Here are the idiotic conspiracy theories promoted by Fox "News" just this past month...
Every one in the middle east is a terrorist, and thus belittling them and using charged language like "axis of evil" to describe their country does no harm. And reaching out to the moderates there does no good.
The Healthcare bill contains Death Panels
Obama is a Fascist
The Annual Census is being used for nefarious purposes
Obama is setting up FEMA Concentration Camps
Obama is a racist and hates white people
The Healthcare Bill covers illegal immigrants
All other news sources are state-sponsored, and Murdoch has no agenda
Obama is a kenyan and the Hawaiian birth certificate and newspaper annoucements from 1961 are all part of a grand liberal conspiracy.
Climate Change is a myth made up by liberals and scientists
The Service Act is Obama's plan to invoke a military state
Obama is going to shut down the internet
Osama Bin Laden Needs to Attack the US again to wake it up
There is nothing to gain from people in the other parts of the world liking and looking up to America and Americans.
ACORN!!!??? Arg!!!! An ASSOCIATION (clearly communist) of COMMUNITY (sounds like communal, code for commies) ORGANIZERS (Hitler organized people too) for REFORM (Reform!!! OMG, they want to destroy the country) NOW (why the rush? we've only been talking about healthcare reform for 50+ years, why not wait another 50 years?)
Every Obama cabinet position counts as a czar, and czars are evil
The economy was great under bush and it was Obama that wrecked it
Obama is going to kill free speech.
Obama is going to create a special police force that is "as powerful" as the military and establish Martial Law. (Yes, Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity all actually invoked the terms Martial Law to describe where we're headed)
Obama is going to demand public service to the Federal Government.
Obama is on the verge of destroying the entire US within the 6 months
The fact that US image abroad surged under Obama from 17% to 71% is a con. It's a bad thing when other countries like and want to work with us.
If just the idea that any network, even Fox "News" presents such viewpoints as credible seems unbelievable, it should be. But believe me it's true. All of these viewpoints were expressed by Fox News correspondents on primetime shows watched by millions, often repeatedly.
And these made up rumors are not presented as fringe beliefs expressed by aluminum foil hat wearing idiots. They are used as talking points, repeated over and over and over again, day after day. The same exact phrases and talking points are cited repeatedly. It seems the old adage "repeat a lie enough times and people will believe it's the truth" is the bible for Fox Propaganda.
If those above idiotic beliefs don't justify open ridicule, I don't know what does. Ignoring this stuff doesn't make it go away. The nutbags that believe Fox News show up at public events and repeat them outshouting everyone else, and this just gives Fox News another excuse to cover these same rumors again. It's basically one giant stupefying echo chamber. And all from the news network that successfully argued in court that it has the right to knowingly and purposefully lie to the public to bias a story.
Openly, and loudly ridiculing this inane nonsense and the network presenting it is the best and only effective method to combat it. The people that spout this drivel and those that believe it should be made to feel like idiots, because that's exactly what they are.
I'm sorry, if you actual believe what the rightwing is spewing about FEMA Concentration Camps and the US census. If you actually think that voluntary counseling on end of life issues and the National Sevice Act serve a nefarious purpose to kill off old people and take over the government, as the correspondents on Fox News regularly state. If you believe any of this drivel, you're right down there with people who think Fluoride is in the drinking water so that the government can track you via satellites. And you absolutely deserve to be ridiculed. But somehow, liberals are too polite to do that.
Every single one of those statements above was made by Fox News Channel Correspondents at some point, all but two of them were stated again and again and many are repeated almost daily. And it's just a small tip of the iceberg of the idiot conspiracy theories being perpetuated as facts by this "news" organization.
And you have almost zero true progressives in the media openly ridiculing this bullshit. Where is the liberal pushback? Why are there no progressives on the other news networks openly ridiculing, laughing at, and debunking these aluminum tin hat wearing idiot conspiracy theorists that claim to work for a "news" organization.
The liberals made this mistake before. When the swiftboaters made idiotic, completely baseless attacks on Senator Kerry, the liberals convinced themselves, no one could possibly be that stupid to believe this bullcrap. This kind of bullshit doens't even merit a response. But guess what. It turned out people ARE that stupid. Kerry's poll numbers dropped several points as a result of these swiftboaters. There are millions of morons out there who will believe anything said by anyone on tv, esp if it goes unchallenged and unridiculed by others.
