Thursday, November 22, 2012

From the Desk.

If you've never seen the Elia Kazan film, A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957), then you've been missing a truly excellent film, for two reasons....one, it's a universal story of how our modern media corrupts absolutely, and two, it's sooooo cool to see Andy Griffith NOT be Andy Taylor.  Or Ben Matlock.

Instead, he's like a malevolent Will Rogers....or anybody currently on FOXNews.

I couldn't help thinking about that particular movie as I have witnessed the slow fade of that illustrious organization post-election.  The bloom is off the rose....actually, the bloom is off the carnation that is telling everybody over and over that it's a rose....so often, that people have actually begun to believe that it is, in fact, a rose.

I could go on and on (and have, in the past, referred to it) about the Theory of the Big Lie:  how you repeat a tremendous untruth over and over and often and often until the lie begins to appear as the truth, and pretty soon it's accepted as such.

Aside from the fact that a fairly recent study shows that regular viewers of FOXNews are not only uniformed, but in some cases ILL informed, another recent poll has shown a drop in their viewership akin to the Coyote falling off a cliff, leaving only that little puff of dust when he finally lands.

But the most telling statistic (from my limited research, mind you) is while they claim to be the number 1 news source in America....well.....they are, in fact, the number one CABLE news source...well, they have been regularly up until about two weeks ago.....but even their number one draw (O'Really) only garners about half of what the lowest rated news program on the networks garner.

It would seem to me that FOXNews began to believe their own hype, which as we all know is the death knell.....and that belief that they had the hearts and minds of the American people in their hip pocket made that very uncomfortable Election Night Coverage all the more painful to watch....

I think it's because the only truth of that night was the Mitt Romney DID win the election in the country he was campaigning in.  The mostly rich, mostly white, mostly male country.

I had hoped with a kind of schadenfreudan glee that this lesson would somehow be taken to heart; that FOXNews, as the Official Media Outlet of the GOP would turn that somewhat distorted mirror upon themselves and see just what Dorian Gray hath wrought.

But no.

The continued story remains that the 52.5% of the American people that didn't vote for them are STILL freeloadin', birth control demandin', free housin' and health care wantin' bums who probably want to take their guns 'cuz their homersectional.  Or sluts.  Or Lebanese sluts.

Or, they fell upon each other like the bottom feeding hyenas they are.

And of course, at the end of A FACE IN THE CROWD, with Lonesome Rhodes howling in the night for somebody to love him, the writer (played by Walter Matthau) states that he's down now, and there will be a temporary silence, and the usual amounts of mea culpa's, and he'll be back....though never at the level he was when he fell.

So.  The old saying is true.

You can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him long.

And in the end, you take a breath and hope that sanity trumps saber rattlin'.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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