Harold Meyerson comes out in support of Fox news in his column: You Report, We Marginalize. Yes, that's right! Here are his very words:
To: Mr. Roger Ailes
President, Fox News
You should be sitting when you read this, because I'm writing to apologize.
In times past, I've had harsh words for Fox for its consistent misrepresentation of the news. In 2003, I cited a survey from the Program for International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the Knowledge Network that showed that 45 percent of Fox viewers believed that the United States had uncovered incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda had worked together; that we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and that a majority of peoples in other lands supported our war in Iraq. In case these bizarre misconceptions merely reflected the a priori beliefs of President Bush's supporters, PIPA further documented that Bush backers who got their news from other networks had a decidedly firmer grasp of the facts.
Has Harold lost his mind? Is he recanting for having written that? Look below the break for the answer.
Meyerson's column also should be read side by side with in today's Huffington Post What Doesn't Kill The Far-Right Only Makes Them Crazier by Bob Cesca. What both writers understand is that we got change, but some things will remain the same. The divide in this country has not been breeched for the same reasons that it would be silly to try to reason with Adolph Hitler. Here's Meyerson's take on it:
Now, I don't in any way retract my judgment that you guys were at the time and still are a constant source of right-wing fantasies. It's just that, at least in today's political environment, I'm no longer sure this is a bad thing.
The election has left the Republican Party reeling, its base shrunk to those Southern, Plains and Mountain West states where rural cultures still predominate. The party's smarter strategists are arguing that the worldviews of the social conservatives and free-market extremists who dominate the GOP are either irrelevant or ridiculous to voters in the middle of the political spectrum. "We can't be obsessed with issues that are not the issues that are important to American voters," Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida GOP, told the New York Times.
But Fox has won its viewership precisely by promoting such obsessions.
This takes us back to the writings of George Lakoff and Drew Westen. What they told us is that there is another World Model out there and that it is not involved with reason. It is a reflexive kind of unconscious reaction that forbids its carrier from looking beyond or outside that world model. I don't think anyone has to wonder what it is. It is the World View that Fox News caters to and of the people Cesca writes about. We are about to see them replay the anti-Clinton saga all over again and with new vigor. That it is totally crazy is clear when one ponders the "meaning" of preemptive impeachment and other attacks on Obama before he even is inaugurated.
Meyerson couldn't say it better than this:
You're not alone in reinforcing those beliefs that marginalize the Republican right, of course. You've got plenty of help from Rush and all the little Limbaughs who dominate talk radio. But together with your allies, you haul truckloads of troglodyte garbage to your flock.
And the way your flock sees it, the modifications that Republicans need to make to become competitive again in American politics -- acknowledging a need for state intervention to make the economy work, backing off the primitive religiosity, embracing a more tolerant pluralism -- amount to nothing less than heresy....... And rather than present these voters with a picture of a complex, changing world, you guys at Fox serve chiefly to reinforce their fears, to paint people who hold different viewpoints as alien and threatening.
This is a frightening situation. The likes of Fox News feed a flame that can only destroy. Hitler's people had patience, so do these. So we are not rid of the insanity and people with lots of money will use it to make sure the campaign to spread their World View goes on and on.
We have defeated them. It took a very large effort. There are big problems out there. Many, if not most, of these problems were not accidents, but part of a campaign to destroy the government's ability to serve the people. Now they circle the camp, fangs bared, waiting for the rot they planted to be used as signs of weakness so they can strike back. It is not over yet. There has to be a way to keep the marginalized right under control. There is a lot of work to be done.