Category Archives: Death of Truth

The Biggest Megaphone in the World:  Fox News

Critical thinking, Death of Truth, Extremism, Right-wing Extremism

 

After Right-wing talk radio the next big thing in Right-wing politics in the US was television. In particular Fox News.

 

As Jeff Cohen said, “One of the biggest steps “forward” in handing our whole media system over to a handful of corporations was the Telecommunications “Reform” Act of 1996. Before then it was completely bi-partisan…Consumer rights advocates were calling it the Time-Warner Enrichment Act…The few fat media companies got even fatter.” Cohen called this “bi-partisan corruption that explains why we have the media companies we now have.” And he suggested strongly that media companies had bought Clinton and the Republican Speaker of the House with large political donations in order to get this done. They bought both Democrats and Republicans.

 

This set the stage for something even bigger—the launching of Fox News by Rupert Murdoch. Fox quickly became the major cable news service in the US and the effect on other news organizations’ was “profound”, according to Jen Senko. He owned a lot of media organizations in TV, newspapers, magazines and books and as a result had a huge influence on news in the US

 

Rupert Murdoch owned Fox News but Roger Ailes built it. It was his brainchild. Without him Fox News would be much different.

 

Gabriel Sherman wrote an influential book that explained the mind of Roger Ailes. The book was called, The Loudest voice in the Room: How the Brilliant Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News and Divided a Country. His control over Fox News was pretty absolute. Bombast was the key.  American conservatives loved loud opinions. In 1988 Bill Clinton had an infamous affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. Fox News covered it with what Sherman called “wall-to-wall” coverage.

In 2000 Fox News milked another issue for a good part of the year. That was the Bush Gore election and the Supreme Court.  Fox did not cover it as a dubious case that went to the Supreme Court for resolution. Fox, under Ailes direction, covered it as showing how the Democrats were sore losers and undemocratically tried to win in the Supreme Court when they had lost the election. Fox really treated it as Democrats trying to steal the election. They barely mentioned that the court’s decision was based on party lines in the court. This was not entirely different than the republicans in 2020 after Trump’s narrow defeat by Biden and the legal melee as a result of 61 law suits launched by the Trump campaign, all of which they lost except for one minor case that hardly had any bearing on the result at all.

 

In 2001 Ailes and Fox treated the disaster of 9/11 as a holy war of the US against the Muslim radicals in the Middle East with George W. Bush the heroic John Wayne figure who would lead America to victory in the desert.

 

Fox News became Ailes megaphone and it became the biggest megaphone in the world. All of these incidents helped Fox to explode in the ratings and become the biggest voice in news on the cable networks and that voice distinctly spoke with a strong right-wing accent. It was the voice of Roger Ailes who selected spokesmen and women who mirrored his right-wing views.

 

Ailes realized that what Fox needed to do was make the news simple and black and white. Subtlety and nuance were irrelevant. Banished for good. Good vs bad was always the issue. And America was good and its foes were either bad or frequently even evil. Its anchors or hosts wore American flags on their lapels and preached the exceptionalism of America that was beset by traitorous lefties and lily-livered liberals.

 

Ailes really made not just Fox News, but America go much further right-wing. And he did it smoothly with cunning. He convinced the audience that they were fair and balanced, as their motto asserted, but actually he was moving his audience and the country much further to the right. Ailes was very good at what he did. And he helped make the Murdochs immensely rich in the process. And, in time, he helped give birth to Donald Trump.

Trump was the child of Fox News.

 

Blinded by the Right

Death of Truth, Hate, Right-wing Extremism

After Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States, Rush Limbaugh spear-headed a campaign of vitriolic hatred  against him. As Jeff Cohen said in the film The Brain Washing of My Dad, “Limbaugh becomes almost the leader of the opposition.” He spread the rumour, without any evidence, that Vince Foster, a Clinton aide was killed and the body was found in Hillary Clinton’s apartment. This conspiracy theory was around for years. Probably it is still around. It probably had an effect on Hillary losing the presidential election in 2016. Yet it was all nonsense on steroids.

