Fox News has been pissing me off for years, with their not so subtle attempts to gloss over torture, prop up incompetent leaders, sell a war of aggression, stoke the fires of fear, and label those who dare to question the administration as unpatriotic. In spite of all of that, however, I’ve never written a letter of complaint until just now. When I watched their “tribute” to Kurt Vonnegut I had to do something.
You can watch the video if you follow that last link. It’s an amazing piece of work. My favorite part was where they said that, “by the late ’70s Vonnegut was rich and irrelevant.” There are so many good parts to choose from. Another highlight for me was when they categorized his work, across the board, as “despondent leftism.” That takes balls. But I guess, now that the 84 year old who so terrified them is dead, they feel it’s safe to go after him, and his “weft wing screeds.”
And, before I forget, this is the voiceover the piece ends with: “Vonnegut, who failed at suicide years 23 ago, said 34 years ago that he hoped his children wouldn’t say of him that he told wonderful jokes but was such an unhappy man, so I’ll say it for them.”
Surely that’s as bad as calling someone a “nappy headed ho.”
Does the pretext of Fox News delivering news, at least as it’s traditionally defined, even exist anymore? I know it’s never been “fair and balanced,” but early on wasn’t there at least an effort to keep up a journalistic facade? But now, I don’t imagine that the state-run North Korean news agency pushes the envelope much farther.
The contact information for Fox News, in case you’d like to join me, can be found here. Or, better yet, write their advertisers.
And, yes, that’s the image they used of Vonnegut. Doesn’t he look sinister?
[Thanks to Kevin Dole for the link to the Fox News footage.]
5 Comments
“But, Kurt! Aren’t you scared of Fox news?”
“Nah. Trust me. I’ve been trained to write this shit.”
faux news turns my stomach. i’m not defending don imus’ infantile remarks, but some of the things i’ve heard faux release are in the long run far more hurtful and dangerous than what imus said. at least his remarks were understood by everyone as a stupid stab at teenage humor, but faux is listened to as serious journalism by some poor misguided souls.
That image looks to me like Lech Walesa. That’s not so bad. It doesn’t look like Vonnegut, though.
And no, there’s no pretext of Fox News delivering news.
The “failed at suicide” thing is pretty bad, but what offended me worst was how they downplayed the body count at Dresden. 25,000 is as “conservative” an estimate as you could possibly postulate without being nakedly deceitful.
I hear they are changing the call letters for Fox to RMFW…Rupert Murdoch’s fucking whore.