There was a time, less than two decades ago when the republican party was run by pragmatists and genuine principled men who wanted what was best for America, men like Colin Powell and George Bush I. That's changed now. Now, the party embraces baseless conspiracy theories and repeats them enough times that people start believe them to be true. And it's clear why...
As Queen Maeve said:
By and large, many Americans are not educated by choice. They don't engage in critical thinking, research, or self-reflection. They take the easy way out of every situation. This goes double for the political realm. Politics gets complicated and messy, and these people choose the path of least resistance (unless a war is involved, and they're sending someone else's kids off to fight).
Therefore, they choose the network that is simplest to understand. They choose the party with the most dumbed-down sound bytes. They choose to believe that the our president is either a big, protective Daddy-figure or a big, bad wolf.
We used to think that the best way to deal with bullcrap rumor mongering was by ignoring it. We were wrong. The only effective way to challenge that kind of bullcrap is with open ridicule at just how idiotic these claims and accusations and those making them are. Ridicule is an extremely potent tool.
The rightwing nutbags of the world, the crazy conspiracy theorists that rave about Death Panels and Czars and Fascism and FEMA Concentration Camps, innudiated themselves into the mainstream media. And with no one openly challenging them or ridiculing them, they are actually winning people over!
We have almost no actual progressives in the media. Instead, you have the windbag conspiracy nuts that control half the media, and centrists that dominate the other half. And the worst part is, even these centrists are such idiots that they think these conspiracy nuts and their viewpoints deserve equal credence to the centrist viewpoints. Stupid enough to believe that baseless unfounded rumors should be presented as actual alternative viewpoints to real facts and evidence. It's time we push back. It's time we atleast force the media to at the very least spend as much time presenting the views of REAL progressives like Paul Krugman and Jeremy Scahill as they do presenting the views of nutbags like Rush Limbaugh and the people on Fox News.
As certainot points out:
i figure if i keep repeating the same thing over and over and over it might work for me too!
much of the political analysis i see, especially related to media, is done in a talk radio vacuum and i try to point that out. talk of dems messaging or framing anything is fairly ridiculous - they frame over. with those 1000 radio stations they always have it both ways- if it's simple they get the media to ask for specifics and if it's detailed they pick it apart out of context, distort and focus on bits, and call us elitists and detached from the mainstream.
IMO it has made the difference the last 20 years. talk radio may be lumped in with the general media but it is usually given a minor supportive roll instead of recognition as the right's main tool. without it we wouldn't have bush, iraq, and we'd be 20 years ahead on global warming- a monumental setback.
it's their backbone and they really can't sell much without it. when the left recognizes that and does something about it much of the obstruction to progress we need will dissipate, the GOP will get moderates and thinking conservatives again, and we can get on with a real democracy. otherwise a few national and local blowhards reading corporate talking points are going to keep undoing the work of millions of concerned citizens volunteering here and there.
there will always be money buying democracy, and hate and ignorance, but that is what democracy is for- unfortunately the left has allowed that 10% to have the biggest soapbox in the country- an uncontested soapbox protected by call screeners, making it nearly impossible to pass the strong legislation that would take money out of politics, for instance, or media reform, or health care or energy reform.
it makes real democracy impossible - much of the discussion and communication that a democracy needs is drowned out by a few giant megaphones- or talk radio spouting screamers.
I implore you. Take action. Write, send emails, do whatever is required to force more people in the media to openly debunk and ridicule these idiotic rumors. Because all the polls already show that they're having a toll on both Obama's approval ratings and the healthcare reform, primarily because they're going unchallenged.
The polls seem to suggest that the center is being influenced as well. If this fearmongering was just believed by regular Fox News viewers, you would expect little change in Obama's numbers. The people watching Fox News never liked him. But, all the polls show, more and more people believe the death panels nonsense. More and more americans believe that the healthcare bill covers illegal immigrants and includes deathpanels.
These views are seeping into the general public (those too busy to do actual research or verification for themselves) and effecting the polls. If they were being openly ridiculed in more places, the general public wouldn't be so gullible about them. The number of people that I personally know who have become right wing loonies that now believe we are building FEMA Concentration Camps is alarming and scary.
We need more Jon Stewarts on primetime tv openly pointing out and ridiculing nonsense in a way that hits hard. Jon Stewart only reaches a million people a night, Limbaugh reaches almost 20 million.