I long-since came to the conclusion that I simply can’t watch much Fox News because if I did, just because of the sheer volume of stupidity, I would spend my time writing about little else than Fox’s limitless potential for vomiting up heavy doses of sophistry, distortions and half-truths, served up drip-feed style to its loyal and dumb-downed viewed base.
Some media outlets latched on to the fact that Fox analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and contributor Stacey Dash had some unflattering things to say about Obama — what a shock — as Peters called Obama a “total pussy,” and Dash said the president doesn’t “give a shit” about terrorism.
But I didn’t even think the latter barb from Dash was the most obnoxious part of the video below:
I thought Kennedy’s — yes, that Kennedy — comments were actually the most repellent. She had this to say after contemplating Obama’s recent speech on the San Bernardino, Calif., shooting:
What I was watching for is I want to feel better. I want to feel better about my friends and neighbors, and this morning as I rode the subway to work, I was looking around — and you know, I feel kind of bad saying this — but everyone looked like a terrorist to me. And I don’t want to feel that way in my city and in my country, and I want the president — no matter what my party is — I want the president to make me feel better when something so horrific has just happened. I don’t think he gave it the proper context. I don’t he gave proper domestic strategy, and he certainly didn’t give me the peace of mind.
A privileged white female who gets to rant on television for a living just wants to “feel better” about herself and the people for whom she cares. Seriously? What about the families of the victims? What about peaceful believers of Islam whose lives get more difficult and complicated every time a fresh batch of terrorists cause chaos in the States or harm their fellow believers in Europe and the Middle East? What about the plight of closeted gays or nonbelievers living in the shadows in places like Saudi Arabia and Syria? What about oppressed women?
Even worse, Kennedy’s line, “everyone looked like a terrorist to me,” in true Fox fashion, needlessly stirs up anxiety among the network’s already panicky viewers, and Fox and its cronies then use that fear to prop up their shallow political message that stigmatizes nearly every outgroup except, of course, the privileged and affluent. Indeed, people like Donald Trump and Ben Carson are byproducts of this sinister strategy. You get what you pay for, but you also eventually wind up paying for what you get, and the American public is complicit in allowing this echo chamber of distortions and hysteria to fester and metastasize these last 20 years.
One has to wonder, then, what exactly could Obama have said to protect Kennedy’s precious feelings about the real or imagined threat of terrorism along her path to work on the subway? Since his name is Obama, after all, and since Fox analysts would find something for which to castigate him even if the government’s budget was perfectly balanced, health care and immigration were finally resolved, the world was a peaceful place and the sky rained down Skittles and unfiltered joy, I’m guessing the answer is nothing.
[Graphic credit: https://hipiseverything.wordpress.com]