 

Limbaugh told his listeners that after Bill Clinton was elected he was part of a global coalition that would get the UN to come and take over the American government and take their guns away and put dissidents in concentration camps. This theory is still around too and hampers the work of the UN.

 

Jen Senko’s father was convinced that Bill Clinton was a murderer and wanted to destroy the country to protect himself. Hillary said “there is a vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband from the day that he announced he would run for president.”  David Brock, author of the book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an ex-Conservative, admitted that he was part of such a conspiracy. He said,

 

“I knew what she was saying was true. I was involved with it and new very much first hand  that people I was working with in places like the American Spectator magazine back in 1993 shortly after Clinton was elected were trying to figure out how to get him thrown out of office. How to impeach him.”

 

According to Jeff Cohen, “the role of Rush Limbaugh in the ascendancy of the right-wing-wing in America was crucial.”

Even more important, the role of such conspiracy theories was part of the right-wing movement. And it still is. Hatred blinds.

 

Champion of the Overdog

Death of Truth, Right-wing Extremism, Trump

 

Rush Limbaugh had an important role in the brain washing of Jen Senko’s dad.

 Jeff Cohen said that Limbaugh became “the champion of the overdog. Any powerful group that was challenged by scientists or medical people was the victim. For example, the tobacco company was the victim.” Likewise environmentalists and Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, are victims. The world is topsy-turvy in other words in the land of the extreme right.

 According to a commentator in the film here are the top 10 Limbaugh lies, that his followers were prepared to believe:

 There are more Native Americans alive today than when Columbus arrived.

  1. The government is going to be able to get into your bank account with the health care bill and make transfers without you knowing it.
  2. Egyptian men are soon going to be able to have sex with their dead wives for up to 6 hours after their death.
  3. President Obama shut down NASA space flights and turned the agency into a “Muslim outreach department.”
  4. The US has more forestland than it did in 1787.
  5. President Obama wants to mandate circumcision.
  6. There is no conclusive proof that nicotine is addictive and the same thing with cigarettes causing emphysema, lung cancer and heart disease.
  7. If the ice caps melted the ocean levels wouldn’t rise.
  8. Styrofoam is biodegradable.
  9. I’m not making this stuff up folks!

 

President Donald Trump gave him a Medal of Freedom.  US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas officiated at Limbaugh’s 3rd wedding. According to Jeff Cohen, Thomas does not listen to mainstream media, but he records Rush Limbaugh’s show! That 3-hour show was Thomas’ “window into the world,” according to Cohen.  A pretty dim window I would say. Similarly, Justice Antonin Scalia, the darling of the right, also said, “I get most of my news, probably driving back and forth, to work on the radio…talk show guys mostly.”

In America little is revered more than ignorance.

Rush Limbaugh was Trump’s kinda guy. Some Americans love bullies, and the more ignorant the better.

 

The Birth of Fox News and the Dividing of America

Death of Truth, Extremism, Right-wing Extremism

 

One of the things I found fascinating about the film The Brain Washing of My Dad was the importance of Fox News to the American right-wing extremist movement.

 

The John Birch society was a cauldron of right-wing extremism in America. As Claire Conner, author of a book called, Wrapped in the Flag: What I learned growing up in America’s Radical Right, How I Escaped and Why My Story Matters, said, “the John Birch Society was built on the theory that Communism was right around the corner.”

 

The Society believed that the bad communists were not just in Russia, or China, or Cuba, they were right here in America and in particular in our government. The John Birchers were considered nutty and extreme, which they were, so they resisted these attacks. In the election of 1964 where Barry Goldwater got hammered by Lyndon Johnson, partly because he had so many supporters in the John Birch Society, that many thought he must be as nutty as the Birchers. At the time, the American right was considered nutty or worse.

 

David Brock wrote a book called The Conservative Noise Machine in which he explained  how one of the first things conservatives did after the humbling defeat in 1964 was to attack the media on the basis of liberal media bias. As he said in the film, “the campaign to discredit the media would lay the groundwork for the vast alternative media that would come later.”

