Big
Brown Lies
 For
years I always wondered how the pre-WWII German
people could allow themselves to be so easily
misled by their government. Now I'm living in
the era of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and it's
like watching history come to life. What I now
realize is that Joseph Goebbels wasn't so much
to blame as was a German people ready to accept
lies from which they personally benefitted.
And it all worked out so well for them, didn't it?
Today Fox News is the de facto propaganda wing of the Republican party. This
should come as news to no one, but we as a people should not allow anything to
be the propaganda wing of ANYTHING. If this were really a Christian nation, one
that does not brook venal falsehoods, then Mr. Murdoch would be among the first
to
be pilloried. But, of course, this isn't and he won't.
Fox News once won a court case saying it was their right to lie, and it's true.
The First Amendment allows you, as a business or as an individual, to print or
say whatever you want within the boundaries of libel or slander laws. That's
why we have crap like the National Enquirer.
(Actually, we have crap like the National Enquirer because there exists a sub-class
of sub-humans in America who will happily read crap like the Enquirer.)
But the Enquirer is fiction. 99.999% fiction. It does not claim to be "news".
Advertising is propaganda-lite but it still has to follow truth-in-advertising
laws. Companies can fudge the truth to sell a product but they can't claim that
Toyota Camry's are built by Muslims in order to sell a few more Honda Priuses
(Priuii?).
Newspapers often take a political slant but they are still obligated to tell
at least a semblance of the truth. As long as you avoid the editorial pages,
that is.
Fox News' job, on the other hand, is to confuse those who don't pay attention.
If you've never heard the phrase "cognitive
dissonance", look it up now. Share it with your friends. Once you know
the name of the beast that hides under the bed its power diminishes.
Joseph Goebbels once said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating
it, people will eventually come to believe it."
Or as Fox News' fair-haired boy, George W Bush, used to say: "See, in my
line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for
the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
Tax cuts create jobs. WMD's are in Iraq. Duct
tape
your windows. Negroes are going to steal the elections. Poor people crashed Wall
Street. Death panels are gonna kill your granny. You're going to jail if you
don't buy health insurance. Barack Obama is
a Muslim.
Barack Obama is the new Hitler. Barack Obama
is the anti-Christ. Mike Huckabee. Glenn Beck. Sarah Palin.
That's what you get from Fox News.
We can do so much better than this, and it begins with you calling your cable
company and telling them that you don't wish to give $1.20 of your cable bill
every month to Fox. Fucking. News.
=Lefty=
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