Politics is like professional wrestling, only it's more entertaining but less edifying. Perhaps that explains why cable "news" personalities like Glen Beck deliberately blur the lines between entertainment and current events. The social critic Neil Postman once entitled a book Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is a rather apt description of the carnivalesque antics the clownish Beck and his ilk have imported into the journalistic profession. War, recession, and national decline are a lot more bearable if our media jesters can somehow divert us from an increasingly unpleasant reality with their foolishness. Lear called upon his Fool to cheer him up as his psyche and his kingdom crumbled. His fool was wise in a way our media fools are not. Lear's jester traded in the kind of wisdom and insight that surpassed men's understanding; our media fools pander to the lowest common denominator while peddling propaganda and sophistry as if they were the highest forms of sagacity. What is so objectionable about the likes of Beck, Sean Hannity, and others at Fox News? Fox News is built on two principles: 1) promoting the reactionary agenda of Rupert Murdoch and 2) telling an audience what they want to hear. Orwell warned that the function of propaganda is to sell the notion that war is peace, that slavery is freedom. Fox News, the "fair and balanced" network – is in the business of selling similar contradictions. The anchors and hosts on Fox News are not in the business of objective journalism. Rather, they are master sophists. They aim not at truth, but persuasion. Socrates noted that the sophists in ancient Greece were so skilled in rhetoric that they could make the worse argument appear the better. Unlike Socrates' dialectical method, which examines presuppositions, sophists begin with preconceptions and end with them. Fox News, like Narcissus, is smitten with itself. When you think about it, it's rather perverse for a news organization to spend so much time reporting on itself. Journalists are supposed to report the news, not make it. However, Fox's personality-driven programming is centered on a simple premise: convince credulous audiences that their anchors and hosts speak for them. Fox News calls attention to itself at every turn because it has set itself up as proxy for beleaguered Americans. War is force that gives us meaning. An Axis-of- Spin – Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly -- promote the notion that the Obama has declared war on the news agency because it plays into the narrative Fox is peddling, namely that Fox is the champion of the besieged masses. Fox recognizes that a rumble with the Obama administration will attract viewers looking for an entertaining spectacle and an outlet through which they can vent their frustrations and aggressions. Like the World Wrestling Federation, Fox News has a stock of buffoonish characters who aim at stirring up their audiences with over-the-top antics. Similarly, with Fox News reality is beside the point, ratings are everything, and discourse is tailored towards third-graders. When I think of Fox News I think of Sean Hannity fawning over President Bush; Bill O'Reilly excusing the abuses at Guantanamo; Glenn Beck ridiculing the scientific consensus on global warming; and Neil Cavuto tossing softball questions to a corporate honcho who would soon be convicted of a massive fraud. Are these anchors journalists or propagandists? You decide. Fox News, like professional wrestling, traffics in entertainment not edification. Both Fox and the WWF create arenas where self-reference abounds and objectivity is obliterated. Climbing into the ring with Fox News is degrading, even for politicians.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Politics, Professional Wrestling, & Fox News
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