 

A central player in the media take down was Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News. Gabriel Sherman wrote a book about him, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the brilliant bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News and Divided the Country. As Sherman said, “Roger Ailes understood one thing about television. He understood that television is about emotion. And you need to communicate to the audience and hook into them on an emotional level.” Fox News embodied this insight and it did that with heart and soul.

 

Added that, Fox found that in America bombast engages. You can still see that on Fox today. Many Fox commentators are brimming with bombast. They don’t like namby-pamby. They like the extreme.

 

Richard Nixon exemplified how this worked. In the 1960s he debated John F. Kennedy and in the debates he looked slick with sweat and was acknowledged to be very smart and tough but he came off looking badly compared to Kennedy. He lost in a very close election.

 

As we all know Nixon came back. He picked himself off the ground and later became President of the United States. In 1968 when he ran again in a campaign for the presidency with Eugene McCarthy, Nixon knew he needed a media guy in his campaign. Roger Ailes was that man. And Ailes taught Nixon how to play the media.

 

Ailes was the power behind the sound bite. He taught Nixon to keep his sentences short with real bites. Short snappy one-liners that can stick in the audience’s mind. According to Sherman, Ailes told Nixon that America was dumb and would not understand him unless he kept his message simple. He should boil down his message and they would get it.  As a result, Nixon learned to master TV which had become a mass medium in the late 1960s.  And that made all the difference.

 

Years later Donald Trump learned the same message.  Keep it simple stupid. Or perhaps, ‘Stupid, keep it simple, would be more like it.

 

According to Sherman in a memo in 1970, Ailes said “Television had become such an important instrument, because people are lazy and want someone to do their thinking for them. It became the blueprint for Fox News.”  Later Roger Ailes said, “There are simple things the American people believe in. It is the reason that John Wayne is still one of the top 5 actors of all time 40 years after he died. You knew all about him: Don’t touch my woman; don’t draw a gun on me; don’t take my horse.”

When nuance becomes nonsense, truth flies out the door.

 

Reese Schonfeld, the founding President and CEO of CNN said this about TVN the news network for which Ailes worked at the time.  He said they wanted to be like a tiny tugboat pulling the Queen Mary a little farther right, and again further right to get the good ship to move as far right as he could.  He said this about Ailes: “He didn’t know much about news then and I’m not even sure he knows much about news now, but he sure does know television. He knows as much about television in the country as anyone and by the way he’s a great propagandist.”

 

When Ailes moved to Fox News it exploded in popularity and with it the interest in right-wing extremism. It engaged. Like nothing else on cable TV.

 

Raging Hate Machines

Death of Truth, Hate, Right-wing Extremism, The Sleep of Reason

 

In the documentary film The Brain Washing of My Dad Jen Senko’s father started to listen to Rush Limbaugh on a small portable radio with ear buds. He was in business—ready to attack the world. At least the part of the world that was sane.

 

Then, as his daughter Jen Senko said, “it got worse when he discovered Fox News. It was like he had joined a cult or a new religion.” He started sending links to hateful stories to his relatives and acquaintances.

 

Jen Senko wondered if he really was brain-washed. She was determined to figure it out. So she made a film about her father and his changes. She found similar stories from around the country. She realized this issue went far beyond just her father and his wild politics. There were bitter and angry people everywhere.  Loving and caring people from around the country were turning into raging hate machines. What was going on? She wanted to know. So do I.

 

She concluded that ordinary people around the country had become raging hate machines after listening to and watching right-wing media. First it was right-wing talk radio, then it was cable TV, particularly Fox News.

 

Hillary Clinton referred to it as a vast right-wing conspiracy. She, of course, along with her husband, were 2 of its biggest victims.

 

Jen said when Reagan was elected president in 1980 she noticed the country going into what she called a more hardened place. This was also the time when her father started to change from fun loving to hating.

The Brain-washing of My Dad

Death of Truth, Right-wing Extremism, The Sleep of Reason, Trumpism

 

A few years ago at documentary film festival in Winnipeg I watched an extraordinary film. It was called, alluringly, “The Brain Washing of my Dad.” I have often thought about it wishing to see it again. Then I realized you can watch it on You-Tube and I watched it again. it was worth the revisit.

