology business: A conservative group is bitterly complaining that Fox News shifting generic Fox word-sayer Megyn Kelly to a more prominent timeslot is a Fox News plot to advance their pro-homosexual agenda.
But America's Survival, Inc. (ASI), which bills itself as a "public policy organization," said that replacing Hannity with Kelly would be a jump-the-shark moment for the conservative cable news channel. "Pushing Sean Hannity out of the 9:00 p.m. slot, to make way for pro-homosexual advocate Megyn Kelly, is another sign of the channel's left-ward drift and decline," ASI President Cliff Kincaid said in a press release, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
These people are yours, Fox News. You broke em, you bought em. Good luck with that.
For the record, I bill myself as a "public policy organization" as well. My public policy is that America should perhaps be hearing a bit less from the dumb people, and a bit more from the smarter people. I realize this has roughly the same chances of success as attempting to revive one of the stuffed birds in a natural history museum, but there you go.
Yeah, and after firing Glenn Beck, too! It's scary how far to the left Fox 'News' is moving, isn't it? :)
Of course, Megyn Kelly isn't liberal, not even slightly. But there is a grain of truth to this, don't you think?
The business model at Fox 'News' has always been old white men (their target demographic) combined with young, hot women who agree with everything those old men say. For the most part, these women have been nearly indistinguishable - young, blonde, gorgeous (again, to appeal to the old men who watch the show).
But Megyn Kelly is no dummy. She's stood out from the army of blonde clones in part by occasionally - never more than occasionally - taking a stance which differed from the accepted wisdom on Fox. And she is, of course, very, very hot.
She's also younger than the old men she's supplanting. And whether right-wingers want to believe it or not, we do progress in this country. You get few people supporting racial segregation these days - not publicly, at least - and even fewer supporting slavery. And "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" very quickly went from becoming the timidly-liberal position to the conservative position. Progress.
I doubt if Kelly is really a " pro-homosexual advocate," and she's certainly not liberal, but I doubt if she's as big a Neanderthal as Sean Hannity. Certainly, she's a whole lot smarter than he is. And that scares the real loons, like America's Survival, Inc.
Well, you can never be fanatic enough for the fanatics, can you? We saw that during the French Revolution, on the left, and we're seeing it in the Republican Party today, on the right.
But Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are in this to make money. Yes, they're old white men with a far-right political ideology, but money still comes first for them. There's no question about that. And the Fox 'News' audience is dying off. Their average veiwer is more than 65 years old. (How much older? No one knows, because pollsters only track "65 and older.")
Despite the complaints of America's Survival, Megyn Kelly still appeals to the old white men who currently watch Fox. But she's got a lot better chance of attracting younger viewers, too, than the monochrome Sean Hannity.
I'm sure she won't rock the boat too far. She's much too smart for that. But she's clearly determined to stand out from the younger blondes Fox keeps hiring. She's not going to do that on looks alone. She's hot, but no hotter than all the rest of them.
And when it comes to gay rights, even right-wingers are coming to see that they're losing,... badly. Attitudes are changing remarkably quickly, and although they won't like it, the Republican Party will change along with the rest of the country (dragging its feet, kicking and screaming, all the way).
Fanatics may not see that, and Republican leaders have filled the party with fanatics. But Fox 'News' executives are in this to make money, and they won't let ideology stand in their way. I wouldn't be surprised to see Fox lead the rest of the Republican Party on this issue. After all, where are their viewers going to go? (And what did David Frum say? "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we're discovering that we work for Fox.")
We've already seen Fox 'News' and the Republican Party pay lip service to racial equality, while also pushing racism as hard as they can. The GOP base, filled with the Dixiecrats wooed to the party by its notorious 'Southern strategy,' understands this to be a necessary nod to 'political correctness.' That doesn't make them less racist.
Likewise, if the GOP starts changing its mind on gay rights, it's likely to be only lip service - certainly, at first. The real fanatics won't like it, but where are they going to go?
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