When you are a right-wing propaganda machine like Fox News, you need to plan things. You need to strategize things. You need to do this because leaving anything to chance risks running into reality and real news, and since real fact-based news is anathema to your propaganda, allowing it in is opening the door to viewers wondering how full of BS your organization is.
Fox & Friends is one of the multihost shows on Fox News where two guys and a woman wear bright reds, whites, and blues, and spew invective about liberals trying to turn your homes into woke Muslim trans commie drag shows. For most of us this isn’t an issue.* But to hear Fox News hosts talk about it, you would think that 98% of the country is made up of undocumented gang members delivering Speaker Nancy Pelosi fentanyl to RuPaul’s Drag Race inside of carved out communist manifestos. Oh, there’s also inflation and wage stagnation as well. Remember the GOP’s “policy” on that? Almost $2 trillion in tax breaks for the richest. How’s that going? Like it always goes: badly for 98% of the country.
On Friday the Fox & Friends squad of faux midwestern by way of the southern continental accented crew had a special segment they ran throughout their morning show. It included a 10-person panel of “everyday Americans” they called their “Parent Panel.” These people were purported to be parents of school-aged children who have common-folk wisdom about what kitchen table issues are for themselves. Upon closer review, it turns out that at least eight of the 10 panelists are right-wing activists! Who would have thunk it?
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*See none of us.
Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz did a quick deep dive on some of these “concerned” voters. Here’s some of what he found. The first guy worked on Trump’s transition team in 2016.
There’s like an 89% chance that if you have the phrase “for Liberty” in your organization’s name, you spend most of your time figuring out ways to take away various groups’ actual liberties.
The “Education Freedom Center” is a Koch brothers-backed outfit that has been behind some of the thousands of books being banned from schools. Its mission is to degrade faith in public education in order to get tax payer dollars sent to private schools. This first guy is part of a PAC that generates money in order to fight against the mythological teaching of critical race theory in elementary schools (and beyond).
Bonnie is an open up schools during the pandemic advocate who has transitioned into a semi-anti-masker in schools advocate. She needs to keep the battle going for her organization now that all of those things have happened and have been happening for about a year now.
And finally.
That picture is from last week at the Heritage India Festival in Chantilly, Virginia. Lot of conservative candidates at the event being thanked by Mr. Venkatachalam. All of this is not new, but the laziness with which the Fox News audience is treated shows the true disdain Fox has for the people who buy all the pillows from them.
There’s also this guy, Darris Hess, who was the other go-to anti-school closures during the pandemic person being interviewed alongside Myshrall. According to his LinkedIn profile, he’s the vice president of asset management accounting at Navient. Navient is one of the student loan firms that spent years doing some predatory dirtbaggery to lift up its profit margin. Hess and his team of concerned parents have made families go bankrupt and fought against student loan forgiveness for almost a decade.
They throw to these hacks throughout the broadcast. If you want a taste of hackery, you can jump to 22:30.