This documentary film was written, directed, narrated, and produced by Jen Senko, a documentary filmmaker. It is a fascinating film.

Senko called the film a “Family Non-fiction Film.” In that film she described the father of her youth as a kind and friendly man, a goofy man, who never had an unkind word to say about anyone.  He never said anything bad about any group of people. He never demonstrated any racism for example. He was a truck driver who loved his family and his children who loved him. He was an ideal dad who took his kids on camping trips that gave them memories for their entire life. Sort of like my Dad!

Of course, the father, like a friend of mine, another long distance trucker who introduced me to Rush Limbaugh,  also drove a lot on long commutes listening to American talk radio. As I had already learned it was a cauldron of hate. Particularly as my friend, the long distance trucker also told me, “I listened to Rush Limbaugh because he kept me awake.”  This was a radio show without punches being pulled. It was real life radio. And it was filled with visceral hate against liberals, Democrats, elites, and a bit more subtly, blacks. Radio like that could keep a trucker awake, even if he, or later, she, had driven too long without proper sleep. It was never boring and kept one engaged.

Senko told the story of how when she was a young girl walking with her young sister and her dad and they encountered a homeless black man sitting on a sidewalk. The man held out his cup asking for help. Asking for change. She said her father gave him money. So much money it seemed like a lot to her. Of course, she was young, and young people are often overly impressed by sums of money. But actually, what impressed her more was the fact that her father called the homeless black man “Sir.”  He showed him so much respect it struck her as surprising. Her father was teaching his two daughters to treat everybody with respect. This was a valuable life lesson.

She said her family was not really political. She described her father as “a non-political Kennedy Democrat.”[1] And they lived in Arizona! But that did not last.  “When my father started listening to talk radio, I saw him change. A lot.”

It was an extraordinary film.    Here is an excerpt:

“In the 1960s Jen Senko’s Dad never had a bad word to say about any race or people or person. Then in the 80s after my Dad discovered talk radio, he suddenly didn’t like black people, poor people, gay people, feminists Hispanics and especially Democrats. After he discovered Fox News they became the enemy.”

 

Through the documentary film Jen Senko tries to show the transformation of her father from a non-political Democrat to an angry fanatical hate-filled Republican. How did that happen?

Yet the film is really much more than that. The film is not really just about one man who was brain-washed, it is really about a country that was boondoggled.

From Election Fraud to riot

Death of Truth, Domestic Terrorism, Right-wing Extremism

 

In the election of 2020 American presidential election  there was fraud about voter fraud. Namely many lied that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2220 presidential election. This alleged fraud was not based on evidence. It was based on unsubstantiated claims made by the president and his henchmen. This lie is now threatening to undermine American democracy. As Ling said just before the 2020 election, “Dozens of American states are introducing laws to restrict voting rights of millions of people, particularly people of color. And it is all based on a supposed fraud that never happened.” That is voter fraud! To claim fraud where one knows there was no fraud, is fraud.

 

Trump was told repeatedly by his own people led by his own Attorney General William Barr that there was no significant fraud in the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost. Trump hated the thought of losing the election so much that he preferred believing a lie, which he knew to be a lie.

According to Justin Ling,

“Right-wing radio has been laying the ground work for this for years. In the days and weeks before the 2020 election they begin watering that lie. And after the votes are counted, it becomes one of the biggest lies in American history. An allegation that a deep state conspiracy rigged the presidential election. It alleges the states were involved, the Democrats were involved, the company that makes the voting machines was involved, the media was involved and they all conspired to install Joe Biden as president.  ”

 

Of course, the man who never saw a conspiracy theory that he did not like, Alex Jones jumped onto this wagon with startling enthusiasm. He said,

 

“The evidence overwhelmingly shows now, and I have a giant stack that confirms it, law enforcement is investigating that Dominion  illegally called the servers and covered up the paper trail, and of course, we knew that. Now by the hand counts they found that Trump won by a giant landslide. The same tactics were used in every other state. They stole the election.”

These were al lies.

Many Trumpsters believed, and many still believe, that the election was rigged but they could not overturn the results. Because they had no evidence of fraud.  It doesn’t matter that Republicans investigated the claims and universally dismissed them. It doesn’t matter because their belief in their leader is a theological belief not amendable to contrary facts. Religious beliefs work that way.

