tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post5426568467307496469..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: The Weird World of Fox NewsJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-13261694842721174582016-07-24T11:47:01.346-04:002016-07-24T11:47:01.346-04:00To reiterate what David said, a lot of people watc...To reiterate what David said, a lot of people watch Fox News -- MSNBC, too, but more so before it changed formats -- to have their beliefs validated. You can throw tomatoes at the other side. A lot of it is role playing, not scripted, but close. The last thing a cable News station like Fox wants is an erudite, civil discussion of politics. The point is to agitate, to create conflict (and not to inform) so that your audience can vent. Anthony Weiner, before his downfall, found a home at MSNBC, a place that matched his personality, his political views, and his loud mouth. Everything Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted has arrived.Shadowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05353532874773316117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-88634317118359159432016-07-24T10:08:20.341-04:002016-07-24T10:08:20.341-04:00Two further thoughts:
1) I wonder if there's ...Two further thoughts:<br /><br />1) I wonder if there's insight to be found in the contrast between these Fox women, who are obviously beautiful but, as you say, show a certain hardness and, I would say, lack of sensuality and, for example, Sharon Tate, who has virtually the same physical look but conveys a frank sexuality that seems entirely apart from what Ailes is after (not that Tate would, by anyone's standards, have made a good news presenter).<br /><br />2) I think it should be remembered that to an extent the blues have created the bed of red resentment that they have to lie in. The original sixties left made it clear that anyone who disagreed with them was simply too uncool, too old, too square, too unsexy to join the fun; they simply ignored the emotions that uncool, square people might feel upon being told this. Ailes and Nixon's insight was to realize that these people vote, too, and in the nature of things, there are more uncool people than cool people. (Note that I am NOT saying there weren't other issues determining the blue-red divide, like, you know, race and the Vietnam War.)Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-60682976984323415912016-07-24T09:53:36.930-04:002016-07-24T09:53:36.930-04:00On the specific point of Fox viewers and whether t...On the specific point of Fox viewers and whether they want to be manipulated: I would say manipulation is in the eye of the beholder. Someone who disagrees with the basic Fox stance on the world would see manipulation. But the fans like it because it speaks to something they already think and/or feel, and gives them what they want to see. They already feel alienated from the government bureaucracy, and they like the hyping of stories like Benghazi because it affirms what they already suspect.<br /><br />My impression is Ailes got his start in about 1968, as part of Nixon's drive for the presidency. Nixon loved him because Ailes was able to key into the very resentments Nixon himself was trying to play on, which he (Nixon) to a certain extent felt, and which they both found already pullulating in a large segment of American voters.<br /><br />I cannot recommend enough Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, one of my favorite history books, which traces the basic red-blue cultural divide's origins in the sixties. It's packed with insights, including a remark that, for red types, the "hippie gamines" at the 1972 Democratic convention were "the wrong kind of sexy."Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.com