Skeptics and cynics can "curmudge" all they want but there's a case to be made that FOX "News'" reckless and self-righteous instigator of the moment, Sean Hannity, at the Cliven Bundy cattle repo affair last week, had these very United States one accidental pistol discharge or one purposefully aimed rifle shot away from destabilizing this very nation. Hannity needs to be fired and perhaps face a DA. This was no joke and no “entertainment”--there was intent in those allusions to Ruby Ridge and pointed questions about hypothetical worst case scenarios posed within the heat of a confrontation which could have gone very wrong and spread far and wide. Thankfully there isn’t a reckless “big government” who unfairly acts with the callous disregard of a Sean Hannity. When it came out days later that Bundy was a racist (while singularly disproving white supremacy if you ask me), Hannity tried to throw his former freedom fighter under the bus by characterizing this dead beat “taker”, Cliven Bundy’s words as despicable among other barbs. However Hannity showed his true stripes by continuing to contend that there was a “big government over-reach”. Clearly, the only over-reach was that of Sean Hannity. And given the stakes he should not be trusted under such circumstances again. I call for his firing and I hope you will join me in doing so relentlessly ever day and every way until this swaggering liar is off the air.
Hannity alone would not have been culpable had that shot been fired which could have triggered everything from singular racial, political, or gay thrill kill by some nut, to organized sieges against the federal government. And no one is more responsible for the climate of scapegoating and hatred which is typical right wing thinking than Fox “News”. It wasn’t as noticeable while Cheney and Bush occupied the White House where it was conveniently glossed over that republican ideology of lowering taxes to create jobs is pure bunk, or that without regulation the financial sector will all be as honest as Girl Scouts, and the military is just a tool we can deploy like a grounds crew at a baseball game to extract petroleum riches with “minimum collateral damage” as Fox kept parents plied with unknown unknowns and other Rumsfeldian double talk mixed in with enough uses of the words freedom and liberators to make it all sound like there weren't criminal butchers in charge and a partisan medium in cahoots covering it all up. What came out of Fox tended to spill over into what was left of the main stream non partisan media and seem to sound like familiar news. No one knew yet how “fat” Fox was getting in the eight dark years between Monica Lewinski and Barack Obama.
But when a Democrat suddenly won the White House everything changed 180. And for god’s or whatever sake that matters to you the most on the solemnest level, let us get this universally through our heads that the representative democracy the founding fathers created depended that news of a win or loss of an election taking time to reach public consciousness where there would be a period of slow acceptance followed by adjustment and the realization that America was big and untamed enough for us all to find a future for ourselves in the post-election America the new President would help shape.
Fox and other partisan media have done away with that whole adjustment and acceptance thing--and one could argue they done away with democracy as well. The question must be raised: can representative democracy withstand round the clock televised antagonism from people who pose as journalists but lie and spin and attack while the other side plays real democracy and old fashion responsible journalism and or at least labels it commentary or something besides “news“? Partisanship takes no breather on the right. There is finger-pointing and scapegoating before an election is even called for one candidate or the other--it doesn't stop to adjustment. It either prepares for supporting propaganda or war.
Rupert Murdoch/Roger Ailes Fox news is an industry--a corporation where star compete on ruthlessness. This deeply penetrating American menace has turned politics into an internal Cold War in which an overpaid zealot like Sean Hannity almost just turned the cold war into a hot war. Perhaps the right wants one. They have all but seceded from Representative Democracy as everyone from Congressional wannabes to presidential wannabes must acquiesce to the condition of signing on to Grover Norquist’s undemocratic blind anti-tax ideology. This tends to explain the very distinct and noticeable drop in the intelligence and substance levels of republican candidates since Mr. Norquist starting turning the Government into the groverment in the 1990’s. He evades the press who might ask the gotcha question of “Is your anti-tax pledge really about keeping taxes low? Or is just a ruse to starve the federal government of funding?
Dear President Obama, before it’s too late could you please use your DOJ to get grovement out of government?
And dear Mr. Murdoch, fire that lame attack dog Sean Hannity before he gets someone killed.