 

Even on and after January 6, 2021 many of the Trumpsters were firm in their belief that Donald Trump would not be removed from office. It just could not happen. Some believed that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would be facing treason charges.

 

January 6th saw the explosion of the hyper believers led by people like the Oath Keepers and Alex Jones.  Jones made a stirring speech to the crowd that was on its way to the Capitol. He shouted through his megaphone in his typical growly bombastic style:

“We are not just going to take the country back, but the whole world back from Communist Chinese. USA. USA.USA. We’re not giving in to the grabbers. We’re never surrendering. The Great Reset is triggering the Great Awakening. And the Great Awakening will trigger the Great Rebellion and the Destruction of the New World Order.”

 

And there were cries to “take back our country,” and “Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.” Another said, “We’ve got the gallows set up outside this Capitol, now it’s time to start fucking using them.”  Another said, “This is now effectively a riot.”  That last one was right! One said, “At 1349 hours declaring it a riot.” Again, that one was right.

 

America had entered a period of insurrection ushered in by decades of lies on American talk radio,.

 

The Land of Fantasies

Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Health, Mennonites, reason, The Sleep of Reason, Trust and Distrust

 

I thought I was done with posting about vaccines, measles, and Mennonites in Canada. It turns out that was not quite the case.

I just read yesterday in CBC News that Alberta has confirmed that it now has more measles cases than the entire United States even though it is 60 times larger than Alberta! How is that possible?

 By now you know my theory. Alberta is home to a stupendous number of true believers–credulous people who don’t need evidence to support their beliefs.  The funny thing is that Alberta has always been that as long as I have known about it.

In the 50s the big craze was Social Credit.  Albertans believed the whacky political leaders who came up with crackpot economic theories. They believed them wholeheartedly. And of course, many of those believers were Mennonites. Social Credit ruled in Alberta for decades as a result of the devotion of Albertans. Many Mennonites in Manitoba espoused those theories too.  I remember Social Credit rallies in Steinbach when I was growing up.

In the last couple of years Alberta has given birth to the truckers convoy and their fantasies.

In the entire United States they have had 1,288 measles cases. That’s a lot for a disease that was considered eradicated. Alberta has now had 1,314 cases. That is an astounding comparison given that the US has more than 60 times as many people.

 

I know some people think measles is a pipsqueak disease but of those cases, Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease specialist, told CBC News, “there have been 102 hospitalizations, including 15 ICU admissions, as of July 5. No deaths have been reported.” And this is all for a disease that should be eradicated, except for the vaccine deniers who refuse to take the available treatment.  There is no good reason for that to happen, but too many people in Alberta have not been listening to the health experts but instead have been “doing their own research.”

 Is it really a good idea to do your own research?

We don’t always have the time or ability to test scientific ideas. Can you imagine going to make an appointment to see a dentist and then insisting he or she tell you in advance what anesthetic they use so you can do your own research on line to determine whether your dentist was right or wrong? How could I possibly do better research than my dentist who has gone to many years of university to learn things like that.

 

I know experts are not always right, but is it likely that we will do a better job of choosing the right anesthetic? Or the right treatment for measles? Or polio? I really can’t match that expertise. Expertise is important. We should never be slaves to experts, but unless we have good reasons, and by that I mean rational reasons, based on evidence, to the contrary, we should believe them.

 

It is the same with vaccines. How can I know which vaccines are good for me or not?  That is not an easy job. Most of us, I would submit, are not qualified to do the research ourselves on line. Rather, I would submit, get a physician you know and trust, and follow the advice you get. That’s what I do.  Now if I have carefully researched an issue and rationally concluded my doctor was wrong and I was right I should not follow the physician’s  advice, but I would say this won’t happen often. If I am entrusting my child’s health to my own “research” rather than my doctor’s research I had better be awfully sure I am right and she or he is wrong. Otherwise would I not I be guilty of child abuse in not following the good advice if my child was harmed?

We should not be a slave to experts; nor should we be blind to their benefits.